Legislative Assembly of Ontario

OFFICE RESPONSIBLE FOR WOMEN'S ISSUES

CONTENTS

Wednesday 13 October 1993

Office Responsible for Women's Issues

Hon Marion Boyd, Minister Responsible for Women's Issues

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

*Chair / Président: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC)

*Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente: Arnott, Ted (Wellington PC)

Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND

*Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud N)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC)

Elston, Murray J. (Bruce L)

*Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND)

Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent ND)

*Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)

Mahoney, Steven W. (Mississauga West/-Ouest L)

Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)

*Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:

Haslam, Karen (Perth ND) for Mr Hayes

Poole, Dianne (Eglinton L) for Mr Elston

Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC) for Mr Carr

Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia

The committee met at 1538 in committee room 2.

OFFICE RESPONSIBLE FOR WOMEN'S ISSUES

The Chair (Mr Cameron Jackson): I'd like to call to order the standing committee on estimates. We've convened today to begin the estimates for the ministry responsible for women's issues. We're pleased to welcome the minister, the Honourable Marion Boyd, and her deputy. We have seven and a half hours for consideration of this ministry. In accordance with the standing rules, the minister has her allocation of time; then we will proceed to the official opposition and third-party critics; and then have time for rebuttal before we get into question and answer.

If there are no questions, I'd like to welcome the minister. Please proceed.

Hon Marion Boyd (Minister Responsible for Women's Issues): Thank you. Members of the committee, I'm pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you today about the programs and activities of the Ontario women's directorate and the Ontario Advisory Council on Women's Issues.

It has been several years since the minister responsible for women's issues appeared before this committee, and I would like in my remarks to refer not only to current activities but as well to other initiatives introduced during my tenure as women's issues minister.

This year, 1993, marks the 10th year that the Ontario women's directorate has worked to achieve its mandate. As a central agency, the OWD assists the government in its commitment to achieving economic, legal and social equality for all Ontario women.

Our priority issues, including poverty, economic wellbeing, workplace discrimination and harassment, and the prevention of violence against women, support the government priorities of economic renewal and social justice. In speaking to you today, I want to outline ways in which the directorate carries out its mandate and works to achieve the priority issues that I've just mentioned.

First, I'll describe the agency's responsibility for a major government initiative, the strategy to prevent violence against women; second, I'll touch on a few areas where we assume the lead role in the development or administration of other initiatives specifically designed to benefit women; and finally, I'll talk about how in our role within government as advocates for women we work collaboratively with other ministries on issues relating to women's equality. In this process, we contribute to the development of policies and programs and analyse proposed initiatives or legislation for their potential impact on women.

Central to the work of the Ontario women's directorate is the recognition of diversity among women. The directorate works hard at ensuring that our policies and programs are inclusive and that they speak to all women in the province: women with disabilities, immigrant and refugee women, women who are members of racial minorities, older women, aboriginal women, francophone women, lesbians, all women.

One of the means by which we achieve this goal is through establishing partnerships with the community. Our partners are many and varied. We work with unions and corporations through our change-agent program, with aboriginal organizations in the development of a family healing strategy, and with ethnospecific community groups in the planning of our public education campaigns. You will see that these partnerships are reflected in the programs I will discuss throughout the course of these remarks. Our partnerships with the community are integral to the success of the directorate programs.

I would like to speak first about the government priority issue on which the women's directorate has the lead: the prevention of violence against women. I'll begin with a brief overview of the issue and then describe the directorate's prevention initiatives.

The government, as I have mentioned, has made it a priority to end violence not only against women but against children and other vulnerable people as well. The term "vulnerable people" denotes those who are particularly susceptible to abuses of authority or physical advantage. As everyone here in this room is well aware, wife assault, sexual assault and violence against women in general are the ugliest and most clear manifestations of women's inequality in this society. In a recent Angus Reid national poll, 97% of the respondents indicated that violence against women is an important issue on which governments should take action. When asked to rank issues requiring government action in order of importance, respondents placed violence against women at the top of the list, ahead of reducing the deficit.

This government has established ongoing initiatives to eliminate violence against women. The Ontario women's directorate leads and coordinates these initiatives. We chair the interministerial committee on violence against women prevention through which 15 ministries work on a comprehensive strategy to address the issue from a variety of perspectives.

The strategy comprises a three-pronged approach. The first is to provide services to victims. This component involves, for example, the funding of rape crisis centres and shelters for assaulted women through the Ministry of the Solicitor General and the Ministry of Community and Social Services respectively.

The second is to ensure that crimes of violence against women are adequately and appropriately dealt with by the criminal justice system. Related programs include victim/witness assistance programs through the Ministry of the Attorney General.

The third arm of the strategy is prevention and education. Our public education campaigns, with which you are all probably familiar, are part of the strategy.

The total government commitment to preventing violence against women in the 1993-94 fiscal year is over $95 million. This figure includes approximately $16 million that flows to the OWD and allocations to the base budgets of other ministries for the funding of shelter support and other services. Funding of the violence prevention initiatives accounts for approximately 70% of the directorate's annual budget, and of that 70%, 86% flows out of the directorate to eight other ministries.

In 1991, the government decided to integrate the sexual assault and wife assault prevention initiatives into a comprehensive strategy aimed at preventing violence against women. This year the OWD has undertaken a policy-based program review to explore the levels of efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of programs and services funded or approved under the initiatives.

As part of the program review, the directorate has consulted with those affected by the current programs and services to facilitate their input into the design of a comprehensive strategy aimed at preventing violence against women. Through a joint steering committee composed of staff from several ministries and community representatives, grants totalling $280,000 were awarded to 44 community groups and coalitions of groups across the province to hold their own public consultations. The results of the consultations will be compiled and presented in the form of recommendations to me, as minister responsible for women's issues, very shortly. We will continue this community partnership to ensure that the new violence against women prevention strategy is as responsive as possible to the community's varied needs.

As I mentioned before, public education is an important component of our violence prevention initiatives. The Ontario women's directorate may best be known for its annual awareness campaigns aimed at preventing violence against women: the wife assault campaign in November and the sexual assault campaign in May. Public education is essential to our strategy to end violence against women. Victims of violence continue to need shelters and other support services, but unless we make a long-term investment in prevention, in changing attitudes, the abuse will continue.

The television ads for both our wife assault and sexual assault prevention campaigns are familiar to most Ontarians, and the directorate is regarded within Canada and abroad as a leader in public education on this issue. The campaign messages have evolved as Ontarians have become more aware of violence against women.

In the current campaign, our key messages are that men, not women, are responsible for ending men's violence against women, that the term "wife assault" encompasses a broad range of abusive behaviours, and that any unwanted act of a sexual nature is sexual assault. Our shift in focus towards men's responsibility is in part to counteract the widespread tendency to blame the victim. It also enables men to feel more involved in and committed to fostering, with women, a non-violent community. These ads have proven highly effective. They've won numerous prizes, including the Television Bureau of Canada's "Bessie" award for excellence in public service advertising.

As part of our evaluation of the campaigns, market research is regularly conducted to evaluate their effectiveness, and the evaluations are yielding encouraging results. In 1990, for example, 71% of the respondents considered threats to be a form of wife assault, but in 1992, 91% felt this to be the case. Some 74% of respondents agreed that it is up to the abusive man to change his behaviour, and men, at 77%, were more likely to agree with this viewpoint than women. In the case of sexual assault, 87% of adults and 90% of teens felt the campaign would help men realize they should have clear consent to sexual activity.

The campaigns appear to be doing what they set out to do, and although we have a long way to go before violence ceases to be a major threat to women in this province, we can take some satisfaction in knowing that we are headed in the right direction.

The ads for both the wife assault and the sexual assault prevention campaigns are being run for a cycle of three years. This approach has the advantage of reinforcing the campaign messages over time, and of course is highly cost-effective.

In planning our campaigns, we have developed a unique model of community partnership. A community advisory committee composed of service providers and representatives of ethnocultural groups from around the province participates in the development of our campaigns from the beginning. The OWD staff and community-appointed co-chairs coordinate the process, and through the process we are ensuring that we are developing components of the campaigns which are culturally appropriate and which will reach a greater proportion of women and men in the province.

As an example, we have worked with 39 community groups which wrote and reviewed wife assault brochures in 17 languages, including Somali, Cambodian and Farsi. We broadcast our wife assault radio ads in 11 languages, including Micmac, Ojicree and Greek, and we run newspaper ads in 14 languages. This year, in partnership with our community advisory group, we will be developing original radio ads in French and five other languages.

Another important component of our campaign is the local public education grants program. We award more than $400,000 annually to community organizations across the province for public education projects geared to the needs of their own communities.

As part of each campaign, more than 100 groups mount activities to reinforce the campaign themes within their own communities. The combination of a large-scale mass media campaign and the community-specific local projects ensures that our messages about violence against women are heard by all Ontarians in a manner that is most appropriate and most meaningful to them.

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The issue of family violence within the aboriginal community came into sharp focus with a report entitled Breaking Free, released by the Ontario Native Women's Association in 1989. That report revealed that aboriginal family violence is widespread, intergenerational and not adequately addressed by existing provincial violence prevention initiatives.

Our government entered into a partnership with the aboriginal community in order to address the challenge of reducing family violence within the aboriginal community. This partnership model is one of both community and interministerial collaboration.

Initially, the directorate and the Ontario Native Affairs Secretariat, or ONAS, entered into a partnership jointly with eight aboriginal organizations, both on and off reserves. We formed an Aboriginal Family Violence Joint Steering Committee, composed of 11 government ministries and the eight aboriginal organizations. An aboriginal representative and an OWD staff person co-chaired the committee.

The partnership resulted in the most comprehensive consultation ever undertaken with aboriginal people in Ontario. More than 6,000 aboriginal people in 250 communities participated in this community-based process.

The consultations resulted in the development of guiding principles which were approved by cabinet. In July of this year, the steering committee completed a draft report outlining a holistic strategy for family healing.

Along with the aboriginal community, four government ministries now share the lead on developing the implementation strategy for this project: the OWD, the native affairs secretariat, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The aboriginal representative remains as the co-chair as we work towards implementing the family healing strategy and as we move towards aboriginal self-government.

One of the important challenges facing the OWD this year, along with all government ministries and agencies, is finding ways to continue to meet the needs of Ontarians in this time of declining financial resources.

When it comes to providing services to Ontario women, one program consistently seeking funding is the operation of women's centres. The women's centres are community-based organizations run by and for women. They link isolated, marginalized women to services within government and within their own community. These services may include career counselling, settlement support for newcomers to Ontario and the provision of resource materials in languages other than English and French.

As well, women's centres offer their clients a chance to meet other women with similar backgrounds and experiences. Among those who benefit most from services provided by these centres are women with disabilities, immigrant and racial minority women, aboriginal women and other members of communities that have traditionally been underserved.

Recent decisions affecting government, community and private funding have made it difficult for women's centres to continue to operate. Women's centres, for the most part, have subsisted on a combination of funds from various sources. Some women's centres were in danger of closing, and that's why I'm especially proud that we have managed to provide a total of $1 million in operational funding to stabilize 20 women's centres in this province.

All ministries have contributed to this fund, because our government believes that the support of women at the community level is key to the achievement of equality and social justice. The funding of women's centres underscores our commitment to meeting the needs of Ontario women, especially those women whose needs may not be met by mainstream means of support.

The stabilization funding is being administered by the OWD and issues related to the administration of this funding will be reviewed and evaluated in two years' time.

The directorate's more established funding program, the one that is probably familiar to the community, is our community grants program. The program is founded on the principle that grass-roots women's organizations have a wealth of expertise and ideas for projects which will benefit the women in the province.

The directorate awards grants which range from $1,000 to $24,000 to women's organizations for projects on violence against women, poverty and economic issues, workplace discrimination, the balance of paid work and family responsibilities. We produced an award-winning, plain language Guide to Community Grants, reflecting our commitment to make the grants program more accessible to women with disabilities and to all Ontario women.

In 1992-93, we awarded $878,000 to 101 community organizations across the province. This past June, 32 groups received a total of $327,606 in grants. The community grants allocation for the current year is $749,200. The community grants program gives meaning to the word "empowerment" by allowing community groups to determine their own needs and to design the means of addressing them.

I would now like to focus on the economic aspects of women's equality. We, as a province, are trying to adjust to the unprecedented changes our economy has undergone in recent years. With hundreds of thousands of Ontario women and men having lost their jobs and with industries that once would have closed temporarily having shut down permanently, our economy is restructuring and adjusting to the new reality of a global economy. We need to address the impact of these changes on women and ensure that any economic adjustment is carried out within an equity-based framework, one which provides equal access to economic opportunities for all Ontarians.

Earlier this year, the OWD established an advisory body, the Advisory Panel of Women in Business and Industry on Economic Renewal. The panel brings together 17 businesswomen from across the province who have also been active within their own communities. The panel advises us about how women are affected by economic restructuring and how they can more actively participate in the economy and in the government's agenda for economic renewal.

The advisory panel is examining several key issues, including financial investment, community economic development, job creation and how job creation programs often fail women, self-employment, and women and pensions. Two meetings so far, held in June and September of this year, have generated some exciting ideas. I am confident that the Advisory Panel of Women in Business and Industry on Economic Renewal will provide valuable input into the government's plan for our economic future.

Changes in the area of employment hold great potential to increase social justice for women. When women are paid adequately for the work they do, when we are not dissuaded from certain occupations and directed into others, when the wage gap narrows from its current 30%, when the workplace is as hospitable to women as it is to men, only then will women have a chance at equality, because then we will have options, and in many respects equality for women is about options.

The Ontario women's directorate is continuing its efforts to increase workplace equality and employment options for Ontario women and is taking a leadership role in these areas.

Our change-agent program helps organizations introduce programs or changes to their workplaces which will benefit women. As an example, the African Heritage Educators Network and advisers from other black community organizations are developing a program to encourage young black girls to pursue their studies. This program includes mentoring, tutoring and other supportive measures.

In another project, the Ontario Federation of Labour is producing training material and programs aimed at eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace.

Xerox Canada, together with 11 other private sector organizations, has developed a video and training guide to support policies which help employees balance their work and family responsibilities.

By disseminating resources developed through our change-agent program, the Ontario women's directorate is able to transform the motivation of organizations willing to make changes into concrete initiatives which will benefit working women in Ontario, now and in the future.

The Ontario women's directorate takes a multifaceted approach to promoting economic self-sufficiency for women in Ontario. The OWD has worked closely with the office of the Employment Equity Commission to ensure that Bill 79, the proposed employment equity legislation, and the regulations governing it are workable, fair and effective. This legislation will undoubtedly enhance women's economic equality.

Other measures are necessary, however, to ensure that women of all races and abilities enter, remain and progress in the workforce and that they receive equitable remuneration. To that end, we have worked with the Ministry of Labour to expand the Pay Equity Act to include about 420,000 women not previously covered, and the government has passed additional amendments which strengthen the act's provisions.

The sharp decline in government revenues has required that we delay slightly the implementation of pay equity, but our commitment to it remains firm. In March of this year, we made a $50-million pay equity down payment to some of the lowest paid workers in the broader public sector. A significant number of the women who have benefited from this down payment are immigrant and racial minority women, traditionally the lowest paid in our society.

In addition to amending the Pay Equity Act, we have also worked with the Ministry of Labour to amend the Employment Standards Act so that all working parents are entitled to 18 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborns or newly adopted children. In short, we've increased protection for working women and indeed for all workers and have raised the level of equity in terms of the compensation for that work.

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Just as the women's directorate is concerned about women in the labour force, we are aware that women's employment options are shaped long before their first job interview. The directorate advocates for gender equity for girls and women in education and training. This includes promoting their integration into maths, sciences and technological studies and occupations and the removal of barriers to allow full access to post-secondary and skills training.

This summer the OWD acted as joint host, with the University of Waterloo, of an international conference entitled Gender and Science and Technology, also known as GASAT. GASAT brings together international delegates who share a common goal: removing the barriers to girls' and young women's pursuit of math and science.

Not only did the conference, which is the seventh international conference by this group, incidentally, provide an invaluable opportunity for the directorate to exchange ideas with other world leaders in this crucial area, but it generated a wealth of printed resources from which we and our international counterparts may draw in the future.

Because the Ontario women's directorate acts as an adviser and an advocate within government, much of our work is invisible in the sense that it doesn't result in programs that we can call our own. When we've done our job well, new initiatives or legislation introduced by other ministries are equitable for women.

The harmonization of work and family issues is one example. The directorate has consulted with government ministries to ensure that work and family issues are considered during policy development. We have also worked in partnership with the Management Board secretariat to help implement work and family policies in the Ontario public service.

In 1994, as a contribution to the International Year of the Family, the OWD will hold a national symposium on harmonizing paid work and family responsibilities.

Child care reform is another government priority issue in which the OWD has had significant involvement. The government regards child care as an essential public service which is critical to economic independence and is working towards stabilizing the child care system and improving access to services by the women who need them.

The OWD was instrumental in establishing a child care component within the government's Jobs Ontario Training program: 20,000 subsidized child care spaces were made available to program participants.

The Ontario women's directorate continues its advisory role on all other government initiatives having an impact or potential impact on women, including long-term care reform and social assistance reform.

Along with our efforts to advance the social and economic equality of women, the Ontario women's directorate continues to work for equity for women within the justice system. The OWD works collaboratively with the Ministry of the Attorney General to meet this goal. The relationship between these two organizations was strengthened earlier this year when I assumed the Attorney General's portfolio while continuing to serve as minister responsible for women's issues.

Within the last year, the OWD sat on the advisory committee overseeing the drafting of Bill 99. This bill, the Limitations Act, proposes comprehensive reform of the law governing limitations, the specified periods of time beyond which charges for various crimes cannot be laid.

The modifications to the Limitations Act, including the removal of the limitation period in some instances, will help female and male survivors of incest and abuse seek justice in their cases.

The OWD is participating in a federal-provincial-territorial working group to develop guidelines for court-ordered support awards. These guidelines are expected to make support awards more consistent, more substantial and more efficiently delivered. Because women continue to be the primary care givers in this country, the adequacy of support payments is crucial to women's economic equality and to reducing the number of children who live in poverty.

I would like to briefly mention the Ontario women's directorate experiences with both the expenditure control plan and the multi-year expenditure reduction plan. Our plan has been to minimize the impact of budget constraints on services for women. I expect that much of our discussion will focus on this area in our later discussions before this committee.

We have identified efficiencies in streamlining for costs and have explored opportunities with other equity offices for shared services and joint projects to reduce costs. Our approach has lessened the impact on the violence initiatives and on programs such as community grants.

Our office is on target in managing the budget reductions for 1993-94.

I would now like to outline the recent activities of the Ontario Advisory Council on Women's Issues. The advisory council, or OACWI as it is called, is a schedule 1 agency with a mandate to advise the provincial government on issues of concern to women. It has direct access to the government through the office of the minister responsible for women's issues, and the council provides a vital link between the government and the women of Ontario.

In 1991, our government sought to address a variety of concerns about the advisory council which Ontario women had communicated to us. These were concerns about the council's relationship to the community in terms of accountability and the diversity of its membership. We undertook an extensive series of consultations with the women of Ontario, asking them how to improve communication between ourselves and the provincial government. The recommendations arising out of those consultations helped to formulate a new mandate for the council.

The council's new mandate is to undertake community outreach and consultation. This includes holding regional meetings to gather the views of women on issues of regional concern and to provide information about government policies and programs affecting women. Council membership, under the new mandate, consists of 15 members and is composed as follows: three members from the northwest, three from the northeast and two from each of the southwest, central, east and Metro Toronto regions of Ontario, plus a chairperson.

The current council is the first to have been selected through nominations by the public. For the first time in its history OACWI has a francophone president, Jacqueline Pelletier. Ms Pelletier oversees a council whose membership represents aboriginal women, women of colour, women with disabilities, francophone women and white women.

The Ontario Advisory Council on Women's Issues celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The appointment of the current 15 members marks the beginning of an era in which the council represents, better than ever, the interests of the diversity of women in this province.

This completes my summary of the activities of the Ontario women's directorate and the Ontario Advisory Council on Women's Issues. I look forward to questions from the committee.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Minister, and thank you as well for providing the committee with a copy of your comments. That was very helpful. Ms Poole, I'd like to move to you, if I may.

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I'm very pleased to participate in these committee hearings on estimates for the women's directorate and, as critic for the official opposition on women's issues, I have a broad number of questions that I'm hoping we'll have opportunities to cover.

The minister explained at the beginning the mandate of the Ontario women's directorate and she basically narrowed it down to three different areas: first, the major government initiative on strategies to prevent violence against women; second, areas where the directorate has the lead role in the development of other initiatives working with other ministries; and third, as an advocacy agency for women.

Some of my remarks will focus on the violence against women strategies and initiatives, but others will be of a broader nature because one of my disappointments is that I believe the Ontario women's directorate should take a much stronger role as far as advocacy, provision of information and as a resource for the women of this province is concerned. A number of areas and directions taken by this government have been of particular disappointment to me as a feminist and as a woman who cares very much about issues of concern to women, because I don't see that the voice of the directorate was present when those issues were prominent.

The NDP government has said consistently that it cares about women and the issues that affect them, and that these issues are important in that they can be counted on to address them. Yet we're now over three years into the mandate of this particular government and I think the actions have shown that it has fallen far short of its commitments and its rhetoric.

I would like to go over a number of areas where we particularly would like to have seen more proactive measures on the part of the government or where we have been disappointed in the past. The first I'd like to bring to the committee's attention is the slasher films which are films that are very violent, which celebrate the brutalization and deaths of young women. They are now in Ontario and have been for a number of years, but it seems now they are proliferating and they can even be purchased or rented in the corner stores.

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It was almost exactly six months ago, in April, when I tabled a resolution concerning slasher films and actions that I would like the government to take. In fact that resolution was passed unanimously by the House. I was quite encouraged by that and by the support I received from members on all sides of the House, but I have been very disappointed. I had thought, from comments made on the government side that day, that action was imminent, yet it's now six months later and there have been no announcements made, there have been no specific plans tabled.

Just recently an interest group -- I hesitate to call it that, because it's much more than an interest group; it has been one of the motivators in trying to get action on this -- the Coalition for the Safety of our Daughters, gave me a letter from the minister to the group wherein she said what the ministry was doing, what action it planned to take in the immediate future. I thought it was very strange, since I have had correspondence and meetings with the minister on this, that she failed to let us know.

But when it comes to the Ontario women's directorate, I guess my disappointment is that this is an issue on which I thought they could have taken a very proactive stand. As an advocacy ministry, I would have expected them to be fairly visible in working with Consumer and Commercial Relations to stem the tide of these films. It may not be, in some people's eyes, an important issue, but I think as far as women and violence initiatives are concerned, this is one of the most horrible things I have seen, which I think all of the people in this committee would certainly not be very tolerant of. I've personally been very disappointed that there has been no action in that regard.

Another issue which came to my attention over the last couple of years is that of the Employment Standards Act to ensure the protection of home workers. I think many members of the committee will be familiar with this issue. I'm sure Ms Witmer would be, as the Ministry of Labour critic, because the home workers have been working very hard for a number of years to try to seek some provisions which would assist them to remedy their particular situation.

To date, I've seen a very thin consultation paper. I have been quite surprised at how slowly the government has acted on this particular issue. To me, it's one of equity and it's one that I think they would have support from all three caucuses on. Certainly I can pledge you the support of our caucus in remedying their plight. I would like to see the government move very quickly on it and I would like to see the minister responsible for women's issues take a very proactive and public stand in this regard.

Another area which is not under the direct control of the Ontario women's directorate but where I would have hoped they had been more proactive -- if they had been proactive, certainly it was invisible; I think the minister used that in her comments -- is with the family support plan. It's very crucial to women who for many years have faced obstacles as single parents, whose spouses have not obeyed custody and support orders and who are in dire straits because of it. There have been attempts by various governments over the last number of years in Ontario to try to remedy that.

SCOE, the support and custody orders enforcement plan, was the first one brought in by the Liberal government, but it was quite obvious after several years that the demands on that program were not being met and that there needed to be reform and adjustments to the program. It was a new program, one of the most proactive and progressive in Ontario, and I was very proud of that particular program. I had a very small and, I'm sure, very insignificant part in encouraging the former Liberal government to bring the program in.

There were certain things I would have liked to see. I supported fully the NDP government's decision that it would reform the program and bring in a different way of looking at ensuring that support obligations were enforced, but there were certainly things that our caucus was critical of.

We were critical of the fact that $850,000 was slashed from the budget at the very same time that $1 million was being spent on advertising to convince fathers with child support obligations to pay into a program that is now mandatory. It was our feeling in the Liberal caucus that the 25% -- a rough estimate -- of fathers who were meeting their support obligations should not automatically be a part of that program, that they should be taken out of it so that there would be more resources to deal with the problems. In other words, for the parts that weren't broken, why do you spend that type of money trying to fix it, because certainly the other 75% are major problems.

We aren't convinced that adequate resources are in the program. I know the minister -- I think actually as Attorney General you made the announcement in June, somewhere in that vicinity. I'd really like to get some viewpoints from her, as Attorney General and as minister responsible for women's issues, as to the success of their announcement and whether they are making progress in that regard.

One of the announcements by the NDP government this year which I was extremely surprised to hear the Ontario women's directorate silent on, and also the minister responsible for women's issues, was its decision to slash fees for all new general and family practitioners, paediatricians and psychiatrists practising in areas the government claimed were overserviced. This affected new practitioners.

In the original plan, the proposal was that they would have their salaries cut by 75% over the next five years; in other words, they would get only 25% of what established doctors in the area were getting. We were very quick to point out that in practical terms this meant that most new physicians in these areas simply would not be able to practise because this wouldn't even cover their overhead.

But what surprised me that the government did not look into this matter more thoroughly at the beginning was the fact that the proposal had a disproportionate impact on women, because if you look at the numbers, the majority of paediatricians and psychiatrists are women. Even in family practices it's true. It was obvious that it would be women who would be impacted more than any other group by this particular policy. Not only that, women who as a client wanted to have a female practitioner would certainly be limited in future by this particular proposal.

The government did back down on it. They did adjust their proposal. But what was really dismaying to me is that the government appeared to have done it without an impact study, without recognizing the impact on women. To me, this is the type of thing where I would have expected the Ontario women's directorate to leap into the breach as an advocacy ministry, because that is one of its primary roles, to be an advocate with other ministries. Why weren't they there battering on the door of the Minister of Health to say, "Look at the impact on women -- not only women practitioners but women who want to use the services of women doctors"?

I would really like the minister to talk to us about that and either explain why she as minister was not advocating in that particular direction, or if she was, why her voice wasn't heard, because to me, it just dragged on for a long time until we got that resolved.

One of the areas the directorate has been responsible for that I have really applauded for many years, both under the previous Liberal government and continuing under the NDP government, has been the efforts with respect to awareness campaigns on sexual assault prevention and wife abuse. I think these programs have been very effective and I certainly think they are helping to change attitudes.

That's why I was really surprised to hear last May when the minister gave her speech when she was announcing the campaign this year that many of the myths still persevere and the messages about the crime of sexual assault are not getting through. The minister had made that comment in her statement. The research quoted by the minister at that time provided evidence to suggest that perhaps we should review the campaign and its funding to ensure that scarce dollars are being used in the most effective manner to make sure that we are shattering those myths.

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Now it's just very recently, I think in August, that I heard via treasury board that they are actually going to have a program review and we certainly welcome that. Although on the face of it, it's been my experience that the ads are very effective and hard hitting, I think it's wise that we do take a look and make sure that we are going about this the right way so that we do break those myths.

I guess changing attitudes is one of the ways in which I was somewhat disappointed by the minister responsible for women's issues, because I know that she is a very strong feminist and that she has spoken out very strongly on issues of importance to women over the years.

There were a number of very disturbing incidents that happened over the last year where I was disappointed by the minister's silence, I guess is how I'd characterize it: the Grandview-Piper affair, the Bell Cairn affair, the Carlton Masters affair. For a government that has prided itself in encouraging women to break the silence, I think the silence was fairly deafening from the minister responsible for women's issues in these three areas.

I'd like to talk to the minister about corrective actions which have been taken not only in the matter of harassment but also dealing with the correctional institutions and how sexual assault training is going on and about some of the attitudes that were quite disturbing in the whole business about Piper and victimizing the victims.

Our caucus and our leader, Lyn McLeod, have repeatedly requested that this government release the Grandview report to the victims so that questions over the government's conduct in the affair, which have occurred over several decades and several governments, can finally be answered. We have critical answers that remain unanswered both in this and in the Carlton Masters case, for instance.

While they are different issues on the one hand, on the other I think it sends a disturbing message out to the women of this province if they do not feel that the members of the government are going to speak out very firmly, when these matters happen, and condemn them.

Another area where the Ontario women's directorate would not have direct control but where I would think it would or should be proactive in advocating is the area of child care.

The minister certainly knows, since she was minister responsible for women's issues together with being Minister of Community and Social Services for several years, that our caucus was disappointed in the solely focused approach on non-profit child care as opposed to focusing on quality child care, whether it be provided by the non-profit or the private sector. I think our first priority should be quality, not the type of service provided, and perhaps we can spend some time talking about the shift in child care from quality to ideology.

Mr Chair, how much time is left?

The Chair: You have about 12 minutes.

Ms Poole: There was an audit conducted last January of the community initiatives unit of the Ministry of the Solicitor General which is responsible for three programs: victim services, sexual assault services and wife assault services.

The audit provided several examples of waste and inefficiency within the unit. For example, it found that one employee had rented a car for a six-month period that included 26 weekends and five statutory holidays, and it was never fully explained why the car was needed for such a long period and over weekends and holidays.

Then there were other instances. An employee had an expensive ministry-owned cellular phone installed in her own car because she travels a lot. The only problem was, while this employee travels a great deal, unfortunately she doesn't use her own car very often to do it. There were instances like that that called into question whether some of the small items were being taken care of.

But there was another thing in the audit that I thought I should bring to your attention; The goals and objectives had not been defined in writing for the sexual assault services program and in fact the project plans for the program didn't exist. I think it's essential that when you have scarce dollars they be used in the most effective manner, and we do hope that the results stemming from the audits are being taken seriously.

We have still not been able to obtain a copy of the ministry's response to the audit, so we look forward to hearing what action has been taken to address this recommendation.

An audit was conducted a year ago on the issue of transfer payment accountability and the draft audit report found that while provincial funding to sexual assault centres had increased dramatically over the last few years, accountability had not been built into the system along with the increased funding.

Again, with provincial funding stretched thin, it is imperative that sexual assault centres be made fully accountable for the manner in which provincial funding is spent. Only then will we be able to judge whether the funding is being used in the most effective way to deal with women's needs.

There were certainly instances reported in the newspaper, instances in Barrie, Oshawa, Scugog. I myself was made aware of one in Timmins, which my colleague for Cochrane South would be aware of, where the accountability did not seem to be there and there were questionable expenditures. I think it's really imperative for the credibility of the program that we ensure that's taken care of.

I think the public, as the minister has indicated, is extremely supportive of initiatives to prevent violence against women, but it only takes a number of these instances being brought out before a public which is increasingly aware of misspending of tax dollars gets upset about it and perhaps changes its attitudes about being willing to spend the money. I think it's important that we make sure the money is spent properly so that women are getting the services they need.

One of the things that came up a number of times when I did a women's outreach across the province last fall and in the spring was that there are a number of shelters for abused women and their children that still do not receive core funding and have to reapply every year for funding.

It makes it very difficult for these centres to do long-term planning, staffing and programming decisions, and many of them were living basically hand-to-mouth and on donations from the community, which -- we certainly would encourage all transfer partners in this province to be using these resources, but I think it comes back to the fact that if these centres don't have adequate stable funding for their base operations and their basic operations, then they're not going to be able to meet the need for services and they're going to be spending a lot of their resources trying to survive as opposed to doing the services.

I'd like to ask the minister questions about that and whether there are plans to review this situation and ensure that the funding is stabilized for these existing shelters.

The other instance the minister actually brought up in her comments was the funding of the women's shelters, and we were very pleased to see $1 million -- I think it was $1 million -- committed to the women's shelters --

Hon Mrs Boyd: Women's centres.

Ms Poole: -- women's centres, which is entirely different than women's shelters -- to the Ontario women's centres to help them survive, but they still are very concerned that they don't have core funding. This is what they really want. They have proposed to the minister a model that is similar to, I think, British Columbia. I look forward to talking to the minister about that particular one.

One program that I couldn't really believe the province killed was the eight-year-old employment equity internship program, designed to boost the hiring of visible minorities, women and the disabled. This was a program that I think was a very positive initiative for women. The program was killed just weeks after it had been advertised widely and it drew in many applicants who were then very disappointed because they were told they had to look elsewhere for opportunities. That's something that perhaps we could discuss, whether there is any possibility of reviving that particular program.

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Recently the press reported the study by federal, provincial and territorial authorities called Gender Equality in the Canadian Justice System, and it's a very interesting report. Basically its conclusion was that sexism and gender inequalities are endemic in our legal system. They say at best our legal system ignores women's experience and at worst victimizes them by applying stereotypes.

When I looked at the expenditure control plan of the Ontario women's directorate, I saw that in several areas they have reduced funding for programs that would act to in fact reduce this particular charge of sexism and gender inequality in the judiciary and in the legal system.

One of them was to reduce funding for the training of crown attorneys on issues relating to sexual assault and wife assault and reduce funding for the administration of the victim/witness assistance program. I am hoping that the minister's response will be that it reduced inefficient administration or something, because I can't believe that at this time, when we're starting to grapple with this particular problem, this would be one of the targets for cost reduction.

The second one in that regard was to reduce funding for training on sexual assault and wife assault prevention for police and correctional workers. This again, in my women's issues outreach across the province, I heard in many communities. I heard it by the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses when they did their lobby. It's an ongoing problem.

On paper it sounds fine. There's police training and police sensitivity but it isn't there in actuality in a number of the communities. So to reduce funding for police and correctional workers in that particular area, I just don't comprehend that this is going to be a positive move.

The initiatives in that regard, including reducing funding for counselling programs for male batterers and an administrative program, was 10% of the Solicitor General's budget in that regard. It just seems to me that those particular cuts fly in the face of what we're trying to achieve.

One of the things I want to talk about directly -- I've alluded to it -- is the advocacy of the Ontario women's directorate. To the public eye, the directorate has been invisible and has been silent on the women's issues which face this government. I can tell you that I have not found a very cooperative attitude with the Ontario women's directorate when I have called for information or resource material. When I call for information about programs that are going on, quite often I'm referred to other ministries, saying they don't know.

The other problem I've had is that for I guess almost a year and a half, since I first became women's issues critic, I've been trying to get a list of the women's groups across the province. Last September I was promised that it would be coming any day, that they were updating it, and despite repeated requests we cannot get that information.

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): Me too.

Ms Poole: I hear the critic for the Conservatives say that she has had the same problem.

That concerns me on a personal basis, but it also concerns me as far as public education is concerned. It would seem to me that one of the major roles of the women's directorate should be to disseminate information and be a resource. Yet when I phoned and asked if I could have some resource material, I was told they were too busy to get it themselves but they did have it in their library. My assistant said, "Well, can I come down and look at it in your library?" and they said: "No, I'm sorry. We don't allow you to have access to the library."

So I'm saying, what's the use of having this resource if in fact we aren't having that opportunity? I would like to expand it not only for the opposition critics to have access to it, but I would hope that this is something they could provide for the public. I can tell you there aren't a lot of resources out there that are really accessible for women to find out information about women's programs and women's issues and some of the things we care very much about.

Over the coming days we'll be talking about accountability for funding. We'll be talking about the role of the women's directorate, sensitivity training, the impact obviously of the social contract and the expenditure control plan on women's programs. We'll be talking about their initiatives on violence and many other issues. I'm really looking forward to the next three days and what we can accomplish in a very positive environment.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Ms Poole: Do I have 30 seconds left?

The Chair: No, but I should indicate that in the process of estimates we would deem your statement about the lists as a request and therefore it is now coming through the Chair as a request for members of the committee. The minister will have an opportunity to respond, and she may wish to. But that would come to the Chair now as a request and we would hope that it would be furnished during the course of these hearings.

Ms Poole: I would certainly welcome that, and thank you, Mr Chair.

The Chair: I just wanted to let you know I was treating it as a request.

Ms Poole: Yes.

The Chair: If I could now move to Ms Witmer, you have up to 30 minutes for your comments.

Mrs Witmer: I would just concur. I attempted to get a list of addresses and phone numbers in order that I could contact some of the people whom we relate to and I was told that information would not be made available to me. It's very frustrating to try to help women when you can't even get a list of the women throughout the province who are going to be impacted by some of the work that you're trying to do.

My staff just simply couldn't believe the response they got when they asked for that particular piece of information, so I hope that will be made available to us. We can't do our job if we can't access people and determine what their problems are, whether it be women in shelters or the transition houses or wherever. It's simply not there; it's not being given to us.

I'm pleased that we're going to have this opportunity to talk about the programs and the activities. I personally think that Ms Poole has done an excellent job of summarizing the concerns. I certainly would have to agree with her that I would concur with the concerns she has raised. One of my biggest disappointments has been that in the past three years I do see this particular group, the Ontario women's directorate, being totally invisible. I do not see them as being representative or advocating on behalf of women in this province and I think that's extremely unfortunate.

Some of my remarks today are going to focus on the area of health. That's an area where we need advocacy on behalf of women, and it has been totally lacking. I feel that when we've asked questions in the House, we've been always encouraged to approach the minister responsible for a particular issue. I guess if that's the case, then why have a minister responsible for women's issues if we're not getting answers? Why have an Ontario women's directorate if it's not advocating on behalf of all women in this province?

Sometimes I see a focus on a very narrow issue and a special-interest group issue but I really don't see it reflecting women in this province. In fact I would suggest most women in the province aren't even aware of the fact that this is available to them, so I really question, I guess, the value of the directorate at the present time or whether or not it's even necessary.

I want to just briefly touch the major government initiative that you talked about, and that was your strategy to prevent violence against women. You talked about the need to have a community partnership "to ensure that the new violence against women prevention strategy is as responsive as possible to the community's varied needs." That's on page 4. That's kind of interesting, because I received a media release from the YWCA of Kitchener-Waterloo on September 30, 1993. As you know, the YWCA serves women and children and it has since 1905.

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This is the heading: "Mary's Place Loses All Provincial Family Violence Funding." It goes on, and I'm going to read the whole thing because I think it's important. What has happened here does not reflect what I've just heard.

"Mary's Place, the YWCA's emergency shelter, did not receive one cent out of $126,000 new annual dollars which are being allocated to Kitchener-Waterloo for services to victims of family violence. Yet, for the vast majority of over 400 women who seek refuge at Mary's Place annually, long-term abuse by those they love is the leading cause of their homelessness.

"`At any given time, 70% to 85% of the women in our 61-bed shelter are living with nightmares of childhood sexual abuse, frequent and severe beatings, or abandonment by their families,' said Chris Willette, director of Mary's Place. Since January of this year, 53 residents fled to the shelter out of abusive relationships. `We can offer safety, a decent room, good meals and some social support; however, whether a woman is in an acute crisis or suffers the debilitating effects of manifold abuse over many years, she needs much more than these basics,' said Doris M'Timkulu, executive director of the K-W YWCA.

"Thanks to a demonstration grant during the past 17 months" -- and that was part of the provincial wife assault initiatives in 1991 -- "the YWCA was able to employ an experienced counsellor who assisted these women, individually and in a group of other survivors, to take a step at a time away from further harm on to a road towards healing. This has abruptly come to an end." They were told in August there would be no further money available to them in September.

"Mary's Place is an alternative to Anselma House when that shelter is full, or for women who have problems fitting into the environment there. `When we are full, as we were in July with an occupancy rate of 105%, one of the agencies we refer women to is Mary's Place. They are a vital part of the network of services available to women in this community,' commented Sue Coulter, executive director of Anselma House.

"The cost at Mary's Place is a fraction of any alternative. `Does it make any sense that government is ready to pay for a battered woman to stay at a motel where she has no support and little, if any, safety, but refuses to pay for her stay at Mary's Place?'

"`The decision by the Ministry of Community and Social Services is simply incomprehensible,' said Dana Tunks. `We have repeatedly shown the ministry how essential a service we are providing. With budget and service cuts in many service sectors, Mary's Place has become the only place of safety in a net full of holes. We are saving the government a huge amount of dollars by keeping very vulnerable women -- and children -- out of high-cost hospitals, addiction services or even correctional institutions. Yet, the only government grant we are receiving for Mary's Place covers one counsellor position.'"

These people are looking for support from this government to help women in need, and the funding has been totally removed. So I really question the truth of the statement that was made where you're looking at community partnerships to ensure that the new violence against women initiative prevention strategy is responsive.

There was a solution, there was a partnership in K-W, and now that funding has been totally eliminated. We now have women and children who are being sent to a motel, as opposed to a safe facility here. Now it's left up to the community, I guess, to subsidize that particular program, if they continue to operate.

I'm not sure whether or not the Ontario women's directorate, the advisory council and this whole area are responding to the needs of women in the province at the present time. I'm not sure if it's really kept up to what's of concern.

I want to focus now on the health care system. I'll tell you, I become extremely concerned about our health care system, because women are being and have been treated differently than men, and I don't see anybody advocating for women at the present time.

Women are taking a look at cardiology, they're taking a look at cancer treatment and many of them, I can tell you -- and these are ordinary women, they're not special-interest groups. These are women from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, disabled or visible minorities, it doesn't matter. They're saying, "Why are our needs not being met?" We know, because it was pointed out in the American Medical Association report, that gender is a factor in patient access to kidney dialysis, transplantation and the diagnosis of lung cancer and coronary catheterization.

Women have been treated, and I think we need to acknowledge this, at times as guinea pigs in the fields of gynaecology and psychiatry. We've had thalidomide, we've had DES, we've had the Dalkon shield, we've had the faulty breast implants, we've had the controversial hormone replacement therapies and women have been subjected to an endless array of mood-altering pills and drugs.

Unfortunately, most of the medical research in the past has been conducted largely by males on men and to the benefit of men. A leading example is the 1988 study of 22,000 male physicians that found men can lower their risk of heart attack by taking aspirin every other day. Researchers couldn't even tell us at that time if the same would hold true for women because there were no women tested. According to a recent report in the Economist, even breast cancer treatments are sometimes tested on male mice because females are smaller and costlier, with hormonal cycles that make them harder to understand.

Scientists have offered us two reasons for excluding women from their studies. The one reason they give us is that the menstrual cycle might affect the results and that they could become pregnant during a drug trial and this raises the risk of litigation should something go wrong. Physical differences between the sexes, including menstruation, body fat levels and the ability to absorb the metabolized drugs, means that tests on men do not necessarily determine how much of a drug a woman should take or whether she should take it at all. So I guess we have a problem here.

Fortunately, at the present time, and it was raised by Mrs Poole, we know that many of the women in medical schools are doing an outstanding job and actually women are now roughly half. I think we're going to see some changes and I think that's very positive, because certainly there is a need for medicine to start treating men and women much more fairly than they have in the past.

I think we need to recognize that women suffer from many health hazards and certainly poverty is one, and there are many women who suffer because of poverty. We have the single mother but we also have the senior citizen who suffers from poverty, a health hazard. Racism, low self-esteem, sexual harassment, and even full-time homemaking can be a health hazard. Certainly we know that research indicates to us that the monotony, isolation and job dissatisfaction can even put a full-time housewife at far more of a health risk than women who are paid for their work. This is what we need to start acknowledging.

Unfortunately, as well, women often belong to minority groups, which do not receive the medical care that they need. Sometimes these women are overworked, they're exhausted and they're poor and many of them come from highly authoritarian cultures, and so that's a unique problem in itself. Even after these women have lived in this country for many, many years, they are still not comfortable asking their doctors questions and these, I guess, are some of the problems that we face in this province, and that we face throughout the entire country of Canada and probably the United States as well.

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I guess the first question I would have to the minister, and I don't know if you want to write it down and respond to us at another time, is that I would really appreciate a complete list of initiatives or actions that have been taken by this government that are designed to meet the health needs of women.

I'd like to move now into some specific health areas that I know there is growing concern about. I'll start with in vitro fertilization. We know that this is an area that has been identified as one which might be delisted by the province. I can tell you, I've received many letters from constituents who are very concerned about this action. I guess one of the concerns they have is that this does enable them to have a child, and obviously that's extremely important, but they really question why we would delist in vitro fertilization and yet we would continue to subsidize abortions -- one, two, three or four. They just can't understand how the system works, why you'd delist one and yet you'd continue to pay for abortions as many times as abortions were required. I put that out there because I think you need to deal with that. They believe that infertility deserves treatment just like any other medical condition. We know that one in 12 couples of child-bearing age is infertile, and I think that's extremely important to remember.

I guess the concern we have within the PC party is that if you take away the funding for infertility treatment, it's going to create a two-tiered medical system. People who want it will still be able to access it if they have the dollars to pay for it. The other thing we're going to be doing is discriminating against the female who is infertile. I think you have to have gone through the experience yourself or know someone closely who has to know how extremely devastating that experience is.

It's also going to increase the likelihood that other treatment protocols will be continued when no longer appropriate and thereby may actually increase the cost of OHIP. Apparently, at the present time, in vitro fertilization costs $4,500 per cycle, plus $2,500 in drugs. OHIP pays $1,500 per cycle. We need to recognize that many insurance companies are in the process of deinsuring the drugs and we need to recognize that IVF is a proven medical treatment which has been considered non-experimental since 1985 and also that IVF is the only appropriate medical treatment for some instances of infertility, such as missing, diseased or blocked fallopian tubes. For these people who have those problems, IVF is their very, very last chance to have a child born to them, and we know that nowadays, if you want a child, and there are many couples who do want a child, adoption is simply not an option any longer.

Personally, I think it's a question this government needs to take a look at. I guess I go back to what I said before: You have chosen to fund abortions and yet the funding for the opposite end of reproduction is possibly going to be withheld in the future. I don't personally believe it's fair and equitable, and my questions to you, Minister, are: What assurances are you prepared to give to the families that this service will not be delisted in Ontario? How can you justify funding one side of reproduction and not the other? How much money is actually being spent on IVF each year by the province at the present time?

The next area I'll go to is breast cancer. We know that the waiting list for breast cancer radiation treatment in this city, Toronto, is again overflowing, and unfortunately these women, who are extremely vulnerable, emotionally very dependent on their family and their friends, are being forced either to go north for therapy, alone, without their families and the support of their friends, or to wait for the services in their home towns. I have to tell you, I find it totally, totally unacceptable that this would be happening.

In September at least 13 women were placed on waiting lists for radiation therapy in the Metro area. We know that five of the women did go to Sudbury, North Bay or Kingston for radiation therapy rather than risk a 12-week wait for services, eight of the women have decided to wait 12 weeks -- three months, five of the women are ineligible to travel for social reasons, because they have dependent children or family members, one woman could not travel for medical reasons and two others have refused the five- to six-week stay away from home to receive the almost daily doses of radiation therapy.

The optimum time frame for radiation treatment following referral and surgery to remove either a cancerous lump or a breast is six weeks. I am aware that in February an additional radiation oncologist was hired in Toronto to help reduce a 14-week wait for services. However, I think we also need to get it on the record that, between June 1992 and February 1993, 114 women were sent to North Bay or Sudbury for treatment. I don't think there is an issue I presently feel more outraged about than this particular issue where we are forcing these very, very vulnerable women -- I mean, if anyone has had cancer, particularly breast cancer, you must realize how totally devastating this is. Yet we're saying to women: "We can't treat you in Toronto. You will either have to wait 12 weeks" -- which is far beyond what is recommended -- "or travel north." It's totally unacceptable.

I wrote to you in February of this year, Minister, regarding this issue. I asked for immediate action by the provincial government to address the lack of breast cancer prevention and treatment programs and facilities in this province and the inadequacy of our health care system's response to breast cancer, and yet the situation has not improved. This is an area where the Ontario women's directorate could be taking a strong advocacy role. This is an issue that relates to every woman in this province. We are all vulnerable.

I would certainly have these questions for you regarding the elimination of the waiting list: What action was taken earlier this year to meet the demands for breast cancer radiation treatment? What action has been taken recently, since we learned about the problem again in September? What action or plans are being made to avoid waiting lists for radiation treatment in the future? What assurances is the minister prepared to give to ensure that services will be made available here in Toronto? Could the minister also table a list of locations in the province that provide services for women with breast cancer and the amount of money that was allocated to those sites this fiscal year? Could the minister table a list of sites in the province that have facilities to detect breast cancer and the amount of money allocated this fiscal year?

I'd like now to take a look at the area of cardiovascular care. Although this has long been recognized as an area where men are considered to be the prime candidates for heart problems, we now know that in March of this year the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada reported that cardiovascular disease kills nearly as many women as men. I personally don't believe that women in Canada or this province are aware of the fact that they are just as susceptible as men are.

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In fact, the stats were as follows: 36,266 women versus 38,823 men. That was in the year 1990. The difference is quite insignificant. Yet we really aren't dealing with it as it relates to women. In fact, the issue of gender bias in both cardiac care and research dominated this year's annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology. We know there is a bias, and certainly the bias needs to be addressed.

My question to you is, have any measures been undertaken by the government to combat cardiovascular disease in women? If so, I'd appreciate the details.

I'd like to turn now to the detoxification services for women. I have in the past expressed my concern about the availability of detoxification services for women. It appears again that there seems to be preferential treatment for males, and yet there are many women who suffer from the same problem.

I indicated in April 1991 that one out of every four women who sought treatment at Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital's detoxification unit was turned away because of a bed shortage, and of the 21 beds at the detox centre there were only three for female patients. You can see the unfairness of the situation as far as treatment of females is concerned.

If you take a look at the other facilities within the province in the area of the health care system, if you take a look at the addiction services, you will see that most of them have been primarily designed and developed by men for men. I think it's important to recognize that entrance into a detox unit is often the first step in rehabilitation from alcohol abuse. If we don't make this available to women, they don't have the opportunity to stop the abuse.

I'd just like to mention here that when I talked about the fact that addiction services have been designed and developed by men for men primarily and not for women, another area where we do a very, very poor job, and I guess one that I feel very strongly about because I don't see any changes taking place, is children, young people. I'll tell you that we in this province probably are in a worse situation today, in 1993, than we were in 1990. We have more young people than ever before. In fact, I have many parents, particularly mothers, come to my office telling me about their teenagers and their 14-year-olds, their 12-year-olds who suffer from severe addiction problems, who have become violent, who have behavioural problems. I'll tell you, in this province there's no treatment. I've helped many of them access treatment in the United States. Of course, we know OHIP no longer provides for that type of care. This is an area I think women should be advocating for, and that is treatment for their children as well. It's simply not happening. It's an area where we're totally lacking.

My question to you, Minister, is, I'd like the locations and the number of detoxification beds that are available for men in the province at the present time as well as the number of beds that are available for women, as well as, are there any available specifically for teenagers?

Just tell me when I'm done. Three minutes?

I'll deal with teenagers and sexual diseases as the last part. A report that was released last year by the province's chief medical officer of health found that it's the young teenage female who suffers the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases of any age group, whether male or female. It appears it's the young women between the ages of 15 and 19 who are infected with gonorrhoea and syphilis etc, far more than the males in the same age group. We know that if some of these diseases are left untreated, they can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease. We know that's a cause of female infertility, so there really is cause for genuine concern.

My final question to you would be, what measures have been undertaken by the government to combat the high rates of sexually transmitted diseases in teenaged females? I'd like the details of the measures that have been made available.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Witmer. In accordance with the standing orders, the minister has still left to her up to about 30 minutes to handle any of the responses as she sees fit. So, Minister, that time is now yours. Then we'll proceed with ordering up our business to complete the balance of the estimates.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I think the issues that have been raised about the role of the directorate within government and what it means to be an advocacy ministry within government are very important, because it's the problem the directorate has always been faced with under all governments.

When a minister is a member of a cabinet and a directorate is a part of the civil service, the role is different than it is if you are an out-of-government advocacy agency. That's why the advisory council on women's issues tends to be the place where that outside advocacy actually lodges. And you're quite right, there has been quite a silence on that side, because since 1991 we have been reorganizing the advisory council. The appointments were really only made and the council has only begun to undertake its new mandate over the last six months.

I'm quite convinced that we're going to find the new council, given its representative nature and the fact that the nominees have been nominated by their communities, to be a very effective vehicle for the out-of-government, independent kind of advocacy that I think we all would like to see. I certainly would. It's a different kind of advocacy than any civil-service-based, cabinet-minister-based advocacy can be.

I should tell you, quite frankly, that this is probably the biggest conflict that the members of the staff in the directorate have. Most of them are very strong advocates who come from their community and would like to be very outspoken when they find things going in a way that they would not choose by our sister ministries, which after all have the line responsibility.

Our job is to work within government, to use as much moral suasion as we can to bring forward the facts, the critique of the kinds of policies that are coming forward, as the policies are being developed. We are part of the cabinet committee process and monitor all of the cabinet policy and program initiatives that come forward with an eye to trying to convince ministers and ministries to take account of the effect on women of any policy changes, to see their policies within that equity framework that we were talking about.

We very often argue very, very hard against some of the policies that are subsequently adopted by the line ministries, but obviously we do that within the process of government. That is not always appropriately a public kind of process. I'm sure that both of you have colleagues who have been ministers responsible for women's issues in the past, and they will tell you that this really is one of the dilemmas that you have if you are an advocacy ministry within government.

The other dilemma that we have, of course, is that the decisions do get taken, in terms of budget means, in terms of the day-to-day policy issues, by the line ministries themselves. We will do our utmost to get our sister ministries to give us the answers to many of the questions you've asked; in fact, we'll be very interested in hearing the answers as well. But it is not the kind of detail or the kind of information that we normally would have in our directorate, because that line responsibility is such that many of the questions you have asked would more appropriately be asked during an estimates hearing on the particular ministries.

I think that's a really important issue for us to raise: How is that integration of women's interests done in a policy and a budgetary way within government? I think it's quite appropriate for us to be exploring it here, and in fact some of the issues you are raising are issues that are raised by the staff of the directorate and by myself on many occasions. I think it's wise for us to get those on the record as concerns that I think we share in many cases.

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We also have a philosophical issue. Ms Witmer suggested that perhaps we don't need a directorate, and I think most of us in our guts are sort of saying, "No, no, no, don't even suggest that," but it is something we need to be looking at over the next number of years.

First of all, was the way in which the directorate was conceived of and instituted 10 years ago the most effective way of making sure that women's issues become part of every decision that's made within ministries? There are those who say yes, certainly at that time it was, but it does revolve as a bit of a satellite around the edge, and I don't think any of us should deny that's the case.

My own vision would be that over time every ministry would have its own area which is particularly dedicated to the issues that women have, and we're beginning to see that. We've got the women's health bureau. Many of the questions you're asking, Ms Witmer, are the kinds of questions that the women's health bureau is most concerned about and has done a lot of work on, and it frankly needs the support of all of us in government in order to make sure that the work it does is appreciated and understood.

There are other areas where, when we suggest that it would be appropriate to have specific units looking at equity issues, there is resistance, and others where there is a growing acceptance that that needs to be, if we're really going to get gender equity in terms of our policies, a part of the program of government. I think that is beginning to happen.

So those are appropriate questions for us to be talking about. I don't think we should ever be afraid of looking at whether our organizational way of doing things is having the outcome we all want it to have. I think certainly when we went through our consultations two years ago on the advisory council on women's issues, the kinds of issues that you are raising are the kinds of issues that women were raising across the province:

What is the role of the advisory council as opposed to the directorate? Where is the information flow really supposed to be? How do they advocate directly and get information directly, and how do we work that through? Our answer, frankly, is that we believe empowering the advisory council to be more grass-roots in its approach, to provide the advisory council with the kind of information it needs to be the kind of advocate it ought to be on behalf of women, is probably the most important role we can play.

But I am concerned about both of your concerns about finding the doors closed to you in terms of information. That's something that does concern me and it is something we did hear during those consultations, that this sort of difficult role the directorate plays -- what is confidential, what is not, what is government property, what is not, how we actually do that kind of role -- is something that we're exploring as we do our whole look at where we are now and where we need to go in the future. So I think that's very appropriate.

I'll try to go through and answer some of the issues, and forgive me if I keep coming back and saying my role is to bring these things to the attention of line ministries and to work with line ministries and to press line ministries and to try and add my voice to that of line ministers who are trying to deal with specific problems.

The slasher film is a really good example, because the Minister of Consumer -- I always get this wrong; the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations is equally concerned. She and I have both met on a number of occasions with folks in both of our ministries, the Attorney General's ministry and CCR, and have worked with the women's directorate on how exactly we can go about dealing more effectively with this.

As you know, part of the issue is the federal-provincial jurisdictional issue about what is obscenity, what is not acceptable. How do we limit the rights of freedom of people to (a) conduct a business, (b) disseminate information, and so on?

Those are issues that we're working on together. We have jointly written to the federal government asking it to join us and in fact to try and get an across-the-country movement on this, and certainly at the federal-provincial-territorial meetings of women's issues ministers this is an issue that we have tried to raise and that we clearly are trying to deal with within our own areas at all the provincial levels. So that is the kind of thing we can do.

I cannot take away from the minister her responsibility for the Ontario film board. I can't speak over her or take over her policy, nor can she deal with the legal consequences, in terms of the Attorney General, in terms of this whole issue. We need to work together and to be advocating as strongly as we can within our jurisdictions. While that may not have had the outcome we all would have liked to have had as quickly as we would have liked to have had it, we believe it can be the most effective way in which we can deal with these things. You will know that the minister has taken a very clear stance with the Ontario Film Review Board around her own views on this, but the review board is an arm's-length agency and has decision-making powers of its own. That whole structure and how that operates is something that we are committed to looking at the effectiveness of in terms of the protective nature.

On the labour front, on the employment standards thing, we have been very active in the directorate with our partners in the Ministry of Labour on this issue. As you know, the Minister of Labour has had a lot of legislation that he has been bringing forward and has certainly advocated strongly. We both have jointly funded some of the projects to look at home workers and what their problems are, and we both are advocating very strongly with our colleagues in government that this is an area of legislation that must be looked at. This is a growing area of employment for women. It seems to be sold as something that's very positive, but we all know that the home worker sector is a very vulnerable and often very difficult to organize sector, and that's part of what makes protection difficult.

I wonder if we could talk about family support more in the context of some of the questions as we go on, because it is a complex area. I think we have made great strides since March 1992 in terms of improving the collection rates for those people who are on the direct deduction from payroll, but we continue to have problems with those people who are not on deduction rates. I think we need to talk about the whole issue of mandatory versus voluntary deductions from payroll, because it is my belief, both as women's issues minister and as Attorney General, that mandatory deduction is the only way in which we can collect these things. People often sound, in front of a judge, as though they're voluntarily going to pay their support, but the support dries up suddenly and without prediction, as many lawyers will tell us. That's a real issue for us.

The cost-cutting plans by Health: Again this is an area, as you're quite clear, that those initial plans did not go through, and part of the reason they did not go through was that many of us within government were particularly concerned about the effect of those plans on women's and children's health, particularly in remote areas of the province. We are advocating and we are working within the system to try to ensure that where there is a direct and a very difficult effect of a plan on women and children, we're advocating very strongly on those very vulnerable members of the society.

Again, I'm sure we'll talk more about the violence prevention campaign and its success or lack of success. It does take a long time to change attitudes, and one of the things I often say is that we need to look at this in the same light as the other major campaigns that we've seen in our society to change our attitudes and our behaviours: drinking and driving and Participaction. It takes a long time for those messages to come through, and sometimes repetition in fact needs to be over a period of time until that comes in.

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I'm sure you are well aware that no member of the government, no minister of the government, can make any comment on cases that are currently before the courts. All of the examples you used in terms of expecting people to speak out and to advocate are cases that are under investigation or before the courts. It is not possible when you are within government to do that kind of role without in fact jeopardizing the investigations and court actions. It is really a delicate balance as to how you advocate.

We as a government have insisted on the investigation of these complaints, unlike any other government. We have insisted that those investigations be carried through and that charges be laid where that is appropriate, where police officers make that decision and those charges go through. We are vigorously prosecuting where charges have been laid and we are very, very concerned to ensure that process does not get lost. We believe that's the best way in which we can advocate on behalf of victims of violence, by ensuring that they have their day in court and by ensuring that the kinds of processes we're putting into place to try and deliver the kind of compensation, the kind of counselling, the kind of support that people who have been victimized need are there. Certainly, in the case of Grandview our very clear commitment is to continue to work with the survivors' group and its counsel to try and ensure that we are moving along in that direction in a way that's going to be appropriate.

On child care, all I can say is that we've been very active in terms of child care policy development, active as part of the consultation process that went on, working with all of our contact communities in terms of advocating on behalf of their involvement with child care. It is not an ideological position alone, you know, this position we have on child care; it is a position that really arises out of our need to be accountable and to ensure that the community has a say in child care, that the public dollars spent on child care are clearly accountable through public means and that the decision-making that's made in terms of the programming, in terms of the delivery of those services, is at a community base and is accountable to the community, particularly the parents involved.

We believe, in this service as in other services, that the way to do that is through community-based boards made up of consumers and providers alike. That is the way to do it. To that extent, it's ideological, but it is not without a very, very clear commitment to quality and to a belief that quality is best ensured when there is an accountable process.

When we talk about the whole issue of the Solicitor General's audit of community services, again it's hard for me to comment on what is really the responsibility of another minister. I will say quite clearly, and I think the minister himself has said, that the community service area of Sol Gen is a relatively new area. Most of the funding that the Solicitor General has done in the past has been under the police services kind of service delivery, very different from community services. They did not, when they began providing community services in the way they are now, have an infrastructure that gave the kind of support to those community services and the kind of supervision to those community services that we see, for example, in the health sector or in the community and social services sector.

Certainly, I as a member of the community always was very deeply concerned about that lack of program support in that ministry for such an important program. We are finding in the discussions we are having around the province on the integration of sexual assault and wife assault services that this need for program support is very clearly felt at the community level, that some of the decision-making around the placement of particular sexual assault centres and the way in which those centres were set up was not initially accountable enough. I don't think anyone is trying to say it was. We are collecting in our consultation very strong views from the community, some of which are quite diverse and certainly not a consensus at this point, as to how to resolve some of those problems.

Those are exactly the kinds of problems we are trying to resolve, how we can ensure that this accountability is there and that every dollar we have is being spent, as much as possible, on direct services to those who need them. At this point in time, we don't have the luxury of not ensuring that this is the case. We simply know that public scrutiny is much too high.

Similarly, with the wife assault shelters the whole issue of funding has been a very thorny issue. It's shared, in most cases, between municipalities and community fund-raising, as well as provincial dollars and always has been since the shelters first began to operate in the early 1970s. The challenge for us is, how do we deal with that at a time when all of the budgets, the community-based budgets, the municipal budgets and the provincial budget, are under great pressure?

We attempted last year, in the disentanglement process, to take on the funding of hostels as part of our 100% funding under the GWA proportion. That was not accepted in the end by AMO. It was not an agreement that was signed. We still face the same issue: Should shelters be funded under the welfare act? If not, how should they be funded and how can we achieve stable funding across the board?

The particular question Ms Witmer asked about the Kitchener-Waterloo area is an important one, because it's an example of where the funding, through a particular ministry in a particular way, has resulted in something that the community sees as a loss. In that particular case, it was a demonstration grant that was always understood to be a temporary grant. The ministry in that area has a strong community component, in terms of its decision-making, as to what further grants go on.

We can certainly provide for you the information we have received from the MCSS on that particular issue and what the rationale is there. That's not to say that people are going to necessarily accept that rationale, but it is to say that there is one and that the intention certainly is to provide the best possible range of services given the budget restraints we have.

On the women's centres, I should correct the impression that this is not core funding. It is core funding, $50,000 to each of the 20 centres. It's only 20 centres, however. There are others in the province that were not part of the original applicant group that are not yet funded.

Ms Poole: But it's only for two years, is it not?

Hon Mrs Boyd: It's to be reviewed whether OWD is going to continue to administer it. We have not been a line ministry in this way before. We have taken this on because it's an all-ministry kind of initiative, but we may find, particularly as we go through our consultation on the best way to integrate the services, that in fact we don't have the program support out there for the women's centres. That is what we are hearing from them. They are concerned that we don't have a program supervisor in each area who can help them to look at their budgeting, to build the accountability, to do the board training, to really help with the government community relations. That is an issue that needs to be resolved. It's the delivery, though, who actually is responsible, rather than the funding.

It's our firm hope, because we're quite convinced that these organizations are very good value for the dollar in terms of the services they offer to their communities, that we will be able to convince our sister ministries to contribute even more so we can expand to some of the centres that haven't been caught at this particular time.

In terms of the employment equity internship, it has not been cancelled; it has been suspended for a year. One of the reasons for that is the very severe impact of the budgetary constraint and the social contract on government itself and the very strong belief of many employees that it's not appropriate to be doing that kind of specific internship at a time when we have so many fluctuations in staff and need to really pause and take a look at that.

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It's my real hope that this will come back and perhaps even be stronger than ever, because we're concerned about the effect of the downsizing on our own employment equity targets. It is certainly our position in the directorate that this is an important program. It has provided the seeds for employment equity in the past. We're very strong advocates of the program and we'll continue to be. It of course is managed by Management Board and, again, we can use our influence; that's it.

In terms of gender equality in the justice system, you can imagine that my double portfolio makes me particularly interested in this area. Perhaps we can talk in more detail about that. I can simply tell you that I would think a very high proportion of the time that we spend on interministerial activities goes on between OWD and the AG's ministry on this issue.

We have done critiques of the papers that have been provided. The directorate is involved right now in dealing with crown directives on wife assault and sexual assault and stalking and that sort of thing in terms of how to make those strong enough and clear enough that we allay some of the community fears.

We have of course in front of the Legislature, which is intended to improve the discipline for our own provincially appointed judges and the appointments process, the Courts of Justice Act, to try and encourage employment equity within the judiciary. Also, there is the requirement that the chief judge provide training and that this become part of the job description, if you like, of the chief judge, which we think is very important. Those are all issues we're most anxious to continue to deal with.

When we talk -- and I think we need to talk in fairly great detail; I'm hoping we can -- about our expenditure control plan, we have worked very, very hard with our sister ministries in terms of how these reductions have been done and how to fill the gaps. The Solicitor General, for example, in training, put its own dollars into making sure that the training did not get lowered in terms of its amount or its force. We didn't have the dollars. They then supplemented the dollars by taking dollars from another part of their ministry. The actual dollars spent on it are the same but the ones flowing through OWD are less.

In the case of the crown attorneys, we put the training together. As part of our integration of sexual assault and wife assault, we wanted the training of crown attorneys to be together. They need to understand how these two crimes interact with each other. Of course, we don't have the turnover in crown attorneys that we had at one time and we are finding that an increasing proportion every year of the crown attorneys who are working in the province have had the training and have developed a very strong interest in this whole area.

With respect to Ms Witmer's particular questions, most of them really centre around the health system, and I'd be happy to discuss some of the particular issues that are there in terms of our positions. The whole problem of women's services and whether they're funded to the same extent as men's services is one the directorate deals with all the time. We don't believe they are in Recreation; we don't believe they are in Health; we don't believe they are in Education. We basically have the same concern in virtually every ministry, and part of our job is constantly, as we go through the budget processes, to say, "Why is this a disparity and how can we begin to redress it?" We've had some successes and some not such successes.

I share your concern about the detox and addiction services. These are ones that I'm particularly concerned about. I know, having been on the board of an assessment centre, that the services just aren't there, there's no place to refer to. I hope we can talk about that more as we go on.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Minister. At this point, generally, the Chair asks the committee how it wishes to order up the balance of its five and a half hours. We have only one vote for the estimates for this office, so the matter of stacking the vote isn't really up for discussion. However, do you wish to go in rotation -- I'm in your hands -- or do you wish to --

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): Rotation.

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): Rotation.

The Chair: Rotation? Fine. Since there are 25 minutes left, why don't we do about 12 1/2 minutes each for the two opposition members and then we'll begin, when we next meet, with the NDP? In six or seven minutes, it is hard for anybody to get into an issue; that's how I'd like to proceed. I can give Ms Poole all 25 minutes, which is probably the most helpful way of going about it.

Mrs Witmer: You can break it into three.

The Chair: Do you want to try that?

Ms Poole: Sure.

The Chair: You've got seven and one-half minutes. Go for it, Ms Poole.

Ms Poole: I suspect I'll have to continue this questioning next Tuesday, but let's start on the Ontario women's directorate, its mandate, its operations and its structure. It's now 10 years old. Minister, do you have any plans to review its operations and structure?

Hon Mrs Boyd: At the present time, we're concentrating our review on the violence program itself. We're doing a very in-depth, program-based review of that major part of our mandate. As I said, it's over 70% of the funding that the directorate gets and therefore it's obviously the first place to start. It's an urgent place to start because we certainly are concerned that in these days of constraint, we may not be developing that.

Once we have completed that aspect of the work, we expect to have a great deal more information come out of our work that we do with our communities and with our sister ministries around what the best way is to proceed on that particular part of the mandate.

It may well be that will inform what we do on the home mandate, because if the demand from the community, which it is in some parts of the community, is that we become a line ministry and become the deliverer of all women's programs, we would want to go one way. If the information we get back from the community is quite the other way, that it's very happy, thank you very much, with the ministries that are now delivering those programs and that all they want to see is more administrative streamlining, then obviously that is not a strong mandate for the ministry to go in a different direction. We don't know what the outcome will be at this particular point in time.

Ms Poole: But that consultation is taking place or will be taking place?

Hon Mrs Boyd: It is taking place now. It's quite an extensive consultation. We can provide for you a list of the groups that got the grants and where the consultations have taken place and where they will be taking place.

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Ms Poole: That would be quite helpful. I would suggest that it would be appropriate, once you have your information from this review, to take a look at the advocacy portion of the directorate. I found your comments quite interesting, basically that the Ontario women's directorate could give advice or could give a direction to the line ministry, but there's nothing to encourage or mandate that the line ministry has to listen. It would seem to me that it's not a terribly effective voice if you have no mechanism to ensure that you're being listened to.

I was trying to think, as you were talking about it, how you might get around this to try to give some clout to the directorate. I remember way back, long ago, in a galaxy far away, when I was in government and for a couple of years I sat on the regulations committee of cabinet, there were a number of backbenchers on that particular committee. When they brought a pile of regulations to us, one of the first questions that we asked and that the various representatives from the ministries were required to answer was, "What is the impact on the community, what is the impact on the users?" and questions of that nature.

I am wondering if, when you're considering a restructuring after you've completed the consultation, one of the things you might look at is doing a similar thing for areas within the women's directorate mandate so that when a ministry institutes a program, one of the things it would have to look at and justify is the impact on women and whether in fact it had actually thought about it in formulating the policy and whether it had satisfied the Ontario women's directorate that it has done an adequate impact study.

I would submit just one other thing, the example of the new doctors and the fact that the policy was eventually changed. In the meantime, the Ministry of Health had gone forward with the policy that was quite detrimental to women, both from the practitioners' point of view and also from the users' point of view and yet it appears that question hadn't been asked.

Do you see any way you could put this kind of structure in place so that the question has to be asked and answered prior to a policy going ahead?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Let's be very clear in the case of the doctors, for example. That was a negotiating position that was taken with the OMA negotiations and the social contract discussions that were going on. It was not a policy that was firm, and when the ministry, of course, then discovered in its talks with the doctors that they didn't see that as a solution and they had an alternative solution, which the Evans committee came up with, then obviously at that point when they came to an agreement, that's when the policy decision-making came up.

We certainly talked about the impact we were having. I think every member here got letters in their constituency office and visited with people -- I suspect we all did -- and I think there was a lot of real concern among all members about the effect of this policy.

One of the things we have done to correct this is to make sure that our women's issues' minister is present at table. The women's issues' minister has been at the treasury board table, at the Management Board table, at the policy and priorities board table, at all the policy committee tables. We get the material, we go through it, we present our concerns and are present at the committee to advocate on those concerns when they are great.

Ms Poole: And that's a recent change?

Hon Mrs Boyd: No. Certainly, since I've been minister, that has been the way in which we have operated. In the budget, for example, the insistence upon the effect on women being looked at as we do these budget reductions has been a very strong insistence that we have had because we know how vulnerable this particular group is.

Mrs Witmer: I appreciate your responses to the questions and I have to tell you that certainly in all the dealings I've had, I've always found you most cooperative and most willing to provide the responses, and I really do appreciate that. I will be most anxious to get that response to the Y. I know they're anxious to determine their fate and make other arrangements, so if you could get that information to me as quickly as possible, it certainly would be appreciated.

I'm glad to hear you say you are looking at the role of the directorate. I think that's really important because I think the directorate has played a very important role and I think that needs to go on the record. Certainly, when I was chair of the school board, I was very aware of the role they were playing. Much of what they've done in the past is changed, because they've been able to achieve their goals.

Hon Mrs Boyd: That's right.

Mrs Witmer: For example, we now have pay equity, we now have employment equity, so many of the goals that they were hoping to achieve have been achieved and we need to take a look at, is there still a need for a directorate? If so, what should the new role be? Sometimes we determine, and I think you hit it right on the nose, really women's issues need to be considered by all ministries in all discussions.

I guess that's the value of having more female legislators. It's so that the issues that are important to women, and women represent almost 50% of the population if not more, be discussed equally, be given equal time, equal attention. I think as more women access public life and become active, the need for the directorate will disappear because those issues will be given the attention they deserve. I'd be interested in seeing where you go with that issue.

I just have one more health care issue and I will clean that up, because next day I want to focus on some other areas, but I did have some questions.

The last issue of health was abortion. I'd like to know how many abortions we've performed in the province each of the past 10 years, how many women have had more than one abortion in the past 10 years, where we provide abortions -- I'd like a list -- and how much money has been spent in each of the past 10 years.

Also, we have the Task Group of Abortion Service Providers' report on abortion services. There were recommendations that were made. I'd like to know the date of the implementation of the recommendations and the cost of the implementation of the recommendations that have occurred to date. Also, if there are further plans under way to implement some of those recommendations, I'd like the expected implementation date and also the cost. I can tell you, and you know that too, that there is a significant and large community that is particularly interested in that information, so I'd really appreciate that response.

My final question here is, what is the present cost to OHIP for an abortion?

That concludes the questions I had regarding the health care section. As I say, in the future I'd like to deal with some other issues. One of them is going to be education and training, employment equity, and violence against women; that's an area we still need to take a look at as well.

The Vice-Chair (Mr Ted Arnott): You have five minutes.

Mrs Witmer: Do I? Okay. I'll just deal with one more issue. It's kind of an interesting one. It's the case of those two female police officers in Orangeville. I personally found that surprising, I guess, to have that happen at this particular time in the life of this province.

Just to get it on the record, it is of course the two police constables who were sent home on unpaid leave because they were pregnant. The police chief in Orangeville maintains that they were laid off because there were no alternative assignments available to them and that to create assignments was going to impose some hardships on the Orangeville Police Service. The local police services board has upheld that particular action, and unfortunately it's had a very negative impact on the two police constables who were involved.

As I say, I can't believe that at this time in our province this is even happening. One of them has already been forced to lower her mortgage payments and dip into her savings in order to get through the next couple of months because of this. The women have filed grievances, as we know, with the police association.

Apparently the Orangeville police union's collective agreement states that pregnant officers can be laid off without pay if there is no alternative work available for them. That contract appears to contravene the Human Rights Code, because subsection 10(2) states the following,

"The right to equal treatment without discrimination because of sex includes the right to equal treatment without discrimination because a woman is or may become pregnant."

The provincial Employment Standards Act states,

"An employer shall not intimidate, discipline, suspend, lay off, dismiss or impose a penalty on an employee because the employee is or will become eligible to take, intends to take or takes pregnancy leave or parental leave."

I guess my questions are two: What action does the government intend to take to make it clear that this type of discriminatory behaviour is totally unacceptable? Also, I'd like to know the status of the grievance at the present time.

That concludes my remarks.

Hon Mrs Boyd: On the first question you asked, we will do everything within our power to get you the data you've asked for. I don't know that the Health ministry collects the data in quite the way you asked for it, but we will certainly do what we can. I know they do the numbers of abortions, where they're offered and that sort of thing, and I think we can find that for you, but I'm not sure that some of the cost breakdown you've asked for is something they collect. We would have to inquire of them how difficult it would be to come up with reliable figures on that.

In terms of the task force recommendations, at this particular point in time, we can certainly look at the ones that have been instituted and see if we can estimate at least the cost of full implementation of those. Many of them have not been considered as yet as policy items, and many of them have not been costed by the government.

They were the recommendations of the task force and in some cases look quite enormously expensive, and in other cases may not meet the public policy needs that our governments feels are important, but we'll try and sort through that and see what we can come up with, and perhaps do it so that you can ask additional questions if that doesn't satisfy. I think that would be helpful.

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In terms of the particular case you mentioned, obviously I can't talk about the particular case. I understand a grievance has been filed, as you say, in terms of the Police Services Act, and that's important, but I also understand a grievance has been filed in front of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

One of the realities for us as women is that very often our own unions, that are supposed to represent us, have in fact negotiated discriminatory contracts. One of the issues for us always is to try to ensure that there are mechanisms in law that enable people to object if they feel they are not being represented sufficiently by their bargaining agent. That's part of our responsibility, obviously, through either a specific act like the Police Services Act or any of the labour legislation, to ensure that rights are being upheld.

At the present time I'm not prepared to comment on the particular case, except that it is a disturbing example of how the kind of employment equity plan that was put in place under the new police act and the new regulations does not seem to be working well for individuals. Obviously, it's our responsibility to see how the attitudes that underlie those actions around accommodation can be done, because otherwise it affects our whole employment equity strategy. If it's easy to get around employment equity by saying you can't accommodate someone, then we have a problem that's much bigger than a particular example.

The Vice-Chair: I now turn to the government caucus. Mrs Haslam has a question.

Mrs Karen Haslam (Perth): On page 5, I zeroed in on this: In the case of sexual assault "90% of teens felt the campaign would help men realize they should have clear consent to sexual activity." Do you have any facts or figures on the percentage of teens involved in sexual assaults or violence against women? I remember hearing somewhere, in terms of the incidence of violence from boyfriends and the age of those involved, that the violence was increasing and the age was decreasing. Do you have any of that information available?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We could certainly provide for the committee some of the studies that have been done. They've been done for a number of different groups: For example, the recent federal panel did some work around statistical work, many of our community groups within their communities have done some work, there's the Rix Rogers study that was done for the government and so on. We will try to gather together a compendium of those statistics we do have available.

It's extremely difficult, with sexual assault in particular because of the high incidence of non-reporting, to really get an idea. It's very disturbing. I'll give you an example. One of our federal colleagues was speaking at the opening of the new institute for research on women abuse in London, the Centre for Research on Violence against Women. He said he had sent out a householder with a response form asking about this kind of abuse and got back an overwhelming response in which 48% of the women who responded said they had been sexually assaulted. He was shocked at that.

I'm afraid those of us in the directorate are not shocked at that. We're deeply hurt by the fact that this is a reality in our society, but we suspect that those figures are not outlandish at all. When you really start talking to large groups of women, when they understand what sexual assault is in all its manifestations and overcome some of the barriers of silence that have been placed on us, we find that an overwhelming number of women from all socioeconomic areas and from all racial and cultural and linguistic groups report very serious incidents of sexual assault.

Mrs Haslam: My main concern was that it seems to be more prevalent at an earlier age in a date situation. My concern is the young women in high school who almost accept it because it is more prevalent than we know.

That leads me to my second point about the education of people. You've talked about the television ads, the campaigns about wife assault and sexual assault. I've seen them, and some of them are very good, but I wonder whether some of them could be directed or redirected to look at younger women and the fact that it doesn't have to be tolerated in a date situation to have a boyfriend. My concern is the 15-year-old and the 16-year-old who have this situation and don't understand the situation but need education about that situation.

My other question was, how have the ads been received and how much have they cost? I'm not going to get all these questions in. How much has it cost the directorate? Is that value for money? Is it working out there? That would give me hope that perhaps we could look at a younger age and direct them more at the teens and the high schools. If it's working, then it's value for money. Should we look at that?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes. We can provide for you the statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training. They have focused on the date situation. Our ads for teenagers, which ran on the radio stations that had high listening rates for them, were specifically geared to helping people understand that date rape was a really endemic problem, and it was a problem for young men as well as young women to understand what consent was. We focused on that group, so we can provide you with the data on that and the response to those ads and also the details of the program the Ministry of Education and Training did.

Mrs Haslam: I don't want to just deal with date rape. I'm talking about hitting.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Oh, yes, the violence.

Mrs Haslam: I think young women think: "Well, it's not a date rape, therefore it's not sexual assault. It's not a harassing situation to be in." I'm talking about violence at that age that eventually will lead to rape or eventually may be date rape, but I'm more concerned about the acceptance of violent actions from boyfriends at a younger age.

Hon Mrs Boyd: First of all, the acceptance of power and control by young women is entirely counter to what we expect, given the emphasis on equality, and we are seeing a disturbing effort at that. I would say you've put your finger on exactly why we're looking at the integration of these programs. It's very hard to separate all forms of power and control from sexual power and control, particularly when we're dealing with young people: how they learn their attitudes, how they learn to relate, how they learn what to expect in a relationship with one another and how they learn to behave. That is a problem.

I also think we are seeing young people observing power and control behaviour between adults in a more overt way than they may have, and seeing that glorified in terms of our popular media in a way we may not have experienced as young people. Most of us as young people grew up in households where you didn't hit girls. Equality has its rough edge sometimes, and that may be part of what we're doing right now, trying to find out how to adjust around the power and control issues without having those rules we grew up with. How do we learn to relate voluntarily in a non-violent way?

Mrs Haslam: I don't know if I've got any time left.

The Vice-Chair: A minute and a half.

Mrs Haslam: Let me go into a supplementary along those lines. I think some people look at the amount of money going into facilities versus the amount of money spent on the ads -- I know it's been raised across from me -- and I'm sure there are people who say, what's the point of advertising services for women who have been victims of violence if that money is not there and there's no place for them to go and they can't provide those front-line services? As my time is up, I just wanted to pass that comment on. That's why I wanted to know how much was spent and what the effectiveness of those ads is.

Hon Mrs Boyd: That's the ongoing conundrum. Do you advertise and get people's consciousness raised when you can't necessarily provide the service? We believe you do, because changing attitudes is at the root of what you do in terms of prevention. We'll never have the services unless attitudes are changed and the public demands it be a priority for government spending.

Ms Poole: Mr Chair, could I request one piece of statistical information when the minister comes back on Tuesday? I did want to pursue a line of questioning. Could she tell us on Tuesday what proportion of crown attorneys have had training in terms of the sexual assault and wife assault issues? I'd like to get a sense of where we are on that issue.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you. This concludes this afternoon's session studying the spending estimates of the Ontario women's directorate. We have approximately five hours and eight minutes remaining. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, October 19, at 3:30 pm. This meeting stands adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1801.