CONTENTS
Wednesday 14 February 1996
Ministry of Transportation
Hon Al Palladini, Minister
Ian Oliver, assistant deputy minister (acting), operations division
Carl Vervoort, assistant deputy minister, quality and standards division
David Guscott, assistant deputy minister, policy and planning division
Rudi Wycliffe, assistant deputy minister (acting), safety and regulation division
David Aronoff, director, financial planning and evaluation
Larry Lambert, regional director, northwestern region
George Davies, deputy minister
Mary Proc, assistant deputy minister, corporate services division
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES
Chair / Président: Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North / -Nord L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Cordiano, Joseph (Lawrence L)
*Barrett, Toby (Norfolk PC)
*Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South / -Sud ND)
Brown, Jim (Scarborough West / -Ouest PC)
Brown, Michael A. (Algoma-Manitoulin L)
*Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
Clement, Tony (Brampton South / -Sud PC)
*Cordiano, Joseph (Lawrence L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North / -Nord L)
*Kells, Morley (Etobicoke-Lakeshore PC)
Martin, Tony (Sault Ste Marie ND)
*Rollins, E.J. Douglas (Quinte PC)
*Ross, Lillian (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC)
*Sheehan, Frank (Lincoln PC)
Wettlaufer, Wayne (Kitchener PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Preston, Peter (Brant-Haldimand PC) for Mr Jim Brown
Colle, Mike (Oakwood L) for Mr Michael Brown
Fox, Gary (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings / Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud PC) for Mr Clement
Pouliot, Gilles (Lake Nipigon / Lac-Nipigon ND) for Mr Martin
Also taking part / Autre participants et participantes:
Miclash, Frank (Kenora L)
Clerk pro tem / Greffier par intérim: Decker, Todd
Staff / Personnel: Richmond, Jerry, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 0902 in committee room 1.
MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION
The Acting Chair (Mr John Cleary): Good morning. We've got a member from each caucus here, so we're going to start. It's the governing party's turn for half an hour.
Mr Morley Kells (Etobicoke-Lakeshore): Good morning. Apparently I'm on first. I'm actually looking at the minister, Mr Chair, but he's chatting away there.
Hon Al Palladini (Minister of Transportation): Good morning.
Mr Kells: Good morning. It is my great good fortune to have the QEW cut through the middle of my riding. I don't know whether I'm the end of the QEW or the start, but it comes through Etobicoke-Lakeshore and meets the Gardiner. I'm sure, Minister, you're well aware that there have been some reports in the local media concerning Metropolitan Toronto taking over some responsibility for that section of the QEW. I know you've talked about it in our caucus, but just for the record, can you give me some background? Should this matter come up again involving Metro councillors, I'd like to be able to have a way to respond. What is the rationale, what is the situation involving maintenance and care of that very busy piece of road?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you very much for the question. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to share with you all the information we have. But before I turn it over to Ian Oliver so he can give you the full details of how this transfer is going to work, I certainly would like to share with you the ministry's vision as far as defining what is a provincial highway and what are the present so-called provincial highways that no longer serve the purpose of a provincial highway.
This is basically the strategy that we feel has to be adopted. The province cannot keep supporting so-called provincial highways today that don't serve that purpose. We feel we'd like to take that money into using it for provincial highways that serve that purpose as provincial highways. The province does have responsibility in making sure there is an adequate highway system for economic growth and moving people around and so on. But at the same time, if there are alternate routes, we feel that we should not be supporting present highways that we've identified because of the fact that there is an alternate highway that we built or constructed that people are utilizing. So at this time I would like to ask Ian Oliver, and he can basically tell you how we arrived at -- unless you have another question.
Mr Kells: Yes, and I appreciate and am looking forward to what the gentleman has to say. But having just heard you explain that, I understand, for example in a community like Etobicoke, where you're building the 427 and our old 27 becomes almost a parallel service road, if you will, and that rationale I certainly can understand off the top. Maybe it doesn't wash as well with the people in north Etobicoke, but at least I understand what you're talking about.
We're fortunate enough in Etobicoke to have a service road along the south side of it coming through the riding, but the rationale -- I'm going to wait and listen before I ask some more questions. The QEW is not a road, in my mind, that could ever be described as something that leaves the province's mighty jurisdiction and somehow becomes something that Metropolitan Toronto could handle with any justification and cost. But anyway, maybe that's not what you're saying. Let's listen to what the gentleman has to say and then I'll ask him some questions after that.
Hon Mr Palladini: You're talking about the Queen Elizabeth. Just let me add for you some of our thoughts. Certainly, the Queen Elizabeth Way is a major artery to come into the city of Toronto, but it isn't an artery that the provincial government basically should be any longer fully responsible for, because we do have an alternate route. We have 427, we have the 401 and we have the 403, so people are basically using this particular artery to a certain point and then diverting from that and going through Toronto, not actually stopping in Toronto» So there's also that consideration that I feel we must give, that it is no longer a provincial highway serving strictly as a provincial highway. Those are I guess the thoughts we've given to some of those highway transfers.
Mr Kells: I don't want to be argumentative, but if I'm going to the dome, I don't know how in hell, coming from Hamilton or Niagara Falls, I'm going to get to that dome unless I come down that QEW.
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, but this is what I'm saying. You're going to Metropolitan Toronto.
Interjection: That's the point.
Mr Kells: I don't know if that's the point or not. I'll arrive at my own points, thank you.
Hon Mr Palladini: But it's serving a municipal service, and that's exactly the point: It is serving a municipal service. Should this province be supplying roads to go strictly into the Metropolitan Toronto area? I think our responsibility as a government is that we have to have arteries in place that are going to be in the best economic sense, but it's not our responsibility to supply municipal roads to get into the city. This is the point that we hope people are going to realize.
In any case, Ian, would you be so kind as to share?
Mr Kells: I'll be back to that subject.
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Mr Ian Oliver: My name is Ian Oliver. I'm the acting assistant deputy minister of operations, Ministry of Transportation. To amplify a little bit the point the minister was making about the QEW, we're talking only about the section from the 427 in. I think one way we're looking at roads like the QEW in areas like Metropolitan Toronto that have been very highly urbanized over the last 20 or 30 years is that the function of those kinds of roads has shifted. At one time, there would be no doubt that the QEW was providing predominantly an intercity function and was therefore, and rightly so, a provincial highway. It was developed by the province of Ontario with that in mind. But over time, as regions like Metro Toronto and the greater Toronto area develop, the function of these roads changes and in fact that piece of QEW is predominantly a regional-level function, predominantly commuter traffic. There is no doubt intercity traffic on there, a certain percentage of the traffic one could call provincial traffic, coming from beyond the GTA either destined for or going through Toronto.
That's the kind of shift in role of these roads that we're looking at, and are the purposes of the road better served by being within the jurisdiction of a more local road agency? There are things beyond just being concerned about the upkeep of the road. There's the ongoing daily operation of that road as part of a network serving more commuter traffic; in that sense, it's more like the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. There's the whole issue of, what is the appropriate jurisdiction to look after things that have to do with development adjacent to the road? Under the current jurisdiction, the ministry, in fact the minister himself controls the development, so anything the local municipalities or the developers want to do in the areas adjacent to that road and its interchanges has to have ministerial approval. A lot of people get involved in those applications for land use changes or development or signs or other forms of permits.
The feeling is that when a road is serving primarily a local or regional function, not only should the road be under the jurisdiction of another agency but also all those things that go with administering the planning and development of the area around that road. There is a number of factors involved there, and those could be in the way of benefits to the municipality. The municipality then has the jurisdiction over those decisions and can --
Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon): But they don't want it.
Mr Oliver: Well, in some cases they do, because there are distinct development benefits to them of being able to administer that road and the control of the development around the road in their own terms rather than according to our guidelines and principles.
Mr Kells: I certainly didn't start out to get into an argument about this, but I'm starting to get interested. Do you have any figures, Mr Oliver, that show what percentage of the traffic comes off the south service slideoff and into my area from Islington or Kipling or Browns Line, as opposed to the percentage that's coming down your normal provincial roads, the QEW, the 427? If you're telling me that's a predominantly local use road now, I have great difficulty with that. Just tell me the figures if you have them, please.
Mr Oliver: I do not have the precise figures, but the point I was trying to make was that in relative terms, the percentage of true provincial traffic is very low compared to the other components of the traffic which are what you would call regional. I don't mean local in the sense of Etobicoke or the city of Toronto. I mean regional commuter traffic: GTA, Metro Toronto origins and destinations that happen on a daily basis because they're essentially commuter traffic. But we can get the figures.
Mr Kells: Okay, let me try it again. Maybe I'm missing something here, but has there been a great debate -- the minister might want to answer this -- within the walls of the Ministry of Transportation that all of a sudden within the GTA are we evolving into a new class of responsibility; in other words, that people who live in the GTA must be responsible for these arteries that normally, in my time, were always considered provincial highways? What are we on here? You're talking about, I bet you, three miles of road, and I don't know what you're going to save. It's the same taxpayer. Here we are looking at what to do in the GTA with provincial governments, and we're talking about GTA councils, according to Golden, we're talking about integration of transit and transportation. I'm trying in my mind to get this all boiled down to this three or four miles of the QEW. Is there some debate taking place?
Hon Mr Palladini: I don't know if I can really satisfy you with my answer, but I'm going to attempt it. I certainly feel that this government is committed to providing the people of Ontario with the best possible and safest highways in North America. But we have to do exactly that, define what is a highway, what is the government responsible for delivering.
As far as the transfer of a portion of the QE, just picture -- how do you see the Don Valley as a function? How do you see the Gardiner as a function? Because what we're talking about basically is something very similar to the Don Valley. The Don Valley was born in that manner. The QE was not because it was clearly a provincial highway.
But now, because of the other arteries that have developed it doesn't really serve the main purpose as a provincial highway, so we should not be the providers of that particular section because we do have alternative routes. I don't think that we're being harsh or downloading to the municipalities in this regard because of the fact that we do have other arteries.
But the most important thing, what Mr Oliver did say, is that right now the ministry is constantly being asked by the municipalities for accesses. We're going to give it to you, now you decide, you want to do what you want to do.
Mr Kells: My point is this: I'm not convinced in any way that Metropolitan Toronto's maintenance crew or the government of Metropolitan Toronto has any more expertise or even as good expertise as you have had in maintaining and looking after that piece of highway. I don't know if your answers are somewhat rhetorical when you say you're not downloading on the municipalities. All I'm saying is that my constituents really don't care -- as a matter of fact, I really don't care -- as long as the place is looked after properly and safely.
I don't quite understand the comparison to the Don Valley. I know what you're talking about, but historically it's a far different situation -- but if you're going to transfer it over, I don't know, do you save money? Do we become more efficient? Do we become less efficient? Is it just a matter of tidying up the network around the GTA? I don't know.
I do know -- this would be if I was starting this thing off again -- I'd talk about the fact that in the last few years I've noticed how deplorable the maintenance along there is. In other words, if some guy goes through the guardrail just before the Gardiner, that guardrail stays pretty bashed up for a long time, and the fenders and the paraphernalia off the various cars lay around there.
I always thought, from a public relations point of view, that the people in the United States, not quite knowing whether it's provincial responsibility or Metro's to look after that, it looks like hell when you come into the city of Toronto. I never thought I'd be lucky enough to be sitting here today to ask about it, but it's been bothering me for a number of years.
I suspect your maintenance people, because it's so busy, nobody likes to do work in the middle of that kind of traffic and maybe that's why the place never gets cleaned up. I thought maybe it was because -- well, I don't want to get into parochial arguments, but the point is that it is an area, from a sight point of view anyway, that's neglected. I'm not talking about from a safety point of view.
Now we're talking about transferring it over, and if I was an opposition MPP, I'd ask you to guarantee me that once you transfer it over it's going to be looked after as well and the safety factors are going to be guaranteed, and my constituents and all the taxpayers are going to feel much better about this transfer.
Where does it stop? At what point does the QEW start to become such an urban road -- Mississauga should then take over their piece and then we'd be at Burlington. We could just keep moving on down the QEW. Anyway, I really didn't mean to get in to that much. I just don't quite understand the rationale for it.
Mr Peter Preston (Brant-Haldimand): Along the same lines, there are some provincial roads being turned over to the municipalities in my riding. It's my understanding that there's a fund to bring these roads up to standards. Is that correct?
Hon Mr Palladini: That's correct.
Mr Preston: All right. Can you tell me how much the fund is, how much it has been dipped into already, what's left over and how do we access it? I want some.
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm going to ask Carl Vervoort, one of our ADMs, to go through the plan and share with you exactly how it does work. The one thing, before I turn over to Carl, I want to say is that we are going to be doing this in a very orderly fashion and we will be treating every municipality or every highway transfer on an individual base. So it's not just, here, they're all gone. That's not the case. It will be done in a very orderly fashion.
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Mr Carl Vervoort: Yesterday we talked about the existence of a $100-million transition fund. Part of that transition fund includes $50 million over two years, $25 million this coming fiscal year and in the subsequent fiscal year, that will be set aside to compensate municipalities, to recognize the transfers that we are talking about.
The $50 million over those two years will recognize a number of features associated with the transfer of candidates: First, the condition, the capital requirements and capital investments associated with the highway; second, some maintenance features associated with the highway; and third, a recognition that, depending on the municipality and the number of kilometres of roads proposed to be transferred, there is an adjustment made to recognize if there is a particularly significant number of kilometres relative to the base number of kilometres that particular jurisdiction has.
All three factors will be components in making an adjustment through the course of discussions and negotiations with individual municipalities. I guess that would be my final point. There will be discussions and negotiations and, hopefully in all cases, a win-win agreement can be concluded between the ministry and the municipality for the transfers.
Mr Preston: The particular road I have in mind, while we're saying it is not a provincial highway, is a provincial highway, and I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be turned over to municipalities. It's the link between Buffalo and Windsor that the truckers and people use. It's not the big highway that is there to be used, it's the link that is used. The four-lane at Port Colborne, they siphon off on to Highway 3, then they go down to Grand River into Brantford and hit the 403 and go west, so it is actually a heavily travelled provincial use, now a municipal road. Does the use have anything to do with the priority of upgrading before they're turned over? Who gets to go first?
Mr Vervoort: There is no first-come, first-served notion. This is intended that all municipalities will be dealt with equally. There is no sense that some roads are more urgent than others. They're all equally important from our perspective in the negotiations for transfer, so there is no desire on our part to establish a priority. Each negotiation will follow a natural course. Some will conclude earlier than others, and we hope most will conclude positively. I cannot speak to the specific route you're talking about at this time, but I can endeavour to respond to you later in the course of the estimates if you so desire.
Mr Preston: No, that's not necessary. How does it work? Flip a coin, put a name in a hat? What happens?
Mr Vervoort: All of the negotiations are ongoing. They're all ongoing concurrently. They're being done through our district and regional offices throughout the province. In fact in many cases discussions about potential transfers have been ongoing for many, many years on most of the more significant and heavily travelled highways for many years.
I draw attention to some in particular: Highway 7 across the top of Metro; Highway 27 within Metropolitan Toronto, north of Metro Toronto; Highway 16 in Ottawa; Highway 2 through almost all of its length from Windsor to the eastern border. Those highways have typically been recognized by the municipalities as routes that have been paralleled by major freeways and therefore there has always been a recognition perhaps that they should be moved to the local municipality. So there have been, in most cases, discussions ongoing for several years.
Mr Preston: So if I find nothing going on in my area, I get the route superintendent to call our regional office. Is that right?
Mr Vervoort: That would be correct. If they had not yet begun to have a discussion on how the transfer might be affected, that would be the place to start.
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): I'm not sure who to ask this question to, but I'll try the minister. Can you tell me the difference between the municipal roads and the provincial roads with respect to materials that go into those roads? Are the standards different?
Hon Mr Palladini: I don't believe they are, but I'm going to have Carl tell you exactly.
Mr Vervoort: When you talk of standards, I presume you mean engineering standards, road width? Yes, there are. In highway and road design, there is a series of design standards that change depending on the designation of the road. Roads are generally classified. Perhaps to start out on the municipal level, you can imagine a local road would be a road that would be on the inside of a subdivision. Then there are collector roads to which several roads would be connected. Collector roads in turn are connected to arterials, and arterials are connected to freeways.
So there is a kind of hierarchy of roads in the surface transportation system, and each one of those categories of roads has associated with it a set of design standards. Typically those design standards have to do with both operating speed and the rural or urban nature of the road facility. Again typically the more rural and higher speed the facility is the greater would be the geometrics, the horizontal and vertical curves that would be in place, and the more likely you would find things like open ditches and wide rights of way as opposed to the more urban roads, which typically you would find to be narrower, with curves and gutters, sidewalks and illumination. So there's a whole range of features that are determined by the classification of the road.
Mrs Ross: I guess everybody's going to talk about their own area, but in my area we have two roads, Highway 53 and Highway 8. Both of them are provincial roads and are being turned over to the municipality. The reason I'm asking is, the roads are already there, the standards for those roads are already there. What happens when those roads go from a provincial standard down to a municipal standard?
Mr Vervoort: The determination of what classification the road would take on within the municipal network would be a decision of the municipality. My expectation is that in most cases a transferred highway would become part of and assume the characteristics and design criteria associated with arterial roads for that regional municipality. In the case of the roads you mentioned, I expect they would assume the highest classification within the municipal road network classification system.
The determination as to whether or not, therefore, there would have to be any modifications to the road itself would be a matter of the longer-term capital planning decision of the municipality. I expect in almost all cases the simple change in jurisdiction would not in and of itself require any modification of the road or the road characteristics or the road geometry.
Mrs Ross: This transition fund, this $100 million, I assume, and I could be wrong in this, is it not so that when the roads are transferred to the municipality those roads could be brought up to certain standards when they're handed over? Is that right?
Mr Vervoort: That's correct. I just want to clarify. The $100 million is a transition fund for the coming fiscal year, of which there is $25 million dedicated for highway transfers. There's a subsequent $25 million in the subsequent year, which would be 1997-98. So there's a total of $50 million dedicated for support of the highway transfers.
That amount of money is intended to recognize, as I indicated earlier, several parameters. The first parameter is the condition of the road and the need to make some investments in that road, and it would also be done recognizing the degree of investment that this ministry would have been making in those roads over the course of the next several years as well.
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Part of the investment will be for the capital needs of the road. The other part will be for the recognition of the impact on the maintenance costs associated with those roads. As I said, thirdly, there's a recognition that, depending on the municipalities, the number of kilometres of roads that would be received might be greater or less in proportion to the overall size of the existing network of that municipality, and there would be a recognition if there's a significant amount of roads being transferred relative to the number of roads that the municipality already has.
The moneys that would be determined through the process of the negotiation that I described earlier would establish a quantum of money associated with that particular set of highways and that amount of money would be transferred to the municipalities. It's our assumption that thereafter what actually happens on the road is entirely up to the municipalities. So if they actually invest in a road or not, that would be up to them to decide. But essentially it is to recognize the three factors that I spoke to.
Mrs Ross: When a road is transferred over to a municipality, and you're saying it's up to the municipality as to how it wants to maintain that road, and how much money it wants to spend on it, does that mean there are no guidelines in place with respect to municipalities and how they operate their roads?
Mr Vervoort: Most municipalities have very comprehensive standards for both their capital investments in their municipal roads as well as standards for their operation and maintenance. This is not new to them and it's not new to the field of transportation management.
Most municipalities, and in particular the regional municipalities, have a very sophisticated engineering and operational management capacity to address those new highways, and they're no different really in character from an engineering and materials and a pavement point of view, hydrology, structures and all the rest. It's identical science that is applied to the municipal roads themselves. There's no distinctiveness associated with the provincial highways that would not be within the technical capability of the municipal engineering and operational staff.
The Chair (Mr Alvin Curling): Mr Colle.
Mr Kells: Do we have more time?
The Chair: You'll have more time as it comes around, the next hour.
Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): What goes around comes around, Morley.
The question is in regard to the one I raised yesterday. With 60% of our roads in Ontario being substandard, this offloading of roads on to the municipalities even becomes more of an acute question. In other words, I think all of us should be allowed to look at this list to see how many and which roads are being offloaded to the municipalities and how many of these roads are in the substandard category. I wonder if you could get that list to the committee. Do you have it with you?
Mr Vervoort: No, I do not have such a list with me.
Mr Colle: The ones you're going to offload on to the municipalities -- you must have that list. You already announced it to the municipalities.
Mr Vervoort: First of all, no, I do not have the list. The minister has not yet formally announced the specifics to each of the municipalities with respect to the particular roads that are transfers.
Mr Colle: My understanding is that he has, that each municipality's been informed on the roads that are going to be offloaded.
Hon Mr Palladini: If I may, I believe, Mr Colle, you would certainly have an opportunity to question the list of the possible transfers at next year's hearings. Nothing has been determined. This is something that we are in the process of doing, and whatever transfers are going to be taking place, I would like to make it specifically very clear that nothing is going to happen until April 1997. We don't have any information that we could share with you at this time so we may be able to get some input. But next year, like I said, you will have that opportunity.
Mr Colle: I find that strange, Minister, because the municipalities have been told which roads are going to be offloaded. How come, as a member of the opposition, the Transportation critic, I can't get a hold of that same list that you've shared with municipalities? That's all I'm asking for: Give us the list of roads that are under discussion.
Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Colle, I believe Mr Vervoort has said that this has been an ongoing thing; it isn't something the Progressive Conservative Party has started. As far as discussions with the municipalities, yes, you're right, there have been discussions but we have not determined the extent of the transfers, so nothing has been finalized. What information could I share with this committee when it has not been finalized? But, like I said, next year you will be able to have that opportunity.
Mr Colle: Minister, this impacts on your estimates here, because you've got 60% of the roads that are substandard. You're going to be offloading some of these roads in municipalities. All I'm asking for is this list that you've already given to the municipalities. Why, as a member of the opposition, I can't have the same courtesy -- of these lists that you're going to turn over to the municipalities --
Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Chairman, I don't know where Mr Colle is getting this information that we have given the municipalities a list. To my recollection, nothing has been given to the municipalities other than conversation. Nothing has gone out officially notifying them of any transfers, so I don't know what list you are referring to.
Mr Colle: Mr Vervoort's already mentioned the highways. He's mentioned Highway 2. Metro's been told it's Highway 2; it's the Queensway. They've been told already -- 27. It's been in the newspapers. It's been debated at local councils already. I'm asking you out of courtesy, let's see this list. Why are you trying to hide it?
Hon Mr Palladini: There have only been discussions. There has not been given any official word of the transfers. Like I said, when we do finalize that list -- the transfers are not going to take place until April 1997, but as of this morning, as of this moment, there is no finalization to any of the transfers.
Mr Colle: This is incredible that the minister will not share information that he's already shared with the municipalities. This is incredible. I guess I'm going to have to go under the freedom of information act to get this list, but I guess I'm going to have to pay for it now.
The other question is -- and, as you know, Minister, the other thing that's happening is that regional government is being eliminated, especially in the GTA here. What's going to happen to these roads like Highway 2, the Queen Elizabeth Way, when you download, and these highways, which were provincial highways, go through three or four different cities? How are you going to decide who's going to be paying for what -- maintenance or repair, sharing the costs -- since right now that is a regional responsibility and a provincial responsibility? So you've got no provincial responsibility, no regional responsibility. How are you going to stop the city of Etobicoke from saying, "We won't pay for the rehabilitation of the Queensway," and how are you going to stop the city of Toronto from doing that?
The other thing, Minister, that you have to consider here is that there's this fund; I think he said $100 million. I know that Metro's already stated -- the director of transportation, Doug Floyd -- and Metro's already told you that it'll take $50 million to bring the Queen Elizabeth Way up to scratch, not to mention what it might cost to bring Highway 2 up to scratch. Where is the money going to come from, since municipalities right now can't pay for the roads they have? Over 50% of the roads in Metro under municipal jurisdiction are substandard. They can't take care of what they've got. Now you're going to ask them to take care of Highway 27, Highway 2, the Queen Elizabeth Way on top of that. How are they going to fund this extra cost that's going to be downloaded and how are you going to maintain any kind of continuity of standard when you're going to have four or five cities involved in the maintenance, in the upkeep, everything from what you do in terms of rebuilding, resurfacing, guardrails? Who's going to pay for this, Minister?
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Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you for the opportunity to be able to share with you at least some of my thoughts of how the maintenance aspect could eventually take place. Obviously, it is this government's intention to work with the municipalities and give the municipalities a lot more autonomy. Possibly, if there are multiple transfers, in other words, multiple municipalities that we see today, it might even become cheaper because two or three municipalities, as you referred to, could be able to in fact get together and maintain a certain portion of the highway at a much cheaper rate than it was actually costing the province of Ontario. So there are some benefits that could actually evolve from that.
As far as the standards of these highways, I'd be more than happy to get you the exact information, because I am not as knowledgeable as Carl is. But certainly he can tell you how the standards would work.
Mr Colle: What I'd like from Carl is a list of these highways that he won't share with us, that's what I'd like from him, so we'd know how much money the municipalities will have to put aside, because you can't repair, rebuild highways over a one- or two-year period. That's why it's essential to get this information out there right away, so they could start to plan in their capital budgets to invest in these roads that you're going to offload on them, not to do it at the last second before they have an idea of the impact on the budget and the impact on the provincial budget.
Especially I think you should let the municipalities know which of these highways you're offloading are in a substandard condition, as earmarked by the Provincial Auditor. You should at least have the courtesy to let the municipalities know which of these highways are going to have to take millions of dollars to rebuild, so at least this so-called transition fund is not just going to be some token attempt to say, "Well, we're giving you some money," because the $100 million looks like a lot of money, but you start looking at this list of where it's going to have to go across Ontario and that $100 million will dissipate pretty quickly. That's why I think what this committee needs is a list of these roads and which of these roads are substandard before we go any further.
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm going to try to say it again, possibly a little bit clearer. There have been ongoing discussions with the municipalities, letting them know that we would be getting together with them once we identified the highways that we are looking to transfer. There has not been any decision made on that. Municipalities do not have a list of the transfers that we are taking a look at. If the transfers do occur, they're not going to happen until 1997. I thought we were here to talk about 1995-96, not something that's going to happen in 1996-97. This is what I thought this committee was going to be questioning, not the future, but what in fact happened last year.
Mr Colle: Just in conclusion, what we're talking about here is 60% of the roads in this province are substandard. You're about to offload these roads. So we're talking about the present and the past and how to rectify that situation.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I want to come back to the same thing, because there are a lot of questions. You say you've been consulting, and we've heard that word in this committee, consulting, consulting, but yet in the election campaign we heard what you were going to do. But anyway, this $100 million and $50 million that you're talking about is a real joke, because we've got highways starting at the Quebec border right through all of Ontario that were built for horse-and-buggy days. There's been no maintenance, there's been no drainage, the shoulders are narrow. I just don't understand where you're coming from.
The Chair: One second. Will you just keep the conversation down a bit so I can hear.
Mr Cleary: My question is, are you looking at turning those roads back to the county system or to the municipalities?
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm sorry, Mr Cleary, I didn't quite understand. As far as the actual transfer is concerned, we're talking about transferring provincial highways that presently are serving provincial use but there is an alternative route, a main artery, which is actually serving that use. The ones we are going to be transferring have become basically secondary highways, and that's why we are referring to them as municipal roads. If you are addressing one of those roads, yes, it most likely would be transferred to the municipality. If there is an alternative route besides the one that you're talking about, or the main route and this has become an alternative route, it will be transferred.
Mr Cleary: What I'm trying to get at is, if you transfer them to the county system, the provincial funding for the upkeep is different than to the municipality. That's what I'm trying to find out. This province is full of county government. Will those roads go back to what's left of county government or will they go back to the municipalities?
Hon Mr Palladini: Carl, would you explain that for Mr Cleary, please?
Mr Vervoort: Yes, Minister. The intention generally is to have discussions with the upper-tier municipalities in the first instance. In the area around the GTA, that of course typically means regional levels of government. In the areas where there are no regional levels of governance, we would expect that in the first instance with most of those transfers we would enter into discussions with the counties, with the exception perhaps that if the piece of road is within an urban area or adjacent to an urban area, there might be some consideration for the local municipality receiving the road.
Going back to the earlier comments, the eventual recipient of that is something that we're prepared to make part of the deliberations. In respect to the general categorizations of roads that I outlined in response to the question from Member Ross, we can normally expect that the highways that are being transferred would go to the upper-tier municipalities. That's the general rule, but it's not an absolute rule.
Mr Cleary: Okay, my next question: Are those roads, before they're transferred back, going to be brought up to today's standards for a county government or municipality, or are they just going to dip into this fund?
Mr Vervoort: At this time, there's not an intention to actually reconstruct or resurface any of the candidates but instead to rely on the $50-million fund to compensate municipalities to recognize for the road needs.
Mr Cleary: I cannot believe what I'm hearing, because I was involved in Jim Snow's day on a road to bypass a terrible provincial highway that cost almost $3 million across one municipality and a little section of another. So your $50 million or your $100 million, I'm telling you, I can't believe it. Anyway, that's the way it is.
The other thing I want to ask is, once they're transferred back there, for maintenance purposes what percentage of funding will that municipality get? If it goes to the county system, will they get 80% on some of their costs from the province, will they get 50%? What will happen there?
Mr Vervoort: At the time the road becomes part of the municipal network, it will receive funding in the same way all other roads within the municipal network will receive support, and that is through the new unconditional grants through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. There will be no ongoing financial subsidy from the Ministry of Transportation for municipal roads. That was specifically the move from a set of conditional subsidies administered by the Ministry of Transportation to a set of unconditional grants administered by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Those roads would simply be part of that new unconditional grant program.
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Mr Cleary: I don't know, I've been involved in this stuff for a long time, and I cannot understand a government wanting to give a 30% tax break and then wanting to download on the municipalities in this way. It's unreal.
The other thing that I want to get around to is -- I'm just coming down my list because I've got lots of stuff here -- potholes on provincial highways: the 401, no wonder wheels fly off. I could take you for a run down to the Quebec border and there are potholes six inches deep, because I measured them. That big around; if that wouldn't knock the wheels off anything. You have no men who at least throw something in those holes, or do we have to wait for workfare?
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm supposed to have an answer now, right? I guess all the deterioration of our highways is because the Progressive Conservative government has been in power for the last eight months, so all the problems that we've got --
Mr Cleary: I'm not saying that.
Hon Mr Palladini: Anyway, Mr Cleary, I do appreciate the question, and I also relate to the situation that is at hand as far as the infrastructure is concerned, and I couldn't agree with you more that we must shift more money.
I basically would like to go back to yesterday and my opening statement, where Mr Colle basically said that he would like us to build subways and still maintain the infrastructure, but he basically said that I have not addressed the problem of repairing the infrastructure. I would like the opportunity to re-read something of what I said yesterday. For example, we are concentrating on the rehabilitation and maintenance of our highways now. The longer you go without doing this kind of routine work, the more it will cost you to maintain roads in the long term. With our approach we can avoid having to rebuild completely in the future.
Mr Cleary, my answer to you is, yes, we are shifting more money into rehabilitation and hopefully we could do a much better job. I've got Mr Oliver here and he'd be very happy to tell you exactly what we are going to be doing.
Mr Oliver: I guess we're talking about a general situation when we keep referring to the auditor's report, and based on our own analysis and our own ongoing knowledge of the overall condition of the highway system, and 60% of the highways being in the category that is not desirable. We're also talking about very specific conditions that happen on individual sections of road across the province at particular times of the year.
I'm not sure about where the potholes in 401 fit into this overall, whether they're part of the general deterioration pattern. They could well be. There are sections of 401 which we are very concerned about and we are programming the work to rehabilitate-resurface those areas, or reconstruct, as required. There are other pieces of the highway system, particularly where we have sudden changes in temperature and moisture content such as we have in the winter period, and where we have heavy truck traffic, where things happen very suddenly. We can't predict it.
Based on our assessment of that piece of highway, it doesn't look like that pavement will need rehabilitation for perhaps two to three to four to five years, and suddenly things happen. These potholes you're describing could be of the kind we call a delamination, where actually a big section of the top course of asphalt literally separates from the course below it and gets pushed off to the side, as it were, as rubble.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. If they are potholes that occur on the deterioration curve, as we call it, the crews get out there as quickly as they can to patch those potholes. In the cold, damp weather we have, we're not 100% successful in getting the material to stick. They get it in there, it stays for a while, and then it comes out again. I think we all know the problems with dealing with asphalt materials in cold weather.
The other thing is that if it is of the more significant type of problem where we're getting delamination and a sudden failure in the pavement, the pavement structure itself, then what we have to do is go in there and mill that whole section off, perhaps a half-kilometre of it or whatever, and actually do a new lift of pavement. The most we can do, if it's a serious safety problem, is get out there and mill it, and we hesitate to do that because we can't do the paving until the warm weather.
That's how we deal with these things. We do get on top of them as quickly as we can, given the weather conditions, and we have had a lot of that in recent years on the 400-series highway where we've had delamination.
Mr Cleary: I understand that, yes. Minister, I wasn't pointing a finger at you, and I know you just came into government, but we would like to have a little bit of input into some of the things you're going to do. My colleague to the left can't get off scot-free. They were talking about the potholes in the roads and everything and that's been going on for several years, and the flying truck tires have been going on for years too, because I had to try like hang to keep ahead of one. Two years ago, a transport passed me, it bounced off and run right alongside the car. They've been flying off all along.
The other thing I want to get around to, and you would say we're talking about last year's estimates and all this, but I just want to know what your plans are for the future for maintenance: weeds, grass, brush higher than transports, or as high as cars in most places. Are you going to get back to mowing? Is there anything you're going to do? Are we going to get a bunch of gobbledegook like we got at the convention a while ago from the former government, that you had to leave that for the insects to have a place? What do you plan on doing?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you for the question, Mr Cleary. I'm really happy to say to you that one of the very first things I discussed with our staff when I was appointed Minister of Transportation was exactly the sentiment you just expressed. It's very important to me as well that our highway shoulders are clean and neat, the way I remember Ontario. Ontario used to be the cream of the crop, so to speak, and the last few years it certainly has not shown that.
I would like to share this information with you, but at the same time I believe that Ian can probably give you a little bit more detail as far as some of the things that we are attempting to do are concerned. It's been ongoing now probably for the past four or five months. We're trying to come up with something that will beautify our highways. Ian, is there any up-to-date information you might be able to share with us?
Mr Oliver: To put it in a historical perspective, we're talking about a trend over the last many years, but particularly over the last four or five years, where there has no doubt been a decrease in the budget we've had available for maintaining the highway system. When we talk about maintenance, we break it into basically two general categories: We talk about the things we do in the summer, and those are the kinds of things you've alluded to where we try to deal with not only the upkeep of the highway system in a structural sense, but we do the safety things like grading shoulders, making sure critical guardrail repairs are made. We try, within the resources available, to deal with things like critical areas of weed and brush control where safety or other factors dictate we have to do it.
We have a kind of a centre-line-out approach to setting our priorities with the resources we have; that is to say, the most important things and the first things we spend our maintenance dollars on in the summer are on the road surface, to try to preserve it, to try to make sure it's safe and driveable. We work our way out. As critical deficiencies show up in the way of shoulder dropoff, we do the grading as needed, and we do guardrail repairs. They may not look pretty, but as long as they're functional and as long as they will perform safely we leave them. That's the way we go at it.
When we get beyond the shoulder, the way we're approaching the appearance of the highway is that it's very important and we recognize that, but in terms of safety it's not number one. It is maybe in terms of tourism, pride in the highway system and all those things, and we are concerned.
A number of things have been under way for a number of years. We have gone into programs called adopt-a-highway program, and I'm sure you've seen the signs around the province. It's turning out to be very successful in meeting the objectives of getting people, on a volunteer basis, to help us deal with those aesthetic and cosmetic types of activities you referred to: litter pickup and so on. It is not without cost. We have to spend a fair amount of money of our own resources in terms of supervising and training people, handling the logistics of dropping them off, making sure they're working on the highway in a safe manner, and making sure the litter is picked up and taken to a proper disposal site.
Those are the kinds of measures we've been taking to deal with the issues you've raised that have to do with not only safety, but the aesthetics. Finally, there are some new ventures ongoing, started this year in cooperation with the Solicitor General: the whole idea of having inmates from local institutions run by the Solicitor General, getting them involved with our forces on the highway so that we have more resources available to tackle some of these particular needs you've talked about.
Mr Cleary: I agree wholeheartedly with adopt-a-highway. I worked very hard with a group at that time, back a number of years ago, to get that going. We ran into all kinds of problems with the former government. I'm pleased that is in the making now, because I think there can be a great saving.
The other thing I have to say, living next door to the province of Quebec -- heaven forbid, I don't agree with a lot of things they're doing down there, but I sure agree with the way they are maintaining their roads and am somewhat disappointed to be a member of the provincial Legislature when we get many tourists from Quebec and they criticize us no end.
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The other thing I want to get to is signage on the highway. I know from my own experience that we've had a terrible time getting signs on provincial highways for tourist attractions and everything, although in our part of eastern Ontario in the last year or two there was a pilot project that made it much easier. But we've been getting the runaround that the provincial government doesn't want signs on the highways because it distracts motorists. I want your reply on that. I don't want staff; I want yours.
Hon Mr Palladini: I'd like to just add to what Ian Oliver said in terms of the things we are looking to implement, and I think it's going to roll into what you're saying as well. I believe there is an opportunity here to do something really positive, not only in serving your purpose but in beautifying our highways. We're looking at floral advertising and if we can tie it up as part of the responsibility to maintain our soft shoulders, to cut the grass in strategic areas of our highways.
As far as signage is concerned, I believe we must be a lot more aggressive in the tourism industry, and MEDTT and our ministry have to work hand in hand to see how best we can promote Ontario. Signage is very important to me, and I'd like to say to you that we are going to give every consideration to how we can improve our signage potential.
Mr Cleary: So you're very supportive of that. Okay, then my next question --
The Chair: Is going to be very short.
Mr Cleary: Okay, Mr Chairman. We had a service club that wanted to put a sign on a provincial highway, and what ministry staff put them through -- they didn't have all kinds of money, thousands and thousands of dollars, to put that sign up. But they said, "You've got to do this, you've got to do that, you've got to do the other," and it was just beyond their means. Surely there could be a simpler way. I don't want a sign that's going to cause somebody some problems or blow down, but surely you don't have to have a deluxe, expensive sign.
Hon Mr Palladini: We must keep one thing in mind. Safety has to be a major part of that. But we are encouraging more signage. Actually, MEDTT and ourselves have just sent out an RFP based on signage.
Mr Pouliot: Good morning. Lifelong learning -- some things change. Thank you, Ian and Carl, for your much-valued expertise.
Tell me, what is the life of a highway? If you were to build one today, when would you have to go back and look at the pavement, look at the blacktop: 12, 15, 16 years?
Mr Vervoort: Yes, that would be the normal range, the expected lifespan of pavement before significant effort on the pavement itself would be required.
Mr Pouliot: Thank you very much. I've only been here 11 years, so that would mean all three parties. You can't say this, and I appreciate it.
Reminded that all politics are local, it's with some irony that I listened to Mr Kells and Mr Preston. People go back home -- they're first-time members -- and you do very well to listen when you're home, and people at home are saying that one of the three things that will get you out of politics faster than others is the condition of roads. People relate to it -- seven million motorists.
There's no secret here. You're asking the municipalities to take over an endeavour that has traditionally been the responsibility of the province. In order to seduce them, to lure them, you offer a sweetener. You say, "We will give you some money." And you know -- it's a certainty -- that when you have the work that needs to be done relatively short-term and the ongoing maintenance, you are saving money. Yes or no?
Mr Vervoort: If the question is that by virtue of having transferred those roads, we no longer have to put the capital investments and maintenance costs to them, that would be correct.
Mr Pouliot: So you're saving money; otherwise, you wouldn't do it. You say those things, and you're saying it very, very well. From time to time, people will try to dress it up. There's nothing to dress up here. There might be nothing wrong. It's the new style of doing business, on the one hand. On the other hand, the minister says, "I wish to go back to the way Ontario was." He brings out the nostalgia and the romanticism, which is not becoming. He talks about summer maintenance, yet I look at the cold, hard facts right here and I don't see even the same money; I see a decrease. If I were sitting outside, I would hear it said that the minister is most economical with the truth or, if he knows, that the minister is lying. But I am not sitting outside, so I cannot hear those things, Mr Chairman.
What happens if the municipalities say no? You go to them and you say: "Psst. Want to buy a highway, a used highway? Have I got a deal for you." And then the minister says, "Where I come from, we're concerned about, `Look at the nice soft shoulders.'" And the clientele say, "Minister, where I come from, we're concerned about the section between the soft shoulders, so you don't have a deal." What happens if the municipalities tell you to go to hell, tell you they don't want the transfer? What do you tell them? When you come calling and Metro tells you, "We don't want the QEW. It's worse than la peste, cholera and typhus. It's costing too much money. You keep it. It's been yours; we don't want it," what's going to happen then?
Hon Mr Palladini: Do you want me to answer your questions now? I thought you were still going to go on.
Mr Pouliot: You can be provocative.
Hon Mr Palladini: Actually, I am enjoying your theatrics. I think you missed your calling. You should be in Hollywood. I think you'd probably do a hell of a job there too.
The Chair: In the meantime, we still want an answer.
Hon Mr Palladini: On the serious side, I'd just like to pick up on what Mr Vervoort said. With these transfers that will eventually take place, obviously the ministry or the province is going to be saving money, but let me say here and now that the moneys that eventually we will save, we are going to reinvest back in the highways that are going to make a contribution to our economic growth. We are committed to shifting a major part of our budget back into the infrastructure. We realize how badly our highways have deteriorated over the years, and I know the auditor reported back in October how bad our highways are. We must pay attention, and we are going to address these problems. We're going to put more money back into the infrastructure as ever before during the last two governments. That's a commitment this minister is going to be making.
Mr Pouliot: You know, Tales of Houdini. You say things, and I am trying very hard to believe you, Minister. But when I go back to the book, all I see is slash and burn, for Chairman Mike has said: "You do it. You get your walking orders. Otherwise, we will have to address tenure with someone who has more ambition, listens better." I want to believe you, and I'm trying very hard, but when I look at the book here, no, there are fewer dollars. And you said this at the beginning of your presentation.
What I'm suggesting is that you're well-meaning, you will be as efficient as you can, but when all is said and done, you will be spending less money, and less money will bring you less result. You don't have to be a mathematical genius emanating from Harvard or U of T to understand that.
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Minister, I mentioned yesterday that we would start this morning to develop a theme around deregulation, around the free-for-all. We have the presence of two people who helped me, have helped the province over the years, and they represent thousands of women and men who provide the essential service. They drive buses, they operate the subway, they do maintenance. They keep each and every one of us alive. Often we take them for granted.
Your cabinet decided to deregulate bus transportation in October. On November 15, maybe you will recall, our then leader, Mr Bob Rae, asked you a question in the Legislature. You said, "As far as the Ontario Highway Transport Board, all that was an NDP bone that was thrown to people." Those were your words of wisdom.
Mr Colle: Leslie Frost was an NDP?
Mr Pouliot: It spoke highly of your knowledge of the highway transport board. You indicated as if the transport board came into existence between 1990 and 1995 by way of patronage. I repeat: "All that was an NDP bone that was thrown to people." How can you believe that the Ontario Highway Transport Board had been established since 1990? Didn't you do your homework, Minister? I think your comments speak for themselves.
You have a zeal, a determination attached to you, with this tunnel vision, that no matter what, the private sector always does it better; they're the answer to everything. "We must get out of their lives. We must not regulate. We just throw it wide open to the private sector and we will be better off."
I have a letter that was sent to Freedom to Move. We all know them. They're a grass-roots organization and they've been around for some time. One of the things they do best is fight for small-town Ontario. In your letter to Freedom to Move, you write that because of deregulation, larger carriers may wish to wish to withdraw service in order to protect profit levels. This is a minister of the crown, who with much trumpet and fanfare says, "I am committed to doing what's best for Ontario, what's best for Ontarians," and then turns around and says, "I understand your dilemma. Because we will deregulate, if you can't get a fair return on investment, more dollars in your pocket, I understand that you might have to make choices and not provide services in the small communities that can't foot the bill." It's not complex, Minister.
If you admit that some routes may have to be cut, what will happen to us in the small and more isolated communities when we have to go to work, to medical services, go to school, meet relatives, go to and from, and we have no alternative? It flies in the face of what you have said. Are you throwing us to the wolves, sir? Have you made any studies vis-à-vis the impact of deregulation? Newfoundland and PEI have it because they're not road-connected. By our perspective, they have anomalies that are -- not anomalies, but they are different: bodies of water. You would become the only jurisdiction that deregulates the bus industry.
The regulation has been here for a reason, damn it. It's been here because public necessity and convenience says: "Greyhound and others, we will give you the route from here to there and we wish you well, and when you do that we're going to trade off with you. You will also have routes that are less lucrative." Most people will be served and most people will be happy.
Now you throw it wide open and you deregulate, in spite of the fact that the thousands of employees, men and women, who presently have jobs and provide stability in Ontario fear that they will end up on the human junk pile. They'll be left twisting in the wind. They have no guarantee. All they have at present are questions, a great deal of anxiety, some fear, and in some cases mad as hell. Things have gone well. Why change? Sometimes it's better to do nothing. People are not breaking down the doors to have the bus industry deregulated, not at all. You know that. I know that. You know that we know that.
Where are the studies? Will you produce studies regarding the impact of deregulation? Whom have you consulted? Tell me.
Hon Mr Palladini: We're working with the bus industry. Consultation has been ongoing for the past year, and we're going to continue to consult with the interest groups to make sure that deregulation is done in an orderly fashion. A lot of thought and input is going into this thing, and that's before it actually materializes in January 1998.
Mr Pouliot: Thank you, Minister. I'm going to quote what some of the major players are saying on deregulation, and I want you to understand that those people are not necessarily New Democrats.
Greyhound, the largest operation in Ontario, has taken a position. They're opposed to deregulation. So when you see them at the Boulevard, the Granite or the Toronto clubs, you shall be reminded. That's Greyhound, one of the majors.
Penetang-Midland Coach Lines, the second-largest. This is what the person who owns the company says: "Deregulation hasn't worked in the trucking industry. It hasn't worked in the airline industry. It hasn't worked in the rail industry. What makes them think it will work in the bus industry?" That's not what I say. That's what the owner of Penetang says.
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More bluntly, more to the point, Monsieur Debeau says the following: "Rural Ontario is going to suffer if intercity bus service is deregulated."
Trentway-Wagar, the third-largest. You know, you've got two strikes now. The majors, the first two, are saying: "Don't do it. Don't do it. Get off the train. Take a break. Get away from the binge you're on. Listen. I'm not in favour of deregulation."
Chatham Coach Lines: "If it isn't broken, why fix it?"
Gino's Bus Line -- you know those people, Minister, no doubt.
Mr Colle: Hey, wait a minute, now.
Mr Pouliot: You know those people I've listed. You know all five people I've listed, no doubt. Those are the circles you tread. This is what Gino says, and he's the president: that larger companies are definitely going to drop routes.
George Payne of Ontario Northland says, "We expect deregulation will have a serious effect upon our operation."
You don't have one player on your side. The operators, the biggest players, are simply saying -- not that they have a cartel, not that they have a monopoly. They're not saying this. They welcome competition, and there is competition. But they are saying, "Really have a good look at it." As a philosophy that is so easily done, what's wrong with consultation? The people who do the work would be willing. Labour is not bad. It's all of us. People should have a say -- the passengers, the clients -- because in many cases this is vast, magnificent. It's also 11 million people. If we're not going to get the service or if the service is going to become so prohibitive, so expensive that we can least afford it, it's not serving Ontario well. In this endeavour, it's not the friends you make, Minister, it's often the people you antagonize.
I would not wish to have to go on the steps of the Ontario Legislative Assembly -- there are no threats here, no ultimatum, sir -- and as the critic for the third party, tell the citizens of Ontario: "They're trying their best. I really know them, and they're a good lot." Sometimes people might not be willing to listen to what I have to say.
Really have a good look at deregulation of the bus industry. You'll be the first. There's a lot to say. Our labour friends here are very capable of producing documents that are not controversial. I don't find them biased, but they're real people doing the job. They need those people daily. I'd like to have your reactions vis-à-vis deregulation and the assurance that everything will be done in an orderly fashion, things will be studied and people will be consulted.
Hon Mr Palladini: I certainly do commit to you that this government is going to give every opportunity for input in coming up with a way that deregulation will be done in an orderly fashion and in fact will work. We can all come up with specific people who are going to be either for or against, and I too have information of people who are in favour. I really don't want to take that time in highlighting people who are in favour, but certainly this is an initiative that was started with the Liberals in Ottawa, so this is a federal initiative. Our government is in agreement because we see the benefits of what possibilities can be realized.
I want to share with you one thought from an existing bus operator under regulation. He is a small-town bus operator who services approximately 24 communities and he says he will be looking to expand. This is a small individual operating 12-passenger vans; the biggest bus in his fleet is possibly only a 24-passenger bus. There are opportunities by deregulation that will open up the business to many more entrepreneurs. The opportunities are tremendous.
Under regulation in the last 10 years alone, over 400 communities have lost bus services. I also want to make it very clear that with deregulation, we are not talking about the urban areas. We're talking about the intercity areas.
Mr Pouliot: Under Bill 26, the massive document that gives Chairman Mike the right to decree at will, a very disturbing piece of legislation, introduced, incidentally, when members were locked out by way of being in a lockup -- it was almost done under cover of darkness. I want to commend you, Mr Chair, for your courageous -- and I know it was spontaneous. The time came, opportunity passed and you seized it. You had to make a stand, for other people had not. It was traumatic for you and you're to be commended. You stood up for all Ontarians. You fought for democracy.
Under Bill 26, when you persevere and go through the 150- some-odd amendments, because it was a very bad draft -- as is often the case. Things that are done in a hurry, in secret, in haste, tend to be less than perfect, and you've done so at your own peril. You'll certainly have to carry the guilt and suffer the consequences.
Under that bill, the law, what stops GO Transit, what stops TTC -- you've just mentioned that urban areas would not be impacted. What stops them from privatizing? What is there to stop Metro from privatizing TTC, the province from privatizing GO Transit?
Mr Davies?
Hon Mr Palladini: You're asking for --
Mr Pouliot: Oh, I'm sorry. The minister will answer.
Hon Mr Palladini: Well, I didn't know whether you were quite finished, Mr Pouliot.
The Chair: I don't think he's ever finished. If there's a pause, it's a question.
Hon Mr Palladini: The TTC runs its own operation, so basically it's got nothing to do with us. I want to make it very clear that deregulation -- we are talking about deregulation in the intercity, not the urban areas, and we're talking about maintaining all the safety standards that are in place. So we're deregulating the services, not any aspects of safety. As far as GO, I made it very clear yesterday that I believe that GO's future is very bright and viable. I believe that much bigger and better things can be achieved with GO. We're not looking to deregulate the TTC or GO Transit.
I want to say too that even under deregulation, I believe that GO will be more than well placed into future potential growth.
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Mr Pouliot: What about the bus industry? Do you intend to deregulate intercity buses? Yes or no, and when?
Hon Mr Palladini: Deregulation is to take effect in January 1998 and, like I was saying, there are going to be ongoing processes and discussions being held with the interested parties to make sure that things are going to be done in an orderly fashion and that address all the concerns. If you want some details, I'd be very happy to have either Frank D'Onofrio or David Guscott give you the information. Would you like David to share with you some of the details and some of the things that have happened?
The Chair: He has about two minutes to do so. What is your preference?
Mr Pouliot: We're listening to Mr Guscott.
Mr David Guscott: If I can give a two-minute response to the member's questions, I think I'd point out that in the current system, as the minister noted, the federal government has told us that 400 communities in Ontario have lost service. Those rural communities can lose that service on 10 days' notice. There is nothing in the current system that provides the kind of protection that some are saying is required in a regulated environment. In fact, in the transition that we are now discussing with the industry, we're looking to build in better protection for the kind of transition that the minister mentioned, in terms of more notice, more ability for the communities and entrepreneurs in those communities to respond to any reductions that may happen in the service to smaller communities.
The Chair: I presume we can go to the Conservatives.
Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): I wish some information, to go back to trucks on our highways and truck safety, with respect to US carriers. We heard earlier that 7% of fatal accidents are attributed to large, heavy trucks and tractor-trailers. I'm assuming not all of those fatalities in Ontario can be attributed to Ontario-owned trucks or Canadian-owned trucks.
Trucking is important in my riding, as in many rural ridings, because of the agricultural products that are hauled out -- tobacco; steel is hauled out of our riding -- and we are in touch with many of these companies. They've set very high standards, but I also have watched a wheel come off a truck. In this case it was a Canadian carrier, but I'm told that US trucks lose wheels as well, and I don't know to what extent they lose wheels in Ontario.
There is concern with people I've talked to, and it was mentioned earlier that we are working with other Canadian jurisdictions and North American jurisdictions as far as some of these rules and regulations, but I'm concerned about some of the complaints, and it's anecdotal with respect to US carriers. I'd like to know, do we have any information on the safety track record of US trucks on Ontario highways?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you for the question. Just before I turn it over to Mr Wycliffe, because he's going to have a lot of detail for you, especially on the US carriers -- I know I was personally involved in a situation with a US carrier last year and how these people were supposed to be taking part in an amusement park. We stopped them basically on past history at the border and we turned them back. We mean business.
That is the message we want to send to Americans but that is also clearly a message we want to send to all Ontarians, or to all Canadians, for that matter, who use Ontario roads. Rudi, would you share some more detail with us, please?
The Chair: You can introduce yourself, Mr Wycliffe, for Hansard.
Mr Rudi Wycliffe: Rudi Wycliffe, acting assistant deputy minister, safety and regulation division, Ministry of Transportation.
The member has asked a number of questions related to Ontario versus out-of-province trucks operating on our highways. There are a number of points I would like to make in my response.
Once a year, the Ministry of Transportation conducts a major safety blitz in conjunction with all the other jurisdictions in North America, all the other provinces and all the states of the United States who have jurisdiction for on-highway truck safety enforcement. That safety blitz is called Roadcheck. The most recent one was called Roadcheck '95 on June 20, 21, 22, 1995. That is the only time in the year that we ask our enforcement officers, as the minister said yesterday, some 240 enforcement officers, to select trucks randomly. We've been doing that for five or six years and we use that as a benchmark. It gives us some statistically reliable information on truck safety, in terms of their mechanical condition. Each year we stop the trucks randomly, whatever truck comes along, whether it's from Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Michigan, New York, Ohio, wherever.
Obviously, because we are in Ontario, the vast majority of the trucks we stop are based in Ontario and plated in Ontario. The statistics from Roadcheck '95, I would suggest to the committee and the previous road checks, are indicative of the performance of Ontario-based trucks versus other jurisdictions. I will give you the statistics. It will take me a minute to leaf through the pages here to find the right one, but very generally speaking, Ontario trucks perform no better and no worse than trucks from other provinces and other states.
In 1995, during the three-day Roadcheck period, we inspected overall 2,366 trucks, and 43.2% of them were taken out of service for various mechanically related defects. Of those 2,366, 1,561 were Ontario trucks, and the out-of-service rate for Ontario trucks was 42.2%. There were 348 trucks from the United States. The out-of-service rate there was 45.4%. The next-biggest number is trucks from Quebec. There were 188 trucks inspected, and their out-of-service rate was 49.5%. Clearly, as the number of inspections by a jurisdiction gets smaller, the statistical reliability of the figure loses reliability. But generally speaking, as I said, we don't find any difference between the trucks based in Ontario or based in other jurisdictions.
In terms of our day-to-day and regular focus on enforcement, and also when we work on a frequent basis with the Ontario Provincial Police and municipal and regional police forces on local or other province-wide blitzes, the instructions of our staff and to the police are: "Select what you think are the worst trucks on the road. Bring them in and give them a good once-over." That's why you hear statistics, that one of the other committee members mentioned yesterday, as high as 70% or 75% on blitzes. I think during normal enforcement you have to recognize it's as much an indication of the effectiveness of our enforcement as it is a criticism of the industry, and you can't use our regular enforcement as a weather-vane of the industry. We're going out to find the dangerous trucks and we're inspecting them and we're taking them off the road.
The Chair: I think you should be satisfied by that.
Mr Barrett: Yes, that covers the safety issue. Another bone of contention in my area, and again I'm assuming elsewhere in Ontario: Many US trucks coming through, using US-purchased fuel, don't even stop in Ontario. My colleague mentioned Highway 3, which was the third provincial highway built in Ontario. It in many ways was built as a link between Michigan and New York. I'm wondering to what extent our roads are being used essentially free of charge by US carriers. In their own nation in many cases they are using turnpikes. As well, I understand many US rigs can be outfitted with extra tanks for diesel. They can carry, I understand, up to something like 900 gallons of diesel. They could spend all week delivering in Ontario and not be required to refuel.
I'm a free-trader and I know the importance of the auto parts industry and the importance of tractor-trailers moving back and forth across our borders, but I'm just wondering to what extent US carriers are basically getting a free ride in Ontario and are getting off the hook as far as certain taxes or fees. They're obviously not paying turnpike fees when they're in Ontario. To what extent are our roads being deteriorated by these trucks, without compensation, and to what extent are we in the unenviable position of our truckers trying to compete with that industry?
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Mr Wycliffe: The member's observations are very correct. There are many routes in Ontario that are desirable corridors, if you like, to cut from one jurisdiction to another. You could argue, for example, that the Trans-Canada across northern Ontario is a corridor between the western provinces and the eastern provinces, and there is a fair amount of truck traffic that uses Highway 17, Highway 11 for exactly that reason. The 401-3-403-QEW corridor is also a route that is used by some American truckers to traverse between Michigan, for example, and New York state and points east and points west of Michigan.
The member is certainly right that it's not common for those truckers to take advantage of Ontario's fuel prices and stop and buy gasoline. However, there are two requirements under the law that those trucks must meet and there are enforcement activities related to those requirements. I want to review those very briefly.
Regardless of whether a truck stops to purchase fuel, a truck coming into Ontario needs a fuel tax registration. Fuel tax registration is administered by the Ontario Ministry of Finance, and a truck or a trucking company can register on either an annual permit basis or a trip permit basis.
Compliant truckers will fax ahead and obtain the fuel tax permits through the Ministry of Finance and their agencies that issue those permits, and our Ministry of Transportation enforcement staff, along with the Ministry of Finance enforcement staff, does conduct enforcement of trucks coming into the province to make sure they are complying with the fuel tax requirements.
The other requirement that trucks have coming into Ontario deals with registration. Within Canada there is a prorated registration agreement, and we have a similar agreement with many states individually. It is a requirement to either be registered in a state that we have a reciprocal agreement with or in another province or to obtain a vehicle registration on a trip permit or an annual basis with the province of Ontario. Similarly, that is one of our enforcement focuses by the Ministry of Transportation enforcement staff.
The Chair: Are you satisfied with that?
Mr Barrett: Yes.
Mr Preston: Is there any thought of lowering the qualifications for the tax? Let me give you a for-instance. Personally, I took a horse in a trailer to Quebec, 20 miles inside the border. To ride for one day and come back out, it cost me $118 because I drive a diesel truck. Incidentally, it cost me $52 to get back into Ontario too, which I question: But is there any thought at all of dropping down the requirements to where it affects tourists and industries that are not primarily truckers?
Mr Wycliffe: The requirement for fuel tax and registration is limited to commercial operations, truck and bus operations --
The Chair: The minister would like to add to this.
Mr Wycliffe: I'm sorry.
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes. Thank you, Rudi.
Mr Preston: Are you telling me I'll get my 52 bucks back? No.
Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Preston, I believe I would just like to say that this is something we should be asking the Minister of Finance. It certainly is not within our jurisdiction, and let's see if we can kind of stick in the environment that we are responsible for.
Mr Preston: I don't really want to stick you with questions. I'm going to make a comment. About regulation, regulations did provide bus transport up to about four years ago for some localities that don't receive it now. Most of the complaints we hear are that this little town in the north country is going to be deprived and this little town in the north country's going to be deprived.
I live in the very southern part of Ontario. We're on latitude with northern California. Wainfleet, Lowbanks, names that you don't hear -- like I don't hear some of the names you guys come up with -- Dunnville, Port Maitland, Canfield, Cayuga, Hagersville, Caledonia and Jarvis.
Mr Colle: Hagersville --
Mr Preston: Do you know where Hagersville is?
Mr Colle: That's where they had the big fire.
Mr Preston: You're right. And those places, under regulation, do not have any transport. The poor people there, when they need to get to health services, have to make do. When they have to get to work in Hamilton, they have to make do. I hope deregulation will help them, but regulation certainly has not. They lost their bus service. Regulation didn't help them a bit.
Thank you, Minister. That was a comment rather than a question.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Kells.
Mr Preston: Go back to Mr Barrett, because he allowed me to move on.
The Chair: Mr Kells.
Mr Kells: Thank you, Mr Chair. Mr Palladini, I must apologize. I got so busy listening to the fact that my riding was going to gain the QEW, I forgot to ask you a question about a piece of road that I'd like to get rid of.
It just happens that a constituent of mine sent me a fax yesterday about a piece of road that we call Browns Line. I don't know what you call it anywhere else. It's been under some construction by the municipality and Metro under the infrastructure program that the Liberals put in place a couple of years ago. I don't expect that Hansard or anybody needs to know, but the reconstruction of the road went from Horner Avenue almost to where the 427 starts.
There's a piece of road -- I guess we could best describe it as a block, a city block -- that does not fall under the jurisdiction of Metro or the city of Etobicoke. So as happy as we are to receive the benefit of the infrastructure program in fixing up the road, it only went to the limit of the jurisdiction of the local governments and there is a city block that still belongs to you people, so it didn't get done. As a result, the complaint of my constituent is that the road surface changes dramatically, and the people in question know that and they change their speed dramatically.
Interjection: It's a speed bump, in other words.
Mr Kells: Yes. Then they really take off to get on to your 427. The constituent complained to the city of Etobicoke, and the city of Etobicoke explained that it's not their road. Anyway, I've got a problem and I'd like you to take the road back over, or give it to us, so we can surface it and police it.
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you very much, Mr Kells, for the information. I know the area somewhat, and I'm at a loss. I don't have an answer for you, but I would like to take it as notice and get back to this committee, just to see what can be done, because I certainly do understand the situation. It should be resolved.
Mr Kells: I suspect we can probably make a trade.
Hon Mr Palladini: I give you my commitment that it will somewhat get resolved.
Mr Kells: I get the QEW and you take this or vice versa. Anyway, I'll pass it on to your staff, if I may.
Hon Mr Palladini: Okay. Please.
The Chair: Have you got more, Mr Kells?
Mr Kells: I have a couple of questions, but there's a long day.
The Chair: I'm just trying to share.
Mr Kells: I think it's more important that my colleague gets in now.
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Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte): Thanks, Morley, for sharing that with me.
Being that I'm just kind of a rookie on the block of eight or nine months, whatever you want to call it, I didn't realize until I got in here and asked some of your staff that over the past three years there have been approximately 300 kilometres of highways transferred back to the municipalities. Sitting here at the start, I thought this was something new, that this had never happened before, but I think the records want to be quite clear that over the past three years and the past governments have passed back some of the roads to municipalities. I think that's kind of an ongoing thing that we in this government are continuing, and if it was good at that time, it's probably equally as good now to make sure that it works right. And I hope it goes in the direction that those municipalities can afford to take those roads and look after them in that kind of an equitable way.
One other thing that I wanted to talk to you about, Minister, is that having been lucky enough a couple of years ago to take a little holiday and go down into Quebec, I see their highways down there extremely well manicured along the lines of the 401. Is there any consideration to buying some moors and getting back to keeping our 401 so that it does look to be the pride of Ontario that it should be?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you, Mr Rollins. I certainly do agree with you on that. We are exploring every opportunity or possibility that we can enhance -- it's certainly, at least initially, possibly with the major concentration on the gateways of the borders, in other words, Quebec and then south of the border with the US -- but we want to go beyond that and we're looking at how we can deliver that service with the minimum cost to the government, because, as you well know, we are in a fiscal situation that somehow we've got to get money back into the infrastructure. But there are going to be some opportunities that we will explore, and possibly with floral advertising in strategic areas as long as everything is going to be in the best interests of safety, and by giving people maybe those opportunities, we can in fact expect them to perform certain services or work on the rest of our highways' shoulders.
We are looking at the adopt a highway program, which has been an ongoing thing. We see opportunities that we might possibly expand on it. You've also heard from our Solicitor General that we might utilize some of the minimum security inmates that we can put on our highways, cleanup details and so on. I'd certainly give you the commitment that I see the importance of clean, manicured shoulders on our highways.
Mr Rollins: Thanks, Minister. I think it's something that we as proud Ontarians -- and I know there are a couple of our opposition who say that everything is absolutely terrible and wrong and everything, but I think there needs to be some of these things happening, because we are open for business again. We do want to make sure the roads look good, and I think it's one of the ways that tourists, and particularly people who are travelling in our province and through our province with holiday time and everything else, that this maintenance would be kind of turned around somewhat.
One of the other things I'd like to question too, Minister, I know that during the cutbacks and everything we have got into quite a bit of truck rental, or equipment rental, for the maintenance of our roads through the winter with sanders and things of that nature. Is there any consideration, or is that a much more economical way to go, by renting some of these pieces of equipment rather than by us owning it as a province and as a department?
Hon Mr Palladini: Carl, come on up. In the last few years, more and more privatization in the winter maintenance has been taking place within the ministry, and I concur with those decisions, because we feel that the private sector can deliver those services a lot more cost-efficiently. As far as the equipment that government has, we should not be investing in that equipment. I think there are other things that we should be investing in, the infrastructure, rather than trucks and sanders and so on. But I'm going to allow Carl Vervoort to explain to you fairly well how the equipment side of the ledger really works as far as our maintenance end of it.
Mr Vervoort: Thank you, Minister. At present, in fact the sanders and salters are almost entirely privatized, not only the operation of the equipment but the actual ownership of the equipment. In the past, the more distant past, all of that equipment was both owned and operated by the ministry, and through a period of about 15 years, we have slowly made that particular service be provided by the private sector. In the first instance, we simply asked them to provide the truck and we continued to provide the sand or salter unit, but more recently we have also in the contracts asked them to provide that equipment.
The same thing has happened with plows and plow equipment. I don't have the precise numbers, but originally all those units were supplied and operated by the ministry. More recently, an increasing proportion of them are in fact provided by our contractors, so they are giving us a full service for the contract.
This has a positive impact not only in the capital costs for the ministry in acquiring and maintaining the equipment, but it has a dramatic effect and we have been able to make some significant reductions in our expenditures in our garage operations with the smaller fleet, with a more focused fleet, with less variability in the nature of the equipment that we're having to maintain. In the last several years, we have been able to consolidate several garage locations and about two years ago in fact closed three or four of our garages.
It's an area of improvement that has been constant. It is an area where we understand that the new technologies of the equipment -- the plows, the metals in the blades and all of those other features that are important to have long life and low maintenance -- that we have tried to extract savings from. I think we've been quite successful in doing that, and we are simply continuing on with those types of initiatives in all respects, both the equipment side, the personnel and the support systems like garages that are necessary to support both the personnel and the equipment that are being deployed.
Mr Rollins: Could you see that rental going on down to smaller vehicles, actually, for our entire fleet of equipment as far as the trucks, the half-tons, the small vehicles and things of that nature? Wouldn't we be wiser to save our capital investment there and put it into infrastructure?
Mr Vervoort: Exactly. We use small vehicles, pickup trucks, for primarily two purposes: One is the enforcement activities that Mr Wycliffe spoke of earlier, and we use light vehicles, light trucks, for our patrolling functions. We are contemplating the benefits of leasing versus buying and are constantly measuring and testing the marketplace. Indeed, I believe, as the general fleet management strategy for the entire province, that is a fundamental issue that is currently under review. So we do intend to explore whatever financial opportunity there is to reduce our expenditures in those areas.
The Chair: Mr Sheehan.
Mr Frank Sheehan (Lincoln): Just humour me a minute, Mr Chairman and Mr Palladini, or Minister. What is the ton-mile tax that we charge non-resident truckers?
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm sorry, Mr Sheehan?
Mr Sheehan: What is that licensing fee that the gentleman was referring to and Mr Preston paid getting in and out of Quebec?
Hon Mr Palladini: Oh, with the borders, over the borders. Rudi Wycliffe, would you --
Mr Sheehan: I know it's not just private, but it's --
Hon Mr Palladini: Maybe you can share with us the cost of the ton-mile tax that you were referring to earlier.
Mr Sheehan: And how do you collect it?
Mr Wycliffe: I think the point I need to make first of all is Ontario does not charge a ton-mile or tonne-kilometre tax to truckers coming in. As I mentioned before, there are two requirements of commercial vehicles coming into Ontario: One is fuel tax registration and the other is a prorated or trip-based vehicle registration fee.
I apologize. Off the top of my head and in my package here I don't have the specifics of what a trip permit fee is for either fuel tax or registration. I'd be more than happy to provide that to you and the committee, but I do want to emphasize that both the Ministry of Transportation for vehicle registration and the Ministry of Finance for fuel tax do not approach it on a ton-mile or tonne- kilometre basis.
Mr Sheehan: How does it generate cash? Just so much a trip?
Mr Wycliffe: If it's on a trip permit basis, yes. If it's on an annual basis, then it is, as you suggest, set by the portion of driving or the kilometres travelled in Ontario.
Mr Sheehan: Do you bill them annually?
Mr Wycliffe: Yes. American truckers acquire an annual registration based on the miles travelled or kilometres travelled in Ontario. For other provinces we have a reciprocal agreement where they register in one province and then those registration fees are prorated among the provinces in which that carrier travels.
Mr Sheehan: Does that generate a significant amount of cash?
Mr Wycliffe: It generates a significant amount of cash both in terms of the vehicle registration, which is the Ministry of Transportation's responsibility, and in terms of fuel tax for the Ministry of Finance.
The Chair: You only have a minute and a half.
Mr Sheehan: A minute? Well, these are kind of quickies. The preventive maintenance process -- I noticed that about 1,400 out of 2,300 are non-resident vehicles. Rather than spot-check them around Toronto, Hamilton or Windsor or whatever, why aren't you hitting them off at the border or hitting them off as they come into the province, as opposed to waiting till they get into the built-up sections where they get a chance to kill more people?
Hon Mr Palladini: There is a process in place, Mr Sheehan, and it's somewhat, not complicated, but I think it's very important that we all understand how the process works. I'm going to ask Rudi Wycliffe to take you through it because it is somewhat detailed.
The Chair: You can take it through for 10 seconds.
Mr Sheehan: I'll defer and come back again. I would really like to find out what the process is.
Hon Mr Palladini: I think it's very important that we do have a reciprocal situation with the Americans as well, so we cannot be too confrontational. But, Mr Chairman, it's your call.
The Chair: We'll take a break, 10 minutes.
The committee recessed from 1102 to 1121.
The Chair: We'll resume the estimates hearing with the Liberals.
Mr Colle: Just a brief comment on deregulation. There has been a lot of comment and they keep repeating that 400 bus routes throughout Ontario were lost because of deregulation. I wonder if there was any study that's been done by the ministry as to why these 400 bus routes were lost, because certainly in looking at bus routes in the GTA area, one of the reasons they were lost in the past is not just because of regulation, but because in some cases plants closed, in some cases there were new developments, in some cases there were shifts of populations. There were also different traffic patterns for people.
To say that a deregulated environment resulted in 400 bus routes being cancelled in small towns is certainly quite myopic in perspective, and I would hope that the minister, as he keeps repeating that, should maybe do a study to find out why these 400 bus routes were lost rather than continually equating regulation with the loss of bus routes.
Another thing, I notice the minister said that if you had four jurisdictions or four cities taking over the financing, the engineering, the planning, the upkeep of a highway, it might be done more efficiently or more effectively or whatever. I'll relate to the minister an experience we had with Metro when we had to do the planning for the Front Street extension. The Front Street extension is the missing link in the southern part of Metro; right now Front Street ends at Bathurst Street.
Metro and Etobicoke and the rest of the GTA were very much in favour of the Front Street extension because it was the link that allowed service vehicles and commuters to come in and out of Metro much more quickly than just along the Lakeshore. So it was a total agreement except for the city of Toronto. The city of Toronto didn't want Front Street extended. What the city of Toronto basically forced Metro to do is buy a hotel and then demolish the hotel so that the Front Street alignment could be done properly. I have to get the exact details of that worked out, but the point is that the city of Toronto did not want any more traffic coming into Toronto because it said it would clog Toronto's streets.
Metro, being the regional government, said: "Hey, on a regional perspective this makes a lot of sense because people are spending so many hours on our congested highways. This would be good for Etobicoke, it would be good for people living in Mississauga or wherever, and getting in and out of the downtown core. It's going to save money and cause less pollution." But, no, Toronto put us through environmental study after environmental study. I think we ended up spending I don't know how many more millions of dollars, as I said, to the point of buying a hotel and then having to demolish it to create this road link.
So when the minister says it's going to maybe easier and cheaper to have all these little municipalities deciding on road maintenance, construction, design and engineering, you haven't seen anything yet in terms of cost, and that's why there's a provincial responsibility in some roads that are interregional. You're going to get so many interest groups out of local municipalities that are going to be worried about their local streets, and in Metro we had this constantly. But for the whole, it was much better to improve that road or to build that bridge.
For instance, the Humber River bridges megaproject, Toronto didn't want that to happen. But if you've ever driven along the bump there, coming in, you see why it had to be done. It was dangerous. Toronto did everything to block that. They said it was an extraordinary expense that we were putting the taxpayer to. There's what's going to happen. All across Ontario you're going to have local interests that don't give a darn about the regional or the greater perspective in moving goods and people around.
They're going to put literally roadblocks in terms of good transportation, and on top of that, they're not going to have the money for it. Because with block funding the municipalities are going to be given the autonomy to decide where they want to spend their money. You know what happens at local municipalities when you tell the taxpayers and the politicians: "You just can't blacktop this road forever and put a slurry seal on top of it. You've got to rebuild it from the core because it's going to cost you so much in repairs and damage that you've got to do things right." What politicians do is they tend to put that off and say, "Oh, no, we've got to keep the tax rate down this year." so they keep on putting the necessary road repairs off. Municipalities are going to be strapped for money, so you're going to have --
Mr Pouliot: Shameful.
Mr Colle: That's exactly what you're going to see accentuated as you download this money, because the municipalities are going to have the choice. Are they going to put into roads, swimming pools? Are they going to put into libraries? Where can they get the biggest bang for their buck? I will bet you that you're going to see the roads of this province deteriorate because there isn't going to be enough money around locally to take care of our roads and there's not going to be the political will.
It's pretty hard to get people excited about repairing and reconstructing a road, but if you say, "We'll put the money towards a community centre and a new library," they'll say, "Oh great." But they'll say, "Put off the road reconstruction, rehabilitation, put it off, put it off." As you know, you put it off and the costs are going to go through the roof.
I don't know how the province is going to direct that or how it's going to manage that, put in guidelines to ensure that you get these roads up to a certain standard. Whether you like it or not, a road like Highway 2, even if they say it's now municipal, still connects a lot of little communities. If you've got the Queen Elizabeth Way, you can say that that's going to be an Etobicoke road. It's not an Etobicoke road. It has interregional interests. People from all over southern Ontario will use the Queen Elizabeth Way, so it just doesn't make sense to give Etobicoke the responsibility or give Toronto the responsibility or give Mississauga or whoever is going to have responsibility, because they refuse to tell us which part of the Queen Elizabeth Way they're going to download.
Mr Preston: They told us this morning.
Mr Colle: No, they haven't. They told you, they didn't tell me. I asked for it, they wouldn't give it to me.
Mr Pouliot: Oh, so they told you, sir?
Mr Colle: Could we have that straightened out then?
Mr Preston: They told the committee this morning what part of the Queen Elizabeth Way --
Mr Colle: Which part are you going to download, Minister?
Hon Mr Palladini: It's not downloading. I hate to refer to that word "downloading."
Mr Kells: Maybe it's unloading.
Mr Colle: Unloading, offloading.
Mr Pouliot: They told you, Peter. You know where to start.
Mr Preston: No, you were here. Maybe you weren't here. It was one of the times that I was here.
The Chair: Are we getting a response to Mr Colle's request?
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, as far as the transferring of Highway 427 --
Mr Colle: Queen Elizabeth Way.
Hon Mr Palladini: Just east of the 427 basically, I guess, that would be the area you're referring to that we would be --
Mr Colle: From 427 --
Hon Mr Palladini: Just east of that, to the border of Metro, obviously, to the Humber River, to the Humber bridge.
Mr Colle: All of that would be in Etobicoke then -- wait a minute, now. Who are the jurisdictions we're dealing with?
Hon Mr Palladini: You want to know what municipalities it affects.
Mr Colle: Yes, it goes through.
Hon Mr Palladini: I guess it affects a portion of Mississauga as well, or not? Strictly Metro, Carl? Okay.
Mr Colle: So it's just in Etobicoke's portion?
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Hon Mr Palladini: Or Etobicoke, I should say, yes.
Mr Vervoort: Specifically with respect to the QEW, the candidate highway at this point would be from Highway 427 easterly. My understanding is all of that is within Metropolitan Toronto and I believe the greatest majority of that, if not all of it, is within Etobicoke.
Mr Colle: So it's basically going to be Etobicoke's -- okay. Thank you.
Anyway, I would just say I hope the minister sets down some guidelines to ensure that these highways which are going to be given to the municipalities have the resources and the wherewithal to meet standards because deterioration is historic, if you look at what's gone on in processes across Ontario.
The other thing I want to ask the minister about is, you said that GO Transit, for instance, is going to benefit and have great potential benefits by deregulation. If you have deregulation and you've got these little minibuses running around deregulated, poaching on GO Transit bus routes, how is that going to benefit GO Transit's bottom line?
Hon Mr Palladini: I basically believe I said that I have every faith in GO Transit that it would be a viable, competitive operation. So deregulation necessarily is not going to hurt GO Transit. What I believe I did say is that I have every faith in GO Transit that they will be able to compete in order to stay in business, in order to attract business, in order to grow. That's what I believe I said.
Mr Colle: No, but I'm saying, you talked about this one little bus company that's got these little minibuses. Let's take some of the GO routes all over the GTA here, and you've got these little, independent bus operators. With deregulation, they're going to find out where the passengers are on GO routes. They're going to try and be there on those same routes and take part of that business. I mean, that's in the nature of competition. How is that going to help GO Transit? Won't GO Transit basically get to the point where it won't be able to afford that route? It'll have to remove itself from that because it'll be an open field because of deregulation.
Hon Mr Palladini: I guess you're really going beyond where we've gone at this point. We are still in a process of putting things together and taking a look at how an orderly deregulation is going to happen. We are going to do it in a very orderly fashion.
But the other element, too, I think is partial. I don't see, especially in the metropolitan area or in the greater Toronto area that you're going to see a 12-passenger club wagon acting as a bus, because I still don't feel that this is going to be the people we are going to be attracting. Possibly in rural areas and small towns, there are going to be opportunities for small entrepreneurs to basically do just that because they don't need a 48-passenger bus, they don't need a 36-passenger bus. Possibly, to go from one town to another, a 16-passenger club wagon might suffice. But the key here is that maintenance is still going to be maintained. Safety is still going to be maintained.
Mr Colle: I'm not worried about maintenance. I'm worried about running -- right now, GO has some very profitable bus routes. It's going to be a free market, remember. How are you going to stop, let's say, a Quebec operator? They find out they can make some money by coming into Ontario and maybe picking off the Hamilton to Union Station run that GO runs right now. As of April 1, what's going to stop a Quebec operator from coming in here and taking that route over?
Hon Mr Palladini: First of all, I doubt very much that that would happen as far as GO, and I guess you're relating to GO. Let's not forget the fact that GO is subsidized by the government and it's difficult enough, even with government subsidies. So for a private operator to come in and compete with GO, I don't know what their success rate would be. So I just don't want to go that far ahead and basically have people thinking that here we are and we're going to have all kinds of people competing with GO, or TTC for that matter --
Mr Colle: No, no, I didn't say TTC.
Hon Mr Palladini: I know you didn't.
Mr Colle: Because you said this is going to be outside of Metro, Metro's not going to be affected.
Hon Mr Palladini: But just keep in mind the fact that GO is subsidized to a great degree and how is a private entrepreneur going to come in the GTA area and basically compete head on with GO? But if that were the case, I still feel that GO has an opportunity here to expand on their services because of the fact that competitiveness is going to be a big part of that delivery.
Mr Colle: Wait a minute. How are you going to be competitive when the Quebec operator's going to come in here, he or she's going to be allowed to come in here, and run bus routes in Ontario? How are you going to stop them, because you're going to be deregulated, and April 1, remember, you have no more regulation, basically, because that board is gone that used to regulate the bus routes. How are you going to stop Quebec poaching? How are you going to stop the cherry-picking? As you know, that's what happens with deregulation, there's going to be cherry-picking, because the private sector, these little independent operators, won't pick the losing routes. They'll find the best, most profitable routes and those routes right now are probably ones that GO has, that Greyhound has, whoever has. They're going to go and try to pick those routes, because they know they can make money on them. They're not going to take some route maybe to Dunnville there because maybe there's no money in that route, so they're going to look --
Mr Preston: They'd have to do a better job.
Mr Colle: No, they're going to have to find a route that's going to have passengers. So right now, most of those routes GO has. So how, as of April 1, are you going to stop, whether it be the Quebec operators or the independent cherry-pickers from coming in here and picking the routes? Because as you know, Minister, right now, one of the beauties about the regulation is that the carriers have to provide a service also, so they take the good routes that make money, but they also have to offer some of the less profitable routes, so that everybody across Ontario will get some level of service. They have that obligation. When you get rid of the transportation board April 1, what are the protections from the cherry-pickers and from the Quebec operators?
Hon Mr Palladini: I thought I made it very clear that deregulation is not going to take place until January 1998, and I also thought I made it very clear that as of April 1 we are going to have another body in place to certainly help us get to the point of full deregulation as far as January 1998. So we are going to have things in place. People are not just going to be allowed to come in here and drive down Yonge Street --
Mr Colle: No, no, remember, I said -- get out of Metro. I'm not talking about Metro.
Hon Mr Palladini: No, no, Yonge Street in York region competing with GO in setting up a bus route, because it's not that simplistic.
Mr Colle: Okay, so you're not going to allow these independent operators, then -- and I have your commitment there that you're not going to allow these independent operators to poach, to cherry-pick GO's routes. You made that commitment.
Hon Mr Palladini: We've been saying that all along, that we are going to be doing things in a very orderly fashion, so we are not just going to allow people from Quebec to cherry-pick routes in Ontario. We are not at that stage as yet. Once full deregulation is in fact in place, then obviously there are not going to be that many safeguards for people outside of Quebec coming in and opening up and trying to establish a bus route and competing with Ontarians. I mean, that eventually might happen.
Mr Colle: So from 1996 to 1998, you're not going to allow the cherry-picking of GO routes, then?
Hon Mr Palladini: That was never the intent. I'm surprised that we would assume --
Mr Colle: You're getting rid of the regulatory body. You've never made an announcement that there's going to be regulation after April, because --
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, we have.
Mr Colle: You said April 1 the regulatory body is gone. So if you want to regulate, why do you want to just change bodies? Why not keep the body that's there now? What's the problem?
Hon Mr Palladini: Because we feel that the way it's set up it's not working and we want to come up with a better way. We feel that what we are going to eventually implement is going to work. And yes, we did make an announcement, we did share with you that we were not just going to walk away and dissolve OHTB and go on. That was not the case. So, David Guscott, would you please bring us up to date exactly where we are and what potentially we will be doing?
Mr Colle: You can bring him up on your own time. Okay? I just want to make sure that I'm clear on that. So April 1 there's not going to be deregulation, there's still going to be regulation. That's all I want to get clear.
Hon Mr Palladini: So I guess you don't want the answer, then?
Mr Colle: No, no --
Mr Pouliot: He wants to ask you, you're the big guy.
Mr Colle: On your time, I'm asking you. Remember, you're the minister. You can't always push the tough questions off to your helpers.
Hon Mr Palladini: I answered your question, I thought. But you want the details of how we're going to do it and that's what he's going to give you. So I've answered your question.
Mr Colle: No, no, what I've asked is, April 1, you're going to continue with regulation, basically.
Hon Mr Palladini: A form of regulation set up not exactly the way it is presently, but there is going to be a form of regulation in place to get us through to January 1998, yes.
Mr Colle: So it's going to be like semiregulation that's going to be put in place. Anyways, listen, I'll get off the bus here right now. Okay? How much time have I got?
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The Chair: He wanted some time.
Mr Colle: I'll take one more minute. The other thing I'd like to have clarified, if I could, Minister, is that earlier this year -- in fact, twice -- there were some announcements about cutbacks in the provincial operating capital budget. The first one I received was -- I'm just trying to think. Yes, this one was in July and there was Ministry of Transportation -- the only reductions I saw were in regional operations division, $1.6 million, transportation infrastructure support, quality and standards, $5 million. Then, later on in October, there's another series of cuts, and again, I looked through the list and there's savings through the sale of unicoaches, GO Transit operating subsidies reduction, corporate in-year savings, it goes on and on, but in none of these listings do I find any reference to the $6.9 million or $7 million you made to winter road maintenance. Where is it on the announced cuts that you've made, this line item?
Because I know in local municipalities and at Metro, when we cut something as important as winter road maintenance, it's a line item, and we debate it at the table because a lot of people are concerned about road safety. So it's usually there in the line item and we, as councillors, will say: "Well, listen, we don't really want to cut road maintenance. We should maybe take it out of another budget because road maintenance is something you can't cut."
I'm just wondering where it is in the information that you've passed forward, for instance, in the October or the July items.
Hon Mr Palladini: As far as a line-for-line breakdown, I really don't have that information handy. The $6.5 million was part of the overall business plan, part of the overall picture. If you would like a line-for-line item, I believe David Aronoff -- is David here? He could certainly walk us through on a line-for-line basis.
Mr Colle: But I'm just wondering, the list that you gave out publicly, why that wasn't included in October. Is it there in October's listings? It's got ministry issues, transportation, savings through the sale of unicoaches etc etc. It's got credit card rationalization, eliminate government fuel dispensing installations. Where is that $6.5 million, $6.9 million?
The Chair: Be sure to introduce yourself, Mr Aronoff.
Mr David Aronoff: Sure. My name is David Aronoff, director of the finance branch at the Ministry of Transportation.
In terms of the information on that sheet, it isn't on that sheet but it was part of our announced package. There were two winter maintenance initiatives that were part of our package and we can give you the details on that information. Why it isn't on that sheet, I can't answer.
Mr Colle: But there were two major announcements of cuts: one in July, one in October. Right?
Mr Aronoff: Sorry?
Mr Colle: There were two announcements when cutbacks were made.
Mr Aronoff: Right.
Mr Colle: And we, as humble members of the opposition, received these Office of the Premier ministry reductions releases. This is October. You know, winter is just about to come on. Why wouldn't it be included in this listing for public consumption? Is it there?
Mr Aronoff: It's not there. Why it's not there, I can't tell you. It was part of the announcements associated with the October set and not the July set.
Mr Colle: Can I see a copy of that, because I never received one.
Mr Aronoff: We can get you a copy of that material. Of the winter maintenance specifically?
Mr Colle: Yes.
Mr Aronoff: We can get you a copy of the material on winter maintenance.
Mr Colle: We heard about it through the fact that graders were getting laid off. That's the only way we knew about it. We didn't find out about it through the government.
Now that you're up here I could maybe ask a follow-up to that: How much was cut in winter maintenance?
Mr Aronoff: A total of $6.9 million -- it wasn't a cut. It was estimated that we would save by different arrangements associated with winter maintenance.
The reason why one of the answers is not on the piece of paper is that it was prepared by the Ministry of Finance and not us. That might have been an oversight on their part.
Mr Colle: So it's their fault. It's the Ministry of Finance's fault.
Mr Aronoff: No, I'm just saying that's why we were unaware that it wasn't on the sheet.
Mr Colle: So this was not a cut. It was an estimated saving.
Mr Aronoff: It's estimated savings from alternative arrangements, alternative work efforts, because again it's a cut in terms of -- it's savings associated with delivering the program. We were going to be able to deliver the same program with $6.9 million less.
Mr Colle: So you achieved that saving of $6.9 million? You delivered successfully that program?
Mr Aronoff: We have saved, it is our estimation -- the winter isn't over yet. It's our estimation that we will be saving $6.9 million from what would otherwise have been the case, again, all things being equal. The winter snowfall obviously makes changes to the total number of dollars spent. But all things being equal, we will spend $6.9 million less than we would have otherwise spent on winter maintenance as a result of alternative arrangements to provide snowplowing and sanding.
Mr Colle: But the number of dollars that you've spent in winter road maintenance, let's say up to now, compared to the same period last year -- have you spent more or less?
Mr Aronoff: I suspect that we've probably spent more, as a result of the severe winter.
Mr Colle: So you've spent more. How much more have you spent?
Mr Aronoff: I can't answer that at this time. It's ongoing. On a daily basis, we're continuing to spend money on winter maintenance activities. By April we'll be able to tell you exactly how much we spent and how much more that was than last year. For obvious reasons, it will be larger than in previous years, because the winter was significantly harsher.
The Chair: I think we can pursue this later on. Your time is up.
Mr Pouliot: Thank you very kindly for your contribution. I thank my colleague Mr Colle. It was difficult, but $6.9 million -- I also thank my colleague the minister. If it snows, it's not unlike a forest fire. You don't question; you do what you have to do. So I can't attack the fact that Trans-Canada Highway 17 was closed for four days because you had, come hell or high water, saved $6.9 million, because it was an emergency and you said, "We'll find the money someplace else but we will do it." Okay, I'm satisfied with that.
M. Lambert, in our riding, Lake Nipigon, 26% of the land mass of Ontario, underpopulated, of course, the road system ends in Pickle Lake. If I leave Manitouwadge and go to Pickle Lake, that's 600 miles one way, ten we charter and go to the bay for the remaining 400 miles. It's 1,000 miles long: Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick put together and multiplied by two.
During the last campaign, right before that, I was at Transportation; I was at Northern Development. The reason I mention both is because there is a natural blend, alliance, traditional marriage of those two ministries to address our special needs up north. I had made the commitment, because of its dire needs, to address reconstruction, resurfacing of some parts -- not all over the kilometres but specifically, in fact meticulously, Beardmore, Longlac. I informed their electorate -- they're paying for all this -- and was very proud that the province could finally deliver. It was a matter of convenience, with a focus on safety. There was a timetable, albeit tentative, attached to it.
Picture this: One day at the post office, having people doubting both the integrity and the sincerity of the commitment, going door to door, becoming an apologist because somewhere in the system, somewhere in the process the commitment and the sincerity got forgotten -- it was more like selective amnesia -- I began to stew and I began to look at and look for people. Imagine having to add to it native-bashing, whispering vis-à-vis welfare, single parents. I felt under a state of siege.
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It's not that it almost cost me the election. This matters none. It's not relevant here. Much more importantly, it's the commitment. I want to know, if I may be so bold, what the heck happened to the project. Please don't tell me about environmental assessment; please don't give me a stall. Please don't lie to me. I work with professionals. Please tell me when we will have a shovel in the ground. I trust you, M. Lambert, and I'm listening to you.
The Chair: Mr Lambert, if you could introduce yourself.
Mr Larry Lambert: Thank you, Minister. My name is Larry Lambert. I'm regional director in the northwest with the Ministry of Transportation. The member is absolutely correct in his reflections that in the spring of 1995 the northern capital highway program was jointly approved by the two ministers, the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. In that approved and publicly announced program, as he suggests, were three projects between Beardmore and Longlac.
For those from Hagersville, if you leave Thunder Bay and go 100 kilometres east, it's Nipigon. At that point Highway 11, the Northern Route, goes about 80 kilometres due north, up the side of Lake Nipigon. At that point then is Beardmore. From Beardmore, if you go east about 100 kilometres, you will go through Jellicoe, through Geraldton and arrive at Longlac. From there, it's two hours' hard drive to Hearst. So that section from Beardmore to Longlac had three projects announced. If I may, I'll go through the three projects.
The first one was announced early in the year. It went through a competitive tender; it was awarded. In June, certain events overtook all of the capital construction projects. There was a request that we review and pause all of our capital construction projects. That first project was under way at that point.
Mr Pouliot: It was twisting in the wind.
Mr Lambert: That project was under way at that point. It had been awarded. There was a contractor onsite, the pavement was ripped up and an exemption was given to that project and it proceeded without any interruption. That project was completed late in the fall of 1995, $3.3 million, and accomplished all that had been provided. That project ran from Beardmore to Jellicoe. That's the first of the three projects.
The second project then, immediately east of that, between Jellicoe and Longlac, was a small $1-million project. I believe it was described in the news release as shovel-in-the-ground activity. It was a series of minor sections of repavement and a series --
Mr Pouliot: With the signs and the detours.
Mr Lambert: No major signs, but selective repaving, frost heave treatments, and the sole purpose of that was to make Highway 11 driveable until we could get to the major project. That second project had gone out for tender. It was not awarded when the pause came. It was released in September, and in September there was not time to retender, so we broke the project into two pieces. We negotiated a portion of it between Jellicoe and Geraldton, and that was completed to the satisfaction of the mayor of --
Mr Pouliot: I appreciate the courtesy of political engineering. When are we going to get the shovel in the ground? Because you see, Larry, in despair I called Jack Kevorkian.
Mr Colle: Who's Jack? Let us in on this.
Mr Pouliot: I called Jack Kevorkian. I'm thinking of his words. He said: "Don't do it, Gilles. Call Transportation." When are the good folks who are paying your wages and my wages going to see the shovel in the ground?
Mr Preston: You didn't get good advice.
Mr Lambert: The first project was totally completed within 1995. The second project was broken and partially completed within 1995.
The third project which was committed was a major design-build project between Geraldton and Longlac, in excess of $10 million, total reconstruction, three new bridges, a major new process of design-build. To put it out, hopefully substantially more expediently, with some substantial cost reductions --
Mr Pouliot: When?
Mr Lambert: That project went out for request for qualifications and expressions of interest in late spring 1995. In June, that project was also put under review. Nothing happened on it until a decision was made on October 19. On October 19, the ministers jointly reconfirmed that this project would proceed in its original fashion.
The statements of interest were opened; the consortia were short-listed to three. They are actively working to finalize their final proposals at this point. Five weeks from yesterday those will close, and our expectation would be that following the review, if we get acceptable proposals at an acceptable price, we would see an award in April and the shovel in the ground shortly thereafter, as the engineering work proceeds. That project is still on the same schedule for completion by the end of construction season 1997.
Mr Pouliot: Just 30 seconds. This is very good news for the people of Lake Nipigon. I have a reputation for not being partisan, so I will make sure that I convey the good news, on behalf of the present regime, to the people of Lake Nipigon. Thank you very much. You've made my day and the day of the people up there.
The committee recessed from 1157 to 1334.
The Chair: Let us resume. When we broke for lunch, Mr Pouliot had the floor and I think he had exhausted 15 minutes of his time so far.
Mr Pouliot: Thank you very kindly. We had just talked -- Lillian, Alvin and I -- vis-à-vis the estimates time allocation, which is to conclude, to terminate tomorrow. It's our understanding by previous notice and reminder that the minister is unable to be with us tomorrow. It's also our understanding that the parliamentary assistant, the person who drives the car, will not be with us.
We had hoped that we would be able to quiz the minister. After all, the minister is the one who gets paid the big dollars. The minister is a reasonable facsimile of Chairman Mike, who really calls the shots, but we're satisfied. It's also a rare opportunity to meet face to face.
Mrs Ross: Mr Chair, on a point of order.
Mr Pouliot: It's my time.
Mrs Ross: On a point of order: With respect to the scheduling, last week we spoke about the schedule and the fact that the minister was unable to be here. We could not get unanimous consent to reduce the Housing hours in order to push everything up, so we agreed we would go ahead with the schedule as is, with staff here, tomorrow morning. I just wanted to put on the record again that it was an agreement of all three parties.
The Chair: I don't think there was unanimous consent about that.
Mr Pouliot: I welcome the interjection. My good friend, with respect, will learn in relatively short order that when resources dwindle, when your research department is somewhat scattered and when you're allocated one half-hour, you wish to make sure at this stage of estimates, and when you hop from committee to committee you wish to make doubly sure, that everybody understands what has been conveyed.
We would acquiesce in the opportunity to have ministry personnel so we can direct our questions in lieu of the kind proposal, the alternative, to reschedule at a later time. At the mine, we used to call this, "Trust me till payday." Sometimes those paybacks never come, so, with respect, we'd rather proceed tomorrow. It's only a half-day, and we're quite comfortable to address the ministry -- if it's okay, of course.
Mrs Ross: We agree.
The Chair: Is that agreement of the Liberals too? Okay. Let's proceed. I want you to understand, Mr Pouliot, that the time you used a minute ago was your time.
Mr Preston: You should have just said yes.
Interjection.
Mr Pouliot: I will have my good and distinguished colleague speak to the point on some legitimate requests and concerns vis-à-vis transportation in Ontario.
As I looked at the 1995-96 estimates briefing book -- and I'm sure we will spend the time it deserves to pass the estimates -- on page 57, "Remote aviation statistical data," I need help. There's a total of 24 ministry-owned and ministry-operated remote airports; 11 of them are in the riding of Lake Nipigon, including Fort Severn, which is the northernmost community in the province. Those remote airports are a life link to amenities that others, only too often, take for granted. The conditions are not somewhat but at times entirely different, so we rely on those airports. We have no road system for 400 kilometres leading to the bay.
People aren't rich. They have very little there. It's a long story, and we're all somewhat aware of it. Someone in the ministry could perhaps tell me if any changes are being contemplated under the "opportunity for saving." I heard you: There are ways to save money. I know what you people intend to do. Politically, I disagree, but I'm going to leave it at that because at least it's philosophical and I can live with that. I won't bore you -- you deserve better -- by saying, "Not you, not me, but the fellow behind the tree." That wouldn't be fair.
But when we look at places like Wunnumin Lake, Kingfisher, Armstrong, Pickle Lake, Kasabonika, and the list goes on, for the few dollars one could save -- I'm not talking about municipal airports; I'm talking about remote communities -- one would risk to dislocate. You would not be attacked if you could meet your commitment -- we're not talking about a lot of money -- outside of these northern reserve airports. Trust me in this case. It's all we have. There's no road system. You provide an excellent service. You administer the airport. It's costly but it's not extraordinarily so. That's the only plea I want to make, let's keep in mind, when it comes to remote aviation statistical data. If we superimpose this with a financial plan to, if at possible -- it's working well and we're very appreciative to leave it alone.
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Hon Mr Palladini: If I may have an opportunity to address that, even though this government is attempting to become fiscally responsible, I'd just like to point out to the honourable member that the federal government is also looking for ways of getting out of subsidies as far as airports are concerned. Certainly we mean to become fiscally responsible in the province of Ontario, in the way it's governed, but I just want to say to you that nothing at this time is planned for any changes. We supported it last year and at this particular moment nothing is planned.
Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): How much time, Chair?
The Chair: You've got five minutes.
Mr Bisson: All right. You made a comment yesterday, Minister, that in your approach to managing the Ministry of Transportation, like other of your colleagues in government, you were under the impression that there were expenditures that were being expended by former governments, including ours and the Liberal government, that were unnecessary. I'm just wondering if you can tell me -- just bear with me and go through this a little bit -- where all this unnecessary expenditure is, because you left the impression that there's a whole bunch of money being spent in your ministry that is not needed to operate your ministry. I'm just wondering where all these savings are and where all this money is, so I'd just like to go through some of it. Or maybe just generally, where are all the expenditures being wasted, in your mind?
Hon Mr Palladini: I believe that my remarks yesterday were certainly not zeroed in on any particular ministry. I basically made a reference to the way governments in the past two decades have spent money.
Mr Bisson: But where in your ministry?
Hon Mr Palladini: When you take a look at the provincial debt that was inherited back in 1985 and the provincial debt we are presently stuck with, I think that in itself is enough of a reference that obviously we were spending a lot more money than we were taking in, unlike a good business.
Mr Bisson: Let's try it the other way.
Hon Mr Palladini: They should spend within their means, and this is really what this government is committed to doing, spending within our means.
Mr Bisson: Let me ask you a direct question: How much money is being expended by the Ministry of Transportation in total for this year, capital and operating -- ballpark?
Hon Mr Palladini: I believe we're looking at around a $1 billion as far as --
Mr Bisson: You better tell the minister how much money he's got.
Mr Pouliot: But he's living within his means.
Mr George Davies: The estimates that you have in front of you, as you can see, are for approximately $2.5 billion, and the cuts that were announced by the government on July 21 are outlined in the last page, so it's that net amount which is the amount that we're dealing with for this past fiscal year.
Mr Bisson: You've given me an answer, but the question I want to ask the minister is that you're saying there's been a whole bunch of unnecessary expenditures because of the size of our total debt in the province of Ontario, close to some $100 billion now. Your assertion is that there's all kinds of wasted money there that was expended by Conservative governments, by Liberals and by New Democrats. I'm just asking, where's your share and where's your admission in your budget where a whole bunch of money has been spent that is unnecessary? I want to know where unnecessary expenditures are in the Ministry of Transportation. Is it in snow removal, winter maintenance? Is that it? Is it winter maintenance, Minister? Is that where we don't need to spend money, we're spending too much money now? Is it in capital infrastructure for upgrading roads to standards?
The Chair: I think he wants to answer.
Mr Bisson: I'm just giving him a couple of suggestions.
Hon Mr Palladini: If you're looking for a complete breakdown, I'm not in a position to share that information because I don't really have it at hand --
Mr Bisson: That's the point, isn't it?
Hon Mr Palladini: -- but I'm sure we can get it for you. But just one small part we were able to do and still function and still perform and remain within the standards of services is winter maintenance. If we had not done business in another manner, we would have spent $6.5 million more, even though we've had a very severe winter.
Mr Bisson: There are graveyards of people who are now lying six feet underground because of that policy decision. We'll get into that one later.
Hon Mr Palladini: I don't believe that this government is responsible for that.
Mr Bisson: We'll come to that a little later. What I want to get to is that you're saying that there's all kinds of wasted expenditure in government, that government is just blowing the load on absolutely everything it does and somehow it's --
Hon Mr Palladini: I'd just like to have the money your government committed to spending on Eglinton subway. I'd just like to get that money back and see how many more roads we could build with that.
Mr Bisson: I want to see what parts of your ministry are unnecessary. Is it winter maintenance? Is that unnecessary? Is it the transfers we do to municipal road budgets? Is that unnecessary? I want to know where the unnecessary expenditures are.
Hon Mr Palladini: I think this government has shown that it wants to govern based on priorities and based on needs --
Mr Bisson: No, I would say you're governing on rhetoric.
Hon Mr Palladini: -- contrary to the last government.
Mr Bisson: And if you were clear and if you were honest in this committee --
The Chair: Mr Bisson, let the minister respond, if you want a response. There are two speaking at the same time. What would you like? A response, or would you like to continue? Which one do you want?
Mr Bisson: I've only got two minutes so we're going to come back on this issue a little later. The point I'm trying to make is that certainly the minister, like any minister, like my colleague beside me, has a responsibility to manage the Ministry of Transportation better. My minister, Minister Pouliot, and others, cut expenditures of the Ministry of Transportation and expenditures they thought were in keeping with trying to deal with the expenditure control plan. I applaud the minister for trying to run the ministry more effectively.
But the point I'm getting at is that I think it is not honest on the part of a government to say, "This is all money that's been wasted." The money that's been spent -- it's not a question of having been wasted. It's in the ground, it's in projects that have been utilized in the province, in our health care system, in new highways that were built. That's not wasted money. That's a question of priorities. If you want to talk about priorities, that's one thing. But don't talk about the money we spent on building a second river crossing in Timmins as wasted money, because I take some exception to that.
Mr Rollins: I've got a couple of questions. Minister, one of your experts has stated that the A-train system of trucks truly isn't the answer to everything because all loads can't be handled on that type of configuration, particularly longer loads. Is there anything the ministry is going to try to do to encourage that type of vehicle on the road? They are more road-friendly than probably any other configuration of trucks.
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, I believe we can, especially with consultation within the industry and with the industry in getting their input. I believe we can come up with remedies and do an orderly phase-out of certain equipment that right now is proving to be hazardous to our infrastructure. These are some of the reasons I did not agree to sign a unilateral agreement on the weights and measures with the rest of Canada. I believe I have a commitment to the economic benefit of the province of Ontario and I want to implement the right changes that are going to be in the best interests of Ontario from an economic sense, but at the same time getting input from the industry to see how quickly we can react and phase these changes.
I have Rudi Wycliffe here, who could maybe elaborate in more detail and be specific on the type of equipment we are talking about, if you're interested in knowing exactly that.
Mr Wycliffe: Rudi Wycliffe, acting assistant deputy minister, safety and regulation. In response to the member's question, the first point I want to make is that the preferred configuration we were talking about earlier at this committee is what we refer to as a B-train. I described that yesterday as a tractor-trailer-trailer configuration with two fifth-wheel connections, as they're known in the industry, between the tractor and first trailer and the first trailer and the second trailer.
That configuration has major benefits, both economically, because we allow it under the maximum weights under the Highway Traffic Act in Ontario, and from a safety and performance standpoint, in terms of stability, turning circle and performance.
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The issues, as the minister has pointed out, deal with the laws as they exist in Ontario, and they have not changed in a number of years, with some minor exceptions. Ontario's weight laws have been -- I think the term to describe them is quite permissive. We set a general maximum in weight; 63,500 kilograms is the maximum weight allowed under the Highway Traffic Act. There are regulations under the Highway Traffic Act that prescribe various internal vehicle dimensions such as wheel bases, axle spacings, the number of axles and so on.
Recent legislation increased the trailer length to 53 feet and the B-train combination length to 25 metres, or approximately 82 feet. Those two pieces of legislation were accompanied with some very specific and strict limitations on how you could configure those vehicles: no airlift axles on those configurations; mandatory underride protection at the rear of the trailer so that cars could not slide underneath them, incurring much more severe damage and injury upon collision; and retroreflective markings on the trailers to make sure that in reduced visibility situations there was a maximum of opportunity for other drivers and road users to identify those vehicles on the road.
The issues surrounding vehicles, as the minister has said, pertain to the vehicles that have evolved in the province over the last couple of decades. Those of you who use the highway system and the municipal road systems will see all sorts of configurations on the road that suit various industry- or commodity-specific groups and suit either Ontario's weight laws or in many cases some of our neighbours' weight laws.
The major issues of concern to the trucking industry, as the minister has said, from an economic point of view are, what are the economic losses by either totally outlawing some of those vehicle configurations or severely restricting the carrying capacity of those vehicles? The economic studies that Mr Guscott, my confrère here, elaborated on yesterday outlined the approach we have undertaken to provide that information to the minister in order for him to decide which direction we should go in terms of those weight laws.
Mr Rollins: The 83-foot length is only permissible in that B-train series, though, is it not?
Mr Wycliffe: Precisely. It is limited to what we call a Transportation Association of Canada-specified B-train, with a maximum of eight axles, three on the power unit, two or three on the first trailer, two or three on the second trailer, no airlift axles, some very specific controls on the length of each of the trailers, the underride protection that I talked about and the retroreflective markings, or as they're called in the regulations, the conspicuity markings. They're very strictly controlled in Ontario and in most of the other provinces in Canada as well.
Mr Rollins: And I hope we keep it very strict, because when you stop and think of an 83-foot piece of equipment moving down the highway at 100-plus klicks an hour or right around that, it's certainly a big piece of equipment going down the road and we need to be very careful with it.
Due to the fact that we have some local inspections, particularly out in the outlying areas of our small municipalities -- we hear it in our office and I'm sure other offices are hearing it too. Some of the inspectors, for clearance lights and things like that, which is maybe a minor misdemeanour, particularly if it's not a brake light or a signal light, only a clearance light -- some of these inspectors are being very exuberant about fining some of these people. We know the safety standard is close to being that there are clearance lights, and yes, if a clearance light is out. Is there any push from the ministry that there should be a heavier penalty for these?
Hon Mr Palladini: I'll turn it over to Rudi because he can elaborate quite a bit more, but I believe the commitment we made when we did our road safety announcement back in October, the Solicitor General and the Attorney General and I, is that basically we're going to be recommending higher fines, and that in essence is what's happening. We are in the process of getting that, but I'll let Rudi highlight a little more on that.
Mr Wycliffe: As the member suggests, the ministry has reacted over the last year to the continuing record of the trucking industry in terms of collisions, serious incidents, tragic incidents. At our roadside inspections and our off-highway safety audits, which we conduct as part of our commercial vehicle enforcement program, we have been focusing on the mechanical condition of vehicles. We're very concerned about it.
I want to emphasize, first of all, the inspection standards we follow. Ontario has been a member and an active participant in an international association called the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. The acronym is CVSA. CVSA in the last decade, working with the jurisdictions across North America -- the Canadian provinces, the federal government, the American states, the federal government in the United States -- and the trucking industry, the insurance industry and the manufacturing industry, the people who manufacture trucks, trailers and safety components of the vehicles, has developed what are called CVSA inspection criteria, an inspection standard, and what are called out-of-service standards.
Those out-of-service standards pertain to the major, what are called, critical safety items on a vehicle. I think there are 11 of them and I'm going to name some of them off the top of my head. They are things like the integrity of the steering system, the integrity of the braking system, the integrity of the frame or structure and springs of the vehicle, wheel attachments and some of the safety signalling devices such as lights and signal lights.
The out-of-service standards are not just one little item and you're out of service. In many of those cases you can have a number of things wrong, and they are called defects, but it will not result in the vehicle being taken out of service. For example, on brakes, when we deal with the adjustment of air brakes -- and air brakes are very different from car brakes; they do go out of adjustment and they have what's called a slack adjustment on them -- 20% or more of the brakes on a vehicle have to be out of alignment, out of adjustment, before we take the vehicle out of service. So you can have, for example, on an 18-wheeler, a brake out of service and we will allow that vehicle to proceed.
Incidentally, I want to emphasize that our inspectors have all gone through a two-week training program on the CVSA inspection procedure and the out-of-service standards. They are all retrained and requalified annually to those standards, and approximately 25% of our inspectors are licensed mechanics.
Until recently, when we took a truck out of service, we told the driver or the company, "You get it fixed or bring it back into the safety standards that exist and we will allow it to proceed." We weren't satisfied that that was having any effect on the industry. Our next step was to say to our officers, "There are various tools at your disposal under the Highway Traffic Act and you can lay charges." Quite often, a truck that's out of service reflects the fact that the driver did not follow the requirements of the Highway Traffic Act and do a pre-trip inspection on the critical safety items of the truck.
If the truck is taken out of service for defects that could have been and certainly should have been detected by a driver properly doing that pre-trip inspection, we can and frequently do charge that driver with failure to do a pre-trip inspection, or if the driver has a documented pre-trip inspection that he or she claims to have done, we will charge him for falsifying that inspection.
In the severe cases, we will charge the driver for driving an unsafe vehicle. Those charges exist under the Highway Traffic Act, and in addition to taking the truck out of service and basically saying that truck doesn't go anywhere until it's brought into safety standards, we will lay those charges. If convicted in the courts, those charges will go on the operator's commercial vehicle operator's registration, or CVOR.
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We have added one more step in our severity of dealing with truckers, and that is, where we find a severely unsafe vehicle, our officers have the authority under the Highway Traffic Act to remove the plates on the vehicle and require that vehicle to have a complete safety inspection under the requirements of the Highway Traffic Act. Basically, that truck or trailer or combination has to be towed away or put on a float and floated away, completely reinspected, and proof of inspection brought back to our officer before the plates are returned to the owner.
Mr Rollins: One other area that I think we all see, particularly people who are in the smaller areas, is we have a lot of vehicles, a lot of older cars that are on the road, that would not pass safety inspections if their ownership changed. Is there any thought from the ministry to bring in a mandatory inspection of vehicles over a certain age to try to remove those vehicles from the road, because we do know they are problems?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you very much for the question. Let me assure you that we will never stop to try to find ways that will help us make our roads the safest in North America. We have given it some thought and so it is in the talking stage, and certainly we are looking to see how best we might be able to implement that. But it does take time in order for us to -- here we are, we are the type of government that basically is saying we want to get out of the regulation business, and the last thing that we need to do as a government is bringing in more regulations.
We are going to be working on this in a way that if it can be implemented -- but we must need industry input on this before we even consider regulating it. Certainly it's a good avenue for us to pursue, possibly by making something mandatory once a vehicle is five years old or 100,000 kilometres or 200,000 kilometres. There are some things that we can consider in implementing it, but at this point in time I'm not really in a position to say to you that, "Yes, we are going to be doing this within the next year," because that would not be the case, but we are looking at it.
Mr Rollins: Okay. Thank you. One other thing, with the number of employees that we have --
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm sorry, Mr Rollins. If you want some technical explanations, Rudi can certainly give you some more.
Mr Rollins: Yes. Because I'm in the service station business and the repair business also, I realize that we see a lot of vehicles on the road that are 10 or 12 years old and they've got defects with them, no question about it. But because the ownership has never changed, nobody ever picks up on them, and you can be allowed to drive on bald tires and a few things like that. How many times does that car go on down the road and have an accident? I know if it was an accident taking the life of one of the members of your family or mine, you'd be very upset about it. I think we owe the public that, to make sure those vehicles stay a little bit on top of it.
I think every three years Alberta has to have one done. British Columbia, I believe, has to have it done every year. There are different criteria in different provinces, and I think we're one of the more lenient ones. I'm glad you are taking that into some consideration.
The Chair: Mrs Ross wanted a quick one.
Mr Barrett: Just a quick comment on that. I've had some discussions about this as well. I just want people to recognize that there are certainly a cadre of people who have older vehicles, of course antique cars and classic cars, that are very well maintained, as you know. I know some people are concerned that everyone may be dragged into the same net, and I would hope any of these initiatives would certainly take into consideration the money and the expertise that's gone into fixing up some of these vehicles that, as we know, are very mechanically sound. I just wanted to mention that.
Mr Rollins: Yes. They have a separate licence plate on those older vehicles, and there's a little different standard for them than what's on the cars of the streets of Toronto.
Mrs Ross: I want to continue along that line just a little bit. I have an article here that was in the Hamilton Spectator about the blitz that was put on to inspect trucks. One of the drivers stated that he could leave in the morning and the truck would be fine, but as he's traversing on his way some of the nuts and bolts might come loose. Is that true? Let me just see what it said here. It said, he "checks his truck before setting off on a trip and complained that things go wrong once he's on the road. Lights, locks -- items can fail and it's not his fault."
Mr Wycliffe: If I might, Mr Chairman. To some extent that is a very valid statement, that there are many components on a truck, particularly a transport truck compared to a private car that weighs probably in this day and age a minimum of 80,000 pounds, which is the standard weight of an 18-wheeler coming in from the United States and, as I mentioned earlier, up to 63,500 kilograms in Ontario. There are many components that will wear and tear -- tires, brakes, wheels, wheel attachment devices, lights. And admittedly there are those times when driving down the highway -- I've had it happen to me -- that your headlight will burn out and maybe a brake light or a signal light will burn out. Our officers take that into consideration, but to expect more than 20% of the brakes to go out of adjustment or for wheel nuts to magically fall off the truck while it's going down the highway, I'm afraid the credibility of the ministry's enforcement officers draws the line well before that kind of argument.
There are some very fundamental issues, for example, surrounding the attachment of wheels to trucks and, as came out in the Worona/Tyrrell inquest, a number of problems surrounding those issues. One of the realities of attaching a wheel to a truck is that torquing the nuts on to the studs is very, very critical. You can overtorque it and create as much of a problem as if you undertorque it. If you undertorque it the nut will come off the stud. Once one nut is off on an 8- or 10-stud wheel, you put a lot of stress on the rest of them. You can overtorque it and you start to put stress on the wheel rim, and we've had observed situations in the last year where the nuts have been torqued on so tightly they wear holes in the wheel rim; the rim actually comes out from around the studs and the wheel falls off.
I think I can assure you that our officers have the knowledge and experience to judge the nature of the defects on a truck and assess whether in fact that happened since the driver did a thorough pre-trip inspection, since the trucking company last did a proper inspection and maintenance on that truck, and since the truck went through its annual required-under-law full safety inspection. Where our credibility draws a line, that's when we get into action and start to lay charges and do other things to the driver and the company.
Mrs Ross: When a truck goes on a road it's inspected, you said, once a year under this three-day cross-Canada thing, but if you don't get a truck on that day, how do you know that a truck -- I guess I want to know, is there an inspection that takes place every year before a truck's allowed to go on the road?
Mr Wycliffe: Yes. Let me outline the requirements -- if I might, Minister --
Hon Mr Palladini: Please.
Mr Wycliffe: -- that exist under the law of Ontario, under the Highway Traffic Act, and have been adopted largely across Canada under what's called the National Safety Code and reflect very similar laws in the United States of America.
First of all, there is what we call a periodic mandatory commercial vehicle inspection. Once a year a truck and a trailer have to undergo a complete safety inspection. It's a mechanical inspection of all the safety components of the truck -- brakes, wheels, tires, steering, lights etc -- and once a year you have to have a full inspection, if it's done in Ontario, by a maintenance or repair facility that's registered under the Ministry of Transportation's motor vehicle inspection station program and by a licensed mechanic who is registered under that program. The vehicle then has to carry either a sticker indicating that the inspection was done in the last 12 months or equivalent documentary proof.
The next requirement under the law is for a company to practise responsible inspection and maintenance programs on its vehicles, recognizing, as the editorial referred to, the trucks' wear and tear when they're on the road, when they're carrying heavy weights, when they're travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometres here, which many trucks do, to return the investment to the companies. A company has to have an inspection and maintenance program that allows for that wear and tear to make sure that at any given time that truck's in good condition.
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The third requirement is what we call in Ontario and Canada a pre-trip inspection by the driver -- in the United States it's a post-trip inspection -- that looks at, I think, 25 or 27 critical safety items on a truck and trailer. The driver either has to certify that those items are in safe working order, or identify them to somebody and have them repaired before that vehicle proceeds on the road.
The fourth inspection is the enforcement inspection done by the Ministry of Transportation enforcement officers -- and I just elaborated on the Canadian Vehicle Safety Alliance inspection standards -- and/or by provincial and municipal police, many of whom have also been trained by us in the CVSA inspection standards. That is an enforcement action. We are not out there to provide a service to the trucking industry, we're out there to provide a service to the travelling public of Ontario to make sure those trucks are safe.
Mrs Ross: One of the other comments in the same article was that these blitz inspections were making it tough on drivers. Can you tell me if Ontario's requirements are stricter than other provinces? Do we inspect them more often? How are we in comparison to other provinces, I guess, with respect to the trucks that are on the road?
Mr Wycliffe: I think, and this is a subjective opinion, that we have probably the best-trained enforcement officers in the Ministry of Transportation of any jurisdiction in North America and we have probably the strongest focus of any jurisdiction in North America on truck safety and mechanical safety inspections.
I would suggest that the inconvenience exists only to those drivers who are driving unsafe vehicles. If you're driving a safe vehicle -- as I mentioned earlier, because our normal enforcement, whether it's in a blitz with our officers or with other police forces, we're trying to select the unsafe trucks to detect them, inspect them and deal with them -- that our percentages are higher and higher in non-random enforcement actions to detect the unsafe trucks. Certainly, it's a major inconvenience and a major cost to a trucking company and a driver if we detect an unsafe vehicle and we take enforcement action. That's what the trucking industry responds to, that kind of deterrent effect.
Mrs Ross: When a truck is taken off the road and has to repair something -- say it's their brakes -- do they have to then repair the brakes and take it somewhere to be inspected before it's allowed on the road? How do you know he's done that job?
Mr Wycliffe: I'll give you probably the typical example: our officers working at a truck inspection station along the highway system somewhere in Ontario, whether it's at Nipigon on Highway 17 or at Putnam on Highway 401 near London. They will inspect a truck and if they take the truck out of service they will tell the driver of that truck it does not proceed until it's brought back into compliance with the safety inspection standards. The typical response is, "You do what you have to do to repair the truck," which frequently involves calling in a mobile mechanic either from the company or from a local garage, and then the officer will be called by the driver, notified that the work is done and verify that it's been done within standards and allow the truck to proceed. In the severe cases, as I indicated, our officer will remove the plates of the truck, tell the driver, "It has to be towed away, either on a hook or on a float, and you will get the plates back when you can demonstrate it was completely inspected and brought into the safety standards under the regulations of the Highway Traffic Act."
Mrs Ross: Can I ask a couple of questions about construction of roads?
The Chair: You have five minutes.
Mrs Ross: Five minutes, okay. I was trying to read through the Provincial Auditor's report to find out a little bit more about this issue, and I read that there are asphalt roads and there are concrete roads. Are most of our highways asphalt?
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, they are.
Mrs Ross: When I was reading that, I think it said asphalt roads had a lifespan of 15 years and concrete roads were 20 years.
Hon Mr Palladini: I guess you could say 25 years. Do you want to go into some real detail? Concrete costs more money, so there are some benefits on either side. If you want some very specific details, I've got Carl and Ian, who can certainly share a lot more in detail. Is that what you want to know?
Mrs Ross: Yes. Basically, I want to touch on something they call life-cycle programs or whatever it is.
The Chair: Remember you have a few minutes to do that, so if you want to get all your questions in, then put the questions and get the answers later.
Mrs Ross: Will this take a long time?
Mr Vervoort: As I understand, your question basically is with respect to life-cycle cost. The concept of life-cycle costing is that in making the decision what to construct and when to construct it, one has to consider the life of the particular product one is building. One has to not only consider the initial cost of construction, but also consider the ongoing costs for operation and maintenance, which in the case of highways would involved things such as crack-sealing, pavement patching, repairing and a number of other activities designed to maintain the integrity of both the pavement surface as well as the substructure.
There's an ongoing maintenance and operating cost associated with a particular highway design. Then at certain intervals more intensive rehabilitation or repair work might be required. Major capital investment at the onset, a kind of flat, ongoing investment for maintenance, and a peaking but smaller peaking rehabilitation cost is the typical profile of a highway.
What life-cycle costing says is that you should make your decision on what to build and when to build it and when to make those investments in those various components on the basis of the total cost of all of those things. The concept of the net present value of that future stream of expenditures is an analysis that allows you to optimize the total expenditure. That's fundamentally what the concept is about. Of course, that entails some key decisions around the nature of the highway, whether it's the topography and the geology within which it is to be built, that are factors in determining what the expected life will be and what types of remediation work might be expected in future years. All of those factors are integral to the initial design of the facility itself.
Those are the concepts and the decision what particular type of design for a highway is most appropriate is very much related to the specific location, the terrain and the environment that the road is expected to be exposed to.
Mr Colle: It's ironic. Ministry staff have been here telling us what a great truck inspection system we have, saying we have the best one in North America. As he's talking, another truck tire just flew off a trailer on the 401 near Meadowvale. The proof is in the pudding. All the talk and all the programs that are in place -- there's something wrong. It's not something that started with this minister, but there's something that has gone dramatically wrong in Ontario's truck inspection system, and to think that we're going to be able to fix this with a few promises is really doing a disservice. We need a comprehensive look at why our roads are no longer safe, why it's more expedient for trucking firms, the bad ones, to not repair their trucks and to take the fines, which are a joke.
This is continuing. We had the inspections two weeks ago: 75% of the trucks pulled off were unsafe. What does it say about what we have been doing? It says there are some dramatic problems. What we have to do is also look at the origins of this.
First of all, you've got the system now in place in Ontario called just-in-time delivery. Has anybody done an examination of what the effects of just-in-time delivery are on truck safety? As you know, with just-in-time delivery, in certain cases you have truckers who are fined $5,000 because they're a few minutes late, because of the pressures of delivery.
This type of system may work well in warm climates or in Japan, but in Canada, with road conditions like we have today, when you put those truckers under that gun and say, "You have to be there at that time or else you get a $5,000 fine," what does that do to that trucker's or the trucking company's emphasis on safety?
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The other inherent problem too is truck maintenance. A lot of this is done in-house by the company itself. As you know, companies are in competition for profit. It's a cut-throat business, because a lot of companies out there have gone into this field, a lot of drivers, independents, and they're all trying to make a living. But as they do this, they're all undercutting each other. Are they taking maintenance and safety procedures into serious consideration or is safety taking a back seat to profit, because it costs money to maintain and certify those trucks on a regular basis?
This is something that goes beyond what the ministry's responsibility is, but the ministry has to show some leadership here. Perhaps the whole system of devising safety and doing maintenance has to be changed, where there's an onus on the private trucking firms to ensure that their maintenance isn't taken as a secondary part of their business. Right now there's an obvious conflict between maintenance and profit. Where is the proof? The proof is the state of our trucks.
I would like to get some analysis on the number of inspectors and inspection stations there might be in a state like Ohio or Michigan. Let's get some comparisons and see what they're doing. The number of inspectors: Have we lost too many inspectors? What are the numbers we have compared to BC or to American states? We need those. If the ministry has done those already, that's great, because that helps us to find out maybe those things we've done right.
But I think there is a holistic part of the solution too, and that goes to the nature, as I said, of the business. Right now, I think that there's got to be more than incidental announcements. Trucking is going to increase. The business is obviously one of the most exponential ones. There are a lot more people using trucks on our highways. Our highways are going to be filled with more and more trucks. It's critical that this whole industry be basically revamped to make it safe for Ontario motorists and the people who ride the trucks.
The Chair: Would you like a comment?
Mr Colle: Yes, just to see if we've done these comparisons. What about analysis of just-in-time delivery and the impact it might have?
Hon Mr Palladini: I share the same concerns as Mr Colle. I believe this government has also shown its commitment to road safety. I believe we certainly have initiated some changes. I like to say that we basically have done more in the last nine months than the last two governments have done in 10 years, but obviously they're going to disagree.
Mr Colle: What have you done?
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, they're going to disagree.
Mr Colle: What have you done? Name me one concrete thing that you've done.
Hon Mr Palladini: If you would give me a moment to elaborate, you're saying that just-in-time delivery is counterproductive. You're talking about efficiency. Let's talk about safety, because if you're suggesting that we kill just-in-time delivery, I think you're going to get a rude awakening from the industries.
Mr Colle: No, I asked you whether you've done an analysis of it; I didn't ask you to get rid of it. I said, "Have you analysed it as an impact on safety?"
Hon Mr Palladini: Let's do an analysis basically of what we have to do to get us to where we want to be. I believe that a lot of changes have begun to happen, changes that are going to prove very positive. You're going to have to be a little bit more patient. I don't like it just as much as you to see and to hear that a wheel has come off, but there are some changes. Unfortunately, for us to implement some of the changes, it does take time, but we are going ahead with the details. I'm going to let Mr Wycliffe explain to you exactly what we are in the process of doing.
As far as the comparison of Ontario versus other jurisdictions is concerned, I believe and support my staff that we probably have one of the most -- it might not be looking effective, but certainly you've got a crew that's out there diligently trying to make things happen in the best interests of safety. When this government came into power, the first thing we implemented was the increase of new inspectors, of additional inspectors out there. We have done that. We have put approximately 30 new inspectors presently out there, and we are in the process of adding an additional 20. But this is only the beginning of what's going to happen. Rudi, would you please share with Mr Colle some of the other things.
Mr Wycliffe: I would like to start out by agreeing with Mr Colle. One of the things we have done under the direction of our minister is to look at the regulatory framework that affects trucking in Ontario and truck safety in particular. One of the things one can conclude is that a lot of regulation isn't the solution; the right regulation is the solution. Regulation has to deal not only with deterrent, in terms of being able to nail the bad truckers when you can catch them and make sure that there's a sufficient deterrent out there --
Mr Colle: Just one second. I just want you to be more specific. it's my time. I asked you, have you done an analysis on the impact just-in-time delivery has had on road safety? Have you done that analysis?
Mr Wycliffe: In terms of just-in-time transportation, the answer is no, there is no specific data on that. I would make a couple of points in response to that. We do know that across North America over the last couple of decades there has been, if you like, a modal shift to truck transportation because it has met the needs of the manufacturing industry in Ontario, in the United States and across North America. The Ontario Trucking Association, for example, liked to boast, "If you got it, a truck brought it." They say 70% of manufactured goods are travelling by truck on the highways of Ontario.
Mr Colle: So the ministry has not done this analysis of the impact of just-in-time delivery.
The second question is, is there any independent comparison that's been done of our number of inspectors, our inspection processes? What I hear from a lot of truckers is that our trucking inspection stations are always closed. They know when they're closed. It's a pattern they've known for years. I'm asking, has anybody independently done an analysis to compare what we do in Ontario and what they do in other jurisdictions?
Mr Wycliffe: We are constantly comparing our enforcement efforts and our approach to enforcement with the other provinces in Canada and, through the Canadian Vehicle Safety Alliance, with what's going on in the United States.
The Chair: I have a responsibility here to share the time. Is that sufficient for you?
Mr Colle: I'll be back.
The Chair: Could I just ask Mr Cleary, then, to put his question.
Mr Cleary: I want to get back to roadside maintenance. I wanted to get back to the weeds and the brush. Is the Ministry of Transportation working with the Ministry of Environment to get a suitable spray that not only the department of highways can use but municipalities as well for brush control?
Hon Mr Palladini: I believe we are definitely working with the Ministry of Environment, because that is a concern, obviously, but if you want some details, Carl Vervoort will --
Mr Cleary: I just want a short answer on this.
Mr Vervoort: Generally, in all instances we comply with the pesticide control regulations that are in place. Any of our own personnel or personnel that we hire must be licensed and qualified to apply any of the pesticide or herbicide controls that have been formally endorsed. All of those products are controlled. I apologize that I don't know which specific ministry it is that does that licensing. Our practices are consistent with that.
We are constantly, in our vegetative management practices, in dialogue with our colleagues in other jurisdictions to determine what the most effective control mechanisms are. Increasingly, we are beginning to rely on natural vegetation as self-control in the environment so that we don't have to introduce chemicals, pesticides or herbicides to the extent that we may have in the past.
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Mr Cleary: What about the purple loosestrife? You're not a very good friend to the agricultural community, any government that allows that all over the place. It goes in the agricultural fields and all over. Farmers try to control it, but the department of highways and the municipalities -- what are you doing about that? I know you brought bugs in, but how's that working?
Mr Vervoort: I can't respond specifically on the purple loosestrife, nor the effectiveness of the various practices there, other than to say that we are subject to the same requirements and obligations to not have adverse impacts on agricultural lands as any would landowner be. We are subject to the same obligations and sanctions that could be imposed if we are deemed to be in violation for failures to control pesticides or herbicides from our lands.
I will have to undertake to get back to you, Member Cleary, with respect to purple loosestrife and specific actions we're taking there. I just simply don't have that information at my disposal now.
Mr Cleary: You released the bugs.
Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): Minister, back before Christmas you made a commitment to travel to the Kenora area to take a look first hand at some of the conditions of the highways that I was asking you about in question period, making statements about and writing you about. You did make it into the northwest, but unfortunately you didn't make it into the portion of the northwest I was sort of looking for you to have fulfilled in terms of travelling between Vermilion Bay and Kenora. I certainly have brought that stretch of the highway to your attention many times in many different letters.
What I'm looking for from you today is a commitment to fulfil that original commitment to take a closer look at that stretch of the highway by travelling that.
Hon Mr Palladini: I think you offered to pay my trip when I came up, so maybe I'll take you up on it. I'll be leaving on the 28th of this month and I'm going to be spending I guess a couple of days up in the north and I should be driving the Kenora road on March 1, I believe.
Mr Miclash: Great, and this is the stretch of highway we've been discussing?
Hon Mr Palladini: That's correct.
Mr Miclash: Okay. As you well know, I've recently written you, after a meeting actually with the Kenora area truckers association. They too have put a request in to you that maybe you may want to take that drive in one of their trucks. As you well know, this is a trucking association that is mainly made up of people who haul in the forestry industry. I'm talking of loggers, log trucks, as well as the gravel trucks and the other kinds of trucks that you would find here in southern Ontario. I would just like to remind you of that request as well and it might be something you may want to take a look at in terms of that letter.
Going back to this same stretch of the highway, and it'll be a stretch the highway on 95% of which you will find you will not be able to use a cellular telephone. They're not within range in this particular area of my riding. As I've indicated to you in the House as well, and I think I've shown you the bumper sticker which I'm sure you'll find somewhere along your travels in this area as well, it has been referred to as the death strip of the Trans-Canada Highway.
I'm on that stretch of the highway maybe three or four times a month, sometimes more, and I have to tell you that this is a very serious concern, not only for the people in the area who travel it, but for people as far away as Calgary. We have a quote after the most recent accident, where the conditions seemed to be icy and the OPP officials seemed to be saying this may have caused the accident, but the quote that came from one of those gentlemen who was involved in that accident, three transport trucks -- fortunately there was nobody seriously hurt -- indicated, "We travelled from Calgary and the road conditions in northern Ontario were the worst" he had ever come upon.
I would certainly like to ensure that you are aware of some of these concerns from not only the people in northwestern Ontario, but the people who travel from across the country.
I brought to your attention, as well as that of the Solicitor General, that the Ontario Provincial Police are concerned about their health and safety when travelling this particular section of the highway. Can you tell me what you have done in terms of these very serious concerns I've brought to your attention?
Hon Mr Palladini: I certainly would like an opportunity to slip in a comment about the cellular phone. To my understanding, northern Ontario does not have the emergency road service. I believe that my comments were based on the GTA-Toronto area emergency road service.
Interjections.
Mr Miclash: No, Minister, they were not made in that context.
Hon Mr Palladini: Your little elaboration about bringing the phone --
The Chair: If I were you, Minister, I'd leave it alone and answer the other question.
Hon Mr Palladini: I will leave it. As far as the member is saying, number one, the northern highway programs basically come under the Minister of Northern Affairs. Certainly, I concur with the sentiments you have expressed, and I believe we are into fulfilling the commitments that have been made, and things have been going along.
There are three major projects of construction over 100 kilometres of Highway 17 between Kenora and Vermilion Bay. The ministry is also very much aware of the public interest in these projects. We agree there is a need; there's no question about that. We're certainly not disputing that there is a need. All the engineering work for two of them in fact now has been completed. These projects are a priority and they are going to be proceeding.
Mr Miclash: A date. Can you give us a date? That's what I'm looking for.
Hon Mr Palladini: The only thing I really can't say to you is give you a specific date, number one because of the monetary situation we find ourselves in, but we do remain committed. Even if I did have a date, it really is not within my realm to inform you of that because, like I said, I'm basically acknowledging the need -- I have talked to my colleague Minister Hodgson -- but he is the one who basically is going to be announcing when those projects are going to begin.
As far as your comments about me riding in a truck on that stretch of road are concerned, I certainly couldn't commit to you at this point because of the timing -- I really don't know exactly my timing -- but I'm sure it would not frighten me to be in a rig. I've personally driven rigs, I know how bouncy they can be and I also know how dangerous they can be, especially if the roads aren't up to standard.
As far as the condition of the roads is concerned, I really have to say to you that we do not control the weather, unfortunately. This year has been a severe winter and I believe all parts of North America have been affected. I really want to commend the job and efforts that the people of the Ministry of Transportation have done to fulfil the services the people of Ontario expect, to maintain the standard we've been used to. I really would like to congratulate them.
There are always going to be situations nobody can really avoid. We can cherry-pick the ones that aren't to your liking, but there's a lot that we perform and perform over and above the duty that was required. I don't want to apologize because I think that the ministry has done a tremendous job in maintaining the standards.
Mr Miclash: Let's go back to the question. I asked you specifically about the health and safety of the OPP officers travelling this stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway. They have indicated to me personally, which I passed along to you, that they feel that their health and safety is being jeopardized. How do you feel about that?
Hon Mr Palladini: You heard those comments. I really can't address those comments because I have not heard of such comments. I'm sure the Solicitor General would have heard from his people. He would have made an appropriate comment to Minister Hodgson or myself. Nothing has evolved. I want to reinforce the commitment. We do recognize the need and we will get to it. It's a question of dollars and cents.
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Mr Miclash: I came looking for some specifics. You indicated that the engineering is done. We've known that for a number of months now. We've known these studies are there. We know they have gone out to public hearings. We know that all it really needs is the signature of cabinet, whether it be yourself, the Minister of Northern Development or whoever to say, "Okay, let's go ahead with phase 1 and phase 2."
What I'm looking for, and maybe what's going to come when you visit the area and go down this, will be a commitment. But I have to say the people are getting anxious up that way after they see accident after accident, fatalities, and after they hear people talk about the stretch of the highway as being the worst in all of the Trans-Canada. I certainly hope you will be able to follow up on some of what I consider right here is a lot of fluff. There's no real substance in what you've told me in terms of what I'm looking for.
I go back my problem with the OPP because this really concerns me. When you're talking about the health and safety of government employees, Ontario Provincial Police, I do really think we have a concern. When I posed the question to the Solicitor General, he had indicated to me that he'd been in conversation with you about this issue. Could you maybe elaborate on what you may have discussed with the Solicitor General in terms of the health and safety of the police officers.
Hon Mr Palladini: First of all, let me agree with you that I share the same concern. Certainly we don't want, as a government, to have, number one, anybody driving a road that's not safe.
Mr Miclash: But you do have.
Hon Mr Palladini: As far as the comments that were made, there was no direct comment made to me from an OPP officer based on the information you're saying. As far as the Solicitor General and myself are concerned, we did talk about the comment but again there was never a direct -- at least, I didn't ask the question of the Solicitor General, but he did not give me the assumption that he was asked directly about a comment made by an OPP. It was hearsay. So we did have a comment based on hearsay.
I want to reassure you that we are committed to going ahead with this project and it's just a question of coming up with the funds so we can implement it, so we can begin. But the commitment is there. I want to reassure you of that.
Mr Miclash: The commitment has been there for a number of years, Minister.
Hon Mr Palladini: But we've only been in government for nine months.
Mr Miclash: Thank you, Mr Chair.
The Chair: You're giving up your extra time. Okay, Mr Pouliot.
Mr Pouliot: Yes, thank you very kindly. Simply put, you have $15 billion to reconcile: $10 billion plus the 30% tax break. You've made a commitment you wouldn't touch classroom, you wouldn't touch health. Simply put, it means that in the first term of office you will have to cut about 35% of whatever else is left out there if you live by what you say. It's very simple. It's simple mathematics. You receive approximately $46 billion, you spend close to $57 billion plus $5 billion, so that's $15 billion in one term of office. You're not going to touch health or education, they take up more than 50% of your provincial budget, and so you do the rest with mathematics. Best wishes.
I want to take the first half of this allocation to us to tap on the excellence, on the resource of our friend Rudi, with truck and highway safety. You do appreciate, certainly as much as I, and under the good guidance of Mr Davies, your DM, you go beyond the privilege -- you're blessed with good people.
Rudi, you're about to become whatever you wish. You could become Smith cartage or incorporated if you wish. You could be one of those less legitimate -- well, a demon or a bandit that looks at every opportunity to bypass safety. I just want to set the table a bit, and I of course need and cherish your expertise. If someone comes to you and says that truck traffic has more than doubled, is it in the past five, six, seven or eight years? A ballpark figure will do.
Mr Wycliffe: Mr Pouliot, some of the figures you refer to -- I will give you a couple of statistics that I hope will answer your question. One of them is in terms of the number of entities registered under our CVOR, our commercial vehicle operator's registration plan, in Ontario. That plan was only put into place in the late 1980s, and in the fiscal year 1989-90, a total of 41,090 registrants were under the CVOR plan. In 1993-94 --
Mr Pouliot: Sir, I want to save your time; you're so busy. I want to establish if it's doubled in six, seven, eight or nine years. Then I'll get the other questions.
Mr Wycliffe: I was just going to say, in 1993-94, which, I apologize, is the most up-to-date information I can provide at the moment, the total number of CVOR registrants was 73,203, so you've had an increase of approximately 75% in the number of registrants in a five-year period.
I will qualify that by saying there is no re-registration requirement. Under the CVOR program we don't have any firm way of verifying how many of those are active or dormant or inactive, gone out of business and so on, how many of them are permanent in the trucking business, but I think it is an indicator. A more precise indicator, I would suggest, is the number of operators licensed under the Truck Transportation Act or the motor vehicle transportation act, and those are for-hire carriers. In 1988-89, there were 9,000; in 1993-94, there were 23,000. So that has more than doubled in the five-year period.
Mr Pouliot: When answering my colleague you referred to a modal change, I think you said, or a transition to door-to-door, just-in-time delivery, a more intricate road system, if you wish, competitive prices and taxes or railroads -- so very much in favour of trucking.
I want to go back to the safety blitz or inspections carried out. We know the numbers now. Over one year, how many people would be inspected on the highways? We're up to about 100,000 commercial vehicles in the province. What percentage of them would be inspected through a blitz?
Mr Wycliffe: Through our enforcement activities, which would be the Ministry of Transportation enforcement officers, in 1994-95, there were just over 17,000 mechanical safety inspection enforcement actions by our officers, and in 1995-96 fiscal year, to late December, the figure was in excess of that. It was over 17,000 inspections by our officers.
Mr Pouliot: So about 20% of the trucks out there get inspected by different agencies or by enforcement officers.
Mr Wycliffe: Above and beyond that, as I mentioned before, all those trucks are required to have an annual safety inspection at a registered garage by a licensed mechanic.
Mr Pouliot: She will ask you that, but I have a different set of questions. I don't want to be repetitious.
When a truck comes by and it's judged that the defects or the faults -- in French we say "lacune"; I need your help -- the shortcomings, if you wish, are of such a nature that it warrants taking it off the road, how many of those are related to a brake problem? For instance, if you have 20,000 inspections, how many get hauled off, 35%, 40%? And out of those, what is the percentage related to brake systems?
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Mr Wycliffe: If you'll permit me to refer to my statistics, I have some information that I think will --
The Chair: It must be a very deep question when Mr Wycliffe doesn't have it.
Mr Pouliot: I just want to establish, is it 30%? You say a third of all those taken off would be the brakes.
Mr Wycliffe: The fastest answer and probably the most reliable information in front in me at this moment dates back to the 1995 road check, which is our random selection. I mentioned that some 2,366 trucks were inspected, with an overall out-of-service rate of 43.2%. The defects relating to air brake systems resulted, by themselves, in an out-of-service rate of 34.1%. All brake-related defects, not just out of adjustment, but also leaks, hoses and that sort of thing, are about two thirds of the issue.
Mr Pouliot: You go and buy a new rig, a new truck. Does it have an automatic slack adjuster on it? Is it mandatory, compulsory that when it comes off the line it's equipped with that?
Mr Wycliffe: Today, the answer is yes.
Mr Pouliot: In a broadly summarized form, please, what difference does it make -- for a neophyte, a novice like me; I know nothing about these things obviously, but I want to learn -- what difference is there between the rig you had 10 years ago under the conventional system and the new slack adjuster system?
Mr Wycliffe: Automatic slack adjusters or self-adjusting air brakes have been mandatory in Ontario for quite some time. The federal government is also going to adopt that standard, and they've been mandatory in the United States.
To describe the impact or the benefit of those slack adjusters, I'll go back to my earlier comments about brakes, the way the air brake systems are designed because of the tremendous weights they're required to stop. The heat generated by those braking systems when they're applied does cause the brakes to go out of adjustment, and if you don't periodically, particularly after a long, heavy trip, check those brakes and readjust them, you will have no brakes. The automatic slack adjustors will dramatically reduce the amount of non-adjustment caused by normal usage of the brakes. They are not a free ticket to do no inspection and maintenance, by any stretch of the imagination. If a company ignores brakes with automatic slack adjusters or they're self-adjusting, they will run into exactly the same problems, probably in a longer period of time, but they will run into the same problems.
Mr Pouliot: Thank you. I apologize. We obviously do not tread the same circles. What an interesting life you live, the fascinating world of three-dimensional brakes. I'm quite envious. It's very interesting indeed. You leave the bay, the garage, and you're a major. You're the driver. Everything is well. You have certified mechanics. You're of consequence, of means. You travel 150 miles and it's little, bumpy roads and then you come to a station -- that one is open -- and you're one of the 34% that gets pulled over and the jig's up; you win the lottery. If you're the driver, is there no way you can adjust these things? It's not redefining the atom; it's not all that complex. Many drivers worth their salt, professional drivers that I've talked to, have said, "I could fix it, but I'm not allowed to fix it." Is that right?
Mr Wycliffe: It is commonplace for drivers to adjust their own air brakes, but you are right that under the trades qualifications legislation, only licensed mechanics are allowed to adjust air brakes for compensation.
Mr Pouliot: It's quite common for people to evade taxes -- they see it as an obligation -- but it's also against the law to evade taxes.
So they're not allowed to do it, right? If it comes into litigation, they could lose, and lose fairly big-time. Yet when we're on the road, the trucks, with all those statistics -- and they're highlighted -- they scare people a lot. You have statistics on that, that people are afraid during the evening. It's a lonely stretch of two-lane highway and you've been driving for some time, and you begin to pass one of those vehicles. You pull to the left and all is clear and you accelerate; sometimes they do too, and then you try to make it before you hit the next curve. You don't have the luxury of a four-lane or multi-lane highway. Then you see a set of lights above the trees and you're screaming a bit -- you know, you begin to die. You begin to pass and you agonize, and it's a matter of a little more on the accelerator. You have the stability, the ability to keep it on the road, and you have this kind of nightmarish vision of going straight from the car to the bag, where you're dead, dead, dead. But you make it one more time.
And you begin to wonder if experts such as you -- I don't wish you to feel shackled, chained or handcuffed, but I tried, and it's difficult. What's wrong with having the Minister of Labour issuing a ticket to the driver so the driver can stop at a shop on the way in, pull over at a scenic place, adjust the God-damned brakes without feeling a guilt trip, without thinking that God is talking to him? Just for the safety of people, and it saves a buck. We understand that the big job has to be done at the shop, of course; no one is jeopardizing that. But the day-to-day routine, if it's a matter of coordinating effort, the drivers say they could do it. The owners would like it. What steps are you taking to have this, if it makes sense to you, to have this achieved?
Mr Wycliffe: First and foremost, the regulatory environment presently in place in Ontario requires the driver to do a pre-trip inspection. If the driver finds defects, including defects related to brakes and defects related to brake adjustment, the law says those defects should be corrected before that truck proceeds on the road. The issue surrounding the driver's legal ability to adjust air brakes is one of corrective rather than preventive measures. If the driver had done the pre-trip inspection properly, if the company had the inspection and maintenance processes and programs and policies in place to require the drivers to do that, the driver, in the vast majority of times, would not find him or herself in that situation when they're stopped by our enforcement people at the side of the road.
In terms of putting the drivers in a legal position to do that brake adjustment, there was an announcement included in the three ministers' statement on this government's plan for road safety in October that included amending the regulations under the Trades Qualification and Apprenticeship Act to provide a training and certification process for drivers so they could be adequately trained, properly certified, so that in those situations they could legally inspect and adjust the air brakes.
Mr Bisson: Minister, I've only got a few minutes so I'm going to try to go through this as quickly as I can. I am curious. There was a policy, and I think it might have been put into regulation -- I'm not quite sure if it was regulation, but at least there was a policy of our government, and I think actually it was introduced by my colleague here, Mr Pouliot, when he was Minister of Transportation -- to ensure that when municipalities are purchasing buses for the transit systems, they purchase what we call the low-floor buses with the wider doors. I know that your party at the time, in opposition, had some problems with that in that you saw it as an onerous restriction being put on communities to buy these buses. They are a little bit more expensive because you need to retrofit them for those people out there who cannot access the regular buses.
I'm wondering, does your government plan on keeping true to the policy that was undertaken by our government?
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Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Chairman, I would like to share with Mr Bisson that the policy my colleague Mr Pouliot introduced has not changed, but sometimes, for governments to deliver on and fulfil the responsibility they have, they have to make decisions that go against the grain or against the policies that are in place. I believe we did act in the best interests of Ontarians by allowing municipalities to purchase conventional buses in lieu of low-floor because of the tremendous needs that the municipalities had. So we have in fact allowed the TTC to go ahead and purchase conventional buses because of the need that we had.
By doing this, we did not remove the policy that is in place. As a matter of fact, we have reaffirmed our commitment that this policy is still in effect. We are going to waive the policy for these particular purchases because of the needs of the municipality and bus shortages. The reason we've done that, obviously, is because the low-floor buses weren't able to be delivered. That's the reason we did it, because they were not available, and they're still not available, and they're not going to be available until some time in April or May 1997.
Mr Bisson: So what you're saying is that due to availability, you're allowing municipalities to get the 75% provincial grant to purchase regular buses outside that policy.
Hon Mr Palladini: They're not regular buses -- I'm sorry, Mr Bisson. They have a lift. These buses are going to be equipped with a lift. So they're not low-floor, they are conventional, but they have a lift, so they will have wheelchair access.
Mr Bisson: I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing here. I'm talking about Timmins Transit, as in other transits across the province, operating buses that you and I use, or sometimes use, to go to school or to go shopping or to go to work. I'm talking about the policy that was put in place that those buses have that they call low-floor entrance. Are we talking about the same buses?
Hon Mr Palladini: No. Obviously, I thought you were referring to --
Mr Bisson: That's what I figured you were up to.
Hon Mr Palladini: No, that policy has not changed. Even for the TTC, for Mississauga, for Hamilton, for Ottawa, the policy is still in effect. I relented to uphold the policy in this one-time purchase because of needs.
Mr Bisson: I just want to make sure that we're both on track here. Low-floor buses are obviously especially for people who have difficulty being mobile, walking on their own: people who have been stricken by polio or somebody with a broken leg or seniors who are not able to get around as well as they could at one time. It's very difficult, as you understand, to jump into a big bus with two or three steps going up in those cases.
The policy of our government was that in order to get the 75% grant from the province of Ontario, the province would only allow that grant to be funded if the municipality bought what was called the low-floor and wide-door bus so the person with the difficulty in walking is able to get on a little bit easier. Is it still the policy of the province of Ontario to say you will only get the 75% grant from the province if you purchase that kind of bus? That's the question.
Hon Mr Palladini: The policy that was put in place by Mr Pouliot is still in effect.
Mr Bisson: So all buses --
Hon Mr Palladini: I just want to make it clear so we do understand. I have allowed municipalities to order conventional buses because of the need, and the lack of availability of the low-floor buses for the Toronto Transit Commission.
Mr Bisson: We'll come back to that in the next round. I just want to go back and check my facts and figures before I go any further on this. I would hope that one of the things you have the ability of, as a government and as a ministry, is to pressure those municipalities, by virtue of the grant from the province, to adhere to policy and to put the pressure on the manufacturers to make those available. We'll come back to that a little bit later.
I am going to talk about my part of Ontario for two seconds. I come from northern Ontario. I am one of the members, like many here, who drive home every weekend. I go up Highway 11 and eight hours later I end up in the community of Timmins. I can tell you that because of the reduction in plowing this year, and salting and sanding, the highways are noticeably different when it comes to grip on the highway and safety than they were last year. I've had the opportunity to talk to people within the ministry in the various patrol areas. In fairness to them, I think how good the highway is really depends on what patrol area you're in. For example, my drive north from North Bay is fairly bad from North Bay up to about Temagami. Normally, what you get there is icy conditions with a certain amount of snow pack. The Earlton area, New Liskeard, Tri-Town are normally in pretty darned good shape. Congratulations to them. But my end, Kirkland Lake going north to Timmins, is atrocious. Every time I've driven up that highway in the months of January and December, it's been white-knuckling.
I understand that the minister wants to save money, but I just want to bring a message from people who drive that highway every week for their livelihood and for getting around: It is really dangerous. I counted, on the second-last trip up to Timmins, nine cars in the ditch from North Bay to Timmins. The last trip down I counted two off into the ditch. This is well after snowstorms, like two days after snowstorms. I've just got to say to the minister, that's not acceptable.
Then I get information from your ministry that I obtained through requests in order to find out for estimates where money is being spent, and I see here that you commissioned a poll in September 1995 through consumer research for $62,000. So I have to ask you the question, first of all in succession, what is this poll for? What does that do for my highway? The firm was J.C. Williams. It was September 7, 1995, consumer research: $62,225. I thought you guys weren't doing this kind of polling and advertising stuff you gave us heck for when we were in government.
Hon Mr Palladini: I'm not aware of the poll that you're referring to. If you would give us more specific information --
Mr Bisson: Can I put you on notice for the record that I would like tomorrow --
Hon Mr Palladini: I can certainly get back to you with that, sure.
Mr Bisson: You're here tomorrow. If you could come back with that information, specifically a poll that was given out to the firm of J.C. Williams. It was from the Ministry of Transportation, dated September 7, 1995. All we know is it's for consumer research for the cost of $62,225. It comes to the point that if we can spend $62,000 on a poll, God, we can put some more sanders out there. We can hire a couple of people to operate graders or whatever the heck we need on our northern highways.
I just have to ask the minister: I understand that you've got to save money, but where is the priority? How does this make any sense? How do I square that to the people of Cochrane South, Timiskaming and Nipissing, who live in that area?
Hon Mr Palladini: I've taken into notice your request and we'll get back to you tomorrow with the information.
Mr Bisson: But I'm saying, besides what the poll is all about, how can the minister here today defend the expenditure of $62,000 at a time when his government says they want to save money? I support you; I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to find ways to save money to balance the budget, and I quite frankly think you're doing the right thing in trying to do that. I don't like the way you're doing it but I think you're going in the right direction. I guess it's a question of priorities.
I heard the minister saying a little while ago here at this committee, "Jeez, governments spend and waste all kinds of money and we need to find efficiency, and when we find efficiency we get a bigger bang for our taxpayer's dollar and then we're able to pass on this big tax break." I have to look at this and say, what does a poll on consumer research have to do with trying to keep my highway safe? I drive that highway every day -- I'm going to be very parochial: every week. I drove it last Saturday night. Luckily, it was in a bit better shape than it's been in a long time, but it's dangerous.
So I'm asking, if you're going to spend $62,000 on the poll, where's your commitment for northern highways?
Hon Mr Palladini: I believe the commitment that I have made, and also the result of what has happened up till now, is that we have done the job that needed to get done; we would spend whatever money it would take to make sure our roads and our highways are safe. We've done that.
As far as your request on the poll, you have taken it into account, and we'll get back to you with the information.
Mr Bisson: The question still needs to be asked. You've cut back the highway winter maintenance budget in northern Ontario. I'm saying here's a case where you've got $62,000 that's gone into a poll that could have gone into maintaining our highways to a better standard. I'm asking, are you prepared as the minister to go back and say, "Jeez, we goofed on this one"? Because every government goofs up. I understand that.
Hon Mr Palladini: I am not prepared, because we did not goof. We put together a plan where we could maximize the equipment, the better equipment that we have, and also the knowledge that we have, and we've maintained the standards that this province has been used to. I am not going to say to you that I'm going to backtrack, because in essence we are still going to be saving the money. We've done the job. This has been a very severe winter, as you well know, because you do live in the north. Under the circumstances, I believe our people have done an excellent job.
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Mr Bisson: I think your workers for MTO are doing the best they can, and the contractors that work for the ministry do the best they can with the budgets they have. That's not the issue. They are hard workers. They want to do a good job for Ontarians and they want to do a good job for you. That's not the issue. The issue is that when you cut back winter maintenance on highways, there is an effect.
I've lived in northern Ontario pretty well all of my life and I have never seen, up until this winter, the highways being in the shape they are in. It gives me no pleasure to come here and tell you that, but that's the reality. I've got to tell you, it is to the point, north of Kirkland Lake, that you're white-knuckle-driving all the way back up to Timmins. We've had people who have been involved in motor vehicle accidents and we've had some deaths. I'm saying to you, as a northern member, are you prepared to divert money that you're putting into polling back into winter maintenance?
Hon Mr Palladini: I believe I've given you that answer. I'm going to stand behind the decision, what we have done.
Mr Bisson: Then the answer's no.
Hon Mr Palladini: This has been one of the hardest winters in over 40 years. We're going to be spending a lot more money than we have in the last 40 years.
Mr Bisson: Listen, we've had winters with far more snow and far colder, Minister.
Hon Mr Palladini: People have done a tremendous job under the circumstances. The support levels have been there, the money has been there --
Mr Bisson: We're going to get into an argument, and let's not do that, all right?
The Chair: Since you're going to get into an argument, let's take a break, and I think your time is up.
Fifteen minutes; be back here by 3:30.
The committee recessed from 1513 to 1530.
The Chair: May we commence the estimates for the Ministry of Transportation. When we broke off, I think the NDP had completed their 30 minutes. Now we are with the Conservatives for their 30 minutes.
Mrs Ross: Minister, I'd like to get back to where I left off; I was talking about life-cycle costing. It's my understanding from what one of your staff said that basically you look at a project before you begin the project and determine the materials and such that you're going to use in that program to get the best time out of the dollars that you're spending. Is that correct?
Hon Mr Palladini: That's correct. The term that we've been using is "value engineering."
Mrs Ross: I asked if most of the roads were asphalt and I think you responded and said yes. I would assume that the reason is because cement is more expensive.
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, it is.
Mrs Ross: But in life-cycle costing, wouldn't it make sense that if cement lasts longer, even though the cost is higher, you would want to go in that direction if in fact the road lasted longer and would save you rehabilitation costs?
Hon Mr Palladini: My layman understanding is that there are some gives and then there are some takes. So you do get some benefits from a longevity standpoint, but then there's up-front cost that you've got to be aware of as well. Since I am not an engineer and I've got two very capable people there, I'm sure they could give you a lot more information on how the difference really does, in effect, work.
Mrs Ross: Could I just ask you to keep it in layman's terms, please?
Mr Vervoort: I apologize; I thought that was what I was doing.
The Chair: Could you identify yourself, now that we've changed performers?
Mr Vervoort: My name is Carl Vervoort, assistant deputy minister, quality and standards division.
You're quite right, there are different lives that would result from different materials. But it fundamentally is based on what your objective is when you design the pavement structure in the first instance. In the majority of cases, the determination of the design life of the pavement is based on a number of factors which I mentioned earlier. It's quite conceivable, therefore, to build a concrete road or an asphalt pavement road which has the same net serviceability and life.
I guess my simple analogy would be that you can make a very well-built, comprehensive pavement structure incorporating asphalt that has a life of, let's say, 20 years, and you can then design concrete pavement that has exactly the same lifespan. So for all purposes, it can be a matter of apples and oranges. It only becomes comparable if you're using the same design objectives for the life and durability of the road that you want.
One has to analyse the pavement structure in its entirety to determine whether or not the costs of all of those items that I mentioned earlier are in fact in the advantage of a specific proposal for concrete or a specific proposal for asphalt pavement. It would not be appropriate to say that in every case asphalt pavement is better or that in every case concrete pavement is better. It depends on the specific two designs which are being compared.
Mrs Ross: So would you have criteria to use either/or? For example, if you're building the Red Hill Creek Expressway, are you going to build concrete or asphalt, and why?
Mr Vervoort: Typically, concrete is preferred where the percentage of commercial motor vehicles is very high or where the loads of the commercial motor vehicles are expected to be significant as a proportion of the traffic activity. That is when perhaps the longer durability and strength of a concrete design might find favour. The offsetting factor, of course, always is the cost, concrete roads being more expensive in the first instance.
Mrs Ross: How much more expensive would concrete roads be than asphalt, generally?
Mr Vervoort: I don't have that at my fingertips so I can't really speak to that, but I will endeavour, if you wish, to reply with that information tomorrow.
Mrs Ross: That's okay. When I was reading through this auditor's report also, it pains me to say that they said that concrete culverts and bridges were better than steel; coming from Hamilton, that's hard for me to say. However, my question also is that if that's the case and it's been proven that concrete lasts longer than steel -- even though they've covered this steel with some sort of material, it still doesn't stand up to concrete -- would you say that we would be apt to lean towards building more concrete structures? I'm talking about bridges and culverts.
Mr Vervoort: Again, it's not appropriate to select one particular product over another on an exclusive basis. One can design a steel bridge that has a significantly longer expected life than perhaps would a concrete bridge. It simply depends on the specifics of the details of the steel bridge design and on the specifics of the concrete bridge design. As to which ones in fact would be more economical, it has been the practice of our ministry that when we have a large structure -- and I'll give you as an example the Burlington Skyway. When we were twinning that, we actually made the selection of the nature of the final product part of the competition for the design and building of that particular facility.
Another location, Highway 407 at what is known as the MacMillan yard north of Toronto here, which is a major railroad marshalling yard, and the bridges necessary to traverse that were also designed both in concrete and in steel. In fact, both packages were tendered in order to let the marketplace determine which was the more economical type of structure to build.
Again, I go back to my earlier point, that there's not a single rule that says that a steel structure is more cost-effective in all instances over concrete, or vice versa. It does depend entirely on the nature of the designs of each of the two and it does occasionally depend on the circumstances of the marketplace at the time. If there happens to be a certain availability of steel because of conditions in the steel industry, it may well be that the suppliers of that particular product would be able to give a cost-effective proposal to have those components be supplied economically, as distinct from perhaps a concrete structure that would rely on aggregates which may be scarce or fully subscribed because of heavy building in the commercial-industrial sector.
So there are a lot of marketplace activities that are also factors in the selection of the appropriate type of structure that's to be built, but our practice has been that in the largest bridges we make the final determination of that be tested out in the marketplace so that we do get the best value for the dollars.
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Mrs Ross: Have we used stone mastic asphalt?
Mr Vervoort: We have not used the stone mastic asphalts in Ontario, but we are beginning to assess their performance and see what applications there might be in Ontario. We are, in direct response to the auditor's report, investigating that more thoroughly. Several European jurisdictions, I think particularly Germany, have used stone mastic asphalts. While they have found some benefits, there has also been an indication that their initial costs are greater.
So we simply have to understand what those relationships are as they're applied to Ontario, because of course it depends a lot on what the native materials are that are available for use in Ontario. Aggregates and stones that are used in pavements are not universally uniform. A particular mine or a particular pit that is used to supply materials has different characteristics and the actual designs of the pavements do vary considerably with the features and characteristics of the components. It's like baking a cake. The ingredients can vary considerably, and the way and the proportions and the timing in which they are incorporated will result in a different product, depending on how you put it together. While we have not yet fully adopted stone mastic asphalt, we continue to see how it might be applied for use in Ontario. Its principal benefit is associated with an ability to withstand heavy commercial vehicle weights.
Mrs Ross: I guess somebody else wants to ask questions, so I'll be quick here. I tried to find through this book here if there's any money invested in research to look into new materials. Is there any money that we spend in research, or is there anybody out there doing research?
Mr Vervoort: The answer is yes, there is research conducted on materials. In fact, within the quality and standards division, there is a small research office. It consists of some 40 people, a budget of just under $5 million. One of their principal objectives is to do what we call technology transfer. Our intention is to be mindful of the types of products and materials that are available or indeed new applications of existing materials that we might feel would be beneficial in the construction and maintenance and operation of the transportation system. So the answer is yes, we specifically look at aggregates, pavements, steels, even operations related to how materials are used in the construction activities, so the methods of construction are also investigated and we have a group of people who specialize in undertaking that kind of work.
Mrs Ross: When a road is put down and it lasts I think it said about 12 years and then you have to spend money on rehabilitation, if you didn't spend the money on rehabilitation, the road deteriorated much faster.
Mr Vervoort: Correct.
Mrs Ross: I think I read also that since 1992 routine preventive maintenance work was not being carried out as frequently as required. Would you say that our focus now has to be to spend money on rehabilitation of some of the major roads in the province, or are we too late? I guess that's what I'm trying to say.
Mr Vervoort: No, I don't think we are too late, but we certainly are at a time frame wherein we do have to realize the history of road building in Ontario, and that essentially is that in the late 1950s, early 1960s is when the majority of the initial significant components of the network were begun to be constructed. I refer specifically to Highway 401 and the Trans-Canada Highway system. It is quite simply a matter of time that here we are some 30 years later facing issues of age of infrastructure.
It is true, like the famous car commercial for filters, that you can pay me now or pay me later, and the further one delays in the investment and the rehabilitation of pavements and pavement structures, the more expensive that rehabilitation becomes, until you reach a point where the road breaks up and you have to reconstruct it. There's a generally accepted curve that displays the increasing costs over time of not intervening at the appropriate time. Mr Oliver can perhaps give you some specifics of where on that curve the costs begin to escalate dramatically.
My personal assessment, and I believe it's exactly the same assessment the Provincial Auditor has made, is that we are clearly at a point where we do need to reinvest in the rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure.
Mr Sheehan: I've been around trucks a long time -- I've serviced them, insured them -- and I find this syndrome about the flying tire seems to have started about maybe three, four years ago. Am I correct? I don't recall reading too much about that before. What suddenly happened to start this process?
Mr Wycliffe: Are you referring to the wheel separation incidents?
Mr Sheehan: Yes, coming detached from the vehicles.
Mr Wycliffe: In Ontario, the public awareness and the awareness of the Ministry of Transportation to the problem of wheel separation really arose just over a year ago, with the very tragic incident involving the Worona family on Highway 401 in the Whitby area. Since that incident, followed within a couple of months by an equally tragic incident on the Queen Elizabeth in Mississauga involving the Tyrrell family, there has been a very heightened public awareness, and consequently a phenomenal increase in the reporting of wheel separation incidents.
I was in the position of director of the compliance branch, dealing with truck safety regulation and enforcement, starting in 1993, and I can honestly say that until late January 1995, I had not heard of a wheel separation incident. That is not to suggest that they weren't happening, and I'll get to that in a minute. But certainly with the heightened public, media and enforcement awareness of wheel separations, we literally over the last year have been averaging probably at least two incidents a week reported to the Ministry of Transportation or reported to the provincial police or to local and municipal police.
We know from doing our research on the issue that a similar -- what would I call it? -- spate of wheel separations occurred several years ago in the United States and led to an investigation of the issue, with the conclusion that the vast majority of the problems could be attributed to inspection and maintenance practices of the trucking companies involved. The vast majority of the recommendations and the discussion at the inquest in October pointed to exactly the same thing. If you're not using proper equipment, if you're not using the procedures available from the manufacturers, you're going to run into those problems.
Mr Sheehan: A quickie to the minister: Some of the ads you used to run, such as on drinking-driving and kids using drugs and what have you, I found to be almost subliminal ads that have been very effective.
Is your ministry contemplating advertising programs to address some of the more bizarre behaviours see in drivers these days, like people driving 50 miles an hour in the inside lane of the Queen Elizabeth or sitting back of the white line waiting for the light to turn green, so then they wait for all the traffic to clear. When you travel, drive in Europe, the traffic moves a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently. They blame speed, but I think the problem is caused not by the speed but by the fact that people just don't know where they hell they're supposed to be and when they're supposed to be there. Are you contemplating any safety programs along that line?
Hon Mr Palladini: Not at this time. But one thing I will commit to is that I will continue to seek private sector involvement to see how best and most efficiently we can deliver messages pertaining to safety. We feel there are some things we could offer the private sector for them to get involved in helping us deliver this message. We are certainly going to be exploring potential opportunities for us to do programs such as the one you've just suggested.
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Mr Sheehan: I understand you have some information coming to the Red-Tape Review Commission. Are you addressing or reviewing the safety procedures? For instance, they close down sections of the highway with pylons about four or five miles in advance of nothing, sometimes. That's an exaggeration, but you know what I'm getting at. There's got to be an enormous cost and very little safety factor borne out on that. Have you looked at that, or is your department looking at that?
Hon Mr Palladini: I can honestly say to you I haven't personally looked at it, but it is an ongoing thing. However, I will certainly make it a point to revisit and to make sure that we are taking the best precautions in the most safety way.
Mr Sheehan: I'll cite you one example. They were doing some bridge repairs in Italy, and they just had a big orange sign at 500 metres, an arrow. You get down to 250 metres, another arrow, everybody moved over, they slowed down. That was the end of it. I get back to Canada on the same trip, and they've got the left lane shut down for one mile, then the centre lane shut down for one mile, and we finally get up to where it is they've got a rubber-tired backhoe in the median that doesn't even come up to the shoulder of the road. That was at rush-hour, and I just wonder what the dollar cost of that bit of overprescribing would be.
Hon Mr Palladini: One of the things I would like to assure you is that if there are going to be any closures for significant times on major arteries, we do not do those closures at peak periods. Obviously, we would do them on a holiday or off-periods, late in the evening and so on. If you want to know some specifics, Carl can certainly tell you how we go about it.
Mr Sheehan: I'll talk to him another time.
Mr Rollins: The number of employees working for the Ministry of Transportation yesterday was stated as somewhere around 8,000. How many of those employees would have 25 years or more with the ministry?
Ms Mary Proc: I'm Mary Proc, assistant deputy minister, corporate services. Of the number of employees at Transportation with over 25 years of service, we have approximately 1,275.
Mr Rollins: Another quick statistic: Are we using any rubber tires chewed up into asphalt? Has that been used someplace and then kind of given up, or is it something that became too expensive to experiment with, or what?
Hon Mr Palladini: We have done some pilots. The ministry has explored those opportunities. I'll let Carl Vervoort share some comments.
Mr Vervoort: The answer is affirmative. We have incorporated scrap tires into asphalt mixes, and we first began to do that in 1980-82. At that time, there was not judged to be cost-effective technology available to achieve a good performing pavement.
However, since 1989, with the Hagersville tire fire, there was renewed interest in finding uses for scrap tires. In conjunction with the Ministry of Environment and Energy, we renewed our research efforts to see if technology had advanced in the intervening 10 years to come up with a productive product. We are conducting ongoing experiments to test a number of different techniques, and we have identified one particular technique, known as a wet process, which involves the introduction of rubber crumbs, very finely ground rubber tires, mixed with other aggregate materials and the asphalt cements to form a reasonably well-performing pavement. To the extent that pavements do perform differently over their life, we have thus far only been able to test that over about a three-year time frame.
We continue to test the use of that particular process and technology. We continue to be somewhat concerned about the cost, because the costs are somewhat higher, but we are optimistic that we can improve upon the product. We have not adopted it universally, and it has not yet been sufficiently satisfactory in demonstration that we can use it as a mainstay in our pavement structures, but we continue to experiment, and hope we can.
In addition, we are also looking at other ways we can use rubber tires in the construction of roads. We have to be extremely sensitive to the fact, as was demonstrated at the Hagersville fire, of the extreme volatility of a large volume of rubber tires located in one place, but we are also looking at how shredded tires can be incorporated into landfill to be used in low-level berms and other features of the topography adjacent to the roadway. Those experiments are again ongoing and have not yet been concluded.
Mr Gary Fox (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): Do you have any stats on the percentage increase of transports on the 401? I ask this because I'd have to believe there has been a substantial increase and it would be related to these rims and tires flying off all the time. The other question is, is there any testing of quality of rims? I've spent a number of years travelling the 401 with a truck, and the thing is, it's not always the studs; it's the rims breaking around the studs that's causing the problem.
Mr Vervoort: In response to your first question, I don't have statistics available now, but the percentage of the number of trucks active on the road is in direct correlation to the vitality of the economy. I believe in general, though, as mentioned earlier by one of my colleagues, there has been a modal shift of freight traffic from rail to roads and that, in relative terms, there is an increased proportion of freight moving by the truck mode, which has resulted in an increased proportion of commercial motor vehicles in the traffic mix. I don't have the specific numbers, though. Mr Wycliffe can address your question on the rims.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Colle.
Mr Colle: I want to move into transit for the disabled. In your own chart on page 66, Minister, you can see the growth in the number of people who require specialized transit. You can see that conventional transit is basically on the decline, but there's quite a dramatic growth in the number of passengers on specialized transit. Given that last year you cut specialized transit allocation for the first time that's ever been done, certainly in recent history, how can you deal with the increased demand for specialized transit while you're cutting it?
I know you're going to blame the TTC, but you've cut specialized transit grants right across Ontario. In the TTC's defence, for their specialized transit, you asked them to find $1.3 million in the last three months of their budget when you're also cutting their conventional budget. It's easy to blame the other people, but your cutting of specialized transit across Ontario precipitated a lot of cutbacks in specialized transit.
How are you going to meet the growing demand for specialized transit, especially when we've got a growing older population? The number of seniors that need rides to hospitals, to doctors, to do their daily work, is growing. What strategies do you have in place to provide more service for people with disabilities?
Hon Mr Palladini: We did not cut specialized transit. It was never the intent of the Harris government to cut specialized transit.
Mr Colle: I've got a whole list. What is this, then? Town after town: Ajax, Aurora, Brampton, Burlington.
The Chair: Mr Colle, just let the minister --
Mr Colle: I hate to see the minister misinform the public on this.
The Chair: Maybe the minister has an explanation. Let him complete.
Mr Pouliot: Those people don't have a voice, Mr Chairman. Someone has to say something.
The Chair: Order. You have a lot of voice over there.
Mr Pouliot: I'm speaking for the children and the elderly, sir.
The Chair: Let him speak on behalf of the government now.
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Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I repeat that we did not cut specialized transit and it was never the intent of the Harris government to cut specialized transit. As everyone knows, we are in a very bad fiscal situation. We approached the municipalities in regard to transit to see how best we could work together to see if there were any savings we could realize. Whatever those savings were, they were to be taken out of the conventional budget. It was never the intent of the Harris government to diminish specialized transit in any way. We remain committed to specialized transit. We see the needs that are definitely there, and we will continue to support it.
Mr Colle: What's your strategy?
Hon Mr Palladini: That is the reason that this time around, we chose to give the municipalities the budget without touching disabled transit. This time we did the cuts on the conventional. We showed the budgets based on last year's transit budgets and we supported it in the same manner this year. We took no chance, because we didn't want to have the same situation arise that happened in the summer.
Mr Colle: Mr Chairman, just to put it on the record, the Ministry of Transportation has sent out something to all transit managers: operating subsidies. It's got a list of recommended cuts to conventional service, and it lists Ajax, Aurora, GTA, Cobourg, Bracebridge, Cobalt, all conventional. It says "reductions," and the reductions are listed for conventional. That means ordinary bus routes.
Then they've got a list of municipal transit programs, specialized service. That means for people with disabilities. They've got Belleville, reduction $4,000; Brockville $2,000; Ottawa-Carleton $429,000. They even go to Elliot Lake, Espanola, $600 -- if these aren't cuts, what are they? If they were just to conventional, why wouldn't there be a list just for conventional cuts?
The minister refuses to acknowledge that he did it, but what he precipitated was a real panic in the community, because for the first time there had been cut of a government commitment to disabled transit, especially when the Harris propaganda during the election said they weren't going to touch the disabled. The disabled were affected.
Minister, you made the cuts last year, there's flat-lining this year, there's a growing number of people who need specialized transit because people are getting older in our population. The simple question is, considering what you say you have done or have not done, what is the strategy to give more rides to people who need specialized transit? How do we get them to the doctors and the hospitals when they can't get there by conventional buses? They can't afford cars. How do we give them this service?
Hon Mr Palladini: There are some things I would like to address. First, I would like to ask Mr Colle what he did to make Wheel-Trans more cost-efficient when he was with the Toronto Transit Commission.
Mr Colle: I'll answer that. Let me answer that.
Hon Mr Palladini: Clearly, they are the least effective, least cost-efficient operation in the province. But what the Harris government, to answer your question --
Mr Colle: Well, can I answer that?
The Chair: Let him complete, and you can answer later on.
Hon Mr Palladini: To answer your question in terms of what the Harris government has committed to, the Harris government clearly has committed to maintaining Wheel-Trans support cost levels for the next two years at the same levels -- no cuts, not one dollar. The numbers Mr Colle is referring to, based on those numbers in that report, they're going to be maintained for the next two years. Those are last year's numbers, so we are maintaining support for Wheel-Trans. We are not cutting one dollar, not one dollar.
Mr Colle: You still won't admit it. What is this list here for, then? Just to answer Mr Davies, who fed you the question about what I did when I was on TTC, Mr Davies, as you know full well, what we did was introduce the taxi service which was a partner to the conventional Orion II buses. We asked the private sector to provide taxi service for the disabled. We increased the number of rides throughout the GTA by about 30% because we asked the private sector to come in with taxi service and that taxi service supplemented our conventional system. That's what we did, Mr Davies, and you should know that.
The second thing you should know, Mr Davies, is that we also put a lot of effort into making our conventional system accessible, because that's the only long-term way you solve this problem. What you do is you make our subway system accessible for people who can't go up and down stairs. So we pushed for the program Easy Access, which you're well familiar with, Mr Davies, part 1 and 2, which made it possible for seniors and people who can't go up stairs to get into our subway system.
Second, what we did in terms of making it more available is that we asked the provincial government to look at and invest in low-floor buses. We're still waiting for the low-floor buses that your ministry promised the TTC two or three years ago.
That's the answer, Mr Palladini and Mr Davies, to what we did at the TTC. I know it wasn't perfect, but at least we didn't cut back on service for people who couldn't protect themselves. That's my answer.
At least have the guts to admit the fact that you made these cuts to specialized service and don't try and blame the TTC for cutting, when you cut right across Ontario to disabled transit, Minister.
Hon Mr Palladini: The fact remains that we made no cuts to Wheel-Trans, no cuts to specialized transit. The TTC made that choice themselves. They're the ones who chose to cut Wheel-Trans, not the Harris government.
The TTC operation is twice as expensive as any other operation in all of Ontario, so they have their own internal problems that they should have been addressing in the first place. It seems to me that approximately two and a half months after they made such a big spiel about what the Harris government was doing to them, all of a sudden they ended up finding funds that they said from day one they did not have.
In terms of the buses, I would like to share this information. I think this is comical. I wish my colleague Mr Pouliot was here. The province of Ontario inherited a deal that was put together by the NDP government where they guaranteed bus purchases to the tune of 813 over the next three years. These buses were all supposed to have been low-floor. The province was on the hook for millions and millions and millions. We have to buy, like I said, 813 low-floor buses by the end of 1998. I have to share some really sad things. If we don't purchase these buses by that time, the province is on the hook for $69,000 per bus.
Now the Toronto Transit Commission needs some buses because their fleet operation is in very bad shape. They keep spending more and more money on repairs and they're in dire need of new buses. So what does this government do? This government basically takes a look at what the needs are of the Toronto Transit Commission. We know we have a low-floor policy in place, a policy brought in by the NDP and still in place, so we had to make a decision, we had to make a choice. We either relent the policy and purchase buses that are badly needed or keep spending more money and having the province subsidize the repairs on these 18- and 22-year-old buses to the tune of 75%.
Well, this minister made a decision in conjunction with and working with the Minister of Economic Development, and made, I believe, the right decision. We relented the policy so we can become fiscally responsible. We ordered conventional buses to supply the needs.
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Mr Colle: What the minister is saying is, as bad as the NDP deal was on the buses, you are going to go along with it. I guess you have the option of whether you're going to keep blaming them or whether you're going to get out of the deal. We'll see what you do.
The other thing in terms of transit for the disabled is that you still haven't said, considering the shortage of funds, no low-floor, what you're going to do to meet this growing demand. You haven't answered that question.
The other thing I want to ask you is that on Highway 407, a system is going to be in place with transponders that will basically monitor vehicles entering the highway. I know the privacy commissioner warned you that you were treading on thin ice, Mr Davies, and he advised not to force people to purchase these transponders. What is the policy going to be, Minister? Will everybody have to have a transponder or will it just be commercial vehicles? How is that going to work?
Hon Mr Palladini: I would like to share some information. We have a commitment to deliver the most cost-efficient and balanced transportation system in the best interest of all taxpayers. The 407 is going to be the first electronic highway fully implemented with an electronic device.
The concerns from the privacy commissioner -- in the beginning, I'm sure there was enough concern that he wanted to look into it, and we've done that. I believe we have been having ongoing discussions with the privacy commissioner to make sure that we are doing things the way they're supposed to be done and people's privacy is being protected. I believe these concerns have been addressed and met.
As to the privacy commissioner standing in the way of an electronic toll highway, I believe, like I said, that things are adequately in place, and this highway is going to proceed being a fully electronic highway.
To answer your question, are you going to be able to drive on the highway without a transponder, at this point I'd say we would certainly not encourage anyone driving on the highway without a transponder. We are going to put a marketing strategy in place that will hopefully encourage all users of the highway to have a transponder. We're going to come up with strategies that it will be affordable and people are not going to resent using a transponder or buying a transponder in order to get full usage of the highway.
If you want more information than that, Mr Colle, I have Mr Galange here from OTCC, and I'm sure he can give you a lot more than information than I have.
Mr Colle: I just want to get this cleared up. During Bill 26 hearings, we had a copy of a letter you sent to the privacy commissioner where you made a commitment to him that you would exclude non-commercial vehicles from having to have a transponder on 407. Are you backing up from that commitment now?
Hon Mr Palladini: No, we're not backing up from that commitment.
Mr Colle: Therefore, it's just going to be commercial vehicles that will require transponders. How are you then going to collect the toll from the non-commercial vehicles on the highway?
Hon Mr Palladini: All the entrances and exits of the highway are going to have electronic cameras and there's going to be a device that we --
Mr Colle: So you're going to have like photo-radar at the entrance. And then if you don't pay?
Hon Mr Palladini: I don't believe it's photo-radar. It's going to be an electronic camera that will electronically monitor the usage, people getting on to the highway and leaving the highway, and that will determine the cost as well, once we've got that in place.
Mr Colle: So if they come on to the highway and they don't have a transponder, you take their picture. Then what do you do? Do you send them a bill in the mail?
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes, that's the way it's been working with parking tickets. If you don't pay them, you get a bill in the mail.
Mr Colle: What if a vehicle is from Quebec? How are you going to collect from the Quebec motorist?
Hon Mr Palladini: The 407 is not the first highway or first toll road. We have reciprocal plans in place now with other jurisdictions, especially south of the border. We are working at how best and how quickly we can work together and implement these possibilities that are going to have to be addressed. We are in the process of tying everything down.
One thing that I want to say to you is that as far as the transponders are concerned, they can be anonymous. It isn't something that someone is going to find out whose transponder that is. There is that safeguard of privacy built into the system, so we are taking a lot of precautions in making sure that this thing is going to work and it's going to work in the best interests of all Ontarians.
Mr Colle: I know the privacy commissioner was so concerned that he asked you to change you policy and he asked you to amend the legislation, and you said that you would do it by regulation. I hope you're true to your word because I'll take his word in terms of privacy. I'm no expert in privacy, but he expressed serious reservations, just as he expressed reservations about confidentiality of medical records, because when you have the government or some corporation that basically monitors all your movements through computer, who knows or who controls that? I certainly wouldn't have the expertise to know the controls in place.
What I would like to get back to though is, if a Quebec motorist drives through 407, Quebec has legislation that doesn't believe or doesn't take into account or will not allow in court any information taken as a result of photo-radar; it's inadmissible. So if you send that ticket to Quebec, how are you going to collect your money from these Quebec motorists who come through and use a highway like 407?
Hon Mr Palladini: You're making an assumption, and I don't believe you can assume, that a deal is not going to be constructed. Let's see if we can't put an agreement in place that we will have that protection.
Mr Colle: So you're going to ask Quebec to change its legislation? Is that what you're going to do? Right now, Quebec doesn't recognize evidence obtained through photo-radar or electronic cameras, as you call them; that's not allowable in Quebec courts.
Mr Davies: I think that's probably a case that's not germane to the kind of arrangement that we foresee with Quebec. Quebec is currently considering toll roads. Quebec used to have toll roads, up until about 15 years ago. Their deputy minister is very much interested in working out a reciprocal arrangement with Ontario that would allow for the collection of tolls that have not been paid in either regime. Less than 5% of the traffic on Highway 407 is expected to be from out of the province and certainly, as we know, all of the commercial vehicles from outside of the province that will be using Highway 407 will have to have transponders.
What we're talking about is basically the tourist traffic that would come from out of province. It's very much in the interests of Quebec, Michigan, particularly New York state, the main centres from which the tourist traffic comes, to have that kind of reciprocal agreement with us. In fact, the transponders that we will be using on Highway 407 are compatible with the transponders that are now being put in place in New York state, and they're now being looked at as the transponders that would be used on the international bridges across to New York state. So it's becoming the standard in the industry on the North American seaboard and we're expecting full cooperation from those regimes in the reciprocal arrangements. We have reciprocal arrangements now for enforcement of traffic offences and we're not inhibited by court requirements in Quebec.
Mr Colle: In terms of, again, the transponders and electronic toll highways -- and I guess the reason why this is important is I think we've got to certainly get it right if we're going to do it for the first time -- one of the interesting differences seems to be that Ontario, as far as I can see, seems to be the only jurisdiction that is now not only going to allow liens on vehicles or trucks or cars, but is going to go that further step of putting liens on people's assets or personal property. Is there any other jurisdiction that goes beyond putting liens on vehicles and goes in fact to going to the land registry office and putting liens of people's personal property? Is there another jurisdiction that does that?
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Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Chairman, I believe that we're trying to be as agreeable and certainly as informative as we can, but these are assumptions that Mr Colle is taking on things that have not yet happened. I thought these proceedings were basically going to be about things that happened in the other fiscal year. These things have not been initiated and I don't know why we're spending time on things to be; we should be spending time on things that have happened. I'm trying to be as cooperative as I can, but if he continues to persist going this route, I'm just going to refuse to say anything more about 407 tolling.
The Chair: Let me just comment on that: All during the estimates ministers have come here and made statements on their Common Sense Revolution and what have you, and the opposition has also responded to that, which is not in the estimates. I have allowed that kind of freedom to do that, so it is kind of free-flowing stuff. I have allowed that and we will just continue. I presume some sort of tolerance has to be exercised in here.
Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Chairman, I am trying to understand and give as much information, but for me to address on assumptions, I don't believe we should go to that extent. Let's not assume that things are going to be falling down. We were very clear that we are in the process of putting these agreements in place. We know what must be done. What further information could I share with the member than I've said?
Mr Colle: Mr Chairman, that's fine. He obviously doesn't want to answer any more questions on 407, but the one thing I'll have to find out is whether other jurisdictions do the same type of thing, and that's all I ask.
I'd like to just move to the Sheppard subway. At this point, Minister, in Metro they're deciding on whether or not they're going to continue the Metro funding of the Sheppard subway. As you know, in the Golden commission there is a recommendation to do away with the Metro regional government, which will basically have to sign the contract. In other words, the subway contract is not signed by you; it's going to be signed by Metro. As the Golden recommends, and there seems to be a trend towards getting rid of regional government, if Metro disappears, who's going to pick up Metro's portion of the 25%? How is that going to be --
Hon Mr Palladini: Again, that's a hypothetical question. We don't know in fact what governance we're going to end up having. I'm sure, to answer his concern, the new governance obviously would most likely pick up Metro's share. We're assuming that there is in fact going to be new governance. I know there's talk and I know about the Golden report, and there are all kinds of things in the Golden report, but again, this is hearsay and it's things that are in the future. We don't know, so how could I possibly answer a question about the future? I'm sorry, I cannot give the member an intelligent answer.
Mr Colle: The reason why I ask that is because it's very important. The government provincially is committing itself to $1 billion. If I were going to commit my ministry to $1 billion to build a subway, I'd want to look at all the contingencies, because if the people who are going to sign the contract could disappear by 1997, I would like to know what would be in place in terms of responsibility and obligation to that contract. But I guess I'll stay away from that question too.
If I could get maybe to the Sheppard subway itself, as you know, basically the first phase is going to cost you about $1 billion. In order for the Sheppard subway to really function, you're going to have to extend it east and west. You're going to have to go to the University line. You're probably going to have to go to Scarborough. As you commit the provincial money, did you ever consider whether or not you were committed to the second and third stages of the Sheppard subway? In other words, building one phase by itself is not going to have an impact on increased ridership really in the GTA. It's going to have a good initial impact, but to get a total modal shift, you're going to have commit to the extension east and west. Have you committed, or will you commit, as a minister to the fact that you're going to look at the total Sheppard package rather than just the first phase?
Hon Mr Palladini: This government remains committed to the Sheppard subway. I've just reaffirmed our commitment with a letter to Chairman Tonks supporting Sheppard and also the 75% funding that had been negotiated and agreed upon previously. The question that Mr Colle has asked I think is a very valid question, and therefore I'm going to try and answer it in a manner that I hope he does understand. We have to have a vision for future transit growth, there's no question about it. So obviously, if there is a commitment on this particular phase, we've got to go beyond that. I'm not in a position at this point to really address or give you an answer of committal based on a possible new governance it's going to have, but then also on the potential growth that will eventually be realized. Obviously, depending on the growth, we will build.
Mr Colle: I guess that really begs the question of whether you've looked at the whole GTA transportation plan, because as you know, if you go into Sheppard you're going to put in a lifelong commitment to it, and whether or not there's the flexibility to meet what you have to do perhaps with an extension of GO networks etc -- I mean, is that all part of your commitment, that you're going to commit to not just Sheppard to where it is, or the GO system remaining static, or to the York University line remaining static? Are you committing yourself in principle really -- you can't do it financially, obviously -- to expand the network?
Hon Mr Palladini: I think it's a worthwhile question and certainly I can say to you that we have looked at many other alternatives. If you want to know of some specifics, David Guscott can certainly share with you what discussions have taken place, because I believe that we have extended in other areas, including GO. That has got to be a major part of our commitment as far as the sizeable investment that we are making to Sheppard is concerned, so therefore it's going to be ongoing. If you want some specifics, David Guscott can give you them.
Mr Colle: Okay, next time around. I think my time is up.
The Acting Chair (Mr Peter Preston): I think David will have to give it another time because the Liberal time is up, and it's for the NDP and their 30 minutes.
Mr Bisson: There are a number of questions I'd like to get back to with regard to issues at Transportation that affect I would say not only northern Ontarians but many Ontarians throughout the province. As minister, you have announced that you are going to be moving towards the deregulation of the bus industry. I'm wondering if you yourself can just quickly give us some kind of assurance that in moving through this deregulation of the bus industry you will try to find some kind of assurances that communities like Chapleau, Foleyet and other communities that are fairly small that are now being operated by subsidy are going to be picked up one way or another, either by the private or public sector, to be able to keep bus services in those communities. Can you give that kind of assurance?
Hon Mr Palladini: I am not familiar with the communities so I would like to just ask you a question: Are there presently bus services in those communities?
Mr Bisson: Yes. What happens in places like Chapleau, the ONR --
Hon Mr Palladini: Presently, they have bus services in those communities?
Mr Bisson: Yes.
Hon Mr Palladini: By deregulation and doing it in an orderly fashion, I strongly believe that there are possibilities that even other smaller municipalities could actually end up with bus servicing. I believe that the manner in which the busing industry basically works right now has to change. I think we have to expand on those possibilities and take advantage of entrepreneurs and give them an opportunity to invest in small towns, because like I said earlier, you don't need a 48-passenger bus when the normal passengers who would travel on there could be four or five. Just think of the cost of operating a 48-passenger bus, not only the bus itself but the increment cost of maintaining it -- insurance and so on. I believe that by deregulating and maintaining the federal safety standards that are presently in place, we actually will have more municipalities having bus services that have not had them in the past.
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Mr Bisson: Time will tell, but I think a lot of what you talk about in regard to smaller buses or looking at how you deliver services can be done under a regulated system. If it's most bus carriers out there in the private sector who operate -- some of them, like Ontario Northland, are run by subsidy. Actually, they're a viable commercial operation on their own and utilize cross-subsidization of other routes to be able to pay for the Chapleaus etc.
I guess what I worry about is that I just came from a meeting a couple of weeks ago with northern mayors from northeastern Ontario, along with my colleagues Shelley Martel, Len Wood and Tony Martin, around the closure of the ONTC norOntair. We know the effect that that's going to have in those communities losing air services.
So here's a community like Chapleau, as just one community in northern Ontario, that is about to, by March, the end of this year, lose air services altogether. Then that mayor and the councillor who were there are saying: "Listen, we hear that deregulation is coming down the tubes. What's going to happen when deregulation comes and the Mike Harris government takes out further subsidies to the ONTC? Does that mean to say that we lose our bus services?" and the chair of the commission says, "That's very much a possibility."
So what do you say, as minister, to those people living in Chapleau, who for one reason are losing air service because of loss of subsidy, but in the other case, if the ONTC had the choice -- they're presently forced by regulation to be in that market in order to service the people of Chapleau -- if they could, they'd pull out, because it's not economical, quite frankly. What do you say to the people of Chapleau as a government? Do you have a responsibility, as the Minister of Transportation, to make sure that in those cases where the market can't sustain the private sector, the government plays some kind of role?
Hon Mr Palladini: Mr Bisson, I share your concerns. As far as the possible airport closure, I believe that our minister is trying to do everything he possibly can to see if there is a private buyer that possibly would entertain taking the airport over.
I think we're going to be faced with a lot of hard and difficult decisions in how much support can be given and can we really afford to give the support that has been given in the past? We believe government cannot just keep supporting every business that's not viable. I think there's got to be an end to the subsidies, or at least an attempt made to find another way to deliver that service. This is really our intent, that we are going to encourage the private sector to get into small busing businesses.
Mr Bisson: That's all fine. If you can encourage the private sector to go in, that's great.
Hon Mr Palladini: But that is going to be our intent, to work with them --
Mr Bisson: But the problem here is that the private sector didn't go to Chapleau in the first place, neither with air or with bus services, because the market cannot support that kind of service. The provincial government of the day, first with Bill Davis with norOntair, but before that, probably under the Robarts government with the bus services, said, rather than leaving those communities high and dry -- because there are only two or three people, I agree with you, who jump on the bus in Chapleau to come to Timmins for a medical appointment on Tuesday morning, and you don't make a lot of money with three people on a bus. There's no question about that.
But the question I have to you is, I believe, I think as many people in this province, that government does have an important role to play when it comes to providing services that are somewhat balanced between the needs of the taxpayer but also the needs of the citizen.
So the question I ask you is simply this: I know that you have as a government an ideological position when it comes to subsidization, and I know that if you could, you'd rather see it in the private sector. I understand that. I don't like it, but I understand it. But are you prepared, as the Minister of Transportation, to say on behalf of your government that you're going to make sure that in the end, either through a private sector deliverer or ONR, doing it through ONTC, the people of Chapleau and other communities such as that won't be left high and dry?
Hon Mr Palladini: I wish I could make that commitment that there aren't going to be any losses of bus services in any community, because even with regulation, I said the other day that over 400 municipalities have lost busing services.
But the commitment I will make to you is that we are going to do everything we can as a government, as a ministry, to make sure that every municipality has an opportunity to have that busing availability. I believe by deregulation, and also identifying the needs of certain municipalities, people are going to come out and say: "Hey, you know what? I'm going to get in the busing business, because I don't need a 50-passenger bus. I can do this." You're going to see entrepreneurs just come up and take that chance.
Mr Bisson: But, Al, in Chapleau, when there are three people getting on the bus on Tuesday morning to go for a medical appointment, I don't know too many entrepreneurs, as brilliant as they might be, who can put a minivan out on the highway and be able to make a buck at it. The reality is they'll find a station wagon or a sedan, with maybe bald tires or whatever they can get their hands on, to drive those people down the highway. I thought that in the province of Ontario, as in other jurisdictions, we said --
Mr Colle: It's called a taxi.
Mr Bisson: It's called a taxi. Thanks. But in this province we understood that there are certain standards that we want to apply to safety and access, and that's why government plays a role. I'm going to go on to the next question. I hear what you're saying, you're not able to give the commitment. Time will tell. I hope indeed that the slack is picked up, but I very much doubt that anyone in the private sector could make a buck at that.
Moving on to subsidization one more time, we have one train that goes to northeastern Ontario, the ONR train that goes up there. It moves from North Bay basically all the way up to the James Bay coast and Moosonee on it's own rail line, but on the section of track running from North Bay to Toronto it's run by either CN or Via, I forget which of the other two major rail companies.
It's my understanding, as I've dealt with this before, that the federal government, in its attempt to get out of the rail transportation business and to privatize the rail transportation system in this country, is moving away from the subsidy on that track, which means to say, quite frankly, who's going to maintain it? Where are we going to have the bucks to have the train? Can you give us some kind of assurance, as the Minister of Transportation, that you won't allow them to shut that track down, so that when we take our train from Timmins we don't have to get off the bus at Mike Harris's house and jump in his limo with him all the way down to Toronto?
Mr Kells: You'd have to pick Ernie up, too.
Mr Bisson: Highway 69.
Hon Mr Palladini: I certainly am concerned with your concern, and I can't give you any commitment on behalf of our government to come up with the subsidies that presently are being given by the federal government. I'm not in a position to really give you any commitment. I've had no less than four discussions with Minister Young, and the situation is basically the same. They are looking to get out of the subsidy business in areas that they clearly just cannot afford to keep supporting. I really can't make any commitments.
Mr Bisson: I understand your difficulty with the federal government backing out and leaving you on the hook. I understand that. We have the same problem. But the problem that remains is that we had at one time in this country a certain amount of vision, and we said back in the early part of the history of this country that when it comes to a system of transportation, if we allowed it just strictly to be put in the hands of the private sector and let the market try to dictate where services would be established, you would have a great system of transportation between Toronto and Windsor and somewhat less between everything else and absolutely nothing in communities like mine. So government moved in and played a role.
All I'm saying is that I recognize it's difficult, I recognize we are in economic times that are difficult in regard to being able to pay for all of this, but certainly there has to be a commitment on the part of your government to say, "We in the end will do everything that is possible in order to ensure that we keep in place a minimal amount of service so that people in this province, either living in Timmins or living in Chapleau or living in the GTA, have a reasonable access to transportation." If we leave it strictly to the private sector, Minister, I'm afraid a lot of those communities are going to go without.
So what I'm asking is, as the minister responsible for transportation for the government of Mike Harris, are you prepared to say that you are prepared to play the role that needs to be done in order to ensure that there are minimal amounts of service, at least at the standard we have now for the people of this province when it comes to transportation?
Hon Mr Palladini: Basically, you're asking me to write a blank cheque and I'm not prepared to do that. I'm not in a position to do that, number one.
But I just want to pick up a little bit on that, because I believe too that the possibility does exist that sometimes the reason that maybe nothing has flourished or nothing else has picked up or grown is because of the government involvement, because there was no need for anyone within the community to take an opportunity and try to go with it. Possibly, once the need is there, there could be somebody in the wings to invest and start working towards it.
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Mr Bisson: Careful, Minister, because if we don't learn from our own history and we don't look at what we've learned through the history of development of our economy -- government played a key role in this country.
I'll talk about northeastern Ontario. It was the Ontario government -- I think actually a Conservative government; I'd have to go back and doublecheck my facts -- which put in place a Timiskaming railroad that ran from North Bay, originally to Cobalt, pushed up to Kirkland Lake and ended up in places like Iroquois Falls and Kapuskasing. If it hadn't been for the government playing that role, northern Ontario would not have developed. We wouldn't have found Cobalt, the silver mines that were developed up there. The gold mines in the city of Timmins probably wouldn't have been found in the way that they were. A whole bunch of things wouldn't have happened if government hadn't played a role.
That was a vision that our country -- we said: "We are different than the United States. We don't have the market, we don't have the amount of people and population in the size of the geography that we have, and because of that, government must play a role."
Yes, you have to be responsible to the taxpayer. Yes, you have to be efficient in how you do that. But there has be an underlying understanding that, as a government, you have a role to play. That's all I'm asking: that your government commit itself, like governments before you, which were the Conservatives and under David Peterson with the Liberals and under Bob Rae with the NDP, that you continue that policy that Ontario's had for the past 120-some-odd years. Yes?
Hon Mr Palladini: Basically, like I said, I cannot give you any commitments. But certainly we are going to see whatever help can be done. Not from a monetary sense but certainly whatever other help we can do, we will.
Mr Bisson: I take it the short answer is no. I've just got two minutes and I'm passing it to over to my colleague. I only say this: There has to be a system of priorities. I understand that. The government has to prioritize what it's got the bucks to do. But what I'm hearing here is that there's really no will on the part of the government to say that there are certain things we're prepared to pay the price for, and that's what scares me.
I just want to remind the minister -- yesterday I asked you for information on Air Oshawa -- if you had received anything at your minister's office in regard to proposals from Air Oshawa. Have you checked that out?
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes. I'm surprised. You're not from Oshawa and you're asking me about Air Oshawa. Anyway, I do have some information. As far as what I have been told, we have subsidized the investment about 50%. I believe the investment was around $6 million, and to the best of my knowledge, I believe we have participated in that.
Mr Bisson: "We," meaning your government?
Hon Mr Palladini: In the airport, not the airline. Are you asking me about the airline or the airport?
Mr Bisson: The airline, and the airport, because they're both interrelated.
Hon Mr Palladini: Maybe you want us to come up with a pilot as well.
Mr Bisson: A what? I didn't hear you. Sorry.
Mr Pouliot: "Maybe you want us to come up with the air pilot." No, stick with the horse and buggy. You're much more familiar with that kind of endeavour.
Interjections.
The Acting Chair: Order.
Mr Bisson: Can you provide me with how much money, when the money was spent, all of that? Can you give that to me?
Hon Mr Palladini: Yes.
Mr Bisson: Specifically to the airport and Air Oshawa.
Hon Mr Palladini: We'll get you all that information.
Mr Bisson: Thank you. My colleague.
Mr Pouliot: Minister, I want to ask you the most serious of questions that I can formulate, and I would appreciate your attention, because I'm speaking here on behalf of people who really don't have much of a voice, or if they do it's certainly not among our circles, and yet they're forever real. Their number is forever increasing. In some cases, obviously, for all to see, physically challenged; in other cases, they represent our changing demography. They could be frail, they could be elderly. They really represent all of us, on a waiting list of sorts. No one is immune.
Wheel-Trans: The money flows or stops flowing from the Ministry of Transportation, from the government of Ontario, to the municipalities or/and to agencies, to people who specialize, and there is more than one way of doing business.
Deliberate cuts to disabled transit, in 97% of the disability. Metro tells us that 27% of the requests will have to be denied because of lack of funding. Fewer dollars were transferred to the municipalities. It's very easy to say: "It is no longer my bailiwick. I wash my hands. It becomes a bagatelle. You take care of it now." That's very easy. That's the easy way out.
The system is in the process of being knee-capped and I'm not going to say that if you're not rich here, you cannot defend, but it very much appears this way. You start at 21.6% with the welfare recipients. They don't have a voice. They're disorganized. Then you move up the food chain and you go after people. Steve Gilchrist, MPP, gets a letter. The person says, "I'm afraid." And then she goes on to say, "I want to be like the others." I didn't go upstairs. They didn't go to their municipality. They saw the buck-passing going on. They saw the shell game being played, so they went to the highest authority and they said, "Please don't do it."
Isabel is a person with a physical disability attending the literacy options program. I guess if you pass the program, the rest you can pick up at the library and you're like the others. We don't have to order from a menu the special du jour. We spend half of our time lying. That gives us a chance to defend and cope with society. That's the human dimension, Mr Palladini. It's very simple. That's what we hear.
Another one to Mr Gilchrist -- Alvin Curling -- physiotherapy. The person is writing on behalf of her mom, to you, Mr Palladini. Get this, and tell me that something else matters, something else is more important. "I have just found out about the cuts on Wheel-Trans and I'm not too happy about it. My grandmother is 75 years old and she depends on the Wheel-Trans to get around also." And the letter laments, makes mention of the world that awaits all of us in one way or the other.
I mean, sure, there's only one taxpayer. Sure, you're on the hook for having printed things that you thought would be easier when you were on the other side and it was okay to collect the favour of the electorate. But it's your responsibility. We pay taxes too. It is all the people who are saying these things.
It goes beyond the cuts; it's a matter of philosophy. It's a matter of searching an equilibrium. It's a matter for all people and you, sir, are the minister. These are the commoners. These are the people who don't have $1,000 tax-free to give to a philosophy, to get listening, someone to listen to them. And there are more and more of them. Today they come calling. They didn't write to the municipalities. They said, "Oh, I see what's happening." And it's only a sample. They've written to all of us and it was different people. We've all gotten those, and in their own way they've copied the system to make sure that it reaches you.
So when you cut -- because you get your marching orders, because you must reduce expenses, and you've made some commitments and you try to go as much as possible towards that goal, and that's a worthy objective. It's obvious that we can and must reconcile the bottom line. I don't think anyone will deny that. People will have different ways in terms of style, in terms of method, but when all is said and done, you have to choose between total and complete adherence to the written philosophy or take a little more time so that Miss Jones does not dislocate, does not fall off the stretcher, becomes less functional in our society and has to be confined in an establishment in a ward of 50.
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I've made up my mind, sir. You have some flexibility. You must meet the bill, otherwise you meet the sheriff and they'll get someone who is more ambitious. I know the way the system runs. I think I do. But yet we're all comfortable with the same system.
I'm here for a plea, because they again don't have the same forte. They don't have enough dineros, enough money, to say, "Well, I'll make my own decision by virtue of being a person of consequence of footing the bill." Not everyone invests heavily into -- what are they called, those tax opportunities or shelters? Oh, yes, RRSP, the private pension plans. Not all of them were preceded by their parents who were rich. They tread more humble circles. Again, they built the country, and more often than not, you marry what you are. Those are the circles that you court, and you are as rich and as poor as that 75-year-old person whose daughter writes on her behalf to Isabel Bassett, one of your colleagues, "I'm writing on behalf of my mom; she's 75." She writes to her local MPP, Isabel Bassett, member of the government party. There is a gulf. There is an irony. There is a twist of fate and an opportunity for you, Minister, to reconcile the lot and the good fortune of both of them by Wheel-Trans.
Hon Mr Palladini: Would you like me to respond, Mr Pouliot?
Mr Pouliot: Yes, please.
Hon Mr Palladini: I would like to respond to Mr Pouliot. Number one, we have protected the Wheel-Trans budget for the next two years. It's in place. We are not going to cut. The low-floor busing policy that you initiated is still in place. We do have 300 buses on order of low-floor and we are told that the first of these orders should be coming in sometime in June 1997. We've had to make some difficult choices because of the lack of delivery. We did buy conventional buses but, again, like I said, it was because of the needs.
One big important area that I really feel -- and I want to just pick up on what Mr Colle said earlier, in his account and in his history with the TTC, the private sector basically could deliver accessible taxi service at a much reduced cost. These are the things that we as a government are encouraging the municipalities to do, to find ways they can deliver these services in a more cost-efficient way. When I took a look at the variances in costs between one municipality and the TTC, it was like twice as much.
So these are the areas that I encourage all municipalities to see how they can come up with efficiencies so they can take the money that they're going to be saving from an operational sense and possibly alter the qualifiers in an upward scale. That would allow more people to actually come on and get the services. These are the things that we as a government are trying to work with the municipalities on to see if there are savings available and actually enhance the services. That's all we're looking for. We're looking for cooperation in that sense.
We do have a commitment as a government to make sure that people who are in need in general, whether it's on welfare or whether it's a single parent -- and these are the things that we stand for, but we cannot afford to keep supporting people who are abusing the system. That really was the whole strategy about the Common Sense Revolution, about eliminating the waste, the duplication and the fraud.
Mr Pouliot: The few seconds that I have remaining -- the system isn't made or broken by virtue of abuse. We too find that a zero tolerance on abuse should be the order of the day. You know, you're not the first administration, the government of the day, to have a welfare check, or your welfare police, your snitch line. Then you find out that, when all is said and done, it's less than 3% of people who abuse. Will it cover the cost of enforcement? And it should be enforced. It becomes somewhat questionable. You go to WCB and you might find out that it's a little more, but the numbers multiply quickly.
People who abuse Wheel-Trans, balanced against the increasing numbers, pale in substance. The argument is not based, cannot be made that if we rule out the abuse, we will better be able to afford it. The philosophy has to be more liberal than that. The money has to be there. Now, if you can do it on a more selective basis by having John and Josephine Free Enterprise do it, by all means. Maybe the element of competition vis-à-vis providing that essential service for those who need it, who need it most, will bring forth the best competition. And that is your duty. If you can do this, you will have succeeded where other administrations have not been as successful, and be it, and I want to wish you well.
But what I'm saying is we will be watching carefully to make sure that, when all is said and done, the priority is given so that people can have mobility; the human dimension, number one. Number two, it makes -- how would you say? -- common sense to keep people out of institutions because it makes them more functional and they feel more worthy, they're contributing. I'm sure you hear me. You have someone, your relatives who are perhaps in this dilemma. I know I do, and it's inevitable. Most of us do.
The Acting Chair: Mr Pouliot, we'll have to continue this at 9 o'clock in the morning. The governing party.
Mr Kells: Ere I get into this, a few things. I don't want to be frivolous, but there were a couple of things mentioned today, and it gets back to a number of times my friends and I have sat around trying to figure out where was Highway 1 in the province. I don't know if you have the answer to this, but I --
Mr Colle: That's Yonge Street, isn't it?
Mr Kells: No, it's not Yonge Street. I don't expect an answer today. We've had the conversation many times, and before your estimates are over I would be pleased if somebody can tell me what was Highway 1.
But anyway, more seriously, more serious things, I really don't want to get into the debate about Wheel-Trans, Minister, but the honourable member Mr Pouliot did comment that we learn from the past and we should be taking those lessons and applying them to the present and maybe indeed the future. I was a member of Metropolitan Toronto council in the late 1970s before there was Wheel-Trans. The huge debate about Wheel-Trans centred around the TTC saying: "Don't do it. Don't get into building yourself a monolith. Don't get into building yourself something that is totally devoted to one subject. We, the TTC, are multifaceted. We understand our mandate in Metropolitan Toronto. We can deliver the service. We can do it at less cost.
If you wander into this area you're doomed to be buying special vehicles. It's like having airplanes that don't fly.
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The arguments were made, chapter and verse, and as maybe one of the more stabilizing members of that council in those days I voted against the formation of Wheel-Trans and voted to leave it in the hands of the TTC. Here we are, some 15-plus years later; the funding starts to dry up; the special services are somewhat stretched. Everybody is opposed to, if I may make comparisons, a Chevrolet service, a Cadillac service. The TTC has its other problems.
I look back. I'm not worried about standing behind that vote back then. I think it would have been better had they left it with the TTC.
Here we are today. In a special group you can always make a special case. I think we need a caring society. Even though, as I said, I used to be a right-winger by classification in the Davis era, I still believe in the social safety net. I'm not too sure how all-comprehensive that safety net has to be. I'm not all too sure just at what cost to society, against other costs that society faces on a regular basis, we can deliver on those services in an increased way and in a more demanding way, time after time. Those are just my comments in listening to my colleague, and I appreciate from whence he comes.
I just have some general questions, and I'm sure it's long gone; it probably was created in the era of the Liberal reign. It was put into concrete in the last five years in the era of the NDP reign. It's the moving of that great facility up on the 401 and your ministry to St Catharines. I know that there are probably cost studies lying around all over the place to indicate why that was and is an economic move. I know my favourite Liberal, Jim Bradley, would probably be here getting quite exercised if we got into it.
I wonder two things. In light of today's economics I guess it's irreversible; I guess the building's built. How far down the road are we? Then I'd love to know what the plans are for that acreage and all those buildings, and one built in my time in government, so it's probably within the last 20 years, which is a considerable size. In other words, does this enormous shuffle of civil servants, this huge capital cost, I just wonder, still make economic sense in light of today's situation?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you for the question. I'm going to give you a short answer and then I'm going to turn it over to Mary. I believe she's going to tell you some things that you'll find very interesting.
One of the very first things I did as a minister when we got voted in by the people of Ontario -- we took a look at all the expenditures or commitments that we had. Unfortunately, as far as the relocation of the St Catharines facility, we were too far advanced to not go through with it. In other words, we did explore other scenarios to see if it was going to be worthwhile to move. In my old business it used to be said, "Your best loss is your first loss," so to speak. We certainly did take a look at that scenario and it just was not responsible. I believe that it had been so far advanced that we just could not pull back.
As far as the Downsview facility, I think you've touched on that as well. Obviously, we don't need the type of facility that we do presently have in Downsview. Certainly we are going to be exploring ways of how we could maximize moneys that can be generated from the sale or whatever it is that we're going to do with Downsview, certainly relocating some of the people there in other areas and possibly just maintaining a licensing depot there basically.
I don't know; I think I'm going a little bit too far ahead here, but just to show you that I do share that same concern you have. I believe that this government is committed to coming up with the best strategy and streamlining and maximizing efficiency at the cost of doing business for less.
Mary, maybe you could share with us exactly where we are with St Catharines right now.
Ms Proc: I'd be happy to. I'd just like to back up a bit and give a very brief introduction to the Ontario government relocation program. It was begun in 1978 under the previous Conservative government, with relocation of the Ministry of Revenue to Oshawa.
Mr Kells: I don't want to interrupt, but --
Mr Colle: Were you there then, Morley?
Mr Kells: No, I was around as an executive assistant. I don't know what you're talking about in relation to Oshawa, but keep going. It's unfair of me to interrupt.
Ms Proc: The St Catharines move was announced in July 1990 by the Peterson government and subsequently reconfirmed in November 1990 by the NDP government. As our minister has said, in August 1995 all of the moves were revisited and at that time the move of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation to Niagara Falls was cancelled, but Transportation's move to St Catharines was considered too far advanced to be cancelled without significant penalty.
You're asking, "Does this make sense?" In terms of the original rationale, the purpose of the program was fourfold: First of all, it was to send stable government jobs outside of the GTA area to local economies that were troubled by low or fluctuating unemployment; secondly, it was to encourage economic development through spinoffs that would arise from people living in that community with higher buying power; third, it was to lessen the growth pressures in the GTA, and this was considered very achievable, especially since the dawn of information technology made it possible for ministries to locate in the province as far as Sault Ste Marie or Thunder Bay; finally, the rationale at that time was to improve the size of the province's capital asset base and improve its holdings.
Mr Kells: Mr Palladini's people ramble on with lots of detail and I'd like to sort of cut in there.
If I may, Mr Chair, Mary is really making my point for me. The point she's making is that the rationale for these changes is certainly outdated and is long gone, and maybe they didn't have a sufficient base to begin with. She talks in terms of jobs, moving jobs around the province. I'm not too sure that as we sit today maybe St Catharines isn't in better shape than Metro, generally speaking. That's an argument to make for another day.
She mentions 1978 and Oshawa. I assure you, if we Tories would have done that, we'd never have sent it to Oshawa. We may have the riding now, thanks to Brother Ouellette, but back in 1978 that was not the case.
Mr Bisson: On a point of privilege, Mr Chair: Did I understand the member correctly to say the determining factor of where a project went under the Bill Davis government was based on who held the riding, and was it a member of the government?
Mr Kells: Oh, dear me.
Mr Bisson: Did I just hear you say that?
Mr Kells: No, you didn't hear me say that, no more than you heard me say what your colleague says about a number of things. Let me finish what I'm talking about and let's not conjure up phoney points of privilege. If you want to play that game, I'll play it with you all day long, but that's not what I said. What I said was that the rationale --
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Mr Bisson: On a point of privilege, Mr Chair: I do believe that the standing orders are quite clear. A point of privilege allows a member to raise a matter which he believes is a question of privilege. As defined under the standing orders, a question of privilege is when a member is being treated differently by virtue of what political party he may come from or an action on the part of the government that puts that member at a disadvantage.
I clearly heard the member say that a project would have been awarded on the basis of it being a Tory seat. I just wanted clarification, and that is purely within my right as a member. I object to the member saying that it's a foolish point of privilege; it isn't.
Mr Kells: Well, if you make your ruling, Mr Chair, I'll be happy to continue.
The Acting Chair: I think that we'll have to check the Hansard.
Mr Kells: Yes, check the Hansard.
The Acting Chair: Thank you. We will continue.
Mr Kells: May I go back to the rationale. We're talking about why decisions are made to move ministries, and you mentioned jobs. I wondered about whether or not in districts that still applies today.
Ms Proc: Sir, if I can just make three very brief points. The construction alone of that building generated 1,300 full-year jobs.
Mr Bisson: Whoa.
Ms Proc: Just in terms of the jobs, and in terms of Downsview, it's going to free up a minimum of 200,000 square feet that will be used to collapse third-party leases that other ministries are in so that they can be accommodated in any vacated space at Downsview.
Mr Bisson: Sounds like common sense to me.
Mr Kells: As I try to make my points, possibly you might, through your minister, file some of that documentation that says exactly where the savings are going to be in relation to acreage. In all due respect to your expertise, I would like to see the rationale in the light of 1996 that says the tradeoff that you're making, and the point you're making about freeing up space for new ministries, is indeed something that can stand the test of time today. I'd love to see that.
You said that there were growth pressures, and one of the reasons to move people out -- I don't think in light of today's -- I do know the development industry -- that growth pressure is there. I'm not really here to beat on the four reasons that were made for moving back in I guess the late 1980s, the final decision in the 1990s; I'm here to wonder whether it makes economic sense today. For you to defend the decision that was made, I guess I understand it, but it's really not what I was here about. I was only here about to say, does that still stand up in the light of what's going on?
As the minister says, if it's irreversible, then it's irreversible, and so we know that's a done deal. Then I wonder, is it a situation where the total number of people who were planned to be moved is still a fact, or are we dealing in a potential situation where we could be talking about three quarters? Those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. I'm not saying that you can undo bricks and mortar and I'm not saying your rationale, maybe, at that time was false. When I mentioned Oshawa, I found it hard to believe. I was not a member of the government of the time but I still find it hard to believe. So that's all.
If we're going to march off into these things, once started, and just keep doing them because they were started, then fine. Why do we have estimates and why do we ask questions?
I wonder if it still stands up, and I do not care what Mary says about moving three ministries up there. We could look at moving three ministries somewhere else. That is a huge swath of land and there's a considerable investment in that land, and all of a sudden we are marching off a number of people, even with modern communications and all that, to another part of the province. In my mind, the fact that we've got modern communications may be a reason not to march them off to another part of the province. I'd like to see those arguments. All I really want to know is, do the economics of that move still make sense in light of today's situation? Also, what is the future of this great piece of property up there on the 401? Mary has answered and you've answered; I don't ask for any more.
Hon Mr Palladini: I haven't answered you. I basically answered the first part of the question. You are asking two clearly different questions. One, I believe, is, would we do it again? I can clearly say to you, definitely not. Is the same number of people originally planned to go to St Catharines in a relocation going? I can definitely say definitely not. We are readdressing that situation; that one, we can. The first one I can't undo; it's done.
As to the old location in Downsview, I believe I said we are taking a look at what can be done to see how we can utilize the facility and possibly sell it and get the money into the coffers, put it towards our debt, whatever. That is still at the exploration stage, but since we're in it now, we've got to go full steam ahead. We've got to take a look at whatever savings we can generate by possibly moving, like Mary said, other ministries paying rent when we have a facility they could move into. Those are things we're going to consider.
Mr Kells: I appreciate your answer. I'm sure you understand that there's a considerable amount of personal aggravation involved in moving people, and possibly there are ways around that. We worry about how we affect citizens and we worry about how we deal with our people who work for us, yet that is probably the greatest shuffle of employees that I, in my time, have seen take place. I'll move from that, Minister. I accept those as very rational answers to what I had in mind.
I just want to know about the smart card. I've got the Star in front of me from two days ago. The smart card has been announced from a Ministry of Health point of view, and indeed the Toronto Star article refers to former Minister of Health Ruth Grier's attempt to bring in a smart card that dealt with health and privacy and the best way to protect against OHIP fraud.
As a citizen who gets increasingly confused as I go to my licence place, whether it's to get my licences or my driver's licence -- I even have trouble getting that straightened out from time to time. I make a humble admission that I one time got my licence and put it on my wife's car. We do get confused.
If there's going to be a smart card, is it something we're going to pick up at the licensing office? Is it going to be a card that takes over for all these functions? Where does it come down in relation to the driver's licence, as I understand it?
Hon Mr Palladini: I hope I can shed some light, because I too read the same article you're referring to. I can share this information with you, that there have been ongoing discussions within the ministries to see how we could develop more efficiency as to as the exploration of one card: Could we accommodate the various ministries that will be utilizing a card with one? Nothing has really been defined. We are in the process of seeing exactly how we can do it. Our ministry, I believe, should be one of the main participants. I have made it known to the Premier that I feel MTO should be a major contributor towards whatever it is we want to end up with. I can only say to you that we are very much aware of what I believe we should have in place, and we're going to make our opinions known.
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Mr Kells: I appreciate the answer, Minister. If we're going to do something along this line, the one focal point for the people of Ontario seems to be the licensing office. My concern is that we don't confuse the public any more. If we're trying to simplify and improve services through a so-called smart card, it's my hope or my request that at least where you go get this thing is someplace you recognize as a government office that you can go into over a period of time. If you have any say -- I'm sure you have -- when we get down to how we deliver this service to the public, don't confuse us any more; try and let us get the damn card, if that's what we're going to have, at an office we can recognize, even if you have to identify it as a Ministry of Transportation office and some other value put on the identification.
Hon Mr Palladini: I thank you for your support, because I definitely feel exactly the same way.
Mr Barrett: Mr Palladini, I want to raise the issue of highway access. I don't know where Highway 1 is either, but Highway 3 runs across my riding. As its number suggests, legend has it that it was one of the first highways built in Ontario. At the time, it was advertised as the tourist link between Buffalo and Detroit. Time has passed this highway by, and in many ways it's a rural farm road with extensive commercially built-up sections with the small towns that have grown in a moderate way along this highway.
Over the last 21 years, this highway, because of the traffic, has been labelled "controlled access" to ensure that the public is not put at risk. It has caused problems over the years with farmers and business people who, understandably, have very little interest in the Buffalo-Detroit requirements, other than, say, some of the tourism-based establishments. They want to run agribusiness on this highway. They want second laneways. Oftentimes other uses are developed on this land -- trucking, logging operations, fruit stands -- that require a lot of changes in the access to the highway. One thing they run up against in, say, trying to switch an agricultural laneway to a commercial laneway is the fact that, as I understand it, no commercial access can be established within 1,000 metres of another commercial access.
There is a number of specific cases that I've been embroiled in, and these issues actually go back to previous governments. We know safety is the uppermost concern, but a lot of these rules and regulations may not fit in some areas. They are inhibiting real estate transactions and inhibiting business and job creation. I find it difficult to justify or explain the reasons for some of these regulations. My question really is, what is the overall rationale for these kinds of regulations? What is our policy on access or controlled access? Where lies the flexibility in a policy like this?
Hon Mr Palladini: Thank you for the question, Mr Barrett. I believe we were elected to remove barriers and get Ontario going again, and I certainly do agree with the opportunities that exist. Access has been one of the areas that has been keeping our people very busy. I believe we must be able to come up with another way. As to the parameter of the municipality on a provincial highway, I believe we've got to come up with changes. I have instructed our staff to take a look to see exactly how we can come up with those changes, but changes that are going to be in a positive mode, not just for the sake of making them.
I believe Carl Vervoort will be able to tell you a lot more, because I'm very much in support of what you're saying. I want Carl to share with you some of the things we are attempting to do.
The Chair: I'll give you two minutes, Carl.
Mr Vervoort: First, you asked about purpose. As you said, the purpose of our corridor control activities is to protect the safety of the travelling public, and second, the integrity of the highway system, in terms of the provincial role being through- traffic and municipal roads being primarily for access to adjacent lands. Those two systems play different fundamental roles in the transportation system.
We're also trying to minimize, through our corridor control practices, the impact of development on the highway system that might adversely affect either safety or capacity. Of course, by managing the points of access, we would also hope to reduce our further obligations associated with reconstruction costs and maintenance problems that we might encounter.
Specifically, on Highway 3, that particular controlled access designation does attract a special set of control characteristics, the most significant of which is that access from a controlled access highway is only by public road. There are no private entrances typically permitted, although on occasion such private entrances have been permitted on a temporary basis as long as ultimate access from a public road could be assured.
The designation of that particular thing goes back to 1966. More recently, there has been a review of Highway 3 and the designation in a 1995 study entitled Trans Focus 2021, which I draw your attention to. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I recommend it to you, because it does contain information in there that specifically addresses the ultimate routing of a proposed new two-lane Highway 3 from Ostryhon Corners easterly to Highway 56. This is a long-range plan, so you've got to appreciate that. The expectation is that that new road will in fact be required by the year 2011 to 2021, so it's certainly a long-term interest that we have to protect for.
It's acknowledged that perhaps the specific alignment of that needs to be revisited, and the intention is to study where that route should be located. It is possible that a different route might ultimately end up being selected for the Dunnville area. That's the current status of that.
Mr Colle: If only we could undo many of the things that we did in the past. With transit authorities, Mr Kells was talking the history of Wheel-Trans. You look back at the decision, for instance, to do the SRT in Scarborough, at what that's cost us; and bringing over the articulated bus from Hungary and all these things. What happens is that an operation like the TTC or GO would be the same. You're forced to basically make a provincial hobby-horse look good, so your maintenance costs may go through the roof.
So the next government will come along and say, "The TTC is spending all that money on Wheel-Trans and spending all that money running its system," but then you've got the provincial government saying, "Listen, we've got to sell this technology internationally. The Russians, people in Detroit, they want that SRT. It's going to be in every state in the world, so you buy it, TTC, and make it look good." So you have the men and women on the maintenance at the TTC working around the clock and saying, "This is basically garbage." But they've got to put all the man-hours into the thing, your budget goes through the roof, and the province is saying, "Oh, no, no, keep working at it." And then the next thing comes along.
With Wheel-Trans, what happened is that, as you said, the TTC didn't want it. They knew that basically it would become like the tail wagging the dog; it's an immense responsibility. They have their hands full with conventional transit, and all of a sudden they're asked to take on something that's complex. It deals with health, it deals with social community values, a whole series of things. All of a sudden you've got a transit authority asked to be like a community service and being a leveller of the economic situation.
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It's pretty easy to say: "Look at TTC costs for Wheel-Trans. They are so high." The minister keeps on repeating that, but what the minister doesn't look at is that that was given to the TTC to do, with all the baggage that goes with it. It's something they've tried to do and it has been most challenging. I have sat through -- at the TTC, one of every three hours we spent was on providing disabled transit. The men and women there tried their darnedest to straighten that problem out, but it wasn't easy and it still isn't easy, and I know, as we get into another era of providing that kind of very important transit, it's not going to be easy.
Look at such things as accessible taxis. You remember this. We tried to get accessible taxis in Metro, and I think in all of Metro there were only about 10 or 12 of them. We asked the private sector. We gave them $5,000, $10,000. We did get, though, the cab industry, the regular cabs, which were in the recession, dying, and they said, "We'll take the ambulatory for you," and they have done a very good job. They said, "We'll come in," and they did very well.
It isn't as easy as just blaming a system, especially in Metro, because everything's a bit out of whack. You say, Metro costs twice as much to deliver the same service. But someone living in Agincourt can ask, under the present Wheel-Trans system, to go to Sherway. I know there's one individual who went once a week. He went from Agincourt to Sherway Gardens because he liked the shopping down there. He did it, and it was his right to do that, and you couldn't deny him his right to do that.
You wouldn't get that in Kitchener or you wouldn't get that in some small town where the geography obviously means you're going to have less mileage, so it looks a lot cheaper to provide that service in a small town or in a smaller community. But in Metro you've got the reality of catering to people who have to go long distances. If their doctor or their specialist is across town, or on the other hand, the way the rules are, if they want to go shopping or whatever they do, that's their right under the rules and we have to give them that ride.
In terms of defending the TTC, I have to say let's look at all the pieces and parts that make up the delivery of a service, because nothing is as easy as an instant expert thinks it is. We have to learn by that. If you're going to look at disabled transit, I believe in private sector partnership. That's one of the keys, no doubt about it, because there's a lot of potential out there. But it is not just as easy as changing one rule or regulation, because you deal also with the definition of "disabled." It's going to be a growing problem because we're going to get more and more seniors demographically on our system.
But it's something we can't walk away from. Either by direction or by guidelines, we're going to have to continue to offer that kind of service. How best we do it, how efficiently we do it, is better done through a long-range perspective and dealing with it in a way that just doesn't try to solve the fiscal problem today, because you've got to build it. It'll be manageable, but it'll never be perfect, because the demands are certainly going to be there.
In terms of the general transit picture, one of the challenges the minister and the ministry are going to have -- and I'm going to ask Mr Guscott -- is that you're going to have a lot of push and pull taking place. You've made a major commitment to Sheppard, and I think that's positive. If you look at McCormick's numbers in the study he did in the Golden report on the demographic shifts, it's pretty scary. If you were going to invest in transit -- being at the TTC I had to have my Metro hat on; now I can have more of a provincial hat on. If you look at those demographic shifts taking place from McCormack's numbers, across the GTA you've got to put your money into Halton, you've got to put your money in York region, you've got to put your money into Durham. That's where the people are going to be living and working. That's where the population growth is going to be. It's not going to be in Metro, as we thought; that growth in Metro's not going to be nearly -- I can't remember the exact numbers, but if you look at those studies Golden has, you'll see that the real growth is in the 905 fringe.
How do you provide, not only public transportation, but day-to-day road and highway transportation effectively across that kind of region? That's why I thought there should be more mention of GO in your plans for the future, because that has to be there front and centre. As expensive as it is, that's where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck: You've got some of the infrastructure already in place; you've got those abandoned rail lines criss-crossing everywhere. You've got to put that to the top of the agenda.
The other thing we've got to start to look at -- and Mr Kells mentioned the communications changes -- is the whole movement towards home-based businesses, the telecommuting that's taking place, the web sites. You talk about moving people to Niagara, to St Catharines and all this. What impact is that going to have on moving people on highways or moving people on transit? We have to somehow factor that type of thing into the equation. At the TTC and at Metro, no one did that kind of analysis. It was a coming thing and I asked them, and they said, "We just haven't got to that point yet."
I don't know if people at MTO have started that, but it's a very new area. There's no doubt that more people are working out of their homes and are going to continue to work out of their homes. As the minister, in terms of where you're going to be spending your money, I would hope that some of your resources go into that kind of pre-emptive planning that I think in the long run will save you a lot of money. No doubt, if you look back at what we've been doing at Metro and the TTC, you can second-guess us to death, that we shouldn't have spent money here, we shouldn't have spent money there, and I agree. We made mistakes.
But I would ask you, Minister, to make a commitment that you're going to do this kind of examination in terms of where we're going, because the important thing is where we'll be six years from now by the decisions you'll make now. I just want your comment on that.
Hon Mr Palladini: I appreciate your comment. I'll certainly take it under advisement; it's an excellent comment. Certainly we have to learn from the mistakes, and I guess the easiest thing is to be critical when a mistake has been made. But I can assure you that this government is committed to providing the balanced transportation system for this province.
I really believe the GTA, the 905, as you referred to it, is the potential growth. We must have a vision. What I said the other day is that in my vision of GO, I see it becoming a lot more than what it is. We've got to take advantage of what we do have in the shortline rail. I believe, as you said, that we've got to explore the possibilities of how that can be incorporated.
On future expansion on subways, as you said earlier as well, I agree that it has to be taken into consideration and done with a vision. But we've got to do it within an affordable mode, and that's really the problem we have. We'd like to do a lot of things, but unfortunately, because of the fiscal situation we find ourselves in, we're not able to do them as quickly as we would like. We have to learn to prioritize, and sometimes we might make a mistake in the order we prioritize. I'd like to go back to what you said. I hope we learn from the mistakes that we have made and we can minimize those mistakes and create a better transportation network in Ontario.
Mr Colle: If I can ask Mr Guscott, in light of the fiscal realities, in light of the commitments and what's happening to investments, whether they be in the road network or the transportation network -- and really, when we're talking about the GTA, it's going to get to the point where it's going to be from Windsor to Cornwall, almost. That's what it's coming to in terms of transportation, and then with the linkages up north --
Mr Kells: A local road from Windsor to Toronto, you're saying.
Mr Colle: What are some of the approaches you're going to have to try and meet this challenge?
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Mr Guscott: In July of this year, the minister met with the regional chairmen of all the regional municipalities in the greater Toronto area and outlined for them a GTA transportation plan which staff had been a few months into at that stage, which was being discussed with the political leaders for the very first time. In that GTA transportation plan, we are looking at the kinds of things you're talking about, Mr Colle, everything from specialized studies of the role that telecommuting and work at home will have on the transportation system -- and you're quite right. People in the past have taken the view that it's either exactly the same as with the telephone, where some claimed nobody would ever leave their office and would always talk by telephone, which isn't true; to the other extreme, that it will cause the collapse of especially those kinds of transportation systems which have high fixed costs. What that really means is that if there's a lot of telecommuting, roadways become the big winner and transit systems become the big loser. A transit system has to run whether there are people in each car or not, and if people work at home three days a week, they still expect that transit system to be there for the days they are going to go and make calls or go into the office.
Mr Colle: If I might interrupt for a second, what we saw in some early trends was that the telecommuters or the people working in home-based businesses were doing a lot of running around off-peak. You could do that with your automobile; therefore, there would still be a lot of traffic. I know there was a real shift in peak periods, rush-hour.
Mr Guscott: The data are so far inconclusive in terms of whether that's a short-term phenomenon, because the very same phenomenon you're talking about corresponded with the time when there was a huge increase in part-time work. I know the TTC had trouble modelling which was the cause and effect in terms of those initiatives.
This year being a census year -- every five years we take a snapshot of people's commuting trends in this area in a very large study that's done cooperatively with all the municipalities in the area. We do gain valuable data that help us in the planning, and this will be the first snapshot where, we expect, telecommuting will be a much bigger factor than it has been in the past.
Mr Colle: The GO network, you might say, is like the skeleton of transportation that really goes throughout southern Ontario. With the cutbacks into their expansion programs, how are we going to -- "we," I'm saying. I guess I do mean "we"; we're all going to use the system. What is the strategy to counteract that withdrawal back on reinvestment in GO? That's what I'm asking.
Mr Guscott: The dilemma that causes the problem for municipal transit systems and the GO system relates to the market development and the land use pattern that's involved. Those are long-term factors. The second-biggest factor in terms of transit usage is the land use pattern. We have to change views around intensification if we're going to have viable transit systems in the future. Metro has known this, and Metro hasn't made a lot of decisions around intensification. In fact, I would argue they've made no decisions for intensification in the last five years. It's a dilemma. That's where the problem is facing us in the toughest way, and that's where we haven't yet seen change.
In the 905 area in particular, there have been changes. York's official plan, their first official plan since they became a region, has special provisions in it to encourage transit in that area, and for an area that has not had a history of transit, it's quite a substantial change.
Mr Colle: John Livey.
Mr Guscott: Exactly. John's been very instrumental in having that happen.
At the same time, and for the reasons you've talked about -- it's interesting. You talked about your perspective changing now. One of the dilemmas we've had is trying to get proper appreciation for the fact that even for the TTC, their growth market is going to be in the transboundary movements. They have come some way, but it's been hard to realize that it's in their interests to work with the much, much smaller transit properties that surround them so that they have a mutual benefit in terms of a better-integrated transit system, one that's better integrated for the users. With a GTA transit pass, we're getting there. We have a common map. We're hopefully soon going to have a common information system.
Mr Colle: May I just interrupt you on that? Somebody was talking about the smart card earlier. I know there was an examination of the cost, and it was quite prohibitive. Is there the technology to have that smart card that you use for medical services or for other transportation services also used for a debit card for transit use? Is that being looked at?
Mr Guscott: That's theoretically possible. For the very reasons you talked about earlier, dealing with confidentiality etc, it may not be necessary. We may be able to carry two smart cards in our pocket.
Mr Colle: An independent one for maybe Ministry of Transportation usages, which could go to everything from driver's licence to transit uses.
Mr Guscott: Or you could have one that related to mobility -- mobility and communications, by the way, because you can use the same thing in a telephone -- where you could have a transit card that would be useful on a transit system, that may be useful in the future on toll roadways, which may be useful in parking facilities etc. There are a lot of those services that can be taken into account in a mobility card.
Mr Colle: Are those encumbrances between interregional bus travel, like the Mississauga buses coming through empty, has that not been rectified yet?
Mr Guscott: It's getting there. It hasn't yet been rectified. The best example is the Dixon Road situation where you can get almost to terminal 1, terminal 2, terminal 3, on TTC and then you have to change. There is some movement in there, but frankly, both the TTC and Mississauga Transit wanted substantial provincial subsidies to make the changes that were necessary, and we're not in a position to be able to do that. They've gone back and they're studying it again to see if there's another way. But we are making some progress in that area, and I think the progress is coming because of goodwill.
I will say as well that the GTA transportation plan has the planning commissioners from the various regions and Metro involved in it, and it also benefits from having TTC and GO Transit senior officials present, as well, the managing director and chief general manager. This gives us the opportunity to combine the benefits of the land use system and those who have a strong voice in how it's changing with the very practical day-to-day decisions that need to be made around the future of an operating system.
Mr Colle: That gives me a pretty good overview in terms of what's happening. I have a final question just in terms of the budget processes here. The moneys in the OTCC -- is it $2.5 billion that's in the budget for transportation, including capital? Just to have that straightened out.
Mr Guscott: In terms of the way your book appears right now, a number of expenditure programs actually show as coming out of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp which in fact in December were restored back to the ministry. You should really just consider now that the transportation capital corporation is responsible for Highway 407. The 407 is exclusively in the transportation capital corporation, and everything else you see here that shows things the transportation capital corporation is doing and lending money to the ministry, you should regard as direct expenditures of the ministry. It was a tidying up process that occurred.
Mr Colle: The subway commitment, for instance, would be --
Mr Guscott: The subway commitment is in the ministry's budget.
Mr Colle: Along with the commitment to Sheppard and the subway car order. That's all folded into here.
Mr Guscott: That's correct.
Mr Pouliot: Just briefly in the little time. We go from dilemma to impasse and it brings forth intrigue. I'm starting to wonder, how many sets of books do you have? Are they being -- well, not are they being cooked. I'm not the one saying this. As members of the public accounts committee, maybe Erik Peters will pay you and you, sir, the compliment of his visit. I'm sure he'll be granted the pleasure of your audience when he looks at the books, because we're becoming a little suspicious. We want everything to be aboveboard.
More to the point, tomorrow -- and I'm begging your indulgence, Mr Chair -- two hours, 10 to 12, time split equally three ways? We have competing estimates. We all have a different agenda. There are so few of us. We have been decimated in terms of numbers, and many are already running to position for leadership, so it's a matter of so many bodies being at the same place. It would only cut by a few minutes.
The Chair: Mr Pouliot, you are saying that the committee could meet tomorrow from 10 to 12 and divide up the hours equally? Do I get an agreement there? Good.
Could I make a suggestion, though? My understanding is that the minister will be unavailable tomorrow; he made that indication before. May I suggest, Minister, that your parliamentary assistant or someone be here? The only reason I say this is that for this wonderful staff from Transportation, their trying to defend the political agenda is sometimes rather difficult. If the parliamentary assistant could be present, it would be helpful to respond to that. If not, well --
Hon Mr Palladini: I understand that. Unfortunately, my parliamentary assistant is busy next door in the committee hearings and he'll be there at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, so he is not going to be able to --
The Chair: That's fine with me. I just thought that with the numbers, as Mr Pouliot said, 82 to the decimated numbers the other parties have -- okay, we'll see you tomorrow. We adjourn and convene back tomorrow from 10 o'clock till 2 for the estimates of Transportation.
The committee adjourned at 1751.