Legislative Assembly of Ontario

SAVINGS AND RESTRUCTURING ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 SUR LES ÉCONOMIES ET LA RESTRUCTURATION

DON COUSENS

PROVINCIAL FEDERATION OF ONTARIO FIRE FIGHTERS

PARKDALE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES

ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION

CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY

JACK LAYTON

MARC GRUSHCOW

POLLUTION PROBE

ONTARIO ASSOCIATION FOR INTERVAL AND TRANSITION HOUSES

FACULTY OF SOCIAL WORK, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

TAXPAYERS ALLIANCE

DIXON HALL NEIGHBOURHOOD CENTRE

CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE FUND

ORGANIZATION FOR QUALITY EDUCATION

EQUAL PAY COALITION / COALITION POUR UN SALAIRE ÉGAL

CONTENTS

Wednesday 20 December 1995

Savings and Restructuring Act, 1995, Bill 26, Mr Eves / Loi de 1995 sur les économies

et la restructuration, projet de loi 26, M. Eves

Don Cousens

Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters

Bruce Carpenter, president

Bob McWinnie, research analyst

Parkdale Community Legal Services

Coranne Plummer, community member

Tanya Lena, community legal worker

Ontario Public Service Employees Union

Leah Casselman, president

Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy

Anne Mitchell, executive director

Dr Mark Winfield, director of research

Jack Layton

Marc Grushcow

Pollution Probe

Bruce Lourie, representative

Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses

Victoria Roth, president

Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto

Rhonda Payne, member, social action committee

Nandini Saxena, member, social action committee

Sajedeh Zahraei, member, social action committee

Taxpayers Alliance

Ray Morand, executive director

Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Centre

Toby Druce, community development worker

Elizabeth Greaves, executive director

Canadian Environmental Defence Fund

David Donnelly, executive director

Organization for Quality Education

David Hogg, vice-president

Equal Pay Coalition / Coalition pour un salaire égal

Daina Green, member

Harriet Simand, member

EVIDENCE SUBCOMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT

Chair / Président: Maves, Bart (Niagara Falls PC)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Tascona, Joseph N. (Simcoe Centre / -Centre PC)

Flaherty, Jim (Durham Centre / -Centre PC)

Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East / -Est L)

*Hardeman, Ernie (Oxford PC)

*Maves, Bart (Niagara Falls PC)

Pupatello, Sandra (Windsor-Sandwich L)

*Tascona, Joseph N. (Simcoe Centre / -Centre PC)

Wood, Len (Cochrane North / -Nord ND)

*Young, Terence H. (Halton Centre / -Centre PC)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:

Cooke, David S. (Windsor-Riverside ND) for Mr Wood

Crozier, Bruce (Essex South / -Sud L) for Mrs Pupatello

Phillips, Gerry (Scarborough-Agincourt L) for Mr Grandmaître

Sampson, Rob (Mississauga West / -Ouest PC) for Mr Flaherty

Also taking part / Autre participants et participantes:

Churley Marilyn (Riverdale ND)

Colle, Mike (Oakwood L)

Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North / -Nord L)

Gerretsen, John (Kingston and The Islands / -Kingston et Les Îles PC)

Klees, Frank (York-Mackenzie PC)

Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt ND)

Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn

Staff / Personnel:

Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service

Richmond, Jerry, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The subcommittee met at 0902 in committee room 1.

SAVINGS AND RESTRUCTURING ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 SUR LES ÉCONOMIES ET LA RESTRUCTURATION

Consideration of Bill 26, An Act to achieve Fiscal Savings and to promote Economic Prosperity through Public Sector Restructuring, Streamlining and Efficiency and to implement other aspects of the Government's Economic Agenda / Projet de loi 26, Loi visant à réaliser des économies budgétaires et à favoriser la prospérité économique par la restructuration, la rationalisation et l'efficience du secteur public et visant à mettre en oeuvre d'autres aspects du programme économique du gouvernement.

The Chair (Mr Bart Maves): Welcome to the third day of the standing committee on general government. Just before we get going we have a housekeeping matter. I believe Mr Phillips would like to table a motion.

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): Thank you, Mr Chair. It's a significant motion. My apologies that there aren't copies. The clerk's getting them. It's just a motion that I'd like the committee to deal with, preferably today, but I think each of the caucuses may want to look at it and consider it, so maybe we can deal with it later this afternoon.

Essentially we're finding we have already far more groups than can be accommodated, and the motion suggests that the bill be split and that the government identifies the areas of the bill that it clearly wants dealt with by January 29, and we give ourselves more time for public input on the other portions of the bill and deal with them when the House resumes in March. You'll have the copies of that motion shortly. I think we can hopefully deal with it later today.

The Chair: What I'd like to do with that is --

Mr David S. Cooke (Windsor-Riverside): We should have taken a quick vote. There are only two of them here.

The Chair: Because of the significance of that motion, we'll leave it until a point this afternoon where we have a half-hour to debate the motion and give all the caucuses an opportunity to discuss that with their House leaders.

DON COUSENS

The Chair: To begin this morning's proceedings, I'd like to call on the city of Markham mayor, Mr Don Cousens. Good morning, Mayor Cousens, and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour this morning to make your presentation. You can use that time as you see fit. I advise that you leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions, responses from the caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you would, even though I just did, read your name and organization into the record for the committee and Hansard.

Mr Don Cousens: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. My name is Don Cousens and I am the mayor of the town of Markham. I'm very pleased to be able to have this opportunity to make some comments to this committee. I regret that I didn't have time to have them all prepared in writing to distribute beforehand, but I'd like to share some of these thoughts.

Bill 26 is certainly a very impressive bill and has a great deal to it. I've had a chance to review parts of it and want to share them so that the Legislature could benefit from at least this one person's view and certainly our municipality's.

As I think of the times that we're facing here in Ontario, these are momentous times, and I think it's going to require a monumental effort on the part of the government and the Legislature to address the concerns that are facing people today. When you think of how it's going now, the status quo just will not give us the winning edge as a province that we really have to have.

Our economy is in shatters. We can blame all kinds of people and governments, but we really just have to put a stake in the ground and begin afresh to see what we can do to get Ontario working again and to get the manufacturing back. The announcement yesterday from Honda certainly is going to affect our community, with Magna head office there, but we also know it's a positive boost to everybody to see manufacturing coming back stronger than ever into our province.

Consumer confidence is weak. Just reading what's happening within the retail industry before Christmas, the sales are an indication that stores just aren't getting people to put their money out fast enough to buy the inventory that they've got. Our Canadian identity is in trouble, and I think we all have to be concerned with what's happening in our country. I look at our youth and I see them uncertain about their future.

You come along and say, "Why is that important?" As a municipal politician, I am concerned about the big picture. I'm concerned about Canada, that we continue to do everything we can to be competitive, at our level, your level and every level, so we're working together to attract new industry and new business to our province, and that our federation of Canada is strong. I always have seen myself as a Canadian first and an Ontarian second, and what is good for our own community really follows through the fact that all those other things are working to our benefit.

Our economy has to be strengthened. I am a strong supporter of the initiatives that I see within Bill 26 that I think will help ensure a strong infrastructure for a stronger economy. What we have to do is create an environment for investment, and I think Bill 26 is in many respects trying to address those concerns by making changes within the systems of governance and government. Certainly in the areas in which I'm involved, I see it as having a positive thrust.

As well, we have to look at the social responsibility that we have. We in our communities have to start accepting more responsibility to do things that maybe we expected the government to do for us before.

There are two areas I have special interest in: one is that of governance within the local government area, and the other has to do with one of my favourite subjects -- I've been monitoring this one for years and trying to push it even in the early stages -- that is Highway 407, and some of the effects on that one.

On the governance issue, there isn't an awful lot in this bill that will answer the questions I have with regard to the Golden commission and the changes that will be needed within the greater Toronto area. None the less, I see within the bill some decisions being made that make so much sense.

In the last session of the Legislature, we saw Tiny township broken up and changes made within that small municipality as all the neighbouring municipalities just plundered in upon it. It really was one of those things I wasn't happy about at the time, and I see a new spirit being brought forward in Bill 26 by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in trying to get municipalities to come forward with their own ideas, to try to gain a consensus. There's a carrot-and-stick approach but it means, let's try it in a friendly way, and afterwards there'll be some of kind of enforcement of it if it doesn't happen otherwise.

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I see that as at least the beginning of something, and I think that with the effort that's got to be taken to reduce costs at local government level, this begins to be a blueprint for action that I think can show that Ontario is prepared to move into the next century by repositioning itself. I like the fact that it's starting off with a voluntary approach and then allowing other things to happen.

I also think there has to be a sense and a spirit in there of community, and I don't see it, but I hope that we don't make some of the mistakes that even one government did in 1969. My own community has Thornhill divided by Yonge Street. They said, "East of Yonge Street will be Markham, west of Yonge Street will be Vaughan," and I think you really have to continue to look at communities. If there's going to be any kind of changes made, they can be done within a larger municipal governance, but try to keep communities together. I hope that is implicit in the kind of guidelines that are there.

I move to the subject of Highway 407, and 407 has been a major issue of great importance through our community for many years. It was mentioned in the fateful speech from the throne in May 1985 when Mr Miller was Premier for a short time. I was chair of a task force on transportation so I got involved with the importance of that part of our infrastructure from 1985 to 1987, and it became an important part of everything that we were doing, certainly within the Legislature. I'll never forget the day that Bill Wrye made the announcement of Highway 407. Were you here then, Gerry? I think you were.

Mr Phillips: I might have been.

Mr Cousens: I think you were. You were, come on. He was part of the Peterson cabinet and you were in it.

I was the only opposition member who stood up in the House to applaud that decision, and I remember with great satisfaction the fact that the government had finally launched 407. I also go ahead to the days when Mr Peterson turned the sod for it in 1987.

I also appreciated the fact that the NDP government kept it on the road. I followed very carefully the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp hearings and have continued to watch its evolution and am pleased that it succeeded in passing the financial test by Mr Eves.

I think that the 407 has been on track and will be on track. Certainly all three political parties in the last three governments have had a say in it.

In reviewing Bill 26, I have to go on record as being one that's supportive of a number of the legislative amendments that are included in there. I think it's worthwhile saying I have been asking for years how the toll system is going to work, not liking the toll system necessarily but knowing that it's the only way we're going to be able to pay for it. Certainly the previous government saw that as a way of subsidizing infrastructure. People will pay for what they need. So the toll system became something that certainly the caucus I belonged to at the time supported and now, as the mayor of a municipality, we see it as one of those essential ingredients to maintaining Highway 407.

I've gone through again continuing to monitor 407, and I think the plans for the toll system make an awful lot of sense. I think the amendments which will permit the system of a toll device, the electronic nature of it to communicate the fact that someone's on that road makes an awful lot of sense. Instead of having the kiosk and some of the ways in which tolls have been collected in the past, we are making good use of technology.

I think that the approach for billing and collection of toll charges is also very, very sensible. You're not expecting people to use a service and then not have to pay for it, so I think what it means is that the corporation will have the ability to charge interest and collect the money that's needed. I think we in society have to continue to make sure that people understand their own responsibility when it comes to doing things.

Also, when I looked at the bill, the fact that there is a dispute mechanism -- sometimes people want to just sort of keep fighting even when they're wrong. I think what this bill does is say, "Okay, go through to the corporation and if you're not satisfied, you can go to the registrar of motor vehicles to have your issue addressed."

I also have to see the way in which the toll debts will be collected. Again, how else are you going to do it without saying "Hey, there has to be some way of making sure that levy is collected.

The fifth part of the bill which talks about reciprocal agreements with other areas -- we've seen it with subsidies, with people paying for their children. They move out of the province, they get to a jurisdiction where they don't have to do it. We've got to make sure that what goes on in Ontario protects the rights of all Ontario citizens.

When I looked at the whole part of the bill, as well as the Highway Traffic Act amendments, again, it makes sense. I didn't know how they were going to do it, but again, new laws for new times and new circumstances, and the fact that people will not be able to obstruct their licence plates makes sense. This special kind of toll device, I think, is probably going to be one that's developed by a company in the town of Markham, but we're open to some other competitive device that'll be used. But I've seen the one and it's been used in China and other main highways around the world and it certainly makes it a lot easier to identify the vehicle through the electronic reading technique.

The fact that the bill now makes it very clear that there won't be any evasion -- I think people who are paying want to make sure that everyone who's on that road is going to be facing the same costs; and the selling of evasion devices, the fact that that's going to be restricted, again makes an awful lot of sense. We just have to be in a world in which government is running its business more like a business and what I've seen happen in this bill has identified the way in which the new corporation is trying to run it. The government is trying to run the highways and the toll system as a business.

So when I review this part of the bill, and I have to admit that my interests are far more narrow now than they were before, I see it as a very meaningful set of statements that will help us go into the future. In the future, I hope this government will certainly watch the cost of the tolls. I think that's one thing we wanted to do.

It's been a concern I've had from the beginning, when we knew there was going to be a toll road, that the costs have to be very competitive, so they're not so high that people won't use this highway -- trucks, transportation, anyone that's using it -- that it continues to be an attractive alternative to the other roads that are nearby, and also that the 407 continues to be expanded.

I'm not sure of where they are going to take it on the west end, but may it continue to be expanded east of Highway 48, and the previous government did announce that it would go to Highway 115. Any effort to keep that highway moving east, and west, so that it does become another major link within the province would make an awful lot of sense to me.

Mr Chair, I could say more but I know you're going to want to get back on time. I appreciate very much just having a few moments to touch on a few of these issues. I thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mayor Cousens. We're going to have four minutes a side, starting with the government side.

Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): Good morning, Mr Mayor. Obviously you spoke slightly to the local autonomy issue, where the province is passing more local autonomy to the municipalities. Part of that local autonomy of course is the issue of user fees. There has been some concern expressed, in fact, how far those user fees may or may not be going and the minister's ability to disagree or by regulation to retract the authority on certain user fees. Do you see any problem with your municipality going beyond what would be a reasonable position on user fees and then giving the minister the ultimate decision of something that was against the best interests of the provincial population?

Mr Cousens: Our municipality has always had some form of small fee out there. There's no free transit, you pay for that, and we've had people paying to use our arenas and our facilities so that they're in a break-even position anyway. So the town hasn't been able to provide the excellent services without at least getting money back.

0920

Interestingly enough, we collect $36 million in taxes a year, and we collect $36 million in fees for services and other costs for licences and so on within the town. So it's an interesting breakout. It isn't all a tax dollar.

But you know the one thing that comes through, Mr Hardeman, is that we have to be competitive with other municipalities. The last thing we would ever want to do is to start levying extra costs for people to be in our community, because we want to make sure that it's more attractive for them to settle there than in a neighbouring community. We're not given too many opportunities to promote ourselves by giving extra incentives to come to Markham, so what we have to do is make sure we're running a lean-and-mean administration, that the costs are kept down, the taxes are kept down, so then people are going to want to come there.

If we start raising taxes even more to the people that are there already, they're going to move away to another municipality. So market forces are a tremendous levelling force for a municipality to keep things under control.

The worry that some people have that we're in danger of levying more costs and fees I'd say is unfounded, on the basis of the way the market has to be run.

There are ones, though, that I would like to see us levy. I think when people come through town, if their car breaks down or they have a fire and we end up having to have special services that are used, I think there may be some ways in which we can recover some of the cost for situations like that. I don't think we have any desire to try to levy any new sets of taxes at all -- if we can, try to keep them down all the way.

The one that I worry about a lot is garbage taxes where people are going to charge for that, and it's being done in some municipalities. I'm finding the same with tires. They start dumping tires elsewhere because they have to pay so much to get rid of them. We've got to be smart to keep the costs down.

The Chair: Sorry, Mr Hardeman, that exhausts the time for questioning. Now to the opposition.

Mr Phillips: I appreciate your comments. You're a strong supporter of the bill. Because this bill is so important to Markham, I gather, how much time has council had to discuss the bill and when they discussed the bill, did they express any concerns at all about the bill?

Mr Cousens: I think we've had a number of conversations about the bill.

Mr Phillips: Have you had a meeting on it?

Mr Cousens: We've had a number of sessions in which we discussed it. We didn't have a formal council meeting on it, but, as a council, we have taken the time to look at different elements of the bill, and have considered just what its impact is. What we're trying to do, as much as anything, is to see what's coming down the way with future changes to get a sense of the way it impacts us. It does impact every community; my hospital board which I'm on is interested in how that impacts.

Mr Phillips: That will be useful. I gather you've had the public meeting on it then, and that's helpful.

Mr Cousens: I did not say we had a public meeting on it. I've indicated that members of council have had some sessions in which we've discussed the bill, but we have not had a public meeting on it. I know we will be having meetings on certain elements of the next steps of the bill.

Mr Phillips: That'll be helpful. But you won't get another chance to tell us the outcome of that.

Mayor McCallion was here two days ago, and said that her legal department had reviewed the bill and had concluded that the bill permits local municipalities to implement a gas tax, a sales tax; in fact, she said, yes, and a head tax, a poll tax. "I can tell you," she said, "when we discussed integrated transit in the greater Toronto area" -- and I assume you were involved in that -- "the only way that we can have integrated transit in the greater Toronto area, and we discussed it, all the municipalities, was with a gasoline tax. We would have to ask the government to pass that, but now we have the opportunity to put it in."

Is your legal department in agreement with Mayor McCallion's view that this does permit a gas tax? And were you part of those discussions that said that for an integrated transit system, the greater Metro Toronto area would have to have a gas tax?

Mr Cousens: On the latter part I have been, and in the transit integration committee among mayors we have looked at that as an option and have asked that consideration be given to such a prospect. But I think we're also concerned with another tax coming out, so that in asking the question, we're not committed to that as being the solution to it. There have to be a number of ways in which we look at how we pay for transit.

Mr Phillips: Did your legal department agree that the gas tax was possible?

Mr Cousens: No, our legal department has not been asked to look at the bill and that part of it, so I do not have a sense of it. My own personal feeling is that we are not interested in claiming certain parts of the bill that are going to give us the right to start taxing people in more different areas. I think we really have to be careful on extra fees and extra charges in these things. There may well be a stage in which the government, in consultation with municipalities, will see that there's an area where we can collect some extra money, and it may well just be in service charges, but I think we all have to be very, very careful. I'm sure Mississauga has to be careful.

The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Phillips. I'm sorry, we've come to the end of your time. The third party: Mr Cooke.

Mr Cooke: I will try to ask a couple of questions. I'd ask the mayor if he could just be a little shorter on his answers because I think Tony has a question, too.

First of all, I want to thank you for your objective analysis of the bill that you've given us so far. I am assuming at this point you're speaking for yourself, because from your answer to Mr Phillips you haven't had a legal analysis of the bill and you haven't had a formal discussion or position taken by council.

Mr Cousens: It's safe to say that I am speaking very much as the mayor of Markham and as one who has the feeling of the consensus that would be within our own council.

Mr Cooke: Do you think there would be a consensus on your council if they were to understand, as the mayor of Mississauga has said her legal department confirms, and the city of Toronto says its legal department confirms -- those are two that come to mind immediately -- that this bill gives the right to municipalities to have income tax, gas tax and retail sales tax? Do you think there would be a consensus in Markham of support for this bill if they knew that another level of government was being given that form of tax?

Mr Cousens: I think council understands the need to find new revenue to do new things, but as far as the way in which we run the town of Markham is concerned, we understand the only way we can be successful is to do a better job than --

Mr Cooke: That's not what I asked. I'm asking if --

Mr Cousens: But you are.

Mr Cooke: No, I'm not. I'm asking you if your council and the members of your community would support another level of government being given those three forms of taxation. I'm not sure that you want to give a straight answer to it. Let me ask you one other thing on an issue that you have raised, the whole question of municipal restructuring and the powers that are under this bill and your claim that they're fairer. Can you just very briefly tell me how this empowers local communities to restructure in a way that the previous legislation didn't when, in fact, if you've read the bill and had an analysis of the bill by your legal department, you would know this gives more power to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the provincial government to unilaterally act to restructure municipalities without ever having to come back to the Legislature -- more power in that process than has ever been the case in the history of the province.

Mr Cousens: I disagree with you strongly.

Mr Cooke: You haven't read the bill then, Don.

Mr Cousens: I've read the bill, and I'm telling you I saw what you did as a Minister of Municipal Affairs with Tiny township. I'll tell you, there was nothing pleasant in seeing what you did because, having it go through the Legislature, there was no opportunity for us to discuss the issues of that bill with you and certainly you didn't deal with them and you didn't respond to them.

Mr Cooke: Mr Chair, I think, just for the purposes of the mayor, he should understand that there will never be a debate in the Legislature again because cabinet can now do it and it won't bring a bill to the Legislature.

Mr Cousens: If I may put in, Mr Chair --

Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): Mr Chairman, on a point of order --

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Cooke and Mr Cousens. Your half-hour has expired. I want to thank you for appearing today in front of the committee.

Mr Cousens: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.

Mr Young: Mr Chairman --

The Chair: There's nothing out of order.

Mr Cooke: If you're going to come here, you've got to give an objective view.

Mr Cousens: I gave one. You have to learn how you were so unobjective when you were a minister and there wasn't any chance --

Interjections.

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PROVINCIAL FEDERATION OF ONTARIO FIRE FIGHTERS

The Chair: Can I please have representatives from the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters come forward? Welcome, gentlemen. Before we begin, I'd just like to ask the folks in the gallery and members of the committee to hold their side conversations to a minimum. Each presenter only has half an hour, and with respect to their opinions, I believe it's fair for us to hold those conversations to a minimum.

Welcome this morning, gentlemen, to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour to make your presentation and you can use that time as you see fit. Most presenters choose to leave some time at the end of their presentation for a response to questions. I would appreciate it if you would, for the benefit of the committee members and for Hansard, read your names at the start of your presentation.

Mr Bruce Carpenter: Thank you very much. My name is Bruce Carpenter. I'm the president of the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters. To my left is my colleague Mr Elliott Hastings, who is the 13th District V-P for the International Association of Fire Fighters and on my right is my colleague Mr Bob McWinnie. Mr McWinnie is the research analyst for the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters.

Member of the committee, I would initially like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear on behalf of the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters. My name is Bruce Carpenter, as I already said, and I am its president. Our federation represents 4,900 full-time firefighters across the province of Ontario. Our member locals have entered into collective agreements with over 30 municipalities, from the city of Toronto in the greater Toronto region to Valley East in northern Ontario.

We have some serious concerns with Bill 26. The omnibus bill, as I am sure the committee is aware, contains more than 200 pages, 17 schedules and alterations to over 40 separate pieces of legislation. We believe that it is quite regrettable that, had it not been for the extraordinary tactics of the opposition parties in the provincial Legislature, Bill 26 would be law today with absolutely no public input whatsoever, and we congratulate Mr Curling on that.

The Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters has, to a considerable extent, found Bill 26 overwhelming. It seems to go far beyond the provincial government's economic statement of November 29, 1995. This omnibus bill grants the provincial cabinet and non-elected bureaucrats the authority to make decisions bypassing the usual and traditional safeguards inherent in our democratic process. Hopefully, other affected groups will have the resources to fully study this bill and expand on the issue in more detail.

On schedule M, ministerial/commission power to restructure municipalities: The Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters is concerned that schedule M will empower the Minister of Municipal Affairs to restructure or amalgamate existing municipalities unilaterally with little or no public input. The minister could, simply by regulation, alter existing municipal boundaries and services that are now provided by the municipality as opposed to regional bodies. Thus, firefighting could, at the stroke of a pen, be provided regionally where presently it is a municipal jurisdiction. The Solicitor General could not give our federation any assurances about what would happen to collective agreements of firefighters who may be amalgamated due to schedule M.

We have no doubt whatever that the Association of Municipalities of Ontario will interpret it to allow them to decimate our collective agreements. It has been difficult for some of us to come to grips with and comment on the full impact of schedule M due to its ambiguity. If our members are going to be affected by amalgamation or regionalization we require a vehicle for our participation. This schedule is simply too rushed and general in nature for us to study and effectively comment on. We therefore require more specific information and time to digest the full implications of schedule M. We do, however, believe that the responsibility for the fire service should remain with the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

On schedule Q, amendments to various statutes with regard to interest arbitration: If we are somewhat unsure of the implications of schedule M, we have no such confusion with regard to schedule Q. Having presented our own boards of arbitration for as long we can remember, we do understand the devastating effect schedule Q will have on labour relations, interest arbitration and, in our opinion, public safety in the fire service.

Bill 26 amends the Fire Departments Act to require arbitrators to consider five criteria when writing their awards:

(1) The employer's ability to pay in light of its fiscal situation.

(2) The extent to which services may have to be reduced if the current funding levels are not increased.

(3) The economic situation in Ontario and in the municipality.

(4) A comparison, as between the employees and other comparable employees in the broader public sector, of the terms and conditions of employment and the nature of the work performed.

(5) The employer's need for qualified employees.

We would like to point out that the Fire Departments Act has been under review for quite some time now by the Fire Services Review Committee. This committee has been established by the Ministry of the Solicitor General. It is comprised of stakeholders representing firefighter associations, fire chiefs, the Association of the Municipalities of Ontario, volunteer firefighters and the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

The chair of this committee, the fire marshal of Ontario, has just recently published a report containing a number of recommendations. Our association, along with other stakeholders, received this report from Solicitor General Bob Runciman on November 19, 1995. At this meeting, which lasted less than 15 minutes, we were told that we would be given until the end of the year, 1995, to respond. It was noted by the Solicitor General that no changes would occur to the Fire Departments Act until all the stakeholders were consulted and we could anticipate legislation as a "best-case scenario" by the fall of 1996.

In a follow-up letter from the Honourable Bob Runciman he noted:

"As you know, the fire marshal's report has been submitted to me and I have circulated it to the members of the committee for review and comment. This is the first step in a thorough review of the fire marshal's recommendations. I am confident that this will lead to a very positive legislative change for fire protection in Ontario."

In a video presentation prepared for a Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters' conference held in April, 1995, and just before the provincial election, Mike Harris, now Premier Harris, had this to say about the Fire Departments Act:

"We have serious concerns about some of the changes that are being contemplated with respect to the Fire Departments Act. Today, I simply want to leave you with my personal assurances. No changes will be made under a Harris government until such time as your members have been thoroughly consulted and we will insist that all changes be fully costed both from the point of view of the workers as well as management."

At this point I'd like to file that tape with the committee.

Mr Cooke: You had 15 minutes with the minister.

Mr Carpenter: I know. Given the above statements, we were surprised and unprepared when Bill 26 was introduced by the provincial government, and we had not yet at that time even given our response to the fire marshal's report, yet this omnibus bill clearly amends the Fire Departments Act with no consultation from firefighter associations.

I want to make it clear: We have not been consulted to this day on this by the Solicitor General.

It is ironic that one change proposed in Bill 26 is criteria for arbitrators, which isn't even mentioned in the fire marshal's report.

It is our submission to the standing committee that these criteria for arbitrators outlined in Bill 26 are a significant interference into the arbitration process affecting firefighter collective bargaining and they should be deleted from the bill. We would like to offer a number of reasons for our conclusions.

Ability-to-pay arguments render the arbitration process impotent since wages and benefits will be determined by the allocation of transfer payments rather than the merits of the case. Employers should not escape serious collective bargaining because of limited funding from the province.

Employers who fix their budgets in the first place will then argue that arbitrators are bound by the "ability to pay" criteria. This leaves little incentive for corporations to settle at the bargaining table since arbitrators will be bound to award in favour of the employer's position. This discredits compulsory arbitration as a system for resolving contract disputes.

The independence of arbitrators is brought into serious question. We believe that the best arbitrators, those with integrity, will opt out of the arbitration process altogether.

Financial mismanagement by municipalities will impact negatively on firefighters' compensation packages.

Bill 26 demands as one of the criteria that arbitrators consider the extent to which services may have to be reduced if current funding levels are not increased. This involves arbitrators in making the hard decisions respecting the level of emergency services to the community. In the fire service, where there is no legislated vehicle for mandatory fire protection, this criterion is especially irresponsible.

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If the citizens of Ontario are going to suffer reductions in fire protection, surely these decisions should be made by the municipalities and cities themselves, and not foisted on arbitrators. Those who provide a service should be held accountable for downsizing and should not be allowed to hide behind the arbitration process. Citizens could suffer a loss in fire protection and emergency medical services because of indiscriminate or ill-advised spending in other areas by municipal officials.

We have no doubt that any award that corporations do not agree with will be appealed to the courts for judicial review. Our local associations simply cannot afford court challenges, not to mention the undue time it will take to ever implement arbitrator awards.

The criteria dealing with employers' need for qualified employees open up a virtual Pandora's box. They will be used by employers to justify any and all encroachments into our collective agreements, from promotional policies to contract-out articles to layoff and recall clauses. It will be next to impossible for firefighters who have traditionally prepared their own briefs to boards of arbitration to cope with ability-to-pay arguments. Those claiming they do not have the ability to pay are some of the people who have been relied upon for financial information. Thus, arbitrators and firefighters cannot hope to be in a position to measure a public sector employer's ability to pay.

Taken as a group, these five criteria are devastating and unacceptable to our federation and the 4,900 firefighters we represent. We have voluntarily agreed to a moratorium on our right to strike, because we acknowledge that our special services are critical to the communities that we serve. In place of that strike weapon, firefighters have been furnished with legislation that ensures a just and independent arbitration system. It should not be tampered with.

Criteria for arbitrators and ability-to-pay arguments have long been sought after by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. They base their concerns on the allegation that arbitrators' awards are out of line and excessively generous. This is without question not true. Interest arbitrators have consistently implemented their awards to replicate what would have occurred at the bargaining table if a settlement were negotiated. Accordingly, they rely on freely negotiated settlements for their comparables. Thus, in Metropolitan Toronto, there is a wage spread of less than $350 per year between six fire departments, two of which have not been to arbitration in the past 13 years.

Below are the data setting out various years that the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighter locals have taken advantage of interest arbitration process under the terms of the present Fire Departments Act. That's found on pages 14 and 15 of our submission. It can be readily observed that the vast majority of contracts have been successfully concluded by the parties at the bargaining table. We have chosen a time period from 1980 to 1992, a span of a full 13 years. We have not included statistics since 1993 because Bill 48, the social contract legislation, has effectively stalled interest arbitrations.

A number of conclusions can be drawn from the attached data. Nine of our locals have not been to a board of arbitration in the past 13 years. Each and every one of our affiliates has signed agreements at the bargaining table more often than they have resorted to arbitration. At least 85.1% of the agreements are reached at the bargaining table. If, as AMO submits, the system is stacked against the corporations, we would expect to see firefighter locals using arbitration to a much greater extent.

Also, in the less than 15% of cases that proceed to arbitration, a large number of awards are unanimously agreed to by the arbitrator, the association nominee and the corporation nominee. The arbitration route is resorted to in less than 15% of all cases. When negotiations break down, it is because the parties have failed to agree. This is simply the result of both sides being unable to come to an agreement, not necessarily the firefighters rushing off to boards of arbitration.

The system therefore clearly works, in the overwhelming majority of cases, for both the firefighters and the municipal corporations.

In conclusion, on behalf of the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters, I cannot overstate how strongly we are opposed to Bill 26, and schedules M and Q in particular.

Firefighters have for decades provided an essential service and we have developed a special relationship with our communities. We are consistently rated at the top of any survey conducted dealing with citizen satisfaction with government services. As a profession and an association we have given thousands of hours of unpaid volunteer labour and raised literally millions of dollars for local charities, including hospitals, burn units, battered women's shelters, children's charities and many more. Firefighters have not only been employees, but have also given of themselves to protect and make their communities more compassionate places to work and live.

We believe Bill 26 is not only a threat to our collective bargaining rights; it is also so unjust that it puts into jeopardy the special relationship that exists between firefighters and the citizens of Ontario.

These five criteria for arbitrators are not merely a tool to enable municipalities to better cope with funding cutbacks. They are, we submit, irresponsible, ideologically motivated and wrongheaded. They will allow our employers to decimate our collective agreements and they tilt what was a level playing field in firefighter collective bargaining. Funding cutbacks in emergency services such as the Fire Departments Act jeopardize not only the health and safety of our members but also the citizens of Ontario.

The five criteria for arbitrators outlined in Bill 26 allow us little or no opportunity to protect our members through compulsory arbitration. They are not in the long-term interests of firefighters, municipalities or the people of Ontario. Our federation and firefighters in Ontario will resist to the best of our ability this unfair intrusion into the arbitration process.

We propose and ask this committee to rescind, if not the whole of Bill 26, then certainly schedules M and Q where they pertain to the Fire Departments Act.

I thank you for the opportunity to appear on behalf of the provincial Ontario firefighters.

The Chair: Thank you. We have about four minutes per caucus. We'll start off with the opposition caucus.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Mr Carpenter and colleagues, I want to thank you for your excellent presentation. As you were speaking and I looked through your presentation, here on page 6 it struck me what you had written and what was said. I have to ask you this question, then: Do you think you were lied to by Mr Harris and Mr Runciman?

Mr Carpenter: I think we were seriously misled.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): In dealing with schedule M, are you concerned at all that this may be a movement to allow municipalities to in effect privatize their fire forces? Is that a concern of your organization?

Mr Carpenter: It's very much a concern of our organization. I think that's moving back towards the 1930s and the aspect of contracting out, of privatization, of user fees. I absolutely believe that's where this is moving and I think it's the wrong direction for this province to be heading. I believe now that the fire service offers a more than excellent service to the community, and I think the citizens of Ontario in every municipality understand what they're getting and what they're paying for.

Mr Gerretsen: Having been a mayor of a municipality a number of years ago, I know where all this comes from. It comes from the notion that people out there somehow think, or some people anyway, that firefighters are paid too much and this is one way in which we can keep the salaries down, or the system keeps it down. What kind of comments do you have on that?

Mr Carpenter: I don't think there's any doubt about that. The history of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has been exactly that. It's been an attack on firefighters continually over high wages, and I simply don't believe that is true. Firefighters have justified their wages at the bargaining table and at arbitration for a number of years and there are some very astute people, arbitrators and city officials, who have agreed with that and have freely negotiated collective agreements. So, yes, I believe it is an attack on our wages and that municipalities see them as inflated.

Mr Gerretsen: What do you see for the fire services in the 21st century? Do you see any additional services being done by fire forces in general than what they're traditionally doing right now?

Mr Carpenter: I do. Prior to this bill, and hopefully it will continue on, I see the expansion of the fire service into automatic defibrillators on our vehicles. Our locals are very involved with their municipalities and in a lot of cases have been the initiators of automatic defib on the vehicles. I see that as a service that is needed. We also, as you probably know, respond to automobile extrication, hazardous material spills and a number of other emergency and medicals, notwithstanding the fact that we still respond to fire calls. So I see the fire service as expanding. I see this as negatively affecting that expansion, and I see these as services -- and I don't think I'm wrong -- that communities want.

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Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): Thank you, Mr Carpenter, for your presentation. As I'm sure you know, we heard also last night from the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association. We heard very similar concerns. I know it's small comfort, but the point you made about the Premier and others misleading you I think we can certainly say applies to a number of other groups as well. The Premier also said there would be no user fees for health care, and there will be. He said there would be no cuts to health care, and there are cuts to health care. And we could go and on with the list.

Unfortunately, we're seeing what the Conservative government is doing relative to what it said it would do before the election. I found particularly useful the information that you've provided to us about the arbitration system because, as you point out, we're really only talking about 15% of cases where matters are referred to arbitration. The additional point that you make here is that even in those cases, there's a good number of them that are worked out in a unanimous way. It seems to me -- and this is the first question that I have of you. Would it be stretching it to categorize what is going on here as simply wage controls by the back door?

Mr Carpenter: Yes, absolutely. I believe that is absolutely right. I believe the arbitration system, first of all, is fair and the collective bargaining system is just. Simply, firefighter associations across this province have done a better job in preparing for arbitration than the corporations have. I believe this is absolutely, as you suggest, a back door method of changing a system that is just and that works for everybody.

Mr Bob McWinnie: If I could just include this, when we go to a board of arbitration, firefighters present their own briefs. The only person in that room, generally, that isn't a lawyer or some kind of accountant is the firefighter giving his case. The fact that we've done a good job at that I think should be to our credit. If the municipalities haven't been able to compete -- because there's nothing that says they can't introduce any evidence they want to introduce at a board of arbitration -- it shouldn't be held against them. It's like saying we can't win in a fair fight so we're going to change the rules so that there won't be a fair fight any more and we'll get our way, and if we don't get our way at a board of arbitration, we'll take the award to court and the thing will never get implemented.

Mr Silipo: One of the other things we heard last night that I'd like to ask your comments on is the threat to safety that some of these changes might pose. A couple of examples were used referring to, I think, Mayor Lastman in North York, who said he'd slap a user fee on cars that would be involved in a fire in his municipality or have something having to do with fire alarms in high-rise apartments, and the danger this might pose when people, in order to avoid paying those fees, might take steps that would endanger their lives and those of others.

Mr Carpenter: I absolutely agree with that. I think that is human nature. I think that once a user fee is imposed on any service, by virtue of saving a dollar people are going to try and eliminate the fire or not report the alarm. I think that will happen --

The Chair: I'm sorry. I have to interrupt and we have to move to the government side for questions.

Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): Thank you, Mr Carpenter, for your presentation. I'd just like to address a couple of concerns of yours and perhaps ask you a question or two.

With respect to one of the criteria and your concern about service levels being determined by arbitrators, I'd just like to assure you that arbitrators are not to be given the power to order service reductions. Anything in terms of how the operation is going to be run is still going to be a municipality decision.

With respect to the ability to pay, I note your concern there in terms of the ability to pay in terms of the presentation and the evidence. We've had submissions on that and certainly there have been suggestions of an audited financial statement being provided and other mechanisms to make it a very fair and due process in terms of dealing with that factor; we've had submissions on that. With respect to the criterion, we've also had some that would go to another extreme. They say: "Well, you only say `consider' the criterion. Why don't you say `apply'?" That's something that we've been approached with in terms of saying, "Make it tougher."

But I'd like to deal with this "ability to pay" argument, because in your brief at page 7 you do make a comment, which I agree with, that "Employers should not escape serious collective bargaining because of limited funding from the province." Certainly they should be bargaining in good faith and making sure they get a collective agreement. I certainly note your comment that settlements are the norm with respect to the firefighters. That sort of leads me to the question why you would be fearing arbitration if you do settle your agreements.

But I would just like to comment on the ability to pay. Certainly ability to pay has been a relevant factor for arbitrators to consider. Certainly all we're doing is merely codifying it, and it's in other jurisdictions of this country to deal with mandatory criteria, and the purpose of it is certainly to control costs, but it's also a safeguard of the public interest.

So given the fiscal problems that we have as a province, given the level of funding that's going to be going to our transfer partners, specifically municipalities, I'd just like to ask you, how is it unreasonable to have arbitrators consider the ability to pay, and if it's not, what would you suggest to this government to do to deal with the financial crisis that we're in?

Mr Carpenter: You've raised a number of questions, sir, and I'd like to respond to them.

Mr Tascona: That's the only question I want you to respond to.

Mr Carpenter: Well, first of all, the aspect of ability to pay has been considered by arbitrators historically, it has been written into agreements, and it has been consistently part of the corporation's submissions. Certainly the Solicitor General could not give us the same assurances that you're giving us here today. In fact, he was somewhat silent on the questions when they were asked of him today, and I don't have any confidence that municipalities, because of this legislation, will be forced in any way to submit to us or to give us figures that we can judge accurately, based on their ability to pay. I just do not believe that's going to happen.

So I believe that the "ability to pay" concept has been continuing on in this province and I don't believe that the financial situation that this province is in today is going to be helped whatsoever by including ability to pay in a mandatory arbitration process. I just don't believe that's going to happen.

Mr Tascona: Well, why not? Because our information is that normally arbitrated settlements are at least 2% higher than freely negotiated settlements. Certainly that's a significant statistic to deal with. How can we control our costs? How can we deal with this situation if ability to pay isn't considered, given the financial situations of the municipalities?

Mr Carpenter: Our statistics don't bear that out. I don't believe that collective bargaining or that arbitration by firefighters is 2% better than the norm. We just simply do not have those statistics. Our statistics show the alternative, that mandatory arbitration or the arbitration process replicates freely negotiated settlements in other jurisdictions.

Mr Tascona: That's not our information.

Mr Carpenter: I'm sorry, sir, it's mine.

The Chair: Gentlemen, time has expired. I'd like to thank you for appearing today in front of the standing committee on general government.

Mr Curling: Mr Chairman, just to you, sir, I wondered if we could get a copy of that tape shown to the committee or a copy be distributed to each of the members. It was presented in evidence here. I would like to know if the members could obtain one or have it shown here.

The Chair: That tape will be available for members to view on their own in the clerk's office.

Mr Curling: Can we get a copy of it, though?

Mr Phillips: Mr Chair, we were told by the government just a minute ago that they have information about the settlements being 2% higher. I wonder if that could be tabled. Also, we were told that the ability to pay has been codified in other jurisdictions for arbitration. I wonder if that could also be tabled, the evidence of that.

Mr Tascona: I didn't say it's been codified. There is criterion -- okay? -- that's considered in other jurisdictions, and I said all we've done is merely codify ability to pay, which is a factor that's been considered.

Mr Phillips: I'll read the Hansard.

Mr Tascona: You stand corrected.

Mr Phillips: I don't think it exists anywhere else.

Interjection.

Mr Phillips: It doesn't exist anywhere else.

Mr Young: Mr Chairman, on a point of order --

The Chair: Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation. Can I have members of Parkdale Community Legal Services please come forward.

Mr Young: Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Standing rule 110(a) on committees says that "membership of such committees shall be in proportion to the representation of the recognized parties in the House." We've had four people from the Liberal Party sitting on the committee.

Mr Phillips: I want the media to hear this too.

The Chair: They can have as many people as they want.

Mr Phillips: Who are you trying to gag now?

The Chair: There are only a certain amount of members who may vote and are official members of the committee.

Mr Phillips: You don't want Alvin to be heard? Is that what you're saying?

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The Chair: Can I have members from the Parkdale Community Legal Services come forward, please. As Parkdale Community Legal Services isn't here and it appears we have half an hour on our hands, I wonder if Mr Phillips would like to move his motion.

Mr Phillips: Yes, I think this is timely. To get it on the record, I move:

Given the great numbers of groups and individuals who have expressed a desire to appear before the legislative committee to address their concerns relating to Bill 26, and given that all those who have or will still express a desire to appear before the committee cannot be accommodated over the time allocated to the committee to do its business,

That the committee request the House leaders to agree to extend the public hearings on Bill 26 to allow four weeks of hearings in the month of February, and

That in order to accommodate the government's desire to address their fiscal concerns, the government identify those portions of Bill 26 which must absolutely be dealt with on January 29, and allow the other portions of Bill 26 to continue to be subject to public hearings during the month of February and be dealt with when the Legislature reconvenes.

Mr Rob Sampson (Mississauga West): Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I don't pretend to be, eight months into this job, an expert on the standing orders of this place, so I'd like to ask -- I gather we're going to be debating this motion, if it's in order, sometime today?

The Chair: Actually, I'm going to make a ruling on this that this is done through --

Mr Sampson: I'd like to ask the clerk and the Chair to determine whether this motion is in order under the standing orders and, more specifically, the direction from the House.

Mr Silipo: Mr Chair, are you interested in hearing from members before you make a ruling on this?

The Chair: We can allow comment. How about we have a comment from each caucus and then I have a ruling and we'll go with that? Mr Silipo, would you like to go first?

Mr Silipo: I don't know what your ruling is going to be, but I hope you'll listen to what we have to say. I'm assuming that those who would argue that this motion may be out of order might say we have a motion of the House we are working under, which is accurate. But as I read this motion, it does not in any way conflict with that, because it's couched as a request to the House leaders and in effect to the House, because presumably whatever requests might come out of this committee would then have to be ratified by the House in order to deal with the directions this committee is functioning under as a result of the motion we passed on the last day of the sittings.

In that sense it's quite in order, as we see it, and the point being made in the motion, which we certainly support, is that it's become clear already in the first couple of days of hearings that people simply have not had a chance to look at this bill adequately and that additional time is necessary. This simply is a request to the House leaders and to the House to facilitate that, and in that sense it's more than in order, because it would not change what we would be doing. Presumably, we would continue to do to the work we've been doing, but also do it on the understanding that if there were agreement among the House leaders, additional time would be provided for us to continue the work of the committee.

Mr Sampson: I unfortunately don't have the motion that was tabled in the House in front of me, so I'm speaking only from memory.

Interjection.

Mr Sampson: No, I've got the one that was tabled here, but not the one that was tabled in the House with respect to our directions. My recollection is that we are required, in the last week of hearings, to do a clause-by-clause review of the bill and then report back to the House for its consideration. I don't know how that can be amended, with the exception of a further motion in the House.

Again, I haven't been around here long enough to fully understand the rules of the House, but my recollection from reading them some time ago was that that's the way the procedures work.

All I'm asking is that the Chair consider, and perhaps, if deemed necessary, reserve judgement on this particular motion and determine whether the motion is in order. If it is deemed to be in order, I would have to move a subsequent amendment to it that the committee convene as a whole, as opposed to the two subsections, to consider this particular motion and debate it further.

Mr Phillips: We specifically worded the motion so that the House leaders agree and that the committee requests the House leaders to agree; not that we schedule the meetings, but that we request the House leaders to agree.

The second thing that's become clear is that many portions of this bill are not time-sensitive. I think when the motion was passed in the House, there was a feeling that it all had to be done very, very quickly. It's clear now that there are some sections that, whether we pass them January 29 or the middle of March is irrelevant.

The third thing that's become clear is there's just far more people and groups that want to express their view than any of us had even contemplated.

I think this accomplishes all the things the government members would want, which is that the House leaders, including their House leader, have to agree; that the portions of the bill that you believe are absolutely essential to dealing with the province's fiscal matters are dealt with; and that it gives groups and indeed ourselves the time for a reasoned consideration.

I think it's in order because of the agreement of the House leaders, and I also obviously think it merits support.

Mr Young: I'd like to ask for a 20-minute recess.

The Chair: I'd like to put forward a ruling first on the motion. Actually, I guess I have to allow a recess when it's been asked for. A 20-minute recess.

The subcommittee recessed from 1006 to 1026.

The Chair: I would like at this point, before we go any further, to read a ruling on Mr Phillips's motion.

The motion is out of order because it is not in accordance with the December 12 order of the House under which the standing committee on general government is operating. Even if such a motion could be and then was passed by the committee, it could not override the abovementioned order of the House, which has priority. That order of the House indicates that the standing committee on general government "shall report the bill to the House" on January 29, 1996, and that if it does not do so, "the bill shall be deemed reported to and received by the House."

Mr Phillips: Mr Chairman, you could be helpful to us, and I appreciate your ruling. It is still our caucus's hope that we can accomplish the objective we have in the motion. As you've said, you've ruled this motion out of order. Can you give us any direction on how we may go about achieving what we want to achieve in a way that would be in order?

The Chair: We can leave that to the clerks perhaps to discuss with you, at a point in time, on how that might be made possible.

Mr Sampson: Mr Chairman, if I may, maybe this is a topic for a subcommittee discussion, Mr Phillips, as to how we might accommodate the request.

Mr Phillips: I appreciate your ruling, Mr Chairman. We'll pursue attempting to achieve this in some fashion.

The Chair: I believe a similar motion has been moved and ruled upon in the other committee, and they've undertaken to do what you and I have just discussed.

Mr Cooke: Mr Chair, I don't have any objection to the subcommittee looking at the matter, but what we're concerned about is that there's going to have to be, at some point, some recommendation to the Legislature, specifically to the government House leader, saying that based on the numbers of presentations and the lack of time to accommodate people and to fully understand the implications of this bill, the government is going to have to make some determination. Sure, the subcommittee can talk about it, but I'd sure feel a lot better about the subcommittee talking about it if there was some indication from the government members that they were actually interested in hearing people and looking at accommodation that will lengthen the time and split the bill.

The Chair: Thank you.

PARKDALE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES

The Chair: Returning now to regular business, if Parkdale Community Legal Services is still available, please come forward. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Coranne Plummer: Thanks. We're a little late, about eight minutes, but we're here now in full force.

The Chair: Unfortunately, because of that, I'm going to allow you 20 minutes for your presentation, and whatever time is left over can be used for questions.

Ms Plummer: Okay, that's perfect. Thank you.

The Chair: Could you please start by reading your names and your organization into the record for Hansard and the committee members.

Ms Tanya Lena: My name is Tanya, and I'm a community legal worker at Parkdale Community Legal Services.

Ms Plummer: My name is Coranne Plummer. I'm a resident of Parkdale, a single mom with a beautiful daughter; a little physically challenged, but she's doing great.

We're also part of 21,000 people who live in a 1.3-kilometre area. Granted, this was taken in 1990. We don't have enough money to make up new surveys or get new surveys, or volunteers or whatever. So you can just, par for course there, add on the interest. So 93% are renters in households; and one third, if not more, pay 30% of their household income on rent. We don't have much money. We are a diverse community and we take care of a lot of things. We take care of the ex-psychiatric survivors in our community. There are also a lot of other things that are usually thrown upon us, and we do our best to deal with that.

We have a few community centres that help out. A lot of it is on a volunteer basis. There aren't really people who are staffed to take care of a lot of our community. A lot of it is done on, like I say, volunteerism. There is a lot of that going on. Everybody is talking about communities and getting together and everybody helping out their fellow person. Well, we're doing that, and it seems that people are trying to pull the rug from under us.

We are, like I say, a diverse community. We have small businesses in the area, and they are really being affected by the cuts. I mean, cuts are hitting everybody, we know that, but we're really paying for it. It's not so bad everybody getting cut, but it should be the big guys too. You know, you guys should help out as well, and Mr Harris, who's talking about giving himself a raise and, "Oh no, maybe I won't," but he still makes too much money, as far as I'm concerned.

Education also -- just the whole fact of we need a lot more, or at least keep what we do get from you guys. If we could get a little extra, that would be great. Just don't give us any less than what we have, because we're working on empty as it is. We have a sensitive community and we have a lot of people to help and take care of there. With all these cuts and stuff, everybody is pulling their hair out, but we are still keeping together. We are a very close-knit community and we do take care of people that are in our area. So we will manage, but to do it just as we are doing it with a little bit of extra help would help. These user fees and stuff -- we can hardly afford anything as it is. User fees aren't going to help us at all.

Ms Lena: Before I start, I just want to give you a bit more context about Parkdale, because you may not be familiar with the area. In Parkdale, 39% of the families are single-parent families, and 32% of the families in south Parkdale also have incomes below the low-income cutoff. This is 1990, and the figures are much higher now. Some 43% of the people living in our area report that their mother tongues and first languages are not English or French, and 13% of the population have university degrees, which is compared to 25% in the city of Toronto overall. So the level of higher education and access to education is very, very low in this community.

Ms Plummer: Besides, tuition fees are too high.

Ms Lena: Yes, tuition fees are too high. That makes education inaccessible. The largest concentration of jobs held by south Parkdale residents is in manufacturing industries; 19% of people are employed in manufacturing. The next concentration is small business. The point that we want to make here is that the small businesses and the landlords and those other sectors of our community are also suffering dramatically as a result of the cuts that have already happened. It's in that context that we want to evaluate what this new omnibus bill is going to further do to our community.

The other important thing is that 23% of the youth who wanted to work in Parkdale were unemployed in 1991, and the figures are now, again, much worse. Approximately 7,000 people in our community of 21,000 were living on family benefits allowance or general welfare assistance -- 34% of the residents. That was in 1993; now we think the numbers may be over 10,000. So you're looking at a community that's been completely devastated by what the government has already done.

In terms of the bill, there are some specific things that we find extremely disturbing. The first thing, which Coranne has mentioned, is the user fees. These user fees obviously could extend to things like garbage, street lighting, our libraries, parking, community recreation and community information centres. If people have to pay for these things in Parkdale, they simply will not be able to use them. That's what we're looking at. Even if the fee is $2 a shot every time you borrow certain things from the library or use an information service, it means that people will not be able to afford it, because you're looking at 10,000 people who are trying to survive on welfare. With the rents in Toronto, that means they have about $50 above that to survive on per month. They're not going to be able to use libraries, swimming pools and community recreation centres, they're not going to be able to pay for garbage collection. So if you want to think about the consequences of that in terms of health in the area, they're pretty drastic. In terms of charging user fees, this is a particular aspect of this legislation that will destroy our community even further.

The same goes for the other things -- parking, libraries. In a community where 43% of the people are immigrants, relatively new immigrants, community information centres are a vital, vital link for them. They've already received cuts in previous pieces of legislation since September, so if there are user fees now attached to these community information centres, people who need that to know where to get their welfare, where to get a legal clinic, where to find out about jobs or possible training options, they will not be able to afford to access that. These small parts of this bill can completely disempower these people.

The other thing that we strongly object to is the part of the legislation relating to freedom of information. If there is a user fee charged for accessing files and personal information, again, people will not be able to afford to do this. You already have a situation where people cannot afford to go to university, can't afford to break out of a cycle of long-term poverty and are already living with very, very limited information about what goes on in these higher levels of government around them. To then charge people money when they do demand to know something means that of course that information is going to remain absolutely inaccessible to them. We see this as a way the government can make itself completely unaccountable to its public, in neighbourhoods like Parkdale in particular, through this legislation.

The other thing that we feel very strongly about is that these consultations are absolutely inadequate on a piece of legislation of this scale. What you need to do, if you want to actually appear to have consulted with the public, is to go into communities and hold town halls and hear what people are experiencing as a result of what has already happened and what will happen under this omnibus bill. To have a week of consultations in Toronto, where community groups receive -- I got 24 hours' notice for this, absolutely inadequate when people are coming from legal clinics where you deal with clients who are in crisis all day and where people in the community don't even have the basic information to come forth and make a deputation on it.

We've been doing a lot of work trying to tell people what's going on. You give people 24 hours to get together a presentation; it simply will not happen. It's not consultation. You will end up consulting with groups that are professional advocates and that'll be it. That's not a public consultation. This group needs to have more hearings in Toronto and perhaps needs to go outside of the Legislature into the communities to actually find out what the consequences of what you're doing are.

Interjection.

Ms Lena: Yes, it's very insulated where you are right here.

Those are the main objections that we have. We also have basically come here to register our complete objection to the government taking all these powers to itself and trying to pass such diverse legislation in one go. In other countries, this would be called dictatorship. That's what we have to say, and we're open to any questions if you want to know more details.

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The Chair: Thank you. We have just over two minutes for each caucus, starting with the third party.

Mr Cooke: Thank you for coming before the committee with very short notice. I just want you to know that we certainly agree that there should be more hearings in Metropolitan Toronto. I think the intention of the government was to try to cram the Toronto hearings in just before Christmas, and then they said there couldn't be any more hearings in Toronto after, that it was only travel for across the province. It's not something that we're particularly happy with.

I wanted to get an understanding from you of a couple of things -- I'm going to list them and then just leave it to you -- just in terms of access to information on this bill. How did you get a copy of the bill? Were you able to get what we call a compendium or the background material on the bill? Were you able to access any of that? If you got a copy of the bill, did it cost you money for the bill? Because that would be a problem for people in your community, to be able to go and buy that material.

I wanted to get an idea, just have you expand a little bit on what user fees would do to you, to members of your community. You mention libraries, and I think it's particularly important for the kids in Parkdale that user fees are going to be a huge barrier to access. Even if the user fees are very low, it becomes a psychological barrier that makes it very difficult.

Then, not completely related to this bill, but what is going on in your community at this point in terms of evictions from rental properties, which I think are beginning to show in other parts of the province as a result of the social assistance cuts?

Ms Lena: I'll respond to the first point. How did we get a copy of the bill and did we have access to any background materials? As far as the background materials are concerned, no. The only way that we got a copy of the bill was that the legal clinic is next door to the clinic resource office for Metro Toronto and they received copies of the bill. So that's to say that the legal clinic got a copy of the bill, has access to that. But in terms of the community having access to that, they get it in so far as we can reproduce it in a comprehensible form, because these pieces of legislation are not written in plain language, or certainly not language that new immigrants can easily understand. Part of the work that the clinic does is to try to tell people what's going on, in public meetings. That's why I'm saying 24 hours' notice for consultation is absolutely ridiculous. The clinic --

The Chair: Sorry to interrupt, but we have strict time lines on how long each caucus gets. We have to move to the government caucus.

Mr Sampson: What has been the trend in the welfare rolls in Parkdale over the last number of years?

Ms Plummer: The trend? Like it's trendy?

Mr Sampson: Has it been up or down in the number of people?

Ms Lena: They've been increasing because of people losing their small businesses and because of what's been going on in the manufacturing sector. The other thing is people are casual and contract workers. They're not always eligible for UI, so welfare is what their option is? It caused a big increase in the welfare rolls.

The other thing that we've seen at the clinic, a huge increase over the last two months, is people being cut off welfare, because of either perceived violations around a spouse in the house or supposedly other forms of income which usually don't exist, but people get cut off.

Mr Sampson: So Parkdale has suffered a general increase in unemployment over the last number of years?

Ms Lena: Yes, huge.

Mr Sampson: So Parkdale hasn't terribly benefited from the job creation programs of the previous government, clearly then, if job growth hasn't happened.

Ms Plummer: Anything we get, then it's cut.

Mr Sampson: Pardon me? No, but I mean there are job creation programs of the previous governments. Clearly Parkdale hasn't benefited, because you've just now told me.

Ms Plummer: Parkdale doesn't usual benefit in any way. We're the lowest on the totem pole anyway. Who usually hears about Parkdale?

Ms Lena: We have never seen the kind of crisis that we are seeing now in Parkdale.

Mr Sampson: Don't you then need a government to take another focus at how to create jobs and how it would particularly impact on Parkdale?

Ms Lena: If you can explain to me how you're doing that in a way that's relevant to Parkdale residents, I'd be delighted to hear it. I haven't seen it so far.

Mr Cooke: They're trying to help you with a 22% cut in welfare.

Ms Plummer: Yes. Did you get a 22% cut in your pay? If everybody got a 22% cut --

Mr Sampson: As a matter of fact, I did when I joined this job, but let's not talk about that.

Mr Cooke: Good for you.

Ms Plummer: Oh, so you went down from what? You're only making $50,000 a year? Please.

Mr Sampson: Can I ask you another question then? You don't see then any impact positively on Parkdale residents from us providing the other side of our balanced equation? One has to cut expenditures to try to create some economic growth and lower the burden of taxes on the province.

Ms Lena: We haven't seen any economic growth so far, though.

Mr Sampson: Second is to add some tax incentive to let people spend again. You don't see that the people in Parkdale would spend?

Ms Lena: People are losing their businesses.

Ms Plummer: They are losing their businesses.

Ms Lena: Let me answer your question. People are losing their businesses and that means income tax cuts are irrelevant to them if they're not working any more.

Mr Sampson: Aren't they losing their businesses because people won't spend?

Ms Plummer: We don't have any money to spend.

The Chair: Mr Sampson, I'm sorry, we've exhausted your time. We must move to the opposition.

Mr Phillips: Because you know your community so well, Minister Leach was here on Monday talking about the fees that are going to be charged. He said: "I was very encouraged to hear that there will be corporate donors to sponsor such activities as library use, ice skating and swimming for underprivileged children. Statements like this convince me that our trust is not misplaced." Do you think you'll be able to line up enough corporate donors to make sure that underprivileged children in Parkdale have access to libraries?

Ms Plummer: Well, no, and why is it up to all the businesses and everybody else who's trying to make it? Why doesn't the government do something? Once the government's in the business to do something -- take for example the airlines: "Oh, it's not quite working. We'll sell those off." You always sell off or get rid of things that just aren't working to your pocket.

Mr Phillips: It's not my idea.

Ms Plummer: No, but you're part of this group.

Ms Lena: The other thing is, with Parkdale children, a lot of them are starving, because there are 10,000 people there and a lot of them are families living under the poverty line. Given that people are starving, they're not even in a position to negotiate for getting corporate sponsors, and from the point of view of a corporation, we're not a very attractive community.

Mr Gerretsen: Have any corporations come forward?

Ms Lena: No, not so far. I would know about It.

The Chair: Thank you, ladies, for coming. I apologize, I'm sorry there was the problem with the time.

Ms Plummer: Okay. You guys got to get into where the people are, instead of behind these desks.

ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION

The Chair: Could I please have members of OPSEU come forward. Good morning and welcome to the standing committee on general government. Sorry for the delay. You have 30 minutes for a presentation. You can use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for responses to questions from all three caucuses. I would appreciate it if at the beginning of your presentation, you'd read your name and your organization into the record for the benefit of Hansard and the committee members.

Ms Leah Casselman: My name is Leah Casselman. I am president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. With me today is Frank Rooney who is our coordinator of communications. You have before us our presentation on Bill 26: Power Over People; How Bill 26 attacks democratic rights in Ontario.

Our union represents approximately 110,000 members who currently work, pay taxes, live in Ontario, and those 110,000 people provide service to Ontarians. About 65,000 of those members of my union are in the interesting position of being directly employed by the Ontario government. In other words, Mike Harris is our boss. That puts OPSEU members in the Ontario public service in a unique position in relation to Bill 26. Many of the provisions of this bill are aimed directly at us. OPSEU members paid by community colleges, hospitals, children's aid societies and hundreds of employers in the broader public sector are also directly affected by Bill 26.

OPSEU has concerns about every aspect of this bill which are contained in our brief. Obviously, I can only touch on a few in the short time we have today.

First, I'd like to say a few words in general about this bill. There's a question that's been bothering me since this government was elected, and that is, what's the difference between a majority government and a dictatorship? From watching Mike Harris in action, I get the impression that he would say that in a democracy voters get to choose their government every five years, but between elections, the government can do whatever it wants.

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This is a deeply impoverished concept of democracy. In this country and in this province, we have a long and very rich tradition of parliamentary democracy. At its best, parliamentary democracy is about discussion and debate. It is about pooling different ideas and perspectives in an effort to find the best possible solutions to political problems. It works best when all parties are willing to see both sides, bend their minds, throw off their mental chains, and in the end to compromise. That's not how government is working today.

It should not have taken last-ditch efforts by the opposition parties to get us to this stage where a small number of Ontarians get minimal time and input into this monstrous bill. Government members should hang their heads in shame.

I'm not the first to note that Bill 26 is in fact dozens of bills. Our first recommendation is that this bill be divided into appropriate chunks and discussed fully in a free and democratic way within the guidelines of our parliamentary traditions.

Now we've been told by Mike Harris, Ernie Eves and Jim Wilson that Ontario's fiscal situation is so bad that we don't have time for debate and discussion. In other words, we don't have time for democracy. This is heresy, complete and utter heresy.

In the first place, Ontario may have problems, but what jurisdiction in the world doesn't? But we don't have a crisis. The only crisis we have is the one that Mike Harris and ministers like John Snobelen are trying to create.

Even if we did have a crisis, democracy is still the best way to deal with it. They say Mussolini made the trains run on time, but Ontario does not want to pay the price that goes with that kind of so-called efficiency.

I'm sure there are even many Conservative Party members who realize that the government's emphasis on passing this bill quickly is really a con job. The need for speed is the shelter of the shyster. OPSEU is here to say, "Not so fast."

Let's talk specifics. Let's talk about schedule L. Schedule L deals with changes to the Public Service Pension Act and the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union Pension Act. Schedule L is theft, pure and simple. It conjures up bad memories of a very arrogant Conrad Black. We estimate that with the passage of this act this government will have already cheated public service workers of between $200 million and $400 million.

Apparently it's not bad enough that honest working people are going to be laid off. It's not bad enough that many will lose their homes. If Bill 26 goes through, many of our members will be robbed of their pension rights. The way the law works now, whenever an employer is downsizing rapidly, Ontario's superintendent of pensions can wind up a part of the pension plan to help people who are laid off. Instead of forcing laid-off workers to wait until age 65 to begin receiving an unreduced pension, a partial plan wind-up helps them access their pension at an earlier date and with a lower penalty. So if an OPSEU member is laid off a year or two before reaching their 80-factor date, he or she can start receiving an unreduced pension on their 80-factor date as if they'd been working up until that date.

Schedule L destroys this option. Schedule L takes away the power of the superintendent to make sure that workers who are losing their source of income can access their pensions. It gives this power to, alas, the Ontario cabinet. These pensions are deferred wages. They belong to the workers, not the government. The government has no right to block access to this money, and the government knows this. That's why schedule L states clearly that no legal action can be taken against the government for any breach of its duties in connection with the OPSEU plan. In other words, this government will be able to violate a signed contract, but it can't be held liable and it can't be sued. That's what it means for our members whose employer is the government.

Schedule L violates the current OPSEU pension plan act. It violates the sponsorship agreement between OPSEU and the government which set up the OPSEU pension trust. This tampering with our fundamental rights is a ripoff, it is a crime, and we are here to say, "Stop, thief."

The government tried in July to rip us off through a regulatory change. OPSEU challenged them in court. The government knows it will likely lose this decision so it's trying to overrule the courts with new legislation -- very classy. So there's a warning to other ones here: Don't sign a deal with this government because they won't live up to it. A deal is a deal is a deal.

I have to underscore the fact that only Ontario government employees are being treated this way. Basically the government has legalized for itself what is illegal for any other employer in Ontario. This is wrong. OPSEU members want justice. If justice matters, schedule L should be scrapped in its entirety.

Schedule Q shows the same contempt for justice as schedule L. Schedule Q is designed to tell arbitrators how to do their jobs. OPSEU members who could be affected by schedule Q are those whose labour relations are governed by the Hospital Labour Disputes Arbitration Act.

Simply put, schedule Q is an attempt to rig arbitrations. Schedule Q requires arbitrators to consider, among other things, "the employer's ability to pay in light of its fiscal situation." According to the law firm of Sack, Goldblatt, Mitchell, "Arbitrators have stated that basing an award on ability to pay could allow the government and employers to unilaterally determine wages and benefits by simply allocating a fixed or reduced amount for employees' compensation in their transfer payments or budgets." In other words, the fix is in from the start, or at least that's the plan.

But we have good reason to believe that this simply will not work. A similar clause was tried in Ontario in the early 1980s. It lasted about a year. That's because arbitrators are paid to produce fair settlements. They don't like being told to skew all their judgements in favour of the employer's side, and they simply will not like being told to take responsibility for implementing this government's simple-minded economic policies.

Schedule Q is really a smokescreen. It's supposed to make it look like services are being cut and wages driven down by impartial judges when in fact the government is the real culprit: It can act without being held accountable for what it does. In a democracy, this is wrong.

Schedule Q is unfair, it is devious, it is stupid, and we recommend that it be scrapped.

Any insightful analysis of Bill 26 keeps coming back to the issue of democratic rights. In a democracy, we've been taught that laws are as fair and as impartial as possible. The rights of individuals are balanced against the rights of society. No one is above the law. Bill 26 makes a mockery of all these ideas.

In one section the bill says, "The minister" -- of Health -- "may enter into agreements to collect, use and disclose personal information concerning insured services provided by physicians, practitioners or health facilities." This is atrocious. We interpret this to mean that the government could obtain and sell medical records. This will mean insurance companies will be able to find out if we have a lifestyle that they deem to be a risk to their profits. It will mean that drug companies can market to us directly. And will it mean that potential employers can find out if we've ever visited a psychiatrist or detox centre? We're talking about a profound violation of privacy. It's wrong. There ought to be a law against it.

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Another clause in Bill 26 which should make us all shudder is a very tiny one in Schedule F. It's a very short clause, but a very important one. It allows the Minister of Health to seek a single company to submit a proposal to provide a particular public service. This can be done without a tendering process. Now, let me say that tendering was not invented by public service unions; it goes back further than that, even. Tendering was invented to make sure that all bidders receive fair and aboveboard treatment when seeking to do work for governments. In a word, it was invented to root out corruption. By allowing the minister or people acting as his agents to secretly approach an individual who stands to profit from public moneys, Bill 26 opens the door to sweetheart deals, influence-peddling and kickbacks. Schedule F, part IV, clause 21(1)(a) is a Swiss bank clause. It is profoundly undemocratic. This part of Bill 26 should be replaced with a requirement that all contracts awarded by the Ontario government be awarded through a fair and open tendering process in which publicly owned service providers have the express right to compete on a level playing field with private ones.

I want to make one last point, and it has to do with those people who will act as agents with the Minister of Health under Bill 26. Whether they're called supervisors in hospitals or inspectors within OHIP, these people will have all the powers of the minister to cancel any and all policies of hospital administrators or other managers that run counter to the Conservative agenda.

Let's say there's a brilliant, public-spirited hospital administrator who is interested in creative ways to provide top-quality public services. She works with her community, her board and her employees and comes up with a plan that saves money and improves service without jeopardizing the livelihood of the workers -- and that is possible. This does not suit the government's agenda. It does not privatize services; it does not drive down wages. So one day the hospital administrator receives a visit from a supervisor. The supervisor directs her to contract out various services, lay off employees and force down wages. She refuses. The supervisor, having assumed all the powers of a hospital board, fires her. End of story.

Such supervisors will create a climate of fear in all hospitals, and similar inspectors will have the same chilling effect in OHIP and, no doubt, in other parts of government. What is chilling about these supervisors is the precedent they set.

One that comes to mind is from Germany more than half a century ago. Under the government of that time, certain officials, called gauleiters, were sent out from the ruling party to make sure that local politicians, military officers and various administrators all toed the party line. If they didn't, that was that. They were gone.

Germany doesn't live under that system any more. Some people, including tens of thousands of Ontarians, were willing to die for something better: for democracy, for discussion and debate, for justice. Ontarians need to talk about all the changes proposed in Bill 26. We have a right to, and we do not have time. There's always time for democracy, because the alternative is very, very nasty.

The Chair: Thank you. We have 12 minutes for questions, and we'll start off with the government caucus.

Mr Young: Thank you for a very thorough presentation. With regard to your comments on lack of discussion and consultation, I would submit to you the very fact that you're here and that you've done such a thorough job proves that there is consultation and discussion. We're here, we are listening, and this is a real consultation. Unfortunately, not every delegation will get everything they want.

It's not helpful to use terms like "dictatorship," references to Mussolini, "comrade," "crime," because we need your help. We've got major economic problems in this province. I work with your members day to day, and some of them are my neighbours, many of them are friends, and I think you're out of touch with your own membership. They want to be part of the solution, and I haven't heard anything from your leadership about how you're going to help us get the province back on track and get our economy back on track. I'd like to ask you now, what suggestions do you have for helping us get rid of this deficit and restructure Ontario so we can get people back to work?

Ms Casselman: Let me just start by saying that we were able, after a great number of years with successive governments, including the old Tory party, to establish negotiations to establish our pension plan. That was negotiation; that was consultation. Perhaps you could take a note back to Mike and say, "Could you answer Leah's letters and sit down and talk to her?" No one in your organization is sitting down and talking to anyone in my organization, yet you have the audacity to wave around the Common Sense Revolution --

Mr Young: But we're talking right now.

Ms Casselman: -- where you say on the last page of your Common Sense Revolution that it's important to talk to front-line workers. OPSEU has some really good ideas. I want to know when you're going to get to those parts of your Common Sense Revolution. We want to talk --

Mr Young: You have an opportunity now to tell us --

Ms Casselman: Thanks to these folks over here, I have an opportunity to come in for half an hour and talk to you.

Mr Young: You can give credit to whomever you like, but I'm asking you, and I'm sincere, what suggestions do you have to help us restructure and cut costs in the government of Ontario? It's critical.

Ms Casselman: It's called negotiations. We're at the bargaining table with you folks right now, except that your idea of bargaining is to table your final offer and then say, "By the way, we're going to apply for conciliation." We have an opportunity right there and now at the bargaining table -- I know you don't understand that concept -- to sit down and negotiate changes --

Mr Young: It's not necessary to say that.

Ms Casselman: -- to sit down and negotiate changes in how service is going to be delivered, but you folks want to run off to a conciliator. We're there. We're trying to meet with you, but all the doors are closed and locked tight.

Mr Young: I still don't have an answer to my question.

Mr Sampson: With respect to the pension benefits issue, what is your view as to why the windup provision was in the Pension Benefits Act?

Ms Casselman: So you didn't have -- I was going to say sleazy employers -- employers who could take pensioners' money and run off and not live up to their responsibilities when they decided they were going to close down parts of or entire organizations or companies. That's why it applies to every other employer in the province except, now, the Ontario government.

Mr Sampson: It's to protect the financial integrity of the pension plan, essentially, isn't it?

Ms Casselman: Yes, which belongs to the workers.

Mr Sampson: Right. Then do you see that the financial integrity of the pension plan your members are part of is financially insecure right now? Is that why you want the windup provision applied?

Ms Casselman: Why I want the windup provision to apply, like it should to every other worker in this province, irrespective of their boss being the Harris government, is to ensure that -- if you're really serious about downsizing the public service and ensuring that the economy stays on solid footing, why would you put people out of employment and then have them go on welfare when, if you had that access to a partial plan windup, they could then go on to a pension and maintain a serious contribution to the community as opposed to becoming a drain. That's the short thinking you're involved in.

The Chair: Mr Sampson, you've exhausted your time. Members of the opposition?

Mr Gerretsen: A very short comment: You've been give a half-hour presentation, which is better than nothing, but let us never confuse a half-hour presentation, and two or three minutes for questions from each caucus, with consultation. It's a totally different thing.

I just want you to give me an example for the laypeople out there, including myself, how section L works. Give me an example of what happens to one worker and what happens to their pension rights.

Ms Casselman: We will have workers in -- what's the latest rumour? -- Transportation. They're not going to be plowing roads in the winter, so I guess they'll be laid off, so you're going to have a worker who has been digging ditches, plowing roads in the winter, building roads in the summer, who is 55 years old. They're now going to say either, "We're not going to do that work any more," or "We're going to contract it out." With the impact of what they did in Bill 7, successor rights provisions don't apply, their wages don't go with them, their union doesn't go with them, their benefits don't go with them, their pension doesn't go with them.

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Under the current law, any one of those workers could apply to the superintendent of pensions and have the plan partially wound up for them, which means they would immediately be supervested, they would have access to all the rights they've paid for over the years with their pension money, and when they got to that age they would be able to access their pensions without a penalty, or with a reduced penalty, because of the actions of the employer. They want to continue to work, but if the employer is making the decision that they don't want them to work any more, they should have access to the pension money they've contributed to, and they will no longer have that now.

Mr Phillips: Maybe you could help us out a little on what the government's motives are on the pension, because it came to us out of the blue too. First, the Pension Benefits Act, as you quite rightly point out, is designed to protect pensioners. It was a bill the Conservatives supported, including all the provisions in it.

It now looks like one group's being singled out to be excluded from these provisions -- nobody else. General Motors isn't, Stelco's not, nobody else but your membership. The only way they can accomplish it is to pass a law overriding another law. The other law had broad support, because if there's one thing people support, it is not abusing people's pensions.

Why would you think the government wants to pass a law affecting you only? If they don't like the provision, why would they not be passing a law that would essentially take that provision out for everyone? Why is it exclusive to you?

Ms Casselman: At some points they want to assume their role as employer and at other points they don't. When we went into negotiations with the employer over this -- the government as employer; it doesn't matter which party's in power, the government's still the employer -- we had a specific provision in there which we actually gave up money to the government for in our negotiations -- it's give and take -- that required them, if they were going to make any legislative change that would affect our pension plan, they had to come to us and negotiate that and discuss that with us.

When they tried to make the regulatory changes just in cabinet, we said: "Whoa, wait a minute. There's a signed agreement here with the government. It doesn't mean you get to abrogate responsibility. You're now government. You have to come and talk to us." They said: "We're not interested in doing that. We have the power." So we took them to court. Clearly, they were going to lose that.

I guess the president of GM would like to have the legislative power to make all the changes and not have to sit down with their unionized representatives, but this employer has the legislative power to make changes. So in order to not have to pay -- because if they did have to wind up, they would have to pay if there was any extra money owing. They don't want to assume that responsibility, as every other employer in the province would have to assume, if they make the decisions that they're going to close down operations and stop delivering public service. They're trying to make sure they get out of that responsibility, which is across the board to everyone else.

Mr Silipo: Ms Casselman, thank you for your presentation. You've certainly reiterated a number of comments we've heard throughout these hearings and I'm sure will continue to hear.

I wanted to ask you, because the point of consultation is an important one, how many meetings have you had with Premier Harris since they formed the government?

Ms Casselman: None.

Mr Silipo: How many meetings have you had with the Chair of Management Board?

Ms Casselman: One.

Mr Silipo: How many meetings have you had with the Minister of Finance?

Ms Casselman: None.

Mr Silipo: How long was your meeting with the Chair of Management Board?

Ms Casselman: About 40 minutes.

Mr Silipo: And you discussed issues related to Bill 26?

Ms Casselman: No.

Mr Silipo: So there's been no consultation, no discussion with you on any issues.

Ms Casselman: No. There's been no consultation or discussion on the municipal front, either.

Mr Silipo: I think it might be important for the government members to note that's the case. If people really believe in discussing -- and in this particular case, in a situation where the government has a responsibility as an employer as well as the government, you don't do that in half an hour in front of a standing committee. I just thought making that point was important.

The other area that I want to touch on -- there's a lot here that we could talk about; certainly the point that you made about the pension. It's deferred money and it might be also noteworthy for members of the government that unless my memory doesn't serve me well, the last time there was a change made to the pension plan, it was negotiated between OPSEU and the then NDP government.

The one area that I wanted to ask you to comment on -- because I know that in the time you had you didn't touch too much on this -- is the pay equity provisions. I know it doesn't affect OPSEU members who work for the government, but that in your responsibility as president for OPSEU throughout that in fact there are a number of people you do represent. What we're looking at here in the elimination of proxy in pay equity means that 100,000 of the most underpaid women in the province will be denied pay equity. It's as simple as that. And the justification that we continue to hear from the government is that this is returning pay equity to what it was initially intended to be.

Our point is that the need for proxy has to be there and is there because in fact the point of pay equity is to bring the pay of women up to recognize the value of the work that they're doing, to bring it up to a comparable value of pay for work that men do. By eliminating proxy we're talking about eliminating pay equity for the most underpaid women in the province.

Ms Casselman: If you sit down and analyse the policies that have come out of this government, there's no fairness in any of this. So, again, in the papers today you see the wage gap growing again between men's and women's wages. I thought the whole idea of government was to ensure that people had equal access to all kinds of things, right? So you look at everything, all the cuts that are being made, to worship on the altar of -- well, now they're even changing on the tax break. But all this deficit hysteria -- there's no understanding of the role or responsibility of government in the provision of service and to ensure that workers, whether they're men or women, are treated fairly, are paid fairly and equally for the work that they do, and it's one more way of ensuring that employers out there don't have to take any responsibility to ensure that that type of thing is happening.

The Chair: I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for coming forward and appearing before the standing committee on general government today.

CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY

The Chair: Would members of the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy please come forward? Good afternoon and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have 30 minutes to make your presentation. You can use that 30 minutes as you see fit, although you may want to leave some time at the end of your presentation for response and questions from the three caucuses. I would appreciate it if you would read your names and the name of your organization into the record for Hansard and for committee members.

Ms Anne Mitchell: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. My name is Anne Mitchell. I am the executive director of the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy. I have with me my colleague Dr Mark Winfield, who's the director of research with our institution. I would like to, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to come here. It was short notice, but we do appreciate it.

The Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy is a research and education organization which was founded in 1970, and over the past 25 years has been doing environmental law and policy research. We understand the government's need to reduce costs but we're very concerned about the ways in which the government is doing this.

Bill 26 is an unusual and a particularly complex piece of legislation. It has major environmental and financial implications which need to be examined carefully. Given the time for preparation -- and Mark Winfield and one of CIELAP's project officers who's also here, Greg Jenish, has been working on this over the past few days -- we will focus our remarks on aspects of the bill amending the Mining Act. We're also going to comment briefly on the proposed amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Municipal Act, the Conservation Authorities Act, the Forest Fires Prevention Act, the Lakes and Rivers Improvements Act, the Public Lands Act and the Game and Fish Act.

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Some of the proposed amendments could expose the taxpayers of Ontario to potentially major liabilities and endanger critical public assets such as forests, lands, lakes and rivers for marginal savings.

In a media release that we're putting out later today, we say that Bill 26 means open season on public lands and waterways and exposing Ontario taxpayers to hundreds of millions in cleanup costs. I think the savings that have been estimated by the government are less than $3 million per year.

It seems to us that Bill 26 should be broken down into several smaller bills which could be studied in greater detail by the government and the public. It also seems to us that the introduction of full cost recovery user-pay systems to deal with the costs of protecting Ontario's forests, lands and waterways might be a way forward to ensure that these costs are not borne solely by the Ontario government and the Ontario taxpayers. It is cheaper to prevent than to clean up. Therefore, the government should play a strong role now to prevent further harm to the environment rather than spend millions later to clean up.

As the Globe and Mail said in a recent editorial on September 20: "Our responsibility is to convince governments to take a longer view: that we are heirs to a bountiful endowment, and we have a moral responsibility to tend it well."

CIELAP believes that the proposed amendments to Bill 26 in the areas that we have mentioned is not in the long-term best interests of Ontarians and their environment.

My colleague Mark Winfield is now going to give you some detailed comments on some of the specific proposed amendments.

Dr Mark Winfield: My name is Mark Winfield. I am director of research for the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy.

As Anne said, this bill is enormous and it has been impossible to develop a detailed analysis in the available time frame. This causes us concern, because not only are there major implications to the bill, but there also appear to be some very serious drafting errors here as well and those need to be seen to.

As Anne said, we're going to focus on the aspects of the bill dealing with the Mining Act and also dealing with natural resources management.

With respect to the Mining Act, the amendments contained in Bill 26 regarding the Mining Act cause us quite serious concern and we believe, in fact, that they should be broken out and dealt with separately. These are major amendments to the act with major environmental and fiscal implications.

In particular, what the government is proposing to do is to weaken the requirements of the act around the approval of closure plans for mines, to weaken the financial assurance requirements around the closure of mines, and particularly to eliminate the need to post an actual realizable security as part of a mine closure plan. We also note that it exempts the financial assurance requirements for mine closure plans from freedom of information requests so the public can't find out what kind of financial assurance is being posted.

We're concerned that the requirement for annual reports on the implementation of closure plans for mines is going to be eliminated. We are also concerned that the amendments to the Mining Act exempt holders of mining claims from liability for pre-existing hazards which, in effect, means that in those circumstances the liability falls back to the taxpayer.

We're concerned about the exemption of proponents who voluntarily surrender mining lands from future environmental liabilities as well, because in effect that again means that the liability, if a problem arises, even if it is the fault of the individual who surrendered the lands, is going to rest with the taxpayer.

On the whole, we're concerned these amendments expose the taxpayers of Ontario to potential liabilities for major cleanup costs for savings which are really quite marginal. The Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has estimated the total savings from the implementation of these amendments to the Mining Act will be in the range of $1.3 million a year. At the same time, the same ministry has estimated that the cost for remediating existing abandoned mine sites in the province exceeds $300 million. We are seriously concerned about the imbalance between the cost versus the potential scale of the liabilities to which the taxpayers may be exposed.

As an alternative, we think the government should consider moving to a full cost recovery user-pay system for the administration of the mine closure provisions of the Mining Act. That would be consistent with the government's goals in terms of dealing with the costs of the program but do it in a way which tries to ensure that the public interest is more effectively protected.

With respect to the other acts amended by Bill 26, we're just going to comment very briefly on a number of them. We're deeply concerned by the proposed amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, particularly related to granting agencies the right to deny requests for information which they regard, or are defined by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, as being frivolous or vexatious. We feel that proposal should be withdrawn.

We're deeply concerned about the proposed amendments to the Municipal Act. Many of them have major environmental implications but it's simply beyond our resources and capability to analyse them in detail at this stage.

We're deeply concerned about the proposed amendments to the Conservation Authorities Act, as well. These amendments clearly contemplate the dissolution of conservation authorities and the sale of their lands. The lands held by conservation authorities in this province constitute a major component of our natural heritage and I think if those lands are lost or sold, that would be a major loss to the people of Ontario which could not be recovered.

We are also very concerned about the proposed amendments to a number of acts administered by the Ministry of Natural Resources, particularly the Forest Fires Prevention Act, the Lakes and Rivers Improvement Act and the Public Lands Act. Bill 26 makes similar amendments to each of these acts and what it does is it replaces the current requirement, which states that you have to get approval every time you engage in such activities as starting a fire or building a dam or building a road on public land, with granting the cabinet the power to make regulations defining when you need to seek an approval. In our view, this approach would significantly weaken the protection of public safety and the protection of public forests, lands and lakes in the province. Again, this law seems to be only likely to achieve very, very marginal savings, on the scale -- we understand the estimate is of about $1.5 million a year.

There is also a serious concern in the sense that the Legislature, through these acts, made a very clear policy decision that it would require approvals in each case of the kinds of activities governed by the acts. In effect, that policy decision is now going to be transferred from the members of the Legislature to the members of the cabinet. I think that has very serious accountability implications.

Again, as with the Mining Act, we think an alternative way forward may be to operate these approval programs on the basis of a full cost recovery user-pay system. This would allow for the maintenance of the oversight and protection of public safety and public assets, which is currently in place, while addressing the government's concerns about the costs of these programs.

For these reasons, we believe that these amendments to these acts should be withdrawn from Bill 26 and reintroduced as a separate bill establishing a user-pay system for permits under the Forest Fires Prevention Act, the Lakes and Rivers Improvement Act and the Public Lands Act.

I want to comment very briefly on the amendments to the Fish and Game Act. These are different from the amendments to the other bills but are somewhat unusual in the sense that they create a dedicated fund for the funds raised through the charges for fish and game licences in the province. It's not clear why this is being is done, why this particular type of licence fee is being set aside for a dedicated revenue fund. We're also concerned that the fund appears to be insulated from the traditional accountability structures of the Legislature regarding the raising and expenditure of funds.

In conclusion, we believe that the bill needs to be broken down into separate bills. In the case of the elements that we've addressed, the Mining Act provision should be dealt with as a separate piece of legislation. The Municipal Act amendments and Conservation Authorities Act amendments should be dealt with as a separate piece of legislation. Then the various acts administered by the Minister of Natural Resources, because the change in them is thematically similar, could be dealt with together, but again, as a separate piece of legislation. I think that's necessary in order to examine these proposals in detail to ensure that we understand what their implications are and if they're in the long-term public interest.

In the case of the approval processes governed by these various acts, particularly the Mining Act and the Forest Fires Prevention Act and the Lakes and Rivers Improvement Act and Public Lands Act, we're deeply concerned by the fact that in exchange for what appeared to be very marginal savings, in total less than $3 million a year, the proposals have the potential to expose the public to major liabilities in relation to the closure of mine sites and also to endanger public safety and public forests, lands, lakes and rivers.

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As an alternative, as I've said, we've suggested the idea of considering a full-cost, user-pay recovery system as a way of financing these programs and ensuring that these public assets are protected.

Finally, I do want to emphasize our concerns also about the underlying theme of transferring power from the Legislature to the executive which is present in this bill. Many commentators, constitutional scholars and others have commented very negatively on the increasing use of framework legislation. In fact, committees of this Legislature have been deeply critical of the tendency for governments to enact very broad enabling powers for the executive branch. Parliamentary committees in Ottawa have made similar criticisms, and they're deeply concerned about the implications of this approach for both public and parliamentary accountability. I think that members of the Legislature should approach requests by the executive for sweeping powers of this nature with the utmost caution and consider carefully their implications for the accountability of the government to them and to the people of the province.

We'd be pleased to answer questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. We have five minutes per caucus. We'll start off with the opposition caucus.

Mr Phillips: We do appreciate your presentation. I imagine you have some idea of the challenge we're facing here of being asked to be knowledgeable about, I think it's 44 different major acts, 210 pages of amendments. We have a gun to our head. We bought four more weeks of time, but that's it. Can you characterize the changes that you see here? Are they minor changes that the government is proposing? Are they simply fairly routine or are they significant changes?

Dr Winfield: These are enormous changes. The amendments to the Mining Act have enormous implications. There are major changes in policy here, and similarly with a number of the others. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act: There's enormous change there, and similarly the natural resources acts we've mentioned. There's this enormous change from a system where, under the legislation now, if you want to engage in certain kinds of activities -- light a fire in a forest-fire zone, do work in a forest area, build a road on public lands, build a dam, all these kinds of things -- the Legislature has said you have to have an approval in all those cases.

What this bill says is: "Well, that's no longer going to be the case. It's going to be the Governor in Council which will decide whether you need an approval." It's entirely possible that the regulations saying you need these approvals will never be made, in which case it's complete open season.

One of the frustrating things about the bill is that there is a range of changes. Some of these are enormous and others are very technical and very minor. One gets the impression that the bureaucracy has sort of taken the opportunity to throw almost everything you could think of into the mix. So I think that just re-emphasizes the need to look at these things in detail and go through it clause by clause.

Mr Phillips: I agree with you. I think, frankly, it's gross injustice what we're being forced to do here. What we're told is that there is no time for debate on this. It has to be done right away because we have this deficit problem and all of these things are necessary tools to deal with the deficit. In looking at the Mining Act, are these amendments designed to save the government a lot of money? Is that why we have to have them through on January 29, at the latest? Will this save the taxpayers an enormous amount of money and therefore reduce the deficit very quickly?

Ms Mitchell: No. As we've said, it will save the taxpayers something like $1.3 million a year.

Mr Phillips: And put at risk how much money?

Ms Mitchell: Potentially, $300 million in cleanup costs.

Mr Phillips: So as we look at the ledger here, we're going to save $1.3 million and, in your judgement, we're risking $300 million.

Ms Mitchell: Well, the long-term implications are that you could be risking a considerable amount of money.

Mr Phillips: Why would you think the government would want to --

Ms Mitchell: We don't know. This is one of our problems: We don't really know the real intent. We understand the problem of needing to reduce costs, but this doesn't seem to be, in our view, one of the most effective ways of going about it, in these particular amendments.

Mr Phillips: I think you also probably understand that we will be lucky, I think, to have six or seven presentations in this area given the very limited time. In your judgement, knowing what you know about the Mining Act, is there any way at all we can have a reasoned discussion on something as complicated as the Mining Act when we also have to deal with at least 42 other acts at exactly the same time? Is this going to result in reasonable debate on a major amendment to the Mining Act?

Dr Winfield: No. This act in itself is a very, very complex and technical piece of legislation to begin with and the amendments are very, very complex in themselves. I really think, as we said in our brief, if the government wants to amend the Mining Act in this way, the only way to do it is to separate it from Bill 26 and present it as a separate piece of legislation.

Mr Phillips: Can I just summarize then, because we tend to run out of time. I think your advice to us is: This saves very little money and puts at risk huge amounts of public money --

Ms Mitchell: Yes.

Dr Winfield: Yes.

Mr Phillips: -- because in the end, the public will be responsible for rehabilitating the mine sites.

So we're not doing this for saving money. These are major changes to a major act of an industry that is fundamental to the province of Ontario. I guess all I can say is, we share your despair. We'll do the best we can to have a reasoned debate, but frankly, as recently as this morning we tried to get some more time for debate and we're having real difficulty with that.

Mr Cooke: I have some of the same concerns that Mr Phillips has on the process. One of the additional problems on the process that we have is that normally when there's a bill that focuses in a particular area, then we have MPPs who have some expertise and have liaised with groups that are involved in that area. With this particular bill, there are very few of us -- and I certainly am one of them -- who know a lot about the Mining Act. So one of the concerns I have on this is that it won't get the attention it requires, we won't understand the full implications and it'll be rammed through. We'll certainly try to convince the government that it should be separated.

The other thing is, we know that the Ontario Mining Association was consulted.

Ms Mitchell: On this specific act?

Mr Cooke: On the issue that eventually was put into the act. Have you been consulted, and what is your role in terms of -- I'm assuming there are people out there in the ministry right now working on regulations that go along with the act. We probably won't see the regulations before we pass the act. Are you involved at all in helping and offering advice on the development of the regulations?

Ms Mitchell: No. We weren't consulted on the Mining Act and we haven't been specifically consulted on this.

Mr Cooke: Marilyn would like to ask some questions.

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): I'm sorry I missed the beginning of your presentation. Do you have it in writing?

Dr Winfield: Yes, we do.

Ms Churley: Good. I'm very, very concerned about the acts in this particular bill, because if you add in some of the other cuts that have been made and the dismantling of the Planning Act and various others which I don't have time to talk about here with these, it's very alarming overall in what's going to happen to the environment in Ontario.

What I want to ask you about -- and I don't know if you have expertise in this or not -- I'm quite concerned that this bill has been exempted from the Environmental Bill of Rights, the EBR registry, with such major implications to the environment. It's been exempted, and it's my understanding that the Finance ministry itself has now been exempted, which means you could take anything and dump it into that ministry and bypass the EBR.

I understand as well -- in fact, I know from looking it up -- there are a whole bunch of new regs that haven't been gazetted yet that have far-reaching implications for the environment. Some of them, from my understanding of what I've seen, water down the MISA program, for instance. Would you say that there's a direct contravention of the EBR, or is it just in spirit? And what are we going to do about it? In my view, it guts the whole meaning of the act.

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Dr Winfield: Sure. It certainly contravenes the spirit of the act. Technically, as far as we can tell, there's not an actual violation because what the cabinet has done is provided exemptions using mechanisms in the act. In particular, not only did they exempt Bill 26 itself, although only after it was pointed out to them that in fact Bill 26 was captured by the EBR, they have also made a regulation which exempts any regulations and policies related to the implementation of financial restructuring from the requirements of the Environmental Bill of Rights as well.

So all of the regulations which are implicit in the amendments to the Forest Fires Prevention Act and the Public Lands Act and Lakes and Rivers Improvement Act, for example, under schedule N of Bill 26, would be exempted from the EBR. They will simply appear one day, with no public comment period or anything. It will simply be, "There they are," which certainly undermines the intent, if not the letter, of the bill.

The Chair: You have about a minute left.

Ms Churley: I have one minute left. What do you think can be done about that? Is there something we can do to strengthen the act, with the approval of the government of course? If there's that kind of major loophole, then us being the government -- it's a new act that brought it in -- obviously I'm very concerned that this kind of loophole is there. I think it needs to be fixed.

Dr Winfield: Conceivably yes, you could amend the EBR to limit the exemptions which can be provided. The only reason, really, why one should provide an exemption would be in an emergency, otherwise you --

Ms Churley: That was our intent, I believe.

Dr Winfield: Yes. Unfortunately, the way the bill is applied is through regulations, and in fact there have been regulations made which change the way in which the bill is applied as well.

Mr Sampson: Thank you very much for you presentation. You mentioned the figure of $300 million a few minutes ago. Is that figure not essentially the estimate to clean up existing hazards which in fact occurred under the previous legislation?

Dr Winfield: Yes. The actual number is the one that the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines gives --

Mr Sampson: So this isn't a projection going forward. It's what in fact has happened under the previous legislation, half of which I am led to believe were actually next to crown-owned sites.

Dr Winfield: It's a little tricky, because the way the act works, under the old version of the act, under certain circumstances abandoned mine sites reverted to crown ownership.

Mr Sampson: Right.

Dr Winfield: When that happened, the liability for whatever damage might be caused reverted with it.

Mr Sampson: These hazards and these costs are as a result of the previous legislation, or at least it happened under the previous legislation.

Dr Winfield: Yes.

Mr Sampson: Is it your concern with respect to schedule O that the ministry or the government is giving up some control over how these reclamation projects are handled?

Dr Winfield: Yes, it is, in a number of different ways.

Mr Sampson: You would prefer the ministry to have more authority.

Dr Winfield: I think that in some ways there are areas in which more authority might actually be appropriate. The existing provisions are quite strong actually in the sense of the degree to which they give the director of mine rehabilitation the capacity to both require remediation measures and oversee the implementation of those measures. I think one of the really critical changes is in relation to the area of financial assurances, because at the moment the financial assurance from the mining company has to come in some form of realizable security --

Mr Sampson: Right.

Dr Winfield: -- cash, bonds, something like that.

Mr Sampson: But with respect to determining sites and dealing with them expeditiously, your position would be, give the minister more authority to do that?

Dr Winfield: Yes.

Mr Sampson: Have you seen any of those amendments in this current legislation that would deal with that, give the minister more authority to deal with them?

Dr Winfield: There is one which deals with emergency situations.

Mr Sampson: Would you also call section 146 with respect to the inspectors giving the minister more authority, where it says that the "inspector may, without a warrant, at any reasonable time and with any reasonable assistance," and it goes on, enter into a place, make inspections, be accompanied by experts, request the production of drawings, deal with the site, make an order to have the site dealt with -- is that not fairly expeditious?

Dr Winfield: It's a marginal expansion of the existing power.

Mr Sampson: It's marginal to have somebody enter a site without warrant or "at any reasonable time"?

Dr Winfield: Part of the problem is that --

Mr Sampson: Would it be marginal if I did that to your house?

Mr Cooke: Let him answer the question.

Dr Winfield: These kinds of powers already existed under the act; this expands them somewhat. But I think we have to keep in mind that, in our discussions with the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, we were informed that only two inspectors will be on staff to conduct the inspections of all the abandoned mine sites in northern Ontario. That's a reduction from the 14 staff members who are there now overseeing the approvals and those kinds of things.

Mr Sampson: But these folks can, willy-nilly, just enter a site and do all of these things and pass expenses off. Isn't that a fairly aggressive authority for the minister to have?

Dr Winfield: In and of itself it is, but I think it has to be put into the context of the other amendments to the bill, which are weakening the authority of the director of mine rehabilitation and the authority of the minister in a number of very important ways.

Mr Sampson: Right. So on balance --

Dr Winfield: On balance, there's unquestionably a loss, particularly when you put it into the context of the changes around financial assurances as well.

One of the important things that's going on is, there are a number of quite explicit powers available to the director of mine rehabilitation now which are being removed. One of them, for example, was that the director could, in effect, impose conditions on a closure plan. The way that the amendments are worded, they won't be able to do that. There's sort of a process whereby a remediation plan under the certification process which is being proposed could conceivably go back and forth between a director and the proponent, but there's no power, as there is now, for the director to say, "This is what has to be in the remediation plan in order for it to be acceptable to the province."

Mr Sampson: But under the financial assurance section the director has pretty strong authority too. Basically, if nothing's happening in accordance with the plan, he can go and act on his own.

Dr Winfield: Yes.

Mr Sampson: The restriction there is, in his view, reasonable and probable grounds. That's fairly broad, isn't it?

Dr Winfield: The problem in that area is the amendment to the financial assurance requirements that eliminate the need to actually post a realizable security. Under the present situation, there's a realizable security. So if the director has to, because of a bankruptcy or simply because the proponent refuses to do the work, there are, in effect, funds available to the director immediately to finance the cleanup. Under these amendments, if there isn't an actual realizable security posted, if such a situation arises, the only way in which the director could pay for the remediation work would be out of the general revenue fund of the province.

Mr Sampson: But the director --

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Sampson. I apologize. Your time is exhausted.

I'd like to thank the deputants for appearing before the committee today.

Before we recess for lunch, Mr Cooke would like to move a motion.

Mr Cooke: Mr Chair, I would like to move the following motion:

I move that this committee recommends to the government House leader that when the House returns on January 29, 1996, that the order with respect to Bill 26 be amended and that the bill be returned to the standing committee on general government so that further public hearings can be arranged; and further, based on the submissions to the committee to date, that Bill 26 be separated into several bills to allow the public an opportunity to adequately analyze the bills.

Further, that this committee recommends that the three House leaders meet as soon as possible to discuss this issue.

The Chair: I would like to adjourn debate on this until an appropriate time this afternoon.

Mr Cooke: We can schedule this in one of the spots this afternoon.

Mr Sampson: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I might suggest that you consult during the period of time between now and the time we debate this as to whether or not that motion is indeed in order and rule on that.

The Chair: Thank you for the advice, Mr Sampson. I'll undertake to do something like that.

Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): You sure don't have much faith in the Chair.

Mr Gerretsen: I have complete faith in the Chair.

The Chair: We stand in recess until 1 o'clock.

The subcommittee recessed from 1148 to 1302.

JACK LAYTON

The Chair: Our first presenter this afternoon will be Mr Layton. Welcome. You have actually now 24 minutes to make your presentation. You can use that time as you see fit. You may want to leave some time at the end for questions. I'd appreciate it if you'd read your name and who you're representing into the record for the benefit of the committee members and Hansard.

Mr Jack Layton: I'm Jack Layton. I'm a Metro councillor for Metropolitan Toronto. Could I just get a clarification on that time, I heard the four.

The Chair: It was 24.

Mr Layton: Okay. I was ready to move into poetry. I'll try and be very brief. I do have some copies of what I'm about to say which might speed things up a little bit.

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak and for the fact that the hearing is taking place. It certainly has allowed us to take a close look at the legislation. This legislation has enormous impacts on municipalities, as I'm sure you're coming to understand increasingly through the deputations and as you absorb its various content elements.

I just want to speak to, let's call it the appearance of the legislation versus what I think is the reality when we begin to peel back the layers. I'd like to suggest to the members here that there are two sort of analyses that you could have. One is that the appearance was designed to disguise the reality or -- and I'm hoping this is the case -- that the appearance was what was intended and the reality is something that can be brought into sync with the appearance by the committee through its amendments. That's what I'm hoping and it remains to be seen, obviously, in your deliberations.

I have really three points to make. The first one is that the appearance of this bill is that it claims to give municipalities more power and thereby enhance democracy. I think this would be a good idea. Many of us have called for this for a long time and to have one government supervising another as closely as has been the case over the years, doesn't seem to be very modern any more. It might've made sense back in 1867, but it doesn't really make sense today. So it's a good direction, but as we began to look at the actual bill itself and the way it's put together, it turns out the reality, if I may suggest, is the opposite to the appearance.

The reality is that the transfer of powers to municipalities simply won't happen in this bill. In fact, the opposite will happen. The minister is securing for himself, or in the future herself perhaps, greatly enhanced powers. Well, that's the opposite of giving municipal government more power.

Not only that, but the minister's new powers would be immune from scrutiny by the public, because it would be entirely by regulation, so there would be no hearings. There would be no requirement for consultation, there would be no debate in the Legislature, and there's no requirement to notify anybody that the changes are about to be made.

All of these are absolute fundamentals in democracy, that people be able to be notified about a proposed law, that they be given a chance to have some input on that law and that there be a debate about the law. All of these are in fact denied by the provisions of this bill. I don't think a member of this Legislature would want to support a direction like that.

I'd like to give you some illustrations. The first illustration: rationalization of services between upper- and lower-tier municipalities. This is what our solicitor says in his report, which you'll get in more detail on Friday when our Metro Chairman will be here.

For example, he says upper tier and local municipalities are given a power and process for the migration of services among them, so that we could move services up and down and get things sorted out and do things more rationally. It makes a lot of sense. However, these powers may be exercised only with respect to such services and facilities and under such conditions as the minister may, by regulation, prescribe. In other words, municipalities aren't able to move powers between themselves. They have to wait, essentially, for the minister to decide what powers can be moved and to spell those out, at which point then we turn around and move them.

Well, that's the same old relationship we've had in the past. It adds layers upon layers of decision-making. It embroils your own government in having to make decisions which could easily be made by relatively responsible adults working in municipal governments, which I would remind you operate without any deficit, by law, and we've managed to do it for a long time. And many of you have probably served in municipal governments before so this is not a revelation to you.

A second example, illustration 2, the power to dissolve local boards: We would like to take a look at some of our local boards and rationalize some of those. We've tried to make them more democratic so they'd be composed -- perhaps be made into committees of council instead of having a proliferation of all these boards, and the bill appears to give us the power to do that, but when you turn around, it's again the opposite.

The power cannot be exercised within Ontario until a regulation is made by the minister relating to the type of board that can be dissolved. So the minister's going to have to sit down and spell out again, in great detail, what board can be dissolved and what one can't and so on. A whole lot of work for the minister; a whole lot less democracy at the local level.

My second point has to do with the appearance that municipalities can implement taxes which are in the nature of a direct tax. The question is, do we have that power or not? And I know that's been the subject of some debate around here. One thinks of the gasoline tax and I'd like to offer an opinion on that, if you don't mind.

But the reality seems to be that there's a changing understanding by the minister of what this power provides. Is it a poll tax or is it not a poll tax? Is it a gasoline tax or is it not a gasoline tax? What this underlines is that ultimately it is, in this bill, up to the minister to decide with complete arbitrariness. The Legislature doesn't decide; the municipal councils don't decide; the minister decides.

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I've never seen any government in this country be given the power to have one minister decide whether a tax can be levied. That would be revolutionary. That is the reason we had rebellions in this country in 1837, because governments and ministers were by edict saying, "There shall be a tax or there shall not be a tax and I will decide it." A taxation power is the most fundamental of powers and the Legislature must, irrespective of what party you're a part of, guard exclusively to yourself the right to tax the citizens or not tax the citizens. You need to decide whether a municipal government can be delegated that power, not a minister. That is absolutely fundamental.

We're dealing here with a very important item. These taxes, if they are implemented, depending on what the minister decides they will cover, could be taking billions of dollars from the pockets of people in our community and they could do so in a way which is very regressive, very destructive, but the Legislature will have had no chance to define the way in which that's to be done.

I can't think of a more fundamental assault on a fundamental, democratic component of governance than this particular item, that gives the minister the power to decide what taxes will be levied and what ones won't.

To turn to the gasoline tax, just to give you a couple of examples here -- on the gasoline tax, this bill gives us the power to tax for things where we give a service directly to the person. Suppose we brought in a gasoline tax or a highway tax, a toll on a section of road. You may not know this, but you've given us the Queensway to look after. The Queensway is not in great shape; it needs about $50 million of investment to bring it up to scratch. Ministry of Transportation officials dispute it in terms of the amount. All we know is it hasn't been resurfaced in about 15 years and normally that's the cycle where we start major reconstruction.

So that's a question where you've downloaded a major cost to us and you've said publicly, the government certainly has been saying publicly, that no municipal increases in taxes should be required by the government's measures, no increase in charges should be required and no reduction in service. That doesn't add up, with all due respect, and the Queensway is a classic example. It's going to cost us money to keep it clean; it's going to cost us money to keep it in good shape. We have to be given some opportunity to raise the money. Now, if we raise taxes to pay for that, I can imagine some people, perhaps even in the government, might be critical of our government for doing it. But yet you're able to lower taxes because you've given us that road. This is just one example.

Suppose we decided, then, to charge a gasoline tax in order to be able to pay for the restoration of roads like that. Our interpretation is that the -- and I say "ours;" we're still waiting for a formal opinion from our solicitor and he will likely be here on Friday and you can ask him. His basic view is that the language is so broad and general that in many cases it's going to take court cases to figure out what it really means, unless the government comes out and says what it clearly means. But in the language there right now, certainly we're allowed to tax for a service that we provide and roads are a service that we provide to people driving cars, and they need gasoline, generally, in order to be able to drive on those roads.

So our interpretation is this allows a gas tax. I'm trying to be careful here, because I've heard that various resignations and what have you hinge on these interpretations, so don't take my word for it.

Mr Cooke: What's the downside?

Mr Layton: It certainly is giving us a big problem when in municipal government we're supposed to be putting together budgets right now. We've got about a $50-million shortfall in our funding from the province, we're trying to figure out how to make it up and yet a new law is coming into place which is going to completely and arbitrarily govern the way we do business.

These kinds of laws, by the way, are known in legal circles as Henry VIII laws. It sort of depends on what side of the bed the minister wakes up on in the morning. If the minister's in a good mood, cut the grant or increase the grant; if he's in a bad mood: "I'm going to force you to adopt a certain level of service by regulation, but I'm not going to give you any funds to make it happen and I'm going to prohibit you from raising taxes. In other words, I'm just going to make your life miserable and really deprive the people of any say." Henry VIII's wives didn't have any say and neither will the people.

Some of you may comment: "Wait a minute. We elected this government. We elected ministers to make decisions. What's wrong with that?" Well, there's a difference between electing a government and electing a king. The difference is that as a government you have to bring your decisions into an open forum for discussion. You have to work with the other levels of government you have helped to create, namely, municipal governments. This bill totally guts municipal governments of their responsibility but pretends that it's giving them more power, which is of course the worst way to present a case: say one thing and do the opposite.

I think I can conclude at this point. Suffice it to say that I think this bill in one fell swoop is going to do more to undo democratic governance in this province than any measure ever taken by any government, with the possible exception of the War Measures Act, because it takes into the cabinet minister's office absolute power on many, many different fronts. This has never happened before. I think it needs to be rejected, major changes need to happen and, hopefully, that's what this process we're going through is all about.

The Chair: We'll start with the third party. You have a little over three minutes per caucus.

Mr Cooke: I just have a couple of questions to raise. The other day, we had the Metro board of trade before us, which had a lot of concerns about the bill but a lot of enthusiasm to support it anyway. One of the reasons they said we should be supporting the bill is that their interpretation of the bill is that it would give cabinet the ability to completely restructure the GTA without ever having to come back to the Legislature. I know that Metro right now is debating the bill or being briefed on the bill. Has there been any discussion at Metro about whether those powers are granted under this bill to the minister?

Mr Layton: That discussion is actually going on right now. Metro council is meeting -- it's just on its lunch break at the moment and coming back at 2 o'clock, and there will be a further discussion of exactly that point and other aspects of the bill. We're refining the brief and you've set aside I think 2 o'clock on Friday for Chairman Tonks and our staff to be here, so I think they would be able to answer that question.

At the moment our solicitor was saying it "could be," as solicitors sometimes do. You can read these words in different ways, so they're trying to narrow down what their interpretation is going to be.

Mr Cooke: If that power was granted -- and I'm not sure if that's how I read the bill, but certainly if it doesn't cover the GTA, we know it covers the other parts of the province that have county governance -- how do you think the people in the GTA would respond after the Golden commission -- which didn't have a whole series of public meetings; it was a fairly short internal consultation -- that the entire governance structure for the GTA could be decided basically by one person? What do you think the reaction of Metro council, but more importantly of your constituents, would be?

Mr Layton: I think the key thing is what the reaction of the constituents would be, as you say. People react in funny ways. Sometimes people actually welcome, if I can use the word, dictatorial action at first, because it looks like somebody's doing something. But it usually doesn't take them long to realize that what's being done to them is something that may have really serious impact.

There's a huge interest, actually, in the GTA on the governance question. We were holding community meetings about it, public meetings, and we were having huge turnouts. There's an enormous interest. My guess is that you'll find that people will want to debate the proposed structure in the forum of a legislative hearing like this and with public hearings and the whole works. If that doesn't happen, a lot of people will be pretty upset about it.

The Chair: We'll move to the government side.

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Mr Hardeman: Thank you for coming in, Mr Layton. From your presentation I could agree with you that at least we agree on the intent of the bill. There seems to be some debate as to whether, in your opinion, we meet that challenge, whether the powers that will grant local autonomy are in fact in the bill, because the minister can, in your opinion, override the granting of it with regulation.

My question would really be, in the present situation, does this bill in any way deal with taking away the authorities that presently exist in the ability to tax and the ability to run the affairs of local municipalities as they see fit? Does this bill in any way detract from that?

If it doesn't, do you not see that at the very least it would improve it, and save and except the protection of having someone being able to give it sober second thought and realize if it's not going in the best interests of the electorate, both the municipal and provincial electorate of course being the same electorate -- if it's not going in that direction, we can put it on hold through the minister's regulation to say, "That's not the type of tax that the people want." Do you not see this as an improvement over what we presently have in the ability of municipalities to govern themselves?

Mr Layton: It's exactly the opposite, and I'll give you just a couple of examples. Under this law the amount of funding that we would get, for example, to expand or work on the Toronto Transit Commission, which is one of the big, big areas for us, or to do sewer or water developments, we've in the past known that transit investments will be 75% paid for by the province. That allows us then to make a decision about whether to go ahead with something or not, because we know the revenue, we know what we can raise through taxes and we can decide on a project. I would say to you now that it would be impossible for us to make any decision if this law passes --

Mr Hardeman: If I could --

Mr Layton: Do you mind, Mr Chairman, if I just finish the answer? I don't want to cut you off, but if we wanted to, for example, expand the waste handling system, the sewage treatment plant or the transit system, we'd be operating in an environment where we'd put up our hands to vote to enter into contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars. But at a later point, once we've already made the commitment, the minister could turn around arbitrarily and say, "Sorry, I'm only funding you at 10%," at which point the municipality would be in grave circumstances. That thereby means that we simply can't vote for the item at all. It's this bill that gives that minister that power, so that's the problem we're facing, just to give you one example.

Mr Hardeman: I have some difficulty in understanding where you are taking out of this bill the changing in funding ratios in different projects as it relates to the ability of the municipality to make its own decisions and charge fees to pay for those services.

Mr Layton: That's a very fair question, and it appears in the bill directly, and I'm sure your advisers can alert you to the clause, that the minister is going to have -- it's a combination of clauses. There's one clause that deals with unconditional grants and that whole aspect of legislation, and there's another clause that deals with the power of the minister to decide the level of subsidy, if any, that will be provided to any particular kind of project. That is in the legislation, I can assure you.

Mr Hardeman: I'd just ask you --

The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Hardeman. Mr Layton, I'm sorry.

Mr Layton: Ran out of time?

The Chair: We divide the time between each group and we have to move to the opposition. Mr Colle.

Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): The thing that intrigues me about your presentation is the exposure of this immense taxation power that is going into the hands of one minister, the Minister of Municipal Affairs. In essence he is becoming another minister of taxation through this legislation. That's the proposition I put forward, and I think this is what this bill is all about. You have a new minister who can levy unilateral taxation powers, determine whether he feels that that tax is an equitable tax or a just tax. He alone will determine that, not the municipalities. I agree with you on that.

What I'm worried about is that what you're going to have is a minister who's basically going to tell municipalities -- he'll tell North York, "If you want that subway on Sheppard, you're going to have to impose a tax on all the abutting property holders on Sheppard." Hazel McCallion, who was here yesterday, agreed that you can impose a gasoline tax and contradicted the minister who said you couldn't -- and he would resign, he said.

If Hazel McCallion wants an airport tax, the minister will decide whether the airport tax will be in place. If the city of Toronto wants to impose a tax on garbage pickup, the minister will decide that. So you have a minister who in essence is going to determine what services will be paid for in a direct tax or a poll tax or a head tax or a user tax, and therefore is determining what services are going to be available, because we've got taxing powers and he determines that. He's also going to have the power to determine if you get a subway or if you get a road repaired, as the Queen Elizabeth Way is going to need that kind of repair.

Is that the essence of this bill, that you're getting taxation without representation, you're getting taxation by regulation by one minister?

Mr Layton: Yes, that is my fundamental problem with it, and it's even worse than you've described, because in fact this is a minister who will be able to tax but he won't be raising the taxes, he'll be telling the municipalities to do it, which means that the leadership of the municipality will be the ones to be punished by the voters if they're unhappy. The minister will be immune. That's the fundamental problem with this. It takes away the accountability.

I know this government has prided itself on trying to present itself as being accountable, but what's happening here is the complete reverse of that. I have never seen anything like it in democratic governance anywhere. I've been a political scientist for 25 years, teaching in the universities on these topics, and I can't find an example where in one piece of legislation so much taxation power was moved to one individual in a government situation. I've never seen it and I would challenge anyone here to show me an illustration in the political science literature where this has happened. It has never happened before.

Mr Phillips: One of the comments from the Minister of Municipal Affairs, when he made his presentation and we were talking about the power to impose fees and what not, he said that certainly this gives far more scope -- I think they called it -- on unlimited flexibility for fees. But the Minister of Municipal Affairs says not to worry because he has been encouraged to hear that there'll be corporate donors to sponsor such activities as library use for underprivileged children.

You're fairly experienced in Metro Toronto. Do you think that Metro will be able to find sufficient corporate donors to make sure that young people who want to use the library will be able to? Have you been able to test the waters of whether you'll be able to get enough of those corporate sponsors to take over that responsibility?

Mr Layton: We have not, but I can tell you that just about every organization in Metro is out looking for corporate sponsors for just about everything right now because of the devastation that we're facing. The symphony is facing closure and the opera company is facing closure because of the combination, the double hit, of the cuts from their provincial funding and the cuts that Metro will now have to administer because the province has cut Metro's funding.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Layton. I apologize, but we've gone slightly over your allotted time.

Mr Layton: I know you've got to stick to your time limits.

The Chair: I appreciate your taking the time to appear before the committee today.

MARC GRUSHCOW

The Chair: Could Mr Marc Grushcow please come forward. Welcome to the standing committee on general government. You'll have 30 minutes today to make your presentation. You can use that 30 minutes as you see fit. You may want to leave some time at the end of your presentation for response and questions from members of the caucus. I'd appreciate it if you'd read your name into the record for the benefit of the committee members and for Hansard.

Mr Marc Grushcow: My name is Marc Grushcow. Everybody I've spoken to in this process said, "What organization do you represent, Mr Grushcow?" I represent solely myself in the context of these remarks. I will read my presentation, which will take approximately 15 minutes.

I appreciate the opportunity to address the committee regarding a bill that I think will significantly impact the nature of the society in which we live.

Public statements made by various members of the government, including the Premier, make it clear that the comments of some are welcome and the comments of others are not. Consequently I wish to begin by establishing my credentials.

I have never voted for the New Democratic Party and in fact sent Bob Rae a number of critical letters when he was Premier. I'm a white male who is relatively wealthy, definitely privileged and the owner of a small business. I say these things to show that I am not a member of any of the currently designated special-interest groups. I pay taxes and work hard and so have earned, in the words of the Premier at a fund-raising dinner, "the right to eat roast beef." So, demographically, I would seem to be part of the Conservative Party's constituency, and in fact the Premier and I would agree in defining many of the problems that face Ontario.

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I have read Bill 26 up to schedule M, but not the 2,000 or so pages of accompanying information. I want to talk about the bill in the context of some of the hallmarks of good government. I think we will agree on these.

A good government should respect the citizens that it governs. In our context, this means it should respect privacy; assume that citizens, including professionals, have good intent while considering that this is not universally true; and should act with restraint, taking the minimum action needed to correct a situation.

A good government should be exemplary in its actions. Citizens and businesses should be able to take a cue for moral behaviour by watching their leaders.

A good government should have respect for democratic traditions and established processes. It should not act unilaterally. Its actions should be transparent; that is, the reasons and motivations for government actions should be obvious and clear. It should negotiate solutions in the manner expected in a free society.

A good government creates an environment that fosters local control and decision-making. Decision-making should be devolved to the level of those directly affected, and once responsibility is delegated, a good government gets out of the way.

Several sections of Bill 26 seem to be at odds with these principles.

Schedule F empowers the Minister of Health and the Lieutenant Government in Council to close and merge hospitals and to define what services a hospital can provide. Further, the minister can appoint a supervisor who will replace a hospital's board of governors and be responsible solely to the minister. The only guiding principle is that the actions must be "in the public interest." What is the public interest? How does a hospital know what will bring it under the control of the supervisor? Section 9 only says, "In making a decision in the public interest" they "may consider" any of the following "as relevant including" and it goes to set a list. "May," "any," and "including" are hardly what you would call a clear set of expectations. This is not transparent, it does not deal with the problem at the lowest level and there is no consultation required.

Schedules G, H and I all eliminate the government's traditional negotiating partners in the setting of fees and determining insured health and drug services. I suspect that the Premier and I share a number of opinions about the OMA and agreements that have been reached between it and previous governments of all stripes. None the less, the OMA is recognized as representing the doctors and is recognized in the Canada Health Act as the proper negotiator for health care issues. Governments negotiated themselves into the current agreements and this government should negotiate itself into a better one. This is, after all, what we expect in our mixed economy.

Schedule I effectively makes the OMA irrelevant and leaves the government as both the paymaster and the setter of health standards and procedures. This is not only a conflict, but it may be that legislators and bureaucrats are not the best judges of medical care. I suspect that the government could wind up with a different negotiating partner by simply asking the doctors if they are prepared to reaffirm the OMA as their representative. This would provide a fresh opportunity on both sides and leave our traditional democratic processes in place.

Schedule H is particularly troubling regarding the privacy and confidentiality of doctor-patient records. Health Minister Jim Wilson initially told us that these rules were needed in order to pursue cases of fraud by practitioners and patients. Here we see the assumption that citizens in general do not have good intent. The implication is that there is massive fraud since all citizens are punished by losing the confidentiality of their records. Recognizing the concern that this loss raised, the minister responded by saying that he would not use the provisions. This was somewhat less than transparent since in fact government access and disclosure of patient records is allowed "for the more effective management of the health care system or the delivery of health care services."

Are we talking about fraud or are we really talking about the outsourcing of health records management? This is a troubling thought since the privacy commissioner has already pointed out that privacy regulations will not bind an out-of-province company. Schedule H effectively makes doctors recordkeepers of government-owned information.

The government has adequate statistical information on which to base suspicion of fraud. If a doctor's or patient's profile indicates the likelihood of fraud, let them seize that doctor's or patient's records under a court order and investigate. This is better than allowing an inspector access to all records under the pretence of "more effective management."

I was particularly upset by schedule H, subsection 29(1). It says that anyone who avails themselves of a scheduled service is deemed to have consented to the provision and disclosure of their related medical records. If you ask me, I do not consent. I suspect that if you asked the taxpaying, hardworking, roast-beef-eating Ontarians if they consented to some bureaucrat rummaging through their medical records in the cause of "more effective management," whatever that means, they wouldn't consent either.

Schedule H also allows the minister, without consultation, to determine how many of what kind of doctors can practise in different areas of Ontario. The minister is also empowered to determine who can fill an available spot. Again, the Premier and I might agree that there is a problem concerning the number and distribution of doctors in the province. Schedule H says that the central government knows better than anyone else who should practise where. If the problem is too many doctors in the wrong places, perhaps some or all billing numbers should be distributed to communities instead of individuals. Doctors could continue to be independent professionals, but they would have to apply to a community that could provide them with a billing number. That way, communities could decide not only what kind of doctors but which individuals would best meet their needs. This presents an opportunity for an organization like the OMA to assist in determining community needs and suggesting an appropriate mix of skills. This is a great opportunity for the government to set some rules and then get out of the way.

I want to make a brief, but I think important, observation with respect to schedule L, amendments to the Public Service Pension Act and the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union Pension Act. I feel very strongly about the responsibility of the government to be an exemplar of good personal and corporate moral behaviour. Schedule L effectively relieves the government of pension obligations that it might have as a result of massive layoff of public servants. The issue of whether or not they deserve these benefits is completely immaterial. The relevant sections of the Pension Benefits Act came into force to deal with situations where corporations were winding down employee pension plans and siphoning off certain funds. Now the government, which says it should be operating like a business, is exempting itself from a law that every other business in the province must comply with. What is the moral justification for this? The government does not want to pay.

Finally, schedule M, amendments to the Municipal Act and others: Here we see the government appearing to give responsibility for increased powers of taxation to municipalities while at the same time retaining the power to take arbitrary decisions. Municipalities are given the right to raise new taxes and electors are relieved of the right to object at the ballot box. However, the minister has the right to prohibit a tax and/or specify exemptions without consultation. In the same schedule, the government defines a procedure for the dissolution of local boards of various types. In case the municipalities don't get the hint, the minister will provide a list of boards that they should consider; also, a list of boards that they must not consider. If all else fails, the minister retains the right to dissolve any local board without hearings.

In many respects, Minister Al Leach has made himself the mayor of every city and town in Ontario. This is hardly what you call fostering local control. This is the man who said on December 8, in regard to charging individuals for various police services: "Everybody has a house alarm....After one or two alarms you should be forced to pay for your bad habits." This is reminiscent of the Minister of Transportation, who said that highway patrols could be reduced since everybody has a cell phone and can call for help if they need it. Everybody in Ontario has a house alarm and everybody in Ontario has a cell phone. I don't want to take the focus away from the substance of my remarks, but I have to ask, is there another Ontario in Canada?

In summary, I want to make some observations about the nature of this government and the previous NDP administration. Many of us objected to the NDP's attitude that they knew better than we did what was good for us. This was obvious in acts like those that deregulated -- that is, shut down -- various near-medical practitioners and the Substitute Decisions Act. They were always telling citizens what to do, how they should do it and who should be responsible for them since they couldn't be responsible for themselves. We viewed them as the classical socialist planners.

In Bill 26 we see many of the same realities disguised under a different rhetoric. In fact, this government is grabbing more power to centralize authority and repudiating more of the institutionalized fabric of our society than the NDP ever did. We cannot ignore the fact that the NDP became the government by accident and the Conservatives rode to power on a sustained wave of approval. None the less, I think that the message is clear that Ontarians do not like authoritarian, centralized governments, whether they are on the paternalist left or the arrogant right.

There are three things that I want to say to the government in conclusion. The first is that something like 45% of the voters resonated to Premier Harris's message in the election campaign and voted for him. I will not be so arrogant as to say that they didn't understand or that they were fooled. They had their vote and I had mine. Different people voted for Mike Harris for different reasons, but at the same time 55% of the voters said that they did not want any part of the Ontario that Mike Harris was selling.

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This leads to my second point. I can understand the sense of power and triumphalism that must accompany the attainment of such a significant majority in the House. I hope that the government will come to accept the responsibility that comes with that. In a minority or small majority situation, it is easy to say that the opposition is responsible for looking after those that the government considers the others. In the current situation, the government must come to bridle itself, to build consensus for its vision and to ensure that our democratic and social values are guarded. "Social" is not a four-letter word. Social values include concepts like mutual respect, vigorous debate and personal responsibility.

Finally, I ask, what is it that we are doing here in these committee meetings and, more generally, this activity of government? My answer is that we are shaping our society, and we have to ask ourselves what we want this society to look like. I'm sure that some of the committee members want to point out that my hallmarks of good government did not include a balanced set of books. I am not so much a fool as to say that deficit and debt don't matter and that the 1990s can only be good if they look like the 1960s. Our financial situation demands attention. Our society will look very different once we have accomplished this task. How will we get there and what will be the cost? Who will we be when we are done?

The Bible contains a verse that begins, "Justice, justice shall you pursue...." The sages, who believed that every word in the text had meaning, asked why the word "justice" was repeated. One answer was that the second "justice" referred to methods and the verse should be understood as, "Justice by just means shall you pursue." For us, this means that the just end of deficit reduction must be attained through socially just means.

If we are only concerned with the just end of deficit reduction, we will end up with a society that only an accountant could call heaven. We agree about many of the problems that Bill 26 addresses. However, they are raised solely from the perspective of financial restructuring -- the proposals are, at best, quick financial fixes -- and we lose the opportunity to engage in meaningful social restructuring through debate and consensus-building. These opportunities will continue to be lost until the government is prepared to argue and debate with people who disagree with it.

Thank you for your attention.

The Chair: Thank you. We'll begin the questioning, five minutes a side, with the government caucus.

Mr Young: Thank you for your presentation. I did want to point out something. One of the statements you made was, "55% of the voters said they did not want any part of the Ontario that Mike Harris was selling." I think about 37% of the popular vote went to the Liberal Party, is that right? Somewhere around there? If you read the Common Sense Revolution and you read the Liberal red book, the Liberal red book is basically a watered-down version. They said they were going to lay off 12,000 civil servants and they said they were going to balance the budget in four years. You see how tough it is to balance it in five; imagine them trying to balance it in four.

What I wanted to ask you is, we have two million people in Metro Toronto served by 44 hospitals; two million people outside Metro in the rest of the GTA served by 17 hospitals. So the Toronto district health council has said: "You're financing too much bricks and mortar. You've got 6,700 empty beds in Ontario. You should close down some hospitals." What self-respecting hospital board is going to put up its hand and say, "Pick me; we'll close"? They're not going to. So how else are you going to restructure those hospitals and get the money to front-line health care unless the minister makes it happen? How else could it possibly happen?

Mr Grushcow: My basic point of disagreement is not with respect to the fact that there are too many or too few hospitals, or too many or too few doctors, or too much money coming out of a pension plan. The point that I want to make is that there has to be a more consensual, democratic method for dealing with this. It will take longer. It may be that in the end the solution isn't exactly what the government wanted to see when it started, but at the end of the day, there will be more people who shake their heads up and down and say: "Yes, this makes sense. I understand why it happened. I don't like it, but I can agree with it."

Mr Young: What I'm saying to you is that 82% of the voters voted for major change, and we have to make this happen. This is our mandate, it's our responsibility, and this is the only way it's going to happen.

Mr Grushcow: I would really like to avoid getting into a game of who the Liberal voters --

Mr Young: I assure you I'm not playing any game here. I'm very serious.

Mr Grushcow: Excuse me, if I can finish my remarks, please. I don't think that, any more than I can say that people who voted for Mike Harris really didn't mean it, that they really didn't understand what was going to happen, as people say to me when we discuss it, "I didn't think it was going to be like this." I'm not going to stand and say that and reinterpret their votes for them, and I don't think I'm prepared to enter a debate about whether or not the Liberal voters are standing in line now behind Mike Harris.

Mr Young: But you have said they did not want any part of the Ontario Mike Harris was selling, so you are saying that.

Mr Grushcow: If you want me to an interpretation, I will make the interpretation like this: I believe that those people who voted for the Liberals, who were making some attempt at copying what Mike Harris said, did not in their hearts believe that the Liberals would have the ideological doggedness to actually do it. So there are those of us who voted for the Liberals, accepting the fact that yes, we have to come to grips with this problem.

But federally we are seeing that issue as well, and federally the difference is, I believe, whether it's true or not, whether the federal government is in fact disembowelling our social fabric in a greater way than we're seeing in other places, the belief people have is that everybody is taking a hit.

That's not what's happening in Ontario. I am not taking a hit. You're putting poor people's money in my pocket.

Mr Young: I see it differently. I think it's your money.

Mr Crozier: Thank you, sir, for coming. I'm not here to debate you. I feel my role is to listen to you, to take what you say that I agree with and try to convince the government that it should listen as well.

Much of what you have said we have heard from others, albeit not always as eloquently and not always from an individual perspective, and that's what I appreciate most of all. Essentially, I wanted to say that, and if you care to reply, or if you want to add any more emphasis to the fact that we hope the government is listening -- because I don't know what's going to come out of these hearings. I don't know what's in the government's mind. I don't know how flexible they are, although up until now I have to say that in some areas it's not been very flexible. I appreciate your coming and I appreciate your comments.

Mr Gerretsen: Thank you very much, Mr Grushcow, for coming here. I think it's an excellent critique of what this government is trying to undertake with Bill 26, and I commend you for taking time to come here.

The one comment I'd like to make and see if you can comment on it is that there is a double standard here. With Bill 26, the bureaucrats and the Minister of Health are given extraordinary powers to access personal medical files. That's very explicit, and it's causing a lot of consternation because of this extra ability to access confidential files.

On the other hand, the government puts up more obstacles for citizens who want to access information, whether it be from the provincial government or its ministries or the municipal governments. They are putting in fees and all kinds of abilities for commissioners and individuals at the municipal level for outright denial of people who want to access files that the public has access to everywhere else in Canada. Do you want to comment on that?

Mr Grushcow: With respect to freedom of information, there are two comments I'd like to make. One is that it's interesting, the difference between the Canadian and the American model of public information. In the United States, the government is not allowed to charge for information relating to its citizens and demographics and the economic state of the country except for the cost of the distribution media. The premise behind that is that the companies and corporations (a) own that information and (b) have paid for its collection once already. In Canada we take another view, which says it doesn't matter that it's your information and that you paid for it; you have to pay again to get it back.

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Within the context of that, there is the second point that the freedom of information changes effectively say that in order to allow a head of an institution to indicate whether or not a request is vexatious, of course the person who's requesting the information has to say what they want the information for. There is a kind of underside to this thing, that I can't just go and say, "I would like a piece of information which the government is holding concerning me or concerning the society in Ontario that I live in." I have to go to that person and say, "This is why I want that information," the premise being that I may not deserve it, in some way. Nonetheless, I accept the fact that there was recent reporting of a case where somebody was asking for 200 requests a day, or whatever it was, and clearly was nuisance or what one might understand clearly as nuisance.

The problem we see here, as with medical records, generally is that the government is saying: "We've got a problem here, and instead of surgically dealing with the problem, we're going to get the elephant gun out and just blow it away. Incidentally, in the course of doing that, we're going to get some more money."

Mr Gerretsen: I'd just make a very quick comment and ask you to respond. The government can take the money away; Mike Harris said they wouldn't, but they can take the money away if they want to. But there's a major difference between taking money away from hospitals and closing hospitals. There are numerous examples around the province where hospitals are starting to work more closely together, particularly in the smaller communities where you've got two hospitals, and are in effect functioning as one hospital.

It's the same thing in the education field. I've got a major article here, for example, from the Kingston Whig-Standard today, that deals with the tremendous cooperation between Queen's, Royal Military College and St Lawrence College, which are three completely different institutions.

The Chair: Sorry to interrupt.

Mr Gerretsen: Thank you very much for your presentation.

Mr Cooke: I've also enjoyed your presentation -- well, most of your presentation.

Mr Grushcow: I can't be accused of being partisan, I don't think.

Mr Cooke: Not for two thirds of us, anyway.

I might just give you an example that I'm sure you're aware of. When I hear Mr Young say that communities won't decide to close hospitals, in my home town we had four hospitals, and we're down to two. That was totally driven by the hospitals, and the unions were part of it and the community was part of it. They made a decision that we'd go from four hospitals to two hospitals and we're doing that, and it's been a model for the province. The only problem now is that some of the savings were supposed to be reinvested in community services and the government's decided to renege on that, so that creates a bit of a problem. But communities will do what they're empowered to do if they're given the power to shape their own health care services in their own communities.

I wanted to talk a bit about the process on this bill. I find it curious, but very positive and important, that we have had individual citizens like yourself who are coming forward. As you said, you're not representing any group; you're representing your own point of view. But I'd like to know how you accessed the information, why you're here, and whether you have any recommendations about the process we should be following. We've had a lot of concerns about the process, and as you said, there's a lot in this bill, because this bill is basically a framework that empowers cabinet. How informed do you feel you are when you don't have and we don't have all the regulations that will really flesh out what this bill is all about?

Mr Grushcow: I'd address that two ways. One is that I was fairly careful in terms of what I did here to try not to get too technically involved in the issues, because if I stand up and try to explain to Mr Young what a particular clause means, I'm losing. I don't have the background, I don't have the experience.

Mr Cooke: You could debate Al Leach and probably win.

Mr Grushcow: The reason I am here is not because of this clause or that clause. The reason I am here is to say to the gentleman on my left that you will not learn if you don't listen. Ultimately, if you only talk to yourself, what you do can be no better than what you walked in the door with. That's what I'm here for.

If you want to talk about process, I must say this: Two weeks ago I asked to appear and was told that somebody might get around to telling me that I was going to appear. Yesterday morning at 10:30 I got a telephone call that I was to call back by 11:30 because I was supposed to be on today at 1:30 and if I didn't call by 11:30 they were going to give my spot away.

I started out at the beginning saying that I'm a privileged member of this society. I walked away from my job on Tuesday morning and spent all day Tuesday in the library going over newspapers, reading Bill 26 as best I could -- and as you know, it's impossible to read the thing in many sections because it says "delete these three words, stick those four words in" and you don't have the text. I don't know who the heck understands what this thing says. In any case, as a citizen this is beyond me.

I spent four or five hours in the library yesterday. I called the NDP caucus, I called the Liberal caucus, I called OPSEU, I called OMA to try to get some information. Some replied, some did not. I was up until 4 o'clock this morning putting this presentation together.

I'm sure that if I were on the Liberals' list or the Conservatives' list or the NDP's list I'd have known a week ago that I was going to have an opportunity to make this presentation because I was on the right list.

Mr Cooke: It hasn't been done that way.

Mr Grushcow: Well, I don't know. The truth of the matter is, this is the first time I've girt my loins and come in to do this kind of thing because I felt I was compelled to. With deference to the gentleman on my left, we have a moral problem with the way you are running this government -- I'm sorry -- and I felt compelled to speak.

The Chair: Thank you for your fine presentation. I appreciate your vigour and your coming forward.

Mr Phillips: Mr Chair, I want to make sure that everyone is aware I've filed this motion. Maybe you're not even aware, but I hope all the members have a copy of it and at the appropriate moment I'll move it, which I gather will be --

The Chair: We indicated that there's a spot this afternoon to do that. Could we stick to that timetable?

Mr Sampson: What time will we be discussing this?

The Chair: During the 4:30 spot.

Is there anyone here from the organization HALT? We'll have a half-hour recess until 2:30.

The subcommittee recessed from 1400 to 1430.

POLLUTION PROBE

The Chair: We have a member from Pollution Probe up next. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. You have half an hour to make your presentation. You can use that time as you see fit. You might want to leave some time for questions and response. I'd appreciate it if you could read your name and your organization into the record for the committee members and Hansard.

Mr Bruce Lourie: My name is Bruce Lourie, and I'm representing Pollution Probe. I'll be speaking for 15 to 20 minutes and allow 10 or so minutes for questions.

I'll be referring to the proposed Mining Act amendments under schedule O of Bill 26. Just to let you know, Pollution Probe is not against mining in any way. In fact, I have a geology degree. I used to work for a mining company. I have a master's degree in environmental studies related to mining issues. I'm still quite involved in working with what I consider to be the upstanding mining companies that we have in Ontario.

I thank you for this opportunity to appear before the standing committee on general government as it examines Bill 26. Pollution Probe would like to address schedule O of this bill, the proposed amendments to the Mining Act.

Pollution Probe looks upon the proposed amendments to the Mining Act as an ill-advised attempt to please certain factions of the mining industry by reducing existing environmental standards. The words used by the government to describe the changes are "cut red tape and lower administrative costs," but the reality is likely to be quick bucks for unscrupulous operators and large costs to the public. It is as though the drafters of these amendments have forgotten the history of mining in Ontario. Ignoring experience, they do not value the protection of the environment or the protection of the treasury of Ontario which the Mining Act presently provides.

Here are some of the changes to the act which Pollution Probe believes would result in significant pollution of water and land and significant taxpayer subsidies to runaway mine operators:

Closure plans would no longer be required to be reviewed for environmental adequacy and approved by government officials prior to a mine beginning operation. These amendments would remove the requirement that closure plans be scrutinized by government officials to make certain they adequately protect the environment. Instead, a company's closure plan would be deemed to be satisfactory if a hired engineer and a company official say it meets provincial standards.

How sure is the ministry that these self-approved plans will be adequate? Not at all, judging by one clause of the amendment. Section 153.1 of schedule O provides for crown immunity from claims of regulatory negligence relating to the filing, approval, review and acceptance of closure plans. This legal armour-plating is a clear sign that the ministry knows there will be trouble down the line, and it doesn't want to be held responsible. For the citizens of Ontario, this would be like buying a new car, getting home and finding that the warranty declares that the manufacturer is not liable for any problems which may arise in the future.

Financial assurance options would now include a self-assurance loophole. This is inferior to purchasing from a third party a financial guarantee that the closure will be completed in a satisfactory way. A mining company could meet financial criteria at the time it is granted the right to self-assure. Years later, when the ore body is played out or unexpected operating difficulties have arisen or commodity markets are down or an officer of the corporation has jetted off to Singapore or Rio with the contents of the treasury in hand or any other difficulty has arisen which can occur in companies from time to time, who is to say that self-assurance will be worth one penny to the Ontario taxpayer when the poison is in the river?

This rule change begs unscrupulous operators to view Ontario as easy pickings for cut-and-run business practices. It invites them to establish shell companies to exploit a particular mineral deposit. It says that in Ontario, once again, when ore bodies are played out and profits dividended out, you can leave the responsibility for the environmental mess to a penniless corporate husk. Enter the grateful taxpayer.

These fears are not mere theory. Sadly, examples of environmental damage and large cleanup costs borne by the taxpayers of Ontario can be cited from history. One example which members may be aware of is the old Deloro gold mine near Marmora in Hastings county. The Deloro mine was the site of gold mining and gold, cobalt and silver refining. The gold ore was rich in arsenic, and the arsenic tailings were left behind when the mining and refining operations closed. The Environment ministry discovered in the 1960s that arsenic was contaminating the Moira River, which runs through the Deloro site prior to emptying into Lake Ontario's Bay of Quinte at Belleville.

In 1978, the site's owner was ordered to take specific actions to control arsenic pollution of the river. The company said it had no money, and the grateful taxpayer of Ontario, in the form of the Environment ministry, stepped in to protect the environment, which includes in this case the municipal drinking water supply for the city of Belleville. Today you can drive up to the three-metre-high chain-link fence surrounding the old Deloro gold mine. Affixed to the fence are bilingual Cleanup Project Site signs posted by MOEE and Environment Canada. A third sign in universal language displays a skull and crossbones.

None of the costs of this environmental mess have been paid by the mine owners and refiners who work the ore body and refinery at Deloro. They mined, they milled, they declared their dividends, and they moved on. The costs are being borne by the people of the Moira River basin in the form of arsenic contamination in the river and the constant threat of more, and they are being borne by the taxpayer. The Ministry of Environment alone -- and it has been sharing some cleanup costs with Environment Canada for five years -- has spent $8 million and anticipates spending another $20 million to control the poisons abandoned at this mine.

Another example: When the tailings dam broke at the old Matachewan mining site in the fall of 1990, there was an owner, but the owner said he had only, as they say, a buck in the bank, and there was no financial assurance requirement in the days when the Matachewan quartz-gold operation began. So after the Montreal River was polluted and after some downstream municipal drinking water systems were shut down and after the owner said his cupboard was bare, that's when the grateful taxpayer stepped in and paid more than $3 million to fix the tailings pond and install a spillway.

It was experiences like these that prompted the financial assurance provision of the Mining Act.

How extraordinary are these examples? A 1993 study by the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, four other ministries and the Ontario Mining Association identified many, many more environmental problems at abandoned Ontario mines. The pricetag for these problems is huge compared to the tiny cost savings the government is claiming it will attain with these amendments.

According to the study titled "Abandoned Mine Hazards in Ontario," there are 6,545 abandoned mine sites in the province, containing nearly 16,000 identified features which pose environmental, safety and public health threats. The government-industry study estimated that 40% of these mines are orphan sites, with no prospect of anyone but the public to inherit cleanup and liability costs. The public -- that's the treasury of the government of Ontario -- will also have to pay for some of the other cleanups where owners have but a buck in the bank, according to the report. The total estimated cost to the Ontario public to fix this environmental damage is between $120 million and $180 million for the orphan sites alone. Adding the other sites whose owners are impecunious, the total could be in the quarter-billion-dollar range. The estimated savings to this same Ontario taxpayer to cancel the insurance policy in the Mining Act is $1.3 million a year, according to the ministry's October 24 news release.

Anyone who thinks these Mining Act amendments will be saving the government money is simply wrong. Queen's Park will have to pay many millions, unless it intends to stand aside and allow the environment to be degraded by abandoned mines.

When Ontario begins dismantling environmental regulations to compete with Third World jurisdictions, it courts environmental disaster from people who have already made messes elsewhere. You may have read about the Summitville gold mine in Colorado. The ore treatment facility at the mine leaked copper, acidic mine wastes and cyanide into several tributaries of the Rio Grande. The owner, Galactic Resources Ltd of Vancouver, responded by having its Summitville unit declare bankruptcy in the United States in 1992. Then it declared bankruptcy itself in Canada. The United States Environmental Protection Agency recently asked Galactic's owner, Mr Robert Friedland, to pay the $150-million cleanup cost. Mr Friedland's response? I will quote the Wall Street Journal from a story it published last month:

"Mr Friedland, speaking from his home in Singapore, declared that he has `absolutely no responsibility' for the environmental damage at the Summitville mine...."

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Needless to say, Galactic had not put up financial security for mine closure, so the only assurance we have is that the American taxpayer will be financing the $150-million cleanup.

The interesting part of this story is the present activity of Mr Friedland. He may reside in Singapore, but his companies are active in Canada. One Friedland company, Diamond Fields Resources Inc of Vancouver, announced this fall that it is buying what could soon be a controlling interest in a 55,000-acre nickel-copper-silver-gold claim in Rainy River. As things stand now, in order to bring that claim into operation, Mr Friedland's company would have to get government approval for a closure plan, be regularly inspected, and put up financial assurance that the closure plan will be executed. If the proposed amendments are approved, the environment around Rainy River is at risk of being put into, as we say, a Singapore sling, as has already occurred in Summitville, Colorado.

With respect to the proposed Environmental Protection Act amendments respecting the mining industry, I would also like to draw the committee's attention to what at first blush appears to be a companion piece of environmental deregulation of the mining industry. The Ministry of Environment and Energy has circulated a proposed amendment to the mining regulation under the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement, or MISA. Ministry officials have told a Pollution Probe researcher that the intent of the amendment is to make it plain that rainwater runoff that comes into contact with waste rock or slag but is not captured in a tailings pond will be treated under the stormwater protocol; it will not be treated as process effluent. The distinction is important because process effluent is subject to water pollution limits, while there are no contamination limits for protection against water pollution in the stormwater protocol.

As drafted, the amendment reads more broadly than the stated intent to apply to rain runoff only. In fact, as drafted, the amendment would gut protection against mining operation water pollution by exempting tailings pond effluent from any contaminant limits. MOEE officials say the regulatory amendment is being rewritten to better reflect its narrow intent, but we'll see.

The MISA regulatory amendments, as written, taken together with the schedule O environmental retreats in the Mining Act, would result in the Chile-ization of Ontario: no effective environmental rules for mine closure; no effective enforcement; no financial assurance.

In conclusion, Pollution Probe urges this committee to amend Bill 26 to sever schedule O so it may be given the detailed individual scrutiny and consideration it deserves. I am confident that such individual consideration would result in many positive changes. I understand this splitting off of the Mining Act amendments has also been called for by both the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Environmental Law Association. For the sake of the environment and for the sake of the taxpayers of Ontario, I urge you to sever schedule O from the bill during clause-by-clause consideration next month.

The Chair: Thank you. We have a little over four minutes for each caucus. We'll start with the opposition.

Mr Colle: The interest I have from, let's say, an everyday citizen: If Bill 26 goes ahead, could we have what happened in Guyana happen here? I mention this especially when I see the same Mr Friedland seems to have a connection with the company that caused cyanide-laced water to go into the major river of Guyana, the Essequibo River. So could this, let's say, free-for-all that this bill's going to induce in mining cause the same type of cyanide spill in an Ontario river?

Mr Lourie: Absolutely. There really wouldn't be very much difference. As you pointed out, Mr Friedland either is or was a director of a Canadian-owned company called Golden Star that was involved in that mine, and in August this year some of the tailings pond engineering gave way and highly toxic cyanide was released into that river. Clearly in Guyana there are no regulations that required pre-approval or put aside money, as we currently have in Ontario, to pay for that kind of cleanup.

Mr Colle: So in essence, what we're doing is we're moving towards the Guyanian model of regulation. Is that what we're doing here with Bill 26?

Mr Lourie: Right. Well, we're moving to the model of any non-industrialized country, that's right.

Mr Colle: And the way it's going to affect ordinary people is down the road, it's possible if these regulations are removed, that water supplies, water that people drink, could be contaminated from everything from cyanide to what other chemicals, what other poisonous substances?

Mr Lourie: Yes, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, acid mine drainage, there's a wide range of things.

Mr Colle: Again, to the ordinary taxpayer and residents of Ontario, what does that have to do with mining? Why are those chemicals like mercury and cyanide used in mining?

Mr Lourie: In some cases, they're part of the ore. In other cases, they're used in the processing. So in many cases, you can't get around it. For example, in Deloro arsenic was part of the ore body, so when you mine and refine the ore, you have arsenic as a residue.

Mr Colle: So in a nutshell, you basically feel that the way this government is going with Bill 26, deregulating these controls, they're putting drinking water and the health of Ontarians at risk?

Mr Lourie: Absolutely.

Mr Phillips: Just to follow up on that, one of our challenges is that this is but, I think, eight or nine pages in 210 pages and if I can just paraphrase what I think you've told us, that these amendments are major amendments to the Mining Act that, in Pollution Probe's opinion, run serious environmental risks.

Mr Lourie: Yes.

Mr Phillips: Now, I recognize that that may or not be the case, but in Pollution Probe's opinion, serious risk and at the very least, I think your advice to us is that, because you believe it's serious risk -- obviously the mining industry may have a different view -- that this bill deserves, on its own, some very significant public hearings so all the interested parties can be heard.

The problem we're going to run into, I think, is that this bill will become law on January 29. We have a very narrow time to hear delegations and frankly, I fear that voices like yours are simply not going to have time to be heard. Your advice to us is advice that we'd like to try to implement. This is more in the form of a statement, I guess, unfortunately than a question, the statement being that we will do our best.

The Chair: At that, Mr Phillips, I'm going to have to move to Ms Churley.

Ms Churley: To follow up on that, just a very direct question: Were you or your organization consulted before these changes were made?

Mr Lourie: Not to my knowledge.

Ms Churley: Okay. I know that the Minister of Environment and Energy was recently quoted as saying that you can't have a healthy environment unless you have a healthy economy and I think it's the reverse. You can't have a healthy economy without a healthy environment. I think that's a significant reversal from in fact, I believe, the past two governments anyway, and a very significant one.

It seems to me that part of the problem with this bill, as has been outlined by you and others, that it's very significant and most people don't understand the Mining Act and all of the implications and every day we keep hearing more and more bits and pieces.

For instance, I don't know if you mentioned specifically, but it's my understanding, and you might want to clarify this for me, that mining companies will no longer be required to file an annual report and that, under the present law, they used to have to tell the director of rehabilitation, when they made changes to their mining operation, ie expanding, there was a statutory requirement and that's being eliminated.

And furthermore, even though the government in some respects is expanding some powers for inspection here, it's my understanding the staff are all being fired and there are only going to be two inspectors left and one director, who's supposed to be reviewing all the plans that are being brought forward which now, I understand, is being changed so that the director no longer can demand the company institute certain closure plans. He can turn it down, but he can't require that they institute certain plans. That's just a few things in my understanding of the bill; I'm sure there's more. Given all of that, what would you say should be done? Should this piece be taken out and dealt with separately from the rest?

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Mr Lourie: Yes. I think they are tremendously significant changes to what was a very good piece of legislation, and to have it included in such a comprehensive bill, it really takes away -- I think the public is distracted -- from the significance of these. So by severing it, treating it directly, having I suggest some specific hearings and opportunity for public comment on these, people will have a true opportunity to start to understand the implications and also provide their feedback.

Ms Churley: Some of the issues that I outlined, there certainly -- as we get to understand this bill better, there are suggested grave implications for the environment. The issues that I outlined that I think you didn't refer to specifically, are you aware that those are some of the changes that are being made as well, ie, not having to file annual reports and all of that?

Mr Lourie: Yes. I believe that's my understanding. I've heard as well of cutbacks to staff and that there perhaps may only be two inspectors for all of northern Ontario, but that's my understanding.

Ms Churley: You think the whole thing should be scrapped and we should start all over again after consultations with all of the stakeholders in this?

Mr Lourie: Really, as I stated, we just need to take it out of Bill 26 and review it independently and have adequate public review and comment and participation.

The Chair: Thank you. From the government side, first Mr Sampson and then Mr Young.

Mr Sampson: Was there a considerable amount of time between the time in which the tailing dams broke -- and I know I'm going to get this town wrong, but Matachewan, is that right? -- and the time in which there was actually some action taken? Do you know?

Mr Lourie: Yes, I believe a number of years passed.

Mr Sampson: Why was that?

Mr Lourie: It was probably in a remote location. Perhaps there wasn't onsite monitoring. I'm not sure.

Mr Sampson: Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that there were some MOEE hurdles to go over, and there were actually some local township hurdles to go over, they had to declare it an emergency before somebody could actually move? Are you aware of this?

Mr Lourie: I don't know the details of the timing between the actual event and when action took place versus when the mine closed and the event took place.

Mr Sampson: But clearly it would be to the advantage -- I would've thought you would've supported action on behalf of the ministry that would take immediate action, somebody who would be authorized, if there was something happening or we suspected something might happen, that you could move right away as opposed to have to go through hoops and hurdles to get at, first of all, the perpetrator of the issue and secondly, deal with the incident itself.

Mr Lourie: Clearly, the quicker the action the better. I think the issue might be also, though, once you've identified it, who's going to be paying for that.

Mr Sampson: Right, but you want to get the guy before he takes the money out of the bank. This is the way receivers usually act. You get in right away before you go to the bank account and the cupboard's bare.

Mr Lourie: That's right.

Mr Sampson: One might support, for instance, the emergency powers that are in schedule O that says basically the minister can go in if he even senses there might be a problem. That is more authority and more power than he currently has. So you would support that?

Mr Lourie: If that were the case and there were adequate numbers of inspectors and adequate financial assurances set aside that it could be paid for, I have no --

Mr Sampson: Let's talk about the financial assurances section. A mine has a significant life, doesn't it, these days?

Mr Lourie: It depends on the ore body. It could be five years. If anything the length of a mine ore body is shortening over time because of increased mechanization.

Mr Sampson: Is it fair to say that financial assurances with respect to potential damages might change over a period of time from the moment the mine was commissioned to the moment it is decommissioned?

Mr Lourie: Certainly.

Mr Sampson: I gather you would be favouring legislation that would say, "Hey, on a regular basis, we should be taking a look and making sure that the financial assurance section is sufficient to cover the decommissioning and the potential problems created with that," as opposed to saying: "Here is the dollar. It's $1 million," or whatever the number is today. "We don't know whether $1 million is going to be appropriate 10 years from now, but today it's $1 million."

Mr Lourie: Yes. Often you might be setting aside a percentage of the fee based on the amount of tailings that are actually being generated or the revenues or the quantity, so that you're building up a base over time.

Mr Sampson: But the unfortunate part of these things, you don't know how much it costs to decommission. You don't know what the problem is until the day has occurred, and so it would seem to me that the more flexibility you had to change that the day before or certainly move in the day it occurred, the better off you'd be, wouldn't you agree?

Mr Lourie: There's some in logic in that. I think that history shows that typically the cost estimates are underestimated. Often they're changed by governments, and in my experience, where a mining company will then go to a government and say, "We're going to shut down; we're going to fire all our miners unless you allow us to get out of this provision," so in many cases, that kind of flexibility doesn't really benefit anyone, because in certain cases mining companies will use that as an excuse to get out of that kind of a commitment and to blackmail, basically, the government to keep the mine open.

The Chair: That's just about exhausted the time, Mr Sampson. Thank you for appearing today.

ONTARIO ASSOCIATION FOR INTERVAL AND TRANSITION HOUSES

The Chair: Representatives from the Ontario Association for Interval and Transition Houses, welcome. You'll have 30 minutes for your presentation. You can do as you see fit with that time. You may decide to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions and responses. I'd appreciate it if you'd start off by reading your name and your organization into the record for the benefit of the committee and for Hansard.

Ms Victoria Roth: My name is Victoria Roth. I'm the president of the Ontario Association for Interval and Transition Houses.

This is your bill. It's a bit intimidating for grass-roots organizations. We don't have the money, the resources, the expertise in lawyers, constitutional lawyers, all of the above, to look at this and give a clause-by-clause critique of the bill in a matter of days.

I work for the association on a volunteer basis. I'm a front-line worker in a shelter, which means that my time is limited. And the reason that I'm here today is because there are some very unsettling things in this bill as it pertains to abused women and their children.

Even a cursory glance, and I will not pretend that I have read the entire thing nor that I understand it, but I do know one thing: that user fees, as proposed, to quote Mel Lastman, "on virtually anything that moves" will definitely affect the reality of women's lives, particularly women coming from abuse who end up being very poor.

Women do not come to shelters for abused women because it's an easy ride. They give up their homes. They often lose their jobs because they are harassed by their ex-partners. They have to uproot their children. They have to beg for social assistance, which maybe or maybe not they'll be able to live on, depending on whether or not they can find housing. On top of all this, now the government is suggesting user fees on virtually anything they feel like putting them on.

The other thing that's very, very upsetting is the whole notion of medical records being available to the minister or his agents. What does that mean? It's very hard to understand. Often women have to go to their doctors, their doctors are the first to hear about the abuse. We need assurances that this kind of information will be kept confidential between the woman and her doctor.

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This is very frightening. The whole process of this bill is frightening, that the government would have this huge document and try to ram it through and then have hearings for a week before Christmas without giving people adequate time to look at it.

I need to say that abused women and their children do not choose to be abused. Their human rights are violated every single day when they're living with their abuser. Their human rights are being ignored by the government when the government fails to provide services which will enable them to get out.

Getting out doesn't mean providing a few shelters with skeleton staff and very, very little money to stay open and then there is nothing for the women to go to, when what they're looking at is poverty, dislocation. They're taking away day care, they're increasing moneys for university or colleges, all of the things which abused women need in order to get out. Everything is costing more. And I can tell you one thing: Abused women and their children are not the ones to blame for the deficit. They would much rather stay in their homes and in their jobs and in their communities.

This bill and everything else that has gone before it since the election is taking away that escape route for women or making it more and more impossible. This government, and I would like to quote, stated prior to the election a commitment to abused women and their children: "Victims should be treated with courtesy, compassion and respect for their personal dignity and privacy." That's what this government said. "Victims should have access to social services, health care...." It seems like the only promise this government is prepared to carry through is to cut the deficit, regardless of who it hurts, and the whole commitment to abused women and children that they made seems to have flown out the window.

This bill doesn't help us. This bill makes it harder, much, much, much harder, and what in fact we are going to end up doing is making it an impossible choice. Women who are in danger of their lives by their partners -- I'm not talking about a better standard of living here; I'm talking about their lives -- will have to make a choice of either staying in that situation or going and living how? Where? Government is looking at taking away subsidized housing, reducing subsidized housing, reducing, reducing, reducing. Where are they to go? I don't see anything anywhere that provides services or help for those women. This is an infringement of our human rights as women, the guarantee to the safety of the person. This government seems to have totally forgotten that, and I want to go on record as having said that.

We are prepared for meaningful dialogue. Don't come to us and say, "What can we cut?" We have stated over and over again and provided each successive government over and over and over again with documentation of the needs of abused women. The services were not even adequate as they stood, and now we're being asked, "Where can you cut?"

I would like to see any of you come to my shelter and talk to the women, with their bruises and their shattered lives, and tell them you don't care where they go and you don't care what they feed their children. It's easy to sit in this room, far away from the reality, but we're talking about your daughters, your wives, your sisters -- maybe your partner was abused in a previous relationship -- your nieces, your granddaughters. We're not talking about a faceless entity, we're not just talking about the poor, we're talking across the board, and I think that this should be taken seriously.

All parties all the time in elections, they do the politically correct thing and say, "Of course we stand by abused women." But when there are cutbacks, it's something else. Tell the woman who's facing her partner with a gun in his hand, "I'm sorry, but we can't help you because we don't have the money." It's easy to write documents. It's quite a different thing to face them and face their children and tell them: "I'm sorry, there's no help for you. You can go and stay in a shelter for a month, but after that? Well, there are no support services. We've taken those away. We've taken away second-stage housing."

You tell me: Where are we in this? I don't see us reflected here.

Thank you. If you have any questions, you can ask.

The Chair: We've got seven minutes per caucus for questions and we start off with the third party.

Mr Cooke: A lot of your comments are on the overall approach of the government which is reflected in the bill as well as some of the other decisions the government has made. I want you to first of all understand that those of us who are sitting on this side of this table are not part of the government. We're part of the opposition, and expressing as much frustration as you are. But based on your experience and your knowledge, I guess I'd just like to ask a couple of questions that I think I know the answer to, but you're there on the front line all the time.

The cuts that have been announced already -- and here I'm talking about cuts to second-stage housing and some of the social services that I would argue are preventive services or can help prevent some of the difficulties within families, those cuts -- do you believe or have you seen any evidence at this point that what is happening is resulting in more violence, more abuse, and therefore, if people want to look at it in just terms of dollars and cents, more cost over a period of time to the government?

Ms Roth: Let me first clarify the second-stage housing issue. Second-stage housing provided safe housing for women and their children. Now, that's been eliminated, not just cut. It's history. That's the first thing that's really important to know here.

There was very little second-stage housing anyway, okay? Let me make that very clear. I don't want anyone to get the impression that every woman who was in a first-stage shelter moved on to second-stage. Many women do not, because there's not space and some don't find it necessary. So that's the first piece.

But what it in fact does is it puts women who are at high risk back into a high-risk situation, because, believe it or not, there are men who stalk women, who try to get their kids out of school, who harass women at work, and this is where the second-stage housing provided a time of safety where the women could be away and protected from that. And that definitely will increase.

Mr Cooke: Many, many years ago, my background was a social worker at the children's aid society. One of my concerns is that if there's not intervention or the opportunity for women to make a decision to leave and go into a safe place and they know there's no place to go after they've been at the initial shelter and they stay home, then we're going to end up seeing cases of more abuse, perhaps very significant injury and perhaps even death, because if you don't get out of that unsafe --

Ms Roth: For sure. Okay. Put yourself in this position: You are a mother, you have three children, they're small. You are now in a position where if you stay with your partner, you're putting yourself and your children at risk, right? Now, you have to decide, are the beatings -- okay, let's say your partner's not beating the children, he's only beating you. So you have to say, "Okay, is that worth a roof over my head, shoes on my children's feet and food in their stomach?" Because for sure I can guarantee you, when she leaves, she will have a hard time feeding and clothing and housing her children.

So you're asking her, we as a society are asking that woman, to make an impossible choice, and that's exactly what happens when these services aren't there. Women are saying: "I may be risking my life, but I need to feed my kids. I need to have housing."

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Mr Cooke: We could go on and talk about what I think we'll see as the statistics, as they did in Alberta, huge increases in the numbers of child welfare cases after the welfare cuts came into place and 22% increases in caseloads in Alberta. And at the same time in Ontario, we're cutting financial resources to children's aid societies so that the societies are only going to be able to meet their statutory obligations to investigate. We could talk about all of those.

I guess one of the things that frustrates me the most, though, is that the decisions that have been made by the government, the budget and this bill and the other cuts that were made as well, are changing the very nature of Ontario. Maybe that's what the people of the province want. I don't know. I don't believe they do, but if that's what this is all about, changing the very face of Ontario, then I hardly think that a week of public hearings in Toronto on this bill and then two weeks of public hearings in January across the province is ample opportunity to engage all of the people in this province about what kind of province they want in the future, because make no mistake about it: What we're doing in Ontario now is changing this province from a caring society to one of survival of the fittest, and I think the people of this province have a right to be part of that decision and they're being shut out.

The hearings that were offered to us -- you're concerned and we're concerned about hearings a few days before Christmas and how accessible they are. You should know the initial hearings that we were offered were this week and last week, 9 in the morning until midnight, so that we'd have people appearing before us the Friday before Christmas at midnight, and this was supposed to be access.

Your frustration, I can assure you, is shared by us, that the very nature of this province is being changed, and they're trying to change it on us without you even knowing about it. I certainly appreciate you coming and sharing your frustration with us.

Ms Roth: I do have a question for the government, if that's allowed. I would like to know what will happen with the material gathered at these hearings. What will happen to that?

The Chair: Well, ma'am, it's really not a forum for grilling the government.

Ms Roth: No, I just -- can you not tell me a --

Mr Young: I'll use my time to answer the question, Mr Chair.

The Chair: We still have a minute left in --

Mr Silipo: The government members will answer you in a second on that question, but if I can just pursue, to add to what Mr Cooke was saying, one of the things that in our view makes the government's approach even less understandable and less acceptable is the fact that what is driving their agenda is not so much their perceived need to cut the deficit -- they justify making all the cuts in light of that -- but the fact that they have to find, by their own accounts, about $5 billion to pay for the tax cut that they are wanting to provide to people across the province, a tax cut which is going to benefit, by and large, not the women that you are serving and not the people that you are serving but those that are in the highest income brackets. That is one of the things that we continue to try to point out as well that we believe is unjustified in what the government is doing.

The Chair: Sorry, Mr Silipo. With that, you've gone into the government time.

Mr Young: Thank you very much for a heartfelt presentation, and we were listening very carefully.

First I'd like to answer your question, what will happen with this material? We have people making 30-minute presentations all day. There's all the ones I get. We get a copy of virtually every presentation in writing. As well, we take notes, and we've taken extensive notes. We have meetings during the day now, we will probably have meetings over the holiday, before we go to hearings next week, and we will give feedback to the appropriate ministers and the Premier's office and we will review the information carefully. This is all part of the process that the opposition is saying we're not having, but of course we're in the midst of it right now. So that's what will happen with the information.

I would like to ask you, did you have someone advise you from one of the political parties on Bill 26?

Ms Roth: And what do you mean by that?

Mr Young: Did someone come and advise you about Bill 26 about how awful it was and how --

Ms Roth: No.

Mr Young: No?

Ms Roth: I'm sorry, I work --

Mr Cooke: She's quite capable of coming to that conclusion on her own.

Interjections.

Mr Silipo: You manage to insult everyone who comes to this committee.

The Chair: Order, please.

Ms Roth: Excuse me, I'd like to speak for myself.

Mr Young: The reason I was asking is because there's a lot of misinformation out there about this bill coming from the members sitting opposite. You said that there are no benefits in health services and that your clients have been totally forgotten. Did you know that as part of the changes to the drug benefit plan there will be 140,000 low-income people added to the Ontario drug benefit plan? I think that's good news, don't you?

Ms Roth: The only medical thing I mentioned, and it was something that, believe it or not, I read myself --

Mr Young: Oh, I believe it. It's just that you said you hadn't read the bill and you --

Ms Roth: I said I didn't scrutinize the entire bill and I won't pretend to be an expert.

Mr Young: Yes, so I just wondered where you got the information from, because there's so much misinformation out there and there's not much good news. It's hard to get the good news. This is really good news; 140,000 people.

Ms Roth: Okay, that's nice. Thank you very much for that. The main concern that I raised when I was speaking was access to medical files. This is a serious issue for abused women. That's what I chose to address because that is a serious issue. If you're going to have user fees for people on social assistance, I don't see how that is going to benefit the poor. If they are living on the minimum social assistance dollars and then they are expected to find money for more of their drugs, I think that will be a hardship. If you are saying that -- and I was a single mother working on minimum wage, I had no drug plan, I had no drug card and I had to pay for my medication -- if you're going to give some relief to that segment of the society, then I thank you, because that's long overdue.

Mr Young: That's what I'm saying. Speaking on that position, you might have been able to get free drugs under this Bill 26.

Mr Cooke: Copayments.

Ms Roth: I need to say that I would not want to take the money for that benefit for me from my poorer sisters. What it looks like is that you're taking the same dollars and you're stretching them thinner and you're saying to me, "Okay, I'll let you pay less for your drugs, but I'm going to make the mom on welfare start paying." I'm sorry, but that doesn't feel right to me.

Mr Young: What we're saying is 140,000 low-income people will now receive the benefits of the drug benefit plan who didn't receive it before. That's in Bill 26 and I would be fairly sure that's good news for your clients. No one had ever told you that before, so I wanted to make sure you understood that, that's all.

Ms Roth: Okay, thank you. As long as I'm not taking it from those on welfare.

Mr Cooke: You are.

Ms Roth: That's the problem, right?

Mr Sampson: To be quite frank, I'm always concerned when we talk about this subject, because it represents the dark side of the male population, something I as a male can't be terribly proud of. We should have zero tolerance for that kind of activity. What would you have said to a government that would say to you, "I don't have any money even for funding for any shelter"?

Ms Roth: I would want to know why not.

Mr Sampson: If they had spent it elsewhere and it was going to interest payments, would you be upset?

Ms Roth: I would like to know then who else is going to pay for that interest payment.

Mr Cooke: It's going to tax cuts.

Interjections.

Mr Young: What about $5 million to the OFL --

The Chair: Let's have order, please, among the committee members. Mr Cooke and Mr Young, if you'd refrain from comments.

Ms Roth: I'd be okay with that as long as you are also asking those with three, four, five times as much money as I have.

Mr Sampson: I guess what I'm driving at -- maybe you're misreading me and I'm sorry -- is I don't want to put this province in a position where we can't provide money for the people who need it. I don't want to do that. But I also want to create a province that's got some opportunity for the people who are stuck in the difficult situations so that they will have places to go, they will have jobs to go to. That is what I believe we're trying to do in this province, not ruin our ability to service the people that you have --

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Ms Roth: Okay, okay, but you're taking away the opportunities. When you take away subsidized housing and subsidized day care, you're taking away phase 1 of getting out. Initially, when a woman gets out, you tell her to go and get a job, but she has no day care; you tell her to go looking for work, but she has no money for TTC. I don't understand this opportunity thing. Women don't want to live on welfare. I know many women who got initial assistance and were off it in two years. That's the opportunity. That is the opportunity.

The Chair: Can we move to a member of the opposition?

Mr Phillips: Do we have seven minutes altogether?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr Phillips: Just a comment first, because I must respond to what the Conservative member said, and then questions. Just to make sure everybody understands, the Conservative government ran on a platform of promising -- and it was written promise in detail -- no new user fees, no copayments, no fees on seniors for drugs --

Mr Young: No copayments.

Mr Phillips: No copayments. That was a clear, factual promise. This bill, Bill 26, allows them to implement -- it says here, "Social assistance recipients and seniors will be asked" -- not asked, but it says "asked" but will be forced, "to make a copayment of $2 per prescription."

I want to make that very clear. It was a clear promise that they wouldn't do it. This law now forces seniors and people on social assistance, each time they have a prescription, to pay a $2 fee. I just want that on the record.

Mr Gerretsen: My wife worked for a number of years in an interval house and a transition house so, you know, certainly from some of the stories that she used to tell me, I completely accept what you're saying without any hesitation at all. Could you just give us some statistics though? How many houses do you represent, just in broad terms.

Ms Roth: I was expecting the statistics question.

Mr Gerretsen: No, how many are there across the province?

Ms Roth: How many houses are there? I don't know. Not all transition houses, shelters, belong to OAITH, because they can't. Let's say it's 70, but my problem with the numbers game is how many numbers does it take in order to be heard, you know.

Mr Gerretsen: No, no, no, I just wanted to get some notion of the severity of the problem.

Ms Roth: The severity of the problem is -- I mean, you all read it in your newspaper that 80,000 people use them.

Mr Gerretsen: Some 80,000 people. Okay, that's --

Ms Roth: I don't know, is that severe enough?

Mr Gerretsen: Yes, that's good enough.

What would you suggest the government do in this regard? We know that you're basically saying Bill 26 is something directly contrary to -- but --

Ms Roth: What I would say is --

Mr Gerretsen: -- in order to more effectively deal with the abused women and children situation, what suggestions do you have?

Ms Roth: The suggestion I have is that the government look at its own statement where it says it is imperative to provide services for abused women and their children and do it. That's my suggestion.

Mr Gerretsen: And would you agree with me that in the long run, by doing that more effectively, in effect, the economic benefits to society far outweigh not doing anything at all or at least cutting off funding for a lot of these places? Would you not agree with that?

Ms Roth: I think that's pretty self-evident, but I think the broader issue is, are we going to tolerate violence?

Mr Gerretsen: Absolutely.

Ms Roth: I mean, why do we have to tie this to -- if I can prove to the government that by providing services for abused women and children, it is going to save some money -- excuse me, I don't want to play that game. I want to say that by providing services for abused women and their children, they are saving lives. That's what it's about. It's do we value our women and children or not?

Interruption.

The Chair: No representations from the gallery, please.

Mr Crozier: I'm certainly not here to debate you or to question your ability to make up your own mind, so I'll ask a question of you with regard to privacy. A previous Conservative candidate has been appointed to the Social Assistance Review Board, and I want to quote from her and then I'd like your comment on it with regard to privacy.

Evelyn Dodds is quoted as saying, "The right of the public to protect its money must outweigh the right of an individual to privacy." She told a Legislative committee that in 1994. Would you agree with that, or would you comment on that?

Ms Roth: Well, If that's a reflection of the values of our society, I'm ashamed to live in Ontario, because we're not talking about the right to privacy being a frivolous thing when it comes to abused women and their children, we're talking about putting their lives in danger. So what you're basically saying is the government's right to know what is happening to their dollar is more important than a woman's life.

Mr Young: That was not in reference to abused women, okay?

The Chair: Mr Young, you've had your opportunity, it's the opposition's --

Mr Crozier: I didn't say that, sir.

Mr Young: No, but that was the inference.

Mr Crozier: You're sounding more like the criticism you gave --

The Chair: Gentlemen.

Mr Crozier: It's still my time?

The Chair: Yes, it is.

Mr Crozier: You're sounding more like the criticism that you gave me this morning about someone interrupting.

I appreciate your comment in that respect. I wonder, have you had the opportunity to hear any of Minister Cunningham's remarks with regard to the fact that they are not reducing the availability of second-stage transitional houses, I guess it would be? Apparently the houses are still there but there's no money to operate them, is that correct?

Ms Roth: If you put women into an apartment building and call that second-stage housing, then I guess it hasn't been eliminated, but that's not quite true. There is actually one of the second-stage housing whose funding is directly related to their programs where the actual building and units will be gone. So that statement may be applicable in a couple of cases, but it certainly isn't applicable in all.

Mr Cooke: No security.

Ms Roth: It's not even just a case of no more security where you have situations where the support staff was replaced by a part-time security person, but you also have the situation where the actual building, the unit, will be gone because they were dependent on being in that category. So that won't be there any more.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Roth. We've come to the end of your half-hour. I'd like to thank you on behalf of the committee for taking the time to appear before us today. I appreciate it.

I would appreciate, members, if we would try to refrain from arguing across the aisle. We all do have our time. I understand that we can get frustrated at times, but in respect to the limited amount of time the presenters have, if we could keep that to a minimum, as we have up to now, it would be appreciated.

Would Rhonda Payne be here from the Social Action Committee of the Faculty of Social Work? Rhonda Payne?

I believe the clerk has gone to look for Ms Payne, so I'm going to have just a quick five-minute recess.

The subcommittee recessed from 1528 to 1532.

FACULTY OF SOCIAL WORK, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

The Chair: That's the end of our short recess. If we could have members from the social action committee of the faculty of social work, University of Toronto, come forward, please. Good afternoon and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have 25 minutes today for your presentation. You may want to leave some time at the end of that presentation for a response and questions from the three caucuses, but the 25 minutes is yours to do with as you wish. I would appreciate it if, before you began, you would read your names and your organization into the record for the benefit of the committee members and Hansard.

Ms Rhonda Payne: Okay, thank you. My name is Rhonda Payne and I represent the faculty of social work at U of T, the social action committee.

Ms Nandini Saxena: My name's Nandini Saxena and I'm also a member of the same committee at the U of T faculty of social work.

Ms Sajedeh Zahraei: I'm Sajedeh Zahraei. I'm on the same committee as well.

Ms Payne: I'd like to begin by apologizing. We don't have anything written because we were just informed yesterday at noon that we were coming to present. So we very quickly came together and cobbled together some of the most important points that we thought of. So I'll begin.

Though we're here representing the social action committee of the faculty of social work at U of T, we're not addressing aspects of the bill which will affect our future job prospects or even the immediate concerns of our clients. We're here as citizens concerned about the erosion of the democratic process that Bill 26 represents. Democracy has been eroded by the lack of public consultation until this moment, the size and scope of the bill and the manner in which it was introduced to the Legislature.

The Conservative Party claims to be a populist government which is concerned about the voice of the so-called ordinary citizen being drowned out by special-interest groups. If this is so, then they should be opening up public debate to the ordinary citizens, not shutting it down. I think there are many mechanisms for doing that. If they seem unsuitable, then there should be more research into doing that. We firmly believe that ordinary people should be involved more in parliamentary decision-making and consultation.

Page 19 of the Common Sense Revolution says:

"We are ready to listen, to learn and to work with anyone who wants to join us and who can show us more creative, more effective ways to end waste and duplication....

"But how we get there will be discussed in partnership with all Ontarians."

I think Bill 26 is a prime example of how the Conservative government is not living up to that. There are so many changes being passed all at once, very quickly, and what I read in the paper was that even Conservative backbenchers were running around trying to get a copy of the bill on the day that it was presented. It was also apparently announced while opposition MPPs were still analysing the financial statement. My question is, is this real democracy?

I think some of the comments made by some members of the Conservative government are also reflective of this lack of concern for process. Ernie Eves criticized Speaker McLean by saying he could have avoided the whole mess by taking the opposition's refusal to vote as zero against the bill. This was reported in the Toronto Star. I think this is evidence of lack of due process. I think there was a very good reason for the opposition, and to write it off in that manner just ignores democratic process.

The other comment that I very strongly objected to was Mike Harris's comment that the opposition MPPs who stood up in the Legislature on the day that the bill was attempted to be passed were acting out because they lost the election. That's not verbatim; that's what I remember of the comment. What that is is a denial that there was an absence of alternatives, that it was very difficult to stop the bill otherwise. It was a desperate measure that was directly proportionate to the desperation of the situation, and the entire faculty of social work sent a letter of thanks to the MPPs who did stand up. I hope they all got to see it. A lot of people were very enthusiastic about signing that thank-you note because they thought it was a very brave thing that Alvin Curling did.

One of the other things that was in the Common Sense Revolution was that we need to have less bureaucracy, which I think is a goal that most people would approve of, but if that is what you're attempting to do, then why pass this huge bill of 2,225 pages, I think the NDP government said it was, that very few people can read?

Mr Cooke: When you add up all the compendiums.

Ms Payne: Okay. Before I get into the details of our objections to this, there are a couple of comments that I'd like to make.

The Harris government has made a big deal of the fact that it has a mandate for deficit reduction. First of all, Marnie Hays of Metro Tenants Legal Services made a very good comment. She said they have a mandate for deficit reduction, not democracy reduction.

Interjection.

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Ms Payne: I thought it was great too. Second of all, I was asked why I brought the election returns along with me. I found it very interesting that in the election returns it summarizes the fact that 44.8% -- and this is valid ballots cast, so it wasn't people who just spoiled their ballots -- of people voted for Harris, which means that 55.2% voted against Harris. Is this a mandate? Regardless of the structure of our parliamentary system, which gives them an overwhelming number of seats, I think the number of people in Ontario really puts into question whether this is truly a mandate.

The other thing I wanted to say before I started is, I'm going to be referring to health care aspects of the bill, but not so much for those parts of the bill themselves, just to illustrate the point that I'm going to make about democracy and centralization of power.

The first thing I wanted to start off with was how Bill 26 shows how the government is restricting citizens' access to information about government institutions, but at the same time it's increasing its own access to private citizens' rights. Re the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, it says that institutions will be able to deny access to a request if it's deemed frivolous or vexatious. There doesn't seem to be any description of what "frivolous or vexatious" is. Is it left to the institution to decide? I would seriously question whether an institution would have the capacity to fairly assess such a decision.

The other part that we object to is that the fees that are proposed for both the applications and for the appeals will be a strong deterrent to many people who won't be able to afford them. You'll have differential access to something that I think all citizens should have access to. Tom Wright, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, has said that these measures will threaten the fundamental right to know what is happening to the government. This is a right of all citizens, not just people who can afford to pay for it, and to take this right away is not consistent with a government that claims to represent the interests of the ordinary citizen.

The other aspect that I want to look at in terms of Bill 26 is the centralization of power. I'm going to get into some of the specifics here. Re the Municipal Act, it says that there's no provision for public involvement in municipal restructuring, that the commission for any restructuring would be set up and directed by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, in this case, Al Leach, which, again, is cutting out public involvement.

The minister will be able to allocate road and transit grants based on discretion rather than formulas. I'm not particularly enamoured of formulas myself, but I also don't think that just on the discretion of the minister is very fair. I would ask: Where is the accountability? Is that mentioned in the bill? Will there be consultation on these kind of fees? This should be clearly indicated within the bill, if this must be passed.

Another example is section 5 of the Public Hospitals Act. It gives the minister power to decide financial aid on his own, previously defined by regulation. In other words, before this was set out by regulation and now the minister has the power to do this.

Section 6 gives the minister power to close or determine what services are available, if in the public interest. I think we'll talk a bit about public interest later. That's a problematic idea right there.

Section 9.1 defines issues to be considered in determining the public interest, but these are issues, they're not standards. That left us with a lot of questions about how this idea of the public interest will be determined.

We're still left in the position of being forced to rely on the minister's questionable ability to determine the public interest. While we're particularly concerned about the current government, this concentration of power is problematic regardless of which party is in power. So this isn't just targeted at the Tory government; this is a concern that would be ongoing.

The next one is the Health Insurance Act. The minister will unilaterally determine what is an insured service, and apparently there's no mention of services that are medically necessary. Previously, this kind of determination happened with negotiation with the OMA. Now it is centralized in the Minister of Health. Our question is, what expertise does the minister have to do this? At the same time, the current government has shown an unwillingness to consult with people. These two considerations combined together make us very concerned about what would be determined medically necessary, what would be funded, but also just what position does the minister have to shut out other bodies.

We'd also like to mention the fact that on page 6 of the Common Sense Revolution it says, "Under this plan, there will be NO new user fees," and "no" is in capital letters. This is what the people voted for, and here we're opening up the possibility that user fees may be installed if certain services are decided to be medically unnecessary. I don't think this is what people voted for.

On page 5 of the Common Sense Revolution they mention the goal of redistributing decision-making power away from the politicians and bureaucrats and returning it to the people themselves. Well, I think some of these examples have shown that this is not what's happening now; this is a promise that was made that is not being carried out.

I'll return to "public interest." We have a lack of confidence in the Conservative government to say what the public interest is, for the following reasons: first of all, "public interest" isn't defined, and second, the government seems to have its own definition of what special-interest groups are, and there is again the lack of respect for due process. I think some of the policies are very shortsighted, such as the environment, such as health care. The long-term impacts of these policies are not being looked at.

I'd like to return now to special interests, because this is really a key point, both about Bill 26 and about the government in general.

Within Bill 26, the Independent Health Facilities Act, though it's not spelled out right in the bill, critics have said this opens the door for American for-profit companies. Allowing American for-profit companies into our public health system, first of all, doesn't help the public health system, and second, doesn't help the Ontario economy. I think American companies will take profits out of the province, and that is a concern that expands far beyond the Health Act.

Another example is the Forest Fires Prevention Act. Apparently, after the passage of this bill, it will no longer be required to have work permits before carrying on logging, mining, and of these kinds of activities, within 300 metres of a forest. This may benefit commercial interests -- it may speed up logging and it may help them with their profits -- but I think it puts the lives and property of Ontarians at risk, and also runs the risk of higher firefighting expenses.

One last example is the Mining Act. Section 15 of the current Environmental Bill of Rights calls for 30 days of public comment for a bill having a significant effect on the environment. If Bill 26 is passed, that is obviously overridden. What is being also put in here is the self-regulation of mine closure activities. This puts the control of such activities into the hands of commercial interests, which are special interests; in other words, profit-making mining companies. This is not in the public interest, which would be protection of the environment, protection of our water table, protection from noxious chemicals.

This is really the core of the problem, that the current government is defining special-interest groups in a way that leaves out the businesses, which we feel are special-interest groups in themselves. Not that they have any less voice than anybody else, but they should not be given privileged voice, and groups such as social activist groups, social justice groups, people who are concerned about social services, are being pegged as special-interest groups.

There are two comments I'd like to wind up with. In a lot of the criticism that's come out about responses to the Harris government, people are saying: "Well, people don't like change. We're bringing in some new, revolutionary acts and people just don't want to make the change." We would like to say that a lot of these actions are not new and this is not revolutionary. We think this is sending us back to a time when more people were disenfranchised, when more people did not have a say.

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Finally, in response to the criticism that is also quite prevalent, that, "We have to cut the deficit, and that's the priority," we're not saying that the deficit does not need to be cut. We are saying that there are alternatives that do not threaten democracy. The connection here between democracy and deficit-cutting is very spurious. Second, it doesn't need to happen in a way that hurts the province. Alternatives have been offered. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to compile a reading list, but the Social Planning Council has very good resources in that sense, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation has put out some good information as well.

On that note, I'd like to conclude. We welcome any comments.

The Chair: Thank you very much. We have two minutes per caucus, starting with the government caucus.

Mr Young: Just a question on freedom of information. What I would define as "frivolous or vexatious" is that an individual has a bone to pick with an agency or with a municipality or a school board and they ask repeatedly for more and more information. It ties up the staff, and at an estimated cost of $30 an hour or more, it costs a great deal of money. That's what we're trying to address. Sometimes it takes hundreds of hours; it could go that high. Would you accept any definition of "frivolous or vexatious"? How would you address that if you were the government?

Ms Payne: I think it should be spelled out very clearly what kinds of frivolous requests you're trying to target. You gave a very good example right now. I know it's very difficult to be that specific within a bill, but I think an attempt should at least be made. If it can't be made to the satisfaction of the public, maybe it should be left out and there should be another alternative considered.

Ms Saxena: Another question is, why is the government trying to restrict access, the public's right to have information about what is going on in the government? Why does the government want to do that?

Mr Young: I don't think they are. I think they're just trying to address the cost and the administrative procedure.

Ms Saxena: As long as that is clearly stated in the act, I think that's great, but it has to be clearly laid out. Otherwise, the government can abuse that power very easily.

Mr Hardeman: Thank you for coming in. You mentioned the issue about no public consultation for municipal restructuring, and I just wanted to point out that the minister's prerogative to appoint a commissioner is done upon the request of the local government, upon which time they've had, hopefully, enormous opportunity to speak to its electorate about what changes they want to make or feel appropriate to make. Beyond that, there's nothing in the legislation that would prevent the commissioner or the commission from looking at more public consultation to make its decision as to what was appropriate for restructuring that particular area of the province.

I would just point out that the minister's prerogative is extended to what it presently is, the difference being that today it can only be settled through legislative changes, which has been done in a number of cases, to the chagrin of the people involved, but the new way would give the minister that authority to help settle local solutions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Hardeman, for that comment. Now we must move to the opposition.

Mr Gerretsen: Just following up on that last point, the major change is this: When it was a legislative change it would have to come back to the Legislature and be debated there; if the minister has the power, it can just be done by way of regulation.

I'd like to congratulate you on your presentation. I take it that you're a student organization within the faculty of social work?

Ms Payne: Yes.

Mr Gerretsen: You very quickly have picked up on some of the relevant points that have been argued before the committee. When did you make your request to appear before the committee?

Ms Payne: That's a very good question -- I almost forgot to bring that up -- because that is part of our concern about the process. Very shortly after these hearings were announced, we did make a request and, quite frankly, got the runaround. One of the committee members phoned and was told that the date hadn't been set yet and, "We'll get back to you" and they didn't say when we would hear, when the dates apparently had been set; the NDP party had sent out dates. Then I phoned and was told that now there was a waiting list, so we got put on the waiting list. I got phoned yesterday at noon to say, "You have a space here." We had very little notice.

Mr Gerretsen: Just so there is no misunderstanding, as you mentioned the NDP, you're coming in here on your own accord and you're not here to represent any particular party or anything like that?

Ms Payne: Oh, no.

Mr Gerretsen: That's right. Thank you.

Mr Silipo: I think we all would be in some awe if you had had more time to prepare, because even in the short time, you've given us a very useful overview of the concerns, which we've heard from a number of presenters here already. We can only hope that many others, particulary the social profession you are going into -- I don't know whether we're going to be hearing from that association, but we look forward to those comments.

What we're seeing here, as you pointed out, is instance after instance where the government is putting in place pretty draconian measures to restrict access to information by individuals. You made the point that at the same time, the irony is that the government is actually getting more into the information of individuals.

It's interesting the point Mr Young made, that one of the things the government is doing through this bill is restricting access to everyone by virtue of now removing the free portion of the searches; the first two hours of searches up until now have been free. That's going to make it difficult for a lot of people to access information.

What I wanted to ask you about is that you said you don't think this is what people voted for, referring to the user fee. We're seeing instance after instance where what the government said and what it's doing are two different things. What's your perception out there among your fellow students, other young people you see and people in general? Is that a perception that is beginning to set in, in your view, or is it still going to take a long time before people realize that what this government is doing is far, far more draconian than it ever suggested it was going to do?

Ms Saxena: We're in the faculty of social work and we're all doing placements, so we're also involved in lots of different agencies around the city. We are finding that in many, many social services agencies and among a large portion of the student population, people were already against Harris anyway because of the things he mentioned he would be doing in the Common Sense Revolution. But it is beginning to take root, the seriousness of the things he is doing and how he is going far beyond what he originally said he would be doing. I can really only speak about what I've seen from other students and from people in other faculties.

The Chair: Thank you very much. I appreciate your coming in today to make your presentation.

TAXPAYERS ALLIANCE

The Chair: The representative from the Taxpayers Alliance, good afternoon and welcome. You've got 30 minutes to make your presentation, which you can use as you see fit, but you may wish to leave some time at the end for response and questions. Begin by stating your name and the name of your association.

Mr Ray Morand: Thank you. It's the Taxpayers Alliance. My name is Ray Morand, the executive director. It was fairly short notice for our appearance here; however, we tried to do a quick overview of what we saw in the omnibus bill.

The Taxpayers Alliance has goals and objectives, which are:

-- To make politicians at all levels of government fiscally responsible and accountable to the taxpayers who elected them.

-- To strike a reasonable balance between the quantity and quality of government services and programs and the public's financial ability to fund them.

-- A public vote on mill rates and critical budgets in order to control the revenue-raising procedures by local governments.

-- The direct election of all members of local boards and commissions.

-- The right for municipal government to reject top-down programs mandated by senior levels of government.

-- A limit of two consecutive terms of office for all municipal elected officials.

-- Recorded votes on at least all money motions voted on by municipalities, school boards, local boards and commissions.

-- The consolidation and rationalization, not amalgamation, of municipal bureaucracies and service departments in order to reduce duplication at every level.

We use these goals and objectives as our guide in examining these proposals. The purpose of this bill is "to achieve Fiscal Savings and to promote Economic Prosperity through Public Sector Restructuring, Streamlining and Efficiency and to implement other aspects of the Government's Economic Agenda." To do this, you wish to amend a number of acts, enact three new acts and set them out in a schedule. Let's deal with these one by one.

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Schedule A, the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act: "To assure the...disclosure of the salary and benefits paid in respect of employment in the public sector to employees who are paid a salary of $100,000 or more a year." We are in favour of this and might suggest that it be broadened to include all publicly traded companies in the province of Ontario.

Schedule K, amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act: We believe these two acts are the cornerstone and foundation of the taxpayers' ability to keep our governments under control and the public properly informed. We do not support a department head being able to simply decide that a request for information is frivolous or vexatious without a strong right of appeal.

Schedule M, part I: We believe many of these changes will lead to significant savings to the taxpaying public.

Part II, schedule M, other statutes relating to municipalities, Municipal Franchises Act: "A municipal corporation is given the power to pass bylaws eliminating the requirement to obtain the assent of the electors before exercising any power under the Municipal Franchises Act or any other act." I'd like to know which fascist thought that one up, especially that last little bit "or any other act." We are opposed to any attempt to remove accountability to the taxpayers from the laws of Ontario.

The Public Utilities Act: "The requirement to obtain the assent of the electors before exercising a power under the act may by bylaw be waived by the municipal corporation." It must be the same fascist at it again, no doubt using the old civil service theory that if we just appointed our politicians for life, we could save a bundle on election costs. We are opposed to this for the abovementioned reasons.

Schedule Q, amendments to the Fire Departments Act et al series of acts "to require arbitrators to consider specified criteria, including the employer's ability to pay." We consider this a major advancement. Finally the government is actually going to force and recognize, at least in a small way, the principle of ability to pay. We believe this is a good first attempt to bring fiscal responsibility to Ontario and our organization will continue to do all in our power to support such actions.

Keep up the good work and the best of seasons greetings for you all. Remember, there's only one taxpayer, and that's you.

The Chair: We have about eight minutes per caucus, and we'll start with the opposition.

Mr Phillips: You've mentioned schedule M, municipalities. One of the areas we've had the most debate around is the area of user fees and taxes and charges that are now available to municipalities that weren't there before, a whole new section for them to raise fees and taxes. The government said that it's intention here was to provide unlimited flexibility for municipalities on fees and charges and allow them to override all existing limitation on user fees. These proposed amendments confer significant discretionary power on councils. As a matter of fact, all they need to do now is pass a bylaw, and as you rightly point out, there's no appeal to the municipal board. They need not get any approval from the electorate other than the bylaw.

Mayor McCallion was in here at the start of the hearings and we asked her what was now possible under this; for example, "Could you have a gasoline tax in the municipality"? She said: "Of course we can. I can tell you that when we discussed integrated transit in the greater Toronto area, the only way that we can have integrated transit in the greater Toronto area -- and we discussed it, all the municipalities, all around Metro Toronto -- was a gasoline tax. We asked the government to pass it. Now we might have that opportunity to put it in." In other words, she is saying, "This is great, because we can now impose a gas tax; we want this integrated transit system and this allows us to impose a gas tax," by a mere bylaw, I might add.

Does the Taxpayers Alliance have any view on that section of the act?

Mr Morand: Yes, we do. Probably you'll find some municipalities that will attempt to do it. I don't think there's any question about it. What will happen is that the province is going to have to step in and prevent it from happening. I believe the theory is great, what they're trying to accomplish. They're trying to bring the responsibility down to the local level where the services are provided.

In actual fact, being able to do that through these changes is a dicey proposition indeed. I have some awareness of what faces municipalities because my brother is in the unenviable position of being the chief administrative officer for the city of Kingston and so I hear what's happening.

Mr Gerretsen: Oh, yes, I know your brother; John.

Mr Morand: I can see some of the problems that are going to arise from this. However, the government simply can't stop and say: "Well, there's no solution for it. We'll just throw our hands up and we'll keep on going as we have." I believe they've made an honest attempt to try and deal with some of these things; in some areas, have perhaps gone too far. If some of these things were to go through in their entirety, if all of them were to go through, there would be some problems down the road.

However, the government has to do something. We have a debt that is just enormous. It's hanging over us both at the provincial level and at the federal level. If we don't do something about it, we and definitely our children are going to suffer from it.

Mr Phillips: I want to make sure: You're in favour of giving the municipalities the right to impose a gas tax or a sales tax? By the way, many have said they will do it.

Mr Morand: No, we're not in favour of it. However, we see great difficulty in achieving some of the things they want to achieve without making some of these changes. That's why we've insisted that any place where there is what we would consider to be a retrograde action not take place; for instance, removing the requirement of assent from the electorate for the franchises act and so on and so forth. That's why some of those changes are in there, so that they would be able to do this in other areas.

Mr Phillips: But you're against that section of the act that would allow municipalities to impose a gas tax.

Mr Morand: Yes.

Mr Phillips: Good.

Mr Gerretsen: I find your presentation very interesting because in the end you basically say, "It's a first good attempt," but you also call two of the ideas in the legislation "fascist," and it's not my word, it's your word, it's right in here. If I were to look at this document as something that could support my position as a government -- which of course we're not, we're in the opposition -- I'd be very leery of a document that also calls me "fascist" at the same time.

Having said all that, of course, it's been our position throughout that one of the main things that is driving this is not the $10-billion deficit, which I think everybody agrees something ought to be done about -- some people say a little bit quicker, some say slower, what have you -- but what's really driving this is the $5-billion tax cut which has been promised as well, which in effect means that you've got to take $15 billion out of the provincial government system. Does your association have any position with respect to the tax cut?

Mr Morand: Yes, it had better be delivered. It was promised and it had better be delivered. I think the politicians on the government side are aware of that. There's an enormous and inordinate amount of publicity concerning this and there are great attempts to say, "Now the government should back off a little bit on this." I think they do that at their own peril.

It's the old saying: You can't have any gain without some pain. We're going through the pain. We'd better get the gain from it; we'd certainly better. It's our position that tax cut would increase the revenues of the government, along with the cuts they're doing. There would be an increased economic activity in the province. The question is, where that shortfall comes in between when one kicks in as a result of the other.

Mr Gerretsen: So it's your position then that the government should pass this massive bill of over 200 pages, even though in your own terminology some of the ideas are fascist in the bill?

Mr Morand: No, we'd like to see them change a couple of the things in there, as we noted very particularly, specific things that we feel need to be changed.

Mr Gerretsen: Would you agree the bill should have been chopped up in a number of smaller bills so people can get a much better notion as to what's going on?

Mr Morand: No. The reason for it is that all it does is lead to more delay, more time taken by the government. I'm afraid we're of the opinion that one of the unfortunate aspects of government -- I guess it's fortunate and unfortunate, both at the same time -- is that if you want to do something, you've got to get it through, and to get it through you've got to have some discussion on it. If you break this up into, say, 20 sections, you're going to be going through this process 20 times. You might as well go through the pain once.

You can make the argument that it should perhaps be a little longer discussion on it or a little shorter period of discussion on it, but the simple fact of the matter is that many of these changes have to be made. When are you going to do it? Are you going to do it this year? Are you going to do it next year? And the year after?

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Mr Silipo: I'm a little clearer now that there have been a couple of questions to you about your position on the question of tax increases, because in looking at some of the literature you've given us and from my understanding of your organization, I've always understood it to be certainly one of your key --

Mr Morand: Death on taxes.

Mr Silipo: You're against tax increases.

Mr Morand: Yes.

Mr Silipo: So I was puzzled, in looking through your brief and in listening to you, that you wouldn't have talked at all about your concern about the right that municipalities are gaining under this bill to raise taxes. I want you to talk a little bit more about that. If you're calling, as you've been calling, for a revolt against the unjustified increases in taxes across the province, why are you so calm about the sweeping powers that municipalities are gaining under this bill to raise taxes? We're not talking about just user fees here, which is one category of taxes; we're talking about gas taxes, poll taxes, gasoline taxes, sales taxes. These are rights that municipalities are gaining under this legislation.

Mr Morand: Yes. It's a devolution of power. We think some of that's very good. We've been for it for a long time. One of the advantages we have as an organization is that it's easier for us to impact a municipal politician than it is to impact one of you fellows. It's much easier. We're closer to them. We can have a greater impact on them. Usually they're only in for three years, whereas you could be in for five. They have to be a little more careful about what they do. They're closer to the people, and they hear about it a heck of a lot sooner.

Mr Silipo: You like the idea of municipalities having all of these wide powers because you think you can better prevent them from raising taxes?

Mr Morand: No, we feel that, should one of these municipalities do something as outrageous as some of these things, the provincial government is going to step in very quickly and stop it. We don't think there's any question about that, because they want to get re-elected.

Mr Silipo: Then what's the logic? Explain to me the logic, then, because you're saying at the end of the day you don't want municipalities to raise taxes. You're pretty clear about that. Why are you not objecting to them having the power if you think that at the end of the day, if they exercise the power, the minister is going to step in? What's the point of giving them the power?

Mr Morand: If you look at some of the wording we used in there about some of the changes -- "any other act," for instance -- you'll see that if those were gutted from this, they wouldn't be able to do a number of those things. That's why we stuck to those specific areas that we think we can make a change on. I suspect the most important thing that will come out of these hearings is that -- because the government can do what it wants, it has the majority, and it didn't have to have these hearings if it didn't want to, because he's got a long time before the next election. If things pick up significantly, the political reality is that the people will say, "Well, that was kind of tough, but it's great now; things are good."

Mr Silipo: We still have a democratic process, fortunately.

Mr Morand: Although these people haven't been in power for a while, we're not dealing with neophytes. They know what they're doing, and they know that they want to get re-elected. This is always the reality for a politician, at any level, at any time. But some of the principles that we're for we see in this bill and we're quite interested in it. For the first time, we see the government saying there will be some recognition, a forced recognition even to an arbitrator, that they have to talk about ability to pay. These are profound changes.

Mr Silipo: Okay, but you haven't answered my question about the taxes. Let me just come back at this other point. Mike Harris built his reputation, I would say, on being the Taxfighter; again, the equation being that he was against increasing taxes. Indeed, as you said, and you're going to hold him to the promise, he's committed himself to reducing provincial taxes by 30%. I happen to agree with you. I think he's going to follow through on that promise --

Mr Morand: He'd better.

Mr Silipo: -- despite the fact that it's going to, I think, cause devastation across the province. You and I disagree on that, but time will tell.

Don't you think that it's inconsistent, if not hypocritical, for the Premier on the one hand to be saying he's going to cut taxes, but what he's going to do is he's going to allow municipalities to increase taxes? Who is really going to be increasing taxes at the end of the day, when he's cutting grants to municipalities, giving them the power to tax, the power to raise user fees? Isn't he really just indirectly, maybe not even that indirectly, raising taxes?

Mr Morand: I think there are some differences here, because one thing is that, fortunately, they're going to be user fees; they're not going to be taxes.

Mr Silipo: You don't know that. Municipalities are gaining the powers to raise taxes as well.

Mr Morand: Wait a second. Let me finish this. Let me finish this thought first.

Mr Silipo: I want to hear your answer.

Mr Morand: Where they're user fees, they're subject to controls under the law; where they're taxation, there's a general exemption in the Constitution of Canada that exempts that from the Bill of Rights, but user fees aren't, and there's very little attention paid to that.

We've made a number of challenges and are making challenges across the province, for instance, in the area of sign bylaws. It may not sound very important, but there's been some very profound changes because of the Constitution in these areas. For instance, if you don't pay your taxes or you pay your taxes and you overpay, you can only go back three years. But if your municipality were to be charging, for instance, a rate for garbage and then didn't allow your garbage to be picked up for 25 years, you could go back and recovery those moneys from the municipality. This has happened out west and I have no doubt it's going to be happening in the province of Ontario.

There are huge, huge unfunded liabilities just in the area of garbage alone in municipal governments across the province of Ontario, and business certainly is going to be going after this.

Now, if that had been a tax, there would be absolutely nothing that could be done to recover from that. After the three years, you're finished, done like dinner, but where it's a rate, you can do something about it, and the exposure in the province of Ontario with municipalities is somewhere in the vicinity of $250 million. It's a serious exposure.

And with these user fees, we'll be able to attack those because they won't be protected under that exclusionary part of the Constitution. So it's very, very important. We would rather be fighting the user fees than a tax, and I'll tell you this right now: I don't believe that the government will not step in where they attempt to do something like that.

Mr Silipo: I still find it difficult to understand why you find it acceptable --

Mr Morand: I'm not saying we find it --

Mr Silipo: You clearly support from what you said, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you clearly support the approach that the Harris government is making on the provincial level to cut taxes, but at the same time you're okay with the notion that he has given municipalities the power to increase taxes, such as user fees, taxes.

Mr Morand: No, no. I wouldn't say okay. I would say what we're saying is it's the lesser of two evils, and if they're going --

Mr Silipo: But why is it necessary, in your view?

Mr Morand: It may not be necessary, but the simple fact of the matter is if they don't, there will be a horrendous calamity and a disaster with the municipalities, because they simply don't have the money they need. They simply don't have it.

Mr Silipo: They don't have the money. Okay. We agree on that.

Mr Morand: This is the problem, and if he were to say on one hand, "We're going to give you some of these powers but you can't get this additional money and we don't have it to give to you," then what could the municipality do?

Mr Silipo: Let me just finish with this, because I don't know if I have --

The Chair: You still have about a minute and a half.

Mr Silipo: That's great, thank you. Then if what we're going to be seeing is a decrease in provincial taxes, coupled with an increase in user fees and an increase in municipal taxes, either the property taxes that we have now or other taxes that now the municipalities will have to charge, at the end of the day, to use your words, since there's only one taxpayer, how is the average taxpayer going to be any better off?

Mr Morand: I think a couple of things will happen. To start off, with user fees: I think there'll be a lot of areas that will be used less. I think it's straightforward. It's a proven thing. You don't have to guess at it. It's an absolute fact that that will happen. A simple $2 user fee in some areas would probably save the government $250 million, a simple $2 fee, and this has been proven in jurisdiction after jurisdiction.

I share the same concerns I think you have, that instead of a $2 fee it might be a $50 fee. But at least --

Mr Silipo: Also, a $2 fee for somebody earning $10,000 --

Mr Morand: Is a lot different from somebody earning $100,000. I fully understand that.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Morand. I'm sorry but we're going to have to move into the government side. Mr Tascona wants to start off and then leave some other members with questions too.

Mr Tascona: Thank you for your presentation. I'd just like to focus on one area of your brief, schedule Q, dealing with the arbitration. I just want you to know that the mandatory criteria for arbitrators apply not only to fire but to police, public service and hospitals. I just wondered, do you support this?

Mr Morand: Yes, we do. We've tried for a long time as an organization -- and you'll see some of our flyers and such going back to 1991, where we talked about ability to pay being a criteria that the government should have to recognize. All too often the government is in the position of saying, "I've got to have this so I'm going to pass an act and I'm going to get it." It has to come from the taxpayer. It can't come anywhere else. There's no mythical hand dropping a load of money on the table. And because there's a distance between, say, a provincial member and a local person who avails himself of a service, and a lead time as well, it quite often results in the taxpayer not realizing what's going to happen until it's happened to him, and I think as taxpayers, we have to hope that -- I feel that there's kind of two types of government. There's the old two-four, and I don't mean a pack of beer. There's the government that does it to you and the government that does it for you.

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Mr Tascona: Let me follow up on that point. I just want you to know that Ontario's not alone in having mandatory criteria for arbitrators. There are other provinces and the federal government that have it. The purpose of it is to control costs and to have arbitrators consider certain criteria. What we've had so far, we've had opposition from public sector unions to mandatory criteria, in particular the principle of ability to pay. I'd just like to ask you, do you believe it's in the public interest that arbitrators currently have no need to look at the financial status of a municipality in awarding pay increases to their employees?

Mr Morand: No, I think it's outrageous that they don't have to. They certainly should have to. Speaking from the viewpoint of a taxpayer, it's got to be a consideration. It's unbelievable that they don't have to. This is a concept I think that all too often we see that after a period of time of governing perhaps -- I'm not saying the politicians in this room, but some politicians think that because they say it's so, it will be so. We live in the real world, and the real world has caught up to us.

The credit card has been used to the max, and if things go at this rate -- I think Rohmer's book Death by Deficit is a real reality. People are going to start to say, "Hey, these guys are a bad risk." We've seen it in what's happened to the credit rating of this province, which was the bastion of success in this country for a great number of years, and it's been a downhill run for the past 10 years.

Every time there's a downgrade in that bond rating, it costs the taxpayer more. It's got to stop at some point. We hope and we believe that the present government is attempting to do that, but they'd better stick to their guns. They're going to get a lot of flak from it. They're going to get a lot of abuse from it. They're not going to hear from the average taxpayer that often because the average taxpayer's out there in a real grind trying to make a living. He's got to work hard. He doesn't have time to come down here to a meeting. He hopes that something will be done, but that generic "he," that taxpayer out there, up until now hasn't had that guarantee, that's for sure, and if he looks back over the past 10 years at what's been happening to him, he can't be too happy about it, and I think you're hearing about that now.

Mr Young: Thank you very much for an excellent presentation. I'm pleased to see you support the public sector salary disclosure act, and I note that you said it should be broadened to include those in all publicly traded firms in Ontario. I believe that's already the law.

I wanted to ask you, with regard to --

Mr Morand: There was something that we were going to add there, by the way. I'm glad you brought that up. We think that perhaps the directors as well, if they're not listed in that, and we weren't sure. I wasn't able to do enough research on it. But the directors of those corporations as well and any remunerations and/or benefits that they receive.

Mr Young: There's another group that has a lot of influence and has a lot of responsibility in our society that are also very highly paid, and I wondered what your feeling would be with regard to union leaders having their salaries and benefits published.

Mr Morand: We'd be in favour, but I don't see why they would object to it either. There should be no reason for them to object to it. Certainly, I don't think they believe that they're above anybody else in society. That certainly hasn't been their history or their background.

Mr Young: Then with regard to the Municipal Franchises Act, as I understand it, the act is trying to address the fact that municipalities have to come to the province to get permission to change their franchises act, and you said that you have a closer influence or closer control over municipal politicians. All we're doing is giving that power back to them, without referenda or without coming to the province. Don't you think the democratic process at the local level would be able to handle that?

Mr Morand: I have some serious doubts about it. Once again, I'll go back to something that may sound not that important, but we feel and believe that the problem in the province of Ontario so far in the past three years, municipalities have spent somewhere in the vicinity of at least $500,000 and perhaps more in trying to change their bylaws so that they can prevent postering on telephone poles, which the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled to be legal. It's just outrageous. It's absolutely incredible that they would spend this money.

We've talked to them. We've had local politicians tell us they don't care what the Constitution says. They don't care. They're going to stop posters from going up on their telephone poles, and they'll find a way to get around the Constitution. They're hiring outside legal advice to do it. It's an incredible situation. It truly is.

So we've got this problem where some of these powers, if you devolve them to the people at that level, I don't think they have the intent or the experience to handle those matters. The learning process is going to be a sharp curve and it's going to be very unfriendly while it's going on. I think the province should be aware that, ultimately, all those powers flow from the province, so they better keep some control on there. It's fine that these powers are devolving to this level, but they better be ready to step in where it becomes necessary.

Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): Consistent with your comment earlier, I agree with you that I think it's much easier for you to influence or to at least get to the municipal politicians and ensure that they're responsive to the electorate on a day-to-day basis than any other level. That being the case --

Mr Morand: Except for school boards. We have a real problem with them and we hope the government will do something about them.

Mr Klees: That's another subject altogether, and we have an act that deals with that as well. But being consistent on that principle, wouldn't you agree that, with regard to the problem that you've just mentioned now, you should be addressing that at the local level and putting the kind of pressure on them at the local level as you're putting on the provincial and federal level with regard to other issues? What we're trying to do here is to eliminate the cost of doing government. By forcing municipalities to go through the cost of referenda when they want to implement a particular service, that is extremely costly.

The Vice-Chair (Mr Joseph N. Tascona): Mr Klees, we're running short of time. Just direct your question.

Mr Morand: We do that now. We spend a great deal of time with municipalities. Probably one of the tightest-run municipalities financially is Mississauga. Still, right now they're one of the toughest communities on these posters. It's going to be in court February 8. We're going to go after Hazel big-time about it. She's spent probably $15,000 so far trying to fight it in direct costs, and in indirect, perhaps another $15,000.

Mr Gerretsen: You can't go against her; she supported this bill.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Morand; we've run out of time.

DIXON HALL NEIGHBOURHOOD CENTRE

The Chair: Our next group of presenters is Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Centre, Toby Druce. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here today. You have 30 minutes to make your presentation. You can use that time as you see fit. You may want to leave some time at the end for questions. I'd appreciate it if you'd read your name and your organization into the record for Hansard and for committee members before you begin.

Mr Toby Druce: I'd be happy to. My name is Toby Druce. I'm a community development worker at Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Centre. With me is Elizabeth Greaves, who is the executive director of Dixon Hall. I'm here to make the presentation; Elizabeth is here to answer questions and to fill in the points that I may miss.

Dixon Hall is an organization that serves the southeast area of Toronto, an area that includes the community known as Regent Park. We have been serving that area for the last 66 years.

I have to apologize for the briefness of the recommendations that we gave to you. We didn't get a call till about 9:15 this morning to let us know we'd be coming to the committee today, so it was a rush for us.

In doing our brief research for our presentation today, we gave some consideration to our history. At the time that our organization began, actually the whole of the country was in the grip of the Depression, 1929. We thought it was interesting to note that the Department of Municipal Affairs was a creation of those difficult times; that hundreds of municipalities across the country were on the brink of bankruptcy -- and they were on the brink of bankruptcy because they were unable to collect property taxes as businesses and property owners were going bankrupt and forfeiting their properties; and the moneys that they were spending on what was known at the time as poor relief or social services were increasing because of the need of people in the communities; and as a result of a slumping bond market, it was difficult for municipalities to borrow money to meet the difference between what they were taking in and what they were spending.

It was for us, I suppose, an eye-opener that that was the case in 1929, when we started. I can't say that there's a whole lot of difference between that time and this time. We are faced with the same problems at a municipal level. There is a decline in the property tax revenue and there is an increase in the need of the communities.

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At the time, in 1929, the solution was to create a Department of Municipal Affairs which would oversee the functioning of municipal governments to ensure that they were running properly. It was a time when the province saw its role as being to step in to fill a need. Today, when we're faced with a similar situation, it seems that the province is taking steps to step away from its role in overseeing the functioning of the municipalities, and that causes us some concern.

I should have prefaced my remarks by saying that, although we have concerns about many of the aspects of Bill 26, today we're going to confine ourselves to schedule M.

Our concern comes from the fact that increasingly what we're seeing is, I suppose you would call it, a devolution of the provision of services to residents in our communities. It starts perhaps at the federal level. Coming in March, when the Canada assistance plan ends, the federal government in essence is saying it is abdicating its responsibility to ensure that there is a fair and equitable access to services for all people in the country. It seems to us, through some of the provisions in this bill, that the province then is turning to the municipalities and doing the same thing, saying: "We no longer feel it is our responsibility to ensure that there is equal access. That's something you can pick up as a municipality."

The upper tiers of the municipalities, it seems, in discussions we've had with our Metro councillors, are saying the same things now to the cities, which is that the upper tier of local government no longer sees its role as being the provision of services, what they call soft services. They feel that's something that the city is better able to pick up, but in our case the city of Toronto certainly is not in a position to pick up all the services that are required.

I suppose in the relationship between the province and the municipal governments anyway there was at one time a recognition that the problems municipalities faced weren't problems of the municipalities, that the problems were being experienced province-wide or country-wide. There was an understanding that the province and the municipalities would work together to try to address those kinds of problems.

Today we see in our community there is a lot of unemployment, and we certainly know that unemployment today is a global problem. It's the result of having a global economy. Yet at the time that we understand that the problem is caused by a process that is going on around the world, it seems everybody is intent on making sure that it is the individual cities that bear the burden of addressing the fallout of that kind of a process, and that causes us a lot of concern.

Specifically within Bill 26 and with the amendments to the Municipal Act, we see under sections 209.4 and 209.5 there is what seems to be a very good democratic process in place for the upper and lower tiers of municipal governments to sort out who's going to provide which services. Just in our brief time today to look that over, that seems to be a reasonable process.

Unfortunately, following that is section 209.6, which then seems to give the Minister of Municipal Affairs the authority to delegate services and to say to the upper tiers of municipal government, "You will do this," and to the lower tiers, "You will do that." That causes us some concern, because we're not clear, and I don't think the municipalities are clear either at the moment, if responsibilities are devolved and if the lower tier is expected to pick up more of the services to people while the upper tier picks up more of the services to property, how the lower tier is going to be able to afford to do that.

Our concern is that as increasingly the provision of the soft services, the services to people, get pushed down to the city level, the only response that the cities are going to have is to enact residency requirements and to say, "We can no longer afford to provide services to everybody who's in need and we will only provide services to those we consider to be our residents."

That sort of opens up for us -- historically there have been some real problems with that kind of a way of going about delivering services. If we say that only people in the city of Toronto can get services from the city of Toronto, that that's all that the city of Toronto can afford to do, essentially it's very restrictive. It limits people to staying in the area where they were born. The provision of residency requirements to receive any kind of services we see as being a real step backwards.

As the city is faced with the challenge of how to provide services to the people who live in the area, the response is to make the services more restrictive. That leaves people coming to organizations like ourselves and to the many organizations across the city, across the province, that try to help communities survive the kinds of turmoil that communities are going through, people are coming to us and saying, "What can we do?"

We have a lot of seniors who come to our agency and say: "We're really concerned. If the hospital closes, what can you do for me?" At this point we're really unclear what we can do for them. So we're concerned about how services are going to be divided up between the province, the upper-tier and lower-tier municipal governments.

We also are concerned about section 220.1, the proposed amendment there, which seems to give municipal governments the power to raise direct taxes. I know there's some debate about whether it's a user fee or a tax, and there's some feeling that it really doesn't matter. If it's a user fee or a tax, it still ends up with somebody having to pay for it. In our area certainly people who need our services aren't in positions to pay user fees to receive those services.

Mayors of some of the cities, particularly in the Metro area, have been quite open about the fact that they see user fees as the way to go, that anybody who doesn't live in their city is going to be paying increasingly for the services they receive, and even the people who do live in the city and are residents will be paying more. We can see that happening in our area, and that's a concern for us.

People won't be able to pay and if the only way that they can get a service is through paying directly, then they're not going to get the service and, if they don't get the service, then the impact of that is not just that we have an unhealthy neighbourhood, it's that we have an unhealthy city, and if we have an unhealthy city, we have an unhealthy GTA and when the GTA is unhealthy, we have an unhealthy province and so on and so on.

Those are the areas of most concern for us, although I would add that it seems to us, in reading through Bill 26, that at the end of every section it seems to be: "These are the amendments we propose to make and this is how things will work, unless the minister decides otherwise. If the minister decides that's not how it's going to be, then it won't be that way." Giving that much power into the hands of one person -- I wouldn't want to be the person getting that kind of power. That's a lot of decision-making or a heavy burden for any one person to take on. That's a process that concerns us, and I will just stop there.

The Chair: Thank you very much. You've left a lot of time for questions. We'll start with the third party. You'll have six minutes. Mr Silipo.

Mr Silipo: A number of the points that you've made about your concerns around the wide powers given to ministers -- in the case you mentioned, the Minister of Municipal Affairs -- certainly things that we've heard from a number of other presenters as well as the concern that you've expressed around the use of user fees, one of the things we've heard from some presenters is that they like the idea of user fees because they see that it makes people more accountable.

When we point out to them the point that I think you've made, which is that it's one thing to talk about, even if it's a $1 user fee or a $2 user fee to use a skating rink, for example, that may be fine, for the sake of argument, if you have a family income that's at a reasonable level so a dollar or two may not be very much, but if you're on minimum wage or indeed if you're on social assistance, $1 or $2 is a lot of money. So then people say, "Well, yes, but we could find ways to deal with that." Realistically, how could one do that without in one way or another having to label people who are poor in that way?

Ms Elizabeth Greaves: I think it's very difficult to do that. We do have some user fees at our agency in principle, such as music lessons for children. There is an expectation that user fees will be paid. It's $1 per lesson as opposed to the normal $16 or $17 or $30 a lesson. When there is more than one child in the family taking lessons, the rate is reduced. There is income verification done and there is often fee forgiveness, and we raise money separately to cover that. It does mean that many of the families in our community are getting lessons for which they're not paying. Most of them would prefer to do so, but they simply do not have the means.

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We're also very concerned in a community like ours where we are encouraging the use of public libraries -- books, videos, film, music are so important to helping new Canadians integrate within the community, in helping our community integrate within a broader community -- that fees in place in a larger system where there wouldn't be the kind of understanding and knowledge that we in the small agencies have of each family's circumstances would deter those children and those families from using the services.

Skating rinks, swimming pools, all of those things which are available at this point or can be available with no user fee, would not be used by many of the families in our community. They could not, and people do not like to ask to have fees forgiven. It would deter many of the proud lower-income people.

Mr Silipo: One of the contradictions we see in this legislation is that, while the Conservative government seems to be quite proud of the position they're taking to reduce provincial taxes, they are at the same time passing on to municipalities not just the cuts that they have passed, cuts in the amount of funding that they transfer to municipalities, school boards and right on through all of the service providers, but they now are giving municipalities the right to tax.

You talked about user fees. We've talked also here in the committee about the rights that municipalities are gaining to tax in any number of other ways. We've talked about gas tax, income tax, we think -- although that's an area that's still under debate, about whether it's included in the bill or not; there seems to be some confusion about that -- sales taxes and a number of other ways in which municipalities can tax.

We see that all of that combination, plus obviously the ability that municipalities now have to increase property taxes, means that we're shifting more and more of the burden of taxation, direct and indirect, on to the shoulders of those who are least able to pay. Because at least, whatever its flaws are, the income tax system is more progressive than any of the other systems of taxation.

Do you have some concerns, given the community that you represent and the people you work with, about the increasing burden that's going to be placed on people as not just the user fees but potentially other municipal taxes, and maybe even the potential for a head tax, are introduced through this legislation?

Ms Greaves: I think each individual piece of regressive taxation is bearable: $2 per prescription service is something that people can do; $20 here, $5 there. But these are regressive taxes on low-income working people and people in receipt of benefits, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that they cannot meet their obligations as citizens and as family members. So we are concerned about regressive taxation.

Mr Silipo: The other unfairness we see is that what is driving the government's overall direction is not so much their yearning to balance the budget but rather their need to find at least $5 billion -- and we think more; $5 billion is their figure, but we think it may be closer to $7 billion -- to pay for the 30% tax cut they've promised, which again is something that is going to benefit largely those families with a very high income.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Silipo. I apologize for having to interrupt, but that's the end of your time.

Mr Silipo: Six minutes gone?

The Chair: Yes. We'll move to the government.

Mr Sampson: One of the sections of schedule M that deals with the right of the municipalities to tax, or the new right of municipalities to tax, indicates that they have the flexibility to determine that tax or that user fee on any class of persons. Do you take any comfort in the fact that there are certain groups of people to whom they might be able to say, "Well, the use of libraries, it's no fee," and there are certain other groups of people for whom, for the use of the libraries, there is a fee, and to graduate it perhaps even to reflect income levels?

Mr Cooke: A means test.

Mr Druce: I suppose there is some small comfort in knowing that people who can't afford to pay for something may still be able to get a service, but what that kind of a process does is it becomes really divisive. It's very, very clear to people in any neighbourhood who is in need of services and who isn't, so I know that the neighbours on my street, for example, will very quickly be picking up, saying, "Oh, yes, I know that now I'm paying this new tax, and I'm paying more for that so that somebody down the street can get something and not pay for it at all."

It's good that people will be able to get the services, but what it does to the overall community is really divisive, and I think that in the long term that's a real concern. It's one that would offset the benefit of people not having to pay directly for some of the services.

Ms Greaves: There are many people in our community who are too proud to ask for that kind of help, and they will slowly withdraw from things that we feel are really important for all members of our society to have access to, like libraries in particular.

Mr Klees: I'd like to just follow up on that issue. Would you agree that perhaps one of the reasons that some people feel ostracized or less than equal with other people, if they in fact legitimately need help and they're given help, is largely as a result of the kind of rhetoric we've heard over the last number of years relating to a means test? In fact, by talking about a means test in a derogatory way, actually putting people into a box so that they're made to feel that way, rather than accepting the fact that some people are disadvantaged and legitimately need help -- and that we deal with them just as they are and respect them for who they are.

Ms Greaves: I think part of the rhetoric that we really have to struggle with in the lower-income communities is the sense of the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, and some of that has come in to means tests and other ways of deciding who should be getting service and who should not.

Mr Klees: But wouldn't you agree that if we hear politicians, for example, talk in a derogatory way about things like means tests, that immediately paints people into that picture, as opposed to simply accepting that some people in society need help, and if they need help, we should put in place a structure that allows us to help those who really need help but to differentiate from those people who don't? That way, we are able to channel the dollars to the appropriate place. I'd like your comment on that.

We've got an opportunity here to talk about the issues as they are. This isn't just a matter of slapping it on the government; the opposition here can learn something about how they should be conducting themselves, and this will be very helpful.

Mr Druce: With respect to means testing, if you had a process where you could clearly distinguish between who needed help and who didn't need help, I can't see that anybody would complain about that. The difficulty is, in the last several hundred years of providing organized relief, nobody's ever come up with a system that was that good at defining who did need help and who didn't need help.

Mr Klees: But what we've heard here is that we shouldn't even start to think about that, that there's something wrong with trying to find a way of differentiating. Wouldn't you agree that what we should be doing instead is working together to find a reasonable and acceptable way to determine that?

Ms Greaves: To determine who needs help --

Mr Klees: Precisely.

Ms Greaves: -- and who should pay for it? Yes.

Mr Klees: Thank you for saying that. I hope that we can work towards that.

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Ms Greaves: We are really pleased to have the opportunity to speak today and hope the consultations will continue.

The Chair: I hate to interrupt, Mr Klees, but that's also the end of the time for the government caucus. We must move now to the opposition and it's going to be -- you're both moving towards the mike -- Mr Crozier.

Mr Crozier: There's also a difference between being derogatory and condescending, but I'm sure you understand that.

It may interest you to know, and I'd like your comments on it, that of the proposed tax cut that I believe Mike Harris is going to deliver on, 62% will go to those earning $65,000 or more. I suspect that won't come to a lot of people in your community and mine when it comes to numbers. Would you expect that?

Mr Druce: Certainly many of the people who use our services, I would say that they probably won't fall into that category. There are people in our community, though, who will.

Ms Greaves: The vast majority won't.

Mr Druce: The vast majority won't, yes. But to try and comment on tax reform -- I'm not an economist -- I don't know of any government yet that's found a good solution to balancing who should pay how much tax.

Mr Crozier: I agree with you. The federal Tory government talked about cutting taxes and increasing the economic standing and reducing debt, and we know where that got us. But my concern is that 62% will go, as you've speculated correctly, to about 25% of the people. I wonder if you might, from your viewpoint, share with me then the comment that "We must all share in the pain." The government has said that, the Premier has said that; that we're all going to share in the pain. Can you imagine that someone making over $85,000 a year will share the pain equally with you or your clients?

Ms Greaves: I think they'll experience pain differently. I do not believe that the people in this province can take any pleasure in getting a tax rebate when their neighbours' children are going hungry. I think there's pain for both: the families that are doing without and the families that are getting more back.

People don't know how to respond. We've had an overwhelming amount of generosity in the last couple of weeks, people who want to put on elaborate Christmas dinners for low-income families. There is no take-up for this. This is something that works for single, transient homeless men and women; it does not work for families with children. They would rather be at home with a tin of sardines and the people they care about than in a nice restaurant being served. It's not an appropriate response but people are throwing hundreds of dollars at it. It's not going to where it's needed. Those who have the $65,000 a year and up are doing their best to do something, but it's not being thought through, it's not getting to where it's needed.

Mr Gerretsen: I'd just like to congratulate you on a very well-reasoned presentation, particularly when you were able to look at the economic situation from a more global viewpoint, because it's always been my view that one of the main problems we have in this province relates to jobs, and that's because we simply aren't competitive enough in a lot of areas in order to produce the jobs and the products. Once we have that, then an awful lot of the social problems will disappear, or at least they'll be a lot less than they are now.

I'd like to come back to this means test situation, though. What is your organization's position, then, with respect to a means test for various government services or various social services?

Mr Druce: Many social services already come with criteria. We have a program called STEP, and that's a program which is only for single mothers who are receiving government assistance. So there's a means test there: You have to be a single mother, you have to be receiving social assistance.

Mr Gerretsen: But isn't one of the problems the manner in which whatever help has been provided at the municipal level -- and I used to be a municipal politician, and certainly at one time there was a movement, for example, to get the social services away from city hall. Therefore people would no longer have access to the city hall complex for certain services, and that in itself was demeaning to a certain extent, because why shouldn't everybody be able to go down to city hall? Isn't that the problem, the way some of the services have been provided? I'm not picking on any particular sector here, but they've quite often been done in sort of a demeaning fashion.

Ms Greaves: I think that's been historically true of services, yes.

The Chair: Thank you very much for taking the time today to appear before the standing committee.

Committee, before we break for dinner, Mr Cooke wants to amend his motion and move it and have debate on it.

Mr Cooke: I'm taking the advice of the learned clerk of the committee. It's been a while since I've looked at this, but we're recommending, based on the submissions to the committee, this be separated into several bills. Let me see here. Where are you suggesting we add the other word?

Clerk of the Committee (Ms Lynn Mellor): That "the subcommittee recommend that the committee."

Mr Cooke: Right. We're referring to "subcommittee" and "recommend" all along, so that the motion is in order. All I'm suggesting in this motion -- and I'm moving the motion. I think it's pretty clear now that when we take a look at the numbers at this point for this committee, we've got 428 people or groups that have asked to appear before the committee in Toronto and beyond, and 462 presentations are going to be accommodated. That's before we've even gone through the process of advertising outside of Metro, as is normally the case when there are going to be hearings.

It's becoming pretty clear pretty quickly that this is going to be a committee that has more people who want to appear before it than any other committee in recent years, including Bill 30, which looked at the extension of funding to the Catholic school system. We'll only have to get a few hundred more people to apply and that'll happen, and that's going to be the case. With Bill 30, we had weeks and weeks of public hearings because there was a commitment exacted out of the government of the day, which was the Peterson government, by the Conservative opposition at the time that the bill was so important to the people of the province that everybody who wanted to be heard should be heard.

I'm not even suggesting that we're going to be able to accommodate everybody, but I think that we're now looking at numbers where we're soon going to be in a position where there are more people being turned down from appearing before the committee than there are who are going to be accommodated. So I think it's quite reasonable to suggest that we find a process, that we make it clear to the government House leader that this committee believes that more people should be accommodated, and that means that when the House reconvenes, there should be a new timetable put in place.

One of the ways of doing this, of course, is to split the bill, proceed with the parts of the bill that are less controversial -- and the government could do that; that can be done by negotiations, by discussions -- and then have the rest of the parts of the bill sent out for more public hearings during the break. The committee would then report back when the House comes back in March.

If we're interested in the democratic process, I don't think this is an unreasonable request. This is not in conflict with the time allocation motion that was in the House. It's in order because it's a recommendation. I am convinced that if the committee goes on record with the government House leader that we all have the same feeling that we've got to do more, to listen to more people and to deliberate on this legislation, I am sure that the government House leader will listen if all three parties go on record supporting this. So I encourage the government to support this.

The Chair: Further debate? I'm going to go caucus to caucus around until such time that everyone has a chance to debate. Mr Klees will be first.

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Mr Klees: I think Mr Cooke will know that this process typically has many more people lined up to speak to the issues than can be accommodated within the schedule. My understanding is that when Mr Cooke's government had the opportunity to preside over hearings, there were in many cases numerous people and groups who were being presented by the opposition parties as wanting to appear before committee who weren't able to, who weren't given the opportunity to do so. That's unfortunate, but that's the nature of the process.

I think to use the reasoning that because there are 400 -- Mr Phillips yesterday said there were 1,000. I'm sure we could at any point in time come up with lists of 2,000, 3,000, probably 10,000 if that would be our strategy to prolong the process. I think it's imperative for this committee to understand, keep in mind, keep in focus that we have a prescribed process here that has opened the door to people across the province to come forward, and those people will be heard.

The other point I'd like to make is that over the last few days much questioning has been done by the opposition members. If we were to look at Hansard, those questions that have come forward are repetitive; they are in most cases the same questions that are coming forward.

It's been predictable that this motion would come forward, because the questions have very little to do with the substance of the act; they have everything to do with process. I think for us to even waste our time debating whether we should prolong this process further is an insult to all of us here.

One of the things that I think is very important and we should be concerned about is taking a look at what in fact all of these many groups are saying. It's not a matter of, do we want 20,000 people here to say the same thing? I think very quickly we can get a handle on what the key issues are that people are concerned about, draw some conclusions and deal with that. I don't know if Mr Cooke -- where's the cutoff? Is the cutoff at 400? Is it at 4,000? Is it at 10,000? I think what we're doing here is allowing ourselves to stand on a very slippery slope if we're going to give credibility to this motion.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr Phillips.

Mr Phillips: Mr Crozier is going to speak first.

Mr Crozier: I probably know Mr Klees as well as anybody in this room, and, Frank, you sound so sanctimonious I think you forgot your small-town upbringing.

Mr Klees: No, it's in the small town --

Mr Crozier: What you're saying is that what's repeated around the table is repetitive in the way of questioning. You haven't been here most of the time.

Mr Klees: I've been listening. I've been reading Hansard.

Mr Crozier: You know, what is being said most of the time, and I think with this government it has to be repeated, is by the people sitting at the end of the table. They are saying constantly that they haven't had enough time to prepare, that they think the bill should be broken down, and that that way the public can understand it better. What we're doing here, Mr Klees, is going through a democratic public process that we fought for, that you were going to deny us, quite frankly.

Mr Klees: You ended up with 60 hours less than we offered you.

Interjections.

Mr Crozier: It would have been before -- let's get reasonable, Mr Chair.

The Chair: Mr Crozier has the floor, please.

Mr Crozier: It would have been before Christmas, and we're having enough difficulty with that. It would have been until midnight and, in the government's largesse, it would have been more hours. Well, quite frankly, again I think you're just kind of dancing, to use Ms Pupatello's terms, around the issue. I felt that I had to say that.

As for the questioning being the same, again I don't think you can sit on that side of the room and be so sanctimonious, because I can almost tell you each time what Mr Young is going to ask. I can tell you what this gentleman is going to ask; it's going to be about the firemen and so forth and what the criteria are for the arbitrator. But that's the process. That's what we're here for. For you to suggest that we don't ask the right questions, that's really not your job. I think I agree that more people, every -- not every person, but many, many people have come here asking for more time.

There isn't anything that I see in here -- and we're asking the government to tell us -- that's costing the $1 million a day that was talked about over the past few weeks, because all of this presumably is going to come about with a budget in the spring. The only thing you've done of any real action -- and I'm not saying that you're right, wrong or indifferent -- is cut social assistance cheques, because you could do that, you could just cut those. But anything we're talking about in here as far as spending cuts, reductions, streamlining, is not going to happen until next spring or summer. Those that are costing us money each day, let's get at it, get them passed. But the rest of it, let's take some time.

Mr Silipo: I think the issue here is what the motion calls for, which is to allow the public an opportunity to adequately analyse the bill. I think that issue can only be properly addressed not in the context of how much time the committee has, but how that time is used.

Government members continue to point out that we could have had three committees looking at this over this week and last week. Quite frankly, we could have had the whole Legislature broken down into 13 committees and spent the two weeks looking at it and we wouldn't have done any better a job than this government's proposal had been, because the issue is not so much how many hours you spend on something; it's also having an opportunity as members of the Legislature and giving the public an opportunity, enough time, enough distance to be able to analyse and to understand what this bill does in its many forms. The wisdom, we believe, of allowing more time for us to hear more people is that we can then hear positions that come to the table that are more thought out, based on the fact people have had a chance to take a look at the legislation or the provisions that apply to them.

At the same time I believe, and I say this with all due respect to the government members, it gives them an opportunity to have a better understanding of the full implications that are in this bill. I think it's quite clear, in the less than three days of hearings that we've had now, that there are a number of issues where I would say even the government members are finding that the legislation goes far beyond what they either thought was in the bill or anticipated being in the bill.

I think it's that issue as well that Mr Cooke's motion allows us an opportunity to address while still concluding the process that we have set out and that by order of the House we are obliged to follow but then allows for some further reflection and allows us, on the basis of what we will have been able to do from now until January 29, to have some further discussions on at least those portions of the bill that clearly already we can see merit some further discussion and some further input from the public.

The Chair: I have Young, Phillips, Sampson and Gerretsen, in that order.

Mr Young: I yield to Mr Sampson.

The Chair: If you yield, you yield to Mr Phillips.

Mr Young: I'll say my piece. I certainly don't support the motion. I think we've had a number of very articulate and very thorough presentations, and I'm sure we'll have more in January. I want to give notice to members opposite that we had vacancies on Monday we barely filled in last-minute. We had vacancies yesterday we barely filled in. We had vacancies today we could not fill in, and as of right now we've got 13 vacancies tomorrow.

Mr Cooke: That's because there are time limits. That's because of the time.

Mr Young: My concern is entering the new year, 1996, with optimism and hope and the change that 82% of the voters voted for on June 8. We're spending $1 million an hour on interest on government debt. I'm very, very happy to get these changes going and make sure they change the attitude of Ontarians, business and all people in Ontario, to bring in hope for the new year. I want to get going on it.

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Mr Gerretsen: There are just a couple of comments I want to make. One of them I made earlier today, and that's that there is a major difference between being allowed to make a presentation to a committee for half an hour and being given maybe two or three or four, I think at the most five or six, minutes for questioning by each caucus, and consultation.

If the members of the government caucus -- and I know some of the members of your caucus don't believe this, because some people on your caucus side even I regard as reasonable individuals. I cannot for a moment believe, having been involved in the public process as long as I have, that every one of your 82 members thinks that making a presentation here and answering some questions is consultation. There may be some of you, and all I would say is that whoever believes that, you just haven't been involved in the total public process enough to realize what consultation is really all about.

Secondly, there are certain sections of this bill -- and I've tried to analyse it myself -- that have definite direct financial implications. There are very few schedules that actually do that. All the other schedules basically put into mechanism a process whereby other processes, whereby other bodies' work etc, can be changed quickly so that, either through ministerial regulation or through some other method, greater restructuring can take place. They do not have an immediate financial benefit. Regardless of what kind of propaganda you want to put out about that, about $1 million an hour, they simply do not.

You know, we've put out propaganda as well, I'll be the first to admit that, but that's certainly one aspect of it, that there are about three or four schedules that have an immediate, direct financial impact. The rest of them don't. Whether or not those schedules are approved in January, February or March in the long run really makes absolutely no difference. I would like you to come up with some clear-cut, categorical evidence that that's not the case. But I've been around long enough to realize that most of the schedules deal with process rather than immediate financial gains.

To suggest that somehow the opposition is asking the same questions, well, that may very well be. Every group is an entity unto itself and comes here from its own particular perspective. The fact that 90% of the groups so far have basically dug all sorts of holes in the bill and come up with, within a lot of cases, the same concerns about it, we didn't put them up to it. I can assure you that none of those groups were sort of trained or cautioned by us or told what to say by us, as was suggested today by one of your members here. So it may very well be that every group is going to be asked the same question, because every group is a separate entity from the groups before that, and I think it's important that people out there and people through Hansard etc be made aware of it.

I think the motion is a reasonable one. It's a reasonable compromise suggesting that there may be some sections where there are some immediate financial savings and that they ought to be implemented at the end of January, because I'll tell you, a lot of the groups have made some excellent amendments to your own bill. I'm just wondering how actively those amendments are going to be pursued or are going to be looked at by your different staffs in your different ministries. I'm wondering, if this process had not taken place, quite frankly, how many of those amendments would have come forward by your own process, as they did with respect to some of the other bills that have come before the House. I doubt very many of them, quite frankly. So I think the real public consultation is to deal with these people, to listen to their presentations, to deal with their amendments, particularly when they've been very specific in a lot of cases, where they've dealt with specific sections in the bills, and then go back to their groups and say, "Look, we've looked at it and for this reason or for that reason we can't agree or we can agree etc." That is where the real process of consultation starts. It is not, my friend, a presentation here for 20 minutes. It's better than nothing, as I've said earlier today, but this is not true consultation, by any stretch of the imagination.

Mr Sampson: I move that the question now be put.

The Chair: All those in favour of the motion that the question be put, please raise your hand.

Mr Cooke: I want a recorded vote.

The Chair: A recorded vote.

Ayes

Hardeman, Sampson, Tascona, Young.

The Chair: All those against?

Nays

Cooke, Gerretsen, Phillips.

The Chair: We'll put the question on the main motion. All those in favour of Mr Cooke's motion?

Mr Cooke: A recorded vote.

The Chair: A recorded vote.

Ayes

Cooke, Gerretsen, Phillips.

The Chair: All those against?

Nays

Hardeman, Sampson, Tascona, Young.

The Chair: I declare the motion lost.

Right now, we're going to move to Mr Phillips's motion.

Mr Phillips: Pursuant to standing order 10(a), the standing committee on general government recommends to the House leaders that they ask the Speaker to call the House back one sessional day during the first week of January 1996 in order to amend the motion of the House dated December 12, 1995, to allow for four more weeks of public hearings into Bill 26, due to the overwhelming number of requests from the public for an opportunity to participate in public hearings into Bill 26.

The Chair: Do you want to speak to the motion, Mr Phillips?

Mr Phillips: The most telling delegation, for me, was the board of trade for Toronto. The board of trade has terrific resources to analyse bills. They probably are among the top organizations to analyse bills that come before their organization.

As an illustration to the public and to the committee of how complicated this bill is and how difficult it is for people to understand what's in the bill, the board of trade's principal support for the bill, if you remember, was around the fact that this would allow restructuring of Metropolitan Toronto. They led off with that. They put a press release out on that. That was the foundation of their support for the bill. They went on to indicate they had 10 or 11 major concerns in other portions of the bill.

Well it turns out, unfortunately for the board of trade, because even they have not had enough time, that they were wrong. The bill doesn't permit restructuring of Metropolitan Toronto, as the government acknowledged late last night. This bill doesn't do what the board of trade's brief was based on. They came to say, "We're supporting the bill because it allows restructuring of Metro," and it doesn't.

If anybody has any illusions that the public and that groups without those vast resources of the board of trade have had a chance to analyse what is going to be, for them, a huge impact. If you are in Metropolitan Toronto, you have until Friday night to make your presentation, and it's all over; we won't hear from you again.

Why are we having gaps in the presentations? It's because people have not had the chance to analyse this bill. They're saying, "This impacts my life, and you will give me 48 hours, 24 hours to come forward with a detailed analysis." Having seen what the board of trade did, the board of trade was wrong on the fundamental principle they were supporting the bill on.

If we needed any more tangible evidence of that, it's that our motion and, I must say, the previous motion are totally reasonable. It allows the government to say: "Here are the portions of the bill that we want passed because they have major financial implications. We want to deal with the deficit." Identify that for us, and on January 29, you have the opportunity to pass those portions. The rest, we're suggesting, because they don't have financial implications, can wait. We can have some reasoned debate. People who will be impacted by it can have a chance to look at the bill and be allowed to comment reasonably on the bill. As I say, nothing could illustrate our point better than the board of trade's presentation. For them to find out that the bill does not do at all what they thought it did makes the point for us.

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Mr Cooke: I think some of the Conservative members of the committee actually think this is the regular way in which bills are dealt with. While you might be getting that propaganda from your members who have been members around here for a few years, you might want to do some of your own research.

Virtually all the bills that I had anything to do with when I was a cabinet minister had extensive public hearings. The temporary rent control bill was a temporary bill that was going to be in place for a few months until the permanent rent control bill came in. Mr Turnbull, your whip, was one of the members on that committee. He insisted that there be public hearings across the province. We had four or five weeks of public hearings on that bill alone, and travelled across the province. Everybody was accommodated and heard. That has been, by and large, the norm.

Then you take a look at this bill and the implications of this bill. I can't understand why you're not even willing to say that the matter should be referred to the House leaders; that somebody in the government should be taking a look at the problem of how many people want to appear before the committee, the problem with even understanding the implications of all aspects of this bill. Mr Phillips has given you one example. We've had Mississauga in front of us saying that yes, this bill allows for a gas tax but doesn't allow for an income tax and doesn't allow for a sales tax. The city of Toronto comes before us and says that their legal counsel says yes, it accommodates an income tax; they're not sure about sales tax and gas tax.

There's so much confusion about this bill that this is amateur hour in terms of the way public policy is being made by the most populous and richest and supposedly most sophisticated province in this country. It's amateur hour. It would be a joke, if what you're doing to this province weren't so serious.

All we're suggesting with these motions is, can somebody on the government side take a look at this? Can the government House leader at least be asked to talk to the other parties and say: How can we accommodate more people? Should we not look at maybe extending the hearings for a bit of time so that people can have more opportunities to analyse the bills and give their input to this process?

We've got people from the mining industry who come before the committee and say they've had some opportunity to be consulted. We've had people on the environmentalist side who say they were not consulted at all, that the first they saw it was when the bill was brought in.

I think this motion and the motion before were a reasonable motion, to simply say, let's take a look at it, let's give an opportunity to extend the hearings. If you've got a better way of dealing with it, if you've got a motion you want to put forward, or if whoever is the lead person on the Conservative side is going to go back to the government House leader and you want to put a motion forward saying you want the House leaders to take a look at this, then put it forward.

It's a procedural motion that's been debated for about six or seven minutes, and the Conservatives feel so threatened by it that they even bring in a closure motion on it. That's pretty bizarre and a pretty clear indication to people that there's no interest in public input. There's an interest in getting the process over with as quickly as possible. They don't want to hear from us, they don't want to hear from the people of the province, and they're going to shut it down at the first opportunity. I think it's a bloody disgrace that they're not even willing to take a look at a real problem where we're going to have more people turned down for public hearings than we're going to have accepted.

Mr Sampson: It's clear that we do indeed want to hear the views of the people. That's why we've been attempting to listen to the deputants as they've come in front of us for the last three days. We've also indicated that we're prepared to receive written submissions, and I believe this committee has been asked by the standing orders, by the motion in the House last week, to review the written submissions. I'm hoping that those who are unable, as in past committee processes, to physically attend can provide us with a written submission so we can review their positions and give some thoughtful consideration to their views. We're here today as a result of an agreement that was reached among the House leaders on December 7 or 8. That agreement set out the procedures under which we would be split into two committees etc. I'm led to believe that one of the topics raised by our side in those meetings is that there would have been three committees, as opposed to two, for 360 hours of cumulative time, but the other two House leaders preferred the two for the 300.

Mr Cooke: No, Rob, you're wrong on that. The government House leader withdrew the offer of three committees and moved it to two.

The Chair: Mr Cooke, he has the floor.

Mr Sampson: We also are led to believe -- no, in fact the Leader of the Opposition stated after the agreement had been reached that the government had provided a substantial amount of time to look at this bill. That was a quote from her in her daily newspaper up in Thunder Bay, and we agree with that statement.

Other omnibus bills have been brought before this Legislature in the past. Bill 175 is one of them. There was actually no committee time. In fact, one of the deputants we questioned the other day indicated that they had never been in front of the committee to deal with a piece of legislation that affected pension funds.

The committee time for Bill 26 was negotiated by the opposition parties. The government House leader was involved, the opposition House leaders were involved. An agreement was reached at that time. We're prepared to stick to that agreement. I don't believe it precludes submissions from the -- what is it now? -- 400 people who will not be able to attend currently; from providing us written submissions just like the people who come here and present in person to us. I think this committee will have ample time and opportunity to consider those.

We've been thrashing around this particular item. This is now the third time we've talked about it. Frankly, I think this time would have been better used if we had allocated it to a deputant. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask again that the question with respect to this motion now be put to this committee.

The Chair: First I'd like to hear from Mr Curling, who's had his hand up as someone who wants to debate, and then we'll entertain that motion.

Mr Curling: I just want to say --

Mr Sampson: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I moved that the question now be put. Are you not prepared to speak on that?

The Chair: That's at the discretion of the Chair. I had Mr Curling on the list, so we'll be hearing him and then we'll move to that motion.

Mr Curling: Let me just comment a bit on this. This is the kind of arrogance we are talking about. The fact is that no participation, not even from members, at times, can be gotten out of this government. The people have been asking over and over to participate.

I speak in support of this. I have to echo my colleagues of the opposition who have mentioned time and time again the legislation they put before committees that got extensive hearings. I can recall putting through Bill 51 in 1985 that had six weeks of hearings across this country. We sat morning, afternoon and evening so that all people had an opportunity to participate, to feel like they are a part of this province, a part of the legislation that affects their lives so they can make the contribution.

My office has been swamped with calls, faxes, people who asked to have presentation here who have been told, "I'm sorry, all the timeslots are gone." People in other areas are saying that the committee is not coming to their area and they'd like to have their contribution on this bill.

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I'm hearing the government side saying that they can always write in. Let me tell him and tell the government too that there is an opportunity for people to express themselves verbally on this committee, and what he's saying to all those who are shut out is: "No, you cannot contribute. We will not hear you. If you want to write, you must write, and we'll have time to look into your presentation."

I could also tell the member that we have had people scheduled to make presentation here who have withdrawn because their legal counsel told them that the bill is so large and so involved that their presentation would not be focused enough if they responded in such a short time. They asked if they could get another day and were told no, because that time was gone.

They can't respond to that thick bill. You have seen evidence. The minister himself came in and admitted he hasn't even read the bill. The minister who's going to carry the passage of that bill hasn't read it, much less the individuals who can't even get the bill. When they call and ask for a copy of the bill so they can go through it because they heard about the impact it will have on their lives, they are told, "You'd better put $18 down before you get it." I delivered a copy of the bill to that individual, and when they saw it they were appalled just by the size and the complexity of that bill and the impact it has on them. It would take weeks for them to look through that.

I'm appealing to those members and their own democratic sense to extend the time so people can be heard, can feel a part of this process, so they don't feel shut out from this process. They're not asking for a lot. If this thing is extended for another two or three weeks or so to hear the people on this issue, I don't see what harm it is going to do. It will do a lot of help. It will help the government to say that they are listening.

People have come in here and have almost said that the government lied to them, that Mike Harris lied to them, that he said he would consult with them. The firefighters here said, "He told us that." He has it in writing. He has it a tape on the matter to say they would have consulted, and now people are being shut out from this.

I would strongly support and urge the members to take it back to their House leader, that the House leaders on this side are willing to sit down again and have those days extended so we could come back and hear in a very democratic way those who would like to present their case before the committees.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Curling. I now put Mr Sampson's motion.

Mr Cooke: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I don't want to be picky, but how do you table, when you rule a closure motion out of order -- it was obviously premature and you ruled it out of order, which you have the right to do and I think it was appropriate. I'm just being very picky about it. Somebody else can move the closure motion again, but you ruled it out of order.

The Chair: No, I didn't rule it out of order. Under standing order 47, the Chair has the discretion to seek further debate, and I used that standing order and used that discretion to allow Mr Curling's debate.

Mr Cooke: I understand, so the motion was premature.

The Chair: But I indicated that I would put it after Mr Curling.

Mr Cooke: Well, I don't understand how a motion that's ruled out of order at that particular time can then be called back by the Chair. It's a very picky thing. All somebody has to do is move it again, but I don't see how the Chair has the right to table a motion. The motion was ruled out of order.

The Chair: It wasn't moved out of order. I just indicated that, using my discretion under standing order 47, I would entertain further debate from Mr Curling, who hadn't had a chance to speak.

Mr Cooke: Because the motion was premature.

The Chair: No, just because it's my discretion, under the standing orders, to allow him that extra ability before putting the question.

Mr Cooke: Can you read that standing order for me? I don't have my standing orders with me.

The Chair: "A motion for closure, which may be moved without notice, until it is decided shall preclude all amendment of the main question, and shall be in the following words: -- `That this question be now put.' Unless it appears to the Speaker that such motion is an abuse of the standing orders of the House or an infringement of the rights of the minority, the question shall be put forthwith and decided without amendment or debate. If a motion for closure is resolved in the affirmative, the original question shall be put forthwith and decided without amendment or debate."

Mr Cooke: Exactly, the point being that you ruled that the motion was premature, that it was an abuse of the rights of the minority, so the motion was premature. Whenever this has been done in the House before and a Speaker has ruled it out of order, it's out of order and then the motion has to be moved again. I know it's going to be moved again, but I really hesitate to allow a Chair to basically table a closure motion.

Mr Phillips: Mr Chair, if I might try to be of help, I think Mr Cooke may very well be right. I suggest that one of the government members, in order for it to be in order, may have to move a motion once again.

Mr Gerretsen: Don't give him any advice, Gerry.

Mr Phillips: I respect the Chair's dilemma, but I also respect that I think Mr Cooke is right that the Chair is in a position where I don't think you can table that motion. I think it has to be re-moved, or moved.

The Chair: I have been given similar advice from the clerk. Mr Hardeman.

Mr Hardeman: Mr Chair, not to suggest that Mr Cooke is right, I would move that the motion now be put.

The Chair: All in favour that the motion be now put?

Mr Cooke: I want a recorded vote.

The Chair: Recorded vote.

Ayes

Hardeman, Sampson, Tascona, Young.

The Chair: All opposed?

NaYs

Cooke, Gerretsen, Phillips.

The Chair: All in favour of Mr Phillips's motion?

Mr Cooke: Recorded vote.

Ayes

Cooke, Gerretsen, Phillips.

The Chair: All opposed?

Nays

Hardeman, Sampson, Tascona, Young.

The Chair: Thank you. We will recess until 6 pm.

The subcommittee recessed from 1737 to 1815.

CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE FUND

The Chair: Good evening, everyone. Mr Donnelly from the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund is currently in the chair. Mr Donnelly, I'd like to thank you for being patient and waiting for us to get through our dinner break. You have half an hour to make a presentation. You can use that half an hour as you see fit. You may choose to leave some time at the end of that for some questions and response by the three caucuses. Since I've already read your name and the organization into the record, and for the sake of the committee, I guess you could begin right away.

Mr David Donnelly: Thank you very much, Mr Chair and all the members of the committee, for allowing me to appear today. I appear before you today representing the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund, which I will refer to hereafter as the CEDF. The CEDF is a national, charitable, non-profit environmental group that provides funding and legal, scientific, planning and engineering expertise to groups pursuing nationally significant environmental law cases or participating in environmental assessments. Since 1984, the CEDF has provided over $3 million to 35 citizens' groups from across Canada.

So that you might know of my experience, I will tell you three tales of instances where unintended effects have followed either the deregulation of certain industries or government failure to apply the law.

The first involves the Rafferty dam in Saskatchewan, which was essentially exempted from the requirements of the federal environmental assessment review process, or EARP. Today, it stands near Bienfait, Saskatchewan, a large dam with no water behind it. The dam was recently written off by the government of Saskatchewan as a useless work that cost the taxpayer $350 million, but it has also had the unintended benefit of creating something of a tourism industry for that part of southern Saskatchewan, as people flock from across the province, other provinces and states in the United States to witness a $350-million dam with no water behind it.

We have also been involved in the case of the Outer Ring Road in St John's, Newfoundland, which was also exempt from environmental assessment and which has cost the taxpayer to date $110 million; that's the Canadian taxpayer. The road is to be built through C. A. Pippy Park, an internationally significant trout habitat that exists there. The purpose of this road, we found out after the expenditure was made, was to relieve traffic jams in downtown St John's -- traffic jams which simply do not exist.

The final example I'll give you of our involvement is the case of the cod stocks in Newfoundland, where an absence of environmental assessment, as requested by the public in 1989, and the doubling of the cod stocks allowances or quotas has cost the Canadian taxpayer $2 billion so far in compensation and will continue to cost the taxpayer because of the failure to apply the environmental assessment law of the land.

This brings me to the mandate of the CEDF, which is to ensure that the public has access to environmental justice and, in particular, that no one should be denied access to justice on the basis of cost alone. This preface will then lead into my discussion of Bill 26. I will be examining the process by examining two aspects: (1) the process being employed to push the bill through and (2) substantive concerns. I will begin my address to you today by covering over some of the process concerns that I have.

First, the bill is simply too big to be examined by virtually any member of the public. To look at this bill reminds me of a flea being asked to draw a picture of the elephant upon which it resides. It is simply just not possible for anyone to review this bill and to come up with any sort of coherent understanding of how this all works together. The environment is a perfect indication of this.

There are various amendments in this bill that must be read within the original acts from which the amendments arise, and to ask someone or to require someone to read through all these things would require hour upon hour. This is time the public simply does not have. This should be broken up into its constituent elements and people should have time to read over these various components as separate components. In absence of breaking up this bill, then some sort of explanation should be required about why it is being done in this manner and exactly what savings are going to accrue to the public if it is pushed ahead in such a hasty fashion.

But specifically, I would like to inquire why regulation 482 was also passed, allowing that this bill be exempt from the Environmental Bill of Rights. The purpose of the Environmental Bill of Rights in the province of Ontario is to make government decision-making more inclusive, and the question that I have is, if this bill does not have any significant negative impacts on the environment of Ontario, then it should stand up to the scrutiny of the Environmental Bill of Rights. There is an absence of an explanation for why this exemption has been granted, and I think it has been granted improperly.

It is my first recommendation to you that this bill should be included on the Environmental Bill of Rights registry and that certain components should be broken off until a proper understanding of the environment is gained.

Let me give you one example of an environmental effect that could arise from this bill that simply cannot be comprehended in the way this bill is presented. If a hospital was to be closed in northern Ontario, requiring that citizens drive from one town to the next to receive medical treatment, some environmentalists might say that would create an environmental impact that is significant -- requiring people to use their cars to drive further for medical service. You might respond that this is not a significant environmental effect. Fair enough.

But what if then the travel along this road required that the road be widened or improved for safety reasons and that this road improvement would cost $10 million, $20 million or $30 million? There is an unanticipated effect of this bill on the environment and on the public trust, the taxpayers' trust, that simply cannot be comprehended by dealing with this bill in this fashion.

To proceed to my substantive concerns, I'll start with schedule K, the amendments to the freedom of information act. It should go without saying that the importance of access to information in a civilized society cannot be overstated, but let me provide you with some anecdotal evidence of why freedom of information is so important.

In our opposition to the fixed link to PEI several years ago, through access to information, we discovered a plan on the part of the developer building the fixed link, a bridge, to lower the height of the bridge by 16 metres. This adaption of the plan would have cost islanders hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tours and revenue. Cruise ships that previously sailed the strait to Charlottetown as a destination would have been prevented from direct access to the port and would have had to have sailed the entire way around the island, which would have created a prohibitive cost.

More importantly, we also discovered through this information that ice-breakers that were required to break ice that would pile up behind the piers would also not be able to access the strait and that near-shore ice scour would occur, which potentially could have ruined the Northumberland Strait fishery, the last viable fishery in Atlantic Canada.

Clause 10(1)(b) provides the government with the power to deny requests if they are "frivolous or vexatious," but when a government is antithetical to a group or to a request, this is an easy case to be made. In the case of the fixed link, Public Works Canada and the government of Prince Edward Island clearly wanted the megaproject; the citizens, many of whom were fishermen and environmentalists and ferry workers, did not. So this could be used as a tool to frustrate the public that is trying to save the environment and save money at the same time.

Another section, subsection 50(2.1) allows the commissioner to dismiss an appeal if there requester cannot establish a reasonable basis for concluding a record exists. We did not know that the plan existed to lower the height of the bridge. It was only through the access-to-information request, which did not require us to specify with absolute certainty what document we were looking for, that we ever arrived upon the material in the first place.

So you may create the unintended effect, by changing access to information, that you will also frustrate the public who are trying to save the government money and also save the environment. This is one thing that certainly deserves further review.

It is my respectful submission that both of these amendments would have prevented the Friends of the Island from learning about the bridge height and that, similarly, this amendment will frustrate Ontario groups and this is something that should be avoided.

Schedule M, amendments to the Municipal Act and other statutes: The changes to the Conservation Authorities Act need further review. Dissolving conservation authorities and particularly the selling off of public land appear to be a terribly shortsighted response to pressure from municipalities.

My parents grew up in Toronto. They now reside in Don Mills. They recall vividly Hurricane Hazel and all the costs associated with improper planning for storms and stormwater runoff. I wonder what possible benefit can come from allowing municipalities to have free hand in the dispensation of public land, public land that was set aside for the protection of the public. In absence of any concrete demonstration that this will have a significant benefit to the public, I wonder why we should be proceeding with it at this time without consultation with the affected public and consultation with people who have experience in planning and conservation matters.

Similarly, the proposed amendments to the Lakes and Rivers Improvement Act could allow for an exemption from regulatory approval of some dams. To justify this type of deregulation, the onus should be upon the government to prove that in the long run this measure will not cost the public more in the remediation of fish habitat, water quality problems and other unintended effects of deregulation. This type of analysis does not seem to have been done.

It is my second respectful submission that the government should be required to demonstrate how these measures save money while meeting the government's stated objective that no deregulation measure should result in the loss of environmental quality.

I will now turn my attention to the changes to the Mining Act, or schedule O. The Bible contains the passage, "These having not the law are a law unto themselves," which is in Romans. Let me suggest to you that the mining industry is made up two different types of actors -- good ones like Inco and Falconbridge and bad ones who are commonly referred to as "toxic terrors." Introducing self-regulation of mine closure plans cannot appear, even to the casual observer, as a very good idea. Requiring directors' approvals and the posting of financial assurance for projects should appear to be common sense. These regulations were developed in response to serious problems that have arisen in Ontario and elsewhere.

I am very familiar with the lobbying efforts of the mining industry that have been undertaken to achieve this sort of deregulation. Mining companies cite several Third World countries as preferred destinations that provide a more hospitable regulatory climate. But these countries present a whole host of advantages, such as the exploitation of child labour, the lack of employment equity, the lack of rights for labourers and so on.

I submit that Ontario would not be in the practice of amending its child labour laws to allow the manufacturing sector to compete on an even playing field with certain parts of southeast Asia. So I have to pose the question, in the absence of the demonstration on the part of the mining industry that these changes will lead to benefits to the public while not decreasing environmental protection, then we shouldn't proceed with these improvements. Improvements in deregulation are welcome changes, but they should be done in an open, transparent way that includes the public, and this is not being done.

Let me read to you from a study recently prepared by Natural Resources Canada, which has a large role to play in the deregulation of the mining industry. The paper that was prepared suggests that the federal government should also be involved in deregulating the mining industry and that it should be providing exemptions to the mining industry from environmental assessment.

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But this is the sole basis upon which they say they justify this deregulation, and I'll quote from the paper:

"Some interviewees within industry said that the burden of regulatory processes has reached a level that now inhibits investment. Some respondents from Alberta noted that Japanese industry representatives are closely observing the operation of the Canadian approval process and are apparently unimpressed. This could have negative implications for attracting foreign investment."

Let me suggest respectfully that amendments to the Mining Act will attract both responsible and irresponsible foreign investment and that irresponsible investment could potentially cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars, such as situations like the Matachewan Consolidated Mines, Ltd dam spill.

It is my third recommendation that schedule O be severed from Bill 26. I believe this recommendation has also been made by the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Environmental Law Association. Unnamed sources within mining should not be justification alone to deregulate the industry in the way prescribed by Bill 26.

If we're to have an open, public debate with public consultation, then I'm sure many beneficial changes can be wrought to mining regulation in the province, but in the absence of this transparent process there is going to be the appearance, if not the reality, that unnamed, unknown sources are driving the environmental protection scheme that affects mining in the province, and this is neither an appearance nor a reality that should stand with this government.

Schedule N, amendments to the Public Lands Act: Many current activities require permits to be issued for activities on public lands. Logging, dredging, filling and clearing of public lands should be done in as transparent a way as possible. Public lands are the public trust. Allowing specific regulations to be developed with an exemption from the Environmental Bill of Rights does not satisfy the public's desire for a strong role in the management of our public resources.

It is my fourth recommendation, therefore, that changes to the Public Lands Act should not be approved until a public review of the benefits of exempting certain activities from permitting are fully shared with the public. Alternatively, this amendment should not proceed without a guarantee that future regulations will be subject to the notice, comment and appeal provisions of the Environmental Bill of Rights.

And so I have come to my conclusions and my conclusions are these: Bill 26 will have a significant impact on the environment. The Environmental Bill of Rights should apply to Bill 26. It was designed to deal with legislation of this kind.

Finally, it is my conclusion that with respect to amendments contained in this bill that impact upon the environment, inadequate justification exists for proceeding in this manner at this time and that through public consultation and open debate the public can be included and we can improve environmental regulation in the province. It just simply should not be done this way.

Thank you very much. I think that allows some time for questions.

The Chair: We have about three minutes and 40 seconds, starting with the government side. Mr Sampson and then Mr Young.

Mr Sampson: Thank you for your presentation. Let me just go to the schedule O part, if I can, for a second. My sense is that your concern with schedule O is the procedure with respect to the filing of closure plans.

Mr Donnelly: And requiring directors' approval, yes.

Mr Sampson: Yes. I concur with you that, like in every sector, in probably politics and business, there are good players and bad players. I'm really asking for your comment and your suggestion on whether it would make more sense, instead of having this particular section or the other sections of this particular act subject to the Environmental Bill of Rights, to have the closure plan -- because that's really where the environmental issue is raised -- be subject to the EBR process. Does that make more sense? What causes the environmental problem is somebody's plan being inaccurate, inappropriate or whatever.

Mr Donnelly: There's a fundamental flaw, I think, in that reasoning and that is, that with thousands of mining closure plans being filed in the province, you then place an inordinate burden on the public to be vigilant for every single plan. That's the role of government. They protect the public trust and the citizen should be the watchdog of government activity.

If, for example, the public missed a closure plan or there was not sufficient interest in a remote area to warrant someone commenting on a closure plan, then there could be significant damage done to a public resource that would cost the government, and hence the taxpayer, millions of dollars and an undue burden would have been placed on the public to play that watchdog role. That is rightly the role of government.

Mr Sampson: Yes, I'm sorry. I wasn't suggesting that we take away from the government the responsibility that this particular section does have with respect to the monitoring of those closure plans and the reviewing of them. I'm just wondering for the purposes of being able to identify and follow the bad actors -- I think was your word, and maybe you might have used another word -- whether or not that was the appropriate way for the public to help the government do that.

Mr Donnelly: It would be perfectly appropriate to have as a safety net the requirement that these closure plans be on the public registry and that the public have the right to notice and comment on them, but that does not exempt the government from the responsibility of having to give these approvals in the first place and not relying on self-assessment or voluntary compliance.

Mr Young: I'm very interested in your presentation. Can we get a copies of that before he goes? Is it possible to get photocopies made, or did you bring some?

Mr Donnelly: I just have notes.

Mr Young: Oh, no. Okay.

Mr Donnelly: I regret to inform you that I was only called within the last 24 hours to appear.

Mr Young: I appreciate that. I know about Pollution Probe and Greenpeace, but I'm unfamiliar with your organization. Would you mind telling me how many members you have with the current year's membership, so I can get an idea how many people you're speaking for?

Mr Donnelly: Okay. We have 3,500 members from across Canada.

Mr Young: Thank you.

The Chair: Members of the opposition. Mr Crozier.

Mr Crozier: Thank you, Mr Donnelly. Your comments at the outset about the bill being too big to be examined by the public have been echoed, I would safely say, by the majority of deputants who have appeared before us.

I was watching Global News at 6 o'clock this evening. Unfortunately, the Premier has said that there will be no more time, in spite of the fact that we've been pleading for it, asking for the bill to be broken apart so it could be reviewed in its many pieces and in fact that we were willing to look at legislation that should be passed immediately, but delay some that didn't necessarily need to be.

Very briefly, we've been given the economics of the environmental impacts to a great extent, that they're going to save several millions of dollars by doing this, but that it may cost hundreds of millions of dollars in fees later on that the province will then be responsible for. There must be some cases, though, where even money can't solve the problem. Does that happen or is money always able to solve the problem?

Mr Donnelly: That's an interesting and important question. The justification for proceeding with the environmental aspects that I have seen so far has all been of cost-benefit nature, and that approach is thoroughly repudiated in any academic literature that is current as a way of assessing regulation and its benefits to the public.

The preferable method is to employ a risk-benefit analysis that gives you a true indication of not only the present dollar impacts of regulation or any action but also is a forward-looking estimation of what the risks are to society of proceeding.

The classic analogy is the Ford Pinto gas tank when the Ford Motor Co did the evaluation that using leather straps instead of steel straps would save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars even though there would be an attendant loss of life, maiming and injury that they would have to pay out insurance claims for, but that in the final analysis the cost-benefit analysis justified that activity.

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Similarly, because in many cases you are dealing with the public trust, and the government becomes the insurer, if you will, ultimately, particularly in the case of fly-by-night operators, the risk-benefit analysis is critical in ensuring that the true costs of these things are well understood.

But then also I think you're quite right. The externality costs of the diminution of environmental quality can't simply be factored in with dollars and cents alone. I'm not appearing today to talk about the value of birds and trees and flowers and clean water, but I also think that those are very important elements of Ontario society.

Mr Phillips: I found your presentation very helpful. In spite of the fact you only had 24 hours to prepare it, we will have it in Hansard and it will be useful for us.

The mining industry, for all of us, is huge in the province and extremely important, but we're being asked, I think, to deal with a major bill affecting the mining industry as but one of 14 different parts, different schedules. This act, I think about 5% of it is the Mining Act and 95% of it is other things. I think you're the fourth group that knows the environment well that has raised major environmental concerns around the bill.

We've heard briefly from the mining industry, although they indicated to us they wanted to come back and give us more information at clause-by-clause. That will be impossible, but that's what they said they'd like to do.

I guess my question to you is, am I characterizing your concerns properly? Are you saying you have major concerns about this bill from the perspective of the environment, and are you saying that if we were to go ahead and pass it as it currently is before us, that represents significant environmental risks?

Mr Donnelly: There is no doubt in my mind that to proceed in this fashion is creating an unnecessary risk to the public of Ontario. You're inviting "toxic terrors" to the province to operate in a regulatory climate that will not protect the public adequately. The way that we are proceeding does not give me the confidence that the public will not be subject to environmental risks and financial risks in the future.

Mr Cooke: You started off your presentation, I think, by asking a question about why is it being done in this manner, and I think those of us who have been around here for a while can answer it pretty easily.

The reason it's being done in this way is that you get a very controversial piece of legislation slipped into an omnibus bill when you know there are other parts of it that are controversial, and this part of it's going to go unnoticed because the constituency that's interested in the environmental aspects of this bill is very small compared to the constituency that cares about the health care aspects and the labour aspects and so forth, so you can just slip it in. Because I think by anybody's measure these aspects of the bill have nothing to do with restructuring government. It's a way of getting a very touchy controversial bill through the House very quickly without much public scrutiny.

I've been quite surprised myself because I said when the mining association was here, I don't know a lot about this area. In fact, I know virtually nothing about the mining industry in the province. But what we have heard, no one has -- in fact, Mr Phillips has asked that question about are you concerned or very concerned, and I think every environmental group that's come before us has said they are very concerned. This is a real potential public risk.

I dare say that as we go through this process, it's not going to get the attention -- and we'll put forward amendments, but I doubt whether it's going to get the public attention that's necessary to force those folks over there to bring an amendment in or amendments to adequately protect the environment.

We'll take your presentation. If there are specific amendments that you think -- they have twice today rejected motions to separate the bill. This is one that it is very clear should be pulled out of the bill and we, as legislators, should have an opportunity to better understand it; nobody on this committee fully understands the implications of the amendments to the Mining Act. But they're not going to do that, so if there are specific amendments you want us to put forward, continue to work on those. Our research department, and I'm sure the Liberal research department as well, will be working on amendments and we can certainly present them and see where we get when we get to clause-by-clause.

Mr Donnelly: Just to respond by way of comment, the greatest fear I have about proceeding in this manner with these changes to the Mining Act is that the true implications of it simply are not known. Canada has committed itself to a number of international treaties relating to biodiversity and environmental quality, and in each case we've adopted the precautionary principle as being a guiding force in the management of our natural resources, and this proposal seems to fly in the face of that commitment.

It really does trouble me that there could be many significant, even severe, environmental impacts arising out of this proposal, and those unintended outcomes or impacts could prove to be very costly, both in terms of dollars but also loss of quality of life in the province.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Donnelly. We've come to the end of your half-hour. We appreciate your taking the time to appear before the committee this evening.

Is David Hogg in the room by any chance? If he were here, he'd be 10 minutes early. We'll recess until 7.

The subcommittee recessed from 1846 to 1858.

ORGANIZATION FOR QUALITY EDUCATION

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Hogg, for coming tonight to speak to the standing committee on general government. You'll have 30 minutes to make your proposal. You can use that time as you see fit. You may decide to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions and response from the three parties. Before you begin your presentation, I'd appreciate it if you'd read your name into the record for Hansard and for the committee members.

Mr David Hogg: Thank you very much indeed for having me here. It was a little short notice but that's probably good; it takes less time. My name is David Hogg. I'm a vice-president of the Organization for Quality Education. I want to speak particularly about schedule K, the amendments contemplated to the provincial and municipal freedom of information and protection of privacy acts.

We want to advise you and the Legislature that the route to go on access to information is to ease the process, not to make it any more difficult. Speaking with conviction from our experiences, the process is already fraught with difficulties. I have experienced extreme frustration with the institutions holding records which I believe the public not only has a right to access, but needs to know about. The Information and Privacy Commissioner, IPC, the media and the public have agreed.

I have been an extensive user of this means of access, a very reluctant but now successful user. The two institutions of my major interactions, the Ministry of Education and Training, MET, and the Metropolitan Separate School Board, MSSB, have on almost every occasion made access extremely difficult. This is not just a singular experience for me, but it is also the experience of others, so much so that it has been necessary to network extensively to exchange IPC access orders and techniques. That should not be. Let me give you some examples.

My first information request was for some provincial test results from MSSB. Here is how the response play out:

While MSSB possessed the results, they said that MET owned them. The request then went to MET. MET wanted $660 for programming and copying to create records held by MSSB. I suggested the Ministry of Education and Training grant permission to the school board to release the records. In the course of this permission, by being inquisitive, I found there was an IPC order instructing that the test results were to be released.

It took me four months. Eventually I got the results for the 15 schools of which only four were above the provincial average, so I would expect that you would understand why they were a little reluctant to release them.

In the course of that access, I found that MSSB staff had made a decision not to have all 250-plus schools tested because the cost of $54,000 was prohibitive. I put in a request to examine some expenses for which MSSB wanted to charge me $4,140. By personally examining and transcribing data from a couple of accounts at no cost, I found over $100,000 was spent on catering in the year when $54,000 was not available for testing.

A Ministry of Education and Training policy document, which controls as a program guideline, is The Common Curriculum, Grades 1-9. It has a particular approach which we believe is unsupported. So I submitted a request for the records which contained the large-scale empirical research describing the support. I received five pages of references in which I could see neither research nor relevant research, but there was an estimated fee of $7,490 to supply me with copies of that material.

A request for access to the expense accounts of MSSB trustee and administration executives took on about a nine-month life of its own. Eventually I got an order from the IPC that instructed the school board to release the records in 20 days. At the last possible moment, instead of providing the documents, I was presented with an excessive bill for $3,213.01 which was subsequently reduced to $710.80 by the IPC. Records obtained showed that a board chair had expenses of $16,600 -- this is for one year -- of which nearly $11,000 was withdrawn in cash. I agree with Commissioner Tom Wright that the information should be available off the shelf without need for an access request.

The question is, how do we get that to happen, given the resistance to information release? Even as a trustee, it has been necessary to use the access act through the appeal stage to get an IPC order.

On the reverse side of this submission, I would like to draw your attention to the request for consistency between the provincial and municipal legislation with respect to continuing access.

If the access acts are expensive to institutions, I would like to point out, from my experiences, that those expenses are self-inflicted wounds. I would also like to point out that while there are mechanisms within the legislation which allow the institutions to recover costs, there is no such protection for requesters. In my present mood, if it would not a further burden on the taxpayer, I would be tempted to suggest institutions should recompense requesters who the IPC finds have been wrongly denied access. Nobody paid me for all of this and the remainder of it, which is at home.

That's part of a story which has rather unfortunate implications for the public. I'm now open for questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much. We have about seven minutes per caucus for questions and we start off with the opposition caucus, Mr Phillips.

Mr Phillips: Mr Hogg, how are you doing? I appreciate your presentation.

The schedule that you referred to is but one of, as I think you know, 14 or 15 that we're dealing with. This bill is huge, and you've, I think very appropriately, pointed out some concerns about that much of the bill. I regret to inform you that we as a committee have so little time to deal with each of these areas, I'm afraid we're just simply not giving justice to major concerns. Some earlier delegation -- actually, some students from the University of Toronto -- pointed out that this is what they said in the Common Sense Revolution: "We're taking decision-making power away from the politicians and the bureaucrats and returning it to the people themselves. That's what the Common Sense Revolution is all about." Yet, as you point out and the commissioner on freedom of information points out, what this bill does is it hides more of the information from the public. I wonder if you could give us any recommendations on what we should do with this section of the bill to make certain that the public has reasonable access to information.

Mr Hogg: I appeared before the triennial legislative committee on this freedom of information act, and I understand that there are some people who are abusing the system, but that doesn't go for most of us. I have had only one of my requests denied when it went through the IPC, and that had its own humour immersed in it because I did two things: I went to the ministry and asked them if they supplied the board with a document and I went to the board asking if they'd been supplied with the document by the ministry. The ministry said that they hadn't supplied the document and the IPC told the board that they had received one. So it was an amusing situation.

I really made two points that I want. I don't think it's appropriate to abuse the act. I mean, if somebody sends in 10,000 requests because you've got two free hours per request, that is an abusive process and shouldn't be allowed to happen. So I don't have a problem with actions being taken, and I understand the IPC has already issued an order dealing with those vexatious situations. You know, because one or two people might abuse the act, that shouldn't stop people who've been very reasonable in the use of the act from doing it.

This business of a fee I have a great concern about. If it's a nominal fee, I'd be quite happy to meet it, but if the fee becomes unreasonable and in fact becomes a bar to accessing information, then I would like to see that struck down. I think it's much more appropriate to deal with it through orders that prevent vexatious requests.

Mr Phillips: Have you any specific recommendations for us on how we might amend the proposals in schedule K to accommodate your concerns?

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Mr Hogg: Unfortunately, I haven't been able to see it. The data that I have are really as a result of what I read in the media, and that sparked sufficient concerns -- the idea of a fee, the idea of pursuing this business of cost. I think that you should have understood from my presentation that the costs that the institutions have tried to stick me with have been absolutely and utterly unreasonable. It would appear that these were attempts to bar access.

There are things in the schedule already there, but what I'm suggesting is that there are other things that may be added to it. This is by no means all, but you can see the amount of data that I had to go through in these, and nobody recompenses me for that. I have no recourse; the act doesn't give me any recourse. I can't go to the IPC and say, "These people are behaving unreasonably." In the political wisdom that you have and the access that you have to people who write this legislation, I would like to suggest to you that you look at that aspect of it.

Mr Phillips: I appreciate that.

Mr Hogg: Because, in fairness, MSSB isn't unique in this regard. There are other school boards that are every bit as restrictive in the way that they release.

Mr Phillips: I think your point is that with the existing legislation it's difficult enough and expensive enough to get the information. This legislation is designed to make it more difficult and more expensive to access information. So, if I can interpret what you said, I gather you've not had an opportunity to review the specifics of the bill.

Mr Hogg: To go through in detail, no.

Mr Phillips: Unfortunately, I realize you probably didn't even find out you were going to be presenting here until probably 24 or 26 hours ago.

Mr Hogg: This afternoon.

Mr Phillips: This afternoon?

Mr Hogg: That's right, so it was too late. If I'd known it was so few pages, then I might have made steps to get them, but it was really more important to me to get my thoughts down.

Mr Phillips: Mr Hogg, just in case I run out of time, let me just assure you that if you felt the previous bill restricted you, the intent of this bill is to tighten up access. I would ask you if you could take the time, not tonight but over the next few weeks, and let us know your thoughts on ways that, in your opinion, the bill could be amended so that we can ensure that there is reasonable access to information.

Mr Hogg: I'd just like to leave you with one thought. As I say, there is only one occasion on which the IPC hasn't agreed with the direction of my requests, and that was with a school board. Meanwhile, the ministry had given me what I wanted, so I couldn't care less, really. But if there is a consistent demonstration of restricting access to documents that subsequently the IPC says should be made available, then there should be something that kicks in that will affect the institution. There has to be some indication to the institution that they're not conducting themselves in a reasonable manner. It would be far better for them. They don't need this work, either. I got mine for free, but it costs them. But the public can't have any influence on this and I would really like to see something in the act that addresses that, that takes some action on the institution.

Mr Cooke: Mr Hogg was responsible for me being able to fight off treasury board when they were trying to cut back the full-time equivalents or staff in the Ministry of Education, because I could justify maintaining our level of staffing just to meet all of Mr Hogg's requests.

Mr Hogg: All four of them?

Mr Cooke: Just kidding. I have a couple of points and one request. I'm not sure whether, when the freedom of information commissioner was before us, he actually gave us a copy of the policy that the commissioner has adopted in order to deal with frivolous requests. I mean, I've got the stacks of stuff that he's provided, but I don't remember him giving us the actual directive. I wouldn't mind looking at that, because certainly when he was also before the Board of Internal Economy justifying his budget, he seemed to indicate that that policy directive was going to deal with requests that were not in line with the original intent of the freedom of information act and that there wasn't a need to put new user fees in place.

I think one thing that you've demonstrated to me over the time that I've known you is that information is power and that if you want to influence public policy, it has to be with information. Obviously where you get information is through the agencies and different levels of government that have that information, and you've made good use of it over the time that I've known you.

I guess what we wouldn't mind you doing is if you could take a look at the act. There are people who abuse the system, but that's the nature of any government service, that there's always going to be some who are going to abuse it. But I wouldn't mind better understanding what specific recommendations you would like us to look at amending, the government amendments, because this will tighten it up considerably, just the removal alone.

I think when the FOI commissioner was before us he said 85% of the requests are dealt with in the two free hours that are currently in the law or in the process that they follow. Now, with these additional user fees, there won't even be the two free hours that are available when you're making requests for information. So if you could supply us with that, I would appreciate that, and we can take a look at putting forward amendments.

The other thing, just to give you an idea of how far this government is prepared to go, in the last Board of Internal Economy meeting the government members of the Board of Internal Economy were even suggesting that we should be considering user fees for those who want to access the Ombudsman's office. I think we're moving very quickly in a direction that any government service, whether it's freedom of information, the Ombudsman or anything else that's been put in place to try to help ordinary citizens better understand government and deal with grievances they have with government, this government is going to put fees and barriers in front of access, and that in the long run I think is going to be bad for the development of public policy.

I don't have questions. I understand the point. If you have any other responses, I'd certainly be more than willing to listen.

Mr Hogg: Actually, on a television show my privacy was breached, because when you make a request your privacy is supposed to be protected, and it was breached on a television program. The statement was made that I'd cost the board thousands of dollars. That might well have been true, but the whole point is that I think that I also saved them thousands of dollars because they knew that if they were going to continue their profligate ways, there was a guy out there ready to go in and start probing questions and making it public. I mean, of this $16,000 for a chairman's expenses, $10,880 was withdrawn in cash. That's not how I use my credit card. I doubt very much whether more than 0.1% of the people -- but this is what was happening. That to me appeared to be abuse of the system. I would suspect that the subsequent chairs are acting a little carefully because they know that there are watchdogs. So yes, sure I cost them money, but I think I saved far more than I cost them.

It's this sort of thing that I think needs to be protected. If somebody just gets a bad mood against some particular agency and then fires in thousands and thousands of them, that clearly is an abuse of process. But there has to be balance and reasonableness. It's difficult to legislate reasonableness. We know there are certain deficiencies attached to democracy, but at least don't close the door on a process that I think is working very well and to the benefit of the public.

Mr Tascona: Thank you, Mr Hogg, for your presentation. The application fee and the ability to refuse to reply to frivolous or vexatious requests that are contained in the schedule reflect the recommendations of the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly's review of the freedom of information and privacy legislation. Specifically, having read your presentation, you may be pleased to know that the fees are going to be set by regulation rather than at the whim of the provider. That's in the legislation.

Mr Cooke: It'll be a fee at the whim of you guys.

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Mr Tascona: I would also say that the requests with respect to frivolous or vexatious claims are going to be subject to appeal. Certainly they're going to be at the front level. The privacy commissioner did indicate he'd rather have them at the end level, at his level, but that would not have provided, under his recommendations, for the individual to be a part of that appeal process. So we're front-ending the "frivolous or vexatious" part with a right of appeal. I'd like to make that clear.

What I'm interested in, though, because you have an understanding and a tacit agreement, I would take it, that frivolous or vexatious claims should be regulated in the process, I'd like to ask you a little bit more with respect to what actions can be taken or you would recommend with respect to the institutions that are being unreasonable rather than a direct appeal to the IPC or some measures that can be taken by the IPC.

Mr Hogg: I haven't found it possible to interact with the institutions. I am regarded in the education reform movement as having acquired some expertise in this regard. I think that's probably fine. But when somebody provides you with five pages of valueless information and then tries to charge you $7,000 for copies of it, obviously there's something wrong in that response.

Mr Tascona: But I think we've addressed that by putting in a procedure with respect to the requester. You'll see that there is a due process there. Also, the regulations are set; they'll have to follow those.

Mr Hogg: But we have that now. I went through that with this one on the expense accounts. The IPC reduced it to $710, but nine months of my time had been consumed in the interim and I got no relief from it. Again, I'm retired now; $700 is a substantial amount of money. The information, the few pages that I got, indicated that there was something worthwhile examining.

Mr Tascona: But when you see the legislation, you'll see it's very specific in the legislation. There will be regulations to deal with such costs, dealing with shipping costs, for example, the costs of preparing the record, in the legislation.

Mr Hogg: I read all that; 20 cents a copy.

Mr Tascona: I'd welcome you to look at that if you feel that should be strengthened in terms of being more specific in that area, based on what you've said.

Mr Hogg: I think that my position, without having thought through it very thoroughly, is that if the IPC rules in favour of the requester, then there should be certain implications involved in it. If there is any nominal fee, that fee should be waived. If the institution is clearly being arbitrary and vexatious in its response -- I mean, if a request is frivolous and vexatious, it can be shut off. What happens if the institution responds in a frivolous and vexatious manner? Is there anything in the act to cover off that situation? I think there's got to be the balance there.

Mr Tascona: That's what I'm asking you, what you think the balance should be, just a waiver of the fee or should there be something else?

Mr Hogg: Certainly a waiver of the fee. If an order is issued in favour of the requester, then the fee should be waived, there is no question, because what the IPC is saying is that this information should have been accessible without the institution consuming its resources to prevent access. But I think that if there is a record on the part of an institution that can be seen to be preventing access when the IPC clearly believes that access should be granted, then there's got to be some action taken, just the same as, I assume, if somebody is identified as a frivolous and vexatious requester, some action is going to be taken.

Mr Tascona: Just one final point, though. You made the point about continuing access. Could you just elaborate that in terms of what you're looking for?

Mr Hogg: I'm not the requester in this particular regard, but in the provincial legislation I understand that once access is granted, then you don't have to submit any more requests, that access is continued. Now, what I understand happened here was that there was a request placed on one of the school boards in the Waterloo area for minutes and board agendas, and so on and so forth. These should be in the public domain anyway, but there was some process in place that prevented continued access to those documents, whatever they were. Now, this doesn't make any sense to me. I haven't experienced this, in fairness. When I got to know about order M-27, which is one that gives access to test results, all I've got to do is to quote the order and I get access. But there must have been something happen in this particular case. I would like to suggest that whoever contacts Mrs Malkin Dare get the specific details on this one.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Hogg, for appearing before our committee.

Housekeeping: Mr Cooke, I believe Mr Richmond is going to undertake to obtain the document from the privacy commissioner. What we'll do is just make that available to any committee member rather than photocopying it for everybody.

The clerk is out looking for the next presenter, so we'll just hold on for a few minutes and see.

Mr Phillips: Mr Chair, I think the minister indicated he'd table that legal opinion on the taxes. Have we had that tabled yet? Mr Leach, I think on Monday morning, said he would table the legal opinion.

The Chair: First day he appeared?

Mr Phillips: Yes. Maybe you could follow up.

The Chair: Oh, his legal opinion from his ministry?

Mr Phillips: Yes.

Mr Hardeman: Mr Chairman, if I might, the legal opinion has not yet been tabled, but it is forthcoming. I have checked with the ministry.

Mr Phillips: Oh, good.

Mr Crozier: Has the opinion been given?

Mr Phillips: Would you expect it this week?

Mr Hardeman: Yes.

The Chair: Perhaps we can do the same with that, leave it with Mr Richmond, and we'll make it available to any committee member who wishes to see it.

Mr Cooke: I don't know about the government members, but I think I can speak for the opposition members: We'd all like a copy.

Mr Phillips: We'll even pay for the photocopying.

Mr Crozier: We'll pay the $2 user fee.

The Chair: We'll just wait a few minutes here.

The subcommittee recessed from 1927 to 1957.

EQUAL PAY COALITION / COALITION POUR UN SALAIRE ÉGAL

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to welcome you to the hearings. This is the Equal Pay Coalition. I was just wondering if you could identify yourselves, and then we can commence the presentation. Thank you.

Ms Daina Green: My name is Daina Green. I'm a member of the Equal Pay Coalition.

Ms Harriet Simand: My name is Harriet Simand, also with the Equal Pay Coalition.

The Vice-Chair: We have half an hour.

Ms Green: Okay, we will be happy to begin. For us, this presentation to you today on the omnibus bill is a matter of fairness and it's an issue of a promise to underpaid women which the Harris government is breaking.

We're here from the Equal Pay Coalition. The Equal Pay Coalition has been around for almost 15 years. Je pourrais dire que la Coalition pour un salaire égal regroupe plus de 60 organisations qui luttent pour des salaires justes pour les femmes. We represent labour organizations, community organizations and business organizations, all of which see pay equity as an important part in the struggle for economic justice in our province for women.

We have come before you today to ask the government not to repeal portions of the Pay Equity Act which are designed to ensure wage justice for tens of thousands of underpaid female workers in Ontario. It is very ironic that just today, on the front page of the Toronto Star, and also on page 10 of the front section of the Globe and Mail, we have seen a report that for the first time in 30 years the wage gap between men and women is starting to widen. This was something that many people thought was in the past, but those of us who have been working very closely with the issues of pay equity realize that we're not there yet. This is not a good time to stop the process towards justice for women.

The problem with the omnibus Bill 26 is that it shuts the door on women who are still owed wage adjustments under pay equity using what's known as the proxy method. These women who are being left out in the cold are women who work in child care centres, nursing homes, treatment centres and other organizations, and those who provide services in the community and in people's homes. These are very important services.

2000

We were temporarily, I should say, cheered to hear a speech at the Pay Equity Commission by the Honourable Elizabeth Witmer at which she said publicly that she and the government are firmly committed to pay equity. This is a question of some puzzlement to us because we now wonder why the government has chosen to stop the progress of the most underpaid and vulnerable women in their march towards fair wages. The only reason is that these women work in all-female workplaces. The bill takes away their rights to achieve pay equity under the proxy method.

In 1985 -- that is, more than a decade ago -- the government of the day set out a method to achieve pay equity using comparisons between male jobs and female jobs in the same workplace. This left out women who work in workplaces where there aren't any male jobs. However, at that time the government promised that it would search for a fair method to ensure that those women as well get pay equity. As we've mentioned, they tend to be very underpaid and undervalued because they work in all-female workplaces. The wages are depressed.

In 1993, the government of the day found such a method that would work as a way to make sure that women in all-female workplaces would get pay equity. The adjustments were not retroactive but, just the same, our Equal Pay Coalition and many women and many women's groups were cheered because it looked like, even if it was taking a long time, the women would finally achieve pay equity. That promise of equality has kept women going in jobs which are really terribly underpaid, as we'll see, a little bit longer.

That brings us to the present moment. At the current time this government, without reviewing the Pay Equity Act, which I might point out is required under the Pay Equity Act, has stepped in to roll back pay equity. The Harris government is telling these women that either they will get no money at all or that they will only get partway to the wage parity that they were promised. Here, in many cases, we're talking about plans that were posted on the wall, that were signed. Women said, "This year I'll get this much and next year I'll get so much and the year after that I'll get so much." The omnibus bill says that those agreements are null and void.

What is the message to the women? The women are being told that they are expected to continue to subsidize the very services that they provide. You are telling them that they should just give up hope on being paid what they deserve.

Ms Simand: Some of the problems we've noted with the omnibus bill for women who work in all-female workplaces is that there are still a lot of employers who have not yet agreed on a proxy comparator. If it's not agreed by the end of next year, these women are going to get nothing.

Bill 26 only insists for those people who have already signed plans that they only have to pay 3% for payroll for 1993, which means in many cases that women won't even get the benefits they're entitled to. If your 3% does not equal what your equity adjustment should be, that's the end and all they have to do is pay out 3%.

There's also been correspondence from different ministries advising unions and employers that if their plan is not submitted by the end of this year, there's going to be no funding. So you may sign a proxy plan in 1996, but there's going to be no funding for those organizations.

Finally, we are concerned with one of the mechanisms in the act. It's going to repeal the entire proxy section as of January 1, 1997. Our concern is that even if you have rights under the existing act, or even under the transition period as provided for in Bill 26, the mechanism to complain is going to be repealed, and therefore there is going to be no way to even enforce the rights that this government is planning to give people under proxy. We assume that's an oversight and we assume that will be corrected so that at least methods of enforcing what this government is proposing to give women under proxy can be enforced.

In practical terms, we've provided one example to illustrate what this actually means. For homemakers in Brantford, the two parties had already agreed on what the pay equity adjustment was going to be. The homemakers' current wage was $10.50, and the comparator's rate was $16.70, which is a gap of $6.20 an hour. If the employer only has to pay 3% of the 1993 payroll, this is a 36-cent raise, and in fact this is all, under the current legislation, they're going to be entitled to. After 36 cents, that's it. So even for women who will be able to get some proxy under the current legislation, they're going to get in many cases almost an infinitesimal fraction of what they're entitled to.

We'd also like to point out that in terms of Ontario as progressive legislation, the Equal Pay Coalition has been invited to countries all over the world: England, Brussels. We've had delegations from Sweden and Japan that have come to Ontario specifically to study how Ontario implemented the Pay Equity Act, in order to model similar pay equity acts for their countries.

We think that, from the government's point of view, this is very internationally well known, and certainly for countries that are considering pay equity it is shortsighted to repeal proxy when this is one way of compensating for some of the problems that were in the original act; that is, if you happen to work in a workplace where there are no male comparators, you get absolutely nothing, even though your job may be undervalued.

Ms Green: I'd like to go directly to the recommendations we're making regarding the section of the omnibus bill that relates to proxy pay equity.

Our first and most important recommendation is that the proxy pay equity methodology be maintained until the women reach the equal wages that they're entitled to. It seems that it would be consistent with some of the other measures the government has taken not to be very concerned about women, and poor women in particular, so we wonder whether the government will take our advice on our first recommendation.

If the government insists on rolling back the promises to these women, we believe there are some minimum conditions that must be met in any case. First of all, the women should not lose what they have already gained. The pay equity plan that was agreed to must be honoured, and there cannot be any takeaways. If they happen to have gotten more than what is minimally stated in Bill 26, they should be able to hold on to their new wage rates and have them increased as per the plans that were in place and that are in place today.

Our third recommendation is that employers who renege on their payments must be subject to enforcement, and that means that the provisions for complaints that are now set out in the Pay Equity Act must be maintained. We cannot have a situation where an employer wins by simply dragging his heels and not agreeing to a proxy pay equity plan until the whole thing goes up in smoke. That would be completely unacceptable. There are certainly many employers who are not rushing to pay their workers a fair wage if there's no way that the women can complain after the period that they didn't get what the employer promised. That would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

Our final recommendation has to do with the way many women, especially women who don't belong to unions, have been able to see their cases taken forward. That mechanism was set up a number of years ago, and it is the Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services clinic. This is a specialized clinic which ensures that non-unionized women get legal representation and advice to secure their rights under the Pay Equity Act.

We have been told that the government will be ending funding to PEALS in the spring of 1996, and they are already not allowed to take on any new cases. Therefore, right now, if there are women who find out that their employer is not going to go ahead with proxy, for instance, and they call up PEALS, PEALS says, "Sorry, we're closing down; we can't help you." If these women don't have a union, and most women in the proxy sector would find themselves in that situation -- contrary to news reports, this is not necessarily a majority unionized sector -- then they'll find that they have nowhere to turn. It is very complicated legislation to take to a local legal aid clinic. PEALS has already specialized in this matter and is very able to help women who feel that they are not getting what they are due.

2010

So those are our four recommendations. We wanted to make sure we left some time to answer any questions that you might have and also to clarify whether it is your intention to close the door on these women, roll back what they have and leave them without a complaint mechanism.

The Chair: Thank you. We have six minutes for each caucus to ask questions, starting with the third party.

Mr Silipo: I appreciate very much this presentation, for a number of reasons, particularly and centrally because I think you make the point very clearly about why the need for continuing proxy pay equity. I appreciate particularly the example that you use in your brief in terms of showing what this means for homemaker and home support workers, because one of the things we've continued to hear from the government members is that what they're doing here is really no big deal, that they're simply returning pay equity to what it was originally intended to be.

In fact, you might be interested to know that the only statement we've received here formally from the government was about two lines from the Chair of Management Board when he appeared before the committee saying that the Pay Equity Amendment Act, 1995, will put pay equity for public sector employers more in line with those in the private sector and return pay equity to its original principles.

I certainly recall that the original principles of pay equity were I think the ones that you've outlined here, which were to provide for pay equity for all women. Even in the original legislation, while the government did not bring forward provisions that were later rectified by proxy and under the previous Liberal government, when they did bring it, there was a commitment in fact to do that. Then the legislation that we brought in -- and I know about that legislation, having had responsibility as Chair of Management Board at the time, working, among others, with the coalition to develop the plan -- it was done specifically to fill the gap, and to fill it for thousands of women who were in the lowest-paid categories.

I guess I'd just like you to talk a little bit more, focusing in on that point, because I really am struck at the insistence we've seen so far by the government members that somehow what they're doing here is nothing out of the ordinary. They seem to fail to appreciate the fact that they are taking a piece of pay equity away from, in effect, one could argue, a group of women that needs it the most.

Ms Simand: I think we would certainly agree with that. It's not just a question of returning to pay equity principles. The pay equity principles were that all underpaid women in Ontario would be paid properly. There was just a loophole because in some establishments they had no male comparators. So just by the fact of where you happened to work, whether you had enough men there or not, would depend on whether you deserved a pay equity increase.

The whole reason for bringing in proxy was in fact to ensure that the original pay equity principles would be enforced. Certainly, proxy in no way goes over what pay equity is; proxy just provides that all women are going to get pay equity and that you don't get left out just because you happen to be in an all-female establishment. You work at a battered women's shelter, you're a homemaker; it doesn't mean you deserve nothing because there doesn't happen to be enough men in your establishment to find a comparison.

Mr Silipo: One of the other comments I know that we've heard on a couple of occasions is around the concern that has been expressed by some agencies around how proxy was being implemented, and I think particularly also around the costing. Now as I recall, I don't know if it's been changed so far -- obviously it's going to be changed dramatically now -- but the provision of funding that we had set up under the previous government was to flow the dollars at 100%, which would cover the proxy so the agencies would not be in a position of not having the funds to pay. Although we all know that there were some problems in some cases with how the implementation of it was taking place, my sense was that those were being looked at. I don't know if you've got any further comments on that.

Ms Simand: We know that we have been hearing things through the members of the organization that people are being told that there's no guarantee that they will get those flow-through dollars. That is very problematic. If you go back to the case study that we showed, in the first go-round where they got 3%, which is what this government is proposing to make basically the cap that employers would have to pay, that only reduced the established wage gap by 5%. So 95% of the wage gap was still there after they got their 5%.

One of the things that I think we need to keep in mind is that it is a benefit to these employers to have better-paid staff who have high morale. If you now tell these women that they're never going to get the money they're owed, it really demoralizes them. The fair wages, even though they were 30 years in the future for some of these women, kept them going, said, "Well, I know my job is worth that and I'm going to get there."

It is seen in many of the service sectors where the wages are very low that it's a revolving door, that it's hard for people to stay motivated because they feel there's no recognition for the work. We're talking about the people who might go into your home and take care of your mother while you're at work. We're talking about the people who might take care of your niece or your nephew in a children's treatment centre, or a neighbour who has to go to a battered women's shelter. We're talking about services that are very difficult to provide, that are very crucial, that are very emotionally demanding.

Part of the lift we got through the proxy pay equity is not quantifiable in dollars. It's the morale boost that says, "Everyone recognizes what my job is worth." What this government is saying is: "Your job isn't really worth that. We're not going to pay you that. Give up. Forget it. Go back to a little bit more than minimum wage. That's what your job is really worth."

Mr Tascona: I was interested in your reference to that newspaper article on the male-female wage gap, because in looking at it, I understand it applied to Canada and I also understand that the rationale for the drop in women's wages and the widening of the gap reflects, as they state here, "an economic resurgence of industries battered by the recession that are traditionally male preserves." Also in the article, there's a statement by Doug Porter, the senior economist with Nesbitt Burns, that he agrees that there could be a trend reversal; in other words, these industries, I think it's manufacturing and construction, didn't have a very good year in 1995 and what we'll see is a potential reversal and the gap will be narrowed. I guess one could say it's sort of a revolving situation.

Ms Green: It certainly has been revolving, because most of the women have been in a position where the social contract would have kept wages from going up, except that most of these women are so far below the low-income cutoff that they would be getting a pay equity increase.

Mr Tascona: I was only referring in terms of the Statistics Canada applying to Canada. Obviously, we don't know what the situation is in Ontario from that article.

But dealing with your presentation, you certainly have made some interesting points, one of them dealing with the enforcement mechanism. It's your concern there that there is potential for the failure to meet the obligations and that the act doesn't adequately provide that. I take it you're in favour of a process that would allow for that.

Ms Green: We believe that if the government is setting out a mechanism, it has to be enforceable. You can't wait till the end of the period and then the woman goes, let's say, to the Pay Equity Commission and says, "My employer didn't implement it," and then they say: "Sorry, it's erased. There is no more proxy pay equity. There's nothing for you to complain about."

Mr Tascona: So in effect, if there's an actual violation that would trigger the complaint mechanism, that's what would have to be put in place.

Ms Green: Yes. We have to make sure that the right to complain isn't removed. Right now, what the omnibus bill says is that the agreements that were signed are suspended.

Mr Tascona: I guess it's a matter of interpretation. I am making notes of what you're stating there, because certainly you want to have a bill that provides an enforcement mechanism, so your point is well taken.

Ms Simand: It's also important in terms of the enforcement mechanism that there are obligations in the act -- for example, maintenance: You can't suddenly in one year just decrease what you've agreed to. If the employer has complied with whatever the new legislation is, there should be something in the act that makes it clear that the other obligations flow from it, so there's still the obligation to maintain for those people who are covered by the proposed new proxy amendments as set out in the act, so that it's not as of January 1, 1997, first, you can't complain and, second, there's no obligation to continue maintaining it. I think the act needs to be made clearer that, if you're going to make these types of amendments, the obligations that they must --

Mr Tascona: Comply and also maintain.

Ms Green: And maintain pay equity.

2020

Mr Tascona: I guess we're getting into the pay equity principle. What we started out with, the process brought in in 1987, was the same establishment. From there I think it was recognized at that time and certainly in the 1990s that that process didn't cover all female workers; I think it was in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 female workers who weren't going to be covered by the initial phase of pay equity. What we have here, proxy comparison, as I understand it -- you may correct me -- is that we're the only jurisdiction in the country that has it.

Ms Green: That is correct, but that is because of the method that's used to achieve pay equity, that's based directly on individual comparisons.

Mr Tascona: I just wanted to confirm that.

Ms Green: But our perspective back at the time when proxy was being considered is that these are all salaries that come from the government. The government could simply raise the rate to the proper rate. You don't really need too much of a process. All of this is completely within the government's hands to pay the workers in these all-female organizations -- this is only the public sector -- to pay them the proper rate.

Mr Tascona: But by the same token, it doesn't apply to the private sector.

Ms Green: The whole idea of pay equity was that it changed the market rate. If you change the market rate in the public sector, presumably for the workers who are in the private sector, that exerts some kind of pressure because you have a disparate wage rate. We're interested in upward pressure so that women's wages rise to meet men's wages, not downward pressure.

Mr Tascona: Yes, and I understand that.

The Chair: Mr Tascona, I'm sorry, you've exhausted the time for the government caucus. I will turn to the opposition caucus.

Mr Phillips: I appreciate the presentation. You mentioned the sort of coincidence that the day you are appearing, the Star has an article indicating that the gap is beginning to widen again. The other coincidence is that if you go out here and walk down the hall, you'll see in one of those glass cabinets a large article, and the headline is, "Women to achieve equal pay soon." That article was from 1952. I encourage you when you leave the building tonight to take a look at it, because the battle goes on.

Ms Green: We're still waiting.

Mr Phillips: I realize that, and today we see the gender gap: men $40,700, women $28,400. We all recognize that there are perhaps some legitimate reasons for that, but there are some not so legitimate reasons.

We just heard one of the government members say that no other jurisdiction in Canada has the proxy method. This is the problem we face, because Ontario has probably led the way in pay equity, certainly in Canada, and now I guess one no longer wants to lead the way, and wait for some other jurisdiction to lead the way. At least this government believes that.

Ms Green: It was a point of good press, actually, for the province that so many people were interested in the pay equity work. It would be a shame to lose that.

Mr Phillips: I realize that. I'm just saying that now I gather the reason for not doing it is because no one else has it, rather than that the reason for doing it is to provide leadership. Can you perhaps help the government members, all of us, by outlining the reasons it's in Ontario's best interests to lead the way in this area, help to outline the benefits to Ontario of continuing to play a leadership role in the pay equity area?

Ms Green: I'll start, and I'm sure Harriet has some things to add. First of all, these kinds of services are typically decentralized types of services that this government has shown some interest in, for instance, homemaker and home support services, some of those smaller treatment centres. We're talking about the community services that allow people to stay in their own homes, receive care and treatment. It is in Ontario's interest to make sure that this is a well-trained and motivated workforce. We're all getting older and we're all going to be needing these services, if we don't need them today, a variety of these kinds of services, and it is in our interest not to discourage young women and men from entering these jobs because the pay is so low. That is one area that it is definitely in the interests of all Ontarians to make sure that this is appropriately remunerated. We're not looking to leapfrog the wages for this kind of work beyond what is normally paid to men who do work of a similar calibre. But we believe that just at the basic level of justice, that is in Ontario's interest.

Ms Simand: When we look at the Pay Equity Act, who was already receiving it, if you happen to be in an establishment where you have a male comparator, you get pay equity, in the private sector or in the public sector. The only people who aren't going to get pay equity are people who happen to work in an establishment that is mainly all women. Women who work in those types of establishments are usually the most underpaid and the most undervalued -- battered women's shelters, homemaking services. It doesn't make sense to, on the one hand, say, "We're going to have a Pay Equity Act and all these women are entitled to receive pay equity under the act," and the only people who aren't going to get it are in fact really the women who need it the most. There's really no reason why this segment of the population of women in Ontario should be cut out of the Pay Equity Act.

Ms Green: And this is an area where the government should lead the way. If the government wants to show that it believes in fairness, it should honour its agreements and raise the wages of these women, as it promised to do.

Ms Simand: It's already in place. It's not as if, "Should we introduce proxy at all?" It's already been around for several years, it's already been done in many establishments. For the establishments where they've already agreed on the comparator and what the wage rate is, they can just continue paying it. They don't have to start up again. It's already done, it's already in progress.

It's not a perfect system, but if the government is concerned that it's not working perfectly, you should try to think of other ways of getting these women money, as opposed to just deleting proxy so they'll end up with nothing.

Ms Green: They're also going to be angry about it.

Mr Crozier: You mentioned at the outset that Minister Witmer was in a venue where she stated that she was committed to pay equity. Could you expand on that -- in other words, the context in which it was said and what you thought of those comments?

Ms Simand: It was at the Pay Equity Commission. Brigid O'Reilly, who has been the commissioner of the Pay Equity Commission since this began, was retiring, and Ms Witmer was invited to speak at her retirement. It was open to the community, people interested in pay equity, and I attended. She gave a little speech, and one of the first things she said was that she was firmly committed to pay equity. All of us in the audience were actually very happy, because we were very concerned about what was going to happen with pay equity and we assumed that if she was committed to pay equity, the proxy method wouldn't just be completely deleted. If there were problems with proxy, perhaps there could be amendments or some changes, but not completely either deleting pay equity or limiting payments to 3% of the 1993 budgets.

Mr Crozier: Did she simply say pay equity, period, or was there any kind of further explanation, or was that what you gleaned out of that?

Ms Simand: No, she didn't go into detail about the proxy method. The first thing she said was, "I want you all to know that I am firmly committed to pay equity." For anybody who's firmly committed to pay equity, pay equity means that underpaid women in Ontario deserve to be paid their proper wages, which would include, definitely, the most underpaid women and the most undervalued women, who are women who are now going to be caught if proxy ends up being deleted or radically changed.

The Chair: Thank you for appearing today.

That ends our session today. Mr Silipo?

Mr Silipo: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I raise something just to seek your help, mainly, at this point. I want to follow up on the point in this last submission about the comments made by the Honourable Elizabeth Witmer, the Minister of Labour, who is the minister responsible for pay equity. I wonder whether we could ask through our research if there were written copies of those comments that could be made available to the committee. That, I presume, could just be a straight request.

The point I need your help on is that of the various ministers who have appeared before the committee to explain the content of Bill 26, Mrs Witmer was one of the ministers who didn't appear. What would be the process whereby the committee could ask her to appear before us at some point?

The Chair: We can request that she appear. The time frame wouldn't permit her to appear before this week, and then the committee's on the road, but --

Mr Silipo: No, I appreciate that it wouldn't be feasible to ask her to appear this week, but I don't know if at the beginning of the clause-by-clause or at some time during that week it would be feasible, or whatever seems to be sensible. Do you need a motion for that, or is that something that can be undertaken?

The Chair: Can I just take that under advisement and report back tomorrow morning?

Mr Silipo: That'd be great.

Mr Cooke: I'm assuming we will have cabinet ministers before us on the first Monday when we're doing clause-by-clause, because somebody's going to want to announce the amendments that are being brought forward, and cabinet ministers usually do that. You might be able to finesse it around that.

The Chair: We are not sure what their arrangements have been for that, so perhaps we can take that under advisement too. We'll talk about it tomorrow and perhaps tomorrow we'll refer it to the subcommittee.

Mr Cooke: Speaking of amendments, we have a pool we're running, that the opposition members have participated in, on how many amendments there will be. If anybody'd like to join in, it's five bucks, so all they have to do is give us a number.

The Chair: That's not a point of order, Mr Cooke. I have to rule that one out of order.

I do want to remind members that we're meeting tomorrow in room 151, and we'll start at 9:30.

The subcommittee adjourned at 2031.