WINDSOR AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
LONDON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
CHATHAM AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
WINDSOR ESSEX LOW INCOME FAMILIES TOGETHER
CANADIAN AUTO WORKERS, LOCAL 27
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, WINDSOR AREA OFFICE
CONTENTS
Monday 17 August 1998
Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998, Bill 22, Mrs Ecker /
Loi de 1998 visant à empêcher la syndicalisation (programme Ontario au travail),
projet de loi 22, Mme Ecker
Windsor and District Labour Council
Mr Gary Parent
Reverend Bill Capitano
Mr Gerard Charette
London and District Labour Council
Mr Rick Witherspoon
Ms Sandi Ellis
Mr Jeff Schlemmer
LIFE*SPIN
Mr Andrew Bolter
Mr Jim McFeggan
Chatham and District Labour Council
Mr Aaron De Meester
Windsor Essex Low Income Families Together
Ms Mary Seaton
Canadian Auto Workers, Local 27
Mr Jim Reid
Canadian Union of Public Employees, Windsor area office
Ms Rose Gunnell
Ms Susan Smith
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Chair / Président
Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte PC)
Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia PC)
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South / -Sud L)
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold ND)
Mr Gerry Martiniuk (Cambridge PC)
Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa PC)
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming L)
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte PC)
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough PC)
Mr Bob Wood (London South / -Sud PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent PC)
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie PC)
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich L)
Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North / -Nord PC)
Clerk / Greffier
Mr Douglas Arnott
Staff / Personnel
Mr Avrum Fenson, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1002 in the Best Western Wheels Inn, Chatham.
PREVENTION OF UNIONIZATION ACT (ONTARIO WORKS), 1998 LOI DE 1998 VISANT À EMPÊCHER LA SYNDICALISATION (PROGRAMME ONTARIO AU TRAVAIL)
Consideration of Bill 22, An Act to Prevent Unionization with respect to Community Participation under the Ontario Works Act, 1997 / Projet de loi 22, Loi visant à empêcher la syndicalisation en ce qui concerne la participation communautaire visée par la Loi de 1997 sur le programme Ontario au travail.
The Chair (Mr Jerry Ouellette): I call to order this meeting of the standing committee on administration of justice hearings on Bill 22. Just prior to our first presenter, at the last meeting of the committee on Wednesday, August 12, 1998, a matter was raised by the member for Welland-Thorold as a point of order with respect to alleged interference in the process by which witnesses are called to testify before this committee during its hearings on Bill 22. The member requested that I, as Chair, investigate the matter.
I reviewed the draft Hansard transcripts of the committee's proceedings of last week, including the remarks by the member for Welland-Thorold. I have had no evidence presented to me to support findings in favour of either a point of order or a point of privilege with respect to the matter raised.
According to the committee's own guidelines, witnesses are properly contacted by the committee clerk's office on the committee's behalf and invited to speak at our public hearings on Bill 22.
Having said that, I would, as Chair, express my serious personal concern if it appeared that witnesses called to testify before this committee were being harassed, coerced or intimidated, or if the integrity of the committee's public hearings process were compromised by any such actions.
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): Thank you, Chair. I, of course, don't quarrel with your ruling. I do note, if I may raise this before we proceed further, that in this morning's Toronto Star Janet Ecker from Durham region has criticized the local regional council for raising taxes, refusing to accept the government's responsibility as a result of downloading that necessitated that.
You'll recall last week that when Bart Maves, the MPP for Niagara Falls and the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Labour, did that in Niagara region one of the local mayors wanted to give him a spanking. You're from Durham. I wonder if there has been any similar response with respect to any local mayors vis-à-vis Ms Ecker, or are we going to hear about it on Jerry Springer?
The Chair: It is not the responsibility of the Chair to report on spankings, Mr Kormos.
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): Chair, given what you've just read to us, can you give us some idea of how the individuals in Cornwall had come to the committee to speak, when the information they provided us with indicated that they were called by what we guess are political staffers of the ministry and asked to come and speak to the minister at the hearings and tell us about the wonders of workfare in their community? How do you rationalize or explain that? Are we going to go into any of that discussion this morning?
The Chair: It's not the responsibility of the Chair to determine the exact procedure. What took place there was that the three parties presented a list along with the invited guest as listed through the advertising process to the clerk and then they were listed to present as such. If you read in the Hansard, I think that Mr Klees made a very fine definition of what had taken place there. It should be your responsibility to review Hansard to determine the answer that was already given.
Mrs Pupatello: Just on a further point, Chair: The issue isn't ultimately what happened once they were all listed on the list. It's how some of them came to be on the list in the first place, in that they were responding to a call from the minister's office.
The Chair: I've already given the ruling on that and there is no debate on a ruling once it has been presented.
WINDSOR AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: We'll call our first witness. If we could have the representative or representatives of the Windsor and District Labour Council come forward. If you or your group could identify yourselves for Hansard, we would greatly appreciate it. Just so you know, there's a total time allocated of 20 minutes. At the conclusion of your presentation, any time remaining is divided equally between the three caucuses. Welcome and thank you for presenting today. You may begin.
Mr Gary Parent: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. My name is Gary Parent. I am the president of the Windsor and District Labour Council. I can tell by the temperature in this room that we won't have problems with people nodding off. It probably is one of the reasons that brought us here today. It's already notoriously out there that this is a Sleeping Beauty bill. I just hope that people will be paying attention to what we're talking about because it is very serious as far as we're concerned.
I want to, on behalf of over 42,000 affiliated members of the Windsor and District Labour Council, thank you for the opportunity to make a presentation to the standing committee on justice on Bill 22, the Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998, which was introduced on May 14, 1998, by the Minister of Community and Social Services.
We want to state right up front that we regard Bill 22 as the latest example of the contempt this government has shown for the institutions and practices that are our common heritage in this province. This contempt has also been seen in the government's attitudes and actions towards the labour movement and people on social assistance in this province.
The record of contempt shown by this government to our parliamentary traditions of providing opportunities for elected representatives and citizens to have input into proposed legislation is mind-boggling. There was the experience of megaweek in January 1997, where in one five-day period the government tabled a series of proposals to alter in a substantive way the arrangements for support and services between the provincial and municipal government. New rules governing debate in our Legislature were rammed through in 1997.
There was the undemocratic use of regulation, the so-called Henry VIII clause, in such important pieces of legislation as the Savings and Restructuring Act, Bill 26, and the Fewer School Boards Act, Bill 104. Another example was the use of time allocation on major pieces of legislation. It was used on 12 bills between October 25, 1995, and October 6, 1997.
During this same period time was limited for public consultation on eight pieces of legislation. The most blatant attack on labour was that no public consultation days were given for Bill 7, the Labour Relations and Employment Statute Law Amendment Act. I might say to this committee that what this has done in our community is that we have a small strike, 35 women who have been on the picket line for some six or seven weeks. The agency that is in a direct relationship to this particular group of workers hired goons, scabs, to go and do their work dressed in army fatigues. They had batons, they had lengthy flashlights, which resulted in confrontations on the picket line. This is the type of action that Bill 7 provokes, when talking to the whole question of the labour relations climate in this community, from 35 women in Windsor, Ontario; not somewhere else, but Windsor, Ontario.
We believe the purpose of Bill 22 is to ensure that the employer friends of this government are given access and the licence to exploit the conscripted labour of their fellow citizens under the guise of workfare. Groups or individuals not subscribing to this view will be ignored.
We feel Bill 22 should be seen for what it is: this government's latest attack on the labour movement as well as some of the most vulnerable citizens in this province, those on social assistance. This attack on labour is unfair and unnecessary, yet we are attacked because our movement is an open, democratic institution with a social conscience and a belief in human dignity. The existence of such an institution poses a threat to the closed, authoritarian, corporate mentality which controls this government.
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Quite frankly, we feel that Bill 22 violates the spirit and letter of the law in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in such areas as section 1, guarantee of rights and freedoms; section 2(d), freedom of association; section 7, life, liberty and security of person; and section 15, equality rights, all of which we feel will surely result in a legal challenge to this ill-conceived piece of legislation.
Also, Bill 22 violates the spirit and letter of the International Labour Organization, ILO, human rights core conventions: 29: forced labour convention; 87: freedom of association and protection of the right to organize convention; 98: right to organize and collective bargaining convention; 100: equal remuneration convention; 105: abolition of forced labour convention; 111: discrimination (employment and occupation) convention; and 138: minimum age convention.
Of these numbers, 87 and 98 form the cornerstone of ILO's international labour code. Canada was a founding member of the ILO in 1919. Canadian representatives at the ILO are drawn from government, business and labour.
Professor Jack Donnelly from the graduate school of international studies, University of Denver, remarked about Bill 22, "This bill is one of the clearest violations of international norms that I have ever seen in a country typically considered to be democratic." That is a terrible statement to be made to any government that would put in such pieces of legislation, in our opinion.
It is interesting to note that Minister Janet Ecker had stated throughout the entire implementation process that workfare would not be extended to the private sector, yet we see this now being proposed. The reason of course, we believe, is because it has failed in the voluntary and public sectors.
We have seen in other jurisdictions such as New York City, and I could also add Quebec, that 22,000 public works employees were laid off, and within two years 33,000 workfare conscripts were brought in to replace them. In a survey that was done of employers who had hired workfare recipients in Quebec, they would have hired full-time people if they did not have the opportunity to provide these people with what you would call some type of life skill. Full-time jobs have been eliminated in the province of Quebec as a result of their piece of legislation. This certainly isn't creating new jobs but in fact is part of a cheap labour strategy by this government.
Bill 22 throws us back to a time when workers had to organize illegally, and so in the end the government will not stop workers from organizing themselves.
The experience in the United States is that conscripted workers in workfare programs fight back. They are fighting back across the United States. One tool they are using is organizing themselves into organizations. For example, last November 1997, 17,000 conscripted workers in New York City's work experience program voted to be represented by an organization called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, and certainly this will happen here in Ontario. I can assure this committee that we will do everything in our power to assist them if required and requested.
In conclusion, let us state that we implore this committee to recommend the scrapping of Bill 22, seeing what it is really going to be doing to the people of Ontario, as well as the total workfare program, and engage in meaningful consultation with a wide variety of groups and individuals to implement labour market policies that would assist citizens in Ontario in their time of need and help build a future, which I believe everyone around this table is really interested in doing, and I mean that.
We will continue to resist workfare and we will support our fellow citizens in the fight for real jobs and for their human right to join a union if they so desire.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to make our presentation.
The Chair: That allows us approximately three minutes per caucus, and we begin with the third party.
Mr Kormos: Thank you, brother. You're quite right: You referred to this as the Sleeping Beauty bill. The narcoleptic Bob Wood slept through a vote, and as others like Ms Pupatello are wont to explain to you, he was sleeping while others were doing any number of things: crossword puzzles, gazing off into the skyline, what have you.
But also remember that the opposition parties didn't call for what amounts to six days of public hearings on this bill. Bill 22 is receiving more public hearing days than Bill 142, which is the root so-called workfare bill. The only reason this is travelling the province for four days, at what again others will tell you is great cost, is because the New Democratic Party utilized its powers under the standing orders to compel.
This is the justice committee; this isn't the committee that considered the original Bill 142, the workfare legislation. This bill has no business in front of this committee. We had brought an application to have a 12-hour inquiry by this committee, as of right, into the role of the Premier, the Premier's office and the Premier's staff in the murder, assassination of Dudley George at Ipperwash Park. The committee would have been compelled to conduct that inquiry had the government not forced this bill on to the committee's agenda.
This bill effectively displaces our right, which we exercised, to have a committee, because it had no other agenda, no other business in front of it. This government was so desperate, and remains desperate, to avoid any investigation or inquiry into the role of the Premier and the Premier's office in the murder, assassination and homicide of Dudley George that it will go to any lengths.
It scrambled for the last two days publicly to find flacks who will talk good about workfare, even those who embarrassed the government when they acknowledged they weren't properly prepped. They felt set up. They felt duped.
I say to the Conservative members of this committee, please recognize what's being said here over and over and over again. This bill is illegal, it's unconscionable, it's immoral and it does absolutely nothing to either create jobs or get people into jobs when jobs aren't there.
Mr Parent: I think the other point it also raises, the whole question that ran through our brief, is the unconstitutionality of this particular piece of legislation. It has already been proven through the courts, as I understand it, that another piece of legislation in relationship to the whole question of 142, on the single moms, common-law and having a male companion --
Mr Kormos: Spouse in the house.
Mr Parent: -- has actually been ruled on, yet I understand that this government is looking at the whole question of possibly appealing that.
Mr Kormos: And this government's track record in court is not very impressive.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kormos. We'll move to the government members.
Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent): Mr Parent, it's nice to see you here this morning in Chatham.
Mr Parent: It's always nice to see you.
Mr Carroll: It's always great to exchange some ideas with you.
I had an opportunity last week in Wallaceburg to talk to a group of 15 young people who are involved in a work-for-welfare project in Ontario Works. I had an opportunity to speak to a group out at Rondeau Park, all of whom I believe now have found full-time employment through the training they got in the work-for-welfare program. Have you had an opportunity to sit down and talk to some folks who are involved in a work-for-welfare project in Windsor?
Mr Parent: What we've done in Windsor is that although it's called what everyone would call workfare, there's a little bit of a different slant to what we do in Windsor. We have built a model in Windsor, even though we do not agree with the whole question and the philosophical idea of forced labour. It's handled a little bit differently and it has provided, in our opinion, some people with an opportunity, through the model that's being used in Windsor, which is different possibly, as I understand it, in other parts of the province, to gain.
The other thing that's happened in Windsor, as you're well aware, Mr Carroll, is the whole question of the casino with now 1,400 new jobs, which obviously has a definite effect in trying to get people, as we've been saying right along, off of social assistance and on to full-time paid jobs.
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In saying that, I still don't see any concrete evidence in the city of Windsor that mandatory forced labour is the way to go to provide the type of training and to provide the types of life skills that are going to put people to full-time employment. When you're going to extend this into the private sector -- we all hope to think that we all have good employers in Ontario. That's not been the history, and what you will see in Windsor is employers utilizing these particular individuals and not guaranteeing them full-time employment after, but using them in place of full-time employees. That's where we have a real problem. That's where, quite honestly and with the deepest of respect, we differ philosophically on this whole move, on the whole question of forced labour.
Mr Carroll: But we do agree, I think, that there are some folks who are in the welfare system who need some help to get out of it because their skills --
Mr Parent: No question. By the way, we were doing a very good job in Windsor before workfare even was implemented.
Mr Carroll: So the question we differ on is whether it should be optional to get that help or whether it should be mandatory to get that help. Is that really where we fundamentally differ?
Mr Parent: That's part of it. But part is also that there are no full-time jobs even at the conclusion of your particular type of forced workfare.
Mr Carroll: But is there not more likely to be if we have those folks get this training?
Mr Parent: What I'm saying is that the government fell way short in providing the type of training programs. You don't have to do it forcefully. You can do it with proper training programs, not something that may be good in the city of Toronto, because this is what happens. They're forced into specific training programs instead of viewing what is the need of a particular community. That is where the government should be looking, trying to see what the needs are in each community.
The Chair: Thank you. We now move to the official opposition.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you, Gary, for coming to Chatham. I guess I have to apologize on behalf of the government. This parliamentary assistant has made it very clear that the committee will simply not travel to Windsor any more. I think that's a credit to you and the rest of us from Windsor because they have a lot of trouble --
Mr Parent: We always give them a warm welcome.
Mrs Pupatello: It was warm, that's for sure. They have a lot of trouble finding people from our area -- and I'm from Windsor, obviously -- to come and speak well of the government. Unfortunately, several people have had to travel from Windsor this morning, along with me, to be here for committee. I appreciate you doing so.
The last line of questioning that the parliamentary assistant is trying is this whole concept of volunteer versus mandatory. We were travelling with this bill in Cornwall last week. What was interesting is what the government will not tell you, that 97% of all welfare recipients today in Ontario are not working for their benefits. The government doesn't like people to know that. Three years after Mike Harris was elected with the major plank of making people work for their benefits, 97% are not doing so. If the public knew that, they would view that for exactly what it is: an absolute, abysmal failure of workfare. I think you and I agree on that.
You prefaced with remarks about the Sleeping Beauty bill. I just wanted to expand on that. To date the government has spent over $700,000 -- that's just the debate time in the House at the government's calculation of $100,000 an hour; we've had seven hours of debate -- not including the time and cost of sending 19 people to Sudbury through Ottawa, to Cornwall, and now we're here today in Chatham, tomorrow St Catharines and then Toronto again. That's over $700,000 for a bill because one of their members fell asleep at committee last fall, one was out of the room, one was doing correspondence, one was reading the paper, and they didn't pass all their clauses. They have the majority on committee.
Because of that foul-up, the government has elected to make one clause, section 73, which they slept through -- thereby the name Sleeping Beauty bill -- into an entire bill, one page getting more hearings, as Mr Kormos mentioned earlier, than the original Bill 142 got in the first place, which was over 300 pages, a complete waste of taxpayers' money. They have no intention of changing -- it's one page. What are you going to change? Obviously this is the clause they should not have slept through in order for them to get what they wanted.
Moreover, they could have brought this in by regulation. They could have done a number of things to save the taxpayer money. This from the gang that purports to be in favour of saving taxpayers' money. Here we are instead at a bill totalling, just so far, over $700,000. How ironic from this gang of thieves, frankly, taking taxpayers' money to send us on a wild goose chase around Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you for coming forward for your presentation today. We very much appreciate your coming to Chatham.
Mr Parent: Thank you for the opportunity.
Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North): Mr Chair, I object to Ms Pupatello referring to us as a gang of thieves. I'm a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada. If that was the case, I would be immediately disbarred. I think she should retract that.
Mr Kormos: Chair, let me join with Ms Pupatello in that -- a gang of thieves.
The Chair: Order, please. Ms Pupatello and Mr Kormos, the phrasing is rather unparliamentary. I would ask you to withdraw those remarks, please.
Mrs Pupatello: I withdraw them on behalf of the member for Hamilton, absolutely.
The Chair: Mr Kormos.
Mr Kormos: Chair, the first thing this government did when it got into power --
The Chair: Mr Kormos, please.
Mr Kormos: -- was steal 21.6% of the social assistance benefit from the poorest people in this province. Then they raised their salaries. If that ain't thievery, nothing is.
The Chair: Order, please. Mr Kormos, please.
Mr Kormos: No. That is theft. They stole from the poorest in this province to finance their tax break for rich --
The Chair: Mr Kormos.
Mr Kormos: I don't withdraw it.
REVEREND BILL CAPITANO
The Chair: We would call representatives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of London to come forward, please, and if you could identify yourself for Hansard, we would greatly appreciate it.
Rev Bill Capitano: Good morning, everyone. My name is Father Bill Capitano. I'm a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of London. I thank you for this opportunity to make a presentation this morning. In my presentation today I hope to show that it will be beneficial to allow those on Ontario Works to unionize. I will attempt to do this by presenting what the Catholic Church teaches as regards unions.
For the Catholic church, (1) unions are a necessary power group in our society; (2) unions allow workers to stand on their own feet; (3) unions allow workers to seek their own good; and (4) unions are instruments for creating a better social order.
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First of all, unions are a necessary power group. Labour unions are both legitimate and necessary in a capitalist or market economy. In a market economy, economic issues such as wages and conditions of labour are settled through the exercise of power in the marketplace, so it would be quite wrong to grant power to some of the parties involved and deny it to others. The labour union is a form of marketplace power for working people.
Second, unions allow workers to stand on their own feet. The Catholic church has insisted that if we are going to respect people's dignity, we have to let them speak and act for themselves. The labour union is working people speaking and acting for themselves.
Third, unions allow workers to seek their own good. The Canadian Catholic bishops, in their 1986 paper entitled "Supporting Labour Unions: A Christian Responsibility," say this:
"Without unions working people have no collective voice in our industrialized society. Through labour unions, workers are able to strive for just wages, decent working conditions, appropriate social benefits and a democratic voice in the workplace."
Fourth, unions are instruments for creating a better social order. On this point allow me again to quote from the 1986 paper on unions by the Canadian Catholic bishops:
"Along with other community organizations, labour unions have been a major factor in promoting some of the most progressive social legislation in this country, including medicare, social housing, unemployment insurance, health and safety regulations and consumer protection measures."
As you can see from what I have presented this morning, the Catholic church believes there are many, many advantages to being unionized. I call on the provincial government to change Bill 22 and allow workfare people to unionize both for the good of themselves and for the good of society.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That affords us approximately four minutes per caucus. We begin with the government members.
Mr Carroll: Good morning, Father Capitano. Thank you for coming and being with us this morning. I'm going to have a little exchange with you here, as one good Catholic to another good Catholic. Do I take it from what you have said to us this morning that the idea of work for welfare, to you, is not a bad idea?
Father Capitano: No. In fact, I made a presentation at government hearings back in April, when I voiced my opposition to workfare.
Mr Carroll: So you don't think that people should be asked or given the opportunity to improve themselves by doing some community work in exchange for their welfare cheque.
Father Capitano: That violates the United Nations.
Mr Carroll: So you object to the idea of work for welfare. You think, though, that if we are in fact going to ask people to work for their welfare, they should be allowed to join a union.
Father Capitano: Correct.
Mr Carroll: I'm going to paint a little picture for you. I would assume too from listening to this presentation and your tremendous support of the union movement that we could probably look for that to invade the Catholic church soon, and we'll have the priests and the sisters all unionized.
Let me talk about a group of people in Wallaceburg, 15 people in Wallaceburg that I met with on Thursday. They're all on welfare. They're all involved in a project where they are helping out with security regarding the people who come to Wallaceburg to visit. These are 15 people who are extremely proud of what they're doing. They are people who have a certain disadvantage right now and they need some help to get back into a better way of life, and they're very excited about that. They're very excited about the fact that somebody has given them an opportunity to improve their skills and do something.
It's really tough for me to say that the Catholic church is opposed to people having that kind of opportunity, and I think it is categorically a terrible position for the Catholic church to take. I hope you are only speaking on your own behalf.
Could you tell me how joining a union would help those 15 people, who by their own admission are having an opportunity, some of them for the first time in their life, to actually improve their lot in life, how joining a union could possibly be of any benefit to them?
Father Capitano: My whole presentation this morning was to draw your attention to the benefits of unions.
Mr Carroll: So would you propose then, Father Capitano, that they be allowed to go on strike? Would you propose that those 15 people be allowed to go on strike?
Father Capitano: Well, yes. The Catholic church -- again I'm trying to say not what I think, so, for instance, when I opposed workfare, I was quoting my own boss, Bishop John Michael Sherlock, who has said that workfare violates the dignity of people. I'm not giving my opinion.
Mr Carroll: Father Capitano, does going to work violate people's dignity?
Father Capitano: No, of course not.
Mr Carroll: Does having to go to work to get your paycheque violate your dignity?
Father Capitano: According to the United Nations -- now, you tell me if the United Nations is wrong on this point -- they say work should be freely chosen.
Interruption.
The Chair: Order, please.
Father Capitano: This is a point the United Nations make. Bishop Sherlock used that exact point in a presentation he made in London back in May of either 1996 or 1997; I'm sorry, I forget.
Mr Carroll: Excuse me, Father Capitano, is your work an option?
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Carroll. We now move to the official opposition, Ms Pupatello.
Mrs Pupatello: Father Bill, you have been quite active and vocal against workfare. I remember you well from the London hearings. That was just before the members fell asleep at committee when we were doing clause-by-clause in Toronto, as I recall, which was last fall. Unfortunately, this point has been lost on the government members. The only reason we're here in Chatham today or anywhere else in Ontario, after a cost of over $700,000, is because the government members fell asleep and, with a majority on the committee, failed to pass a particular clause, numbered 73.
We now have a one-page bill, and ironically enough, the number of the subsection on the bill is 73, because it's the same clause. They could have brought it in by regulation. You might recall from Bill 142, the original bill, that there are several areas where it's left to orders in cabinet, as prescribed, that they could do whatever they wanted behind closed doors. Most of the significant changes that affect people on social assistance are being done by regulation. We don't know about it until it has already affected people, and that's how we find out. The same is true with this clause.
Instead they chose to launch major media advertising campaigns during those hearings. If you recall, they were launched in London the day we were there for hearings. That advertising campaign was $800,000, which they did not have to spend. Now $700,000 later -- and that's just the count so far, not including all of our train fare, airfare, bus fare, hotel fare etc to go traipsing around for political propaganda, which is all this is. It should be repaid to the government by the Progressive Conservative Party. If they've got the money to be wasteful in this way, let the party pay for it and not the Ontario taxpayers, because that's all this is.
It went through the washing by the political masters at Queen's Park to even change the title of the clause, which originally was just a clause entitled "Community participation." It went through the wash and came up with this anti-union, slam another group while we're at it going around on the taxpayers' bill. That's what we've done here.
In the end, they've chosen to use taxpayers' money for self-propaganda of the party, which is all it is. What they won't tell you, and what I must tell every community I'm in, is that after three years of Mike Harris, after three years of the PCs being elected on their major plank, which was making people work for their benefits -- that's what everyone understood, not any other nuance; it was that fancy little policy they wrote on the back of a napkin at the Bradgate Arms at some point during their campaign that became the major plank that won it for them -- three years later, 97% of the people receiving welfare today in Ontario are not in workfare. Of the 3% which we can find, we are discovering today those people are in voluntary programs; it's not mandatory, because the mandatory nature of it will not work.
The minister has had to recant and go, even in her own backyard of Durham, and say, "What can I do with you to make this work?" The people who actually have to mete out the program, who actually have to deliver programs, are telling her, "The only way it's going to work is this," and she has had to relent and allow it to happen.
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What they're doing is completely bogus. It is the greatest lie I have seen out of this government: to politically make people believe workfare is there, and it isn't, and to continue to propagate workfare as though it were something wonderful, and it isn't working, all at the taxpayers' expense.
You've been very consistent. I apologize on behalf of the government members for this badgering. They obviously do not like this kind of go to the heart objective against workfare, which you have presented very clearly, not just this first time but again at Bill 142.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Pupatello. We move to the third party.
Mr Kormos: Thank you, Father. I left not out of disappointment in you but because I didn't want to be associated with some of the comments the parliamentary assistant was making, especially when I reflect on the role that has been played in the Catholic worker movement and the worker-priest movement internationally and the sacrifices that have been made by some of those very people, the losses of life, the succumbing to brutal violence, by Catholic priests and nuns and brothers in the course of helping workers internationally. I find it difficult to treat the issue of your comments from a Catholic perspective frivolously.
But I also want to raise this: We live in an economy which protects high levels of unemployment. You'll recall in the fall of last year when unemployment stood a chance of dropping below 9%, the federal government and the Bank of Canada reacted promptly, more promptly than they've reacted to anything in a long time. They raised interest rates for fear that unemployment would drop below 9%.
That concerns me about this whole proposition here. What good is any program if you haven't got real jobs for people to pursue once they're done and over with the program? Have you had a chance to reflect on an economy and levels of government that would maintain policies of sustaining high levels of unemployment and what that means and what the motive might be?
Father Capitano: Back in 1983 -- maybe this answers Mr Carroll's question as well -- the Canadian Catholic bishops criticized the federal government for making inflation the number one enemy. Back in 1983 our Catholic bishops very clearly said to the government, "Make unemployment the number one enemy, not inflation." Our bishops have not been against creating jobs. For the last 15 years they have come out with this position that unemployment should be the number one enemy and not inflation. So there is a very strong history within Catholic thought that emphasizes the necessity of jobs. Does that answer your question?
Mr Kormos: I'm just wondering if you've had a chance to reflect on what in the name of God would motivate a government to establish and maintain a high unemployment policy.
Father Capitano: My understanding of it is that it's going to be more profitable for big business, the financiers of Canada, to have high interest rates, but it's detrimental to our society, it's detrimental to ordinary working people to have them put out of a job because of high interest rates. Am I getting close?
Mr Kormos: I'm interested in your observations. I have some of my own views, that it is part and parcel of the drive to drive wages down, which ties in of course with enhanced profits and corporate greed.
Father Capitano: Sure, because the more workers you put out of work, there's going to be that pressure to lower wages. You're going to have this vast army of workers who will work for starvation wages because it's better than nothing.
The Chair: Thank you very much for coming forward. We very much appreciate your presentation today.
GERARD CHARETTE
The Chair: We call on our next presenter, Gerard Charette, if you could come forward.
Mr Gerard Charette: Good morning. It's interesting that we're talking about Catholic thought and Catholic philosophy and theology today. I'm a member of the Catholic church and that's a big part of my presentation this morning. I'd just like everyone on the committee to appreciate that there is a different Catholic view.
Let me take you through my submission, if I may, ladies and gentlemen. I'm appearing this morning in support of Bill 22. I think it's fair for all of you to have an understanding of my background, the biases I approach this issue from. Let me give them to you. They're in my submission but I'll repeat them.
I'm a lifelong resident of Ontario and I currently live in Amherstburg. I am a fiscal and social conservative and a supporter of the government. I practise business law in Windsor, but it's also important and interesting for you to note that I'm a part-time student in the master of arts program in pastoral ministry at Assumption University, one of our Catholic institutions. I work actively in my parish. What you're going to hear this morning about the bill I think is based in many respects upon my fundamental views about social justice and equity.
I have been actively involved in supporting our government's initiative to renew Ontario's welfare system. Previous governments have poured $40 billion -- that's $4,000 million -- into social assistance over a 10-year period ending in about 1995. This spending at an average annual rate of $4 billion -- again that's $4,000 million -- yielded a bumper crop of growing social welfare rolls, even in times of economic expansion and demoralization, the demoralization of those living on welfare. Before our government began to tackle the problem of the welfare malaise, the number of residents in our proud province relying on social assistance skyrocketed to 1.3 million, a provincial and indeed a national scandal.
I recognize that many of us, including many well-intentioned Conservatives and those who hold other political beliefs, had an abiding faith in money in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of us had an abiding faith in the idea that government could solve any problem as long as it threw enough money at the problem.
Over the last 10 to 15 years it has become clear that (1) money cannot solve all problems, particularly problems of the human spirit; and (2) spending too much money actually increases social ills by inviting residents who would otherwise be productive and self-sustaining residents into a lifestyle of codependency, living on government life support offered by the other partner in the codependency relationship, a free-spending government that has an undeserved sense of power and control over the human spirit.
In the warm light of day, most of us have now come to recognize that this province is good and great, not because we have social programs but rather because its people are good and great. We must continue to do whatever is necessary to permit individuals and families to recognize and make use of their own greatness by permitting them to be self-sustaining members of our community. This is the fundamental reason I have strongly supported the Ontario Works program.
For the purpose of supporting this program I have given a number of talks on welfare reform at service clubs, I have made at least two submissions to the municipal council of the city of Windsor and I have published a lengthy editorial piece in the Windsor Star in its July 7 edition. You have a copy of that editorial piece attached to this submission.
The reason I am here today is to support the idea that participants in Ontario Works programs should not be permitted to unionize or to go on strike. Rather, it is more appropriate that these participants should be freed from the labour practices that can only hamper their reintegration into productive society.
I recognize that unions, unionization and the right to strike can sometimes play an important role in a free market economy. There are many cases when all of these are appropriate and helpful to society.
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However, those who oppose the Ontario Works program have threatened to unionize participants in the program and to take them out on strike. This constitutes a grossly inappropriate use of the principles of unionization and the right to strike.
As I believe the government has made clear, participants in the Ontario Works program are not employees. They are participants in a social services program that is designed to help reintegrate them into productive society.
The threat to unionize Ontario Works participants is another case of stonewalling, and obstructionism and rearguard action by those who have an overriding faith in big government and government handouts. It's too bad that we have to waste valuable time and energy in dealing with this obstructionism.
In my editorial piece, a copy of which you have, I explained to the members of my own Roman Catholic community and to the members of our broader community why it is that the Ontario Works program stands on a strong moral foundation.
The Ontario Works program increases the self-respect and dignity of the poor by permitting them and indeed requiring them to live as all of us who are employed. We all receive benefits from society and in exchange we work to be self-sustaining and to help sustain those around us.
As I stated on page 2 of my column, all the negative comments about the Ontario Works program "make it harder for the poor to maintain their dignity. Complaints that" the Ontario Works program "is a punishment for being poor and that" the program "is like slavery are not helpful. They only serve to debase the efforts of the poor.
"It's sad that welfare recipients have been told these things by those who are supposed to uplift the poor. It is evident that many" of our self-styled "poverty advocates would rather keep the poor married to a welfare cheque" and at the same time "divorced from everything that enlivens the human spirit."
Fundamentally, the principles of unionization and the right to strike are inconsistent with and inapplicable to a program that is designed to help reintroduce welfare recipients into the mainstream of society. Our fellow citizens who participate in the Ontario Works program are in essence the recipients of a government program. They are not like employees who work in the public or private sector. Seeking to unionize program participants makes about as much sense as unionizing other recipients of public funds. Should we give university students the legal right to strike and unionize because they receive tuition assistance?
Mr Kormos: Damn right.
Mr Charette: I'll answer that when I'm finished.
Clearly, there is no logical connection between the receipt of tuition subsidies and the legal right to strike under the labour law. They can protest at any time they want, but the point is this: If they do not attend school, they should lose their right to subsidy and it has nothing to do with the legal right to strike.
It is the same with the Ontario Works program. There is no logical connection between participation in this program and the right to unionize or strike.
It is for these reasons that I support Bill 22 and I urge all of you to recognize that this bill is appropriate and indeed will help foster a sense of dignity among the poor.
The Chair: That affords us approximately three and a half minutes per caucus. We begin with the official opposition, Ms Pupatello.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you, Mr Charette, for making your way from the Windsor area to be here today. Were you made aware by government members about the clause that was slept through last fall which has resulted in this kind of taxpayers' expense and this bill being reintroduced, that it was in fact a part of Bill 142?
Mr Charette: No, Mrs Pupatello, I'm not aware of what you're speaking about.
Mrs Pupatello: You're fairly consistent in your views and I know you're a self-admitted fiscal conservative etc.
Mr Charette: Proudly so.
Mrs Pupatello: Yes. I've known you to be consistent, so I was hoping that you would answer this question as well. Once you become aware that this is quite a bit of a propaganda campaign, that government could have taken care of the clause that was slept through by the Conservative members at committee, that they could have taken care of that clause through a regulation change, that it didn't have to launch public hearings, introduce another bill, entitle it -- obviously it's an anti-union title. You didn't have to do any of that. The fact that they did that makes you wonder what the real agenda of the bill was, because if it was the problem that a clause was missed and not passed there were a number of ways to fix that without launching this huge show, going on the road, spending at this point $700,000, and that's just the debate time. Knowing how you've spoken out in the past about the way governments have wasted taxpayers' money, I can only hope that you would agree at this time that none of this was necessary today.
Mr Charette: Ms Pupatello, I'm not qualified to answer that question. I don't know what you're talking about and I don't know that it speaks to the true issue of the bill as to whether it is proper for participants to unionize and strike.
Mrs Pupatello: Just for clarity, then, there is a numerical number on the bill, 73, and 73 is the subsection of Bill 142 of last fall that the committee, a majority of Conservatives, did not pass because several members were in absentia during the vote: One was reading, one was doing correspondence, one was out of the room, another was sleeping. That's how it got the title the Sleeping Beauty bill, no doubt. In any event, the point is that's why that section 73 did not pass.
Now this bill is again numbered 73. It is in fact the same subsection, and my point is that if they could have logistically and through legislation processes taken care of the clause that they erred by sleeping through its passage, they could have saved well in excess of $700,000. That's an awful lot of money to be put towards appropriate training programs etc.
Given your consistency in speaking out on how governments have wastefully taken taxpayers' money and put it in very inappropriate places, you and I must agree that this bill was no place to spend that kind of money.
Mr Charette: Ms Pupatello, I only came today to address the substance of this bill.
Mrs Pupatello: I too am addressing the bill in its entirety, actually. Would you agree or are you just going to be partisan in that answer?
Mr Charette: Ma'am, you have me at a disadvantage. I'd like to study both sides of whatever you're talking about, but the point is that it's not the substance of what I'm here to discuss and it's not the reason I was called before the committee, as far as I understand.
Mrs Pupatello: Why were you called before the committee? Were you not told the history of why this became a bill in the first place?
Mr Charette: I was called before the committee to tell the committee members whether I agreed in substance with the principle of having work-for-welfare members not strike or unionize.
Mrs Pupatello: What is interesting --
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Pupatello. We'll move to the third party.
Mr Kormos: I appreciate your comment, "Money cannot solve all problems," especially problems of the human spirit.
Mr Charette: Exactly right.
Mr Kormos: You're a successful lawyer and I have no idea about your financial status, but you seem pretty prosperous. Folks tell me you do well in your practice. It's remarkable how easy it is for prosperous people to tell poor people that money isn't going to solve all the problems. Try telling that to a single mother with three kids. Try telling that to persons whose jobs have been eliminated and who at one point were living a middle-class lifestyle and within 12 months find themselves on the welfare rolls.
Mr Charette: I'll tell you what, Mr Kormos. It isn't very easy for me to say this, because I get demagogued by people like you. It's not easy, but I'm saying it because it's right. If you want to know why we have a lot of poverty, it's because of high taxes in this country that are killing jobs; it's high CPP; it's high UI. That's what's killing jobs.
Mr Kormos: What do you say about the federal government policy that is designed to sustain high levels of unemployment by manipulating interest rates? The proof of the pudding is in their response, I believe, in October 1997 when unemployment stood a chance of dropping below 9% and the Bank of Canada raised interest rates. God forbid that unemployment in this country should drop below 9%. Do you endorse that?
Mr Charette: I sit on the border. I work. I see all the international flows. Our foreign investors rely on a stable currency. The reason we don't have jobs, I repeat, is because we have too many taxes in this country. They're killing off jobs. The best thing we could do is reduce the levels of UI premiums in this country. That would help increase jobs. It's not the so-called rich, greedy people. That's a sham.
Mr Kormos: Would you advocate reducing interest rates?
Mr Charette: I think interest rates should sit where the market fixes them and if we have low taxes and a sound dollar, and they've been letting the dollar fall, we will find that foreign investors and others who deal with us will have more confidence in this country.
Mr Kormos: Don't you agree that the Bank of Canada controls interest rates in this country?
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Mr Charette: Again, this is way off the beam as far as this submission is concerned, and I'm not ready to discuss this with you except to say that you can scream about the rich all you want. The fact is that it's the government that is being greedy about this. It's soaking up too much of the wealth.
Mr Kormos: I'm not screaming about the rich. I'm just finding it amazing and remarkable how easy it is for rich people to say that money doesn't solve all ills. I tell you, when you're poor money is a big start.
Let's get down to unionization --
Mr Charette: Yes, sir.
Mr Kormos: -- by workfare recipients, mandatory placements. What would the ill be of a group of workfare participants unionizing and even going on strike?
Mr Charette: Because it's a social program. It's like when I do work in my parish. I'm there face to face with a person and we want to disentangle that relationship from all other irrelevant economic or legalistic mechanisms. We want to work with someone and help make them better, and to interject unionization and striking is just totally abhorrent to the nature of the work we're trying to achieve.
Mr Kormos: Some people refer to workfare as work for welfare. That's a fair proposition, isn't it?
Mr Charette: Sure.
Mr Kormos: Then, if you're working for welfare, what ill is done by saying, "I don't like the conditions that I'm working in, therefore I won't work and therefore I won't receive welfare"?
Mr Charette: Because they're part of a monitored, structured government program where it's structured so that it isn't unfair. It's structured so that they're working in community agencies or structured working with a municipal government. It's being used as a tool by union bosses to leverage their way into this program that they don't want to see work. That's the answer.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kormos. We'll move to the government members.
Mr Carroll: A quick point of interest before Mr Skarica asks the question --
Mrs Pupatello: Is this a point of order?
Mr Carroll: It's our time. Just to clear the record, section 73, which was missed out of Bill 142, was voted against by the Liberals, Ms Pupatello, and the only way --
Interjections.
Mr Kormos: And by the New Democrats. Damn right we voted against it.
Interjections.
The Chair: Order, order.
Mrs Pupatello: That's a bunch of crap and you know it. This is a sheer waste of taxpayers' money. It's the government's mistake and you can repay it out of your coffers.
Interjections.
The Chair: Order, order.
Mrs Pupatello: There is no order.
Mr Carroll: Contrary to what Ms Pupatello says, the only way to correct the issue that Ms Pupatello voted against was to introduce new legislation.
Mrs Pupatello: You should pay for this out of your own party pocket.
The Chair: Order. Mr Skarica.
Mr Skarica: I might say at the outset that I have concerns about this whole committee process, about the validity of it. You can see it's degenerating to name-calling and that kind of thing, and I really question the overall usefulness of the whole committee process regardless of which party is in power. I find it intriguing that now the government is being criticized for having these hearings, because every time we have any legislation, all we hear in the Legislature is, "We need committee hearings and we need lots of committee hearings, you're moving too fast," and now that we have them it's a waste of time and money.
In any event, referring to your article, and I've read it, I find it intriguing because my family is Roman Catholic as well and many of them are practising Roman Catholics and I do not recall there being any debate in their church regarding this entire unionization issue. I know that the Father who spoke here, and I don't mean any disrespect, is not speaking for anyone in my family and he's clearly not speaking for you. Is there a debate going on in the Roman Catholic church among parishioners, or how has this come about?
Mr Charette: No, there isn't. That's the point, Mr Skarica. For some reason, the leadership in my church clearly has taken the side of I think some special interest groups. That's part of the reason I'm doing work within my own church, to try and bring in some balance.
Mr Skarica: I find it somewhat disturbing, because I thought we had a division of church and state and that was deemed to be good about 500 or 600 years ago, and here we are basically -- as I said, I don't disrespect the Father, but he's taken certain positions that I know don't reflect my view or your view or many of the Catholics I know. As far as I know, there's no debate going on in the church itself among them. How did that come about?
Mr Charette: I don't know how it came about. The fact is that the church is up to its armpits in politics. There's no doubt about that. I think all of us as members have an obligation to speak our minds and try and bring balance to discussion. I can only speculate, Mr Skarica. I don't know the answer to that.
Mr Skarica: Okay. Those are my questions.
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): Perhaps I could just follow up. The Father made a number of references, as he was speaking, to what his boss said. Could you comment on what the Bible says on this issue?
Mr Charette: I just finished a Bible study course this summer, actually. There's a classic line. There is a sort of split within church doctrine and you see that in Paul's letter, "He who does not work, let him not eat." That's just a classic, that thread. It's not meant to punish people, it's meant to bring about a recognition that labour is dignified, it brings dignity, and we've lost that in some way.
The Chair: Thank you very much for coming forward today. We very much appreciate your presentation.
LONDON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: We call our next presenter forward, the London and District Labour Council. If you and your presenters could identify yourselves for Hansard we would appreciate it. You may begin.
Mr Rick Witherspoon: First of all I'll introduce myself. My name is Rick Witherspoon. I'm the president of the London and District Labour Council. I will be sharing my allotted time this morning first with Sister Ellis, Sandi Ellis, the Ontario regional representative for the Canadian Labour Congress. I was hoping to be joined this morning by one of the affiliates of our labour council, Jeff Schlemmer, who's a lawyer at Neighbourhood Legal Services in London. Obviously he's having trouble finding us this morning. We're not holding these in our own communities, so people are having to travel to catch up with you.
I would typically open my comments by thanking the members of the committee for the opportunity to make our presentation this morning, and I will take the opportunity to thank the members of the opposition parties for taking time out of their busy summer to come and listen to their constituents. But I think, as has been already stated, the reality is that the provincial Conservatives are only holding this dog-and-pony show with absolutely no intention of considering possible amendments to this piece of very repugnant legislation. But their intention is to keep the standing committee on justice tied up so they don't have to comply with the Legislature's standing order 124. In typical Tory fashion, this government would rather waste taxpayers' dollars debating a morally reprehensible piece of legislation than holding an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the 1995 homicide of Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park.
Each and every one of us should be deeply concerned and should be taking a critical look at what's taking place here. This government as its first act of Parliament lowered welfare benefits by over 21% in an attempt to ensure that they had large numbers of desperate people willing to perform work for little or no pay and under any conditions. Now, under this legislation, it proposes to eliminate not only their right to association but their right to representation and their right to the free collective bargaining process. These workers have been and will continue to be denied even the most basic of human rights.
Make no mistake about it, this legislation will impact on all of us: people on social assistance, those who are in the workforce, the unemployed, underemployed and even those receiving unemployment benefits, as it eventually undermines the wages and working conditions for those of us fortunate enough to still have decent jobs.
You may have sensed that I'm just a little bit ticked off. In the words of the MPP for Chatham-Kent, Jack Carroll, as quoted in Hansard, "I seem to be having some problems with Ontario Works." That's pretty observant and, I would say, pretty profound on his part, don't you think? I suppose his comments should come as no surprise, seeing that Mr Carroll says he comes from a community where the local labour council is apparently much more responsible and, in his terms, has taken a laissez-faire attitude towards workfare because they apparently understand how important it is to involve people in forced labour programs. It should be interesting to see how the president of the Chatham and District Labour Council responds to Mr Carroll's comments in his presentation later this afternoon. But it comes as no surprise to anyone involved in the labour movement that we would see such a bill coming forward from a government like yours.
The Harris Conservatives have adopted a policy of blaming all who do not fit the mould of what they consider to be a good corporate Ontarian. The poor are blamed for being poor, the unemployed for being unemployed, the disabled for being unfortunate enough to have been injured at work or born with some dysfunction. This government has truly shown its uncaring, undemocratic, inaccurate fumbling since June 1995.
The philosophy of this government has been a sustained attack on the labour movement and working people, with the ultimate goal of total control over people; in other words, putting them in their place.
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This Bill 22 in fact violates the spirit and law protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as international agreements signed by Canada, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It also violates the statement of principles on the role of volunteers and paid workers in non-profit organizations which has been endorsed by Volunteer Ontario and the United Way in this province, as well as many non-profit United Way member organizations.
Recent statistics show that the Ontario Works program and workfare aren't working. Minister Ecker maintains that since its inception, 387,000 people have participated in Ontario Works, but province-wide only about 3% of eligible welfare recipients are in government work programs. Roughly 7% are in training programs, and those workers who are in training programs are indeed volunteers. No community is forcing them to work. The other 90% are active in a stream known as independent job search. In fact, as I'm sure you know, the typical turnaround time for a person on welfare is approximately four months, during which time the individual seeks other employment independently. After that four-month period the person's situation is reassessed and he or she may be steered towards some kind of a training program.
From the above figures, the success of the Ontario Works program, as declared by this government, is simply a numbers game, a game in which this government attempts to deceive the public. At the provincial level the Tories proclaim its success; at the municipal level the information surrounding workfare is totally inaccessible, even, I might add, to some of our members of city council who wish to try and find that information.
The refusal of organizations to be involved in Ontario Works programs is making this government look as foolish as the program is. Organizations did not subscribe to the principle of mandatory work placements. Now Minister Ecker is saying that social assistance recipients are themselves demanding access to the private sector for work placements. What a crock. This government gained support for workfare by lying to the public and misleading people on social assistance into believing that somehow these mandatory placements would miraculously lead to good, secure, full-time jobs, when the reality in most cases we've seen is that they are being directed into low-income, dead-end placements. In fact, there have been numerous examples where these people have displaced permanent, full-time workers, something this minister and government proclaimed would never happen.
This government must face stark reality. If workfare produces goods or services that the public wants, either paid workers are losing their jobs or the rest of us are simply getting a free ride: goods and services that we all value but that we're not prepared to pay for. If you try to give an individual on social assistance work of little or no value, how then do you expect them to become contributing members of society? You don't. You simply continue to punish them for being poor.
Janet Ecker, the minister responsible for this disaster, says she is "furious and can't understand why some union leaders would torpedo the workfare program." We have asked this government and we have asked our municipal council to show us one jurisdiction, just one, where any kind of a workfare scheme has been successful. You couldn't respond then and you can't respond now.
Workfare is not only unethical but it again shows this government's complete contempt for a group of people they feel should be governed by a different set of rules than anybody else. Ms Ecker complains to us in the labour movement, "How dare we?" To this government we say, "How dare you?"
Enter the large multinational corporations, which have no commitment to any country, let alone any commitment to community, but will be only too willing to seize the opportunity for free workers while they have been displacing their own. It is a well-known fact that over the past number of years corporations have been downsizing their workforces to the barest minimum to save costs and increase their profits. Those left working are becoming burned out, and wow, here come the Conservatives with a chance now for these corporations to take advantage of the welfare program themselves. We never hear anything about corporate welfare, but it is financially a much bigger burden than social assistance ever could be. Here this government is looking again to subsidize its corporate friends with free workers, in fact actually giving the employers the welfare cheques for the placements and expecting them to mete it out to the recipients. Talk about total and ultimate control. This government and this bill disgust the labour movement and the London and District Labour Council.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the issue here is a lack of jobs, real jobs. To sum it up, the workfare concept only becomes popular during periods of high unemployment. It emerges as a part of a blame-the-victim philosophy. The sanest thing that this government could do is to deem this program the failure that it is and repeal the legislation and all other legislation pertaining to it.
Ms Sandi Ellis: My position with the Canadian Labour Congress is that of national representative working with eight different labour councils throughout southwestern Ontario from Guelph down as far as Windsor. The geographic area in which I work has a population of over a million and a labour-council-affiliated population of nearly 200,000. Outside the greater Toronto area, southwestern Ontario is the most populated area in the province.
Throughout this area, all the labour councils as well as the United Ways within their jurisdictional boundaries are demonstrably against the mandatory aspect of the Ontario Works program. I have with me a copy of The Principles and Roles of Volunteers and Paid Workers in Non-Profit Organizations and Public Institutions. This document is the result of years of work with volunteer Ontario in consultation with many non-profit organizations, individual United Ways, the labour movement and United Ways of Ontario. I was on the working committee and I know how much effort went into the compilation and the final document.
There is mention in this document of how mandatory placements through Ontario Works are not volunteers, but also that there is a need for strong, stable public services, adequately funded and maintained, to provide essential and complementary services to our population, along with public policies aimed at full employment at decent wages.
In the words of the executive director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Volunteer Action Centre, "Volunteering is done by choice, and without the expectation of monetary reward." You cannot have a voluntary component of a mandatory program. The two concepts are mutually exclusive.
The executive director of the volunteer centre of Peel has said publicly: "Workfare represents a much larger issue. It's the beginning of how governments view unpaid labour. It's a can of worms." This individual also told a workshop of a new business that was just starting up, whose owner said she didn't have enough money to hire staff, called the Volunteer Action Centre and asked whether the centre could send over some volunteers. The executive director told her there is one word for that: "slavery."
Talking about this individual situation, how would it be handled, if in fact the Ontario Works program entered into the private sector? In this new business case, no paid positions would be eliminated, because there were none to be eliminated to begin with. Would it be OK for new businesses such as this one to request and receive workfare placements instead of hiring paid staff?
I also have with me copies of statements, responses and motions passed by various United Ways throughout western Ontario, including London, Windsor-Essex, Oxford region and Chatham-Kent, supporting the position of the labour movement as contained in the roles and principles of volunteerism and that of negative donor designation option where workfare is concerned. Individuals placed in positions in the community in exchange for the social assistance cheque are not volunteers, but indeed employees as indicated by your government's statements that they are covered by workers' compensation and other pieces of labour legislation. These individuals are in fact free workers who, by the Constitution, have the freedom to associate, unionize and bargain collectively.
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Therefore, Bill 22 is as unconstitutional as you found out parts of Bill 160 are. Your government should seek some new legal advice, or perhaps any legal advice, before trying to legislate away the rights of Canadians that are protected by statutes. In Mr Charette's comments, the definition of economic expansion that he talks about also includes the 300% increases in CEO packages that we've seen over the last number of years. If his community feels that welfare is making a group, a very large group he says, of individuals become dependent on the system, so to speak, then I would also challenge him and all transnational corporations to voluntarily remove themselves from the corporate welfare rolls that they are on and have become dependent upon through local, provincial and federal giveaways, tax breaks and tax loopholes.
Mr Witherspoon: Hear, hear.
Mr Jeff Schlemmer: My name is Jeff Schlemmer. I'm a lawyer with Neighbourhood Legal Services in London and an adjunct professor of law at the University of Western Ontario. I'd like to address a couple of more technical issues in relation to the legislation.
The first is that I've done some research into precedents in other jurisdictions, particularly New York City where, as you're well aware, there's a large workfare program. In New York City you may be aware that there have been substantial difficulties with workplace health and safety issues and in fact there have been several injunctions issued by courts as recently as May of this year where the courts have found that workers have been required to work in unacceptable conditions, including working out on the road, picking up dead animals, syringes, condoms, used diapers, tampons and so on, without gloves or any kind of safety equipment, not having access to water to wash their hands, not having access to drinking water, not having access to toilets. The courts have basically prohibited that kind of activity on an ad hoc basis because there is similar legislation to prevent the workers from unionizing there. I guess that's the kind of concern that arises in the context of this program, particularly because New York City is often touted as a model for Ontario and how Ontario should go.
The specific concern in relation to unionization of workers arises and one of the aspects that the committee should carefully consider is the constitutionality of the provision, and that is, as I'm sure you've been told before, that the Constitution of Canada, and specifically the Charter of Rights, provides a freedom of association and also a freedom of peaceable assembly. Those are the fundamental hallmarks of unionizing. The act provides that those rights can only be taken away and the technical language is subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
In the case law to date where courts have permitted restrictions on the right to organize, there has been a specific balancing of the rights of management and the rights of labour, the right of management being the right to carry on a business to provide a service or a good. It has been found in several cases -- you'll be familiar with the case involving the vice-principals of Ontario where the courts have said that because vice-principals are effectively a management role, it's appropriate that they not be allowed to organize. That decision's under appeal, but that's the kind of rationale. It's also the case that police officers are not allowed to belong to unions, although they're allowed to belong to associations which in many ways perform the same role as unions. Similarly, we've seen restrictions on the right of farm workers to organize, again because of specific balancing of interests between management and labour.
In the context of the Ontario Works Act there's no similar balance in the sense that management is not providing a service, they're not providing a product. Over and over, we hear that the principal goal of Ontario Works is to help the recipients get back to work, effectively the workers in the workfare program. So the espoused goal of the government in this case is to help the workers who are participating in Ontario Works. There's a small incidental benefit that may accrue to the social agencies who participate, who may get some free labour, but we're told over and over again this is not a program designed to provide free labour to people. It's a program designed to help the workers.
If the government is going to rely on an argument to say that unionization should not be allowed in this case, they're going to have to argue that somehow the unions are standing in the way of helping workers; that is, they're going to have to successfully argue that the goal of the union is not to help the very workers who are its members. It would seem clear that that kind of an argument is not going to succeed. The courts are not likely to find that the unions are actively trying to prevent their worker members from finding real jobs. On that basis, it seems unlikely that a court challenge will be successfully withstood by the government.
I've sort of followed this. I was one of the lawyers on the Falkiner decision that you may have heard of that was released on Friday in Toronto where another section of the welfare legislation was struck down as being unconstitutional, that is, the spouse-in-the-house provision. In that case again, the tribunal found that the restriction on the charter rights of spouse-in-the-house recipients was not justified and was struck down as being unconstitutional.
The same kind of challenge, I would suggest, would have a strong chance of success in relation to this legislation. Again, the difficulty is that there's no compelling and overriding reason why unionization would prevent the government from being able to help the workers in the way they want to.
The Chair: Sir, just so you know, your time is almost up.
Mr Schlemmer: Okay. I'm just about through. Another matter that I'd just addressed briefly is the question of sanctions under this legislation. There are no sanctions specifically provided in this legislation, which is quite unusual, and it makes one wonder why that would be. The only thing I can suggest is that presumably because this is going to be part of the Ontario Works Act, the sanctions contained in that act would apply by inference to this act. However, the only sanction provided in that act that would seem to relate is that if you're not in compliance with the act, you may not get welfare.
The bread-and-butter provision of this act, it would seem, is the prohibition on the right to strike; that is, if a worker goes on strike, they will be in violation of this act. In that case, then it would appear they won't get welfare. I would submit that that's not a surprising result and I would have thought there would be a more punitive sanction. I don't know the reason for that, except it may have something to do with the constitutional challenge: if you can argue that you're prohibiting conduct but not sanctioning it, there's no punishment for breaking the law, that somehow you might more successfully withstand a charter challenge.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We very much appreciate you coming forward with your presentation today.
LIFE*SPIN
The Chair: I would call forward the next presenter, the Low-Income Family Empowerment*Sole-Support Parents Information Network.
Mr Carroll: Mr Chairman, while those folks are coming forward, I'd just like to announce that the members of the committee are invited to have lunch with Greg Keating, the commissioner of social services for Chatham-Kent, and Lucy Brown, the manager. There will be some Ontario Works participants there we can chat with. The media's welcome to attend that, as are all members of the committee. We're due to be there at 12:10.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Carroll. If you could identify yourself for Hansard, you may begin.
Mr Andrew Bolter: Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I'm from LIFE*SPIN. My name is Andrew Bolter. I'm director of community development.
Mrs Pupatello: Sir, are you from Chatham?
Mr Bolter: Sorry. I'm from London, Ontario.
What we want to do is show you a video that was produced the People's Video Network in New York. It shows how people came together to form a movement known as workfairness. One of the spokespeople for workfairness is Larry Holmes and he speaks on the video of the historical context of workfare and how vital it is for those on workfare to gain the protection of organized labour, not only to protect their rights but also to ensure that real jobs are protected and real wages are protected as well.
I'm going to let the video speak for itself. Basically, it would appear that your house of cards has begun to fall. Your unjust and unconstitutional laws are being struck down by the courts and tribunals in this province. The latest, as has been mentioned to you before, the Falkiner decision, the spouse-in-the-house case, clearly stated that the spousal regulation that you had for social assistance recipients was unconstitutional. The rule of law is on our side.
I'd like to --
Mr Kormos: One moment, please. Perhaps your people would like to come up here, the people in the audience. If you want to come up here to watch the video, please join me or all of us.
Mr Bolter: Thank you. The first eight minutes is not there because I had to get it down to below 20, so it starts about eight minutes in.
Video presentation.
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Mr Bolter: What happened was I think the technician hit play and it was playing while I was waiting to put it on. If I may just rewind it, it will take three minutes.
The Chair: There is a total time limit of 20 minutes per presenter.
Mr Bolter: I will put the tape on and when the 20 minutes runs out, if you'll advise me, I will attempt to operate the on/off switch.
The Chair: It's only fair to the other presenters as well.
Mr Kormos: We'll get them all in. We're in control of our bus. We're travelling by bus; the bus leaves only when we want it to. We can stay till 5, 6.
Video presentation.
The Chair: Thank you, sir.
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Mrs Pupatello: Chair, how much time is left in the video?
The Chair: I'm afraid I have no idea. According to this, it's a 28-minute video and we're over the 20-minute mark now.
Mrs Pupatello: Could I ask the committee Chair to allow the video to continue to the end.
The Chair: That can be put forward to the committee.
Mrs Pupatello: Could you ask the committee, please, Chair. There's likely five minutes left.
The Chair: Do we have unanimous agreement to watch the conclusion of the video?
Mr Carroll: No.
The Chair: I heard a no.
Thank you, sir. We very much appreciate you taking the time to come forward today and we appreciate your presentation.
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JIM MCFEGGAN
The Chair: We ask the next presenter, Jim McFeggan, to come forward, please.
Mr Jim McFeggan: Chair, members of the Legislature, I'm currently running a small business in Tilbury and I've also operated a farm. I would like to begin my presentation to you today by stating that this is something I usually do not do. I have never appeared before a government committee until now, yet my reason for doing so is simple. I firmly believe that in the last election the people of Ontario overwhelmingly voted in favour of work for welfare.
I realize that some of the members of the opposition parties would like to think that Mike Harris was elected by accident. They would like to believe the electorate in the spring of 1995 didn't realize what they were voting for. This is simply not true. I suggest to all the members here that in the last provincial election the electorate had a clear choice. As presented by the Tory campaign, voters had the clear option of either choosing work for welfare or not.
I remind the members of the committee of what was said in the Common Sense Revolution, "We should prepare welfare recipients to return to the workforce by requiring all able-bodied recipients, with the exception of single parents with young children, either to work or to be retrained in return for their benefits."
Compared to this the Liberals ran on a weak imitation of the Harris platform. There was a clear alternative between Mike Harris and Lyn McLeod and the people of Ontario chose Harris and work for welfare.
I have reviewed Bill 22 and I am aware of the controversy surrounding the need for this legislation. Some have suggested that this bill is about the Conservative caucus mishandling a vote at the committee level. I believe Bill 22 is about delivering to the people of Ontario what they voted for: a policy of work for welfare.
I think it is important to remind the members of the committee that thousands of people, including union members and many staunch Liberals, voted for Mike Harris because of his work-for-welfare plan. Even people who were still very bitter with Brian Mulroney did something they had sworn they would never do again -- they voted Conservative.
They voted this way because they saw the Tory platform as one of substance and real change. They saw and accepted a political platform that called for welfare reform as opposed to simply continuing down the road of more people on welfare and more taxes. Ontarians generally agree that an effective welfare system has to be a transitional program of last resort, designed to get people back into the workforce.
I know that many of you in this room do not need a history lesson on the last election; however, I raise this issue simply to point out and to remind the members of the committee of the strong public support for welfare reform. Any attempt to hold up or interfere with these reforms, I would suggest, is undemocratic.
This, to me, is where Bill 22 comes into being. It is one bill in a series that is part of Mike Harris's commitment to the voters to make self-sufficiency and responsibility the hallmarks of the welfare system. Bill 22, if passed, would provide that the Labour Relations Act, 1995, does not apply with respect to participants in a community participation activity under the Ontario Works Act. Its purpose would be to prevent those participants from unionizing or striking and cannot have the terms and conditions of their community placement determined through collective bargaining.
Many people in the public may wonder why Bill 22 is needed. Why is the government holding these hearings? Of course the overriding question in the public's mind may be, why is the government dealing with this? Didn't we already vote for work for welfare?
There is one answer to all of these questions. It is simply that some union representatives have chosen to try and prevent the Harris government from moving forward with work for welfare, either by threatening to unionize welfare recipients who participate or by harassing community agencies that offer help. This is unacceptable. In my view, the government should not stand by and allow some union leaders to stop the reform of the welfare system. If the union bosses are allowed to succeed and work for welfare doesn't become a reality, this will represent a defeat for democracy. I would like to remind the members of the committee that the majority of the electorate voted for this.
Of course, not only would this be a defeat for democracy, it would also represent a return to the tried and failed welfare policies of the past, a past that despite the NDP and Liberal governments spending $40 billion on social assistance over 10 years saw the number of people relying on welfare skyrocket to 1.3 million or 12% of the population in June 1995, a past that saw the system rife with fraud and abuse, where far too many recipients saw welfare as simply a lifestyle or an alternative to work. Under the NDP, Ontario had the highest per capita welfare caseload in Canada.
But merely giving these statistics doesn't quite capture the depth of the welfare problem Ontario had. I would like to read a quote from a false recipient, which was in a story in the Toronto Sun, April 21, 1991:
"They give you a job search piece of paper. You're supposed to be looking. I look in the yellow pages for companies and write them down. They are too busy and take your word for it."
In short, the previous system had lost sight of the values of mainstream Ontario and lost credibility with taxpayers. By June 1995 taxpayers had come to realize that there were several key failings of the social assistance system. They realized that it was more attractive to be on welfare than to work and pay taxes. They realized that the more money the province spent on welfare, the more welfare became a problem. They also realized, perhaps most importantly, that the system did not have employment as its ultimate objective.
A return to these failing attributes would not only be very unfortunate to the taxpayers who have to pay the bill, but also to the recipients themselves. As welfare rates were increased time and time again under the previous government, the number of people in the system increased. This resulted in recipients becoming more and more dependent on welfare cheques with little or no connection to the job market.
This is not to suggest that other governments had bad intentions. Far from it. The people of this province are compassionate and all three political parties here today have often been a voice for that compassion. I do believe, however, that previous governments have at times mistaken high welfare rates for compassion.
This misguided logic in the long run didn't really aim at helping its able-bodied recipients. By giving these recipients not only record welfare rates but the option to stay at home, the system served to reinforce in many cases their disconnection from potential employers and opportunities, opportunities that could get them back into the workplace. To me and to many others, this meant that the welfare system had departed from its original purpose. It ceased to be a transitional step to self-reliance.
What the Harris government has been working towards with its version of work for welfare, called Ontario Works, is a change from the aforementioned failed policies to one that provides recipients with a real shot at a job.
Under the new system, municipalities such as Chatham-Kent must link individuals who receive social assistance to a full range of services that lead to self-reliance and skills development. Ontario Works participants must participate in those services to remain eligible for assistance. As more municipalities get their programs up and running, more recipients will have the opportunity to gain the confidence and skills necessary to become self-sufficient. We all realize that these attributes are key reasons why someone gets and holds a job. From my understanding of the ongoing Ontario Works system, it involves employment supports such as job searches, referral to basic education, and job-specific skills training. This to me sounds like an excellent program to assist those on social assistance to find work.
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I encourage all members of this committee to look at the results. Already more than 387,000 people have participated in one or more of the program's mandatory activities designed to help get them back to work. Over 283,000 people have stopped relying on welfare since June 1995. In addition, the government has committed itself to continue to look for ways to help people on welfare find the shortest route to a paying job.
In addition, the provincial government has taken many other steps to reform the system. The government has reduced assistance rates significantly, but to a level that is very much above the average rates in the other nine provinces.
Recipients are being allowed to earn back the difference between the new rates and the old rates without penalty so as to provide a stepping stone back to full-time employment.
The province has tightened eligibility rules for those who voluntarily quit jobs or refuse employment. A welfare fraud hot line has also been established to catch people ripping off the system.
Through these measures, including Bill 22, Mike Harris has shown that he is keeping his word with the electorate and is reforming the welfare system to help people get off welfare and get on with their lives. Welfare under the Harris government is intended, as it should be under all governments, as a temporary measure, not a way of life.
On that note, I would like to take just a few minutes to present to you what other governments in other jurisdictions are doing.
In the United States, President Clinton oversaw legislation that reformed welfare far more radically than anything Ontario has done. Just two years ago, Clinton signed a bill that placed a time limit on the receipt of welfare benefits. Every person can rely on welfare for no more than five years throughout their lifetime. After that they are on their own. I would also point out that Clinton didn't just sign this because he is dealing with a Republican Congress; he campaigned on welfare reform in 1992.
Similarly, in Great Britain, Tony Blair and his Labour government have also introduced a version of work for welfare. The UK model has much the same aim as does Ontario Works: to get those who can work back to work. It seems rather funny to me seeing a Labour government in Britain introducing policies that are being so fiercely opposed by union leaders here in Ontario.
What this shows, in my view, is that Ontario's move towards reform of its welfare system is consistent with what is going on in other jurisdictions. In fact, according to some social service delivery agencies, Ontario's work for welfare program is far more successful than similar programs in the United States.
With all this positive feedback and support for workfare, you may ask what the claims against Bill 22 are. One argument put forward by Howard Hampton, leader of the NDP, Sid Ryan and other union leaders is that Ontario Works does not work and is of no benefit. This is simply false. Participants in the workfare program increase their chances of finding a job.
Furthermore, if the system does not work, then why do Sid Ryan and others feel the urgent need to threaten people into not supporting or participating in the program? It seems to me that union bosses such as Ryan have overstepped their bounds, not only by attempting to thwart a policy which the majority of Ontarians voted for, but also by intimidating and harassing non-profit, community-based organizations which benefit from Ontario Works.
Critics of work for welfare also claim that making this program mandatory victimizes and punishes welfare recipients. This again is wrong. I believe that the old system victimized recipients by simply handing out cheques and neglecting their need for conceitedness to the work force. The new system does not punish recipients; rather it cares enough about them to take an active role in getting them work.
Another myth surrounding Bill 22 is that its purpose is to take away the workfare participant's employment protections. Again the critics are wrong. According to officials in the Ministry of Community and Social Services and those delivering the program, people in community placements for workfare are protected under health and safety protection laws currently in place. They are also entitled to privacy protections, religious holidays and pregnancy or parental leave. All they are being required to do is put in no more than 70 hours per month in a community placement, with their hours of attendance being limited to eight hours a day and 44 hours per week. This is hardly unreasonable for the voters and taxpayers of Ontario to ask of welfare recipients.
Now I realize that Dalton McGuinty's Liberals would rather discuss how much this committee cost, because they don't support or don't care about work for welfare. They, however, are missing the point of these hearings. It is to remind them that thousands of people like myself voted for Harris so that this province would stop paying people because they chose to stay at home. If vocal special interest groups and unions are permitted to stop a policy that the majority of people in this province voted for, then it will be a sad day for democracy.
Just look at some of the good that unions and the NDP have done in past. How the CAW works for its members: A paying member for 25 years and a member for 31 years was laid off in 1992, at the age of 56, with not much chance of being recalled; 1992-93 attended St Clair College and took a self-employment training for enterprising persons, STEP, program; mid-1992 started a small business in Tilbury, Ontario; turned 60 years of age April 17, 1996, and retired May 1, 1996.
The plant was working on an early contract. I was not informed by the union heads that the new contract, if accepted, had a retirement bonus which I would have been eligible to receive. This happened under the NDP government.
A quote from the Chatham paper:
"The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food has developed a plan to give the province's three main farm organizations between $5 and $7.5 million in funds. To do this, the government is willing to use the rather questionable tactic of withholding property tax rebate cheques for farmers who choose not to join. By forcing farmers to join lobby groups, the government is admitting it has failed in any attempt to deal with the individuals it represents."
How any government elected in a democracy can justify infringing so far on an individual's rights as to tell them they must join a lobby group is beyond the scope of reasonable thought.
March 30, 1993, a quote made by Basil "Buzz" Hargrove to the Honourable Pierre Blais, MP:
"On behalf of the 170,000 CAW Canada members working in several industries from coast to coast, I urge you to prohibit handguns in this country, with the exception of those required by law enforcement officers and members of the Canadian armed forces necessary to perform their duties."
Basil "Buzz" Hargrove failed to check with his 170,000 members on how they felt about the bill. He was giving his thoughts only. I feel this is undemocratic.
Interjection: What has this got to do with --
Interjection: Tell the truth.
The Chair: Order.
Mr McFeggan: In conclusion, as a small business person I put in long hours and earn every devalued dollar I get. I don't feel it is too much to ask others to do the same. For welfare recipients, simply choosing not to work is no longer an option. The Conservatives, through their welfare reforms, have removed those on disability from the system to a new program focused on meeting their specific needs. The difference in the welfare system now is that this government has set apart those who cannot from those who will not. The Mike Harris government remains compassionate to those who cannot work but, like the rest of us, will not tolerate those who will not. That is common sense.
The Chair: Thank you, sir. There's only a couple of seconds left and I don't think that affords us any time for questions. We very much appreciate your coming forward today. Thank you for your presentation.
Mrs Pupatello: Could we extend the time by just five minutes to allow each of us to have a couple of questions?
The Chair: There is not unanimous agreement.
Mr Kormos: Chair, we've got all sorts of time.
The Chair: Order. I put it forward to the floor that there was not unanimous agreement. Therefore, that concludes that.
Mr Kormos: We've got the whole day. Why are these people not interested in questioning a participant?
The Chair: It is not my function to respond to questions. I am only here to judge on a procedural basis.
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Mrs Pupatello: I have a motion to put forward. I'd like to move that the committee cancel all future hearings regarding Bill 22. It makes a complete mockery of the hearings process. They are hearings that neither the Liberal Party nor the third party had requested. It was clearly meant as sheer propaganda. The bill, totalling over $700,000 to date, should be repaid to the taxpayers by the PC Party of Ontario. This clause that we're discussing today, supposedly Bill 22, dubbed the Sleeping Beauty bill, could have been handled in many ways other than this blatant waste of taxpayers' money to traipse around Ontario and spew PC Party propaganda. This bill, one page, receives more hearing time than the original Bill 142, or workfare bill, which has a failure rate to date of 97%. Even a farmer losing 97% of his crop essentially would be out of business.
That makes the purpose of these hearings suspicious at best and deceitful at worst. I would look for every member of the Conservative Party to support this motion this morning, in particular Mr Skarica, who as well questions the validity of these hearings.
The Chair: As this motion has been put forward before and has been voted on previously, I rule this out of order.
Mrs Pupatello: This is a different motion.
Mr Kormos: On a point of order, Chair: I appreciate what the Chair is addressing. However -- and I was very careful in reflecting upon the previous motion that had been dealt with -- (1) we are at a far different stage in the proceedings; (2) we have seen conduct on the part of the government during the course of these proceedings that would substantiate the position that the government is trying to pad these proceedings futilely, fecklessly coming up with so-called witnesses who they've solicited and sought out to talk the government line, reading, effectively, government scripts before the committee; (3) we've seen a complete transition, this incredible turnover in government participation in this committee. We see new member after new member each time the committee sits. How can they hope to consider in the aggregate all the submissions being made?
The Chair: And your point of order is?
Mr Kormos: My point of order is that in view of the fact that the only reason we're considering this bill is so that the government doesn't have to consider the Premier's involvement in the death of Dudley George at Ipperwash -- it's the only reason that bill is before this committee -- this committee had better do some serious reflection as to whether it's being used as a part of the cover-up of the Premier and the Premier's office's involvement in Ipperwash park and the murder of Dudley George.
The Chair: Mr Kormos, you do not have a point of order. I have already ruled on Ms Pupatello's motion. The motion is the same motion that was debated earlier and was voted on at that time.
Interjection: You can't challenge the Chair.
The Chair: Yes, you cannot challenge the Chair.
Mr Kormos: Don't take marching orders from Jack Carroll.
The Chair: No.
Mrs Pupatello: I need to address the Chair.
The Chair: You may address the Chair.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you. Notable about my motion this morning is that it's different from the motion that was put forward in Cornwall. If you recall, the clerk specifically asked me in Cornwall to remove half of the motion that I had read so that it would better format to what the motion is that typically comes before a committee. The point is that I would request that perhaps the people from Hansard would review and read aloud what my motion was in Cornwall so that we can see how different it is from the motion put forward today. I need to make note too that there are members here who were not present. Mr Klees was not there. Mr Skarica was not there.
The Chair: Members not being present is not relevant to the motion.
Mrs Pupatello: In any event, these individuals I know are going to be interested in the content of the motion, in particular because this morning, when we began our proceedings here today, one of the Conservative government members indicated the futility of the hearings. He actually questioned the whole validity of this hearing process, which is the point we have been making from the beginning. Given that there seems to be support even from the government side, I would ask the Chair to review the original motion put forward in Cornwall. Read it publicly if you would -- I would ask that -- so we can prove that it is a different motion. Then if we could continue forward with, as a minimum, a vote on the motion I'm putting forward today.
The Chair: I have already reviewed, I have already made a decision on this matter and thereby concluded, because there is no debate after a Chair has made a decision.
Mrs Pupatello: Chair, does this have something to do with the fact that you don't want to exceed 10 minutes after 12?
The Chair: No. We are far beyond that now as a matter of fact. That has no bearing on anything, on my decisions at all.
Mr Klees: On a point of order, Chair: With respect, if you want this to continue, that's fine, but this committee does have a commitment to have a meeting with a number of people who are expecting to meet with us. I would suggest to Ms Pupatello --
Interjections.
The Chair: Order, please. Mr Klees, what is your point of order?
Mr Klees: My point of order is that this committee is committed to a meeting. If Ms Pupatello wants to continue, we can deal with this matter --
Interjections.
The Chair: Order. Your point of order.
Mr Klees: We should respect the people to whom we've committed a meeting.
The Chair: No.
Mr Klees: And that this matter be dealt with --
The Chair: Mr Klees, you do not have a point of order.
This committee sits recessed until 1:30 of the clock.
The committee recessed from 1216 to 1333.
CHATHAM AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: I call the afternoon session to order. I'm going to call our first presenter, the Chatham and District Labour Council, if you could come forward and identify yourself for Hansard. I believe you were here earlier and heard about the presentation time. You may begin.
Mr Aaron De Meester: My name is Aaron De Meester. I am the president of the Chatham and District Labour Council. Before I begin my submission I'd just like to say this: I have a copy of Hansard dated May 27. Under orders of the day, on page 4, Mr Jack Carroll in the House said, and I quote from Hansard, "In my community of Chatham-Kent where organized labour has been much more responsible" -- comparing that to London -- "and in fact has taken a laissez-faire attitude and has understood the importance of us helping people who need our help, we in Chatham have had over 500 people involved in community placements." I want to make it very clear that the Chatham and District Labour Council and its affiliated unions have never endorsed workfare and we are strenuously opposed to it. We are strenuously opposed to workfare.
On behalf of the Chatham and District Labour Council, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before this standing committee on justice to discuss Bill 22, the Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998, which was introduced on May 14, 1998, by the Minister of Community and Social Services. The Chatham and District Labour Council represents 11,000 workers from 22 unions in Chatham-Kent. We have always believed that committee hearings are a vital part of our parliamentary democracy which allow interested individuals and organizations the opportunity to share their perspective on proposed legislation with their elected representatives.
Let me get off to a good start by stating why these hearings are taking place at all. This government did not want members of this standing committee on justice to use standing order 124 to hold a legislative committee inquiry into all activities, in particular the role of the Premier's office, surrounding the 1995 police homicide of Dudley George at Ipperwash.
We regard Bill 22 as the latest example of the contempt this government has shown for the institutions and practices which are our common heritage in this province. This contempt has also been seen in the government's attitudes and actions towards the labour movement and people on social assistance in this province. If one examines social, political and economic policy, an unmistakable picture emerges of the poor as people who are despised for their poverty and punished for their lack of wealth. This government and their cultural elite project this picture until it permeates political and popular culture and is reflected in public policy.
Why did the government launch its attack on the social assistance system? What was behind its rhetoric? If you analyze it closely, you'll find the push for this policy came from the Ontario business lobby. Here's why. The business cycle is crucial to capitalist economies. Back in 1958, an economist noted that when unemployment falls, wages rise; when unemployment rises, wages fall. This is known as the Phillips curve. This is so because when most workers are employed, business is pressed to react to wage demands. However, when there is significant unemployment, business knows it can find labour at lower wages. Thus, unemployment drives down wages for all workers as it increases job insecurity. You might say, "What does this have to do with welfare?" Welfare is a form of income maintenance and as such it serves as a buffer between the employed and the unemployed. Therefore, when workers are not desperate, when they have security, they demand higher wages. Who would have thought that the poorest among us, those on welfare, strengthen and stabilize the wages of workers?
It's for this reason that the Harris government launched its attack on the poor and disguised it as welfare reform. Ontario employers joined hands with this government in the battle against the poorest of society and their labour union allies. When masses of people are unemployed, that's called good for business.
The Harris government came up with workfare, which is just a new word for an old program that comes from the southern United States. The logic is to take well-paying jobs and force those seeking welfare to perform this work at the minimum wage or less or they don't get welfare. This workfare program does not create any jobs, does not provide any useful training, but in fact takes away decent-paying jobs so that more people end up with exploitative wages and shameful working conditions.
Labour unions around the world have in their constitution the mandate and the obligation to advance the economic and social interests of their members and society at large. That's why we are here today. We must put this insidious workfare scheme to the most rigorous test by simply asking, "Does it respect the rights and dignity of workers and social assistance recipients?" The answer to this question is a resounding no.
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We are not alone in our passionate opposition to this violation of human rights. The Roman Catholic diocese of London has also come out against workfare, as was mentioned in earlier submissions. Bishop Michael Sherlock has said, "Workfare is a violation of dignity." Other religious leaders have also spoken out against workfare: the United Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran Church have all taken strong positions against workfare, so this is not exclusively the Roman Catholic Church, as was suggested possibly by some of the other submitters.
Back in December 1996, religious leaders in the Ottawa area said the government's work for welfare program is "unethical and draconian." Archbishop Marcel Gervais made this statement opposing this govemment's workfare system: "The goal of full employment should be the basic priority of our economic and social policy, thus enabling women and men to fully choose" -- and the key words are "fully choose" -- "productive employment that will provide secure and sustainable livelihood."
This legislation, this Bill 22, is morally reprehensible and a shameful reflection of how this Tory government cares for working people. As elected representatives, you should ask serious questions about workfare and how its imposition on our province will benefit or hurt some of us or all of us. Do you believe that some of your fellow citizens should be conscripted workers but not have the same legal rights and protections as their co-workers? In spite of the lack of rights and protections for these fellow citizens, do you support their exploitation?
There is a segment, and I will suggest a large segment, of the employer community that is quite willing to exploit their fellow citizens. Do you condone their actions? Would you encourage them to increase the level and intensity of this exploitation by creating for them a pool of conscripted labour?
Exploitation happens in workfare programs in the United States, and there is no reason -- no reason -- to believe that it would not happen in Ontario. To quote from Welfare News, Center on Social Policy and Law, New York, February 1997: "Legal services offices and advocacy and community groups have found many people suffering greatly. Participants are exposed to industrial, biological, and medical wastes, including asbestos, animal carcasses, human feces, and discarded syringes, without protective gear. Students in high school or other approved education programs who were willing to carry both school and workfare are told that their workfare hours were in conflict with school; many drop out of school and others lose all welfare benefits. Participants are denied access to toilet facilities, and made to work in bitter, cold weather without warm clothing. Skilled workers are told that they had to work off their check at the minimum wage, and lose and are even denied opportunities to seek paid employment."
Aspects of workfare programs in other jurisdictions such as New York state are being challenged successfully in the courts. Do you want the resources of our province wasted on lengthy court cases? This program, make no mistake about this, will be challenged, and challenged successfully in this province if this bill proceeds.
This government places little value on the contributions made to our society by workers, especially those in the public sector. In that sector, workers have been laid off and programs gutted in order to pay for the Harris tax cut. Many workers have become victims of this government's labour market strategy of low wages and as few legislative protections as possible. Decent jobs are replaced by poorer jobs. Do you support the replacement of workers, especially in the public sector, who are currently providing needed services and who are taxpayers, consumers and activists in their communities? Do you replace them with conscripted workers? Under workfare it happens in the United States, and we all know that it will happen here if it is allowed. The New York City Central Labour Council believes that the numbers are comparable between the public sector jobs lost and the level of workfare conscripted labour used in that community.
In Ontario, the conscripted workers under this program will organize themselves in order to be treated as the first-class citizens that they are. Make no mistake, they will be assisted every step of the way by this labour council and by a wide variety of fair-minded groups and individuals. The continuing actions against workfare in communities across Ontario are only the beginning of this process. There is an old French slogan that should be remembered by governments of any stripe, and that is, "He who sows misery, reaps rage." We urge this committee to call upon the government to withdraw immediately Bill 22.
Thank you, on behalf of the Chatham and District Labour Council.
The Chair: Thank you. That allows just under two minutes, about a minute and a half per caucus. We'll begin with the third party.
Mr Kormos: You made reference to Mr Carroll as MPP for this community and this riding and to his comments in the Legislature. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you leave the impression that he had told the Legislature that labour took a laissez-faire attitude towards workfare in this community. Would you clarify, please, what in fact is the position. Is it as Mr Carroll describes it, and if it isn't, do you have any idea how Mr Carroll would have reached the conclusion that he expressed in the Legislature?
Mr De Meester: I don't know how Mr Carroll reached that conclusion. Certainly there are other members of the labour council who have articulately voiced their opinions in a very forceful manner against the program. My predecessor, Buddy Kitchen, expressed his views and they were the same as mine in opposing workfare. We have a workfare watch committee on the labour council that has functioned well. So I don't know where Mr Carroll drew these conclusions, but I hope it certainly was clarified today, what the true feeling is of the Chatham and District Labour Council.
Mr Carroll: A quick question, Mr De Meester: The Capitol Theatre project downtown, which I'm sure you're very much aware of, trying to rejuvenate this old, abandoned theatre for the use of our citizens -- a lot of the work, thousands of hours of work have been done in there by people from the federal government under section 25 orders, a very similar concept to the idea of work for welfare. Has your union been as opposed to that as they have been to --
Interruption.
The Chair: Order.
Mr Carroll: Has your union been as opposed to that project on behalf of the citizens of our community? A lot of people are learning new skills and new trades in there. Are you as opposed to that project?
Mr De Meester: Mr Carroll, you're very smart at forming a leading question. Let me make something very clear. I'm not opposed to any program that is truly designed to create long-lasting jobs with good protection. The program your government is putting forth is not volunteer. You're telling people, "You either work or you do not get your cheque, or you get a reduction in your cheque."
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Mr Carroll: What about the Capitol Theatre project?
Mr De Meester: What about the Capitol Theatre project?
Mr Carroll: How do you feel about that?
Mr De Meester: How do I feel about it? It's not the same program.
Mr Carroll: It's the same idea.
Mr De Meester: No, it's not at all.
Interruption.
The Chair: I'm going to remind this crowd here, the audience, that this is a committee of the Legislature of the province of Ontario, which is bound by the guidelines of the Legislature.
Interruption.
The Chair: No, sir, I am not. I am reminding you that this is a committee of the Legislature bound by the rules of the Legislature, which allow you to be present during the committee hearings. No disruptions or demonstrations are allowed at that time.
Interruption.
The Chair: Sir, there is no discussion on that. I'm reminding you that the options that I have are the removal from the room, and the committees will proceed without the individuals if the disruptions continue.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you, Mr De Meester, for coming today. I appreciate you spending the morning and the afternoon with us here. As you know, we tried to bring forward a motion to cancel further hearings as a complete waste of time and money that should be repaid by the Conservative Party to the government because they're spending taxpayers' dollars to traipse around Ontario for their political propaganda.
What we do know from some sites of workfare that we've been able to find is that only 3% of the total welfare recipient roll is actually involved in any kind of program like it. Those that are running are volunteer. You see the games that Mr Carroll is so adept at: playing with the information so that the public and their core Conservative supporters will believe that this platform they won on is actually happening when in fact it is not.
You gave an example in your presentation about New York state and what was going on. What can you ask the people of Sudbury to do where there is a workfare site going on and the people who are sent out into the fields near the airport in Sudbury -- they're doing a reforestation project as part of this workfare -- don't have any bathroom facilities? This is today in Ontario, not New York state. I'm just wondering what your view is.
What if it were you or I? Any one of us, as parliamentarians, could be out looking for work in the next election. I hope some are. It could be me having to apply, not being able to find a job, sent out into the field without a bathroom.
I just want to know how you feel about --
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Pupatello.
We very much appreciate you coming forward with your presentation today.
Mr De Meester: Am I not allowed to speak any more?
The Chair: There's a total time of 20 minutes.
Interjections.
The Chair: Order, please. I will finish speaking.
There is total time allotted of 20 minutes. How the individuals decide to use their time, divided equally, is up to the individual. If she wishes to speak for that entire period, then that is her option. I have no ability to determine how that individual will use her time. Mine is to determine procedural orders. That's what I rule on. We are over the 20 minutes.
Thank you very much for your presentation. We very much appreciate your coming forward today.
Mrs Pupatello: On a point of order, Chair: I'd ask for unanimous consent from the committee to allow him an extra minute.
The Chair: You can ask for unanimous consent. You do have that ability. Is there unanimous consent? I heard a no. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr De Meester: With all due respect to you, sir, I'm very disappointed in this process.
WINDSOR ESSEX LOW INCOME FAMILIES TOGETHER
The Chair: We would ask representatives from Windsor Essex Low Income Families Together to come forward, please. If you could identify yourself for Hansard we would greatly appreciate it. In the event you were not here earlier, although I believe you were here, there is a total time allotted of 20 minutes. At the conclusion of your presentation, any time remaining is divided equally between the three caucuses. You may begin.
Ms Mary Seaton: Good afternoon. Thank you for giving me the opportunity of speaking to you. My name is Mary Seaton. I am membership coordinator for the Windsor Essex Low Income Families Together, known as WELIFT. This is a grassroots support group with a membership of 220 families who are the working poor or who are in receipt of social assistance benefits or disability. Most of us are personally involved in the Ontario Works program.
By enacting a bill to prevent Ontario Works personnel from joining a union or any form of bargaining unit, an unmistakably clear message is being sent to the general public which is extremely worrying:
(1) First, social assistance recipients are not full citizens of Canada. Last time I checked, being on welfare did not preclude a person from exercising their civic rights. Does this mean the next step is that persons in receipt of social assistance or disability benefits will be denied the right to vote in municipal or provincial elections because of conflict of interest?
(2) Denying the most vulnerable and inarticulate members of our society the right to group support in the workplace systematically strips them of the ability to speak out about the workplace and administrative injustices.
(3) Who will support and speak out for the workers who are (a) being sexually harassed; (b) being discriminated against by management or paid work staff? There are many recorded incidents of these types of abuses in the American workfare programs. You need only look to New York state, and more especially to New York City. Who will advocate on differences between overworked social services staff and Ontario Works participants when there are disagreements in grey areas? The administrative process of Ontario Works is, charitably, at best described as chaotic, where information is lost, cheques are not issued and children go hungry.
(4) Who will educate Ontario Works recipients as to the few rights they retain, such as the right when working to access money for transportation, child care and workplace clothing up to the limit of $250 a month? It is a well-known fact to most social assistance recipients that their workers fail to keep them informed of the small benefits they have available under certain circumstances.
What happens if the workplace where the Ontario Works worker is placed goes on strike? Does the person lose her cheque because of a work stoppage not of her making or face the ultimate indignity of becoming an involuntary scab labourer?
This single-page bill reduces the most vulnerable segment of society to slaves with no rights or voice. I thought the province of Ontario was part of a democratic country called Canada. Obviously soon I will be wearing a badge that denotes that I am a non-person in the workforce, an unwilling cog in the drive to bring earnings of all wage earners down to a Third World level so that the gap between the haves and the have-nots becomes insurmountable.
If this is the Common Sense Revolution, with Cicero I cry, "O tempora! O mores!" Oh, the times; oh, the customs. Thank you for hearing me.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. That allows each caucus approximately five minutes for questions and answers. We begin with the government members.
Mr Klees: Thank you for your presentation.
The previous speaker, who I'm sure you know, mentioned that the district labour council has a welfare watch committee. Are you aware of or familiar with that? I'm not sure if you are -- you're from Windsor, I guess.
Ms Seaton: I come from Windsor.
Interruption.
Mr Klees: I didn't interrupt the previous speaker. He may be so kind as to not interrupt these proceedings.
Are you aware, in the city of Windsor, of any community placement circumstances where someone has been treated inappropriately?
Ms Seaton: Yes.
Mr Klees: Could you give us an example?
Ms Seaton: I personally know of a member of our group who happens to be a rather large lady and who was discriminated against because of her size. She is neither slovenly nor lazy. She's quite intelligent and quite skilled. She was put under a lot of abuse because of her size.
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Mr Klees: Who was she put under abuse by?
Ms Seaton: Both by the Ontario Works staff -- this was, I must say, stopped as soon as it was put to the commissioner -- and also by people where she was to be placed.
Mr Klees: So you are saying that there was a circumstance of abuse. There was obviously a process by which she could bring a complaint forward and the matter was dealt with. Is that right?
Ms Seaton: Yes, because she very simply went to the legal assistance in Windsor.
Mr Klees: Well, it is a very important point. We're living in an imperfect world and there will be abuses regardless of what program, what government or what society we might be in. The important thing that I think we all must remember is that there are processes in place. In the Ontario Works program now there's an appeals process, so if in fact someone does feel they are not being appropriately dealt with, they can bring an appeal forward, they can make their complaint known, and that will be dealt with. Certainly our government's position is that it doesn't take a unionization process in order for that to happen.
It's very important that we keep the facts of this bill in focus, and that is that no one is being prevented from organizing. In fact --
Interjections.
The Chair: Order.
Mr Klees: Well, it's a fact. That is the irrational leap that Mr Kormos would want to take on this.
Mr Kormos: This bill prohibits them from joining a union.
Mr Klees: The fact is that you can organize without joining a union. This is not about preventing people from gathering together. It's not about preventing people from organizing.
We met, as a matter of fact, with a group, with a committee who had organized themselves together. There were welfare recipient members of that organization. They organized for the purpose of ensuring that Ontario Works would work in their community. They've done so very successfully. They've told some excellent stories about how their involvement ensured that there were opportunities in the community for community placement, for training and for finding a full-time job.
So I think the important thing here is that rather than allow this to become a philosophical debate or a political grandstand for Mr Kormos and Mrs Pupatello, we focus on the facts of this bill. I just want to assure you that there are processes in place to ensure that the abuses won't happen.
Mr Kormos: And Stalin had all those photos of happy --
The Chair: Order. Mr Carroll.
Mr Carroll: Ms Seaton, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of people up in Wallaceburg on Thursday of last week who were involved in the process, people who find themselves temporarily in need of some assistance. They're working on a project up in Wallaceburg. They see this as an opportunity to improve their lot in life, and they quite frankly are very supportive. As somebody who is opposed to them having this opportunity, what would you say to them if I brought the 15 of them in front of you?
Ms Seaton: I would have no objection if they were working on a project that paid them a decent wage and also gave them a chance to advance their skills. I feel that everybody has a right to work. I have met very few people in my life that do not want to work. The trouble is that there is no work. Whatever the programs are, when they're mandatory and they lead to nowhere, they lead to disillusionment for the people who have high hopes.
This is where the trick is. You keep --
Interjection.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Carroll. We now move to the official opposition.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you for coming up from Windsor. I'm sorry. I'm afraid we have collectively cost, all of us, lots of money to keep travelling out of Windsor for hearings because the government won't come back to run committee hearings in Windsor. I'm proud of that, frankly. In any event, I do want to thank you for being here today. I know my community has been pretty supportive of my position in all of this.
Mr Klees doesn't want to have a philosophical discussion about workfare. In fact, this is all that it's about, because if we look at the facts, this is a program 97% of which failed. Any business, after three years of operation with a 97% failure rate, would be out of business. They wouldn't even have the money to pay the exorbitant property tax increases that this government has now foisted upon them. Three per cent as a success rate would have every business under, and that's what we're faced with here.
Moreover, the cost of these hearings: I'm embarrassed to meet my fellow Windsorites so that they can see what I've been doing here in Chatham today, in Cornwall the other day, in Sudbury the other day, wasting Ontario taxpayer money with this farcical tour of Ontario because the PC Party refuses to pay for its own propaganda and is using this committee as a means to do that. In fact, this clause, which we dubbed the Sleeping Beauty bill for the obvious reason that a Conservative MPP fell asleep at committee and failed to pass their own clause, has now turned into an entire bill that went through the political machinery of the PC Party to be yet another hunt to slam labour.
I find this very interesting. Mike Harris goes to the chamber of commerce and in all of his speeches over his first couple of years would go on about how proud he was to have beaten down the labour movement, slammed the labour movement: "We've cracked the back of the unions. They're not going to be in charge any more." That's the kind of thing he would say at the chamber. He beat them down so badly that the flip side of that is that we have a bill being brought forward as though it's the unions' fault that workfare isn't working.
You can't have it both ways. Either you've beaten them down so completely, and that's what you tell the chamber, or you obviously haven't because they're strong enough that a plank like workfare has failed. Either it's a failure, because they say they need the bill because it's failed and they have to fix it, and yet when they do that they come around to tell us how wonderful it is -- if it was so wonderful, why did they need the bill that's to fix it because labour's ruined it? I find myself in a bit of a bind. I don't know what they say, what they mean. I don't know if you have any comment on that, Mary.
Ms Seaton: I find it very difficult because from the clients' point of view this bill has done nothing but make life a lot more difficult, for the major fact that the social services staff do not know whether it's Christmas or Easter because their regulations keep changing. I'm not blaming the staff in the least; they're as confused as the people they serve. One month you get one set of rules and the next month you get another set of rules. Basically, as I said, it's charitably described as chaotic.
Mrs Pupatello: So you'd probably agree that this whole thing is such a farce.
Ms Seaton: It's such a mess.
Mrs Pupatello: We go around Ontario so that they can spend taxpayers' money instead of party money to propagandize workfare, to tell us how much it's working. But we're going around because we need a bill because supposedly it isn't working, so they need the bill. You're left with, what the hell are they doing? They're spending taxpayers' money for political propaganda for which the PC Party should reimburse the province immediately, which is why we've begun each day hoping that someone of those MPPs will vote in favour of the motion that we keep bringing forward, and that is to cancel this charade.
Ms Seaton: But the interesting thing is, you see, that these gentlemen and ladies are not on the cutting edge. We're on the receiving edge, so that when something doesn't work, our cheques don't come, whether we're obeying the rules or not. I had two girls last week come weeping because they hadn't had their cheques because of some mess-up in the computer system and they had families needing groceries and back-to-school clothing and stuff like this.
Mrs Pupatello: We have lots of examples of the government completely botching this up. We understand that the ministry still has not perfected the computer system required to implement Ontario Works. But I guess it's like a lot of things the government has done. They write the policy on the back of a napkin over lunch or over drinks, and then it becomes part of a platform. They run it in an election with those nice little slogans, and unfortunately you can't write public policy with a slogan from the back of a napkin.
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Mr Kormos: Thank you, Ms Seaton. I suppose what bothers the daylights out of me is that the government's attack on social assistance recipients was clearly very popular in 1995 when this government got elected and remains popular among many quarters today. There's an impression being created. They talk about co-dependency. They're picking up all this flashy language somewhere. I think what they really mean is dependency except somehow they figure "co" makes it a little more forceful, although they're misusing the word.
My impression is that people are dependent upon social assistance because there aren't jobs out there for them to go to. Is that your impression?
Ms Seaton: Exactly. I have never met a social assistance recipient who did not want to work; I frankly never have. They would be happy to work. Most of the recipients in our group have quite a few skills.
Mr Kormos: I'm from down in Niagara, which in some respects is similar to Windsor, the same type of industrial culture. I've got folks down there who had five, six, maybe 10 years into a well-paying job in a factory, who thought they were doing all the right things -- you know, the house, kids and a snowmobile in the garage -- who found their jobs eliminated when free trade rolled by and jobs moved south, and then even more so when NAFTA came by. We've had families down there who used up their UIC credits and within 12 months they can have gone from sort of blue-collar middle class to literally being on welfare, again having done all the right things.
What about this impression that living life on the dole is the way to go, that people are so seduced by the luxuries of being on the dole that there's no motivation? What does it mean to live on welfare? You've talked to enough people who have been forced --
Ms Seaton: I've lived on welfare.
Mr Kormos: Tell us what it means. What does it mean when you've got kids and the end of the month is approaching and there's no food in the cupboards?
Ms Seaton: It's absolutely no fun, and having to go to a food bank to me is the ultimate in humiliation. I have always worked. It really is the most difficult thing, and most people find it so. Most people on welfare have led fairly good working lives until circumstances came. As somebody very wise once said, if you're a single mother you're only ever, when working, one cheque away from welfare.
Mr Kormos: Or even if you're not a single mother.
Ms Seaton: Yes, if you're low-income. About 55% of our membership are working poor and they are in constant terror of losing their jobs.
Mr Kormos: Ms Tingley and a group from Barrie told this committee back during Bill 142 that they were very offended by the concept of telling women who had been mothers, homemakers, workers -- in this case it was three women who had left violent, dangerous families and found themselves shifted, again, from a blue-collar middle-class lifestyle to welfare, and they were very offended by the government's paternalistic attitude of, "We'll teach you 30 different ways to prepare chicken." Their line was: "Just give us the frigging chicken. We already know how to cook it."
Ms Seaton: We can do 157 ways of preparing hamburger. It's quite -- well.
The other thing I really found very offensive was the removal of the pregnancy allowance for pregnant mothers. There are not very many pregnant women who are on welfare, and that was an ultimate, because I have not met anybody who spends it on beer. They do need their fresh vegetables, which are of high priority, and they need their milk.
Mr Kormos: You understand that first they slashed welfare rates by 21.6% and then they raised MPPs' salaries by 10%. You understand that that happened within the same time frame, and the arrogance of it.
Ms Seaton: In fact it was almost the same amount of money that was slashed that they paid, yes.
Mr Kormos: Isn't that ironic beyond any apprehension?
Ms Seaton, keep up the good fight and we'll whip these buggers yet.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation today.
We will now call on representatives from OEM Industrial. Is there anyone here from OEM Industrial? No.
CANADIAN AUTO WORKERS, LOCAL 27
The Chair: I would then call on representatives of the Canadian Auto Workers, Local 27, if you could come forward.
Mrs Pupatello: May I ask the Chair a question while we're waiting?
The Chair: Yes.
Mrs Pupatello: Can the staff tell us if OEM Industrial was contacted by a member of the committee or by the ministry or had forwarded their name on their own to the committee to be presenting today?
The Chair: We can ask.
Mr Kormos: Ask Jack.
The Chair: Each caucus puts names forward as well as people directly applying.
Interjections.
Mrs Pupatello: Is it a Chatham-based company?
Mr Carroll: Whether they're friends of mine or not is irrelevant.
The Chair: Just so you know, sir, there's a total time allocated of 20 minutes. Any time remaining is divided equally. Thank you for coming today.
Mr Jim Reid: My name is Jim Reid. I'm with the Canadian Auto Workers, Local 27. I'm an injured workers' advocate. I also am the co-chair of LIFE*SPIN in London, which is the Low-Income Family Empowerment*Sole-Support Parents Information Network. I believe Andrew put a presentation on earlier. I also sit on the board of directors of the London Unemployment Help Centre.
I'd like to thank the Chairperson for the opportunity to make a presentation to this committee on behalf of the more than 5,000 members of the Canadian Auto Workers, Local 27, employed in 22 different workplaces in the London area.
While we're always happy to visit Chatham, I question why London was not one of the cities selected. Perhaps this government and Minister Ecker didn't want too bright a light shone under this offensive, undemocratic barrel of bilious Tory waste referred to as Bill 22.
Perhaps Mrs Ecker remembers her last visit to London when she participated on a radio call-in show in an attempt to promote mandatory workfare. The minister remembers that during nearly two hours on the air she had only one positive response to mandatory workfare, and that was from the board chair of the Memorial Boys' and Girls' Club, one of only two community organizations in London to act as brokers and take community placements through Ontario Works.
In London the consensus among the community service providers is that a voluntary community placement program combined with adequate levels of support will move far more people into sustainable paid employment. Even the regional and municipal welfare administrators are telling Minister Ecker that Ontario Works just isn't working. The fact that communities across this province are failing to meet the prescribed targets of this ill-conceived and poorly implemented mandatory workfare scheme is to be expected from a government that is more interested in scapegoating the poor than it is in providing for the essential needs of this vulnerable population.
Bill 22, as proposed, when placed alongside Bill 142, the Social Assistance Reform Act, offers clear and convincing evidence that working people, the poor, the disabled, the homeless and the unemployed have become the enemies of this gang of 82 bullies and cowards who now infest Queen's Park.
Any time a government drafts, proposes, passes and implements legislation, it usually does so for some perceived legitimate public interest and does so for their perception of benefit to the common good. The Harris government, on the other hand, takes the view that what benefits their wealthy friends is in the best interests of all Ontarians, regardless of the misery and deprivation their policies of fleecing the poor to line the pockets of the rich have had in the last three years.
In most democracies legislation is not used to take away legitimate rights and freedoms of large segments of the population. In Tory Ontario there is no room for the rights of citizens when they conflict with the dictates of the Common Sense Revolution.
Bill 22 is the Reform-a-Tories' latest attack on democracy, an attack that began with introduction of Bill 7 allowing scab labour, stripping away successor rights from crown employees and eliminating the card majority system of union certification that had been in place since 1950, replacing this system with mandatory certification votes permitting the employer to organize anti-union campaigns of intimidation. Bill 7 was bulldozed through the Legislature without a single day of hearings.
On November 29, 1995, Bill 26, the omnibus Savings and Restructuring Act, was introduced, amending 44 statutes, creating three new acts and repealing two others. The bill was 211 pages thick but was rammed through the Legislature after only three weeks of hearings. The only reason that the hearings were held at all was because of a sit-in by the opposition parties.
The attack on democracy continued with Bill 49, an act to gut the employment standards act.
Mike the Knife ignored an overwhelming referendum vote against the megacity and dictated Bill 103.
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I can only begin to talk about the havoc the big business Tories are unleashing on our education system with the implementation of Bill 104 and Bill 160.
Bill 22, An Act to Prevent Unionization with respect to Community Participation under the Ontario Works Act, continues not only the Tory hackers' attack on democracy but moves this government's war on the poor to another level. In her statement to the Legislature on May 14 introducing Bill 22, Minister Ecker gives the only reason for this amendment to the Ontario Works Act, as follows: "Some union representatives have chosen to try and prevent the government from moving forward with Ontario Works, our mandatory work-for-welfare program, either by threatening to unionize welfare recipients who participate...or by harassing community agencies" who offer to help.
Is this the reason for the introduction of Bill 22? I think Ms Pupatello elaborated eloquently on the real reason for the introduction of Bill 22, the Sleeping Beauty bill.
Are we here today because some union representatives threatened to unionize welfare recipients? Is this what caused the minister to introduce legislation that denies its citizens charter rights? Does this perceived threat necessitate the violation of basic human rights as set out in the human rights core convention of the International Labour Organization, a body which Canada has participated in since its inception in 1919?
As a proud and committed trade unionist, I have volunteered my own time on many organizing drives over the past several years. I cannot pretend to understand how, given the provisions of the Labour Relations Act, a union could threaten to unionize anybody. My experience has been that people sign union cards and join unions out of their own free will. The records of the OLRB will clearly show that it is the employers who threaten workers if they choose to exercise their rights by joining a union. I have never met with an individual or group of workers and threatened to unionize them, and I don't know any organizer who has.
Perhaps I'm getting this wrong. Maybe it's the government that feels threatened. Perhaps Minister Ecker believes people on social assistance are incapable of making an informed decision on whether or not to join a union, or maybe Mrs Ecker has decided that people on social assistance don't need such silly and frivolous nuisances like charter rights, especially when there are all these wonderful opportunities in the conscripted free labour market.
The real fear this government has is that if people on welfare organized, they could not be marginalized and abused. No longer would it be easy for Mike and company to lie about people on social assistance. The myth of widespread welfare fraud that the corporate sense revolutionaries campaigned on would be given about as much credence as young Mr Harris's bologna diet.
Perhaps the Tories are fearful that if poor people organized and educated each other about the devastation and class warfare this government has engaged in they might become a force in the next election and vote out these real-estate-shilling, used-car-dealing, Reform-Party-loving group of big business toadies.
In any discussion about workfare it is necessary to examine both the history and the ideology of having the poor work for their welfare. We can trace the path of this government's ideology back to the 1834 Poor Law that eliminated relief for the poor. The social thinkers of that day argued that giving the poor even the most meagre quantities of bread and coal harmed both the larger society and the poor themselves. Never mind the rapid enclosure by the rich of commonly used agricultural land. Never mind the displacement of hand-loom weavers by mechanized factories. Never mind the decline in the earnings of rural workers. According to these eminent social thinkers, the real causes of poverty and demoralization were not to be found in these large economic changes but rather in the too-generous poor relief. The solution in 1834 England of eliminating the provision of relief to people in their homes and putting entire families into prison-like workhouses is the same solution the Harris Reformers seek to emulate by giving conscripted free workfare labour to their business buddies.
This past April, Minister Ecker visited Wisconsin to study their W-2 welfare program in the hope of finding solutions to improve the pathetic Ontario Works program. Even with an unemployment rate of less than 4%, the majority of W-2 participants are trapped in poverty. The average hourly wage for W-2 workers in these practice jobs is $5.65 an hour. Little more than half had full-time work. One in six participants had private health insurance. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story of December 31, 1997, homelessness, shelter use and food aid are all up dramatically. Between 1988 and 1996, the number of AFDC families in the state fell by 19% while the number of children from AFDC families entering foster care rose by 60%.
It is interesting to note that the US Department of Labour said recently that some people on workfare may be considered employees who are covered under existing labour laws such as the requirement that they be paid minimum wage and overtime, as well as afforded workplace protections.
Mrs Ecker now appears to be moving away from putting workfare placements into the private sector. We feel the minister is backtracking in an attempt to avoid the negative political fallout from the majority of fair-minded Ontarians who favour fair wages over free labour.
The fact is that the Ontario Works community placement programs aren't working. In the March 23 Globe and Mail, Metro Toronto commissioner of community and neighbourhood services Shirley Hoy said, "Toronto welfare workers are under pressure to entice people with promising job prospects into dead-end community service placements," a ringing endorsement from an administrator of the largest municipal social assistance program in Canada, who like many of her colleagues in similar positions across Ontario, has told the minister repeatedly that mandatory workfare just isn't working.
There has been an overwhelming negative response from social service providers, charities and community groups to this model of conscripted voluntarism. When we look at the placement program administered and developed in London by the Memorial Boys' and Girls' Club, an organization that has lobbied all levels of government to be workfare pimps, we see the phony make-work jobs, requiring minimal training or skills development. These community participation opportunities include conscripted volunteer positions such as cafe assistant, night custodian, lawn-care maintenance and play-care assistants.
I have spoken to several graduates from the Memorial Boys' and Girls' Club who have told me that they did not learn any new skills, that they did not receive any training, and that they were used primarily for menial labour. Every person I talked to wanted a real job or specific skills training in order to secure sustainable employment. This came as no surprise, having myself been out of work many times in my working life. I know what it's like to stand in line with hundreds of others just to apply for a job. I remember what it was like to be laid off, no money coming in, rent to pay and no food in the house. I remember the desperation of being poor. Just like my brothers and sisters here today, I never chose to be poor.
In order to put a positive spin on this disastrous waste of municipal and community resources we call Ontario Works, the Tories brag about removing 294,000 people from welfare. The Tories never mention the fact that the drop in interest rates and the undervalued dollar have resulted in more people re-entering the workforce. The Tories never mention the fact that the number of people who now rely on food banks and homeless shelters has grown dramatically since the 21% cut in social assistance. The Tories never mention the number of women who have been forced to return to abusive partners. Instead, the Tories continue to promote the myth of long-term welfare dependency and fraud.
The fact is that overpayments continue to be added to fraud statistics to boost the figures of money recovered, since according to the province's own statistical report, real welfare fraud accounts for less than 0.03% of the caseload. Bill 142 has made it possible for fraud police to apply for search warrants and use them to search the homes of income assistance recipients. Currently, only police officers can obtain search warrants and they are governed by very specific laws in using them. Police are also governed by tribunals and boards which define appropriate police behaviour. Bill 142 has given welfare workers police powers without any responsibility. It's interesting to note that the welfare workers in Metro Toronto have overwhelmingly said they do not want these types of powers, that they do not feel it's either necessary or appropriate.
In London, the average length of time someone is on welfare is nine months. This length of time will continue to drop given the fact that only 29% of all unemployed workers in Ontario are now eligible for federal EI benefits. Welfare, the income support of last resort for people unable to find work, is being used more regularly by workers in the low-wage, contract, temporary and seasonal job ghettos.
When the economy improves, it is because of low interest rates and a low dollar, and we now have the illusion of more people being moved off the welfare rolls. The real test for any government is how they respond when there is an economic downturn. The record of this government in responding to the needs of low-income people is abysmal.
Whether or not Bill 22 passes into law, people on social assistance will continue to organize. Our union will continue to work in solidarity with the low-income community in our common struggle for social justice and political change.
Time is running out on this government. You have alienated union members, teachers, police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, small business people and the poor. I look forward to the next election to send this gang of 82 back to the used car lots, real estate offices and corporate boardrooms from which you came.
In last week's Globe and Mail, our reviled Premier stated that he would not be calling an election until he lost 20 pounds. Well, Mr Harris, there is one thing the voters of this province know: The 20 pounds of fat you carry around is situated firmly between your ears.
That's the end of my presentation.
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The Chair: That allows us approximately a minute and a half per caucus. We begin with the official opposition.
Mrs Pupatello: Thanks for coming today to speak with us. We have much of the same feeling regarding this bill and the duplicity the government employs as we go across Ontario and they spend taxpayers' money to actually make something appear that simply isn't there, and that is the success of the workfare program. We've got a great deal of difficulty with this. I don't know how you feel as a member representing a union being slammed repeatedly by a government, by ministers. It's sort of the same feeling the teachers probably had when Mike Harris went on television at taxpayers' expense to slam an entire education sector, a professional group that actually teaches children. It really is par for the course.
You reminded me of a few things they've done to the poor, the bologna sandwich story, the tuna story etc. But that aside, what would you do for the Sudbury workers who are engaged right now working at a site with no toilet facilities?
Mr Reid: If I was in Sudbury right now, I'd organize the largest contingent of people on social assistance, people in the labour movement, people from the faith community and march on that work site and sit down and demand justice for the workers until the government reacted, plain and simple. We will continue to organize whether the government says, "Mother, may I?" or not. This labour movement wasn't founded by kowtowing and listening to the powers. We broke the law when we formed unions. We'll break the law again. We have no problem with that.
Mr Kormos: I want to thank you for participating in the hearings. You understand that, as I indicated earlier today, this government slashed welfare rates by 21.6% and increased MPPs' salaries by around 10%. Minimum wage at Queen's Park for an elected member is $78,000 a year. People like parliamentary assistants pick up, I don't know, another 10, 11 or 12 grand a year.
Mrs Pupatello: The Chair of a committee is $5,000.
Mr Kormos: No, the Chair picks up $10,000 or $11,000; the Deputy Chair picks up $5,000. So we're talking about a minimum wage of $78,000 a year. I suppose the problem I have is the arrogance of people who are enjoying that sort of affluence making the judgments that are being made, the judgmentalism about being poor. It's like an earlier submission where someone said, "Money isn't the solution to all of an individual's problems." Well, it's the first bloody thing by way of a solution when you don't have any. There's incredible wealth being created in this province even right now. You and your sisters and brothers analyze corporate directors' salaries and multi-million dollar bonuses, yet my impression is that this wealth is becoming isolated in fewer and fewer hands and that the poor are being called upon to pay for things like phony tax breaks for the very rich.
Mr Skarica: I want to talk to you about the first and last pages of your presentation. I note that your second-last paragraph says that the gang of 82 should go back to the car lots, real estate offices and corporate boardrooms. I don't come from any of those places. I was an assistant crown attorney for a long time and we had to study the art of advocacy. One of the things that we were told and instructed over many years was that, in the art of persuasion, you don't get anywhere by calling your opponents names and insulting them. Your presentation, frankly, is full of those types of things. I've had my run-ins with Mr Harris himself and that's well known, but to say that he has 20 pounds of fat between his ears is hardly something that should be said in a presentation like this where you're trying to advance a philosophical argument of some type.
As well, to say the gang of 82 are bullies and cowards, I would never call my opponents, Mrs Pupatello or Mr Kormos or anyone else in politics, a bully or a coward, because it takes a lot of courage to stand and run and fight for votes for something you believe in.
Mr Reid: Can I respond?
Mr Skarica: I'm just curious how you think that advances your position, to call people names like that.
Mr Reid: I'm glad you woke up this afternoon to pay attention to my presentation, number one.
Number two, this is a government of bullies and cowards. This is a government that has no respect for the democratic principles of this province. This is a government that would find political allies in the likes of Mussolini and Pinochet.
Mr Skarica: Just because they disagree with you, eh?
Mr Reid: We can have disagreements, but we can also have democracy.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr Reid: Mrs Pupatello is right, this is a farce. This whole process is a farce. This government is not listening to the people of Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation today. We very much appreciate your coming forward.
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, WINDSOR AREA OFFICE
The Chair: I call on the next presenter, a representative or representatives from the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Windsor area office, if you could come forward and identify yourselves for Hansard.
Ms Rose Gunnell: My name is Rose Gunnell. I am a temporary national rep out of the Windsor area office. I have been on the welfare rolls. I have been on the unemployment line. I currently have a disabled son, visually impaired, mentally disabled and, as we speak, he volunteers with the food bank in Essex.
On behalf of the Canadian Union of Public Employees representing municipal social service workers, workers in community agencies, school board workers, health care workers and university workers, we would like to thank you for this opportunity.
Bill 22, the Prevention of Unionization Act, brings us here today, a bill that speaks volumes about the government's attitude to the poor on the Ontario Works program, to working people and to activists trying to promote a vision of Ontario based on principles of equality and economic justice. The people of Ontario now realize that this government, through legislation and policies, presents a threat to fundamental shared principles of justice and basic constitutional and human rights. Bill 22 presents another example of how this government, the Conservatives, wants to undermine basic rights.
Workfare is designed to punish people. The government wants us to believe otherwise. They claim the old system wasn't working, that welfare rates were too high and that the system offered neglect instead of real help. The problems, they decided, were that too many people were on welfare and that the rates were too high, that too many people had access to the system according to this government. Somehow Ontario Works would be a panacea to all that ails the system, but the Conservative view of "all" that ailed that system was simply the numbers on welfare, the levels of income support and the obstacle welfare presented to creating a vulnerable low-wage workforce.
We have good reason to be skeptical that this government has any intention of doing anything to help people find decent, secure employment. They are following a model designed in the United States, pioneered in Wisconsin and now imported to New York. Ontario is not the next state of the United States of America. The governor of Wisconsin once claimed that the purpose of workfare was to dissuade people from applying for welfare. The statistics the government keeps only tell how many people have left welfare. They don't tell us what has happened to the people pushed off welfare.
Minister Ecker cites a survey showing that 52% of those who had left welfare had found jobs. This number is very low, especially since only those with telephones could be surveyed. We suspect that if this survey had been done properly, the numbers would show that far lower numbers found employment. Has there been a follow-up?
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We contend that this government doesn't care at all what happens to people once they're off welfare. They only care about keeping the numbers down. Studies have shown that workfare is not an effective route to employment. Workfare is designed to reduce the numbers of people on welfare by discouraging people from applying for welfare income support and cutting people off for non-compliance with the myriad rules.
The welfare system in existence before this government took power was by no means perfect, but it was a system that had the objective of helping people make the transition from welfare to work. It was not a passive system that merely provided cheques, as claimed by Minister Ecker. Previous governments had embarked on a series of programs aimed at providing training and employment assistance to persons seeking employment.
CUPE represents most of the people delivering Ontario Works. We are hearing cries of frustration from our members. They trained for their jobs because they wanted to work with people. Now they spend little time with clients, but a lot of time facing a computer terminal inputting information to ensure that compliance with the legislation is achieved. Their discretion to help people and seek creative employment programs has been handcuffed by Ontario Works. Local initiatives are discouraged by the program. They feel they no longer have any real ability to help people, but feel more like enforcement officers. Their frustration is so high that some members are now working alternative employment. Participating in a system designed to punish people, not to help them, is intolerable.
Workfare can reduce jobs and drive down wages. The Economic Policy Institute in Washington estimates that if all workfare participants in New York found jobs, but no new jobs were created, wages for the bottom third of the workforce would drop by more than 10%. In other instances, the employed and unemployed will switch places, and still others, homelessness will simply increase.
The treasury in New Zealand has estimated that for every four workfare placements created one job would be lost.
Quebec changed its welfare program dramatically when a poll of participating employers found that 50% would have hired workers at real wages had workfare participants not been available.
Workfare is a job killer. We represent workers in many of the community agencies that have rejected workfare. Our members know about the studies that show that workfare does not lead to work. The government has cut these agencies. Some agencies even feel their funding will be at risk if they resist the pressure to accept and monitor people on workfare placements. They feel they have been conscripted into the government's workfare scheme, that they are forced to supervise welfare recipients. At the same time, they feel their jobs are threatened and the government has undervalued their work.
Now the Ontario government is proposing to subsidize private sector employers if they hire workfare participants. The poor will be working for substandard wages. Moving workfare into the private sector means that everyone's job is now vulnerable. The unemployed, contract workers and summer students will be competing with $3-an-hour workfare participants. Downsized workplaces will be able to access cheap workers.
Large corporations in the United States now rely on subsidized workfare workers instead of paying decent wages. To paraphrase a prominent leadership candidate for the federal Conservative Party, we now have socialism for large corporations and rugged individualism for the poor. Bill 22 has prescribed and enforced rugged individualism for persons on workfare placements.
We are in favour of policies that encourage the creation of decently paid and relatively secure jobs. We are in favour of voluntary, publicly delivered educational and training programs to assist people to get these jobs. Under previous government programs there were waiting lists for programs that assisted people to find employment. We see the provision of high-quality, publicly regulated child care as a condition to helping people join the workforce.
CUPE, the Ontario Social Safety Network and other groups have recommended that any programs must be governed by certain principles including people must not be forced to take part in such programs; training should be paid and work expenses should be covered, including clothing and transportation costs; good child care must be provided; any training must be useful; mentoring and training that can lead to genuine employment should be part of any program; programs must not eliminate jobs or potential jobs; people working in programs must be paid a fair living wage. Participants should be covered by labour legislation, including employment standards, health and safety, workers' compensation and human rights laws. People who lose their benefits must be able to appeal to an independent tribunal. Programs should not be started unless resources are available to do them properly.
Bill 22 will prevent someone on a workfare program from exercising his or her fundamental freedom to join a union and have the terms and conditions under which he or she participates determined through collective bargaining or strike. One thing this legislation does is clarify for everyone that work done by people on workfare programs is work; otherwise the government would not feel compelled to introduce this legislation.
Minister Ecker claimed in a presentation that it was a myth that people on workfare programs did not receive workplace protections that others received. We disagree. Legislation barring people from their fundamental constitutional right of freedom of association is a very serious violation. The whole purpose of this legislation is to discourage and prevent people from joining unions.
Aside from being a violation of our constitutional rights, Bill 22 also contravenes our international obligations. Freedom of association has been well established as a fundamental human right for at least 50 years. It is prominently referred to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its status as a basic human right was reaffirmed in the covenants of the United Nations adopted in the 1960s. It is referred to as a fundamental democratic right in the constitution of the International Labour Organization, the UN agency that deals with labour matters.
Canada is a signatory to the ILO convention number 87 concerning freedom of association and protection of the right to organize, which has been interpreted by the ILO to protect the right of employees to bargain freely with employers and the right to seek to improve their working conditions through trade union representation and collective bargaining. This bill, if passed, is a very serious breach of all our fundamental freedoms.
We also believe workfare constitutes discrimination on the basis of social condition, a violation of our constitutional equality rights and a violation of the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The minister makes it clear that the bill was introduced as the direct result of some Ontario labour leaders attempting to sabotage welfare reform. They have been actively harassing community agents participating in Ontario Works and they are now attempting to unionize welfare recipients. Seventeen thousand New York City workfare participants recently signed union cards. Most of them had been working for the city for more than three years, often side by side with real municipal employees. They have become part of the permanent labour force. They want to be treated as such.
It is these kinds of reports that have inspired anti-poverty groups, social justice groups and unions to consider this strategy to prevent the exploitation of persons on workfare. Maybe it is time this government started listening to social justice groups, religious groups and the union movement instead of cynically trying to create a media-orchestrated attack on unions on the backs of vulnerable people on welfare.
These are serious human rights violations that this government is considering with the introduction of this bill. The labour movement, with our community partners, has been working to prevent the victimization of persons in receipt of welfare. We have been trying to promote job creation policies and employment programs to help people find work. We vehemently disagree with this government's so-called welfare reform.
Decently paid, secure jobs are the only solution to the welfare problem. Social assistance recipients who are capable of working want jobs. The majority collect welfare for less than four months, not for a lifetime, despite the fact that these are desperate times and jobs are not that easy to find.
Workfare is bad policy. Don't let workfare become a way of existence as it is in the United States, where a permanent part of the workforce is dependent on workfare programs, the most minimal existence. Get rid of Bill 22 and workfare, and stop the creation of a two-tier workforce.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That allows us approximately two minutes per caucus and we begin with the third party.
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Mr Kormos: Thank you kindly, sister. I appreciated especially your introductory comments about the role of so-called caseworkers. I don't know what the current language is.
Ms Gunnell: They change them all the time.
Mr Kormos: My first career was in social services and what I'm hearing from caseworkers is that they are overloaded in terms of numbers of cases because they've been reduced in numbers. They would dearly love to deal with individual households, families, recipients and talk about designing things, like upgrading programs, retraining programs, adult ed, dealing with problems that women have, single mothers with day care, a whole plethora of solutions that are available on a case by case, individual by individual basis. My sense from talking to these folks -- you know what, Chair? We should have had some of the caseworkers here.
Ms Gunnell: Teresa was scheduled next. She's with her brother in hospital in London so unfortunately she's not going to be here.
Mr Kormos: There is no adult ed in most communities any more. Day care is increasingly difficult for women to access. Welfare discourages post-secondary training. There are disincentives to pursue post-secondary training like community college. This is nuts. There are real ways to deal with individuals and families and households who find themselves jobless even in an economy where high unemployment is encouraged, but none of this approaches any of that. This is just so nuts, isn't it?
Ms Gunnell: It's just like a meat market. To me it's a meat market.
Mr Kormos: Why wouldn't this government be approaching this in a far more realistic way?
Ms Gunnell: The government is only concerned about the numbers. They don't care if they've got a job; they're off the welfare rolls, on Ontario Works, but they're not getting paid.
Mr Kormos: And Ontario Works ain't working.
The Chair: We'll move to the government members.
Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): I know there have been some comments that the poor have been attacked by our government so let me just mention a few facts. Welfare payments in Ontario are approximately 15% over the average anywhere. I want you to know that.
Ms Gunnell: Over the average what?
Mr Boushy: Over the average in Canada. This is fact. This has been substantiated. So we have no attack on the poor.
On workfare, we just met today with some people in Chatham. We were told, and it's again a fact, that over 500 people have been placed in the community. I am from Sarnia and I state to you the fact that over 300 have been placed in the community. That's another fact. The greatest majority of recipients involved in the program are pleased to have registered for the program in Chatham-Kent and Sarnia-Lambton. These are facts and I want you to know that.
The question I have for you is, organized unions, organized workers earn wages; also, the unions collect dues, approximately 1% of wages. In Ontario, the question is, has a union ever organized volunteers? If not, why are volunteers being targeted? And what percentage of welfare cheques do you estimate they would be charged or what dues would they have to pay?
Interruption.
Ms Gunnell: I question how happy the participants are, what little choice the participants have to join these programs. If there were that many jobs available in Chatham or Sarnia, then those jobs should have been opened. If they were unionized jobs, they should have been unionized. They shouldn't still be on the welfare rolls.
The Chair: We'll now move to the official opposition.
Mrs Pupatello: Thanks so much for coming up from Windsor. You've been very active in our community. I'm glad to see you're here and I apologize on behalf of the government members for refusing to hold hearings in Windsor. They find our welcome in Windsor far too warm for them, and I want to thank you for that as well. In any event, I am sorry that we can't be in my own hometown to talk about the failings of workfare, because it has indeed been the biggest, most abysmal failure of any program anywhere.
Mr Klees: It's not failing.
Mrs Pupatello: And Mr Klees says it isn't failing. So here we have this conundrum. Which do we believe? Do we believe that workfare is working and it's so wonderful, or do we believe that they have to bring forward Bill 22 because "It's the big bad union that won't let workfare work"?
Interruption.
Mrs Pupatello: Mr Chair, will you be active at all with this last group?
The Chair: Yes. Order.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you. In any event, here we have it. It's either working or it isn't working. If it's working, we're to go on this tour of Ontario to show all these wonderful sites of workfare and how happy and contented these people are so we can have the Conservative members go on the lunch hour to lay their hands on the heads of the people so that we can see how happy they are in these workfare placements. Or are we to believe that in fact it's an abysmal failure, all of the facts of which we have to collect through freedom of information because this government won't give us the numbers, to find that only 3% of all welfare recipients are in fact in any kind of placement at all, that the bulk of those people are in voluntary programs, which would blow their case wide open for the fact that there is any workfare existing in Ontario?
Having said that, we come here saying we're either in favour of Bill 22 or we're not, or we want it, we don't need it, we need it because it's not working, but we come here on hearings so we can hear how it's working. This is what I'm doing in Chatham today, making, as Mr Kormos has pointed out -- obviously more than I was the first term I was an MPP, and I'm embarrassed to have Windsorites find out what I'm doing for a living today because these people refuse to have the PC Party pay for this kind of propaganda. I'm hoping that you'll be an accomplice with me, and when we get back to Windsor you'll make sure that people understand we really are trying to do our job.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mrs Pupatello, and thank you very much for coming forward today. We very much appreciate that.
I call for the next presenter, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 543. Not here?
SUSAN SMITH
The Chair: We'll call on the next presenter, Susan Smith. Thank you for coming. You may begin.
Ms Susan Smith: My name is Susan Smith. I'm here from London and I'm speaking as an individual, as a citizen. I would like to offer my thanks to the clerk and his staff for their assistance. I'm one of the other dwarfs from London West. I'm not Narcolepty and I'm certainly not Happy.
This is a really interesting piece of legislation. Probably never before the term of office of this government have I been as active in responding to bills, and of course, it was important to start pretty early, because you picked October 31, 1995, to nail in place Bill 7 which, among other things, disaggregated full- and part-time workers from the same collective bargaining unit. This is like a chess game. These are real set pieces you're playing, and I'm probably going to tell you exactly what I think about what you're doing.
This reminds me of Ten Lost Years. I don't know if any of you had the opportunity to attend performances of that play at Canadian and Ontario universities in the 1970s, but -- I'm speaking to government members now -- this is, by and large, what you are making this province feel like to me and some other people. It also reminds me of reactions that came to the fore in the anti-apartheid movement, and I'll just state it quite simply. You have touched a woman's anger and you have struck a rock.
I don't know if Janet Ecker is going to get a chance to redeem her political career and get up off her knees, based on what she has obviously been learning in the backrooms of the Tory party, particularly while you were in opposition. I've never heard of anybody begging constitutional challenges to this extent, and to all the other arguments that you've heard today. The only one I would mention, because I haven't heard it already, is that the unconstitutionality of discriminating against people under the age of 65 doesn't make your politics very pretty. Even if you're playing to demographics, you will not win.
The national child benefit is not being clawed back in New Brunswick or in Newfoundland, but in Ontario I would just like to tell you of the impact that it has on our community of London for the month of August: 62 families will lose their social services benefits for the month of August because of the treatment by the provincial government of what is supposed to be a national child benefit. Janet Ecker cannot beg anyone's credulity by arguing that it's going to go into programs for healthy moms, Healthy Babies, Healthy Children.
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The major context in which I look at the amount of money being spent because of the other dwarf from London West falling asleep on your agenda, but on taxpayers' money and time, is that 62 families of members of the Ontario Legislature aren't faced with that kind of situation. I want you to think about your own situations for just a minute. It just took a little bit of research, so in the background papers that I gave to the clerk, just do a little bit of cut and paste and compare and contrast the benefits for members of the Ontario Legislature.
In eight short years, between January 1988 and April 1996, remuneration more or less doubled for members of the Ontario Legislature. But in addition to that, in the Legislative Assembly minutes -- I guess if you were going to operate on ideology and it's very clear that you are -- your hypocrisy doesn't extend to saying, "But everyone should have the Board of Internal Economy as your collective bargaining agent." I just want to point out a few of the benefits that you do enjoy because of that.
You only need a quorum of the Speaker, Chris Stockwell -- although he wasn't brought into the forefront at the beginning of the life of this current government; we know how hot he was getting about wonderful bills like Bill 7 and Bill 15. It's not a pretty picture, but politics isn't pretty and I don't want to go there. A quorum of the Board of Internal Economy consists of the Speaker, one commissioner who's appointed from among the members of the executive council, ie, the cabinet, who probably is using a bit of input from the backbenchers -- I'm quite convinced of it actually -- and one other commissioner who will be one person from any other political party represented in the Ontario Legislature.
The Board of Internal Economy may determine its rules and methods of procedure and shall keep a minute book. But then we go on. Actually, cancelled cheques, with the permission of the Provincial Auditor, can be destroyed at any time. There are all kinds of powers in the Board of Internal Economy that you are hypocrites not to acknowledge. It's one of the best collectively bargained situations you could ever be represented by.
As a regular citizen who quite likes democracy, I'm offended that over the lunch hour I put cold, hard cash in to pay Bell Canada to make my important long-distance phone calls; I was not using an OCN booklet number. There are a number of benefits that accrue to members of the Legislature. I'll just mention a few since half your families are not faced with the prospect that around 62 families in London were faced with earlier this month.
In fact the act goes on to all kinds of things, remarkable things like competency and compellability, but also service of civil process. There are restrictions on how you are civilly processed when you have the privilege of being a member of the provincial Parliament. Powers and privilege: There's a whole section that's actually called that. Staff and office equipment; retirement allowances, some age restrictions; fees, with some restrictions on your acceptance of fees while in office even though your base pay is $78,007 a year; immunity; the estimates of the Board of Internal Economy, members' compensation: these are all sections in bills.
I'll remind you, you got your catch-up on the social contract with Bill 42. Most of the bills I have focused on are the ones you passed in the first half of this current Parliament. I think it's a record: three days for that bill to be in place, prior to the end of August 1996 when your new paycheques were cut to you, the one-twelfth of social indemnity. You went back to January 1, 1992, so that the social contract didn't touch you. You got your catch-up right away, I guess because you can do it. I guess that's the reason. It paints an interesting picture. There's quite a bit of lying going on; "mendacity" I think is the pretty word. There's a lot of hypocrisy, and that's not serving the citizens of this province.
Boy of boy, government members, you people in charge of the economy, this is not a good picture. Even while the Ontario economy is booming, we can't afford you. You are cutting back social assistance recipients, the people who recycle every penny in your local economy, my local economy. None of that money is going into money markets in Southeast Asia. It's all being recycled in the local economy.
There's another point I'd like to make. I currently am represented at every level of elected office -- municipally, federally, provincially. The current incumbents have all raised their pay in this term of office. I don't know if Herb Gray was the one who introduced the bill for the federal government, but it was certainly Rob Sampson getting his payoff to become the minister responsible for privatization that he brought in the pay raise bill, let's call it, and the immediate catch-up on the social contract. His payoff was a minister's portfolio for privatization.
If you really wanted to help the economy, you could lower the provincial retail sales tax and raise the minimum wage. The last time I spoke to a committee was almost two years ago on Bill 49, about employment standards, and I did not get any satisfaction there. We've been through a federal election where the federal Liberals were patting themselves on the back, breaking their arms, because they were claiming they'd raised in Ontario the federal minimum wage by 58%. That's right, it went from $4 to $6.85 an hour, while you continue to freeze it. It has been frozen for three and a half years, at $6.85 an hour.
I don't understand how the economy can afford you. It's such a major screw-up, and then wanting to throw money at constitutional lawyers because -- oh I guess you're perverts, I don't know. To me, it's a perverted thing to want to throw money at lawyers. I still think you need to think about half of your membership in the Ontario Legislature having families to deal with the situation that 62 families in London deal with, because the national child benefit is clawed back and the social assistance benefits for a family are lost. Government is cleaving itself to an ideology and I personally, obviously, am expressing I do not recognize where it comes from.
I'd like to entertain some of your questions. I'll only say that in addition to the money you're wasting, maybe the London Free Press covered the cheque signed by Ernie Eves for the Summer Games in London because they were also getting a paid ad for this committee. This bill is three paragraphs long. The level of incompetence that brings you here I understand is ideological, completely political. I want to answer your tough questions because when I ask myself, "Why do you do it?" I'm only ever going to be able to picture Rob Sampson, Ernie Eves, and why did you do it? Why did you raise your pay? Why do you cut social assistance recipients? Why? Why do dogs lick their genitals?
I'd be happy to answer your questions.
The Chair: That allows us a little over two minutes per caucus. We begin with the government.
Mr Skarica: Basically, you've portrayed a picture of politicians as fat cats and we're here somehow lining our pockets.
Ms Smith: Hypocrites.
Mr Skarica: I can tell you that before I came here, I was making substantially more than I'm making now. Mr Kormos over there as well, when he ran, was making substantially more than when he got elected. For you to portray us as licking our genitals, I find that quite offensive and insulting. I don't know how you expect that by insulting people they're going to come around and be swayed by your arguments.
Mr Kormos: It's not what she said.
Ms Smith: Your legislation insulted me first.
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Mrs Pupatello: You've brought forward some of the same points we've been making all day and in fact in all the cities we've been to. I am embarrassed to be part of this charade of hearings where the members from the government side made it very clear early on that this is very much an ideological position, that they were not prepared to change anything. The whole point was that it simply replaced a clause they slept through, so obviously they're not planning to change it. This is the clause they slept through. It's only one paragraph. They made it into a whole bill. They sent it to more hearings than the original bill ever got. It was clearly because they made a mistake. How much respect might the public have had for them had they said, "Look, we made this mistake and we're going to do this; we're not going through a change of hearings"?
Then it went through the political machinery back there at Queen's Park, where they could find a way to use Ontario taxpayer money instead of Progressive Conservative Party money, which they've got lots of. Most governments in government -- that party has a great deal of ability to fund-raise, this party especially.
Ms Smith: And the taxpayers subsidize it again, even that.
Mrs Pupatello: Even that is subsidized, I agree. So the very idea that we're doing this makes me laugh. Actually, we should laugh, but it's serious. This is real life here.
I think about the $800,000 ad campaign the government launched the day we were last in London, for Bill 142. The bill hadn't passed in the House yet and they launched a campaign that included radio and newspaper advertising telling the same people they mail a cheque to, by the way, about workfare. That was the point, so obviously it had some other hidden purpose which of course was to paint the picture, "These guys are making people work for their benefits." That's what they said during the election campaign, that's what got them elected and that in fact is not happening by miles, not happening by 97%.
Can you imagine the failure? Any government that would fail so abysmally at such a huge failure rate deserves to get the door next time around. I sincerely hope that happens and that people will recognize failure for what it truly is.
Ms Smith: I've actually tried to avoid ad hominem arguments, but really on a personal level, when you talk about people's volunteer work and volunteer efforts -- I'm looking at somebody right now -- I hope your mother never voluntarily donated labour to breast-feed you.
Mr Kormos: Thank you. As you posed your final sentence, your question, I understand that Bill Clinton is probably answering that question, as we sit here, in the secret hearings of the grand jury in Washington.
I suppose my concern, and you're wrapping this up today -- we debated Bill 142, we are dealing with Bill 22 now -- is that from day one there's been a failure on the part of the debate to be focused on who is poor in our province, why they're poor and how you address meaningfully the broader issue of poverty.
I approach that with some assumptions based on just my day-to-day life experience. Seniors tend to be poor, women tend to be poor, students tend to be poor, unemployed people tend to be poor and even certain classes of workers tend to be poor. It seems to me that the far more important question the Legislature should have been dealing with was to start to understand poverty and why certain people, because of their gender, because of their age, because of their class or their station in life, are inherently poorer, not because they're lazy or slothful or less deserving.
Part of my concern is that this government, with its ideology, creates this impression of poverty as deviant behaviour, poverty as deviance, hence their therapeutic and tough love type of power.
Ms Smith: Electoral power doesn't indicate any level of intelligence or understanding, necessarily. If you're looking at the root causes of poverty, I personally make believe that people want to deal with that, to fix it. It's still a very basic economic tenet that lower-income people continue to recycle their money, their assets and their labour, because there is all kinds of unaccounted-for labour, that's not calculated in the GDP, recycled in the local economy.
It really makes sense to honour that, not to cut that. The ideology of this government simply is something that Ontario, as it changes quickly -- I actually believe the demographics of who is poor or who has challenges for income and cash income aren't necessarily as cut and dried as mostly seniors, because then the issue is, who has assets? What is equity in assets?
The intergenerational transfer of wealth that is currently in the dramatic flux that we live with in Ontario and in Canada and in North America and other parts of the globe is something that should be keeping you people on the ball instead of this nuttiness, this nonsense.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. We very much appreciate your coming forward today.
This committee stands recessed until 10 am tomorrow.
The committee adjourned at 1516.