Committee Transcript 1991-Aug-26 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Retail Business Establishments Statute Law Amendment Act, 1991, Bill 115 / Loi de 1991 modifiant des lois en ce qui concerne les établissements de commerce de détail, projet de loi 115

Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce

Windsor and District Labour Council; Canadian Auto Workers, Local 444

Cheryl Lucier

United Food and Commercial Workers

Convention and Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County and Pelee Island; from the Downtown Business Association of Windsor

Ottawa Street Business Improvement Area

Rudolph Flachbarth

Doris McKnight and Wilma Hannon

Bernie Ryz

Clifford Sutts

Ontario Convention and Visitors Association

City of Windsor

Patti-Jo Lane

Trevor Davidson

Christopher Pratt

Robert Andrew

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Chair: White, Drummond (Durham Centre NDP)

Vice-Chair: Morrow, Mark (Wentworth East NDP)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)

Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West L)

Fletcher, Derek (Guelph NDP)

Gigantes, Evelyn (Ottawa Centre NDP)

Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)

Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex NDP)

Mills, Gordon (Durham East NDP)

Poirier, Jean (Prescott and Russell L)

Sorbara, Gregory S. (York Centre L)

Winninger, David (London South NDP)

Substitutions:

Daigeler, Hans (Nepean L) for Mr Chiarelli

Kormos, Peter (Welland-Thorold NDP) for Mr Gigantes

Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville NDP) for Mrs Mathyssen

McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East PC) for Mr Harnick

O'Connor, Larry (Durham-York NDP) for Mr Winninger

Also taking part: Dadamo, George (Windsor-Sandwich NDP)

Clerk pro tem: Manikel, Tannis

Staff: Swift, Susan, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service

1219

The committee met at 0909 in the Hilton International Hotel, Windsor.

RETAIL BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENTS STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LES ÉTABLISSEMENTS DE COMMERCE DE DÉTAIL

Resuming consideration of Bill 115, An Act to amend the Retail Business Holidays Act and the Employment Standards Act in respect of the opening of retail business establishments and employment in them.

Reprise de l'étude du projet de loi 115, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les jours fériés dans le commerce de détail et la Loi sur les normes d'emploi en ce qui concerne l'ouverture des établissements de commerce de détail et l'emploi dans ces établissements.

WINDSOR AND DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

The Chair: We have two representatives from the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce, Mr Mark Jacques and Mr Stephen Roberts. You have approximately half an hour to divide between your presentation and the many questions I am sure the committee members will have for you.

Mr Roberts: My name is Stephen Roberts. I am the president of the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce. It is a pleasure to be here with you this morning. I have handed to the clerk 15 copies of our paper. It is broken down into a number of headings. The first is "Background." The freedom of choice is one of the greatest democratic principles which many people have fought long and hard to uphold. In this regard, an individual's right to shop on any day of the week and a business's right to be able to conduct business on any day of the week are rights that should be upheld in any free and democratic society. As a result of society's demands, the legislation affecting the opening of retail establishments on Sundays has been struck down by our courts or amended to allow broad exemptions by municipalities and other various sectors of the retail establishments.

In 1989, the Retail Business Holidays Act was substantially amended to give municipalities wide powers to regulate retail shopping on holidays. This legislation did not result in municipalities immediately utilizing their new-found authority to permit widespread or unrestricted retail openings. This legislation was challenged and the Supreme Court of Ontario, in June 1990, declared the amendments to be unconstitutional and of no force and effect. As a result, retail establishments were again allowed to be open on Sunday and thereafter in this community many stores began to conduct business on Sundays.

The decision of the Supreme Court of Ontario was appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal and on March 20, 1991, the Court of Appeal reversed the prior decision and the amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act were declared to be valid and of full force and effect. Notwithstanding that the prior amendments to the act had now survived constitutional and court challenges, on June 4, 1991, the Solicitor General, Mike Farnan, introduced his government's amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act in the form of Bill 115.

The amendments established provincial criteria for tourist areas which must be met before a municipality could pass a bylaw allowing Sunday shopping. Under the previous legislation municipalities could opt out of the general prohibition on Sunday shopping by holding public hearings and legally passing a bylaw to that effect. Furthermore, under the proposed legislation an application for a tourist exemption must be made by a business or a group of businesses to their municipal council. The application must demonstrate that the geographic area in which the business is located meets the province's criteria for a legitimate tourist area. These criteria are listed in the regulations of the act and are broad enough and vague enough to result in much confusion and lengthy court battles to determine their effect.

The proposed legislation also provides additional criteria. If the retail business which desires a tourist exemption is larger than 7,500 square feet or has more than eight regular employees, it must meet additional criteria set out by the province. The retail business must provide services on holidays primarily for tourists and meet at least one of four criteria outlined in the regulations. Again, these criteria are both broad and vague enough to allow serious difficulties in interpreting them and will also result in lengthy and costly court proceedings to determine their effect. The proposed legislation also provides that all applications for a tourist exemption must be supported by the local chamber of commerce or the local convention and visitors bureau. Furthermore, it is up to the municipal councils to decide if the applications meet the provincial criteria for tourist exemptions.

In their deliberations, councils must hold public hearings and even if the application is deemed to meet all the provincial criteria, a council is under no obligation to pass a bylaw granting the exemption. While the amendments propose that all council decisions will be final, they can be appealed to the courts. The proposed legislation further provides that all exemption bylaws under the previous legislation which are not yet in force will be repealed and all exemption bylaws currently in force will be repealed in one year or sooner.

The proposed bill also sets forth amendments to the Employment Standards Act which will greatly strengthen employees' already existing rights to refuse assignments of Sunday work. The current legislation provides that retail workers have a general right to refuse an assignment of Sunday work that they consider unreasonable. In addition, the current legislation provides that when there is a dispute between the worker and the employer about the reasonableness of an assignment of Sunday work, including situations where the worker has been disciplined or dismissed because of the dispute, the worker has the right to apply to the Ministry of Labour to arrange a settlement and to require the issue to be resolved by a referee.

The existing provisions of the Employment Standards Act also provide that retail workers have a specific right to refuse work on Sundays and public holidays that is illegal under the Retail Business Holidays Act. The proposed amendments to the Employment Standards Act will give retail workers the absolute right to refuse Sunday work and other holiday work in any retail business establishment defined under the act.

Furthermore, the proposed amendments will give a worker who has agreed to work on Sunday, and thereafter wishes not to do so, the absolute right to refuse to work on a Sunday upon giving 48 hours' notice to his employer. The proposed amendments also assure retail workers of a weekly day of rest by entitling them to 36 continuous hours of rest in every seven days, whether they work on Sundays or not.

Our concerns:

1. Although the proposed amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act in and of themselves will not have a direct bearing on the provincial economy, the overall intent of the legislation, by reducing the ability of businesses to do business on Sundays and increasing the employees' right to refuse work and guaranteeing a common pause day, is seen as being against businesses' interests. Accordingly, this legislation, along with other legislation being proposed by the government, has the effect of reducing the competitiveness of businesses in Ontario and discouraging potential investment in Ontario.

2. The issues of Sunday shopping and cross-border shopping by Ontario consumers are often linked. However, it is readily admitted and not in dispute that allowing Sunday shopping will not totally resolve the cross-border shopping issue. Notwithstanding this admission, when you have a fire you do not throw gasoline on it, and since the issue of cross-border shopping has been directly related to the declining competitiveness of businesses in Ontario, any legislation that moves to further restrict or prohibit Sunday shopping is consequently related to the cross-border shopping debate.

3. An individual's freedom of choice along with a business's freedom to choose the days to conduct business which it feels will increase its competitiveness are rights that should not be fettered or restricted. Most businesses are more than capable of making these business decisions and to determine those days on which, for their particular businesses, it is most profitable to remain open. Accordingly, these business decisions should not be restricted by any legislative requirements. Furthermore, an individual should be given the freedom to shop or do any other lawful act on any of the week which he or she chooses.

4. The proposed criteria for the tourist exemptions are widely considered to be unworkable, confusing, unenforceable and open to abuse. These criteria will be by regulation and therefore could be changed quickly and without public consultation. Furthermore, the province will be required to face lengthy and costly court battles to enforce the validity and proper interpretation of the proposed amendments. As a result, the proposed legislation will not ensure the goals originally established by this government -- to provide uniformity or a province-wide common pause day -- as this legislation is seriously flawed and will be immediately challenged.

5. The tourist exemption criteria are also inherently unfair. A retailer who provides the same goods or services but who is too large or just outside a designated tourist zone or whose building lacks architectural uniqueness could be forced to close while the competition is open for business.

6. The proposed amendments place an unmanageable burden upon municipalities. In addition to their already existing role, the proposed legislation imposes on municipalities the additional burden of administering the unworkable and confusing provincial tourist exemption criteria. Accordingly, municipalities have had forced on them, unwillingly, the responsibility to evaluate in terms of the provincial criteria the application of any business seeking a tourist exemption. Municipalities must also incur the costs of holding hearings on the said applications being made. In addition, the municipalities will be potentially liable for prohibitive court costs arising from the inevitable appeals of their decisions. The cost to municipalities of these additional burdens in terms of time and money will be enormous.

7. The proposed amendments place undue onus on the retailer to submit an application to the municipal council for an exemption from the prohibition on Sunday openings. In the application, the retailer must demonstrate that the geographic area in which the business is located fulfils the requirements to be designated as an official tourist area. As a result of its size and number of employees, it may also have to demonstrate that many other additional criteria are met to be allowed the tourist exemption. Accordingly, by restricting the conditions under which a municipality can grant an exemption bylaw, the proposed amendments are further punishing Ontario retailers at a time when their need for a competitive business environment has never been greater.

8. The proposed amendments require that all applications must be supported by the local chamber of commerce or the convention and visitors bureau. This requirement was put in place without any consultation with the said organizations. We, at the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce, are not prepared to act as arbitrators of who should open on Sunday nor to become unwillingly involved in the application process.

0920

9. Although in March 1991 the Solicitor General led border communities to believe they would receive special exemptions, the proposed legislation does nothing for border communities which have been seriously impacted by the effects of cross-border shopping. In particular, in Windsor, our city council was prepared to pass a bylaw in May 1991 under the then existing legislation which would have exempted the city from the prohibition to open on Sunday. However, as a result of a last-minute appeal from the Solicitor General, the third reading of the bylaw was delayed until the middle of June. Notwithstanding our council's good faith in delaying its decision to await the announcement of the proposed legislation, the Solicitor General enacted legislation which contained provisions which would repeal any bylaws that were passed subsequent to June 4, 1991, whereas any existing bylaws passed at that time would have been allowed to continue for a one-year period. We feel the Solicitor General's actions in this matter were in bad faith and unfair to the retail business establishments in Windsor who relied on his prior assurances.

10. The proposed legislation would give retail workers the absolute right to refuse work on Sundays and, in addition, to refuse work previously agreed to upon giving 48 hours' notice to the employer. The existing legislation already provided sufficient protection for employees with regard to requirements to work on Sundays. In addition, the retail workforce only encompasses approximately 4% of the entire workforce in Ontario, and pursuant to the proposed amendments a substantial portion of this small sector would be required to work in any event as a result of the businesses being within the tourist exemption criteria. Accordingly, the proposed amendments affect a very small minority of workers in Ontario but send out a very loud and clear message to anyone interested in investing in Ontario that the legislation does not favour businesses.

Recommendation: that the government immediately reconsider its decision to pass the proposed amendments as they will result in the undue restriction of freedom of choice in this province to shop and conduct business on Sundays, which will further decrease the competitiveness of Ontario.

In conclusion, we at the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce feel strongly that the government's decision to pursue the proposed amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act is wrong. The government claims it consulted widely before introducing these Sunday shopping amendments but it does not appear to have listened to the responses received. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario submitted a brief to the government outlining the reasons why tourist exemptions do not work and the prohibitive cost that would be incurred in trying to conform to the provincial criteria. Furthermore, Ontario's border communities have made numerous submissions and have been very vocal with regard to the need to obtain relief and were very discouraged by the government's failure to honour its promise for special exemptions.

The proposed amendments will do nothing to assist the retail sector in its need to compete effectively in our new and expanding global economy. We, along with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and all other chambers across Ontario, are greatly concerned with the responsibility which has been unwillingly legislated upon us to approve applications for exemptions. We were never consulted in this regard and will resist strongly the role the government has imposed upon us.

Although we realize the purpose of these committees is for us to submit to you our views and opinions, which in this case are definitely criticisms of the proposed legislation, we want to emphasize that we stand willing and ready to consult and work with the government to discuss other proposed solutions to the issues at hand. We want to emphasize that we are anxious to be involved with the government and to be involved in the consultative process. We feel if we work together we can increase the competitiveness of businesses in Ontario, which will result in more jobs for those most unfortunate citizens of Ontario who are now unemployed.

We thank you for allowing us the opportunity to express our views today and are certainly ready to respond to any questions you may have.

Mr Sorbara: I want to tell the witnesses the brief is an excellent brief and I think probably the first time that we have had such a concise statement of the background. I have a couple of questions. The first has to do with the particular circumstances here in Windsor. I am looking at paragraph 9 on page 4 of your submission where you argue that you had been given some assurances by the Solicitor General that the realities of Windsor and, parenthetically, other border communities would be taken into consideration in drafting new Sunday shopping legislation. Is that right?

Mr Roberts: I am dealing with general comments that were made by the Solicitor General in March of 1991, I believe, in response to submissions made by the task force of border community mayors. There were general statements made by him that there would be some provisions made to assist border communities.

Mr Sorbara: Cross-border shopping has been an issue in the province for certainly a good year, exacerbated by the imposition of the GST and other matters that have created a significant competitive disadvantage for retailers in Windsor. We have heard about those during our budget hearings. There have been hearings at Queen's Park on the issue of competitiveness across the Canadian-US and the Ontario-US border. If businesses in Ontario and in Windsor are required to stay closed on Sunday, that represents 52 days a year, plus the other holidays, let's say 55 days a year when you are not able to compete. That is like trying to run a business 10 months a year when your competitors are running businesses 12 months a year.

There have been arguments made by some, particularly government members, that Sunday shopping has nothing to do with the issue of cross-border shopping and competitiveness across the border. What is your view of that? Is it an issue and how do you rate that issue among the variety of competitive disadvantages that you have in Windsor and district at this time?

Mr Roberts: As I stated in our brief, and I think it is certainly recognized, having Sunday shopping is not a panacea, will not solve the cross-border shopping question. But it is certainly one of many factors that reduce the competitiveness of businesses not only in Windsor but across Ontario. We are not just dealing with a problem that is only affecting border communities. It is exacerbated in border communities because in the length of time that I have submitted this brief you could have driven across the border, filled your car up with gas, been over at Pace and started doing your grocery shopping and probably just about be on your way back.

In any border community, those stores over there are your competition. At one time your competition may have been Sears next door or the Bay down the street at the mall, but in today's global economy, and especially with free trade coming in, the competition today, especially in Windsor, is on your doorstep. You have made a very good point. It is like being able to compete in only 10 of the 12 months if those other stores are able to compete against you on days when, for no other reason but because there is legislation in effect, you do not have the ability to open your front door and allow the consumers to walk through.

The Chair: You have one minute.

Mr Sorbara: If there is just one further question, I will pass it over to Mr Daigeler.

Mr Daigeler: During these hearings that we have been holding over the last three weeks, many chambers of commerce have in fact taken the same stand you are proposing to us today. However, those chambers also reported there either has been a change in the opinion of their members or there is still a split among the members of their organization. How is it in Windsor? The position you are putting forward here, is that pretty well unanimous among your members or is there a split, and if so, what would be the split?

Mr Roberts: I would have to say this is an issue, and like any other issue you are not going to get unanimous support among your members. It is an issue which I believe even among retailers in this community, as in any other communities, there is some dispute about. At the chamber we simply represent the majority and we try to take those positions which represent the majority of our members. We have not done recent surveys, but surveys that we have done in the past and then have reinstituted more recently have resulted in large increases in support for Sunday openings. I was chairman of a municipal-provincial affairs committee and approximately four or five years ago when we did surveys on this issue we were about evenly split, 50-50. We have seen a drastic increase in the support for Sunday openings as a result of the cross-border shopping debate and as a result of the cross-border shopping impact on this community. It really has increased the support for Sunday openings.

0930

Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. Particularly I think, in your presentation on page 3, your point 4 sums up very clearly what we have been hearing from a lot of people about the legislation. As you know, a lot of municipalities have said they will open up under the tourist exemption. Notwithstanding the fact the Premier and the Solicitor General have said they have legislated a common pause day, very clearly we will have Sunday shopping in this province, and the only question is how many municipalities will open; is it going to be 60%, 40%, 30%? From what we have been hearing my best guess is that probably 60% of the province will take these broad tourism exemptions and open up. As some people have said, that will have a domino effect and a few years from now we will have wide-open Sunday shopping.

I think your criticism, though, appears to be of the way it is done because, as you know, a lot of people have said that the government made an election campaign promise they did not want to break. They put in these tourism exemptions that were so broad they will now blame it on the municipalities when they open up, and they can get out of the campaign promise by saying, "Sorry, it was big bad Windsor that decided to open up; we just put the criteria in there."

But there has also been some criticism that the tourist exemption will lead to a lot of litigation, that regardless of what side you are on there will be a fight because they will say you interpreted it the wrong way. Is that the crux of the complaint you really have with the tourism exemption?

Mr Roberts: It is certainly one of the greatest flaws in the legislation in terms of the costs that are going to be incurred by municipalities, and really everyone in the province, in trying to enforce and interpret these provisions.

The other problem that is compounded is that the legislation has brought other players in. It requires the retailer to make the application. So we are now putting the onus back on the retailer to have to do surveys and conduct studies and prepare briefs to prove they meet these criteria. We are having a difficult enough time in business these days. To meet the bottom line, with an additional burden to competition, to be able to remain open, you are going to have an extra hurdle to jump over.

As well, they brought the chambers into it. Now we have to also become an arbitrator and look at applications and decide whether or not a particular area meets the criteria. I do not want to agree that the prior legislation was perfect in passing the buck on to municipalities, but this legislation not only passes the buck to municipalities, it passes it on to the retailer and to chambers and to tourist and convention bureaus. Again, we should consolidate it back to the body that has the expertise and the liability for it, and that is the province.

Mr Carr: The number one concern of business, as you know when you look at some of the surveys, is the tremendous tax burden in this province. But the second biggest concern after that is the amount of regulation and paperwork and so on that businesses are facing. What you seem to be saying is that all this fight is going to go to the municipal level and businesses are now going to have to do, as you said, the surveys and prepare the briefs and line up and do presentations like this. Is that your concern as well?

Mr Roberts: Exactly. That is a great concern and it is an unnecessary hurdle that a company should have to jump over just to be able to carry out business.

Mr Carr: The third situation all the chambers have been very concerned about is, as you know, the fact that they were brought in without consultation. As Mr Mills has said, part of these hearings is to show they are listening. I think you have said it, as have all the chambers of commerce, but I just wanted to put it on record that I think that anybody who does not want to be involved, any really essentially volunteer organization that does not make money, that is out there to try to help its members, should not be dragged into the fight. I guess that is what you are saying in point 8.

Mr Roberts: Yes, it is going to put us in a difficult situation, just as it is putting municipalities in a difficult situation. They will certainly, as a result of decisions they are going to make, anger some sector of their community unnecessarily.

Mr Lessard: For the benefit of people who were not here on Monday, and especially for my friend, Mr Sorbara, I just wanted to say that I enjoyed your presentation, as well. I can tell that you benefited a great deal from a good University of Windsor law school education.

Interjection: At least he went to school.

Mr Kormos: It is going over your head, Greg. We will tell you later.

Mr Lessard: I just wanted to say that I did question the Solicitor General last week when we were in Toronto about the provision respecting the chamber of commerce's involvement in this process. He has agreed to take a second look at that provision.

In a great deal of your presentation you speak about the issue of freedom of choice. In fact, in the city of Windsor in the downtown area merchants have had the freedom to open up on Sundays if they wanted to. There are probably about half of them that do not open on Sundays in the downtown area at this point. If you follow your submission, it would seem that if there were unregulated openings on Sunday the malls would open up and then those businesses that were in the downtown area that chose to close on Sundays, they would be really forced to open, do you not think? I mean, they would lose their freedom of choice. If they did not open they probably would not survive.

Mr Jacques: If I might respond to that one, I guess in previous legislation -- and we are going to maintain the same position we have in our previous submissions to a number of different groups -- those businesses that had the opportunity to open in the downtown sector were doing so probably without the chambers of commerce looking at that as a specific regulation that should be changed, because they also had the same designated tourist area, which every time it got to council would be disputed highly. I could not understand how you could draw a boundary down the middle of a street and businesses on one side of the street could be open and businesses on the other could not. That was effectively what you had here in the community. It was only brought to a head by proposed changes to this legislation and any amendments that were forthcoming that said, "This is unfair." We believe everyone should have the freedom of choice. By that nature, there will be a competitiveness factor that will perhaps create a need for businesses to open that might not want to open. There might be that choice. However, the marketplace will dictate that, and what any business would like to have is the opportunity to make that choice, I would suggest.

Others, certainly as Mr Sorbara has said, would probably not like to have, or might like to have legislation which would prohibit them from opening so that they would not have to make the choice, they would not have to force their employees. Their business probably would not benefit in their opinion by being open, but you should not restrict other businesses from opening just because some businesses feel they should be restricted or whatever, because that is an easy solution for them.

I think the marketplace in many respects dictates those openings. This is the only sector really which has legislation that prohibits this kind of occurrence. Every other business sector -- I mean, the doctors and dentists and lawyers and this and that can work whatever time they choose. This is the only sector in our marketplace which dictates and it is only representative of 4% of the employed population. I would suggest that it would effectively cause some people, because of the competitive nature of it, to be open -- not by regulation, because we are not asking you to regulate people to be open; we are only asking you to regulate people to have the choice.

0940

Mr Morrow: Thank you for such a fine brief. A few of my colleagues and I went for a walk in your downtown core last night. You have a very fine city.

Regarding your closing paragraph, I think it is very important to say that is exactly what we are doing here. We are listening to you and you are actually helping us to either amend or go with the existing legislation. That is what public hearings are all about, so we can get your input into it.

Mr Sorbara: The question is open, is that what you are saying? It is an open question?

The Chair: Let him ask his question.

Mr Morrow: Can I please ask my question, Mr Sorbara?

Mr Sorbara: I am delighted to hear your question.

Mr Morrow: We know that in Ontario there are over 100,000 workers who are basically unprotected in the retail field. What do you feel about the absolute right to refuse work on Sundays?

Mr Roberts: I believe that the amendments that were made to the prior existing Employment Standards Act are sufficient to protect those workers. Again, what we are dealing with is 4% -- and I do not say that just because it only deals with 4% of the workforce, that those people do not have rights and that they should not be protected -- but the rights that they have, even the existing rights that they have, are greater than the other 96%.

If you have walked through our city you probably noticed there were a lot of people who maybe were not walking around Saturdays and Sundays because they are employed at the Chrysler van plant, which has been running for seven days a week probably for the last 10 years. There are many people in this community who work seven days a week and do not have any rights. If we are talking about protecting rights -- and I am not suggesting that is what you should be doing, but the intent of this legislation was to create a common pause day. That is not going to be brought into effect except for a very small minority of the workforce.

At the same time, the legislation is sending out a very, very loud message, as I stated, to anyone looking to invest in this community and to expand and to be able to create new and better jobs hopefully for those who are unemployed. This is not the place to do it. That is the problem we have with it.

I have to agree, this is the forum for me and the chamber to be able to express these views and we appreciate having the opportunity. I do hope you are sincere in your remarks that you are going to listen and that this is an open question, and that hopefully some of the comments we make and the views expressed by others across the province will have an influence on the legislation that eventually gets passed.

The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. A very interesting presentation.

I have an announcement about a change in our agenda. I believe the presenters from the Windsor and District Labour Council are here and from the CAW, Local 444.

They are moving to the 10 o'clock spot, which of course has just been moved up. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is moving to the 11 o'clock spot. The CAW and the labour council are combining, so the 1:30 slot is now empty. Tentatively, we have an additional witness for this afternoon, a Mr Clifford Sutts.

WINDSOR AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL CANADIAN AUTO WORKERS, LOCAL 444

The Chair: Gentlemen, if you could join us, please. We are very pleased that you are here early, so that we can keep things rolling. Mr Parent and Mr --

Mr Lewenza: Lewenza -- A good old Ukrainian name.

Mr Sorbara: It certainly is a good Ukrainian name.

Mr Lewenza: First of all I would like to take this opportunity to thank the United Food and Commercial Workers for allowing us to exchange spots with them because of our timing restraints. We have a meeting this afternoon in Port Elgin.

My name is Ken Lewenza and I am the vice-president of Local 444, CAW, representing Chrysler workers. With me is Gary Parent, the president of the Windsor and District Labour Council, along with the financial secretary of Local 444.

I had the misfortune of listening to the chamber of commerce. I just want to make a clarification, if I can. The Windsor Chrysler mini-van plant, the one we represent, does not work seven days a week. In fact, they work six days a week, on a schedule of eight and 48. Those are the hours they work under the current legislation. Obviously anybody who works five days a week in manufacturing, normally works six days a week. If you work six days a week, you normally work seven days a week to do some PM schedules and stuff to keep the plant running. I just wanted that clarification.

Mr Parent: If I can just add to what Brother Lewenza said, if the chamber in Windsor wants to lead the fight for the shorter workweek, I am sure the labour movement in this city and other cities across this province would join with it to get that fight going. I just want to make that a matter of record.

Mr Sorbara: Now I am confused. Is this van plant open? Do people work there on Sundays or not?

The Chair: You can ask that later as a question.

Mr Sorbara: Okay, sure, or they can just say yes or no.

Mr Lewenza: We would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to make a submission to you on an issue that we feel is very important, not only to the labour movement of Windsor and area, but to the different communities as a whole. In our surrounding communities, the issue of a common pause day has been debated time after time over the last couple of years, and we feel that the previous provincial government tossed the ball back into the lap of the municipal governments when, actually, the responsibility of setting such legislation should be that of the provincial government.

During our many public debates on this issue, the anti-Sunday-opening advocates far outweighed the pro-Sunday-opening advocates, and yet what did we see but our municipal council's total disregard for what the majority of those who spoke out had to say. In our opinion, they went with the minority of businesses that preferred wide-open Sunday shopping.

Tourist-designated areas: We feel very strongly that we cannot allow municipal governments to solely have the right to designate areas because of what our city council has done under the old legislation in designating our whole city as a tourist area. We feel that our city council's decision was swayed a great deal by the cross-border shopping phenomenon which we, as a border community, are definitely suffering from. However, the reality is that wide-open Sunday shopping in Windsor will not stop people from going across the border. Only cheaper Canadian prices can do that.

We feel that the areas that were permitted to remain open under the old legislation, like the downtown area, should be the only areas to open and, even then, only if their establishment is less than 4,000 square feet, and the number of persons engaged at any one time does not exceed four.

Workers affected: The working men and women in retail-related businesses are the people most adversely affected and, yes, we are happy with the proposed legislation set, out by this government to protect them. Our concern, of course, is the policing of such legislation. We do not have to tell this committee that employers have subtle ways of intimidating workers, which, I might add, was expressed during previous debates on this issue, not only by the workers themselves but also by management people who spoke at the public hearings.

The moral issue: We say to this committee there has to be a line drawn as to profits. Profits will have to take a backwards step and let the people of this province enjoy at least one common pause day a week, as we have had in this province for so many years.

Public hearings: We know our city council will be asking this committee to grandfather their present bylaw which was passed this June. We ask this committee not to grant them this special request because, as we expressed during that debate, they should have waited until the province brought down the new legislation. However, they would not listen and passed it anyway. We also ask the committee, if in its wisdom it decides more public input is needed by having more public hearings, not to grant our city council or any other municipal council an exemption from this process. We feel quite frankly that after this current consultation process finishes, the legislation be put forward and finalized so the people of this province know what is and what is not open, once and for all.

In conclusion, we implore this committee to look at this legislation from the eyes of those workers who would have to work, and not from the eyes of those who are looking at this matter from a point of view of convenience. Profits, in our opinion, have to take a back seat, and the human element of having at least one common pause day a week has to be upheld for all people in this province. Thank you.

0950

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Lewenza. We have approximately eight minutes per caucus, starting with Mr Sorbara.

Mr Sorbara: Let me say at the outset that if you are of Ukrainian origin I guess this is a pretty important time for you, and the hearts of a lot of people around the world are with you and your fellow people of Ukrainian origin.

I want an answer to the question I raised during the intervention that you made before you started with your brief. Do people at the Chrysler van plant, or people in Local 444, work on Sunday? Are they eligible to be called upon to work on Sunday?

Mr Lewenza: As I have indicated before, in the production process such as the mini-van plant, normally when a plant is scheduled to work six days -- which they are today because obviously we are one of the plants which have really not been affected by the recession, we are still doing fairly well -- normally what would happen is the production people would work six days a week and the seventh day the company would canvass for a voluntary crew to work in the skilled trade sector, obviously to maintain the machinery. I just want to add, though, I think there is a slight difference in terms of comparing the two. In the manufacturing sector, in a mini-van plant, for example, to work 25 or 30 people on a Sunday they would canvass 500 to 600 skilled tradespeople. So it is a significant difference in terms of apples and oranges, if I may add.

Mr Sorbara: Many retail businesses that open on Sunday testified before this committee that to maintain a workforce of some 10 or 15 in a store they canvass between 200 and 300 people who put themselves on a list of people anxious to work on that day, which is to say that the difference is not all that dramatic.

I have walked around Windsor a little bit, not this time but in the recent past, and I see a lot of stores that are closed up. I guess you travel around the province quite a bit and you see "For Rent" signs and bankruptcy sales. I noticed that on page 4 of your brief you say: "We say to this committee that there has to be a line drawn as to profits. Profits will have to take a backwards step and let the people of this province enjoy at least one common pause day a week as we have had in this province for so many years."

First of all, are you basing your submission on the fact that the retail sector in Ontario has been profitable as of late?

Mr Parent: I think what we are saying very clearly to this committee and to others as we have said time in and time out, is that the majority of the retail industry in this province does not really want to be open.

Mr Sorbara: No one is suggesting they have to stay open.

Mr Parent: You say that, but we all know the retail industry is competitively driven, and competition is very swift and very severe, particularly in light of the recession this province is experiencing at this particular time. Any time someone next door opens up you want to have at least some access to those same people who are walking down, maybe to go to that particular store, so you are going to stay open.

At the hearings that went across this province under the last provincial government, those same retail businesses in this community, probably some of them have now had to close, possibly because of this legislation of letting stores open. No one is taking into consideration the added cost it takes for a store to open on that Sunday.

We heard submission after submission by a store that is a multinational, Sears. The experience their particular chain had out west was actually detrimental. At first their profits, they saw, actually increased; but long-term, after the novelty had worn off, what they experienced in hydro costs, in added employee costs, far outweighed the benefits they were receiving at the time.

We are saying very simply, as a province, we have to set out legislation on a common pause day to protect not only the workers but also the retailers themselves.

Mr Sorbara: Okay. we just heard from representatives of the retailers through the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce and probably we should allow their own organization to speak on their behalf. Without any disrespect, and I have a great deal of respect for the Windsor and District Labour Council, I would prefer the chamber speak on behalf of the business owners.

I was concerned about that issue of profit. If you are basing your submissions on the notion that unconscionable profits are being made in the retail sector, I want to tell you that the story is not quite like that. Most retailers are finding it extremely difficult to pay the rent at the end of the month and many of them do not have to pay the rent any more.

Mr Parent: We submit that if you add one more day to that workweek, that is going to add another burden on to those same retailers.

Mr Sorbara: What is a common pause day in the view of the district labour council?

Mr Parent: A common pause day to us is what we have experienced in this province for many years: that Sunday be a common pause day, that workers not be subjected to having to work on that particular day.

Mr Sorbara: I know, but do you think this bill brings about a common pause day? It affects a very small sector of the workforce. Do you bring about a common pause day by providing a right to refuse work to a very small percentage of your workforce and by creating a tourist exemption that allows maybe all of the businesses to stay open in any event? What, in your view, is a common pause day and how do you get there?

Mr Parent: I think I answered that question. With all due respect, I think this community, as well as other communities across this province, in certain designated tourist areas that were there previously, survived quite well the needs of this province. I believe if we get back to that, but with stricter enforcement and protection of those workers who do not want to work, we are back to square one where we have a common pause day in this province, and the people can get on with their lives once and for all instead of having this debate continue year after year after year, which makes no sense to us. All you are doing is confusing not only the consumer but also the working people in this province. We have to put an end to this once and for all.

Mr Sorbara: Speaking of workers in the province, do workers in Local 444 periodically cross the border and do some of their shopping on Sundays in Detroit?

Mr Parent: I would be less than honest if I were to say they do not. They go there for the cheapness of the price and not because it is open on a Sunday.

Mr Sorbara: Do they go there on Sunday because it is convenient to go there on Sunday?

Mr Parent: No.

Mr Lewenza: I think that is where a lot of confusion falls into play here about tying in Sunday shopping to legislation, and some of the whining that is going on in this particular community. I wish everybody here were at our city council debate at the Cleary Auditorium and Convention Centre where presentation after presentation was given, from Marks and Spencers, Freeds, Sears, stores that know the competition out there; they know the cross-border shopping has affected them but they also know in reality that Sunday shopping is not going to make or break their business. It is two things: obviously it is much cheaper in the United States and in some cases it is very convenient. You see polls all over the place. If you took a poll of workers today and said to them, "Do you want to work on Sunday?" I am sure you would have a poll that overwhelmingly says no.

1000

Mr Sorbara: About 95%.

Mr Carr: On page 1 you said the previous provincial government tossed the ball back in the laps of the municipalities when actually the responsibility of setting legislation should be the provincial government's. I hate to tell you this, but this legislation has done the same thing, and those fights you talked about at the auditorium are going to happen again right across this province because municipalities can -- and have said very clearly to this committee they will -- be taking some of the tourist exemptions.

You have been a little kinder than some of the other district labour councils. In fact, the chap in Peterborough called the tourism exemptions a joke and was very blunt in his criticism of the government. As a result of the tourist exemptions, there will be Sunday shopping in this province, there is no doubt about that. Do you believe the Premier of this province has broken his campaign commitment to have a common pause day if this bill is enacted?

Mr Parent: I do not think the Premier of this province has broken his promise to the people of Ontario. I think what is happening through this process is, we are having a consultation, even though I may personally dislike this process, once again to go through the same debates we have had for the previous governments plus the numerous debates we have had within our own city.

I believe one mistake the Premier and this government have to take into consideration is the designation of tourist areas. I do not believe our city council or any other city council should have the ultimate right of choosing what is a designated tourist area and what is not. There have to be some guidelines set up, and I do not particularly like the guidelines that are initially in this particular bill that have to be tightened up, and that is why we are here.

We are asking you as a committee to advise the legislative committee to put the proper legislation in there that is going to put the designated tourist area in a proper focus and not leave it so wide open that Mack trucks can drive right through it.

Mr Carr: I guess the ultimate decision will be made by the people of this province. The Premier said there would be a common pause day. Two years from now if they know they can go out on Sunday and they can shop in their community, and some will and some will not, then obviously that commitment will have been broken and it will not be us who will be deciding that. You will be able to go out, and if I can shop on Sunday that commitment will be broken. The question is, just what percentage of the population of this province is going to be able to do that?

With regard to the tourist exemption, there are many who said that what the Premier and the Solicitor General did was make it broad enough so they can then pass the responsibility off to Windsor. So that is why I made my comment about you saying the provincial government tossed the ball back to the municipalities. That is what this legislation does.

I am wondering why you are not as critical of that responsibility as some of the other district labour councils were, because in spite of the good co-operation between some of the unions and the NDP government they were still saying: "Hey, this is wrong. It's a bad bill. We want it changed. Get rid of these tourist exemptions." Is that what you are saying in effect as well?

Mr Parent: We are saying that this legislative committee is going to put proper legislation, we hope, back into focus as regards the proper designated tourist area. It is not law right now, obviously, and this is what this consultation process is all about; there will be proper legislation put into effect, we hope. That is why we are here today, to try to give you some guidance as to what we feel as a labour community. We do not agree with the designated tourist area in its present form. We are saying to you as clearly as possible that we want some changes and some tightening up on that part of the legislation. That is what we are saying in our submission to you here this morning.

Mr McLean: On page 3 you say only cheaper Canadian prices can do this. Farmers are getting $60 to $75 a ton for their grain now. It costs $150 to get rid of garbage. Farmers work seven days a week. What are you going to do for the farmers for a common pause day, and do you want them to get $50 a ton for their grain for cheaper prices?

Mr Parent: With all due respect, Mr McLean, I wish we were talking about the farmers because I believe there are a lot of suggestions that we could make, not only at the provincial level but I am sure on the federal level as well, to help those farmers.

We in this community happen to be caught in probably the worst drought that we have seen in several years, so when you talk about the farmers in Essex county in particular, we have a lot of farmers right now who need a lot of provincial help. It is not going to be satisfied by opening up Sunday stores to help those farmers at this particular time. What we need, quite frankly, is a lot of financial aid, from the provincial government as well as the federal government, because of the drought that we just experienced in this particular year. There are some problems peculiar to the farmers in our county and we only hope that if there is a consultation process put in place, we will be there defending and protecting the farmers and trying to get the financial help they need to assist them in this devastation they have just experienced.

Mr McLean: Then what do you mean by cheaper Canadian prices?

Mr Parent: We are talking mainly of the retail industry. We are talking about eliminating the GST that your particular government, federally, happened to put into this country, which is devastating this country of ours as we now know it.

Mr Carr: Provincial taxes on gasoline, booze and cigarettes while we are at it.

Mr Parent: We covered those particular items last Monday, I believe, Mr Carr and Mr McLean, because you were both here at that particular hearing as well. I am glad to see you are getting your income supplemented by attending these hearings as well. Maybe there is a shortage of certain backbenchers attending these particular hearings, I have no idea. All I am saying to you is that we have a problem that goes far beyond the provincial mandate. We have a problem that starts at the federal level that is devastating this country and in particular devastating this community. I will debate at any time with anybody on what is the cause of the devastation that this community and other communities across this country are suffering. It is at the federal level; that is at the root of the whole trouble.

Mr Carr: Getting back to my last question, because I let Al jump in for that one, you talked about the recommendations that you want to see. If this particular bill does not change, do you think we will have a common pause day in Ontario?

Mr Parent: Quite frankly, no. I think the tourist-designated area has to be straightened up to give a true common pause day for the people in Ontario.

Mr Lessard: Gary and Ken, it is good to see you here this morning, as always. I know you guys are working overtime yourselves just to make presentations before all these committees that are coming through town.

Mr Parent: No pay, though.

Mr Lessard: We appreciate that fact. What is the standard workweek at the van plant? What is the normal workweek?

Mr Lewenza: Which one are you talking about?

Mr Lessard: The straight-time workweek, I guess.

Mr Lewenza: It is eight hours a day, 40 hours a week.

Mr Lessard: Forty hours and then on. So if the plant is open on Saturdays, there is a premium?

Mr Lewenza: Anything over 40 hours is automatically time and a half.

Mr Lessard: What about Sundays? You say they have to go through a lot of workers to get volunteers to work on Sundays. What is the pay rate then?

Mr Lewenza: Sunday is automatically double time, negotiated.

Mr Lessard: Do you feel there is any intimidation that is exercised in order to get people to work on Sundays or to volunteer to work on Sundays?

Mr Lewenza: In our work environment, speaking strictly of the manufacturing sector or the mini-van plant, absolutely not.

Mr Lessard: What do you attribute that to? Do you attribute that to the collective bargaining process or the union representation?

Mr Lewenza: I think there is no question that the union influence has a great bearing in terms of the intimidation factor. Obviously, if there were no union there, then workers, I think, would feel intimidated about refusing, thinking that come Monday morning they may not be protected or may not have some layoff provisions. I think we all know what some of the non-union personnel go through.

Mr Lessard: In part of your presentation you talked about your concerns about enforcement. Do you have some concerns about those issues in the retail sector?

1010

Mr Parent: Yes, we do. We have, in our particular point of view, some good health and safety legislation in this province of ours, although obviously there is always room for improvement. The policing and enforcement of that piece of legislation leave, at times, much to be desired. I think it is important to note that during the debating process in the public hearings that have transpired, we heard management employees make presentations to the council about subtle ways employers had of saying to the management people: "Here you are as a manager. How does it look to the people who work for you if you don't come in on Sunday?" The particular woman who was making that presentation had not worked, I believe it was, a couple of Sundays in a row, but then her employer spoke to her in a very subtle way.

As we said, there was nothing that could be pinpointed as a violation per se as it relates to the current legislation that is before us, but it is there, in particular in the retail industry. You will find, if you talk to people in the retail business, that they are very reluctant to step forward and say their employer said this or did this. They are very insecure. I am not talking about the organized retail people; I am talking about those who are non-organized, in those stores out there having employees who really fear their employer and who want to work. That may be their only source of income. Even though they may not want to work, they may want to be home with their family on that particular Sunday, they feel compelled because of maybe the threat of not getting enough hours, say, in the subsequent week. You all have to remember that most of the people involved in the retail industry are basically working on commission, so if you cut their hours, that is another problem to them, that is another subtle threat to them.

The other thing you have to remember in the retail industry is that when you are stretching the six days into seven, those hours may not change as far as the commission hours are concerned. They may be stretched out over seven days versus six days. There are a lot of things that come into play when you are talking about the retail industry and when you are talking about putting in legislation for a common pause day. These are all issues that have been fully debated before our city council and others. Unfortunately, they have fallen on deaf ears in our municipality. All we are asking is to let it not fall on deaf ears in this committee. Let us try to put the proper legislation forward for the protection of all workers, organized and non-organized, and, as I said earlier -- even though Mr Sorbara said I should not be speaking for the business industry -- to save some retail industries in this province as well.

Mr Lessard: Do you think this legislation is a big improvement with respect to the protection of retail workers?

Mr Parent: Absolutely. It is the first time the retail worker does have protection in it, as legislated in the proposed legislation. The only question we have is on the policing of such legislation.

Mr Fletcher: Gary, you said a few things as far as the cross-border shopping issue is concerned. How long has Detroit been open on Sundays?

Mr Parent: They have probably been open on Sundays ever since I can remember growing up in the community.

Mr Lessard: Do not ask him how long that has been.

Mr Fletcher: No, I will not. It has been a while, has it not? But was it not during the 1970s that transportation was coming this way?

Mr Parent: That is very true. I can remember when the dollar was extremely high -- the US dollar, that is -- and obviously we in this particular community enjoyed quite a profitable response from the American shopper at that particular time, which we also do today. Today, the American tourist is encouraged to come over here. I think it would be a shame that we did anything to deter them from that.

Mr Fletcher: You have already hit on the points as to why people are going across the border and I agree with you fully. I think it is time to change that part of government that should be changed.

As far as the employment standards part of the legislation is concerned, it is going to be tough to enforce. I think even Mr Sorbara, when he was the Minister of Labour, realized that under his bill it is hard to enforce. Is there any way we can make it tougher, to make it enforceable?

Mr Parent: Obviously you would have to add on more staff into the employment standards branch, more staff in the Ministry of Labour, to have specific designations to police and to tour various retail industries across this province to make sure the legislation is being upheld. These are things that are very complicated, but I do not think you will ever get to the type of enforcement you would want to stop the subtle little pet peeves that the employers could push on to their employees. That is why we strenuously urge this committee to look at the common pause day and to put legislation into place that is going to protect the workers, yes, but to shut down the province the way that it had been in the past with only a few tourist-designated areas that are allowed to open. I do not buy the argument that has been set out by some of our councillors to the effect that it is unfair to those in the rest of the community.

Mr Fletcher: I know the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce was saying that it was against Sunday opening and Sunday shopping and that if you opened the stores eight days, people would find a way to shop on the eighth day.

I just want to touch on the point that you have been making quite clear -- and I think the opposition members have not been picking up on this -- that this committee is here to listen. What we have heard, as far as the chambers of commerce are concerned, is that they want nothing to do with it. We can make that change. As far as you are concerned, labour is saying it wants certain changes. We can make those changes. The opposition members are saying that this is a fait accompli, that this is the legislation, that this is the way it is going to be. Maybe that is the way those parties operated when they were in government, but this is different. That is what we are here to do, to make changes when we hear what the people want, so I am glad you did make that distinction at the time, that this is what you see this committee doing, more so than what your city council probably did.

Mr Parent: Absolutely, and I think in previous consultation processes that has happened. I just want to point out -- it was in the Windsor Star, I believe, on Saturday night -- that the town of Essex has done a survey, I believe, on the whole question of Sunday openings. The survey results proved once again that the people in the town of Essex do not want wide-open Sunday shopping, and yet one would look at the town of Essex as being a designated tourist area, being that it is in a tourist area, so to speak. So I think it is interesting to note that there are communities within the county of Essex that really do not want to have wide-open Sunday shopping. The counterargument of course is: "Well, they don't have to. It's strictly voluntary." But again, one has to look at the whole question of competitiveness, as we pointed out earlier in our remarks.

Mr Fletcher: You are right.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Parent and Mr Lewenza.

We have a small change in our agenda. Ms Cheryl Lucier is presenting now for a quarter of an hour, but before that presentation Mr Mills has a couple of points he would like to make in response to questions from two weeks ago. As you know, there has been a response from the Ministry of the Solicitor General attorney in regard to Mr Elston's and Mr Sorbara's questions.

Mr Mills: The week before last Mr Sorbara asked a question through me to the minister. Was the intent of Bill 115 competitive-driven? I want to say on the record that the intent of Bill 115 is not competitive-driven. The goal is to ensure a common pause day and protect retail workers.

Mr Sorbara: If I might, Mr Chairman: Generally, when the ministry responds to a question like that, the person who put the question is entitled to a supplementary. Perhaps we could do that after our friend's submissions.

1020

CHERYL LUCIER

The Vice-Chair: You can now proceed, Ms Lucier. You have 15 minutes.

Ms Lucier: My name is Cheryl Lucier, and I am a retail worker in Windsor. Although I am personally not faced with the prospect of having to work on Sunday, I feel I should make my views known. I strongly support the common pause day legislation and feel that it is an important move by the Ontario government to protect the rights of retail workers and to re-establish the importance of the family.

I have a criticism regarding the amendment to provide province-wide criteria for an exemption to holiday retail closing requirements for tourism-based businesses. To the best of my knowledge and experience, Windsor city council will apply for a tourist exemption for the entire city of Windsor. Based on the criteria for tourism exemption as set out by the former Solicitor General's office, the entire city of Windsor does meet the requirements for such an exemption. In fact, most communities in Ontario meet at least two of the top four requirements, which are: that the area must have either historical attractions, natural attractions, cultural attractions or ethnic attractions. These criteria are, in fact, the same qualities that we in Ontario are very proud of possessing.

It is clear to me that the Retail Business Holidays Act amendment should be more specific and be applied to the individual retailer rather than the community or the size of the business concerned. Such appropriate characteristics outlined by the Solicitor General are that the retailer should have historical or distinctive architectural features, feature items of cultural or ethnic appeal, or provide specialized goods or services, such as heritage or handicraft items.

The last characteristic, that the retailer must provide goods or services necessary to tourist activities in the area served by that establishment, is again too broad and all-inclusive and is based on location rather than the actual goods and services being provided.

The NDP government has pursued this important legislation to protect the retail workers of Ontario. It is a good law, but it must also be a strong and precise law to meet its objectives. Municipal councils must not be given the option of having their entire community declared exempt from retail closing requirements. We must have a law that will stand up in court and maintain the intent of such legislation. I trust this is an issue that has already been discussed and acted upon by our new Solicitor General and his staff.

Windsor city council is trying to fix the economic recession by declaring wide-open Sunday shopping. They perceive it as a remedy to cross-border shopping. We all know our economic problems are not so easily remedied. We must demand that our next federal government move to lower interest rates, make our dollar more competitive, and completely overhaul the Canada-United States free trade deal.

I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to express my views, and I applaud the Ontario government for its efforts to make Ontario a better place to live and work.

Mr Poirier: Madame Lucier, it is interesting that you say you are not personally faced with the prospect of having to work on Sunday. What have you seen or heard around Windsor that would make you feel the way you do, and what personal motivations do you have, if I may say so?

Ms Lucier: First of all, the store that I work at, our manager took a poll and asked people if they would be willing to work on Sunday. He was the only one who volunteered, so as far as that is concerned, the company I work for will not be opening on Sunday.

Mr Poirier: Do you have a medium-sized or small-sized store, or what is it like?

Ms Lucier: It is a large company in Windsor, and we do have some Sunday store openings, so it is being left up to the individual store. I do know a lot of people in the retail industry, though, who are definitely being faced with having to work on Sunday or face problems in their workplace.

Mr Daigeler: I am always struck, quite frankly, when I hear community representatives such as yourself, and before, union representatives, speak very strongly for one particular point of view and then I hear that the elected representatives, in a pretty well significant majority, decide another way. It leaves with me a very difficult feeling, as a provincial legislator, to step in and decide for the local people the way it should go. It would seem to me that the proper place, probably, to decide that is at the ballot box here in Windsor. Do you see that question of Sunday shopping becoming a major issue in the fall municipal election?

Ms Lucier: In the next municipal election, I think it should be made a very main issue.

Mr Daigeler: You said it should be. Do you think it will?

Ms Lucier: Personally I hope it will. It is unfortunate that in the city of Windsor we tend to have a city council that does not always stand up for most of the people. It is unfortunate; I do not know how we got into such a dilemma, but it is a problem we have here.

Mr Lessard: Federally too?

Ms Lucier: Yes, definitely.

Mr McLean: I want to thank you for appearing this morning as an individual expressing your concerns, because it is important that we hear from individuals.

Your short brief indicates very strongly that the exemptions will allow pretty near every city or town or village in Ontario to open under their criteria. You indicate that you feel they should be more specific with regard to the amendment, and you also indicate that you think it is a good law. What specific recommendations would you make, other than the individual retailer?

Ms Lucier: Other than the individual retailer? That should be a main requisite: what the retailer has to offer tourists who are shopping in the area on Sunday. As everybody knows, in Ontario we are very proud of our heritage and our culture, and by allowing city council to make a decision for the whole community, I do not think that is the way to go with this law.

Mr McLean: I guess the basic problem is with the exemptions, is it not?

Ms Lucier: Yes.

Mr McLean: If it was changed, which would not allow certain communities to meet the criteria, then a lot of small-town Ontario would not qualify.

Ms Lucier: And a lot of urban areas would not qualify as well.

Mr McLean: So your recommendation would be to take out some of the exemptions.

Ms Lucier: I think each individual retailer should be made to meet certain exemptions in order to be open on Sunday, and I think that is the intent of the law as it is stated. I have not read the full legislation, but as it is stated, they are trying to get down to the cultural and ethnic and tourist-based industry. That is the people they want to see open on Sunday, not the grocery stores and not the shopping malls.

Mr McLean: Maybe they should be more specific and put in some of those very types of businesses you are talking about, the large malls and the large retail grocery stores.

Ms Lucier: What do you mean, they should put them in?

Mr McLean: Put them in so that they would not qualify as an exemption; thereby they would not be able to stay open.

Ms Lucier: It is a very big thing to sit down and go through all the criteria. I believe the government should do that before the law is passed.

1030

Mr Lessard: Ms Lucier, I am glad to see that you were able to fit into a very full agenda here today. In your presentation you referred to some of the actions of city council and Mr Daigeler suggested there was a significant majority who felt the stores should be open on Sundays. Did you attend any of the city council meetings where this matter was discussed?

Ms Lucier: Yes, I did. I made a presentation to city council and the night that I made the presentation I would say at least 95% of the presenters were against wide-open Sunday shopping. That includes the retailers and the community, a lot of the big store owners in the community. The majority of the city of Windsor does not want wide-open Sunday shopping and I believe city council is acting against the wishes of the city.

Mr Lessard: As I recall, the vote was 5 to 4 in favour of passing the bylaw, so it was fairly close. You have mentioned that people working in retail establishments, if they did not work on Sunday, may face some problems in their workplace. Could you be more specific about that?

Ms Lucier: First of all, what it boils down to is that people entering the workforce, when we have wide-open Sunday shopping, are going to be hired based on the fact that they will work on Sundays. As for the people who are already involved in the retail industry, their companies, if we have wide-open Sunday shopping, are going to have to face the fact that they are going to have to open to compete. If we have seven days of wide-open shopping, the stores that stay closed are going to lose a percentage of that market and so, as far as I can tell, they are going to have to have workers who are willing to work on Sunday. If the people who are working there refuse, I think we are going to see problems.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for that fine presentation. It is always really nice to see individuals presenting.

Mr Sorbara, you had one brief question to pose to the ministry.

Mr Sorbara: Yes, Mr Chairman. I do not think the ministry responded exactly to the question that I asked. I do not think my question was whether or not the legislation had an economic purpose, but I accept the answer.

My supplementary then would be this: Based on the fact that his submission to the committee was that the purpose of the legislation was to create a common pause day and to protect retail workers, would he be willing to submit to the committee a working definition of common pause day?

The reason I ask that is this: You will notice in the legislation, if you turn to subsection 4(2) of the proposed bill, it says, "The council, in passing a bylaw under subsection (1)" -- that is the section that allows for retail businesses to be opened on Sundays and holidays -- "shall" -- the council, that is -- "take into account the principle that holidays should be maintained as common pause days."

The problem that we have with that, and I think the problem many of the presenters have had during the course of these public hearings, is that the bill does not present any definition of what a common pause day is. What the bill does, in fact, is ask councils around the province to maintain common pause days and yet the act does not define a common pause day. So I think the councils are going to be in a little bit of a quandary wondering what exactly it is that they are to maintain as they consider passing a bylaw.

So I am asking that the Solicitor General, through his parliamentary assistant, provide the committee at this point, with a working definition. Later on, down the road, I am going to be taking that working definition and bringing it up in clause-by-clause consideration of the bill and proposing that if we are really trying to create a common pause day, we give it some sort of definition. This of course will help municipal councils.

My request is that the parliamentary assistant either provide us now with a working definition of "common pause day" or have his ministry do so as quickly as possible. Can we have a response now?

The Vice-Chair: You will get it later, I am assuming, Mr Sorbara. Now the Ottawa Street Business Improvement Area, are they here? Okay, can we possibly go for a 15-minute recess, please?

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, I think the parliamentary assistant has an answer to my question -- okay, we will do it after.

The committee recessed at 1033.

1050

UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS

The Chair: We have before us a presentation from the United Food and Commercial Workers, Mr Tim Orbine. Mr Orbine, we have approximately half an hour. Please leave some time if you can for questions from the committee members.

Mr Orbine: Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to address you today and put forth the views from UFCW on behalf of our members. The UFCW --

Mr Sorbara: I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Chairman. Do we have a copy of this brief?

Mr Orbine: No, I am sorry, this is an oral presentation. The United Food and Commercial Workers union is Canada's largest private sector union representing some 180,000 members in the country. UFCW members are employed in more than 20 sectors of the economy, including the retail service, meat packing, food processing, brewing, beverage, distribution, fishing, general merchandising, health care, shoe and leather and banking industries. Locally here, I represent 18 units in Windsor and 15 of them would be directly affected by the legislation we are talking about.

Our position is that the present act fails to recognize the right of workers to a common pause day. The proposed legislation recognizes the need and importance of a common pause day in part I of the RBHA. The wording in the proposed amendment to subsection 4(2), such as "shall take into account" and "should be maintained" is too general. This achieves only a watered-down version of what is required. We believe it has not gone far enough.

The recommendation that UFCW is making is to ensure that the intent of the RBHA is consistently followed. The amendment to section 4(2) regarding municipal powers should read: "The council in passing a bylaw under subsection (1) must maintain the principle that holidays are to remain as a common pause day, that is, to ensure that they remain days on which most businesses are not open, days on which most persons do not have to work."

There was some talk this morning about freedom of choice and expression. Before, in front of the Windsor council, the majority of people who put forth briefs were opposed to Sunday shopping -- and the majority were ignored. There are a lot of long-term retail employees out there who have enjoyed Sundays off for years. Their whole social and family fibre have been geared around one common pause day, that being Sunday. Unless we get airtight, specific legislation to have Sundays maintained as a common pause day, these workers will lose this right, the right that they have enjoyed.

When these employees chose to join these workplaces, they joined at a certain point in time when Sunday was the common pause day. Now, certain people, certain groups are blatantly violating the law; that started the domino effect and a lot of employers have had to get on the market-share bandwagon. They freely chose to come to these types of workplaces because they were not seven-day operations. Perhaps they came because they did have the Sunday off, and they wanted to enjoy the Sunday off. We are changing the rules in midstream for a lot of these people, or threatening to change the work lives for a lot of these people. That is a major concern.

Does the current legislation go far enough to protect the workers? When you spread the business over seven days, as Brother Parent has explained, all that does is spread the costs over seven days. So for retail workers, their work hours, the pool of hours, get spread over seven days. If they refuse a Sunday they could be penalized by losing hours; that is another concern we have. They might have the absolute right to refuse, but in doing so could be cutting themselves economically in the throat by way of a lesser paycheque.

The municipal option, we believe, is wrong. There are no regulations, no criteria and no principles to guide municipalities in making decisions. The will of municipal council simply predominates. The provincial government has no way of stopping wide-open Sunday shopping, or working. One has only to look at the high rate of applications for exemptions that are presently in the hands of the municipality for proof of the extent of this problem. Under the proposed amendment, the decision-making process would remain in the hands of the municipalities. In addition, the regulations and criteria of the tourist exemption set out in subsections (1) and (2) in section 4 of the the new amendments are so broad that they could potentially restrict no one.

Our recommendation is that the recreational, entertainment and cultural pursuits of tourists, as well as the goal of enshrining the common pause day, can both be accommodated by the law. To accomplish this, the UFCW recommends that the proposed amendments be changed to reflect the following, the new subsection 4(1) to read:

"Notwithstanding section 2, and subject to the provisions of section 4(1)(a) and (b) below, the council of a municipality may by bylaw permit retail business establishments in the municipality to be open on holidays where it is essential for the maintenance or development of a tourist industry and where it is essential to meet the educational, cultural, leisure and recreational needs of tourists;" and

"(a) Only retail business establishments in which the total area used for serving the public, or for selling or displaying to the public, in the establishment is less than 4,000 square feet, and the number of persons engaged in the service of the public in the establishment does not exceed at any time four."

We believe the government must establish a committee of the affected people, who will prepare and recommend a new set of viable tourist criteria or regulations. These stakeholders should include the representatives of the affected groups, such as retailers, union and government.

According to the amendment, the tourist criteria as proposed would not form part of the legislation. However, we recommend that the new set of viable regulations established by the stakeholders mentioned above be integrated into the legislation. Further, the council's decision may be appealed by any interested party to the tourist exemption board.

I want to talk about enforcement. As I mentioned before, certain people took it upon themselves to blatantly violate the law. These original violators ended up with no fines, or minimum fines -- so they just kept violating the law. That, in our estimation, created this domino effect and brought us to where we are today. If we allow this to happen and continue to allow it to happen, then the problem will never be solved. If we get a law and put a law in place, then we want it enforced.

The recommendation of UFCW is that the proposed amendment of the minimum penalty in subsection 3(1) be modified to include: "For first offences, the minimum fine for conviction be $10,000, and for subsequent offences, the minimum fine for conviction be $20,000." Also, that subsection 8(1) be amended to read: "Upon the application to the Supreme Court by any affected or interested party, the court may order that a retail business establishment close on a holiday to ensure compliance with this act or regulation under this act."

1100

At present, legislation similar to UFCW proposals exists in Quebec, allowing affected parties to apply for an injunction. The legislation has proved to be both workable and effective. In other words, if I am a worker and my employer is violating the laws, I can get an injunction myself. I do not have to ask the police to act on my behalf, because we have experienced that sometimes the police are not familiar with the laws or they could be too busy doing other things and it gets put on the back burner.

I also want to talk about the definition of a retail business. Under the present act the definition of retail business does not include club warehouses such as the Price Club. There is one just now in London, a very massive retail store, another one just opening up in Kitchener, I believe, off Highway 8, and the current law allows for these clubs to be open. In the proposed amendment the government has not addressed the existing problem relating to the definition of a retail business and as a result club warehouses will continue to operate on Sunday.

I have also had some great deal of focus in this area on cross-border shopping, and our position is that Sunday shopping/working has nothing to do with cross-border shopping. Canadians go to the United States because the prices are cheaper, and it is that simple.

There are a lot of reasons for the cross-border shopping going on: the recession, the high level of the Canadian dollar, high taxes in Canada, the introduction of the GST, lower gas prices, lower cigarette prices and on and on. I believe there was recently a poll done by Agriculture Canada that food prices ended up 10% cheaper when you take away all the high-taxable items such as cigarettes and gas. We believe that is what is sending people across the border. We do not think that wide-open Sunday shopping will be a solution to this; it will be a Band-Aid effect, a desperate measure. We believe that just because we are in desperate retail times, we should not take desperate measures, because we hope we are going to come out of this and we do not want to tie ourselves into a law that we are going to live with for a long, long time.

I also want to talk a little more about the cross-border shopping. Locally I represent workers at the A&P and the Miracle Food Marts that have been converted to A&P, and Zehrs, as far as the major chains are concerned. I do have access to sales figures, but I think you can appreciate that I cannot disclose these figures at this forum. But I can generate the figures into general terms and I can tell you that A&P and A&P-Miracle Food Mart are down and were down during wide-open Sundays, when they were open. I can tell you that during this time frame these businesses laid off a lot of our members and Sunday opening was not a saviour; it did not get a lot of our people recalled. In fact, I can make the statement it did not get any of our people recalled.

We also represent, as I mentioned, the Zehrs workers. It remained closed. In the Zehrs corporation right now in the area that I service, there are no layoffs, there were no layoffs during the Sunday opening, and they are growing. Zehrs recently opened up in Barrie and before that they moved to Sarnia, and I think that is an example that the businesses are dealing with market share and how they attack the market share from within Canada. I think that just amplifies that factor.

I want to thank you for listening to me, and if anybody has any questions, I hope I can answer them.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Orbine. Mr Mills has a point of clarification. Mr Mills is parliamentary assistant to the Solicitor General.

Mr Mills: I would just like to correct one thing about the Price Clubs. It is the view of the Ministry of the Attorney General that in the present legislation the Price Clubs are caught in the provisions of what is in place now, so to say they are exempt would be incorrect.

Mr Sorbara: The United Food and Commercial Workers have what I consider to be a good working definition of a common pause day. I have heard it in your brief and I have heard it in a number of other briefs. That definition, if I could just paraphrase it, is that a common pause day is a day upon which most businesses are closed and most workers are not called upon to work.

Ironically, the United Food and Commercial Workers have been supporting Sunday shopping legislation as a way in which to bring about a common pause day. Now the figures that have been provided to us from the Ministry of Labour -- I think these are actually 1987 figures, but the figures have not changed all that much -- suggest that some 3.7 million people in Ontario work in non-retail, non-agricultural occupations in Ontario. That is 3.7 million, in rough terms. At the same time, about half a million people work in retail. So just about 10% of the entire workforce works in retail.

The legislation we have before us will close some of the businesses that some of those retail workers work in. So, you know, in rough terms maybe 200,000 people will work in businesses that are forced to close on Sunday so they will have what the government considers to be a common pause day.

Would you not agree with me that when you pass legislation to close the businesses in which about 200,000 out of 4.2 million people work, you are not getting very close to a common pause day for the people of the province of Ontario?

Mr Orbine: I do not know about those figures.

Mr Sorbara: They are not mine. They belong to the Ministry of Labour.

Mr Orbine: Right, and what year were they, 1987?

Mr Sorbara: Yes, 1987.

Mr Orbine: All right. We have all seen the impact of the GST, and if it keeps up the way it is going, there will be a lot more employed in the retail and the service sector.

Mr Sorbara: But this legislation does not cover the service sector; it just covers the retail sector.

Mr Orbine: I understand that. I am just saying there will be a lot more jobs in that sector. Part of our argument is also the spinoffs of the police force and the overhead that is involved with maintaining these workforces and the families and the lives of all those people that are affected, not only the workers.

Mr Sorbara: But still, would you not agree with me that if the government were interested in bringing about a common pause day, it would close most businesses in most sectors on Sunday? Again, even though we have lost jobs in every sector, including retail, 90% of the workforce does not work in retail. So if you wanted to bring about a common pause day, you would attack the 90% and let the spinoffs occur in the 10%. Would that not be a more logical way to go about bringing about a common pause day for the people of the province, in accordance with your definition of a common pause day?

1110

Mr Orbine: No. I believe we have got to walk before we can run. We have all seen the chaos that this has created, by your figures, to 10% of the workforce, and let's satisfy the 10% that have had it historically, and then if the 90% do wish to get that, and hopefully we do get an airtight law that everybody is happy with, then we will look at that.

As far as my non-retail sectors are concerned, they are compensated by way of double time and the premiums that Brother Parent.

Mr Sorbara: But that does not bring about a common pause day.

Mr Sorbara: I have just one more question. I want to talk about the labour legislation aspect of this bill. You talked about the difficulty of enforcement. Legal counsel tells us that under the provisions of this bill every member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union could enforce their rights not to work on Sunday and that could virtually guarantee that no reprisals would be taken against those specific workers who tried to exercise their rights. That is to say, all of the members of the UFCW could insist that they have the right to exercise and do exercise their right not to work on Sunday, an absolute right to refuse. So does this bill, no matter what else it does with tourism criteria, not provide your members with an exclusive opportunity, a good, exclusive, airtight opportunity, not to work on Sunday and to have a common pause day, at least, common to the rest of the members of the UFCW? Does that not create an opportunity for you to expand your organizing ability because you will be able to help your members enforce those rights?

Mr Orbine: No, we do not believe that, and I go back to the point --

Mr Sorbara: Are you not going to insist that none of your workers work on Sunday?

The Chair: Let him answer.

Mr Orbine: I go back to the point where, let's say, for example, you are a retail worker in one of the shops and you are currently getting 24 hours a week and have three hungry children at home and the business opens up to seven days and you want to exercise your right. You go to church every Sunday, it is your family day, for whatever reason, and you want to exercise that right and your boss allows you to do that --

Mr Sorbara: But your union prohibits you from doing that.

Mr Orbine: Just a second. Can I answer the question?

Mr Sorbara: Sure.

Mr Orbine: Thank you. By doing that over the next schedule, by limiting your Sunday, then you suffer that amount in hours, and although contractually you might be getting the right amount of hours; because you restricted your availability on that Sunday, you would lose those hours that you were entitled to, and therefore at the end of the week, when you incorporate the Sunday to Saturday, you would be down in hours and you would be hurting yourself economically.

Mr Sorbara: But how does the business open if all of the workers insist on forcing their rights? That is what I do not understand. How is he going to open the shop?

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Sorbara. Mr Carr.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation -- it is my turn now -- and I think you are right when you talked earlier about some of the reasons for the cross-border shopping. We had a chap in from Tip Top Tailors, I believe it was, and he said we can compete selling shirts, but the reason people are going across the border is for booze, cigarettes and gasoline, those three commodities, and as you will note in the last provincial budget, this provincial government increased the taxes on all three of those items. So I agree with you on that point, and I think that your agreement with the government of a common pause day is there.

The Premier said he wanted to have a common pause day. You agree. Where your union and a lot of the unions disagree -- and you heard Gary, who was here earlier -- is when the Premier says that this law that he has brought in will give a common pause day. You heard Gary say earlier that unless there are changes it will not, and across the province in our dealings so far, your union has said the same thing, "Notwithstanding the fact that the Premier said that this is great legislation, that we will have a common pause day, we disagree." I was wondering what your thoughts are. If this legislation remains the same, has the Premier of this province broken his promise to have a common pause day?

Mr Orbine: I believe that if this law is passed, the lawyers will get very rich defining the laws, and our members, in our estimation, will suffer while we legally battle out the interpretations and exemptions of these laws. Has the Premier broken his promise? I can answer that it is a step in the right direction, but it has not gone far enough. I guess in the context that it has not gone far enough perhaps it could be a broken promise. We are encouraged by what has been done, but it has not gone far enough.

Mr Carr: One of the big concerns you have, of course, is that it has now been thrown in the laps of municipalities. They are going to be the ones to decide whether we open. There are those who have said this was done to get around breaking the promise and that when they open up, as inevitably they will -- and just so you know, Collingwood says it will be open; Thunder Bay and Kenora did; some of them say they will not; I think North Bay municipality said it will not; if I remember, Kingston said certain sections will be; Ottawa will not be -- there is no doubt that significant portions of the population will have Sunday shopping if this legislation is not changed and it is thrown back in the municipalities' lap. You seem to be saying the province should take more of a role and that the province should make sure these tourist exemptions are tougher. Is that really where your concern lies with the exemptions, the fact that they are so broad that, as Mr Parent said, you could drive a Mack truck through them?

Mr Orbine: Under the law it is open for interpretation. I believe I could hire a lawyer in conjunction with putting a bird feeder on the front of my business and selling an Eskimo carving, and I could be wide open. I believe I have counsel that would support that position in the courts and hope for a win and, as long as I did not force my workers, I could open my business and then the domino effect would force other businesses to open and we are right back to square one.

Mr McLean: You have a recommendation in your brief where council may permit the stores with 4,000 square feet and less than four people to be open on a holiday, with regard to a tourism exemption. The previous legislation, before the Liberals brought in theirs, had the tourist exemption in it. I believe you have even tightened up the tourist exemption that was already there. I like your brief. I think you explain very well the legislation we have now and I believe the exemption you are bringing in is even tighter than the previous exemption. That is what I see you are aiming at: tightening it up but only allowing tourism.

Mr Orbine: Further to that part of the brief, if we do set up a committee and define what the regulations are on tourism, I think that is the key to it -- I mentioned about the bird feeder, or dig a fish pond in your backyard -- we have to define what it is. In the event there might be circumstances where a genuine tourist business that could be closed by this act might be exempted, such as a large postcard and knick-knack shop in Niagara Falls, let's list them and put in the proper exemptions for those people as well, because we are not trying to hurt genuine tourist business.

Mr McLean: Who else is making recommendations like you have? Do you know of anybody and has there been any input into the ministry with regard to what you are saying? I have not seen any and I was just wondering whether you know of any others.

Mr Orbine: No, this is my first presentation in this area, although I was at town council, but as for submitting the briefs I do not know. I believe that would be done through Toronto with most of the larger organizations.

Mr McLean: Well, you have done a good job. Thank you.

The Chair: In deference to the amount of time taken by the previous caucus, you could have another minute if you have other questions.

Mr McLean: Okay. The right of workers to refuse work is a very important one. I had the opportunity to sit in on Bill 70 and it really does give any worker the right to refuse Sunday work. However, I accept the example you give with regard to the 24 hours and that those people may not be as favourable with the boss to get extra time or continue with their time. What further comments have you got with regard to Bill 70 -- maybe you are not aware of it -- and with regard to Sunday work?

Mr Orbine: I represent 3,000 people in this area and the boss is the boss, no matter what you do; no matter if he is a likeable fellow or the biggest unlikeable fellow going, he is still intimidating. Let's say they exercise their right and give 48 hours' notice; you could certainly hide the fact that it is retaliatory. If I were a boss and all of a sudden everybody is working to rule -- there are other subtle ways of intimidating employees so they cannot be caught and are very hard to prove. I go through this all the time in union shops. We are not the majority.

1120

Mr McLean: I think Bill 70 covers that worker now. If he feels he is discriminated against in any way, he can talk to the director and appeal any decision and the layoff and that employer will have to put him back to work.

Mr Orbine: What average Joe on the shop floor is going to go through this kind of tribunal? If I am a student or a mother and suffer that kind of harassment, it is not worth the fight to go the employment standards. It is easy if you have a union backing you, but for the average Joe to pick up the phone, file charges at employment standards and make representation -- it is easier to try to find another job. I still maintain that the boss is the boss and there are ways of intimidation that cannot be proven and there are retaliatory ways out there. I have seen it for years and years.

Mr Lessard: I will try to be short to give everybody an opportunity to get in there. You mentioned the experience you had during the time of wide-open Sunday shopping at your own store and people not being recalled from layoff in order to take advantage of those additional hours to work on Sunday. Can you explain that? What took place? Why were those people not recalled?

Mr Orbine: The point I was trying to emphasize is that we have two major chains that are open for business, are suffering and laid off their workers. All this talk of Sunday opening as the so-called saviour of our retail businesses did not happen in A&P and in the Miracle Food Marts that converted to A&P. That is the point I was trying to emphasize. Those employees got laid off within that time frame and subsequently did not get recalled, so there was absolutely no impact on them.

Mr Lessard: Your experience then is that opening on Sunday would not create additional employment for your members?

Mr Orbine: No. the hours are spread.

Mr Orbine: I go from Chatham to Windsor so it is kind of hard to figure out Windsor. Ballpark is about 3,000 overall between Chatham and Windsor. In Windsor I have 18 units and in Chatham I have 10.

Mr Morrow: That is quite a lot, actually. I was wondering, is there any new money being presented by Sunday shopping, or do you see it as just old money being put over seven days as opposed to six?

Mr Orbine: The business is spread. If I have a wife and two kids and they eat $100 worth of groceries over six days, just because it is open Sunday I am not buying $150 worth. That has always been the theory and I think it has always applied.

Mr Kormos: You and all the other people who took time to come here today, I thank you. I come from Welland down in the Niagara Peninsula, a small community with a downtown that has suffered like so many other small-city downtowns. The plazas and the development around the periphery have, in some people's minds, driven the final nail into the coffins of downtowns, yet the people who maintain their downtown businesses that I am familiar with tend to be small family-run businesses. They do not have a large number of employees but rely upon the labour contribution. They work six days a week as it is.

Some people have been saying that if there is wide-open Sunday shopping, there is just no way the clothing store or the specialty goods store that is run by a family can compete with -- dare I name names -- the K mart or the big chain store that hires, sadly, as often as not, lowly paid and non-unionized people. There is no way they can compete seven days a week. They are already working six days a week. Even as it is, they need that seventh day perhaps to do book work or clean up the shop or what have you. People are saying if there is wide-open Sunday shopping, if you think small businesses in downtowns have been hit hard now, just watch until we have wide-open Sunday shopping and downtowns will be real ghost towns. What do you say to that?

Mr Orbine: I say that is absolutely true. If a person gets in the car because he is out of milk and Zehrs is here and Beckers is two miles down the road, it is human nature to go to the closest spot. I know they have been suffering. In fact, there are articles in Toronto about the little associations standing up and shouting they do not want this. It is a question of market share.

Mr Kormos: But those big plazas and big chains have the bucks and the format. We have to work even harder to fight for small, family-run businesses. Thank you.

Mr Fletcher: This is a follow-up question I asked in Peterborough, so you may get the second part of the question now. I was asking about the produce people would buy in the store on a Sunday, whether it was Sunday produce, and was surprised to hear that it was delivered on Saturday because the delivery trucks do not run on Sunday.

Now I am going into the domino effect. If we get into wide-open Sunday shopping, does the domino effect go into sectors other than retail? In other words, are we looking somewhere down the road where the delivery people have to be working on Sunday to deliver fresh produce to the stores and other things? And then, once we get past the delivery people, do we get into the manufacturing businesses themselves, such as packaging and everything else to supply them? That is the domino effect I am looking at, not so much just the stores opening but, as we go through the whole system of supplying stores on Sundays, is that a possibility? Is that something you are afraid of?

Mr Orbine: I think the briefs that have been and will be submitted to city council on behalf of the various groups today speak for themselves. Any time you get Sears and UFCW and the churches and on and on standing up and holding hands in a fight together, that speaks for itself. That is the domino effect, when you get a major union and a major retailer standing together on an issue. I believe that speaks for the domino effect on its own.

Mr McLean: Mr Chairman, on a point of clarification: Is the food terminal in Toronto open on Sundays?

Mr Mills: No.

The Chair: You still have some time. All four of you have asked questions and you are still under the wire.

Mr Fletcher: Yes, I know. I will continue, Mr Chair. As far as the cross-border shopping is concerned and the stand UFCW has on cross-border shopping and Sunday shopping, I keep hearing from a lot of the border communities that if we are open Sundays we can compete, and yet everything I have been reading is that wide-open Sunday shopping was the time during which the cross-border traffic started to increase. We know it is GST, free trade and everything else.

What I am coming down to, and you address it in your brief a little bit: How do we combat the cross-border shopping issue and still have a common pause day when I am hearing from businesses -- and I have to listen to what the business community is saying -- that this is going to help?

Mr Orbine: I think it is a question of education, that unions and businesses and government have to get together and educate the people as to what the impact is. I have had many an argument with many a person as to crossing the border and shopping over there. It is hard to debate with people when they say: "I can cross the border and buy my brand of cigarettes and my brand of booze imported. Who am I putting out of work? It's made in Canada." Their argument is that they are still supporting the Canadian workers and manufacturers and their businesses and that they are just purchasing it somewhere else. It is an education process that these tax dollars go back into our social programs. I think people have to understand that and there has to be an education system put in place.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Orbine, for an interesting presentation.

Mr Fletcher: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I would just like to have you know that Mr George Dadamo, the member for Windsor-Sandwich, is in the crowd.

The Chair: I should mention a couple of things before our next presentation. First, we have simultaneous translation for anyone who wishes it. Second, we have another change in schedule. The Ottawa Street Business Improvement Area, which was scheduled at 10:30, will be showing up at 1:30 this afternoon.

1130

CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU OF WINDSOR, ESSEX COUNTY AND PELEE ISLAND DOWNTOWN BUSINESS ASSOCIATION OF WINDSOR

The Chair: Before us now we have Mr William Docherty, Mr Sergio Grando and Mr Tom Racovitis from the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County and Pelee Island and from the Downtown Business Association of Windsor.

Mr Grando: Distinguished members of the Legislature of Ontario, good morning; welcome to Windsor. My name is Sergio Grando. I am the general manager of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County and Pelee Island. I am making this submission on behalf of the board of directors of the bureau who represent the interests of the local tourism industry.

To say that Sunday shopping has become a controversial issue is indeed an understatement. However, as with any public controversy, very strong community positions, both pro and con, become entrenched. This issue is certainly no exception. The board of directors of the convention and visitors bureau is in favour of open Sunday shopping. Our position is based on what will best serve the needs of our struggling tourism industry and will enhance the competitiveness of our product in an already overcrowded marketplace.

It is important to note that locally the tourism industry employs approximately 12,000 people, making it this area's second largest employer and second only to manufacturing in terms of revenues generated.

To have any significant opportunity for survival in this very competitive industry Windsor and Essex county must continue to strengthen their existing tourism product. Only through aggressive and visionary ambition can tourism become a contributor of economic diversification and, more important, a catalyst for improving the quality of life in our community. After all, the very least we can expect for Windsor's future is an improved quality of life.

I have been employed in the hospitality industry for over 16 years. Having to work on a Sunday or holiday is intrinsic in any hospitality/tourism-related business. Having said that, I do not believe that I or those who are similarly employed in the hospitality industry have a lesser quality of life. All these employees still enjoy a common pause day. They still enjoy quality time with their families and they can still practise their religious beliefs. In all honesty, to resolve most if not all the concerns associated with Sunday shopping is a matter of proper scheduling. It can be done. It is done every week. Just ask any hotel-motel manager or operator of any of our local attractions. The real issue is truly proper scheduling.

Perhaps a more specific question deserves some further attention. How important is Sunday shopping as a direct tourism benefit to our area? First, we must recognize that the Windsor area relative to the rest of Ontario is in a unique geographic location. The state of Michigan, our immediate American neighbour with six million residents within one hour's drive, allows open Sunday shopping. Windsor is primarily a day-trip, short-trip destination. Our research indicates that the two major demand generators for Windsor are shopping and dining. If we are to compete effectively in a region that allows open Sunday shopping, then the Windsor area must be given the same competitive advantage.

By this I am not suggesting that open Sunday shopping in and of itself will stop the current cross-border shopping craze. It will, however, encourage both visitors and residents to spend their dollars in the Windsor-Essex area, which in turn adds to a healthier, more stable economy and helps to create jobs.

The position of the board of directors is not driven by political or religious or moral issues, but rather the positive effect Sunday shopping will have on our local tourism industry. The mandate of the convention and visitors' bureau is to promote Windsor, Essex county and Pelee Island as a viable tourism destination. Accordingly, we are the sales and marketing organization that represents the local tourism sector. It is therefore inherent in our mandate to generate business by attracting visitors to the area.

Research indicates that over 70% of our visitors are American. One of their prime activities is shopping. For a visitor to Windsor and Essex county, whether on business, as a tourist or attending a convention, shopping will be one of the top three activities while staying in the area. In fact, 67% of all visitors to our area shop. In particular for American visitors, the idea of coming to a safe, clean, friendly environment in a foreign country to shop, dine and partake of other leisure activities is both appealing and inviting.

Recent statistics indicate that North American travel trends show an increase in the frequency of vacations. However, these trips have become shorter in duration, which further emphasizes that travel encompassing the weekends is a growing market segment.

To cite an example, the bureau has several major motor coach tour operators who are each doing over 20 overnight bus groups to Windsor a year. Most of these are indeed occurring on weekends. We have been told that the availability of Sunday shopping, albeit it is pretty sparse, was a major factor in coming to this area. So to curtail a major leisure activity on one of the two days available to a visitor, especially when we are competing in an area that allows open Sunday shopping, clearly puts the Windsor-Essex county area at a disadvantage. At the same time, we are missing a tremendous opportunity to generate substantial tourism revenues.

Surely we cannot remain blind to the reality that Windsor and area merchants are losing millions when local residents spend their dollars in Michigan. Cross-border shopping has contributed to a national travel deficit of $1.5 billion in the second fiscal quarter of this year. Cross-border shopping is costing thousands of jobs and an estimated $2.2 billion in lost business this year alone. The figures are indeed epidemic.

1140

Unfortunately we cannot control the new GST policy or the overvalued Canadian dollar, both of which have a tremendous negative impact on our ability to compete and attract visitors. However, we can counter these uncontrollable factors with policies we do have some control over. This can be accomplished by the government of Ontario amending the Retail Business Holidays Act to allow retail business to open unrestricted on Sundays and holidays. The government must allow the principle of supply and demand to determine hours and days of operation.

In conclusion, if we are to prosper in the 1990s and into the 21st century, then we must separate rhetoric from deed and we must rethink, review and reanalyse our priorities. Laws of old may not always be applicable to rapidly changing social and economic environments. We in the Windsor-Essex area simply ask for the tools necessary to develop our local tourism industry. We beseech the government of Ontario to give open Sunday shopping due consideration. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you. Seeing as you have concluded your presentation, we have approximately six minutes per caucus.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Grando, participating in these public hearings is a little bit like taking a journey with Alice through Wonderland. We have, for example, the government proposing to bring about a common pause day but not telling us what a common pause day is and in fact bringing forward legislation that will affect about 250,000 workers of 4.5 million workers in Ontario.

We have the Windsor District Labour Council saying it is opposed to Sunday shopping for, among other reasons, to protect small businesses in Windsor. At the same time, we have small businesses in Windsor saying, "Thank you very much, Mr Parent, but we will protect ourselves and we want an opportunity to open if we want to open."

We have the United Food and Commercial Workers locals right around the province saying they do not give a darn about additional rights for workers, the only way to protect their workers is to make sure every store is closed. In virtually every other situation, trade unions are arguing for enhanced rights for workers. They say, "Give us those rights and we'll make sure that we enforce them."

To me, the greatest irony in all of this is the discussion about workers, because the government pretends it is doing this to protect workers, it has nothing to do with anything else but a reasonable protection of workers in the province -- again, just 200,000 of them, but workers. On the other hand, we have businesses, both in the tourism sector and in other areas that say they would never use coercion against an employee who did not want to work on Sunday. We have heard that testimony from businesses right around the province from the employers' side.

Now, I want to hear what the situation is with the businesses you represent. If a worker says, "I don't want to work in the bar on Sunday," or "I don't want to work in the rooms of the motel on Sunday," is there an unwritten rule that if you are an owner of that business, you are going to take it out on that worker when that worker wants a day off or when that worker asks for some consideration or something like that? What is the real situation in the real world of the businesses that you operate?

Mr Grando: Basically, if you are in the tourism industry, you are operating seven days a week.

Mr Sorbara: What about people who do not want to work on the seventh day?

Mr Grando: Again, they are not working seven days. Individuals are not, to my knowledge --

Mr Sorbara: Well, that would be against the law.

Mr Grando: -- unless they request additional time, working six or seven days. By and large, they are working their five-day week. It is just spread out differently. I will cite an example of a hotel. You are all familiar that a hotel operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It is a fallacy to suggest those employees cannot practise their religious beliefs, are coerced to work on a Sunday when they do not want to, each and every time. I just do not believe that is the case. I have been involved in this industry, as I have indicated, a number of years. We do not hear that. We do hear that people sometimes do not want to work a Saturday or a Sunday, but that has got nothing to do with the issue of open Sunday shopping. It is just a preference that sometimes you may not wish to work that particular day, and the fact that it is a Sunday is immaterial.

Mr Sorbara: What happens if a worker says to you, "I would like to work at your hotel or your restaurant, but I have three children and I would like a schedule that does not involve Sundays"? Do you say, "Sorry, go someplace else?"

Mr Grando: Would I personally say that? I do not know. I guess we would have to review the individual merits of the case. First of all, someone who wants to be employed in this industry, by and large, recognizes that it is intrinsic in the nature of the business that the operation is open seven days a week. You do not necessarily work the seven days a week.

Mr Sorbara: You argued, I think eloquently, that shopping is an integral part of the tourist industry, so that the person who is here in Windsor for one or two or three days looks forward to spending some time at the museum, some time on the water and some time shopping in the downtown area or the malls or whatever. Again, the Alice in Wonderland kind of fantasy in these hearings is that the other side is arguing that shopping has nothing to do with tourism, that people come to Windsor or to Toronto or to London as tourists for reasons other than shopping. Do you have statistics to support the proposition that the ability to go out and browse or purchase is important to the individual who comes to Windsor or comes to London or comes to Toronto or comes to Lord knows where in Ontario?

1150

Mr Grando: Absolutely. That is what people do when they are going to any destination in this country or anywhere abroad for that matter. Shopping is part of the activity. There is no question about it. As I indicated, our statistics show that clearly two thirds of the people coming into the area participate in shopping of one form or another.

Mr Sorbara: If the freedom of choice to open or close on Sunday -- this is my last question -- is granted to the province and to the city of Windsor, do you believe that will solve the cross-border shopping, or will it have some small impact on cross-border shopping?

Mr Grando: As I indicated, I think it will not solve the overall issue of cross-border shopping, but I think it will give residents and visitors an opportunity to shop in their own backyard or to shop on this side of the border when they are here on visits. Right now they do not have that luxury, or they have that luxury in very limited forms.

Mr Docherty: You asked a question that begs an answer. You asked, what do you do in a hotel or a business particularly on Sundays or Saturdays? I ask you, what do you do with a policeman, a fireman, an airline pilot? This is a place the government ought not to be. My goodness, private industry has to arrange its own situation. You asked another question. If somebody does not like what an employer does, the Ministry of Labour is a very large organization in Ontario. It encompasses all businesses which employ anybody in any form whatsoever, and the complaints that wind up there are the kind of complaints you are talking about if one is segregated or if one is discriminated against in terms of work habits, etc. There is ample legislation in place to deal with all of these matters. Certainly the government has no business becoming involved further in this.

The situation that we are talking about here, most of us at the table, is tourism. We had designated areas for that. On the outskirts of the city that is something else. Downtown in this hotel, downtown in the hotel next door and the 1,000 rooms we have around here, when they come to us from Detroit -- where all of us are members of the tourism and convention bureau -- the question you ask is what to do. When you come to a hotel room, you do not stay in it and look out the window at the fine skyline to the north. You want something to do, and that is a what-to-do. That is how they describe it in the industry. With no what-to-do you are dead in the water.

The Chair: I am sorry. Could you identify yourself?

Mr Docherty: Yes, I am Bill Docherty. I am talking on behalf of the Hotel Association of Canada.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Docherty. It is simply for the purposes of our recorder. They are not going to be able to identify voices.

Mr Docherty: His questions begged answers. They were simple questions and there are simple arrangements in place.

The Chair: Gentlemen, do you have an additional presentation to Mr Grando's?

Mr Docherty: This gentleman is going to make a presentation and I am going to say a few words.

The Chair: Perhaps we have a bit of a difficulty because after Mr Grando had finished there was a silence and no one continued, so we may have some difficulty in terms of having any questions after your presentation because we also have, of course, the questions for Mr Grando.

Mr Sorbara: Might I just suggest that we continue till about 12:10 and solve that problem that way.

The Chair: We will be doing that, but we still will not have time for questions. Mr Carr, go ahead.

Mr Carr: I was just going to say I would give up my time. I would much rather have their presentation than my questions. I see the nods from the government side. Maybe we could forgo our questions.

The Chair: Mr Morrow, are you in agreement with Mr Carr? Mr Carr was suggesting that he would forgo his time so that the gentlemen from the Downtown Business Association of Windsor could make their presentation.

Mr Morrow: As long as they make it short and brief, Mr Chairman.

Mr McLean: I think they should be allowed to make their presentations, and I think our party and the government should be allowed the same time as Mr Sorbara's party was allowed for questions.

Mr Fletcher: Are you forgoing your time?

Mr McLean: No.

The Chair: No, we are just rearranging it so that the questions will start up again after the presentation is finished, starting with Mr Carr and then yourself.

Mr Winograd: My name is Ralph Winograd. I have been a merchant in the downtown area for 30 years. Along with my wife I own a ladies' retail shop on Ouellette Avenue, where I have been located for the last 10 years. I have also been a member of the board of directors of the Downtown Business Association of Windsor for the last 10 years.

This contentious issue seems to be a little clouded with the Sunday shopping issue. Whether the Sunday shopping or opening issue is a major saviour or the saving grace for the designated tourist issue or vice versa does not make a lot of sense to me. I thought we were here to speak on the benefits of having a designated tourist district. The DBA has been recognized since 1982 as a designated tourist district. It is a wonderful tool to complement exactly what is has been established to do: complement the hotel and restaurant association in attracting tourists to downtown Windsor, to bring in new dollars to downtown Windsor and to allow for the tourists coming in for conventions, staying in hotels, to have something to do when they get here. When they are looking at an area to come into, they want to know what the entertainment benefits are, what the restaurant benefits are and what the shopping benefits are.

Windsor, with a population of just under 200,000, has a high concentration of retail and restaurants in the downtown area to service not only Windsor but the Michigan market as well. That American market has six million residents within a one-hour drive of downtown Windsor. Consequently, our hotel, restaurant and retail community consists of seven major hotels, 86 restaurants -- full-service and fast-food -- 57 apparel and shoe stores, 24 china and gift stores, nine fur stores, 15 jewellery stores and four bingo halls.

The soon-to-be-completed expansion of Cleary Auditorium and Convention Centre within the hotel cluster will enable Windsor to be a major contender for conventions. We are also in close proximity to Cobo Hall, which is approximately five to 10 minutes away in downtown Detroit. That had an estimated 2.2 million people attending 45 major conventions and trade shows in 1990. For the tourists, downtown Windsor offers an appealing, safe, friendly, clean environment in which to come and have a convention, address themselves to entertainment, shopping and whatever.

With regard to what we can present to continue our designated area, we have historical and natural attractions: the Dieppe Waterfront Park, the Detroit River, the Detroit skyline and historical churches. Culturally, we have ethnic attractions, the art gallery, the Hiram Walker Historical Museum and the Spirit of Windsor. The arts council has just taken over the Capitol Theatre and will provide entertainment of all types for tourists of all ages. We have a major concentration of fine restaurants, 90-plus eating establishments which include the best of Chinese food, Vietnamese food, steak restaurants, seafood restaurants and fast-food restaurants. We have Canadian fashions, fine china, collectibles, Canadian prints, paintings, boutiques, souvenir shops. For recreation, we offer the YMCA, racket and fitness clubs, bingos, movie theatres, dinner shows, comedy clubs, live music, the infamous Windsor local ballet establishments and Dieppe Waterfront Park.

Mr Sorbara: Is that what you call it?

Mr Winograd: We will try to class it up in the best way we can and keep this in sort of a spirit in which it is meant to be. We have International Freedom Festival in June and July with the United States; Caribfeste, which was just completed a week ago; the re-enactment of the War of 1812; Wheels of Freedom Antique Car Show. All of these express the criteria under which the downtown area should be allowed to continue its designation.

That it is the saviour of any kind of economics in Windsor is foolhardy, but it is a tool to complement exactly what has been established, and that is a designated tourist area to attract tourists, to complement the conventions that will come to the city, to give the tourists who are coming into Windsor an opportunity to have activities to complement the convention itself and give them an opportunity to get out and see our city, to give the tourists coming here another reason to be in Windsor. The reason I am making this presentation is to see that we are extended our designation.

The Chair: After your presentation, I think the committee should negotiate with the bus company to see if we can delay our departure. We have, again, starting with the Conservative caucus --

Mr Docherty: I have a presentation.

The Chair: I am sorry. Is there one more presentation?

Mr Docherty: I will be very brief.

The Chair: Okay.

1200

Mr Docherty: My name is Bill Docherty. I am a lifelong resident. I have been in the development and construction industry and some other related ventures for 35 or 40 years. To enlarge on what my friend has said, the population adjacent to us here consists of four states: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The combined population of those states is in excess of 50 million people. Most of those states are within a comfortable drive of this city.

In Detroit the metropolitan airport has direct flights to Frankfurt; Paris, France; and London, England; all non-stop. It handles three times as many flights as Toronto airport and has continued a mode of expansion that is in the billions right now, in terms of planning. The facilities that we have across the river in Cobo Hall are the largest clear-spanned area of convention facilities and exhibition area in the United States.

We have a number of hotels that have been built. I built this hotel and the one next door, sold the land for one just behind the parking garage. To ask us to not support the "what-to-do" on Saturdays or Sundays, whatever day it is, would certainly be foolishness on the part of anybody, because people have to have a what-to-do. The single biggest factor in the hospitality industry is the what-to-do.

The proximity of our downtown to the downtown of Detroit cannot be overlooked. It is very close. The hotels in Detroit enjoy a good business from the Cobo but so do the hotels here in Windsor. When you bring people over here, you have to have something for them to do. It is absolutely imperative that our downtown be open because the tourism industry in Canada is the second largest industry you have. If you shut it up you are only shooting yourself in the foot. The sooner we all understand that the better. That concludes my remarks.

Mr Carr: Thank you for your presentation. I have a question to Mr Winograd. You may have been here earlier when Mr Kormos was talking about protecting the downtown business people, particularly the small shops that may be run, like yours is, by a husband and wife. He was saying to one of the early presenters that if we have Sunday shopping, that may be the final blow to push some of the small downtown businesses out of existence. You have had Sunday shopping, I guess, going back to 1982. Those are the very people that Mr Kormos was talking about. Has Sunday shopping in fact driven them out of business?

Mr Winograd: Sunday shopping did not put us out of business. Most assuredly, my wife and I are the mom-and-pop of the 1990s. We run our business and since 1982 we have run it seven days a week. We have never had a problem staffing it. We have never had a problem having people work for us. We have probably the least turnover of anybody in our business. When we entered this business we knew what we were up against. It comes with the territory. Who is fooling who? Did we know 15 years ago there would be a GST and an excessive amount of cross-border shopping? Not to this degree, but we knew that cross-border shopping was available in Windsor and will be available in Windsor for ever.

Hiring people or not hiring people really is not as important in the overall picture as the high Canadian dollar or the new GST. It is in there, but it does not have a priority 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. For us, we will take another day off and when we have not got staff to work on Sunday, my wife and I will work on Sunday. Being Jewish, we take the Jewish holidays and we do not work and our staff works those holidays. When Easter and Christmas come, we work and our staff does not work. On Sundays when there is a wedding or an event that someone cannot work, we work. When we need to be away on a buying trip somebody else comes in. Nobody works the seven-day week. They work a certain number of hours within the seven-day week that is comfortable. We always have a student working for us and that student gets the weekends, with one of the staff members on one week, with my wife and I on another week and a third member on another week.

That is not the problem. In developing a tourist district, and being a good community business, we have to have the tool of being open. You cannot take that tool away. You cannot develop any kind of a tourist business if you do not give us the hours to be open. It is really simple. You take those hours away and we cannot service the person who wants to be in business. That is the question here, not cross-border shopping, not the high dollar. These things will kick in and be an advantage to us later on, but we are now back to step one in developing a designated tourist district and we have to have the hours to be open.

Mr McLean: The bylaw that was passed in 1982 which allowed stores to open from 12 noon to 6 o'clock, did that work satisfactorily -- that anybody could open who wanted to in the city of Windsor?

Mr Winograd: I think at that point it opened with just the designated area of downtown. It did not open across the whole city.

Mr McLean: But all retail stores could open.

Mr Winograd: All retail stores within the designated tourist district had the right to choose whether they wanted to be open or closed.

Mr McLean: So that bylaw from 12 to 6 worked satisfactorily?

Mr Winograd: Absolutely.

Mr Carr: One of the concerns that has been voiced, as you know, is that the tourism exemption will allow municipalities to decide. We heard earlier -- I think the chap from the labour council said they are big enough to drive a Mack truck through them -- and one of the things that has been proposed by some of the groups is to change the tourism exemptions to make them a little more difficult to adhere to. Right now they are pretty broad and everybody admits that. If the government was to change the criteria and make them tougher, what would it be doing to your particular business? I was thinking now of the tourism aspect of it.

Mr Grando: Clearly, since our organization represents not the with city of Windsor but also the county of Essex and indeed even Pelee Island, our position is to let the forces of supply and demand dictate hours. If some of them want to open on a Wednesday or close on a Thursday or open on a Sunday, they should be allowed to do so. It is up to the individual proprietor and the laws of supply and demand to dictate how one conducts one's business with respect to that.

Mr Carr: So if the tourism exemptions were to change and make it more difficult to open, that would be something that would hurt you?

Mr Grando: Yes. That would have a very negative impact on what we are attempting to do. I mean, we have to be able to play on a level playing field. We need the competitive advantage that we are not enjoying presently.

Mr Fletcher: Just a few comments and maybe a few questions. One is, as far as the hotel industry is concerned, I know people are hired with the expectation they are going to be working seven days a week, as you said, and that is fine. People know that. As far as the employment standards part of this bill, it is for retail workers not for hotels or anything else. Whatever Mr Sorbara was getting at as far as your work is concerned in the hotel sector -- they are not covered by this anyway, so I just add that piece of clarification.

As far as what is going on in Windsor, if the province which has just finished raising taxes -- and a lot of people do not like them. I know I do not -- but if we were to lower taxes on gasoline, cigarettes and alcohol, would that do more to draw people to the province, to this area, than opening on Sunday? Any one of you can answer that.

Mr Docherty: I do not think so. As Ralph said earlier, given a level playing field we will compete with the disadvantages that we currently have to carry in terms of higher taxes. What we need is the opportunity to be able to accommodate that customer and not shut him out and have him come into the city and see it shut down. When you say, "work seven days a week," I just want to make sure we understand. Hotel people work five days a week, the same as everybody else, the same as policemen, firemen, etc. They have two other days in the week off and they do not work seven days a week.

Mr Fletcher: That is the nature of the job and they understood that when they were hired.

Mr Docherty: The important thing for this community is to be able to compete with our friends to the south of us in the United States. They are open all the time. They have the opportunity of serving people. And people want service today. If you are not open they will go some place else. We think very often the opportunity of being open will enable some of that business to stay here and then it is up to us all to be competitive.

Mr Grando: I dare say if you combine wide-open Sunday shopping and you indeed incorporate those tax reductions that you just outlined, you will have a travel surplus instead of a continuous travel deficit that this country and indeed this province unfortunately enjoy.

1210

Mr Fletcher: Some of the problem, as you said, is caused by GST, free trade, the high dollar and one of the things that really -- I am not jumping on you, but the business community in this country has supported the Conservative government in Canada that has been bringing in these policies. They have been doing it at the insistence of the business community.

Mr Sorbara: On a point of order: This line of questioning is entirely out of line --

Mr Fletcher: Will you give it a break, Greg?

Mr Sorbara: -- accusing witnesses --

Mr Fletcher: I just said I am not jumping on them.

The Chair: No, Mr Fletcher did not accuse the witness of --

Mr Fletcher: Why do you not listen before you start jumping in?

The Chair: Mr Fletcher, you may proceed.

Mr Fletcher: What I am saying is that they have continually propped up this government and yet the policies they are doing and the policies that we are doing are hindering more and more what the business community is trying to do.

How can we strike a balance when both levels of government seem to be operating in different directions? That is one of the hardest things to do. Where does the business community get into this? We have heard the chambers of commerce say they do not want any part of this and yet you are from the business community; you probably belonged to some chamber of commerce at some point, or some of you do -- maybe not all of you. Where do you come into this? Where do you fit in?

Mr Docherty: I really understand what you said a moment ago. We are not downplaying the fact that the GST, taxes, and some of the implementations of prior governments have certainly not been in the best interest of business, but I would prefer not to look back but to look ahead. Do not make the same mistakes some of them made. They made mistakes and anybody who does anything will make mistakes. The only people who do not make mistakes are people who do nothing.

Now, it is terribly important that you do not compound what others have done before you. Try to get government out of our business, if you can, and minimize its impact on our community and we will be a lot better off. We must find a way to operate, no matter what, and we must find a way to turn a difficulty into a strength. We will in this community because this community has a proven track record in terms of suffering disadvantages of all kinds and rising up. So just do not get government any more into it than it is already. Back off.

Mr Fletcher: I hope you are sending that message somewhere else also.

Mr Docherty: I am saying it to all governments. I am not segregating one or another. I am saying that the others have made mistakes when government interfered in private enterprise, but please do not compound it. That is what we are saying to you, I think.

Mr Racovitis: Can I make a comment on that? Would that be permissible?

The Chair: Please identify yourself.

Mr Racovitis: My name is Tom Racovitis. I am representing the restaurant and food service industry in this area. Our family has been in the industry here for 50 years. The point of whether there are government regulations and taxes and so on is not, "Well, we have got a major problem here." Where we have got a major problem: we have competition directly a mile from us. They have a lot of advantages over the local business economy by way of cost of products, variety of products offered and so on. We are being further hampered in our ability to offer a competitive alternative.

The people come over for a variety of reasons. The restaurant industry, as most people know, is the largest employment industry in North America. It is by far the largest employment industry in Canada. Now, our industry traditionally has accepted to work seven days a week and expects it.

We talked about quality of life, and I take exception to that because the quality of life in the restaurant industry -- we have put a lot of people through school; there have been a lot of university students who have been employed in our industry. When there is seven-day operation our business is no different from somebody else's. The difference is, somehow we have this mystical idea that a Saturday or Sunday is something special over a Monday or a Tuesday. But there are a lot of people out there who prefer to work part-time, work a couple of days a week. It does not take money out of somebody else's pocket. What it does is, it helps with a lot of expenses, of kids going to school and so on, and allows for the augmentation of people's income. When you say, "no," you are removing their freedom of choice as well, and I think, overall, there are a lot of restaurants that are not open on Sunday, and they are allowed to.

Sheer economy will dictate who stays open and who stays closed. We we are not some kind of tyrants with whips and guns and stuff like this, running around. You have a labour standards act that is very, very emphatic, that totally protects that type of thing, and I think to assume anything else, I do not think businesses would be in business much longer if they tried to contravene that in this day and age.

The Chair: Thank you, gentlemen, for a very interesting presentation, if staggered.

Mr Mills: Does George get any of his time for questions?

The Chair: We have unfortunately run out of time. Mr Dadamo, I apologize.

Mr Lessard: I would like to see whether there is consent from the other committee members to permit Mr Dadamo to ask his question. It is his riding. It does not hurt to ask.

The Chair: With the consent of the other members, Mr Dadamo.

Mr Dadamo: Thank you, Mr Chair, very much. This hotel, of course, is in my riding that I represent at Queen's Park. Thanks for your presentation, Mr Grando, Mr Racovitis and Mr Winograd. I have a couple of very basic questions that I am wanting to ask, only because the media in Toronto seem to ask me from time to time and I know the response that I give, so I am sort of looking for a response from you to this question.

I am concerned about the numbers. We all work in numbers. I came from an industry where we worked in numbers all the time, so I am very concerned about demographics, etc. But do the numbers come back to the convention and tourist bureau that perhaps prove that malls, the downtown area being open on Sundays makes money, makes money for you, will make money for establishments once you take into account that you have the salaries to pay, you have overhead to pay, you have middle people to pay, etc? Is it worthwhile to be open? Are the numbers coming back to you, in other words, proving that you are making money on Sundays?

Mr Grando: Do you want to address that to the private enterprise?

Mr Dadamo: I have heard from Mr Winograd. What I would like to do is ask you, Sergio.

Mr Grando: I cannot speak for every individual establishment, if they are profitable or not profitable on a Sunday, but as Bill mentioned, in this business we do marketing and we have to market activities. We have to market products. If we give people activities when we define our destination, it gives us a greater opportunity to bring those people, whether they are individual visitors, whether they are motor coach operators with a busload of people or whether they are convention planners looking for a future site for their particular convention, we need to show them the wealth of activity that exists here -- as Ralph just mentioned over my shoulder, to presell them. We have to tell them that we are vigorous, we are vibrant and we are competitive. If they do not see that, we are not playing on a level playing field. We do not have that advantage. That is my point.

Mr Dadamo: Are we concerned about luring the American people over to our side of the border on Sunday for that disposable income that they may have? What I am concerned about is, if you have someone who works at the Chrysler Corp, has a couple of children, there is a family of four. For the sake of argument, they may have $100 at the end of the week to do anything frivolous they may want to do. Are we concerned about taking that $100 and having them spend it here? I am concerned about their taking that $100 and going stateside.

Mr Grando: Let me just answer the one part of it. Our job is to bring new dollars into the community, not to recycle existing dollars, so our job is to bring visitors from points beyond our boundary of Windsor, Essex county, bring them into the community and have them circulate their dollars. We are very much in the American market from a marketing and sales standpoint.

Mr Dadamo: Okay.

Mr Docherty: Mr Dadamo, one quick answer to you too, it is very important for us to understand. The overhead of plant, property taxes, services, costs are on a seven-day basis. There is no holiday from them. If in fact a person or a business can open a store for an extra day, he does not have to do a gangbuster's lot of business in order for it to help defer that expense additionally. We are looking at bringing tourism in here from Ontario as well, and when we bring people in from Toronto, Kitchener, Ottawa, North Bay, whatever, they will spend Canadian dollars here; and if we are not open, part of the adventure of coming to our community will be to head north of the border and we do not want that happening. If we are open, at least they will think twice about it and that is very important to us on a local basis, as well.

Mr Dadamo: We are waiting for the sportsplex too, by the way.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Dadamo. We will recess until 1:30, with the Ottawa Street Business Improvement Area.

The committee recessed at 1220.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The committee resumed at 1336.

OTTAWA STREET BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT AREA

The Chair: We have, I believe, a representative from the Ottawa Street Business Improvement Area, Mr Allan Orman. I believe you were here for the last presentation this morning. Please disregard those proceedings; they were totally disorderly. Basically we have about half an hour. If you could divide that, your presentation should occur in the first half and I am sure the committee members will have many questions for you. Please proceed when you are ready.

Mr Orman: Thank you. First of all, I would like to extend an apology to the committee. I was scheduled to be here at 10:30 this morning and somehow time got away from me. By the time I came, our slot was taken. So please accept my apology, and we welcome you to the city of Windsor.

Ladies and gentlemen, groups before me have sat and read a whole presentation, which I have right here, but I think rather than do that, I would just like to talk to you a little bit and tell you where we are coming from and whom we represent.

My name is Allan Orman. I am a working partner of Freeds of Windsor, which is the anchor store, at this particular stage, of a business community in the heart of Windsor called Ottawa Street, a business community that has been there for a number of years. Ottawa Street represents 60-odd businesses and professional situations. Of course, our store is situated right in the middle of this particular street, and, I might add, has enjoyed great successes over the years -- happily to the extent that we, if I may boast a little bit, are now considered one of the largest men's retailers, if not the largest, in the Dominion of Canada. That could be challenged of late, but we have not heard the challenge and it is still in our advertising, so take it for what it is.

Just to give you a little bit of background, our store represents 45 employees, expanding to about 75 in the heart of the Christmas season, so we are a fairly substantial store. Let me start off by saying that the reason you are here is that our store and our street, virtually unanimously, are really not in favour of Sunday shopping. We would prefer to remain closed -- as a matter of fact, we would vote, if need be, for just that -- and prefer to go along on a six-day week, with night shopping of course being a part of that availability. We feel the job of retailing can be done in those hours. It also, I might add, would be very, very well received by not only the employees of Ottawa Street, and more specifically our store, but I would say probably the employees of every single retail establishment in the city of Windsor.

I heard the Downtown Business Association of Windsor's presentation. I understand some of their problems and I do recognize them. But on the other hand, we have proven over the years that business can be done in the hours that have presently been put upon us. Freeds as an operation, for example, and Ottawa Street more specifically, have not opened up every single night, Monday through Saturday, which is available, and yet operations like ourselves have not only survived but have expanded and grown.

To those who think Sunday shopping is the answer to cross-border shopping, that is absolutely ridiculous. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Sunday shopping is an accommodation to stretch six days of business out to seven, and to those who are really thinking in terms of the Americans coming to us at the present time to do their shopping, I think they are being a little bit naïve. It is very, very difficult for an American to justify shopping in Windsor, Ontario, at the present time. Not only is it price competitiveness, but the excessive taxes, ladies and gentlemen, are killing us as far as trade goes with the United States. They see a 15% tack-on on virtually everything they are doing here, by the time you add in the provincial tax and the sales tax. Even although you tell them it is refundable, it is discouraging. We see the American flow that used to be, in our operation, 15% of our business, is now down to a mere fraction.

Our biggest concern, of course, is trying to maintain the Windsor clientele, if you will. We have done it. We have done it with good, aggressive advertising. We have done it with price competitiveness, and we have done it with a very, very high service level that my partner, Gerald Freed, and myself continually pound into our offspring, who are presently running the operation on a day-to-day basis: my son and my nephew.

Mr Dadamo: Doing a good job, by the way.

Mr Orman: Thank you. I want you to know that we have challenged the community to that service level, and we have challenged the community to our price levels as well. We have succeeded in the last few months, although it has been tough, to do a respectable amount of business -- not as much as we would like, but a respectable amount of business -- by being just that aggressive.

We cannot do it alone. We need the government's help. Forgive me, but I think the government would perhaps be better able to recognize the problems of Windsor, Ontario, or, more generally, Ontario itself, if there were some retail thinking that was an equal part of these committees that we have sat on, not only from a provincial level but from a local, municipal level as well.

Retailing is tough here. Our governments recognize that they have expenses they have to cover, so immediately upon getting into office, they put taxes on items that are just forcing the people, as was said before -- and I do not mean to be repetitive -- to go over to Detroit for those handful of items. While they are there, they figure that if gasoline and beer and cigarettes are that much less, everything else must be the same way, even although it is not, and we have proved in our particular business that it is not. It is hard to get that message across to the people of Windsor. They figure that everything is cheaper there.

Something has to be done from a government level to ease up, to let it be more competitive, rather than to stifle us with impressions and illusions and actualities that are just absolutely murdering retail business in the city of Windsor.

I am surprised there is a gas station open in this city, and yet there are a lot of gas stations around. I just came back from a trip; I was away for a week in the southern United States. The price of gasoline down there is $1.08 per gallon. When I left here, it was 52.9 cents per gallon. It is now being posted at 59.9.

Mr Carr: A litre.

Mr Orman: A litre, sorry. I wish it were a gallon. Excuse me.

Their prices are going down and our prices are going up. What do you expect the people of Windsor to do? They have to go and look to our neighbours in order to fulfil and stretch their budgets. We need some help from you. There is no question in my mind.

One more statement, and then I am ready to answer any questions that I can. As far as the designated area for the downtown business association goes, let me say that, in protection of the Ottawa Street business association and virtually every other corner of this city, we feel this way: If the city closes because of a law that is struck down, we will support it with a full heart. But we do not want to be restricted by virtue of certain areas being open where we would lose our competitive edge. We want to have the choice.

Now, that does not mean we are going to open. By the way, the downtown business association has proven that even though it had the edge, even at the time when the dollar was at 72 cents, only a handful of people opened up in downtown Windsor. The rest of them did not want to. At least they had the choice.

Whatever the decision of the government is, we feel it should be a choice across the board. If you close it, we are in complete support; we would love you to do that. But if it does open, I think everyone should have the opportunity to say, "Yes, yes," or "No, no."

Mr Daigeler: Thank you for the presentation. Most interesting, although I am still not quite clear where you are coming from. What I think you were asking for just now, you will certainly not get from this legislation. As you know, this legislation re-establishes the tourism exemptions. According to that project, certain areas of Windsor, I guess, could be open and others would have to be closed. I presume Ottawa Street would have to be closed, and perhaps downtown -- certain areas of downtown would be open depending which way the Windsor city council decides.

In view of the shortcomings of this legislation in line with your own thinking, do you support the law as it is at the present time, which leaves a decision to be open or not up to the municipal council? So if Windsor wants to stay closed -- and you seem to say the majority does want to stay closed -- that is fine. If in other areas -- we were in Collingwood, for example -- they want to be open, or in Thunder Bay, that would be fine as well. Would that municipal option be your preferred approach?

Mr Orman: Well, sir, let me just say this to you. The approach was kind of summed up in my last statement. I think it is unfair that a city that is struggling as Windsor is struggling -- it is well recognized -- across a border, and in the process of trying to keep the Windsor population interested in your own establishment you are to be curtailed by our restrictions, which is what is being proposed -- if you just take small sections of the city and open them up and you do not allow the rest of the city to open up; after all, we are all sitting on this border -- I do not think it is totally fair that a section of the city should be allowed to stay open -- their choice, by the way; not everyone opens, as I pointed out, and as a matter of fact very few did -- and not allow places like Ottawa Street. After all, we have a lot of things to give to a tourist. We have the biggest men's store in the city. We also have introduced ladies' wear. We have expanded our horizons.

1350

Mr Daigeler: So you have three options, then, and you would prefer first of all that the province would say everybody be closed.

Mr Orman: Every retail establishment be closed.

Mr Daigeler: That would be your preferred option.

Mr Orman: Yes, sir, that is right.

Mr Daigeler: The second option, which is presently in place and which was instituted by the Liberals, was to let each municipality or region decide to either stay open or not.

Your third, and I guess the least preferred, option is the one being proposed here which gives an exemption only to certain tourism areas. Is that correct?

Mr Orman: That is correct, sir.

Mr Daigeler: May I just ask one final question? Being from the Ottawa area myself, I am interested of course where this Ottawa Street is in Windsor in relationship to the downtown core.

Mr Orman: It is in the centre of the city and, by the way, a very unusual business community because it has been there for a number of years and really does not have a complete east-west artery. Ottawa Street is bordered by Walker Road, and it dead-ends there, and Howard Avenue on the west side, which dead-ends there, and yet the street has survived for 60 or 70 years. It has been a long-established retailing area in the city of Windsor.

Mr Poirier: Just off the downtown map, right?

Mr Orman: It is not on the downtown map. Of course, that is because the downtown merchants did not want to put us there.

The Chair: I am supposed to maintain pleasurable circumstances so that witnesses are not harassed and members are not harassing each other. But now we have witnesses harassing each other.

Mr Orman: I do not think we are. I think we are all on the same level. All we want is, whatever choices are made, that in the true way of democracy we are all available for those choices.

The Chair: Indeed. I am just jesting, Mr Orman. Mr Carr.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much for a fine presentation. I think you have expressed it very clearly, the difficult task that everybody has; it certainly is not a simple one. I suspect that when the fight goes to municipal council the people in the Windsor area are going to have a lot of sleepless nights over it. I think you are right.

What a lot of people are saying, or I hear a lot of people saying, is regardless of what we do let's just be uniform in it, even the people who are saying, "Even if I pick one side and I lose at least it will be something that will be right across the province." The problem we have with those who, for example, like yourself want to remain closed, is they see what happens. As you know, the word has been that it will snowball, that once one area opens -- not even just in a particular area, one section of a community -- but when a whole community of, say, Windsor opens, it will put pressure on the other people as well.

You seem to be saying what a lot of people are saying, that if everybody is closed, forgetting about the tourist aspect and the US portion of it, at least we will be able to compete, but that if we open in certain parts of the city and not other parts, that will create problems.

Do you also see as a result the square footage creating those same types of problems because, as you know, based on the square footage, you might open a particular area but those over the 7,500 will not be open as well. Do you see that as a big problem? Are you looking more at the businesses of the same size or do you see that creating a problem with the square footage as well?

Mr Carr: Let me put it to you this way. The square footages are something that is easy to play with, the roping off and all the things that have gone on here for a few years already in order to qualify and not to qualify and so on and so forth. I think it is really a game that circumvents the law and you can do whatever the heck you want.

It is really very simple -- give everybody an equal playing field. We are talking about the governments doing the same thing by not making us so out of proportion to Stateside, if you will. The same thing applies with retailing in the city of Windsor.

Bill Docherty was very good in his presentation about tourists coming into this community and I think we need them desperately. But let me say this to you, why should not that tourist, for which we would provide a bus, have the availability of Windsor's largest men's store? Why is it being segregated to some small shops in the city's downtown core? In fact, if you are going to open them up, why can they not go to us? Why can they not go to Devonshire Mall? We do not want to see the city open up; our preference is to close it down because everybody will do the same amount of business, I am thoroughly convinced. It has nothing to do with doing more business, it is strictly stretching out your expenses.

Mr Carr: As you know, one of the problems is that people are saying that because it is so open-ended you are going to have a lot of people going to the courts and saying it is not fair, whether it is square footage, whether it is that you are closed and another part is open and so on. You seem to be saying, however, let the free market decide, where you say whoever wants to open can, those that do not will not. That does not work either because the ones that are open will be gaining a little bit of a foot up on the other people. That cannot work as well. Is there any way you see that working, or is there anything that can be done to ensure that? For example, in Peterborough we heard some people say that even if they are allowed to open, a large percentage of them will not open. You seem to be saying that would not work.

Mr Orman: We will do everything we can as an individual operator to stay closed on Sunday. We have a history. The history suggests that we are open two nights a week, Thursday and Friday nights. Devonshire Mall by and large is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights that we are not open in competition and we have maintained our growth pattern on that particular basis. But we do not want to be handcuffed that if that became an issue we could not compete, that we cannot voluntarily just say, "Okay, let's start opening." The same thing applies to Sunday. Give us the equal playing field. That is all we are saying.

Mr Carr: Thank you. Good luck.

Mr Lessard: Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr Orman. Not only is your store in the centre of Windsor, it is in the heart of the Windsor-Walkerville riding and we are happy to have that store there.

You mentioned in your presentation that right now there are no US shoppers coming over here to shop and certainly that is something we had enjoyed in the past and I hope that is going to be present again in the future. We are hearing a lot of people say, "We have to stay open in order to compete for American shoppers," and sometimes we might get the feeling that really those are people who are asking us to take desperate measures in what they perceive as desperate times for the retail sector.

I am wondering whether you have ever considered the costs and the benefits you might incur if you did have to open up on Sundays, whether you would think it would be to your advantage if you would have to open.

Mr Orman: We have a certain group of good news and bad news. The good news is that over the period of -- since 1929, I guess it is 62 years years now in business -- we were fortunate enough at one stage or another to buy our premises, so we do not pay rent. Once you do not pay rent you have a very key advantage as far as maintaining your expenses. But the cost of labour is very expensive and the cost of advertising is very expensive and the number of hours you are open is somewhat limited. From 12 to 5 or 12 to 4 seems to be the pattern that has taken place, not only in the short time Sunday shopping has been available, but that has already been established by the Detroit side as well. It is a five-hour day.

We did stay open, because we felt we were losing our competitive edge, in the month of March this year. I want you to know that if we had our druthers, even after that experience, and we did do some business on Sunday, we would much prefer to be closed. But if our competition is not closed and we are put at a competitive disadvantage, we cannot do it. I do not care what the costs are to open up that store, you have got to go after it because you just cannot afford to lose the edge. If you want to know our druthers, it is the bottom line, it is the whole thing: close up Sundays, perfect, great. It is a common pause day that people have been used to from time immemorial and even though I am not a Protestant person, I am Jewish and it is not my holy day, I recognize that it is the holy day of the majority of the people here. Let them have those moments and if you are good you can make those six days that are left in the week and the number of nights that you want to stay open so good that they will come to you.

Mr Lessard: And you have been operating your business with the downtown tourist exemption in place since 1982.

1400

Mr Orman: No question about it, and have not seen fit to make our voice heard to compete with them. But we also recognize what has happened down there and you have to look at its history. Only a handful of people have taken advantage of that downtown exemption. That is the unfortunate part. I am not talking about restaurants, I am talking about retail now, please. This is only retail that I am referring to.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Orman. A very interesting presentation.

RUDOLPH FLACHBARTH

The Chair: Our next presenter is Rev Rudolph Flachbarth. Rev Flachbarth, if you would please have a seat. You have been observing something of our proceedings.

Mr Flachbarth: Yes.

The Chair: You have a quarter of an hour, 15 minutes. Please divide that time between your presentation and, if you could, some time for the committee members here to ask you a few questions. Please go ahead.

Mr Flachbarth: I am definitely for the idea of establishing a weekly day of rest or pause day for our working people. They need one day in the week to relax physically and mentally from hard labour during the week. They have to get a chance to spend one day with their family, wife and children without having to fear that they will be fired for not showing up for work. For the mental wellbeing of the children, it is necessary that the children have their working mother and father around to share with them their interests.

By tradition, Sunday is the day of rest in this country of Canada. This was so since many decades. Those minorities who came to Canada much later in the history of the land knew that Sunday was the long-established day of rest. They are free to keep any day of the week as their weekly holiday, but they have no right to deprive the majority of the population of the traditional weekly holiday, which is Sunday. To demand that Sunday be a working day as any other day, especially stores and shops, is a violation of the rights and privileges of the majority of the Canadian population.

The store and shop owners in Canada are mistaken if they presume that the customers, especially in border towns like Windsor, will shop at their stores if they will keep them open on Sundays. All customers will continue to drive to the United States because the prices over there are much lower than here in Canada. Just let us look at the gasoline prices. Here in Canada we have to pay 55 cents for a litre of gasoline. The price in the United States is just 32 cents. This makes a difference of 23 cents. When a car owner drives over to the States and buys 25 litres of gasoline he saves $5.75. Even if he takes into consideration the exchange rate he still saves money.

The same goes for cigarettes. In the price for one pack of cigarettes is included the provincial as well as federal cigarette tax, yet when one buys a pack of cigarettes here in Canada he or she has to pay on top the provincial sales tax as well as the GST, so they have to pay taxes twice. They actually pay taxes on taxes. This they do not have in the United States. The customer will continue to drive to the United States because there they will save money, so the opening of stores on Sunday will not keep the customers in Canada.

To keep them here and to make them shop here, two things have to be accomplished: the prices of the merchandise have to be reduced; second, the taxes, provincial and federal, have to be lowered. You cannot keep customers in Canada and make them shop here if the price of everything they purchase is much higher, twice as much as it is in the United States. This is a riddle: How can the United States produce and sell everything cheaper than Canada?

One way or the other, the opening of stores on Sundays and the opening of any working place will not solve the problems. We must look for the roots of the issue, which are: (1) high merchandise prices, which are caused by high wages; and (2) high sales taxes and the horrendous GST, which can be lowered only by reducing the high spending trend of the governments, especially the federal government.

But no matter from what angle we look at this problem, for the sake of the population, a weekly day of rest in any branch is a must. Thank you.

Mr Daigeler: Thank you, Father, for sharing your thoughts on what I consider a very difficult problem, because I do not think too many people will argue that we should not have at least one day of rest. I think that is kind of a given. The only problem that I have, and my colleagues, I guess, is that many people are saying, "Let us decide by ourselves which day I want to take that rest," and that experience has shown that even if they have that choice to decide by themselves which day it is, people will tend to make it Sunday and there is no need for the state or for the government to interfere in this. That is I think the dilemma that I face. We have had many people come before us during these hearings to say: "Let us decide. Who are you to tell us that we have to stay closed on Sunday?" What would be your answer to that?

Mr Flachbarth: If you recognize Sunday is a weekly holiday, then have the stores kept closed. You must be able to issue the law which simply states, "The stores have to be closed on Sundays."

Mr Daigeler: So you would be against this idea of a tourism exemption as well?

Mr Flachbarth: Absolutely.

Mr Daigeler: What about the other sectors of the economy, like manufacturing and industry and so on? Many of the industries, at least on a rotating basis, are working on Sundays. What about these sectors? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Mr Flachbarth: If they are on a rotating basis, they should be left, because then they have another day in the week off. The factories cannot change rotating. They have to continue. So in that case I would say it could be stated that if they are on a rotating basis, let them keep it.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much, Reverend. I take it that the people you are concerned about are the people who would be working on Sunday, not the people who would be partaking in the shopping. It is the workers who have to work who are the big concern. Is that right?

Mr Flachbarth: What is your question, basically?

Mr Carr: With having the stores closed, what you are concerned about is the people working in those stores, not the people who would be shopping. Presumably it is okay to shop if you wanted to. It is the people who have to work whom you are concerned about, is it?

Mr Flachbarth: If the workers in the shop are working for six days, they should have one day off, be it Monday or be it Tuesday, while usually it is now Sunday. It is a tradition in Canada so please respect the tradition of the Canadian population.

1410

Mr Carr: With this law, as you know, people would be able to refuse work on Sunday, but I guess what you are saying is that that does not work, that people would somehow be pressured to work. Is that your problem with the law, because, as you know, they are going to have it so that if somebody says, "Because of religious grounds, I don't want to work on Sunday," they do not have to. Do you see that not working?

Mr Flachbarth: I take my profession. I always was fully employed on a Sunday, but Monday was my day off and I was looking anxiously for this day off on Monday. I could sleep as long as I wanted, I could do what I wanted. I could go for a walk. I could read or I could write something privately. I was not forced to be in my office. So the knowledge that I have a day off is convenient for me, and since Sunday is a traditional day of rest, let's keep it that way and respect the tradition of the country.

The Chair: Mr Dadamo.

Mr Mills: Was I not first? What is going on here?

The Chair: Mr Mills.

Mr Mills: Thank you, Reverend, for coming here. I appreciate what you had to say. You touched on a comment that I want to pick up about lowering the taxes. I think it only fair to say that we should examine the social programs that we have in Canada vis-à-vis when we go across the river. So I would say to you, sir, perhaps, do you think that in Windsor we should bring about a social awareness that you shop in Canada, and we have got health care unlimited, and if you go across to Detroit there, you are really taking away from social programs that I think are so important to Canadians. How would you feel about that?

Mr Flachbarth: Yes.

Mr Mills: Thank you.

Mr Carr: He did not answer.

Mr Mills: Yes, he said yes, he agrees.

Mr Lessard: Is the time up?

The Chair: The time is not up, but we could move on.

Mr Flachbarth: More questions?

The Chair: Mr Flachbarth, you agree with Mr Mills, as I understand it.

Mr Flachbarth: Yes.

Mr Mills: A social awareness.

The Chair: Would you allow Mr Dadamo to ask a question now?

Mr Dadamo: Father, if I do not come to you, you come to me. This is fine on a Monday; this is nice. I just have a very general type of question. It is very simple.

Interjection: It is his day off.

Mr Dadamo: It is his day off, yes.

Do parishioners express their concerns to you, one on one, as to how they feel about that seventh day and whether they would like stores open or closed?

Mr Flachbarth: Yes.

Mr Dadamo: Do you hear from a fair amount of people?

Mr Flachbarth: Yes. I belong now to the First Lutheran Church in Windsor, and the vast majority authorized me to state that they want to have Sunday as a complete day of rest.

Mr Dadamo: Are there a lot of auto workers who come to you, and we know well that Chrysler works six days a week in this city, and has for a long time, saying that they relish the thought of having that seventh day off?

Mr Flachbarth: They work on a rotating basis. They get anyway one day of rest, be it a Monday, be it a Tuesday, as the shift changes. So they get it. But usually they want to have the Sunday established as a legal holiday so the majority of the people who work for six days a week can have a day of rest and some time with their families. That is the main concern. They take it if the husband has to go to the factory to do his shift. There is a regulation. They say the factory cannot change its schedule. But in general they want to have the Sunday established as a legal holiday for everybody, no exceptions.

Mr Dadamo: That is the way it has been and that is the way we should leave it then?

Mr Flachbarth: Yes.

Mr Dadamo: It has been that way for many, many years.

Mr Flachbarth: Yes.

Mr Dadamo: So leave it alone. All right, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Rev Flachbarth, a very helpful presentation.

DORIS MCKNIGHT WILMA HANNON

The Chair: We now have a presentation from Doris McKnight and Wilma Hannon. Ladies, would you please have a seat? We have about a quarter of an hour. Please divide that time between your presentation, and if you would, please leave some time for the committee members to ask questions. Oh, and could you identify yourself into the mike for the purposes of our recorder.

Mrs McKnight: Members of the committee, good afternoon. My name is Doris McKnight.

Mrs Hannon: My name is Wilma Hannon. We come before this committee as two individuals who are deeply concerned about preserving the quality of life for Canadian workers and their families.

Mrs McKnight: We do realize that there are some people who wish to have wide-open Sunday shopping as a matter of personal convenience, without realizing that this convenience is at the expense of the majority of retail workers and their families.

Even though there are good intentions by this government to protect the retail workers who choose not to work on Sundays, good intentions are all they are. It has not taken into account that there would be gentle persuasion applied with it. Even though employees have the theoretical choice of whether to work on Sundays or not, the reality is that you work side by side with your co-workers. You are part of a management team. If you are not a team player, the other managers have to pull up the slack and work your Sundays to cover your shift. This does not create a very healthy atmosphere at work.

We do not feel that anyone should feel pressured to do something that they do not want or believe in, especially when we are supposed to have choices. I personally chose not to work Sundays when wide-open Sunday shopping took place July 8 of last year. I was looked down upon by my peers because I did not do my fair share, and how was I supposed to set an example for my staff when I was refusing to work myself? I finally buckled under and started working on the first Sunday in December because I was torn apart.

Mrs Hannon: We do realize that many people believe that wide-open Sunday shopping will create increased employment. In reality, with wide-open Sunday shopping, competition eventually forces retailers to open on Sundays in order to preserve their market share. Consumers only have so much disposable income to spend. Sales are spread over seven days instead of six days, all at the expense of the employees and their families. Since competition forces retailers to open Sundays, retailers are forced to staff the Sundays. Without any increase in sales, this forces the retailers to spread the payroll over seven days instead of six days, without any increase in employee earnings.

Mrs McKnight: We do realize that there are some businesses who wish to open on Sundays and holidays. We also realize that there are retail businesses opposed to wide-open Sunday shopping because they know that competition will eventually lead to more extended hours to try and gain more market share until everyone is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What kind of quality of life will this pose for the retail worker?

We realize that there are certain emergency services and businesses that must remain open on Sundays and holidays in order that the needs of the community as a whole may be met. We wish to publicly thank those people who, for their own reasons, have chosen a job or career that limits their opportunity to enjoy the legislated common pause day.

When we chose the retailing field, we did not choose Sundays and holidays as part of our five-day work week. We in retail already work evenings and Saturdays. We do not want to be taken away from our families on Sundays and holidays. With our children in school and our husbands at work all week, why would we want two days off during the week without them?

Mrs Hannon: Increased working days for the retail worker will eventually lead to increased demand for other services to rearrange their work schedules in order to accommodate these demands, for example, day care and public transportation, again affecting the quality of life not only for the retail workers and their families but eventually for the workers and families in these other services as well.

1420

Mrs McKnight: The issue does not end with Sunday shopping. What legislation will prevent other workers from being forced to work on Sundays, such as bankers, teachers, government employees who currently enjoy the common pause day? Before you know it, every worker will be setting their alarm clock around a seven-day work week. Sunday shopping will be the beginning of the end to a very special and cherished, and may we emphasize, Canadian lifestyle which many Canadian workers fought so hard for many years ago. By living so close to the American border, we can foresee our Canadian quality of life deteriorate and become more Americanized if a common pause day is not legislated. We are the envy of the American workers. Let us preserve what we have.

Mrs Hannon: As we reviewed Bill 115, the amendments anyway, and from what we have just recently experienced with our city council in Windsor, we feel that Bill 115 is extremely vague in its explanation of what constitutes a tourist-designated area. We are not lawyers, but we feel that the ambiguous description of tourist-designated area in the proposed legislation will lead the public to challenge the city councils. The legislation must be more specific so that no loopholes will be found.

In summary, we urge you to keep the following points in mind as you review Bill 115.

1. A common pause day must be legislated.

2. All statutory and civic holidays must be preserved without exception.

3. Tourist-designated areas must be more specifically defined.

4. Stiffer fines for businesses that open illegally. A $2,000 fine will only allow businesses to defy the law; try $10,000 or more.

5. Should businesses be allowed to open on Sundays under a tourist-designated area bylaw, the employees should be paid a premium for working on Sundays.

6. Sunday hours, under a tourist-designated area bylaw, must be stipulated in the bylaw.

We wish to sincerely thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to publicly voice our concerns.

Mr Poirier: On your page 3, in the middle of the page in the second paragraph, it says, "Before you know it, every worker will be setting their alarm clock around aseven-day work week." You are not implying that people will be working seven days a week around the clock? With rotation?

Mrs Hannon: With rotation, yes. With rotation you will still be eligible for two days off a week, but as we stipulated earlier, why would we want two days off during the week, even though they are together, when our husbands will be at work and our children in school? What kind of days off will that be for us?

Mr Poirier: Did you feel that in other retail areas other employees or management people felt the same pressure that you claim you felt?

Mrs Hannon: Absolutely.

Mr Poirier: So you feel that it was rather widespread?

Mrs Hannon: Yes.

Mr Poirier: Okay, thank you. I think Mr Daigeler has a question.

Mr Daigeler: Thank you very much for coming before us and sharing your viewpoints with us as individuals. You are saying, and many others are saying as well, that competition will eventually force others to open on Sundays as well even though they may not want to. I do not know the Detroit situation that well; you obviously know it a lot better than I do. Is that what happened over there? Are the stores, all of them, basically open over there, or is it just select ones? In other words, did that happen over there, that the competition forced everyone to open?

Mrs Hannon: They have been open on Sundays for a great number of years and it used to be that they were open basically from 12 till 5. I have now noticed that they are open from 11 till 6. Besides that, they were also closed on their Thanksgiving holidays. Last year was the first time that some of those stores decided to open. So now, basically, the only day of the year they are closed is Christmas Day. That is it.

Mr Daigeler: Does that apply to most stores?

Mrs Hannon: Pretty well, of retail store shopping.

Mr Daigeler: You are also mentioning in your brief that Canadian workers are looked upon with envy by the American workers.

Mrs Hannon: I have had several people -- when I used to wait upon a couple of American shoppers -- who work in the retail industry in the States, and they would say, "Oh yeah, that's right, you're closed on Sundays. Oh jeez, I wish we could have that."

Mr Daigeler: You see, I am asking this because we have had, at several stops, especially tourism operators, say that Americans who come and realize that we are closed on Sundays, say, "How could you be closed?" So, this seems to be sort of different from what you are saying now.

Mrs Hannon: But it is the people who work it, not necessarily the shopper. There are a lot of people who do not share our viewpoints, because for them it is a convenience to shop on Sunday, but it is the worker who has to bear the brunt of it. I have worked a couple of Sundays and it really disrupts your family life.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. You seem to be agreeing with the government's position of having a common pause day. The problem we have is that most people who are opposed to Sunday shopping are saying this law will not do it, and you have already seen what is going to happen in Windsor. My question is this: What do you see happening across the province a year from now? Do you see a lot of municipalities having Sunday shopping? What do you envision?

Mrs Hannon: We would prefer to have everything closed, all the retail closed, but we are not oblivious to the fact that there are certain areas in this province that thrive off a tourist-designated area. You take some place up in the Muskokas, for example, there are cottagers on the weekend. You would be crazy not to open on Sundays. That is their livelihood. So we are not oblivious to the fact that there is a tourist-designated area. There should be something to designate that, but from what I have seen here in Windsor, here is the city of Windsor being designated as a tourist area. When was the last time you asked your children if they wanted to come to Windsor for a holiday? I am sure it happens all the time.

But what we are saying is that we realize there are areas that have to have a tourist-designated area because it is their livelihood. We are not talking about major department stores. We are talking about a little mom-and-pop shop that thrives off the tourist industry. In order to qualify as a tourist-designated area, the way we see it is, it is just going to be thrown right out. People will challenge it completely. There cannot be any loopholes in that tourist-designated area.

I do not know about the square footage. I honestly did not read the entire bill. I just read some of the amendments, but it used to be the 2,400 square feet -- is that what it was? I do not know -- as far as a store opening in a tourist-designated area. We had drug stores that would close off aisles so they could have this 2,400 square feet. I do not honestly know what the answer is. All I know is that the way it sits right now is that it can honestly be challenged, and if we have this tourist-designated area, once an area is designated as a tourist area, then you are going to have a domino effect. Some other area wants it. The downtown businesses want it here. Then Ottawa Street wants it, and then you are going to have the Riverside area that wants it, and it will just keep snowballing. Windsor eventually will be totally designated and then you have Essex, the town of Essex, and Amherstburg. Before you know it, you will have wide-open Sunday shopping.

Mr Carr: So your problem is really with the tourist exemption part that is too broad.

Mrs Hannon: Yes.

Mr Carr: The difficulty is when you try to go back and change it. It is very broad, and we have heard you can drive a Mack truck through it. The problem is, how do you get it so that you can incorporate the Muskokas that you mentioned, which should be a tourist area, without shutting the door to those people? That is the very difficult part because it is very broad now, and they leave it up to the municipalities. If you try to narrow it, then it makes it very difficult for, say, Collingwood where we heard they want it because they need the tourism dollars. That is the big question when you take even one criteria out: Now what happens to that situation? Have you given any thought to how you would like to see the tourism exemption changes made? You say you need them not quite as broad, but have you given any thought to how you would like to see it worded?

Mrs Hannon: From what I have read in the paper when this was first introduced in June, there were some things in there about an amusement or an entertainment area. I think each of those types of words should be specifically defined as to what constitutes an entertainment area or an amusement area or -- I forget some of the other words. I do not recall them offhand. All I know is, as soon as I read it, I just said, "This is a joke." Who is to say that going to Devonshire Mall is not entertainment?

Mr Carr: Okay. Thank you. Good luck.

Mr Fletcher: Thank you for your presentation. It is really nice to hear you come out. I have heard from big business, little business and they are all over the board, but what I am hearing from you and from retail workers, from unions, is very consistent. You really do not want to work on a Sunday, that is what I am hearing, and I appreciate that. When I look at your six recommendations, I think they are excellent recommendations, and I can support all six.

1430

The one I do have a problem with is the one that Mr Carr alluded to, and that is that the tourist-designated areas must be more specifically defined. I have just been going over the old Hansards from 1988 and 1987 when the Liberal cabinet and their caucus were wrestling with this and were saying, "We cannot define a tourist area that won't suit the whole province." What we are trying to do is just that, and that is the most difficult part about it. When you said in response to Mr Carr that certain words such as "entertainment" should be specifically defined, even that comes down to interpretation again and again. This is a question, and this is not something that the government is thinking of or anything: What if we took that tourist exemption part and just threw it out?

Mrs Hannon: It is okay by me. You have my full support.

Mr Fletcher: Okay. That is great. Thanks a lot.

Mr Lessard: Actually, I am going to be very short because I do not have any questions. I just wanted to thank you for your excellent presentation. I think that you hit on most of the major points --

Mr Daigeler: Is he in your riding?

Mrs McKnight: He is in my riding.

Mrs Hannon: Thank you for sending him.

Mr Lessard: -- and I thought that it was very well done. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much, women.

BERNIE RYZ

The Chair: Our next presentation is from Mr Bernie Ryz. We have approximately a quarter of an hour. Please divide that time between your presentation and hopefully allow some time for questions from the committee members if you could, and start when you are comfortable.

Mr Ryz: Thank you for affording me the opportunity to address this committee today so that I may express my personal views on this controversial Sunday shopping issue. As stated, my name is Bernie Ryz, and I am a management employee of Sears Canada Inc, located at Devonshire Mall here in Windsor.

Sears employs over 500 employees in the city of Windsor. Our employees have spoken out very clearly that they do not want Sunday shopping. They do, however, want to enjoy the same quality-of-life standards as the majority of the city of Windsor's citizens. As Windsor's largest general merchandise retailer we and our employees have a tremendous stake in the decisions that will be made by this council today. It is my intention over the next few minutes to focus on three main areas. First, I will provide you with our corporate stance on the Sunday shopping issue; second, I would like to cover my genuine concerns about Sunday and holiday shopping; and third, I wish to share with you some of our experiences where we have been forced to open on Sunday because of competitive pressures.

Sears's position: Sears Canada has consistently opposed wide-open Sunday shopping other than for essential goods and services and are strongly in favour of a common pause day. We support and promote the strict enforcement of the Retail Business Holidays Act by both the provincial and municipal governments. I have many concerns regarding any proposal to legislate any form of Sunday shopping.

Sunday shopping means Sunday work, which negatively affects the quality of life of those who would otherwise spend this time with their friends and family. Granted, some people have chosen to work in essential services or other service industries that do require them to work on Sundays and holidays. However, most of the population of Windsor, including the Sears employees, chose a career that did not require them to work on Sundays, and we feel that it is the social responsibility of the government to legislate a pause day and enforce that legislation.

I believe that if Sunday shopping quickly becomes a reality again here in Windsor, which it is right now, it would quickly impact on other businesses in this community that supply goods and services to retailers. Requirements for additional day care, banking and delivery, just to name a few, will increase until it is conceivable that Sunday will become just like any other day of the week for everyone, and no one will have a common pause day at all.

The introduction of Sunday shopping does not increase the amount of disposable income to be spent in retail stores. There will be no economic gain but merely a shift in the balance of sale and work available by day. We have had firsthand experience of this here in Windsor from the period of last July 1990 to March 1991, and we experienced no gain in sales over the seven-day week, only a large increase in costs.

I also believe that if each municipality tries to gain the upper hand in attracting retail sales to its areas by declaring theirs a tourist area and opening on Sundays, all the surrounding municipalities will gradually be forced to open as well. It is my hope that the knowledge we have derived from Sears' practical experience with Sunday opening will be of interest and assistance to this task force in your future deliberations.

Sears currently has 12 stores open on Sundays in western Canada, seven in Alberta, five in British Columbia. We have studied the performance of those stores individually, collectively, and against non-Sunday stores, in every conceivable statistical manner since first opening in November 1984.

While many results are mixed due to variable market factors, we can conclude that there is absolutely no evidence that opening Sundays has accomplished anything except to shift some of the sales from Saturday and Monday to Sunday. We can also conclude that Sunday openings have not increased our business. From an operating standpoint, we are confronted with additional payroll costs and reduced supervision during the balance of the week, as management hours are spread over seven days rather than six. Another reality is increased maintenance costs, specifically in cleaning and energy to cover lighting and air conditioning.

Our experience would indicate that wide-open Sunday shopping makes no economic sense. The same business is spread over more hours for all retailers at a higher cost which inevitably leads to either higher selling prices or reduced services.

I have several other concerns I would like to highlight before closing. The first is a concern that, should the city of Windsor be successful in gaining a tourist designation, it would only be a very brief time until the next adjacent community would have to open to compete with Windsor. Then what next? The next adjacent community, and then the next adjacent community, until you have the whole province open again.

The second is a concern that is voiced by many who support wide-open Sunday shopping. They say that if the city of Windsor does not allow wide-open Sunday shopping, all the shoppers will shop across the border in Detroit, and this will further fuel the cross-border shopping problem. This argument has absolutely no basis at all. The city of Windsor has had firsthand experience with wide-open Sunday shopping from July 1990 to March 1991. During this time frame, cross-border shopping had escalated faster than in any other period in its prior history.

Open Sunday shopping was certainly not the answer. Cross-border shopping is not only a Sunday issue. It happens every single day of the week, mostly on Saturdays, and should not be included in the argument supporting wide-open Sunday shopping.

In closing, we have nothing to gain by opening Sundays. Our employees have everything to lose if we are forced to open. I would like to stop at that point for a second and just say that the retail business is a matter of gaining market share or losing market share, and if you do not keep pace with your competitors and they are open and you are not, you lose market share and are forced to follow suit.

I ask this task force to recommend that the current legislation before the House be passed quickly and return this community to the quality of life it has experienced in the past. I say pass the legislation that you currently have before the House quickly, then get on with some of the finer points that we require -- and maybe this is something that can be debated in the House.

1440

There are some problems with tourist designation or definition of tourist designation that I think you have to work on and tighten up. I am not sure I know what the answer to that is. The size of business -- somebody had mentioned 7,000 square feet. I did not see that in the proposal at all. Maybe it was there and I overlooked it. My experience in other provinces, 2,500 seemed to be the acceptable square footage that everyone tried to work towards, and maybe that would be a more realistic size

Also, the size of the fine -- a first-time offence of $500 may be a hardship to some small company, but certainly it is not a hardship to the larger companies, and I would like to see the size of that fine increased to maybe $2,000 for first offence. Someone mentioned earlier $10,000. I think that would certainly be a deterrent.

The Acting Chair (Mr Kormos): Two minutes per caucus, so brief and pithy comments, please.

Mr Daigeler: We certainly have a pithy chairman now. Welcome to this high office, Mr Kormos.

The Acting Chair: Life is ups and downs. I have been there, Mr Daigeler.

Mr Daigeler: Thank you for making the presentation. You indicated in your opening remarks that you were giving your personal views, but then you went on to state Sears's position. I am just wondering, when you described the Sears's position, in what capacity were you speaking there? I found it very interesting, but I would just like to be very clear as to whether that Sears's position is the official one.

Mr Ryz: I am coming before the task force to give my own personal opinion. I have made presentations before other committees before, and I drew from my experience on information that has been given to me in the past to support some of the comments I made today. It is my personal opinion, but the information that I have received is Sears' official position as well.

Mr Daigeler: Like the financial information that you gave us in terms of where Sears has been open and it has not increased their profit, that is coming from Sears?

Mr Ryz: Yes, that is right.

Mr Daigeler: Do you know whether Sears is going to make a presentation at all to this committee?

Mr Ryz: Yes, I was originally going to make a presentation on behalf of Sears in this market, but I was advised just this past week that our company would be making another presentation later on which will basically carry the same.

The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Daigeler. Time --

Mr Daigeler: We have got a tough chairman here now. We will have to cut Mr Kormos off next time he speaks.

The Acting Chair: You can try.

Mr Carr: On page 6, I think, for want of a better word, you hit the nail on the head. The first concern is that the city of Windsor would be successful in gaining a tourist exemption. It would be a very brief time before the other adjacent communities would have to open to compete. In fact, that is what we have been hearing.

You may have heard this morning, Collingwood said they voted 9-0 they are going to be open. Thunder Bay is going to open. Kenora is going to open. There will be some that will not be, I think Sudbury and North Bay. But the fact is, significant portions of this population will have open Sunday shopping in the province. I say the best guess I have got is it will be at least 60%, probably closer to 70%.

On the last page you say, "I ask this task force to recommend that current legislation before the House pass quickly." What you are saying is that you want to have a closed Sunday, but most people are saying that if Bill 115 passes, we will have Sunday shopping in this province.

Maybe you could just tell me the reasons that you want it to pass quickly when, in fact, this bill will make Sunday shopping legal in the vast majority of the province.

Mr Ryz: The city of Windsor bylaw regarding Sunday shopping was passed by an act after the June 3 deadline, so your passing this through the House now would nullify their legislation. That would return us to another control --

Mr Carr: Another shot at it.

Mr Ryz: -- and this would force it to another discussion. Hopefully we could make some progress there.

Mr Carr: Unless there is a change, and there might be with the change in municipal government in the election, then what happens is that you get another shot at it, is what you are saying, and it might change.

Mr Ryz: Yes, that is right.

Mr Carr: I understand in the Windsor area it was fairly close. In some of the other ones, it was not. It was overwhelming. If one person were to lose their position, it would make it close.

I am thinking now in terms of the province. In fact, in Collingwood the vote was 9-0. So unless the entire people were to be thrown out, what you are saying is that you would like to see this, but you have the vast majority of the people saying, "We do not want the tourism exemption, because for all we know in the next municipal election there could be more people so that either it does not become an election issue or they do not very clearly articulate their position, or in fact a lot of people who want Sunday shopping get elected."

So that is where my confusion is. This bill as it is, will allow vast majorities in the province to be open, but you are saying you want quick passage, although you are opposed to Sunday shopping. I find that rather strange.

Mr Ryz: Yes, the tourist designation is one of the hiccups in the proposal, and certainly, if it were tightened -- there has got to be some work done on it yet in the House -- to make it very difficult for someone to achieve a tourist designation, I would really support that. The way it is right now, the tourist designation part of it is loose.

Mr Lessard: Your store is located at the Devonshire Mall, and it is really the anchor tenant, I guess, out at that mall. As such, are you required to open when the mall owners say that the mall is open?

Mr Ryz: No we are not. The mall started opening back in June. We did not start opening until the Sunday two weeks ago, and the reason for that is, we chose not to and now, because Sunday shopping has started to grow again, we felt we were losing market share and were forced into opening.

Mr Lessard: Based on your experience that you have outlined, that you did not really find it to your benefit to open on Sundays, why do you think that other stores and retail chains that are represented at the Devonshire Mall would be really pushing the government to allow wide-open Sunday shopping?

Mr Ryz: I cannot speak for them, I do not know. I know from my point of view personally and from our company's point of view, we do not wish to be open on Sunday.

Mr Dadamo: I have more of a comment than I do a question. I just wanted to say that for the longest time I have been in conversation with the Windsor tourist bureau, also the Windsor chamber of commence and other business associations who would listen to me, and all along I have been asking for their numbers, or at least numbers to come back to me, to prove that by opening up on that seventh day, you in fact make new money, if you will, as opposed to, I think you are the second or third group that would say that you are only spreading it a little more, but you are not really bringing in some new type money on that seventh day.

Mr Ryz: That is right. Just because the retail business is open on Sunday, that does not give people more disposable income. They only have a fixed amount of disposable income, and they will either spend it in six days, or if you open seven, it will spread to seven. It does not generate any new business at all.

Mr Dadamo: I just wanted to say that those numbers have never found their way back to me and they have never proven otherwise, so thank you.

The Chair: Mr Ryz, thank you very much. We all appreciate your comments and your attendance today.

CLIFFORD SUTTS

The Chair: Mr Sutts, please seat yourself. Clifford N. Sutts, Queen's Counsel.

Mr Sutts: Thank you, sir.

The Chair: Far be it for me to inquire as to whether it is a provincial or federal Queen's Counsel.

Mr Sutts: I am here as a businessman.

The Chair: I understand that, sir. Please begin. Fifteen minutes, and try to leave some time for discussion afterwards.

Mr Sutts: I am not going to repeat a lot of territory that has been covered, but I want to make two very important points.

First of all, let me introduce myself. I am a lawyer. My practice involves me in business law, and I represent a wide diversity of clients, each of whom has a different approach to Sunday shopping. However, today I am here as the vice-president and general manager of N&D Supermarket Ltd, which is a local company which represents a very substantial portion of the food business in the Windsor area.

At the very beginning, I must tell you that we support Sunday shopping. This is not a decision that we made easily. A year ago, I appeared before Windsor city council at a special meeting to consider this legislation, and to consider a bylaw, and at that meeting, our company's position was loud and clear: We want one law, and we want that law uniformly enforced. In other words, if we are open, allow everyone to open; if we are closed, make everyone close.

1450

The situation we had was where the law prohibited Sunday opening for a period of time and there were people flouting that law who were remaining open. The consequences for the competition were very significant and they were unfair. Our company at that point said, "Whatever it is, we will support, but enforce it." However, I am sad to say that in this community things have changed very dramatically.

I would like to tell you in the beginning the two points that I think my whole argument is based on. First, to make a blanket statement such as the speaker who preceded me made will lead you down the path to error, because there are differences in industries. The effects of the Sunday shopping will affect those industries in different ways. Second, once you recognize the distinction between these industries, you will find that the money spent on Sunday is not spent on Monday, it is for ever lost.

We in Windsor occupy a very unusual situation today. I have been carrying on a dialogue with the Premier, and it seems that we are in agreement on about one point only. My whole difficulty is that cross-border shopping necessitates Sunday opening in the supermarket industry, period. I do not think that is an argument you can refute. Our Premier has written to me and he has said, as I have said, "Cross-border shopping is a long-standing national issue which is not limited to Sundays. For border communities especially, it is a seven-days-a-week problem. It cannot be resolved by any policy affecting retail operation on Sundays." I agree it is a seven-days-a-week problem and it needs a seven-days-a-week solution. There is no question about it.

Let me point out one thing that is irrefutable. In our industry, in our company, what is our trading area? To be very elementary, our trading area is the area from where we draw our customers. Our trading area stops at the north, at the Detroit River, at the Canadian-United States boundary, and it covers Essex county. That is our trading area.

Who are our competitors? Our competitors are on the other side of the border. What is their trading area? Their trading area is the city of Detroit, the city of Detroit suburbs, and Windsor, Essex county, Kent county. They are drawing immensely from these areas.

Just today at my home I was talking to my wife, and she tells me we have had a 16-page colour bulletin delivered in the mail advertising United States stores in Windsor, "Come to Detroit and shop, we accept your money at par," and so on. Stand at our border on Sunday and see the outflow of cars and the inflow of groceries. Those people who shop in Detroit on Sunday are not shopping in Windsor for those products they buy in Detroit.

What is our problem? How do we cope with that? Can we get people who come from Detroit here to have the pleasure of paying our 8% retail sales tax, our 7% GST, our very favourable prices for gasoline? Yesterday the Main Street station was selling at the equivalent of $2.58 a gallon. I can buy it for $1.05 to $1.08 in Detroit. Cigarettes are $19, more or less, a carton; $43 a carton in Windsor. There is one little store at the foot of the bridge that is selling 3,000 cartons of cigarettes on a Saturday, people running across the border. You can buy Canadian beer in Detroit for half the price of what you pay at Brewers' Retail. When you put it all together, how can we compete with bringing people from Detroit to Windsor? The fact is we cannot. Our trading area stops at that border. So how can we be expected to compete in this community, to keep our business in this community?

We have all seen a wide variety of articles containing explanations of why people are going to Detroit. As recently as Saturday in the Globe and Mail we saw an article. They say that when you take into account cigarettes and the rest, there is a 16% advantage to going over to Detroit. Remove cigarettes and the rest and maybe it is a 10% advantage. But people today are very conscious of price. They are shopping for the best price wherever they can. If they get into a supermarket in Detroit on Sunday, forget it. We have lost them for the rest of the week, until next week, when they go back, and the habit has now been developed among the shoppers and the consumers in this area to go to Detroit.

I left a meeting on Saturday morning in Windsor. I drive down the street and I see an Art Van truck -- for those of you who are not familiar, Art Van is a furniture store in Detroit -- making a big delivery of furniture to a new home that was just constructed over here in Tecumseh. How do we compete with these things?

Stand at that border on a Sunday and look. What do you see? You see cars trailing back bumper to bumper from Detroit, and what are they carrying? Groceries. They are loaded with groceries. With our taxation and with our hospital benefits and health benefits that we provide to the public here, we know that it costs money, and it has got to be paid in the form of increased taxes. But how can we compete? If we cannot compete with the prices, we have got our variety of taxes, we have got our marketing boards, our consumer and labelling legislation, which is a killer. You guys should be looking at it.

This past week I just heard on CBC, I think Thursday morning, that a little grocer on Ottawa Street in Windsor wanted to sell a product at a special price so that he could compete with the people in Detroit. So he went over to Detroit, met the distributor, and he bought pork and beans. He was going to offer those pork and beans to his customers at three cans for 99 cents. He got it all cleared, it came to the border, and was stopped. Why? The Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations: "You can't bring that into Canada. That's pork and beans. Under our legislation it's got to be labelled `beans and pork.' No entry." The buyer was fortunate. He was able to take it back and they would accept it and he was able to find an alternative product in Canada which he could sell in Windsor for two cans for 88 cents.

1500

Mr Poirier: Caviar.

Mr Sutts: Right, the beans with the pork.

I mean, this is the absurdity of the situation that we are running into. If you ask your ministry for a codified section of all of its regulations, God help you if you can get it. I think now that there is a legal service that is being published that is trying to bring it all together, if it has not already.

But we have got to be allowed to compete. We have got to be able to meet these problems. Do not kill us. Do not let our own government stop us from competing with our major competitor, Pace, the warehouse store. The gentleman who preceded me from Sears, I do not know how much concern he has, because they are probably already represented through their US stores in this trading area.

I can demonstrate to anyone you wish to send to me, through experience, that we have gained during the period when we had Sunday shopping -- Sunday shopping stopped and then it was on again -- and the sales made in our company on a Sunday are lost when Sunday is closed. You never gain it. Your sales volume during the week will be less by the amount of your Sunday sales.

I acknowledge that if you are buying a car or if you are going to be buying a refrigerator, you are going to shop around and you are going to look and get it. You are going to have it for four or five years. But the steak that I need tonight, if I do not get it tonight, I do not need it tomorrow. I may have bought something else. The industries have to be distinguished.

Gentlemen, it is so important that you recognize that fact in structuring any legislation, that here we are on the border; allow us to compete. We are doing our best, and you are going to see a lot of fatalities. I can see it in my practice now that people here are hanging by their fingernails. If we are not careful, we could push them over the edge. I made the statement not too long ago that if I had to open a supermarket today, I would probably put it on the other side of the border. It would be a hell of a lot easier to compete by doing that.

In closing, please, whatever you decide to do, do not include supermarkets in your Sunday closing legislation, exclude them.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Sutts. Unfortunately, I believe we have run out of time.

Mr Sutts: I am sorry I was so verbose.

The Chair: Normally we would like to allow for questions regardless, but we do have a pressing number of people coming in.

Mr Morrow: Can I please ask that each caucus be allowed to ask one brief question?

The Chair: We have an additional presentation because of a problem with the morning's presentation.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, I would support Mr Morrow's request. If we have to hold up the bus by five minutes, the world will not come to an end.

The Chair: We are also holding up presenters. All right? So we have a request for one question per caucus? Mr Poirier.

Mr Poirier: Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for your presentation. Imagine how tough our job is, listening to the gentleman from Sears, for whom I have a lot of respect, and a lot of respect for what you are saying also. But it is black and white. There are no grey zones. You open or you do not. You cannot just half open the door. It is like capital punishment: You hang or you do not hang; you just cannot half hang. In this dossier, how would you resolve that difference? If you were in our shoes, how would you do it?

Mr Sutts: I would exclude supermarkets out of self-interest and a desire to survive. You know that it is absolutely essential to survival to be able to stay open to compete. If the other industries feel that it is not necessary to remain open to compete with their US counterparts, that is fine. Most of the companies you find in the retail industry here are to a large extent subsidiaries; they have got presences in the United States. The small retailer here is feeling the pinch. You can walk down our main street and see the number of empty stores with "For Lease" signs on them as an answer to the problem that we have got.

I would suggest that you are going to have to exclude, just like a tourist area, certain industries. Are we going to legislate the closure of factories? We cannot produce plastic parts on Sunday? I think your legislation already provides the protection. You cannot force anyone to work on Sunday. I know there is a variety of arguments and counterproposals to that, but what is the choice?

Mr McLean: My question will be very short. For 1982 the city here passed a bylaw which took into account the tourist designation. We had indications that it worked well. If the legislation today was tightened up with the tourist designation, would you agree with that?

Mr Sutts: If you are asking me to comment on a 1982 legislation and bylaw, I am really not equipped to look back. I do know it is essential we remain open and whatever legislation it takes to do that is what is needed. If we are going to be looking at the self-preservation and survival of our retail industry in border communities, we have got to do that. We have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps there should be a basket clause that allows exclusions on demonstration of the need.

Mr Dadamo: Thank you, Mr Sutts, very much. There is one store near me in the riding I represent, an N&D, and now in my neighbourhood. When I was talking to a group of business people in Toronto a little while back, we were talking about showing some sort of comparisons, via newspaper articles, I imagine. Has N&D, both those stores in this city, ever done that; in other words, where they have shown what a particular product would cost here as opposed to what it would cost in the United States?

Mr Sutts: No, we have not. I think some of the discrepancies are so phenomenal. For example, at last American Thanksgiving, in November 1990, turkey was advertised in the United States at between 37 cents and 47 cents a pound. We had a mad exodus of people running over to buy turkey, because here, where we are governed by a marketing board, the marketing board price at that same time was $1.34 a pound. So how can you sell turkey here? You cannot. The comparisons are very rough to make and you have to look at select products and I do not think you can generalize. That is the difficulty.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Sutts.

ONTARIO CONVENTION AND VISITORS ASSOCIATION

The Chair: We now have a short presentation from the Ontario Convention and Visitors Association, Jonathan Deneau. I should mention at the outset that this morning we had an extra presentation and there was mention made, because we had that presentation from the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County and Pelee Island, it was thought and represented that it would take Mr Deneau's place. I apologize to Mr Deneau for not being aware of that distinction. Please proceed when you are comfortable, sir.

Mr Deneau: Maybe I will help to clarify some points by initially giving a little overview of the Ontario Convention and Visitors Association, of which I am the current president.

The mission statement of the Ontario Convention and Visitors Association is to promote Ontario destinations through the meeting and convention industry. Basically, we are an industry association which is made up of various convention and visitors bureaus across the province, 23 to be quite specific, and then we have 12 affiliated members which are particularly in the hotel industry. Geographically, our membership is represented from the various regions from North Bay to Windsor. Member organizations are both border and non-border communities. The organizational makeup of our members ranges from either being full municipal departments or divisions of local chambers of commerce, so our membership, although it is only 23, is quite a diverse membership and represents quite a constituency.

The OCVA has been Ontario's voice in our industry since 1979 and provides a wide variety of services to its members. Basically, the position of the OCVA with respect to the amendments to the retail business establishment statute is that the OCVA believes the public should have the free and unrestricted right to choose when and where to make retail purchases. In addition, retail business establishments should be permitted to open without restrictions. The OCVA is pleased, though, with the amendments to the Employment Standards Act that take into consideration the operating realities of the tourism industry. I have a few facts I want to bring forth to you and I am sure you have heard these before on a number of times. I will try to make them brief, especially its being 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

1510

It basically deals with the rough economic impacts of tourism. Again, I am sure you have heard them. I would like to reiterate a few. Tourism represents the province's largest private sector employer. We are the largest employer of women, youth, indigenous peoples and visible minorities, which I think is very important. We are the province's third-largest industry. In 1990, we had $36.9 billion in sales. We are the province's fourth-largest export industry, $3.06 billion in foreign exchange earnings in 1989. Those are new dollars, outside dollars, coming into the province. Ontario is considered the gateway to Canada, with approximately 67% of all US visitors entering Canada through the province. We are the largest commercial consumer of Ontario-produced agricultural products. Therefore, you can see the economic spinoff that the tourism industry has. Of all convention delegate spending, 8.2% very specifically deals with or is in the retail sector.

With respect to the investment being made, and I am only going to touch right now upon the government investing in tourism in Ontario and promoting it, it is projected that in 1991 the Ontario government will be spending between $5 million and $7 million to attract US tourism. Another $2 million will be spent on promoting intra-provincial tourism. That means keeping the Ontario tourist within Ontario. Let's stop them from going across the border or anywhere else.

In addition to that, both the federal and provincial governments are spending money on rebate programs. We have imposed taxes, specifically the 7% GST and the 8% provincial tax, but we are rebating this. This is an additional, very extensive cost, not only to the federal government but, more specifically, to the provincial government. In 1991, the OCVA operations survey of our small members -- and this is excluding Toronto and also, in addition, excluding Windsor, Ottawa and London, larger municipalities with large spending amounts -- the average spent in the smaller communities was $205,000 per community. That may seem, with the figures that we throw around, to be quite small, but it is not small when you are talking of a small community like Goderich, where that is an expensive expenditure for a city of that size. Tourism is still very important to them. Collectively, our association members spend in excess of $5 million promoting the province.

At this time, the states neighbouring Ontario -- that would be Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and Michigan -- are not restricted by any type of restrictive Sunday shoppping bylaws. According to Statistics Canada, between January and May 1991, almost 10 million Ontarians made same-day trips to the United States and four million of those were on Sundays or holidays. In that same period, 2.2 million Ontarians stayed for one or more nights, 900,000 of those being on Sundays or on holidays.

Cross-border shopping to the United States is now being estimated to cost Ontario about 14,000 jobs and $2.2 billion in lost business. What is very interesting is that Canada and Ontario are becoming net exporters in the tourism industry. This is something new to us. In the past -- and I am sorry I do not have all the figures -- we were a net importer. The people in Ontario and Canada were receiving more tourism dollars than they were spending externally to the province. I think that is also very important.

With respect to intra-provincial travel, which is very important with tourism, in 1990 the total tourism market for most of Ontario destinations was 131 million people. In other words, there were 131 million people travelling from one destination within Ontario to other destinations. That is a very lucrative market and something we need to keep and to promote further.

With all these facts in mind, and all of us coming from Ontario, we have a beautiful province to promote. We have excellent destinations that can compete with anybody. The provincial government is spending money and our own municipalities are spending money. We have got what it takes and, basically, a major investment is being made. We also have at our doorstep one of the most lucrative tourism markets in the world, that being the United States. Yet it seems that the legislation either passed or the legislation that is being considered right now is actually being rather restrictive, and the OCVA feels that really is not only unfair but just does not make good business sense. A cross-section of our members feel this way, that if you have the opportunty and you have what it takes to do it and you are investing money in it, why do you want to restrict it and why do you want to put some handcuffs on it?

Tourism is very important and I think we have to come of age and we have to start competing with our closest competitors, the states that I mentioned, in order to be successful in this tourism market. Thank you very much.

Mr Sorbara: I am sorry I was not here for the initial part of the presentation. The government has argued that one of its purposes in bringing forward this legislation is to enhance the quality of life of the people of this province. Communities like Windsor, London, Toronto, wherever you go, want to enhance the quality of life by somehow bringing about what they describe as a common pause day. As far as you are concerned, what contributes to a high quality of life, and will the fact that I might be able to go out and buy a toaster oven on Sunday somehow attack that quality of life, in your view?

Mr Deneau: First off, I would like to comment that I am certainly not being cynical with respect to the 14,000 jobs that are going to be lost just due to cross-border shopping alone. You would have to talk to the l4,000 people as to where their quality of life is going when they do not have a job. I think that is a very important point.

With respect to the second point, the quality of life of being able to shop on additional days -- is that the point? How does that add to it?

Mr Sorbara: No, what I was asking is, what in your view contributes to the quality of life in a community? You can be very subjective and personal. What for you is important to have a high quality of life, and will the fact that stores are able to remain open on Sunday detract in any way from those things that contribute to the high quality of life you look for in your community?

Mr Deneau: No, not at all. I think having stores open on Sundays will not detract because I think the one clear point has to be that because a business operates for seven days does not mean people are working seven days in a row. People are being given the opportunity. The Employment Standards Act clearly states that these people have the right to time off and they also have the right to refuse Sunday and holiday work. If you are considering enacting legislation that will cover that, there is only the up side, that if you are open on Sundays I think your business increases. I think you increase business, you increase employment. The more people who are employed, the better quality of life.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. As you know, the people who are opposed to Sunday shopping have come through and said that in spite of what the Premier has said, this does not do it. There will be Sunday shopping because of the tourist exemptions. The expression that has been used that sticks to mind this morning is that they are broad enough you could drive a Mack truck through them. As a result of that, they are advocating getting tougher on the tourism exemption. If the government, as Mr Mills has said many times, is listening, if in fact the government were to listen to that and change the tourism exemption and make it more difficult, how do you see that hurting you? From what I understand, you are not happy with this legislation, but at least there is some out, where a municipality can use the tourism exemption and so on. If it gets tougher in terms of the tourism exemptions, how will it hurt your particular industry?

Mr Deneau: It will certainly hurt tourism. There is no doubt. I think it is restrictive enough as it is. If you get a little bit more restrictive, then you are again becoming even more unfair. Who has the right to open? Who does not have the right to open? Who are you going to restrict? Who are you not going to restrict? You are leaving it up to a municipality.

In addition, you are going to have very inconsistent openings across the province and it is certainly going to be confusing to our potential tourists. When you travel to Sudbury, are the stores going to be open in Sudbury? What stores? You do not know, because it is very restrictive. I do not see how that could help at all. I think it is just trying to get closer to the fact of no Sunday shopping.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, before the next question, can I raise a point of order?

The Chair: Yes, Mr Sorbara.

Mr Sorbara: Sir, whenever I come to Windsor I stay at the Hilton International. I like this place. It is very comfortable. This is a beautiful room, but the government of Ontario is probably paying a significant sum to use this room. I wonder if someone could prevail upon the hotel management to ask that the jackhammering just stop until we have finished these hearings. It is almost impossible to follow the questions.

Interjection: I will talk to the manager.

The Chair: You will?

Mr Morrow: It's next door, Greg.

Mr Sorbara: Oh, that is too bad, because it is extremely difficult. The hotel should have advised us that this would be going on during the hearings. It is extremely difficult to follow the witnesses. Sorry, I thought it was in the hotel.

Mr Deneau: They have a deadline to meet too -- October 1.

Mr Sorbara: I hope they get to the deadline. I want to be here for Anne Murray and all of that stuff, but I also want to be able to hear you.

The Chair: You are quite right. It is extremely annoying and disconcerting.

Mr Morrow: Thank you for your fine presentation. I just want to talk to you about one of your comments about 14,000 jobs and the 40%. You are attributing that to Sunday shopping. I have a hard time with that. That should be a cross-border issue regardless of whether or not we have Sunday shopping. As a matter of fact, when we had wide-open Sunday shopping people still crossed the border, did they not?

1520

Mr Deneau: They crossed the border, but there is also something you have to consider: How long have the stores been closed on Sundays? I think that is a long process. When the stores were opened up on Sundays, the next week people expected people to be driving across the border in hordes and they did not know about it. You just cannot open your doors after years of being closed and suddenly the business is going to be there.

With respect to saying that 14,000 jobs has to do with Sunday shopping, that was not my point. My point was that we are losing 14,000 jobs, and the business of the cross-border shopping that is occurring in the trips going over are 40% of that. Let's say 40% of 14,000 we can directly attribute to business going over on Sundays and holidays.

Mr Morrow: But other than Sunday shopping, are people not crossing the border due to GST and the free trade issue?

Mr Deneau: There is a whole myriad of issues. If there are three main issues -- and this is certainly up to anybody; it is up for debate -- you can say it is GST, free trade and Sunday shopping. What we are discussing here though is the opportunity to take control of one of those, and if we can take control of one of them then we are at least one third of the way there.

CITY OF WINDSOR

The Chair: We now have a presentation from the city of Windsor, the city clerk, Mr Lynd.

As you are aware, sir, we have approximately half an hour, if you can divide that time between your presentation and some opportunity for committee members to ask questions. Let me apologize for the very disconcerting sound environment we have here.

Mr Lynd: It is sort of progress here so we are happy that they are building the addition.

Mr Chairman, members of the committee, I am going to be somewhat brief. I did submit to your secretary a copy of a five- or six-page written submission that was submitted to Windsor city council. In this particular written submission there is also some background information. It does not go quite as far as what Jonathan Deneau, the previous speaker, talked about, tourism and the importance of tourism to the local area.

The statistics we have are that there is a market of six million people in this metropolitan Detroit area that the local tourist bureau and others are always trying to promote and encourage to come over. Windsor really is a tourist area, since about 80% of the advertising and such from the convention and visitors' bureau is aimed at that market. Clearly Windsor and Essex county and the entire area are dependent upon tourism.

Just for background, in 1982 Windsor city council did enact bylaw 7330, which established Windsor's first exemption under the Retail Business Holidays Act. That particular exemption was in the downtown area.

Mr Daigeler: Mr Chairman, could I just interrupt for one second? I may have missed it. I fully understand the position of the city of Windsor, but did you say who you are with the city of Windsor?

Mr Lynd: I am sorry. I am the city clerk and am basically appearing on behalf of the corporation of the city of Windsor, the city council. In 1982, city council did enact its first bylaw and it exempted the downtown area. At that time the downtown area basically was the downtown business improvement area. The same boundaries were used for that exemption. That particular exemption continued and then in May 1990, when the act was amended, council did have public hearings. At that time they heard a number of delegations and a decision was made to expand the designation but it kept the downtown business area boundaries. It also exempted trade shows, so it did widen it, but it did not go all the way to wide-open Sunday and holiday shopping.

In May 1991 public hearings were heard again after there was some request for some action to be taken. At that time, on May 14, 1991, a decision was made by city council to enact a bylaw to exempt the entire city of Windsor. The bylaw widened it up to exempt the entire area, but it also restricted the number of holidays, restricted it to Sundays and eliminated certain defined statutory holidays. That bylaw was given first and second reading on May 14 and third reading was deferred to allow for the introduction of the provincial Bill 115. Then, once the bill was introduced city council met again, considered its bylaw and on June 17 gave third and final reading to the bylaw.

There are two basic issues. The one is the matter of tourism criteria. The recommendations are that municipal council is a publicly elected body, that it is here to look after the needs and wishes of the inhabitants and therefore should be the best judge of what is necessary in terms of the local tourism market, the local need for a designation.

The second issue involves the transitional rules. Windsor city council is somewhat caught in a catch-22 situation because the proposed legislation says that if you had a bylaw enacted on June 3 or before that, it would stay in effect for approximately a year after the provincial legislation is proclaimed, and if your bylaw was enacted on or after June 4, that the bylaw would be automatically repealed on the date that Bill 115 is proclaimed. In Windsor's case, first and second reading were given prior to the June 4 date. Since this bylaw was legally passed under the presently existing legislation -- it repealed the previous downtown designation -- if these are absolutely applied, then Windsor will find itself without a bylaw on the date that the legislation is proclaimed.

To summarize, city council is basically saying that municipalities are local bodies and that they are responsible, elected bodies and should be given the opportunity to provide for any tourism exemptions without having to have any constraint from provincially defined criteria. The second is that the transitional rules be changed to provide that there be unconditional grandfathering of all municipal bylaws. So the Windsor bylaw, which followed a hearing, which also was given three readings under the presently existing legislation, should be allowed to stand as well. Those are the two recommendations that are contained in my written submission.

Mr Sorbara: I have a question and I think Mr Daigeler may have a question as well. I think the points you make are very valid. Can I surmise from your first submissions that if the government were not to proceed with this bill and the local option, which was such a subject of fierce debate back in 1988, were to remain in place, that would be just fine for the city of Windsor and you could manage to establish your own set of rules and regulations for Sunday shopping in Windsor?

Mr Lynd: Yes. I recall that when there was the movement to widen up the discretion, there was a lot of debate at that time between municipalities and their associations and the province. But city council has taken advantage of the existing legislation and is satisfied that it gives it the powers to make a local choice.

Mr Sorbara: I am just wondering whether the committee is aware of how severe the consequences are for the city of Windsor because of the transitional provisions within the bill; that is to say, on the date that this bill is passed -- and if you count, there are more of them than us, so this bill will pass -- the bylaw in Windsor becomes null and void and requires virtually every store that had been open under your bylaw to close the very next Sunday. Is that the case? Am I interpreting it correctly?

Mr Lynd: That is the case and we would have to start the process with public hearings. The public hearings have been held under the existing bylaws.

Mr Sorbara: Can I throw out one other caution? Under the legislation as it is presently formulated, the city of Windsor cannot initiate public hearings of its own accord. It will have to wait for applications to come forward from one business community or other, so even if it wanted to open up some stores on Sunday, in the best interests of Windsor and the surrounding area with the previous bylaw, if an application was not coming forward from a retail business or a shopping district the city of Windsor could not move on its own accord. Do you think that is a fair way to treat municipalities? To me it sounds paternalistic.

1530

Mr Lynd: Being a bureaucrat more than a politician, I do not know if I can really comment on that, but you are correct in the interpretation that council would have to wait for an initiative from an individual or a group to prompt some change or a new bylaw, absolutely.

Mr Daigeler: Did Windsor council support the local option during the last round of hearings on the Sunday shopping question?

Mr Lynd: Initially there was some opposition to it, feeling that the Retail Business Holidays Act was a provincial enactment and the province should not be delegating --

Mr Daigeler: Are you telling us they have had a change of mind?

Mr Lynd: That is right, they did, but once it was changed --

Mr Daigeler: Do not worry too much because my own area, the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, also acknowledged that. It has seen the thing in operation and has changed its mind. It now supports the municipal option.

The government members have mentioned several times that they made a promise during the last provincial election to change the municipal option back to stricter provincial guidelines. In your opinion, was the Sunday shopping issue a question in the last provincial election, and do you feel that the NDP is morally bound by that promise it made at the time?

Mr Lynd: On that I really do not have a comment.

Mr Daigeler: I think you could say whether it was an issue in the Windsor area, from your observations. That is what I am interested in.

Mr Lynd: I think I am appearing here as the clerk of the city of Windsor and not as an individual to give my own personal feelings on that particular point.

Mr Daigeler: It is a sociological fact, whether it was an issue or not.

Mr Lynd: I really cannot say with any certainty or anything on that.

Mr Daigeler: Thank you.

Mr Carr: Good afternoon and thank you for your presentation. I was interested in page 4, where you talk about the grandfathering provisions. You said you had gone through first and second reading and then held off with third reading, "deferred pending the introduction of the bill." Were those the council's wishes or the provincial government's?

Mr Lynd: No, they were the council's wishes. At that time there had been information provided by a letter from the provincial government that the legislation would be introduced on a specific date. There was no indication of the content of the legislation. It was basically a decision of council to wait and see and take a look at the provincial legislation. But once again, to look at council's action -- the legislative process does take time; it is a process right now -- that council decided to give its third reading to allow the implementation of the wider bylaw in anticipation of some legislative delay in implementation.

Mr Carr: Are they upset at the fact that they waited and the province then came and said you had to have it by a certain date? Is the council upset now?

Mr Lynd: There was nothing recorded at that time in the form of a resolution that was presented, so the council just felt it was prudent to introduce the third reading and finally passed the bylaw.

Mr Carr: Just on a personal note, if it is public knowledge I would not mind a copy of that. If it is not, I would understand.

Mr Lynd: The particular letter, you are saying?

Mr Carr: Yes.

Mr Lynd: It is a public record. We could provide that to you. Basically the letter said nothing more than that it gave the legislative timetable they were expecting to --

Mr Carr: A political letter. What were the votes? I was thinking back now. You have given a couple of dates with a couple of votes and I was wondering whether you know what the votes were, starting with the most recent one with third reading. What were the numbers?

Mr Lynd: The most recent one, which was the June 17 vote, was not a unanimous vote. There were four negative votes on an 11-person council.

Mr Carr: Did some abstain?

Mr Lynd: I am sorry, you are right. There was one abstention and there were four "nay" votes.

Mr Carr: So it was 5 to 4?

Mr Lynd: That is right.

Mr Carr: What about going way back to some of the other ones? I do not know whether you have that at your fingers.

Mr Lynd: I do not have those files going back that far.

Mr Carr: Would it be safe to say that you are looking at a very divided community? I mean five, four is entirely --

Mr Lynd: There always were close votes on the particular issue, and having attended and transcribed the records for both of the public hearings, there were strong delegations and numerous ones on both sides.

Mr Carr: As you know, what has transpired, what a lot of communities are upset with, is the fact that it has now pitted virtually neighbour against neighbour in these battles, and they have been very emotional because people feel very strongly on both sides. When you throw it back into the municipalities, that happens. If the province does it, then both sides can yell about how the fact that it is Toronto making the decisions, and one way or the other we have a solution. Is it the feeling of council that it wants to have another go around with this thing again? What is their feeling?

Mr Lynd: I think they would rather avoid the go around, having had public hearings both in 1990 and again in 1991; that you find you get the both sides appearing and their positions really do not change. I will add, and it is sort of recorded in the position, that city council has no concerns or opposition with the recommended changes in the labour legislation, so there is no opposition to that particular protection for the worker. There was never any opposition.

Mr Carr: This question is more of a political one, and I understand that you could not guess in the last provincial election whether it was a big issue or not -- I guess Wayne and George would be the best guess at that -- but with the municipal election coming up, do you see this being a big issue or, knowing the city, what are the big concerns? Is this going to be a number one battle, or what?

Mr Lynd: As the returning officer, I am just getting into the process and there really has not been much political debate on issues thus far, so I do not know if it would become a big issue. I would not, personally, as a resident of this city for 45 years, expect it to be one of the key issues, but it could possibly be.

Mr Carr: Yes, thank you, and good luck.

Mr Lessard: Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr Lynd. There is one thing I just wanted to clear up as a result of the submission from the chamber of commerce this morning, and I will just read to you from that presentation. It said, "As a result of a last-minute appeal from the Solicitor General, third reading of the bylaw was delayed until the middle of June," and of course that is a reference to the first and second reading on May 14.

The submission goes on to say, "We feel that the Solicitor General's actions on this matter were in bad faith and unfair to the retail business establishments in Windsor who relied on his prior assurances." Do you know if there was an appeal that was made by the Solicitor General, or some request that was made to delay third reading of the bill that caused city council to delay third reading?

Mr Lynd: Very clearly my recollection is that it was just on the basis of a letter advising of the date when it was expected the legislation would be introduced. There was no request by anyone from the government, either through the ministry or anyone else, to delay giving third reading or taking any type of action. I was just trying to look very quickly through my notes but I have not been able to locate it.

Mr Lessard: You were at the meeting yourself, though, right?

Mr Lynd: That is right.

Mr Lessard: You did not get the impression there was any pressure being exerted by the provincial government to delay third reading?

Mr Lynd: No, it was just basically the information as to when it could be expected, and council had that information before them and there was no pressure or anything like that.

Mr Lessard: So city council waited to have third reading and by the time third reading came around they knew what the proposed legislation looked like and the fact that the bylaw was going to be caught by it. They knew the impact of the legislation, but nothwithstanding that, they passed the bylaw, and now they are asking us to change the bill?

1540

Mr Lynd: But I think in fairness to the council, they did have the public hearings; they did debate the issue at a public council meeting; and they did give notice, during first and second readings, of their intention with respect to wider-open Sunday shopping, as a public body. I guess they felt it necessary, having done that, to go through with it and finish third reading of the bill and to enact it as a bylaw, understanding, I suppose, they were caught in a catch-22 situation.

Mr Lessard: City council had the opportunity, I guess, since 1988 to implement the bylaw that it did, finally, in June. Were there ever any attempts to have wide open Sunday shopping prior to 1991?

Mr Lynd: In 1990 there was a public hearing and there were requests for it at that time, and council chose not to pass it at that time. They just exempted trade shows from the restrictions. There had been previous times where there were requests made from various interest groups to widen up that did not reach any public hearing stage, but they may have been recorded more for council's information, and no formal action was taken for a hearing. It was not really until 1990 that they began debating it under the present legislation, and in 1991 they took very positive action.

Mr Lessard: Do you know what the vote was in 1990?

Mr Lynd: I do not have that, but there were also negative votes on it as well. I do not have the actual vote with me.

Mr Lessard: All right, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Lessard. Thank you very much, Mr Lynd.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, might I just raise a point of order at the end of this submission? Sir, the transitional provisions of the bill have a very unusual effect in the city of Windsor because of the timing of the first reading of the bylaw and the final reading of the bylaw. I wonder if I might just ask for written confirmation from the Solicitor General's ministry as to whether or not they would be supportive of a friendly amendment. We will be putting forward an amendment when we go to clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, but a friendly amendment to resolve the difficult and unusual situation that the city of Windsor is in. We might even have a straw vote on the committee now to see if they would be supportive of that sort of thing, to encourage the Solicitor General to acknowledge the unusual circumstances of the city of Windsor.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Sorbara. As you know, that is not a point of order. However, it is still a very good question and I am sure the parliamentary assistant is taking note of it.

Mr Sorbara: I will make it as a request for information, written confirmation from the ministry as to whether or not they would be supportive of that sort of amendment, given the unusual circumstances of the city of Windsor.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Sorbara.

PATTI-JO LANE

The Chair: Our next presentation is from Ms Patti-Jo Lane. Ms Lane? Thank you for bearing with us through all this noise and changing schedules. We have about a quarter of an hour. If you could, if possible, share that time between your presentation and an opportunity for the committee members to pose questions to you. Please start when you are comfortable, Ms Lane.

Miss Lane: I am nervous. Good afternoon. I must admit outright that I am against Sunday openings. We Canadians have many essential economic issues to consider at present. Ontario is the economic hub of Canada and it also is bestowed with this country's legislative matters. According to Maclean's issue of August 26, 1991, 35% of the population lives in Ontario and we generate 50% of the federal government's revenues.

I am here today to voice my concerns and to protect my future family. I will not idly sit by and assume this country's governing powers are being conducted for the good of all, and are just. I am proud to live in Ontario, but more so, to be Canadian. Allow Ontario's population to celebrate a day exclusively set aside for our families. Help us maintain our uniqueness and our individuality, since we are losing it slowly due to our proximity to the United States.

In July 1990, council member Tom Porter stated, "Many Windsorites already work occasionally on Sunday and enjoy other days of rest and relaxation with family." If I have a day off during the week my kids would be in school, my husband and friends would be at work. So where is this family time, I ask you? In my home Sunday has been a day for the family unit to function as a wholistic entity. Please do not take this quality and quantity time away from the family.

City council opened retailers in July 1990, while management believed our sales would increase. However, what we have experienced is our sales spread over seven days rather than an actual increase in sales. Furthermore, the availability of hours open has been questioned. The average mall is open 63.5 hours and the average citizen has a 40-hour work week. Therefore, there is a surplus of 23.5 hours available to the consumer. I sure as heck would not call that limited. Who do you know who shops 20 hours a week?

Since December 1990, I have seen a shift of view taken by Windsorites and city council members. In August 1990, Michael Hurst was quoted as saying that Sunday openings "will provide a real protection for retail workers." However, a year later in August 1991, a study by the University of Windsor states that cross-border shopping will result in a loss of 4,600 jobs and Canadian expenditures in the United States of $58.7 million to $117 million in the next year.

So city council members opened us on Sundays so Canadians would not spend $1 million each Sunday in the United States, but based on my latter statement, Canadians are still in a mass-exodus shopping mode. I think it is now apparent what the central issue is here. It is not Sunday shopping but deficiencies in our current distribution system.

Also, I have noticed an increase in US shoppers venturing to the Great White North. Our government is offering US citizens incentives to patronize Canadian stores by refunding the GST and PST paid on purchases. Why not have border-city municipalities offer the same rebate to their very own taxpaying citizens as a method of reducing cross-border purchasing?

In the August 1991 issue of Windsor Business Life, it states, "Detroit merchants offer better quality, more selection and lower prices." To emphasize this, the federal government released a 50-item product list that would reap the benefits of the GST. The Consumer Association of Canada conducted two price checks of these items prior to the application of the GST and two checks after its application. In the June 17, 1991, issue of Maclean's magazine these consumer watchdogs found that only 18 products cost less.

With ever-increasing tax burdens, Canadians are being forced to scrimp and save wherever and whenever possible. Can you actually blame us for getting more for our looney?

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly agree that cross-border shopping is of epidemic proportions, but opening retailers on Sunday is not the solution. Our family and personal lives are infringed upon enough by our business activities. With Sunday openings I now have an 18-hour weekend. Please allow the family to maintain its vital function, thereby detaching business life from family life. Thank you.

Mr Sorbara: Miss Lane, do you work in a retail store?

Miss Lane: Yes, I do.

Mr Sorbara: What store is that?

Miss Lane: I cannot tell you. I was told specifically, "Don't say where you work."

Mr Sorbara: Is the store that you work in open on Sunday?

Miss Lane: Yes, we are open.

Mr Sorbara: Do you work on Sunday?

Miss Lane: Yes, I do.

Mr Sorbara: Are you forced to work on Sunday?

Miss Lane: No, I am not.

Mr Sorbara: So you volunteer to work on Sunday.

Miss Lane: Yes.

Mr Sorbara: If you said to your employer, "I would prefer not to work on Sunday," what would happen?

Miss Lane: Actually, nobody has refused so far.

Mr Sorbara: No one has refused so far, but if you said to your employer, "Gee, I would prefer to stay with my family on Sunday," would he cut your hours or attempt to fire you, do you think?

Miss Lane: I cannot answer that, because I have worked in all of the stores in Windsor and we have eight stores in the Windsor area and I work at Devonshire Mall and Devonshire right now is the only one open on Sunday. We have other stores in University Mall, Tecumseh Mall and in the downtown area. Our downtown store is closed on Sunday and so far nobody has refused to work.

However, I have a management position and if I refuse to work it would lead the way for the rest of the group to say, "Well, if she doesn't, then why do I have to work?" Then you have the situation where within the past six weeks we have hired two part-time girls and they are saying, "Why do we have to work every Sunday?" because everybody else is working during the week. So we are finding that we hire them and say, "We want you available to work almost every Sunday," and because they are young girls and they are finding there are men out there and what not, they want to have the weekends off.

Mr Sorbara: Are you aware that the laws of the province of Ontario give you the right to refuse an assignment of Sunday work?

Miss Lane: Yes.

Mr. Sorbara: Do you feel like you could take advantage of those laws if you decided you did not want to work on Sunday?

Miss Lane: I choose not to. As I have said before, I have to set a good example for the rest of my employees.

Mr McLean: You must be getting a settlement to work on Sundays. Is the staff who work there on Sundays getting time and a half or a bonus?

Miss Lane: No.

Mr McLean: Nothing? I appreciate your presentation. It is a different point of view and I respect that. I think what we are seeing today is a broad spectrum from this community that has a very real concern with regard to Sunday shopping and I thank you for your presentation.

Mr Kormos: You come here talking about the things that you are talking about, and you are talking about family and spending time with your family and enjoying things about your community other than the business life of the community. You seem to be saying that maybe we should reflect on the type of lifestyles we lead, because -- you know what? -- people have come before this committee and talked about shopping as a leisure activity. I go, "Holy zonkers." They have actually got us conned into thinking that when we buy their products, most of which when we reflect on it we really do not need, but as we become more and more acquisitive and acquire more and more of these consumer goods, they have got us actually thinking that it is fun too. Right? They are running those credit cards and they want us to do it on Sunday, and it's supposed to be so much fun that we take our kids there and our spouses and our parents and grandparents and say, "Let's go to the supermarket or the department store."

You have got some people who would somehow suggest that you, by saying what you are saying -- and some of the church people, the preachers and church leaders who have come here and said the very same things you are saying, and some of the trade union people who said some of the same things you are saying -- somehow are old-fashioned and are out of step. So I ask you this, do you mind being old-fashioned when it comes to family values? Does it bother you at all for them to call you old-fashioned?

Miss Lane: First of all, I am not that old.

Mr Kormos: I knew that.

Miss Lane: And I guess because I have gone to university and my profession is social work, I have a more --

Mr Kormos: Please, listen to this lady.

Miss Lane: I value the family unit more than maybe -- I do not know if "your average person" would be the correct phrase, but I maybe understand it a little bit more. Everything I have been seeing lately -- and I guess I am embarking on that, getting married and having a family, and it has become a real concern of mine right now. I see all the rest of the ladies I work with, that they are getting up at six in the morning to get the kids together with the 10 diaper bags and take them over to the day care centre. Hopefully their husband is on shift work so they get a break every second week, so they do not have to pay the babysitter $200 out of their paycheque and what not. Then they have to go and pick up the kids at 10 at night, and they are sleeping, and the whole system is just very disruptive.

I really cherish my Sundays. Since we have been open, I have not gone Sunday shopping. I do not consider it a leisure activity. I see women come in the mall and they are there from 9:30 on a Saturday to 6 when we close and they say, "Oh, God." They are putting themselves through all this and I am saying, "Well, you do not have to." So in response to what you asked me, yes, I do not mind being old-fashioned and I think the way our society is nowadays we have gotten so fast-paced and, you know, we are just doing this and doing that. We have to get back to basics.

Mr Kormos: Thank you. I think you are right.

Mr Sorbara: This is just a good old-fashioned labour government.

Mr Morrow: That is right. You are right.

Mr Sorbara: Save it. If you are worried about the worker --

Interjections.

The Chair: Gentlemen, please. May I introduce our next presenter and perhaps you can have your discourse later.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, could I move a motion that we videotape Peter Kormos's questions. They are so good, so dramatic and entertaining, I want to be able to take this home for a good old-fashioned half-hour of shlock TV.

Mr Kormos: Mr Sorbara, I have got videotapes at home I can sell you.

Mr Sorbara: You used to sell videotapes, and they are still illegal. I want to tell you that. The ones that you used to sell, they are still illegal. That is good, old-fashioned values for you.

Mr Kormos: Give me a break.

The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. We do have some presenters who are waiting and we are behind time. I realize after the interruptions of those jackhammers one tends to get a little bit frayed around the edges, but we have only a few more presenters if we could restrain ourselves for three quarters of an hour I am sure that would be appreciated by the witnesses.

Mr Sorbara: I just made a request for a videotape, that is all.

The Chair: Do you want to make that in the form of a motion, Mr Sorbara?

Interjections.

Mr Sorbara: You just cannot capture the true quality --

Mr Kormos: I will send you a transcript, Greg.

1600

TREVOR DAVIDSON

The Chair: We have Mr Davidson. I see you have been with us for a while. You have about a quarter of an hour, if you could divide that time please between your presentation and allow the committee members to ask some questions of you. Please start when you are ready, sir.

Mr Davidson: Chairman White and members of the standing committee on administration of justice, thank you for coming to Windsor to hear us out on the Sunday shopping issue. My name is Trevor Davidson and I am a very concerned citizen. I am here to say no to Sunday shopping but yes to a common pause day. I ask the question, why work seven days when the job can be done in six? This issue needs to be settled properly for the well-being of the future generation as it takes that long for governments to recognize the harm of a law that hurts instead of healing.

Sunday shopping affects the well-being of all families who make a living in the retail industry. Can you imagine families sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with a member or two missing because they have to go to work to satisfy the needs of the inconsiderate? On two or three occasions the Windsor city council has tackled the question whether or not to allow Sunday shopping and over the past three years they recognized the need for a common pause day. In fact, they washed their hands of the Sunday shopping issue a couple of times and threw it back to Queen's Park. Now they are doing an about-face on it. Unfortunately, this year they gave in to the whimperings of some greedy store owners who want Sunday shopping and to steal a niche in the marketplace.

At the public meetings that Mr Lynd referred to, that were held in April and May of this year, there was a vast majority of delegates who spoke in favour of a common pause day. April's meeting attracted nine speakers and seven were in favour of a common pause day. May's meeting attracted 38 and 30, that is 30 of them, wanted a common pause day, and our council still voted for Sunday shopping. Incidentally, one of the councillors at the May meeting admitted to receiving over 300 letters from people requesting a common pause day and still voted for Sunday shopping. We, the ordinary voters of this community, are dismayed with this decision and wonder if our democratic society is crumbling. I hope we are fairly represented at this hearing and in parliament. Why do we have to work seven days when the job only takes six?

Sunday shopping means Sunday and holiday work, and most of us who work in the retail industry do not want to have to work Sundays. Those people who feel it is their right to shop on Sundays and holidays are not considering the rights of the people who have to open the doors, man the counters and cash registers. Allowing the retail businesses to extend openings on Sundays does not result in higher sales, more jobs, or better service for the consumer. Our store used to be closed on Monday and Tuesday nights. When we opened these nights our business was spread over a longer period of time and not one extra person was required to cover the additional hours. All we did was take two bites of the cherry. During the recent Sunday openings last fall, there were major cutbacks in the retail sector and many people were laid off or encouraged to leave. This is all the proof we need that Sunday openings do not create more jobs. Service to the customer also suffered a blow as there were fewer employees to cover the extended hours. So we ask why do we have seven days when the job can be done in six?

The author of a letter published in the Windsor Star said how he observed workers in his place of employment scrambling to work the Saturday and Sunday and could not understand why the retail employees were not following suit. The answer is that in his career he and his co-workers are being paid time and one half or double time whilst the retail professional has to, for the most part, be satisfied with regular time. In some cases full-time staff wages are docked two and three hours on Sundays, as it is a five-hour shift instead of the normal eight. So Sunday work for the retailer means that day becomes part of the normal five-day work week and not an opportunity to earn extra wages. Is it any wonder, we ask, "Why work seven days, when the job can be done in six?"

Presently, stores are open 63 1/2 hours or more each week and this gives everyone ample time to shop. There is a major problem when someone complains that they have to work continually six days every week and Sunday is their only shopping day. Why work seven days when the job has been accomplished for decades in six?

I am not a lawyer but I have been told there are more holes in this amendment than in a calendar. Bill 115, subsection 4(1), states the council of a municipality can allow Sunday openings for the maintenance or the development of tourism. Surely every municipality, town, and city in Ontario could claim to allow Sunday shopping to maintain whatever tourist areas they have, no matter how small, and to further develop more tourist areas. The criteria set forth in Bill 115 that must be met before a municipality can declare itself a tourist area are much too broad and cover almost all aspects of retailing. Surely businesses that do not presently meet the criteria can very easily change their name or the way they merchandise to comply and open Sunday, an example being a drug store using a pharmaceutical name and selling everything from a needle to an anchor on Sundays. The same would also apply to Mac's, Becker's etc, and that affects the business of the supermarkets as well.

This is a shameful excuse to open Sundays and steal the business from companies who wish to be fair and ethical. It is only fair to do the work in six days instead of seven.

In section 11b, it spells out the rights of the employees with regard to Sunday working, but I do not see any guarantees for rights of the retail professional paid by commission. After all, they are like the small business people who are forced to open Sundays to protect their market share.

I am paid by commission only, and I refused to work on Sundays last year, resulting in the lowering of my wages. My right to having Sunday off as a common pause day and also the right to enjoy equal wages with my counterparts are no longer there, as I must now be at work to earn a living. I say there is no need to work seven days when I know the job can be done in six. I would like to relate to you how Sunday shopping affects my life.

My hobby is music, and I am a church organist. For years, choir practice was held midweek. It moved from one night to another as retail establishments gradually opened their doors night by night. With no nights free on a consistent basis, choir practice had to be moved to after the 11 am service on Sundays. If I have to work on Sundays, then my right has been taken away from me. If you ask anyone who feels it is necessary for a common pause day, they will all have similar experiences to tell. That is why six days is all it takes to do the job.

Now here are some reasons why we should have a common pause day. One, the money pie is just one size. Sunday openings do not magically add another slice. To highlight this point, the manager of one of our local chain stores said of a major competitor who stayed closed the first month of the latest Sunday openings: "They're the big guns in the city. When they open, that'll hurt the rest of us. Now the money will be split out there."

Two, keeping the doors to stores closed on Sundays will make content the retailer who feels someone else is getting a bit of his business. Three, having a common pause day for everyone allows us all to serve one anther better. Four, it gives a day for the family to enjoy some normal activities. Five, after the Creator created the heavens and the earth and all that is therein, he rested. He also commanded us to rest and keep that day holy. Why is man so devious in trying to get around a law that is good for his soul as well as his body?

These are a few reasons why Sunday should be a day of rest. The new law regarding a common pause day should be a simple one, void of all the ands, ifs, buts, wherefores and therefores. Part of the NDP's mandate for the last election was a common pause day for Ontarians. I believe they got a lot of votes on this issue, which helped them get elected. I am now looking forward to a common pause day, the fulfilment of an election promise and doing my job scheduled from Monday to Saturday. Thank you.

Mr Sorbara: Well, Mr Davidson, I think you point out as eloquently as anyone one of the great defects in this legislation, that the government has said it wants to bring about a common pause day and then presents a bill which will allow basically any community of basically any size to open up virtually all the stores in the community under the tourism exemption. In fact, they refer to the common pause day in the legislation, but they do not define it. They do not say what they are trying to achieve. I can understand that, given the inconsistencies in the act.

I ask you, sir, what is your definition of a common pause day? What are you searching for, and what were you looking for from the government after it was elected and given the fact that it had promised a common pause day in Ontario under its administration?

Mr Davidson: A common pause day to me is just a common pause day.

Mr Sorbara: Is it most businesses closed or --

Mr Davidson: Most businesses should be closed on Sunday. It is not even necessary to have all the Mac's convenience stores and all the gas stations open on Sundays. There are about five small variety stores within about a mile of where I live. I live in the suburbs of Windsor. I do not know how they survive, but they are taking away business from the bigger stores. They could be put on a rotating basis. I recognize the fact that sometimes people do run out of milk and that sort of stuff and you have to have some of the corner stores open, but not necessarily all of them.

Our downtown Windsor has nothing to offer as far as tourists go. You have tourist areas that are very clear, like Niagara Falls and maybe Grand Bend, that type of thing. Those are areas no one can dispute, but whenever we have areas like downtown, then we had the old town of Sandwich here in Windsor applying for the same exemption. We could also talk about the Ottawa Street merchants, who have a very nice street, as nice as downtown Windsor, and the whole thing just snowballs from one area to another.

1610

Mr Sorbara: Do you think this bill is going to bring about a common pause day in Windsor?

Mr Davidson: No, it is not. That is why I said it has to be void of all the ands, ifs, buts and sos and just be a straight bill to say no Sunday shopping.

Mr McLean: I have been opposed to Sunday shopping for many years. I probably would not have held my seat in the last election if my community did not know where I was coming from. I have been very strong on that. But the thing that really bothers me is the fact that we had a lot of people in the last election who ran their campaign on no Sunday shopping. They have said they are for the Agenda for People saying, "Elect us and we'll have a common pause day." Would you say the Premier lied to the people of Ontario or not?

Mr Davidson: I am waiting for the truth to come through. I know that was not the only issue, but it was a major issue in this area and I know it was a major issue with me. When I heard him saying he wanted a common pause day for Ontarians, I felt he was on side. This bill in its present form is not --

Mr McLean: It is not what he promised.

Mr Davidson: -- going to satisfy my needs.

Mr McLean: Mine either. Thank you very much.

Mr Kormos: Well, sir, you have done something nobody has been able to do for three weeks. You have brought Mr McLean out of the bushes. Now we know he is on the side of a common pause day.

Mr McLean: But we do not know where it is with this legislation.

Mr Davidson: I say bless you and tell you that some of the things you have identified as weaknesses in this legislation are consistent with what a whole lot of other people have said -- people like you and me who agree with the concept of a common pause day, and others who want Sunday shopping -- issues like who regulates it and who controls it? Should it be the municipality, with the potential for checkerboarding across the province, or should it be a provincial body so that there is uniformity? And the loopholes: As people have said, you can drive a Mack truck through them, a Caterpillar tractor or a great big tractor-trailer.

Mr McLean: And a Corvette.

Mr Kormos: And a Corvette if you are wily enough. I and a whole lot of other people on this committee listened to your comments with great interest. I am looking forward to the fruitful discussion I know people like Mr McLean will engage in now to try to beef up this legislation so that it achieves what so many of us want it to achieve: a common pause day for as many Ontarians as possible so we can develop family values and church values.

Mr Davidson: I feel it is a law that has to be administered from Queen's Park so that it is going to be equal for everyone throughout the province, because the way it is right now the Windsor council, as someone else has pointed out, has declared Windsor a tourist area. We have nothing really to offer as far as tourism. We do not have the natural beauty. We have Fords, Chryslers and the Detroit River and that is about it.

Mr Kormos: I believe that tourists are as impressed by our Sundays as they are by so many of our other qualities here in Ontario. The peacefulness on a Sunday impresses as many tourists as not.

CHRISTOPHER PRATT

The Chair: We now have a presentation from Rev Christopher Pratt from St John's Anglican Church. Rev Pratt, I have observed you have been with us for a while and you recognize that we have a quarter of an hour to divide as you wish. I am sure you will be tolerant of the frazzled nerves the committee members seem to be experiencing. Thank you very much for waiting for us, sir. We appreciate that.

Father Pratt: You will note that the covering page on my submission is to indicate the purpose of my submission, to encourage the standing committee on administration of justice to repeal section 4 of Bill 115.

Members of the committee, I value the opportunity of appearing before you today to address the proposed legislation referred to as Bill 115. This act to amend the Retail Business Holidays Act will have an impact of the lives of many individuals and families who will look to it as a means by which the values and traditions of time spent with families and participating in religious worship will be safeguarded. All citizens of the province of Ontario will be able to benefit from this legislation; or will they?

At the present moment, the Retail Business Holidays Act allows, in section 4, for the council of a municipality to enact bylaws which may permit retail establishments to be open on any holiday, or may require that retail establishments be closed on any holiday. The lengthy rewriting of section 4 in the proposed legislation allows for a variety of loopholes to be discovered by retailers and municipalities alike, who will search for any means possible to evade the spirit of the proposed legislation.

With the potential for a great degree of variance in the application of Bill 115 across Ontario, the aim of this legislation will be diluted and destroyed. In the first throne speech of the present government, the statement was made that the government intended to "provide for a common pause day to help strengthen family and community life while protecting small business and the rights of workers."

On April 8 of this year, an open meeting was held in Windsor city hall council chambers on the issue of Sunday shopping. A large number of individuals, groups and businesses voiced their opinion on this matter. An overwhelming majority indicated their support for the enforcement of the Retail Business Holidays Act and a curb on open Sunday shopping. A member of city council expressed the fact that he was unable to endorse the views of those present because of his concern that many members of the community of Windsor were not able to be present at the meeting. He felt compelled to use his vote to give expression to the views of what he believed to be a silent majority.

I invite the members of the committee to eliminate this situation from future discussions by reviewing section 4 of Bill 115. I ask the committee to act decisively and strike section 4, dealing with municipal powers from Bill 115. In doing so, this committee will allow for a provincial common pause day law that can and will be applied equally in all municipalities and that can and will be enforced effectively across Ontario.

After making this plea before you, I would also like to take this opportunity to endorse the presentation of the Fairness for Families coalition, which will be appearing before you in Toronto on August 29. This groups has been working with representatives from the business community as well as churches, citizen groups, retail associations and trade unions. Their detailed review of Bill 115 is worthy of your in-depth study. Thank you for this opportunity to come before you and voice these concerns.

Mr Sorbara: Rev Pratt, as you know, people of the Jewish faith have been able to maintain a holy Sabbath on Saturdays, I guess throughout the North American continent, without the intervention of the state to require stores to close or to require businesses to close. I think if we would review the history of the Jewish faith, they have done that quite successfully. Do you not believe that in Ontario it is possible for those of the Christian faith to maintain a common pause day or a holy day or a Sabbath on Sunday without the intervention of the state?

Father Pratt: I would hope it would be. Unfortunately, it seems not to be the case. In a presentation that was made to Windsor city council, the Fairness for Families group stated that they would hope that the coalition and those who were interested in supporting them, would work to prevent the erosion of the act by the adoption and enforcement of bylaws by the city that protect both the retailers and the retail employees human rights to observe Sundays and other public holidays with appropriate protection for all religious groups. For example, store owners who, for religious reasons, close their stores on Saturdays could be allowed to open their stores on Sundays.

It seems to me that we have reached the point where everyone feels the need to have their rights spelled out in a legislative manner. Where those particular working arrangements were almost taken for granted in years gone by, these days, people want to have their rights spelled out in law.

Mr Sorbara: Yet people of the Jewish faith have not tried to convince governments of the necessity to require that the pause advocated by the government be extended to Saturday. If they have advocated, they have advocated that those who do choose to voluntarily close their stores on Saturday for religious reasons, simply be allowed to open their stores on Sundays so that they can respond to a natural market that evolved.

Why is it that we need to use the power of the state to bring about an observance of Sunday when we do not need to use the power of the state to bring about an observance of Saturday among the people of the Jewish faith or, for that matter, the power of the state to bring about the observance of Friday respecting Muslim traditions which are significant if still in a minority in Ontario?

Father Pratt: There is no question there are a multitude of religious beliefs held by residents of Ontario and that is why, I think, the phrase "common pause day" is most appropriate because it covers all of those particular backgrounds. It seems to me that the option for observing a particular common pause day in a retail outlet would be something that the members of that working group would be able to establish under the proposed Bill 115 and do so with some amount of freedom.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. As I was reading it, I was interested to note that most of the criticism seems to be going towards Windsor city council. I suspect that is the Premier's strategy. In fact, he could have prevented all this if he had wanted to and said, "We are going to legislate a common pause day," as he said during the election campaign, and eliminate this internal bickering.

It is interesting that most of the people who have come here and who are critical have talked about what Windsor council has done. So, I guess what the Premier has done by giving it over to them has in fact worked because what happens is a lot of the -- I will not use the word "anger" -- but the criticism gets shared. I noticed that you did criticize some of the provisions, but the people focus on the city council.

The city council members are the ones who had this thrust upon them. I was just wondering why, in your particular position here, there is not more criticism of the Premier of the province of Ontario who said a year ago, "We are going to have a common pause day," and then as a result of this legislation, has not followed through. Why is the criticism not of him?

Father Pratt: I think one of the very important things that has happened because of that particular action has been the ability for people to be placed in a public forum where they feel they really can be heard and where they really can make a difference. To have a committee such as this come from the provincial level into the community is not something that happens on a regular basis. But to be able to go before city council, where people we know and relate to on a regular basis as councillor representatives of our own particular home areas are making decisions which affect us, certainly has been able to stir up members of the community to go to that location to make a presentation to hope that the message would get through.

When the response has been as it has been, then I think one of the things that you have seen here today is the fact that people have been empowered and enabled to come to this particular group and say, "Look, maybe our voices weren't heard or our concerns weren't heard at this particular level, but we want you to hear what we are thinking," because the expectation from the community as a whole, residents and councillors alike, is that leadership needs to be shown at the provincial level, and responsibility needs to be taken at the provincial level. If that is where everyone is looking, that is where we would like to see the leadership.

Mr Carr: If, in fact, there are no changes to the bill, and you are very clear on the last page what you would like to see, but if, in fact, there are no changes and Bill 115 goes through as it is proposed now, do you think there will be more criticism towards the -- because remember, we are at the stage where we are, and I am speaking for the government now, listening to people and so on, but if it does not change, do you think more of the anger will focus on the Premier of this province?

Father Pratt: I think one of the things that is going to happen is that people will take opportunity of every advantage to hold elected representatives responsible for their actions, of no matter what party, and I think that is one of the things that is vitally important in discussing this particular issue. Whether we vocally say we are for something or against something, elected representatives have the opportunity to make the final decisions and to cast the votes, and that is what people are being really woken up to by this particular issue because it touches the life of their family and their community in a very important kind of way, and they are responding to that.

Mr Fletcher: It is a day for confessions, I know.

Father Pratt: I am glad to hear it.

Mr Fletcher: And I am going to confess that I am definitely against Sunday shopping, and part of my campaign was on opposing Sunday shopping; Sunday working is what I prefer to call it. As far as this legislation is concerned --

Mr Poirier: Rev Fletcher.

Mr Fletcher: Thanks. What we are trying to do is strike a balance, and perhaps we have not struck that balance yet. There are going to definitely probably have to be some revisions. You talk about section 4 that has to be struck, the municipal option part of it, the municipal powers of Bill 115, the first exemption part of it. As far as what we have heard from some of the business people who work in the tourist area, how would you see us striking that balance? I do not want you to do my job for me. I know that is on my shoulders, but I am just asking for guidance, and I guess I am coming to the right place, too sometimes.

Father Pratt: One would hope that from the provincial perspective you would be able to look across the province and without local community banner waving you might be able to discern those communities that would have a legitimate claim on being a tourist attraction. It would hopefully be helpful for you to do that because then the municipalities would be perhaps challenged to do something creative in their communities if they are going to pursue the tourism option, to do something that would be worth while, to do something that would stimulate the life of their community.

There was mention earlier in the last presentation of the old town of Sandwich. Many of you perhaps would quake in your boots in terms of being able to come to Windsor and see it as being the end of the province of Ontario. Here we view it as the beginning of the province of Ontario. You are within a few kilometres of the oldest European community in Canada west of Montreal. There are all kinds of legitimate tourism options that we can wave in your faces as being tourism centres, but it also means that the community has to do its homework and have a good, solid presentation of something that is worth while and something that will be of benefit to the local community and to the province in terms of filling in the guidelines which are there.

1630

Mr Fletcher: On that point, that would mean that the municipalities would be going to Queen's Park, to the politicians, and saying, "We think we should be able to open because we fit this criterion." But before they do that, it has to be the community that decides. I am trying to envision something. Would it be plebiscites, would it be town meetings, would it be the people saying, "Well, yes, we agree with what you are saying partly"? As you said, you were at a city council meeting and a majority of the people were saying, "No, we don't want it." Yet city council went ahead and did it. I have read from the press what you said, how disappointed you were. Yet, again, that is still going to be open. If the city is being lobbied by the business community, "We want to open on Sunday." We have something like the West Edmonton Mall opening up in Windsor, say, and that is a tourist area, and yet you and your group of people saying, "No, we don't think so," and you go to city council. City council is swayed. It comes to Queen's Park and we are supposed to decide that yes, what you are saying is right.

Father Pratt: But look at the process. What you have done essentially is you have gotten people involved in the life of their community. What you have done is you have gotten people excited about some potential in their community, and what you have done is you have gotten people working for the benefit of their community. If you are saying, "Don't come to us until you have done your homework," then you are putting a great deal on the people of the community to do something of benefit to their community. If they can do that within the guidelines of the legislation as it is provided, then you will be doing something worth while for the province of Ontario.

ROBERT ANDREW

The Chair: We now have a presentation from Robert Andrew. Mr Andrew, we have about a quarter of an hour. If you could divide that between your presentation and some time for the committee members to pose questions to you.

Mr Andrew: Thank you for having me here to speak; I appreciate the opportunity. I would like to say I am opposed to retail activity on Sundays and holidays. After reviewing the proposed legislation, Bill 115, I can find no assurance that it will promote a common pause day in Ontario. This bill provides the opportunity for any municipality to allow unrestricted retail activity any day of the year. The advent of unrestricted retail activity in Ontario is the end of a healthy social tradition for all citizens of Ontario.

Retail workers are the most immediately affected by this proposed change, but it will eventually change the social and family life of all Ontarians. Demands of unrestricted retail activity will spread to other occupations and professions, creating just another work day for everyone.

In the last year, full-time employment in Canada has fallen 3.9% while part-time employment has risen 11.8%. It appears that more and more people are being forced to depend on multiple part-time jobs for income. With unrestricted retail activity, these people are faced with the reality of a seven-day work week without rest.

To say a worker is protected by a right to refuse is unrealistic. They can be subjected to a host of abuses by an employer as well as peer pressure from fellow workers who reluctantly work Sundays and holidays.

In Windsor we have had numerous retailers opening illegally due to an apparent lack of law enforcement. If these retailers have no respect for the Retail Business Holidays Act, why would they have any more respect for the Employment Standards Act? And why would an employee feel he could safely refuse to work when an employer is allowed to continually open illegally?

I have included with my submission an article from the Windsor Star newspaper, dated July 20, 1991. The article reports that a retail worker was fired in July of 1990 for refusing Sunday work. Only recently did she receive a ruling in her favour from the Ministry of Labour. She has been unable to find work since her termination. The only way to protect the worker is to keep the stores closed on Sundays and holidays.

My recommendations: Ideally, introduce legislation similar to the Lord's Day Act; if the legislation resembles Bill 115, then no powers to the municipalities; no major retail activity on statutory holidays; stiffer fines that guarantee it will not be profitable to open illegally; more stringent tourism exemption, and only allow it where it can be proven a viable major tourist industry presently exists; provisions to guarantee that the law will be enforced regardless of the attitude of local officials.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Andrew. Unfortunately I believe our written copy of Mr Andrew's presentation is in Toronto, and it will be circulated as soon as is possible, probably on Thursday when we are in Toronto.

Mr Daigeler: Not so much a question as a comment: I think you and the previous witness rightfully pointed out the very serious shortcoming of this present legislation when you look at the avowed purpose the government is putting forward. They have been making a lot of statements about the need to expand the common pause day but, as you have pointed out, the exemptions being provided are extremely wide and the way I look at it will certainly more or less come to the same conclusion that the Liberal legislation had arrived at, letting the local areas decide on their own. Quite frankly, a lot of witnesses have said that is the best way to go.

I would like to say I agree with you that this legislation certainly does not achieve the purpose the NDP has set out for itself, and if they were really serious about putting in place a common pause day they should do what you are suggesting.

The Chair: Would you like to respond to that?

Mr Andrew: No, it was just a comment.

Mr Sorbara: You mentioned in your submission that there should be no -- I think I am quoting -- "major commercial activity on Sunday."

Mr Andrew: Yes, major retail activity.

Mr Sorbara: Major retail activity. If you were setting the standards, what stores, if any, would you allow to open on Sunday?

Mr Andrew: What I had said was something similar -- ideally, I would like to see something similar to the Lord's Day Act --

Mr Sorbara: I cannot remember what was open and closed in the Lord's Day Act.

Mr Andrew: I believe there were convenience stores and there was a limited square footage and the number of employees was limited to three. That is what I would like to see.

Mr Sorbara: So you could sell anything so long as you were small enough --

Mr Andrew: I am not saying sell anything, but just decide who is going to open first.

Mr Carr: Thank you for your presentation. As you know, the government said this legislation will give a common pause day to the province. There are many opposed to Sunday shopping who say that will not happen. What is your best guess what we are going to see a year from now in this province if this legislation goes through unamended?

Mr Andrew: If it goes through the way it is now?

Mr Carr: Yes.

Mr Andrew: I feel it is eventually going to be a common workday in Ontario if we stay with this legislation the way it is now. It will be another day of the week. Maybe not right now, but within a generation it will be like any other day of the week. That is what I am trying to prevent by being here.

Mr Carr: With the best case of what you would like to see, and I may have missed this, you want to see it remain a provincial responsibility so that --

Mr Andrew: Yes, no powers to municipalities. You have heard our stories about Windsor and our city council, it just does not work.

Mr McLean: That area of jurisdiction really concerns me because we all heard we wanted to establish a common pause day. Nobody has seen anywhere in this legislation where there is going to be a common pause day. The city of Windsor had a bylaw with two readings. The government wrote them a letter and indicated that they were bringing their legislation forward which they probably figured was going to determine how Sunday shopping took place in Ontario, which really did not happen, so they went ahead and passed their bylaw. The confusion is the fact that there was a commitment made for a common pause day in this province, and that commitment has not been fulfilled. Do you think he will fulfil his commitment?

Mr Andrew: It is not solved yet. We have public meetings so we still have to give him a chance. As far as the city council being confused as to what the provincial government wanted, they came out and told them that the spirit of the legislation they wanted was a common pause day and it was to be restricted to tourist areas. It did not matter what the legislation was going to be, our city council wanted Sunday shopping in Windsor, wide open, and the mayor said so right after the day that legislation was published. He said we are going to have wide-open shopping in Windsor, and after the numerous delegations that went to council and told them, "We don't want it," they still went ahead with it.

Do not tell me the silent majority counts for something. You have a chance to speak. This public meeting is here today. The public meeting was at city council. Do not tell me the day after that the silent majority rules.

1640

Mr McLean: But if the province had brought in the common pause day legislation that bylaw would not have taken place.

Mr Andrew: I do not know. I was at every city hall meeting and the majority of people that spoke at those meetings were against it. Each time the majority was against it. The majority of council was against it initially and now they have turned around. I do not know what turned them around, but now they are the other way and they are not listening to people any more.

Mr McLean: Do you think a referendum would be good?

Mr Andrew: I suggested a referendum myself and it was turned down too.

Mr Morrow: I want to thank you very much for participating in what we are doing here today. We will be taking your recommendations back to Toronto. That is part of the whole process. We are here to listen to you and everybody else that has been presenting. Do you feel any retail worker should have the absolute right to refuse to work on a Sunday?

Mr Andrew: I feel the store should be closed. As far as saying you have a right to refuse, forget it. It is not going to work. You are not going to -- you have other laws in Ontario that are supposed to protect workers and they just do not work. You have a law in Ontario that says 48 hours a week is the maximum you can work. I work at a company where they tell me how many hours I am going to work and that is it. Fifty-five hours a week and that is what you are scheduled. Do not say you are not going to work or you might not be there the next time, or the next time there is a possibility of an increase in your wages or a promotion they pass you over. Sure, you can say you are protected by a law, then you can stay in that position for the rest of your life.

Mr Morrow: You bring up a very interesting point of intimidation and things like that. I want to thank you very much for your fine presentation.

Mr Andrew: Mr Kormos, you have my support on auto insurance. That is our next fight.

The Chair: Gentlemen, we have a change in our schedule. The presentation from the town of Goderich has been cancelled, or they have decided not to present. So our first presentation will be at 9:30 tomorrow with the presentation from the city of London. Before we adjourn, Mr Mills has a clarification of some form.

Mr Mills: Thank you, Mr Chair. It is not a clarification but I keep hearing Mr Sorbara asking me, "What is a common pause day?" He wants me to clarify common pause day.

Mr Sorbara: What is it?

Mr Mills: I am not going to clarify what a common pause day is, but I am going to tell you what the act says and surely to goodness that is as plain as day. Subsection 4(2), "The council in passing a bylaw under subsection (1) shall take into account the principle that holidays should be maintained as common pause days." Right, that is the principle.

Then we go to the Retail Business Holidays Act and it says, "In this Act, holiday means New Year's Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day," the 26th day of December, "Sunday and any other public holiday declared by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor." If that is not the definition of a common pause day, I need to be enlightened further.

Mr Sorbara: Let me thank Mr Mills for pointing that out. I have already read those sections of the act and I appreciate that subsection 4(2) refers to those days, those holidays. If you will go, sir, to the second line of the section that you quoted it says, "take into account...that holidays." Now "holidays" is a defined term. Holidays means those days that you listed and Sundays and any other day defined by the act. That is a legal definition of holidays.

What I am concerned about is that there is no definition of the phrase "common pause day." If you will check with legal counsel you will know that often when governments present legislation of this sort they give legal significance to phrases like common pause days so that counsel, when they are trying to maintain holidays as common pause days, will have some sort of direction.

The deficiency I see in the act is that you do not offer in the act any specifics as to what qualities the common pause must have. We know what days we are talking about. There is no disagreement about that. You point out correctly that the days themselves are defined in the act. What is not defined is the phrase "common pause." I would suggest to you, and the request for information is, that the ministry provide us with a working definition of the phrase "common pause." That will help us in our deliberations and I submit to you, sir, will help councils as well, once this bill is passed, in achieving the objectives the government wants to achieve.

We have had a lot of discussion about what individual deputants think about the common pause day. I think it is time now that the government put its definition on the table and hopefully incorporated that in the act before it is passed.

The Chair: I want to thank you for bringing that to Mr Mills's attention. I think it is an excellent point.

Mr Sorbara: Could I get an assurance that the government either will respond with a working definition or say that they are not prepared to respond.

Mr Mills: I think the best place for that discussion is when we do clause-by-clause.

Mr Sorbara: But if we had something before we get into clause-by-clause, we could have a better -- if the government wants to say, "Sorry, we do not want to provide a working definition," I accept that. I am just putting in the request for the information.

The Chair: I think it is very helpful, though, Greg, for us to have your advice on those points now so that perhaps the Solicitor General can respond in time.

Mr Sorbara: Can I also just reiterate my request for an answer from the ministry as to whether they would consider a friendly amendment and supporting a friendly amendment to get Windsor --

Interjection.

Mr Sorbara: I will during clause-by-clause, but if we could know beforehand --

The Chair: We have had that question already, I think. Mr Mills, you will endeavour to respond to that? Thank you. We are adjourned.

Mr Morrow: Point of order, please, Mr Chair: Can we please thank the city of Windsor for their fine facilities?

The Chair: My apologies, Mr Morrow. Before adjourning, I would like to thank the city of Windsor for their hospitality and, of course, all of the witnesses who have put up with the noise and have done an excellent job with their presentations today. Thank you all very much.

The committee adjourned at 1647.