SAVINGS AND RESTRUCTURING ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 SUR LES ÉCONOMIES ET LA RESTRUCTURATION
HAMILTON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
HAMILTON STEELWORKERS AREA COUNCIL
FEDERATION OF ONTARIO NATURALISTS
HAMILTON AND DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
TAXPAYERS COALITION BURLINGTON
ONTARIO PROFESSIONAL FIRE FIGHTERS ASSOCIATION
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 3906
BURLINGTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CITY OF BURLINGTON
CONTENTS
Friday 12 January 1996
Savings and Restructuring Act, 1995, Bill 26, Mr Eves / Loi de 1995 sur les économies
et la restructuration, projet de loi 26, M. Eves
Hamilton and District Labour Council
Wayne Marston, president
Andy Paterson, vice-president
Hamilton Steelworkers Area Council
Bryan Adamczyk, executive officer
Federation of Ontario Naturalists
John Lounds, executive director
Marion Taylor, director of environmental affairs
Lyn MacMillan, volunteer
Brian McHattie, conservation director, Hamilton Naturalists' Club
Hamilton and District Chamber of Commerce
Lee Kirkby, executive director
Taxpayers Coalition Burlington
Frank Gue, chair, education committee
Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association
Jim Lee, president
Patrick De Fazio, president emeritus
Mississauga Board of Trade
Charles Coles, chairman
Peter Cassidy Consulting
Peter Cassidy
PATH Employment Services
Aznive Mallett, executive director
Sal Vella, president, United Disabled Consumers
Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3906
Catherine Hudson, president
Burlington Chamber of Commerce; City of Burlington
Scott McCammon, executive director, Burlington Chamber of Commerce
Mike Wallace, alderman, city of Burlington
Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, District 8
Jim Douglas, chair
Ms Betty Ann Bushel
Ms Bev Wilson
Police Association of Ontario
John Moor, president
Brian Adkin, president, Ontario Provincial Police Association
Paul Walter, president, Metropolitan Toronto Police Association
Dave Wilson
Hamilton Region Conservation Authority
Alan Stacey, chair
Ben Vanderbrug, general manager
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:
Agostino, Dominic (Hamilton East / -Est L) for Mrs Pupatello
Phillips, Gerry (Scarborough-Agincourt L) for Mr Grandmaître
Sampson, Rob (Mississauga West / -Ouest PC) for Mr Flaherty
Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt ND) for Mr Wood
Also taking part / Autre participants et participantes:
Christopherson, David (Hamilton Centre / -Centre ND)
Doyle, Ed (Wentworth East / -Est PC)
Ross, Lillian (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC)
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Richmond, Jerry, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The subcommittee met at 0902 in the Sheraton Hotel, Hamilton.
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): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the standing committee on general government. Before we begin our proceedings this morning with our first deputant, we have a motion from Mr Agostino.
Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Chair.
Whereas Bill 26 impacts in a major way on every individual in Ontario;
Whereas Bill 26 requires broad public input before being passed into law;
Whereas there are 82 groups in Hamilton that want to provide input into the bill, but only 15 will be heard;
I move that when the House returns on January 29, 1996, the order with respect to Bill 26 be amended such that the portions of the bill that do not require urgent passage for fiscal reasons be returned to the standing committee on general government so that further hearings can be arranged for the community of Hamilton.
The Chair: Would you like to speak to the motion?
Mr Agostino: We have heard constantly, in every city we've gone to, demands for more time, for more opportunity and for more people who want to come forward and express their views to this committee and to this government on Bill 26. This is fundamentally the most important piece of legislation this government may table during its mandate, and although the government finally gave in to opposition demands for public hearings -- extensive in its view, but not in the view of the opposition -- we do not believe it is enough. We do not believe it has given people across Ontario enough time.
Every time a group comes forward there are further suggestions, further ideas, further views that are new to this committee, and allowing this to continue for a period of time after the 29th would give opportunity to people in this community and across this province.
In Hamilton -- I'm going to go through a list for the record, Mr Chairman -- these are the people who have been denied access to this committee:
John Andrachuk; Anne Demeter; James Dodson; Margaret Fox; Peter Tyndall; Dave Steinberg; Charles Johnston; Matt Wilson; Tom Eyre; Brantford Public Utilities Commission; Burlington Professional Fire Fighters Association; Canada Watch Network; Canadian Environmental Industry Association; the Canadian Federation of Students; Canadian Union of Public Employees; CAVIAN; Canadian Auto Workers, Locals 4401, 504 and 558; the city of Burlington; the city of Hamilton; Barbara Hall, mayor of the city of Toronto; Cultural Interpreting Service; CUPE, Locals 786, 1065, 1605, 3566, 778, 794 and 839; the CWA; Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board; Dundas Professional Fire Fighters Association; Falconbridge Ltd; Halton Elementary Teachers' Association; Halton Regional Coalition for Social Justice; Hamilton Professional Fire Fighters Association; Hamilton Teachers' Federation; Hamilton Women Teachers Association; Iwanas Ferrous Ltd; Lincoln Chamber of Commerce; McMaster Ontario Public Interest Research Group; McMaster University; Metropolitan Toronto School Board; Municipal Electric Association; Norfolk NDP Riding Association; Ontario Private Campground Association; Ontario Federation of Labour; OPSEU, Local 213; the region of Hamilton-Wentworth; the region of Ottawa-Carleton; the regional chairmen's association; the regional municipality of Halton; Salary Action Committee; Scarborough Professional Fire Fighters Association; Senior Tenants of Hamilton; Simcoe and District Labour Council; Stoney Creek Professional Fire Fighters Association; the Strategic Directions Council of Public Libraries; the regional municipality of Hamilton; the Toronto electric commission; the Toronto electric commissioners; the United Steelworkers, Local 1005; USWA Hamilton; the Voice of Canadians Committee; Burlington Public Library; and Anne Gillies.
Mr Chairman, these groups have been denied access to this committee by this government.
Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): I would like to speak briefly in support of this motion. As you know, we tabled a similar motion with you this morning, as we have indeed every other morning this week. We've done that because in each community we've visited, from Windsor to London to Kitchener-Waterloo to Niagara Falls and now here in Hamilton this morning, we have found that the interest in this bill far exceeds the number of spaces available for people to speak. While that always is the case to some extent with any major piece of legislation, we are finding that it is there to a far greater extent with this piece of legislation than with any I've ever seen.
That's the case because clearly Ontarians are beginning to understand the far-reaching implications this legislation has for devolving a great deal of power to individual ministers, for providing broad powers of taxation to municipalities, which people say they want more clarification about at the very least. It's interesting that even those groups that have appeared so far before this committee to express support in a general way for what the government is doing, support in a broad way for the bill, have very quickly moved to outline a number of concerns they have with this legislation, and want at the very least to have the powers given to municipalities severely curtailed in terms of the number of taxing powers, or to have them explained. We heard this yesterday, we heard it throughout the week.
For those reasons and because, listening as we have been to many groups and individuals, while the themes have been consistent, it's fair to say we have been garnering new insights with every presentation, and it's incumbent upon us to provide a mechanism for people who want to continue to be heard.
The other useful part that's before us is that there would certainly be a mechanism, with agreement among the three parties and the three House leaders, for us to be able on January 29 to sever those pieces of the bill over which there is little or no controversy and deal with those, to then spend more time on those other sections of the bill that require greater study and over which people are much more concerned.
Although this has become a routine motion in the sense that we've raised it every day this week, we do hope it is taken by the government members as much more than us putting forward this notion that people need to be heard. I hope they are beginning to realize that there is a great deal more substance here that requires more thought and more work and that this is one vehicle through which that can be accomplished.
Mr Rob Sampson (Mississauga West): It's important in speaking to this particular motion to put a few facts on the table that we need to have in our mind when we give consideration to it.
First, there is the committee time, the hours we have been and will be sitting, reviewing this legislation with the public in the form of public hearings and inclusive of committee time in clause-by-clause review. I've looked at this and I've done the calculations; this committee, which was struck last year, will allow this government to spend more committee time than on any other piece of legislation in the last two parliaments, clearly reflecting our view that it is indeed a significant piece of legislation and does certainly require some consultation.
We're prepared, by the way, to receive written submissions, as I've said earlier, from individuals who are not able to get on the list. I have one that was given to me this morning that I will table right now. I would ask the clerk to circulate it to the other members and we'll give it due consideration. That, to my knowledge, by the way, is the fourth written submission we've received during the now two full weeks of hearings, two full weeks during which we've suggested that for people who cannot make it here, we're prepared to receive written submissions and they will be given due consideration.
The other thing that is important to realize is that twice so far in the two weeks we've had hearings, we've the same individual at the table in two different locations. I would hope that if individuals are coming again to this table, if they have come to us before in other city locations, they would yield to people who were not able to make presentations at the committee table. I am hoping that today and in future days individuals who do that will give full consideration to the fact that there are those who are not able to be here and speak to the table.
I want to clarify that it's not this government that determines who gets on the list. That statement I believe was made by members opposite, that people have been denied access to this table by the government. The allocation and sequencing on the list is not determined by this side of the table, nor by the other side of the table. Procedures were established, based upon agreement by both sides of the table before this committee hearing started, and those procedures are being followed. It was based upon an agreement by all the parties about how the names would be dealt with and what the sequence would be. That process is being followed. We do not propose changing that, and I've not heard anything from the other side that we do.
0910
There have certainly been interesting proposals raised with respect to this legislation. We've said all along that we're prepared to listen. Three ministers spoke to this committee on the first day and indicated our preparedness to listen. We're going to do that. We have had some very good suggestions come forward. I want to hear from the rest of Ontarians before we make a decision about what the resolutions and amendments should be. Clearly, we're not prepared to draft amendments and determine the depth and breadth of the amendments until we've had deputations from all the people we're prepared to listen to. I think that's appropriate for the other people in Ontario, the people of northern Ontario, whom we will be seeing next week, and the health committee will be doing the route we just finished this week.
I believe there is sufficient time to deal with this legislation. Issues are coming up, and we're prepared to listen and respond to them. It's not in our purview to have the House leaders deal with it in any manner other than what was agreed to by all the House leaders and the parties at the time this committee and the process for this committee were struck. I conclude my comments by saying that we believe there is sufficient time, and we'll be voting against this particular resolution.
The Chair: Before I take the vote, I'd like to recognize Mrs Ross from Hamilton West and Mr Christopherson from Hamilton Centre, who join us today. Mr Agostino is also with us today as a voting member. Mr Phillips is also a voting member, and so is Mr Silipo, along with Mr Tascona, Mr Sampson, Mr Hardeman and Mr Young. That being done, I'd like to put the question. All those in favour?
Mr Silipo: A recorded vote.
The Chair: In a recorded vote, all those in favour?
Ayes
Agostino, Phillips, Silipo.
The Chair: All those against?
Nays
Hardeman, Sampson, Tascona, Young.
The Chair: I declare the motion lost.
I'll let it be known that Mr Silipo has tabled a very similar motion. We'll rule that out of order since we just had debate on that, but he has filed that motion.
HAMILTON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: Will our first deputant, the Hamilton and District Labour Council, please come forward. Good morning, gentlemen, and welcome. You will have half an hour this morning to make your presentation, which you may use as you fit. You may wish to leave some time for questions from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it, for the benefit of committee members and for Hansard, if you'd start by introducing yourselves and your organization.
Mr Wayne Marston: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Wayne Marston; I'm the president of the Hamilton and District Labour Council. With me today is Andy Paterson, who is the vice-president of the Hamilton and District Labour Council and president of CAW Local 504.
It's a very interesting mood to see around these hearings. I guess formality demands that we must thank you for the privilege of making a presentation, but I must say that has to ring hollow in many people's ears, as a result of the clamour that had to be made to even get these hearings.
I'll preface the labour council's brief with a few observations. In the minds of many citizens of Ontario, 1995 saw Ontario take a sharp turn to the right with the election of this government. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that I wasn't particularly happy with the result. It is true, though, that by virtue of our political system, when 45% of the public votes for one particular party, it then has the right to govern. But I submit to you that what this government has been doing is not governing but dictating.
From where I sit, I'd have to say the June 8 election has brought to power the most retrogressive government in Ontario's history. This government clearly has an agenda which includes the dismantling and laying to waste of many of the gains provided by the more progressive pieces of legislation over the past 50 years. This government seems prepared to roll back legislation that was brought in by previous Tory governments. Mind you, the Davis Tories were not as reform-minded -- or much less ideologically driven -- as this government.
Bill 26 represents nothing short of the single greatest power grab in the history of the province. I want to say to those who are not familiar with the history of Canada's labour movement, and who as a result are easily led to believe our only objections to this government's actions are because of Bill 7, that this is simply not the case. The fact is, the Ontario labour movement has a proud history of defending not just its members but also the weak and voiceless in our society. No one should be surprised that the labour movement is positioned as few others to oppose this nonsense revolution. One bit of advice: When you, the elected voice of the people of Ontario, attack the so-called big unions, remember, you're actually attacking the ordinary, hardworking people of Ontario.
Our formal brief will start at this point. The Hamilton and District Labour Council represents over 100 affiliated locals with a membership in excess of 30,000 active and retired members and, in addition, their families. The labour council is more than concerned about the proposed changes under Bill 26, the Savings and Restructuring Act. This act, if passed, would change the entire way that the provincial and municipal governments do business in Ontario, yet this provincial government is not affording the appropriate time for proper public consultation or debate in the Legislature.
This bill, if passed, would give cabinet ministers unprecedented power to make decisions on the delivery of public services and in the operation of public institutions. Municipal governments will have the power to establish user fees and impose new taxes and be able to drive down public sector wages. The bill also allows cabinet to make decisions by regulation or administrative order without parliamentary debate or any opportunity for public discussion or scrutiny.
As a trade union body, we cannot allow any piece of legislation to go unchallenged that would allow cabinet ministers to cancel or eliminate any contractual rights contained in existing binding agreements and then to prevent enforcement of these agreements in the courts. These provisions specifically apply to agreements between the government and the Ontario Medical Association and the government and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
This bill would also empower cabinet with the ability to make regulations that would override the provisions of any collective agreement or contract, and even override or provide exemptions from the provisions of other legislation. The bill will also reverse or eliminate certain decisions already made by the courts under existing legislation and will insulate the government against any liability arising from future court decisions.
To this labour council, it is clearly incomprehensible for one piece of legislation to create three new acts, repeal two other acts and amend 44 other acts. Bill 26 contains over 200 pages and the compendium provided with the bill consists of 2,225 pages, even though it does not include a full text of all the acts to be amended. In the opinion of the labour council, it is impossible for any MPP to have even the slightest understanding of what is being passed in this bill.
There are many sections of the bill which will detrimentally affect the wages and living standards of many of the affiliates of our labour council in the public sector. These are included in schedule Q, which would require an arbitrator to consider the following criteria:
(a) The employer's ability to pay in light of its fiscal situation;
(b) The extent to which services may have to be reduced if the current funding levels are not increased;
(c) The economic situation in Ontario and in the municipalities concerned;
(d) A comparison of the terms and conditions of employment and the nature of the work performed by other employees in the broader public sector; and finally,
(e) The employer's need for qualified employees.
These provisions will interfere with the integrity of the arbitration process by requiring boards of arbitration to consider these criteria in awarding collective agreements.
0920
The bill deprives employees in the fire, hospital, police, public service and school board sectors of a fair and impartial mechanism for determining their terms and conditions of employment. This bill is wrong and unfair and should be withdrawn.
Also of great detriment to our brothers and sisters in the public sector is the section of the bill amending the Public Service Pension Act and the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union Pension Act, 1994. The changes proposed by the government are solely for the purpose of facilitating the privatization and downsizing of the public sector. They will strip public sector employees of pension rights which they would normally have had under existing laws. This government is taking steps to exempt itself from the normal obligations faced by an employer that undertakes a massive layoff.
Typical of this government's unfair treatment of workers in the case of women is the amendments to the Pay Equity Act. These amendments will take away fairness in the compensation packages of many women. There are an estimated 100,000 women in low-paid jobs such as day care and nursing homes where they have no male-dominated job classes of equal value at the same employers to compare wages with for the purposes of pay equity. Proportional pay equity, introduced in 1994, would have assisted these women by proportionately comparing their wages to male-dominated job classes at the same employer at different levels of skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Proxy pay equity was also introduced in 1994 for public sector employees who had only female-dominated job classes, by comparing these job classes to a proxy establishment that had been able to establish a pay equity plan. As a result of these sections of Bill 26, women who would have had raises under these sections of the Pay Equity Act will now have raises which will be far lower. Once again this government hurts the workers who are least likely to be able to defend themselves.
Also contained in Bill 26 are changes to the Municipal Act and other statutes related to municipalities. These changes give the Minister of Municipal Affairs much greater power to restructure with the goal of privatizing public utilities and services and the establishment of user fees. Changes under Bill 26 in many cases will allow the restructuring of municipalities without public input. Residents could see municipal restructuring which could result in privatization, user fees, large property tax increases or a large reduction in service, and never have the opportunity for any input.
This omnibus bill also contains changes such as those to the conservation authorities, the Forest Fires Prevention Act, Lakes and Rivers Improvement Act, Game and Fish Act, the Mining Act, as well as many changes in the health care field, and even roadblocks to the public in receiving information under the freedom of information act.
That begs the question: What would people have to hide? The freedom of information act is an important tool for the ordinary citizens to make governments accountable and to make other parts of our community accountable. This bill is wrong. It is too all-encompassing, too broad in its changes, and this government is denying the public proper, meaningful input, as well as the opposition members a meaningful debate.
The changes contained in Bill 26 will have a more direct and devastating effect on the citizens of this province than almost any bill in our history, yet this government will ram it through the Legislature with even most of its own members not fully understanding the ramifications of it. This is wrong and undemocratic, and this bill should be defeated not only by the opposition members, but by Tory backbenchers as well.
Beyond this brief, from my perspective, when considering your government's record to date, it seems this particular Ontario government is acting cowardly. Only cowards would begin their nonsense revolution by attacking those in society least able to defend themselves, such as battered women, children, seniors and the unemployed. You know and I know your government has been preparing for next year's ill-conceived tax break on the backs of those least able to fight back.
This government began its mandate by ignoring democratic process by making many of their cuts before the Legislature was in session. This was clearly done to prevent the opposition MPPs from being able to fight back on our behalf and the public's.
Your party claims to have consulted the public over the past four years. My question is, who the hell else was in the closet with you? Your party surely wasn't making its members available to the working people of this province. Is this 1990s democracy, Tory style? The one word I believe applies to the style of governing we've been seeing is "ruthless," just totally ruthless. Beyond the cuts, which dramatically damage our friends and neighbours, and beyond the bunker mentality displayed by the Premier and his cabinet, and beyond your government's total disregard for democratic process comes Bill 26, a bill which proposes to place tremendous power directly in the hands of ministers and furthermore remove our elected representatives from the democratic process.
I sincerely believe there has been no greater threat to Ontario's democracy in our lifetime than that posed by the undemocratic actions of this government. The actions of this government have forced many citizens of this province to mobilize as never before. Coalitions are being formed whose members come from the ranks of the unemployed, the poor, battered women and children, from church groups and from labour. These coalitions share one resolve: to continue to use every possible method, peacefully and resolutely, to oppose the undemocratic methods employed by your government. Their sole purpose is to stop your government from further decimating our democratic society. When any government leader, Premier or otherwise, undertakes to impede or eliminate the people from the democratic process, they have but one choice, and that's to resign.
In your government's haste to appease your corporate masters, you have threatened the very essence of what makes Canada different from many nations. Your party disgracefully used fearmongering, racism and sexism in your campaign. If allowed to carry on, I believe your government's reckless cutting and slashing will lead to the end of the middle class and set us on a road to a society of haves and have-nots, a society of two-tier education and two-tier health care. Those with money who can afford user fees will get services, and those without money will simply have to do without.
I know we have a debt and deficit problem. I accept there are things that governments must do to begin to address them. I also know the trickle-down theory of Thatcher and Reagan has been a proven failure. Your government must come to realize that jobs and sustainable growth can be created by direct government intervention and its full participation in the economy. Over the past two years there has been significant investment in the province of Ontario, and at the same time corporate salaries have grown. Some have referred to this time as "the jobless recovery." The corporations this government seems to count on to generate jobs have already shown you what they will do with profits: They'll go to the board of directors and they'll go to the shareholders.
When your government cut social assistance payments, you not only hurt those who could least afford it; you also hurt the small businesses where they spent the money. Lord knows, social assistance recipients have to spend every cent they get. The unemployed and workers who have lost their jobs and now are considering or trying to re-enter the workforce will do so with a substantial loss of earnings. They are not going to be the consumers that this government seems to be counting on to help kickstart the economy.
Government efforts to generate and protect investment in the province require a stable labour force to be successful. Workers and their representatives have a significant role to play in this process. The end result of the continuing of a confrontational style of governing will not prove to be in anyone's interest.
The government members of this committee could choose to walk away from these proceedings ignoring the great number of warnings they've received, warnings which have come from very sincere and concerned citizens of the province, people who have taken the time to attempt to get this government's attention; or, instead, you could begin to examine those aspects of our democracy which have made Ontario and Canada great. If you do, you will soon learn that this greatness comes when the participation of all citizens in the process is valued and protected by its elected officials. I believe it's the job of all elected officials, as it is for all citizens, to protect the vulnerable and to ensure Ontario remains a province of equals.
The Chair: Thank you. We have four minutes per caucus for questions, starting with the third party.
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): Thank you, Wayne. I know I join with my other two Hamilton colleagues in welcoming everyone to Hamilton. I want to specifically welcome the committee to my riding of downtown Hamilton Centre and hope you have a chance to enjoy a bit.
Four minutes is not an awful lot of time, but I think it's important, particularly with the Hamilton and District Labour Council being first up and my having played a role in our party's response to Bill 7, which was really the run-up to this bill: The reason we did what we did in the Legislature was because we saw what this government will do in terms of running roughshod over democracy. Bill 7, which replaced the entire Ontario Labour Relations Act -- not just amended it, replaced it -- did not even have a minute of public hearings -- not one. We've also had major changes to the WCB. Now with Bill 26 and the way they were trying to ram it through, does anybody at all in this province fault the opposition for what we did in terms of forcing these kinds of hearings in this time frame, and as we've heard already, it's still not nearly enough.
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Wayne, I just want to ask you a general question in terms of all the concerns you've raised and all the things you've identified. We know that for our economy the partnership between government, business and labour is an important component of our success in being world competitors. Overall, what would you say has happened in the Hamilton area with regard to that kind of partnership that we've seen over the last few years in terms of the introduction of measures and legislation by this government? How will that affect relationships with employers in this particular community and how will that affect your members and the citizens of our community?
Mr Marston: One of the impacts that will happen as a result of some of the changes we've heard about and have seen so far is that it will force labour to have to go back to the employers and make demands on the employers which were part of the legislative process before. We had rights that we lost under Bill 7 which we'll now have to fight for and get involved with disputes with employers about that we thought were parts of the past. We don't need these kinds of disputes. We need to be able to work together to make the gains that are necessary for all the partners.
Mr Christopherson: We've pointed out before that there are so many changes in Bill 26, and I can't recall ever in my time in public life when the bill number has taken such a hold with the public mindset. People all through the Christmas holidays were saying to me, "So what's happening with Bill 26?" I don't think that's ever happened before, when there's been that much attention riveted. What do you expect will happen in terms of labour's response if Bill 26 is just rammed through in its current form -- again back to that relationship between the unions and the workers, the employers and the government to a large degree -- in this particular community?
Mr Marston: First of all, your point's well taken about people talking about this bill. At local union meetings you rarely hear political discussions because they're more concerned with the working conditions and that. Bill 26 is coming at us from places we wouldn't have expected. They're putting us, as representatives of the people, in a position where we will have to confront the government and confront our employers on a lot of issues we would have preferred not to, but there's no choice.
Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): I thank you for your presentation. I note that you're with the Hamilton labour council and you'd be representing all the private and public locals in the Hamilton region.
Based on what Bill 26 stands for, it's certainly not the status quo. As you identify, we're in a fiscal crisis. Certainly it is a new direction and the direction we're looking at is providing services for less money. There's been job creation. I'm fortunate in my own riding. We've had Honda create 1,000 jobs and we're fortunate to have that and certainly we need it in these desperate times when we're looking for good jobs in this province. That's what this government is trying to create an environment for.
With respect to schedule Q, we're all asked in this society to make some sacrifices, trying to make us part of the solution. Everyone has to be part of that process. We think Bill 26 and the measures the government has been doing are trying to make everybody part of the solution. We're not picking on groups. We're not trying to point out that this group's got to pay, that the doctors have to do this, and other groups. It's all part of the overall process and that's what I've heard from the feedback I've got in my riding, that everyone feels they're a part of the solution.
I think one area where we differ is that certainly we have to bring some fiscal reality to the public sector in terms of how we deal with things. We heard from the mayor of Niagara Falls the other day and he said that in their interest arbitration they had brought up ability to pay and that had been recognized by the arbitrator in terms of the economic conditions facing the city of Niagara Falls: tax arrears, very difficult times.
We don't think we're creating a new criterion when we bring in ability to pay. But I'd like to say this to you with respect to the criterion: That criterion is not exhaustive. There are other factors that can be considered. Certainly it is a mandatory criterion, but that's something that only has to be considered and the parties can make submissions on it. Certainly if there is no evidence, then the arbitrator wouldn't be making a decision.
What I'd like to deal with is that there are other jurisdictions that have mandatory criteria, in other provinces. Also, as you know, if you go in front of a judge, a judge has to consider criteria. A judge has to interpret a statute, and this is no different in terms of what an arbitrator would have to do in terms of dealing with the situation. We both know that arbitrators can be selected by both the parties in dealing with the process, so we both have input into the selection process.
The CAW made a presentation the other day and also the London firefighters, and we discussed such things as productivity bargaining where we look at such things as reorganizing the compensation package, trying to do things better for less, trying to get cost savings and doing a different approach. The CAW guy said to me, "Why don't you get together with your union and start doing such things as that? Because when an employer tells us they haven't got any money and they don't want to do things with less people, we say, `Let's start bargaining for productivity and we'll discuss it with you.'" That's what he said to us. I'd like to ask you, do you think that's the appropriate way to be dealing with this type of situation we're in, dealing with the productivity approach to bargaining?
Mr Marston: I'm not going to start speaking on anybody's behalf who's going to go into negotiations. But what I would say is that if you have a good, stable labour force and they sit down with their employer and that employer opens its books to the union, the union's not going to be suicidal. They're not going to be lemmings going over the cliff to try to bargain for things that aren't there. That's when you have a good, positive working relationship.
The problem we have, as I indicated earlier, is we're going to wind up spending a lot of our time with our employers debating issues that were part of our rights under legislation before, that we've lost. That's going to complicate our ability to get places. You're going to have some --
Mr Tascona: But you're talking about Bill 7 now.
Mr Marston: Yes, but as indicated here before, one rolls into the other. If you put us in a position of having to fight for what were basic rights, we damned well are going to fight and it's as simple and clear as that. That's what's happened. When you get down to then, you cannot look at Bill 26 and our relationship with employers in isolation from Bill 7. You just simply can't do it.
When you look at what we do when we go to the table, we are there to represent the rights of our members that they have had under a collective agreement, the rights that they thought they had under the legislative process of this province, and if either is lacking, then our job is to try to adjust that and make gains for them.
Mr Tascona: Yes.
Mr Marston: Now, in this case, we've got to bring them back up to where they were. That complicates --
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Marston. I have to move to the opposition's time.
Mr Agostino: Regardless of how the government tries to spin this, what this bill does is it allows the government the tools it needs to come through with its 30% tax cut for its rich friends. That is clearly what is driving this. The arbitration aspect is one clear example of this.
This was a tradeoff to the big money people, to the bond rating agencies. Let me quote from Dominion Bond in regard to the arbitration: "Proposed legislation has been introduced that will give arbitration awards and wage settlements within the broad public sector. This is a very important mechanism that could offset part of the impact of the reduction in grants." This didn't come from the opposition. This came from your friends in the bond rating agencies.
This bill is clearly, particularly as it affects the arbitration rulings, wage controls through the back door, right in Bill 26. This has been called and should be called the Harris wage control bill because this is really what we're talking about here. It's giving the government, through a back-door attempt, the opportunity to bring in wage controls in this province and to offset its tax cut to its rich friends on the backs of working people.
This is really a sneaky, underhanded way of doing this, and in my view government should come clean and call it what it is. Don't hide it under Bill 26. Don't attack working people the way you're doing. Come clean and say, "We want to introduce wage controls in Ontario," because what you're doing is you're going to have government-appointed arbitrators do the dirty work for you on the backs of people in this province who can least afford it.
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My question to Mr Marston: In your view, do you believe that this bill in effect will give arbitrators a back-door approach to impose wage controls in Ontario? Secondly, have you ever seen any sort of wage control bill in Ontario being put through with such little debate and discussion in the public?
Mr Marston: We haven't seen any bill go through without the debate that should have been appropriate, but the potential is there to do what you're saying about the settlements to be imposed in a fashion that is well beyond anything we would find acceptable.
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I appreciate that. I think yesterday we heard several groups saying this is essentially the Harris wage control bill.
I want to follow up on another part of your presentation, and that has to do with pension rights. As you well know, the government is just on the edge of some very important negotiations with its union. It may very well come to a head in the next few weeks.
In this bill is a provision that exempts the government from the Pension Benefits Act. The Pension Benefits Act, as you know as well as I do, protects all pensioners in this province. The government passed what's called a regulation to try and do this in July. The union took them to court. The court said: "The government is acting illegally. You can't do it." Now they're trying to ram through a bill that overrides the Pension Benefits Act, is retroactive to January 1, 1993, retroactive for three years, and it also takes roughly $250 million that the government would've had to have in the pension -- pensioners' money -- from the Public Service Pension Act.
What do you think that does to the climate of bargaining when on January 29 this will become law and the thousands of people that the government says it will be laying off will find that their pension benefits are dramatically less than they would've been if the government hadn't exempted itself from the law?
Mr Marston: I can answer that very simply. You look around at yourselves sitting here and if someone told you that they were going to put your personal pension and your family at risk, how the hell would you feel? You're going to have a war on your hands. It's as simple as that.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Marston. You've come to the end of your half-hour. I'd like to thank both gentlemen for coming forward to make your presentation to the committee today.
HAMILTON STEELWORKERS AREA COUNCIL
The Chair: May I please have a representative from the Hamilton Steelworkers Area Council come forward. Good morning and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour this morning to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish at the end of your presentation to leave some time for questions and responses from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce yourself for the benefit of committee members and Hansard at the start of your presentation.
Mr Bryan Adamcyzyk: My name is Bryan Adamcyzyk. I'm a staff representative with the United Steelworkers of America and I'm also an executive officer of the Hamilton Steelworkers Area Council.
For your information I am here on behalf of the Hamilton Steelworkers Area Council. The area council represents approximately 14,000 men and women who are members of one of the 80-plus United Steelworkers of America bargaining units in the Hamilton, Burlington and Simcoe regions.
Our membership is very diversified in this part of the province. Some of our units consist of 10 members and our largest is Local 1005 that has a membership level of around 5,000. Our members in this and the surrounding regions work in the basic steel, foundry and automotive industries, the health care sector, the security industry, and we also have members who work at a credit union.
I would like to begin by thanking the members of the Liberal and New Democratic caucuses at Queen's Park whose determination to resist the government's intention to ram through Bill 26 with little debate and no public input was entirely responsible for the existence of this process.
I would also strongly urge the government to extend the hearings. This process is rushed. I understand that over 80 requests were made for standing at today's hearing; 15 spots were allotted. A lot of voices have been left unheard. Furthermore, additional time is needed to review the bill in greater detail and analyse its impact.
We in the labour movement are outraged, to say the least, with the way the government rammed through Bill 7 taking labour legislation and labour relations back 60 years in time. There was no debate or public input when the bill was introduced. When Bill 26, which is the focus of our attention today, was introduced the people in this province said: "Enough is enough, we're not prepared to allow democracy to be replaced by a dictatorship. This bill must be withdrawn."
Bill 26 contains 17 schedules which enact or amend over 40 separate pieces of legislation. If passed, this bill will allow cabinet and ministers of the crown to make decisions affecting the delivery of public services and the operation of public institutions by regulation, ministerial direction or administrative order without parliamentary debate or meaningful opportunity for public scrutiny and without community, local or stakeholder input.
That is the opposite direction from which we were aiming for here in Hamilton. In the past five years there have been a number of community initiatives dealing with the issue of sustainable development that not only spoke about the need for community, local and stakeholder input but realized the need for such input for a community and a society to grow and prosper.
Bill 26 has been described as a bill that bears the same relationship to the economic statement of the Minister of Finance as budget bills bear to a formal budget. Yet may of the changes proposed in Bill 26 are not even mentioned in the economic statement.
Bill 26, we are led to believe, will give transfer payment partners the means they need to implement financial savings. It is our view that this an attempt by the government to turn attention away from itself, shuffle its obligations aside and have communities cast blame on the municipalities.
The points in this submission will not address any of the parts of Bill 26 regarding health care issues. We will address those sections of the bill later in the process.
Interest arbitration restricted: Many workers in Ontario are denied the right to strike in support of their collective bargaining demands on the ground that they provide services so important to the community that life or health would be threatened if they were to be withdrawn. As an alternative to the right to strike, these workers have access to a process of interest arbitration in which a neutral third party determines the final contract in the event of a dispute.
Bill 26 contains amendments which could significantly interfere with the independence and integrity of the arbitration process. Requiring arbitrators to take into account ability to pay could render the interest arbitration process largely irrelevant since the use of ability of pay could allow the government and employers to unilaterally determine wages and benefits by simply allocating a fixed or reduced amount for employee compensation in their transfer payments or budgets. The collective bargaining process would be a sham because employers would argue that arbitrators are bound by the employer's budgetary decision. It would greatly weaken the opportunity of employees in the public sector to obtain fair collective agreements.
Our brothers and sisters in the public service sector deserve a better shake than this. They are a valuable resource to the people of this province and should not have their ability to obtain a fair collective agreement eroded by this amendment.
Pension cuts for laid-off public service workers: The Pension Benefits Act provides for additional rights for plan members whose service is terminated as a result of a major layoff or a shutdown. In these circumstances the superintendent of pensions has the power to order a partial windup of a pension plan.
These additional rights include a guarantee that the employer's contributions will fund at least 50% of the cost of the pension, the right to immediate vesting of the employee's entire pension and the right to "grow into" early retirement and bridging benefits.
Bill 26 exempts the two pension plans for which the government of Ontario is responsible -- the public service pension plan and the OPSEU pension plan -- from these provisions, thus denying their employees facing layoff literally thousands of dollars in the pension entitlements that are the right of every other worker in the province. If that isn't far enough, it makes the provision retroactive and gives employers the power to demand repayment of any amount paid as a result of these provisions after that date.
Public service employees should not be denied these rights. Making these provisions retroactive is absurd and ridiculous, to say the least.
I'd just like to say I don't know how many people in the government have faced a layoff, have had a plant in which they worked shut down. When the Hamilton area was hit, we were hit badly with plant closures. A lot of them were Steelworker plants. Those people who lost their jobs at least had their pension, at least it was locked in and at least in the partial windup some were able to retire early.
A lot of people wanted to make sure that when they were able to retire, they would have their pension there. In some cases that's all they got, because some employers just went bankrupt. Thank God for the last government, because in one bankruptcy we had at least the guys got 5,000 bucks out of the employee wage protection fund, but they never got anything else. At least their pension was there, and pensions are a big issue for people in Canada today.
I don't know if the CPP is going to be there when I retire, and what you're saying here is that these people are not going to be entitled to pension rights that every other worker is entitled to. Not only that, but when I'm at the bargaining table and negotiating a collective agreement, some of the money goes towards wages, benefits and pensions. When our people negotiate a pension increase, rather than taking the costs of the pension, an increase in the dollar, and putting it their pockets, those are deferred wages that go into their pension. Those are their wages that they're entitled to.
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Elimination of proxy valuation in pay equity: Proxy value provisions were added to the Pay Equity Act in 1993 to provide for pay equity for female employees in the broader public sector who were denied access to pay equity under the act because there were no male job classes at their workplaces that could be used as a comparator. Women who were to benefit by that amendment work in jobs that are traditionally low paying: women who work in nursing homes, children's aid societies and day care centres. By eliminating proxy value comparisons from the Pay Equity Act, Bill 26 removes pay equity rights from over 100,000 women in the broader public service in Ontario. They would now lose their pay equity rights because their employer does not have a male-dominated job to which their jobs can be compared.
In the kind of retroactive measure that has become typical of this government, even where a proxy value plan has been already posted, the employer is not bound by the schedule of compensation adjustments required to achieve pay equity. Women who work in the above-mentioned sectors will continue to work in low-paying jobs, in jobs that are essential to our society and communities. Their wages should reflect that value.
Restrictions on freedom of information: Bill 26 allows an agency head on his or her own to refuse access to records. The information can be refused if an agency head feels the request is frivolous or vexatious. Even though the determination of the head can be appealed, some people will not be able to afford the costs involved in an appeal process. For those who can afford to appeal, the process could be costly and lengthy. An individual could therefore be denied access to his/her own records and then become embroiled in a lengthy process to obtain the information.
In addition, Bill 26 requires individuals in all cases to pay a prescribed user fee at the time of making the request in order to obtain a record. This has got nothing to do with saving money or restructuring. It has to do with shielding more and more of what government does from public scrutiny.
Municipal restructuring: Bill 26 gives the government the power to amalgamate, dissolve or create municipalities, force municipal annexations and include a municipality in a county for municipal purposes. While this power can be exercised at the request of a municipality or local area, it can also be exercised by the Minister of Municipal Affairs without reference to any local request.
It also gives the minister the power to dissolve or change local boards of all kinds that perform municipal functions. It gives the government the power to establish by regulation the rules and procedures governing the transfer of powers between local municipalities and county, regional, district or metropolitan government. This would permit the transformation of local municipal life in Ontario without any further public debate.
Expanded municipal user fee and tax powers: Bill 26 grants sweeping new powers to municipalities to levy user charges, including direct taxes. There is the appearance also that municipalities would be allowed to impose poll taxes. Imagine -- a household head tax in the province of Ontario. When a poll tax was introduced in England, there was bitter opposition that resulted in violence in the streets and the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.
Conclusion: There's a theme running through the many disparate elements of this bill. Bill 26 grants government unprecedented power to make decisions that will affect the very fabric of life in this province. It gives government and officials extraordinary arbitrary powers to make decisions that affect consumers of public services, producers of public services and individual citizens who seek information from the government itself.
Bill 26 gives this unprecedented power in a way that veils those government decisions from public review and debate. Bill 26 is not about less government. It is about less scrutiny; it is about less democracy. It is not necessary and it should be withdrawn.
I'd just like to make a comment on the previous presenter. There was some discussion about the 30% tax rebate. I'm never going to see that and you know I'm never going to see that, because something will happen. The municipalities are going to have to increase the taxes in this community, so I'm never going to see that.
Let me tell you something. If this government was going to give me my 30%, keep it. I don't want it on the backs of women and children in this province. Keep it and give it to those in need, and those in need aren't the people on Bay Street, I'll tell you that much right now.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Adamczyk, for your presentation. We have five minutes per caucus for questions. We'll start with the government caucus.
Mr Tascona: Thank you for your presentation. I recognize that the Steelworkers are the fourth-largest union in the province, and I may say in the past I've had the pleasure of negotiating with the Steelworkers. I find them always professional, particularly Leo Gerard, your past president. He certainly did a good job.
Mr Adamczyk: District director.
Mr Tascona: District director. What we're dealing with here under schedule Q, just to bring a little bit of our perspective on it, ability to pay, as you understand it, and perhaps I can add some light to it, really is the economic situation of the community in terms of dealing with ability to pay.
We're in a tough time and certainly if we have arbitrators making decisions, saying, "We'll give you a 6% wage increase," the public is going to be very upset with that type of approach because they know it's going to be passed on to the taxpayers in terms of a tax increase. But it is a fact that ability to pay is considered by arbitrators, and more so in these tough times.
All we're doing is making sure as part of the consideration -- and we're not saying that this is what you have to do. All the legislation says is simply consider, and it's not exhaustive, mandatory criteria for the public sector, as in other provinces, for them to look at. What we're trying to do is what is in your sector -- and I know the Steelworkers have had their ups and downs through the recessions of the 1980s, and now we're in the 1990s. When you have an arbitrator -- it's not an arbitrator, because you're not subject to that -- but when you have an employer who says to you, "We have an ability-to-pay problem," you say, "Open the books, let's have a look and let's see what we can do to work things out."
When I talked to the CAW representative the other day, he said: "Why don't you do that? Why don't you get together with the unions and start doing productivity bargaining and start doing the things that we do in the private sector?" Do you share that view that we can't shield the public sector from the fiscal realities and we have to bring in a reasonable approach for the type of problem we have? We have to provide the services with less money. That's the reality of the 1990s. Do you share that approach in terms of bargaining in the public sector like you do in the private sector?
Mr Adamczyk: In the public sector a lot of our brothers and sisters have -- first of all, we can tell the employer to put his cards on the table. We can strike. Public service employees cannot. The way it is now in the public service, as I understand it, and I haven't negotiated any contracts in the public service sector, an arbitrator can take a look at what the going rate is, what the settlements are. Now he's going to be, in our view, hamstrung. His hands are going to be tied by the employer who is going to be able to argue, "This is all I can pay."
Mr Tascona: No. That's not the case.
Mr Adamczyk: Wait a minute. When we're bargaining with employers, the only time employers will open up their books is if they want concessions, and that's the only time that we'll even consider a concessionary proposal from employers, if they open up their books and we in fact see that they're in dire straits. We have done that from time to time. What the government should be doing is talking to their bargaining units, not just dictating to them, because in our view, what my experience is, the only time employers usually want to come and talk to us about working together is when they're in a bucket of shit.
This union, our union, we've always believed in good times and bad times in consultation and cooperation. But we also have no problem with confrontation if need be. But during the life of the agreement -- because after you've negotiated a collective agreement, that's not the end of it. Agreements end but relationships continue. I think the way this government is going, you are creating a very, very adversarial relationship in the province of Ontario, not just between your employees but within the citizens of this province.
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The Chair: Sorry, Mr Tascona, we've come to the end of the government's time. From the opposition caucus, Mr Phillips.
Mr Phillips: Just on the same point, because I think we should call, as they say, a spade a spade. These directioned arbitrators exist nowhere else. This is unprecedented. It just simply exists nowhere else. This is designed to dramatically restrict settlements with our firefighters, our police, our hospital workers, our teachers.
The evidence of that is that the government has told the money markets, "Don't worry; we have this mechanism in place that will offset the impact of the reduction in grants." This is a major change in the bargaining relationship between the groups -- our firefighters, our police, all the ones that essentially do not have the right to strike -- and this is, without doubt, the Harris wage control bill. We can't gloss over that and say, "Well, this is just a minor thing." This is a huge change -- there is no doubt of that -- and the government views this as a big part of its restraint program.
I guess my point that I'd like you to comment on is this: Imagine for a moment that we were changing the bargaining relationship between your union and your employers to this degree, and we were going to essentially allow the employer to, in a very major way, dictate the final settlement, regardless of collective bargaining, and imagine that your contract was expiring, as the public sector contract is expiring, shortly. Can you give us any indication of how the Steelworkers might respond if the government was trying to pass legislation that would affect the Steelworkers to the extent that the government is trying to pass legislation that will affect all of these groups?
Mr Adamczyk: Well, I'm not the district director or the international president, but I can tell you, in my view, there would probably be a response like this province has never seen if they ever tried to do that. The thing is, it would be a further attempt, in our view, to try to weaken -- and let's face it: This government is after the unions. No two ways about it, we're a target. There are no two ways that there would be very strong reaction if the government ever tried to impose this type of legislation on the private sector -- on the Steelworkers, auto workers and other private sector unions -- like they're trying to do with the public service.
I'll tell you something; that's the concern that I would have. They're trying to do it to my brothers and sisters in the public sector. Who's next? Us. So our public service brothers and sisters are not alone in this fight.
Mr Agostino: Just to follow up on that, I agree fully with you. I think public enemy number one of this government are the needy and the poor in this province and that public enemy number two of this government are the unions and the people they represent in this province. This bill goes back to them.
I'm going to go back to the wage control aspect, because my friend Mr Tascona talked about ability to pay. Ability to pay is going to be a determining factor in this arbitration, and very clearly the way it is going to be done is this: They are significantly reducing transfer payments to municipalities, to school boards, to hospitals, to universities. Therefore, when the arbitrator then looks at the ability-to-pay factor, with this massive 30% to 40% reduction to municipalities, in effect the ability to pay is not there. You are then in effect imposing wage controls indirectly through your cut and then putting ability to pay to be such a major factor in the arbitration process.
I think it's a very simple concept that the bond market understands, which they talk about, which was a tradeoff that this government has made with the bond markets and the big money people in this province. Very clearly that ability-to-pay provision, highlighted as it is, is going to drive totally the bargaining process at the local-municipal level with hospitals, school boards and universities.
They're not going to have the ability to pay, so in effect what you're doing is imposing wage controls and you should call it that. You're the government. Say to the people of this province, "Yes, we're going to impose wage controls on all public sector workers and we're going to take away your right to bargain and to negotiate as you have in the past because we're going to cut off the funding to the body that pays you."
Mr Silipo: Thank you very much for the presentation. At the end of your presentation you referred to the tax cut and said, "If it's ever going to happen, don't give it to me." It's interesting that we've heard that kind of approach a number of times. I remember a gentleman in Toronto who came before us who described himself as a typical Tory supporter and said to us, and to the government in particular, "You're putting poor people's money in my pocket and I don't want it."
That seems to me to be something that we are hearing more and more as people are realizing, as you pointed out, that what we are seeing here is a government that is giving itself unprecedented powers to change the very fabric of the kind of society that we've built up.
I guess my question to you is, do you see that realization developing among your members and among the public that you serve and that you work with?
Mr Adamczyk: The realization that?
Mr Silipo: That in fact that's what this government is all about, that that is what they're doing; and what they are doing, I would suggest, goes far beyond what people understood they would do when they elected them on June 8.
Mr Adamczyk: Let me tell you, our members knew what the government was up to with the introduction of and the approach that they used to Bill 7. I've never seen anything be rammed through like that. The way they introduced this particular bill in the House, when I understand everybody was in a lockup -- what a sneaky way to do that. Jeez, give me a break.
Mr Christopherson: First of all, I realize this is government legislation, but I always find it fascinating to hear the Liberals talking about the unions now being a target. Yet, when they ran in the campaign, they had decided that Bill 40 was going to be a target for them too. However, they're not the target today.
Mr Phillips: Oh, the social contract.
Interjections.
The Chair: Order.
Mr Christopherson: I want to focus on the idea of targets and special-interest labels that this government has effectively tried to place on anybody who's active in our community. If you're an anti-poverty activist, if you're an environmentalist, a feminist, a non-profit housing activist, if you're a labour leader, you're labelled as "special-interest" and therefore your role in democracy is illegitimate. Unfortunately, they've been very successful at doing that. At the end of the day, when you do that with all the different parts that make up a pluralistic democracy, you only end up with the very wealthy, who quite frankly are a special-interest group as much as anybody else.
I want to ask you, Bryan: If you could speak to all the workers of Hamilton, union and non-union, why would you say to them that they should pay attention to what's happening with Bill 26 and how it's going to affect their lives? In other words, break out of the label that they're trying to place on you and talk directly to the workers, union and non-union, if you could.
Mr Adamczyk: This bill is going to further erode our rights, our quality of life in this community and right across the province.
Let me make a point about the labour movement. We are a social movement. We're not just interested in what happens at the bargaining table. We're not just interested in what happens to our members. We're involved in this community and other communities right across the province. Any society that does not have a strong labour movement doesn't have good social programs and in fact is a very uncaring society. Everybody, organized and non-organized workers, should be looking at this bill closely because of the negative impact it's going to have on us as a society in this province and in this community.
Not only that; at least our members have a voice through their union. The people who are unorganized don't. At least we can have the resources to pull together, to be here. There are a lot of poor people and groups that don't have the resources to be here, and we're going to be working along with them. We've started, and not just with this government; we've been doing it here in this area probably for the last 10, 15, maybe 20 years, and we're going to be mobilizing even more. This is just the start. Look out.
The Chair: Thanks for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.
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FEDERATION OF ONTARIO NATURALISTS
The Chair: May I please have representatives from the Federation of Ontario Naturalists come forward. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming today to appear before the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour this morning to make your presentation. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions and responses from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you would introduce yourselves at the beginning of the presentation for the benefit of Hansard and committee members.
Mr John Lounds: My name is John Lounds. I'm executive director of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists.
Ms Marion Taylor: Marion Taylor. I work for the Federation of Ontario Naturalists.
Mrs Lyn MacMillan: I'm Lyn MacMillan. I represent the MacMillan family and I also volunteer with the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and many other environmental groups.
Mr Brian McHattie: My name is Brian McHattie and I'm the conservation director of the Hamilton Naturalists' Club.
Mr Lounds: The Federation of Ontario Naturalists thanks the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'm pleased that we're in the Heritage Room today because that's what we want to talk to you about: the protection of Ontario's natural heritage.
The Federation of Ontario Naturalists is a provincial conservation organization with 15,000 members and 76 affiliated clubs and interest groups across the province, from Thunder Bay to Ottawa and from Windsor to Kingston. We have Brian here from Hamilton today.
As a non-profit charitable organization, our operations are totally supported by our membership. I want to emphasize that we do not receive any provincial government funding towards our operating expenses. As owners of nearly 2,000 acres of provincially significant lands, we are custodians of the largest private nature reserve system in Ontario.
For more than 60 years we've played an important conservation advocacy role in this province and worked with every government since 1931 towards sound government policy on wildlife, parks, forestry and land use planning. Over the years we've developed a broad education program which includes our award-winning quarterly magazine, Seasons, our trips program and our program to provide information and teaching material directly to teachers. We also have a long history of volunteer work at all levels of government.
We feel a burden of responsibility here today because we're speaking for many individuals, small businesses and groups that were denied a place on the hearing roster. Many of those who telephoned or faxed for places immediately after the committee was set up have been unable to obtain a place at these hearings. This brief consultation time and the week that will be allocated for the amendments we believe are totally inadequate to deal with all the legitimate concerns that are being raised across Ontario.
With this background, today we want to talk about our major concerns with respect to this bill, and recommendations. I'd just like to briefly outline those first and then Marion will describe the details. While there are a number of areas in the bill that cause us concern, we've chosen to focus on the following:
Firstly, the provisions in Bill 26 that relate to municipal government decision-making that, when taken together with other proposed legislation and policies, most notably Bill 20 and the new planning policies, serve to severely restrict public access and involvement in planning the future of their communities and undermine what we believe is years of work to protect the environment. We believe that the provisions with respect to municipalities cannot and should not be considered separate and apart from the proposed changes to the Planning Act and the policies.
Secondly, the provisions in this bill with respect to setting up a separate account within the consolidated revenue fund under the Game and Fish Act: The structure of this bill, with its emphasis on health and municipal matters, is allowing other amendments to sneak through because so little time is available for discussion. But this section needs attention. It's obvious that very little thought has been given to these provisions and it's very difficult to tell how they will improve public policy or the delivery of service.
As well, and as legislators you should pay attention to this, in this section no provisions are included to review the expenditures of this account, either through the estimates process or public accounts, and the requirements for an annual report do not specify time frames or which aspects of the account's financial affairs are to be reported on. The report could be so general as to be useless in public policy development and the protection of Ontario's wildlife. These provisions need to be amended.
Finally, we want to talk about the provisions in the bill allowing the sale of lands by conservation authorities, as they do not consider the fact that many of these lands have been obtained with the financial assistance of private sector donors. Over 40,000 acres of land have been acquired with the assistance of private contributions in this province. These provisions in the act will place in jeopardy the private sector contributions already made towards conservation lands held by conservation authorities and will place future donations and contributions at risk. This bill will discourage ongoing private sector financial contributions in support of public policy goals in conservation. We find it odd that a government claiming it wishes to encourage such contributions in conservation would draft a bill that will do the exact opposite with respect to private contributions.
I'd like to turn it over to Marion Taylor now, who will talk about the specific recommendations we have on these sections.
Ms Taylor: Thanks to the committee for the opportunity to appear.
We're concentrating on several areas, as John has pointed out. We don't see in this bill in those areas that John mentioned any cost saving to the province. In fact, what we see is a concentration of power at the cabinet level and also at the municipal level, a disappearance of public consultation as a means of doing business and a closing off of public access to process. We also see, as John has mentioned, that thousands of acres of conservation land in this province are being put at risk, a lot of that done through the private work of individuals or the private generosity of individuals. More will be said about that later.
At the municipal level, I think what we're facing here is, whether through intent or bad planning, a fragmentation of the planning process. You've got Bill 20 standing out there as the amendments to the Planning Act and you have a whole section here on municipal restructuring and a number of other aspects of municipal government which are equally as important and fit in with Bill 20. You also have the policy statement which was issued last week, which is an undermining of all the environmental framework which has been carefully set up. It didn't come out of a vacuum. It's part of the history of this province and it comes out of necessity and need, not out of the forehead of Zeus. It does have a history.
I'd like to call your attention in the municipal section to the fact that in Bill 20 we have a possible exemption from approvals of official plans and official plan amendments, and we turn around in Bill 26 and find that local municipalities, which are now exempt possibly from provincial scrutiny, are going to have all kinds of powers, including ability to levy all kinds of fees for services and also the ability to get rid of agencies, such as the conservation authority. This doesn't smack to me of any cost saving for this province and in fact looks as though we're headed towards an incredible muddle in planning.
The policy statements also -- the statement, it's called now, undermines a lot of the environmental guidelines which were put in place over the last 15 or 20 years. One of the things which it will affect directly is the wetlands. The wetlands line has been moved so that 40% of the province which was covered by the wetlands policy statement is no longer covered. If any of you are in the Muskokas or cottage country, you're not covered any longer.
The other thing that is happening is public access is being cut off to the process. There will be no appeal to restructuring. There will be no appeal to privatization, or no going out to the public for privatization of utilities. So coupled with this loss of an environmental framework, you have tremendous powers concentrated in the hands of municipalities and of the government at the cabinet level. Now, the beneficiaries here, as far as one can make out, are the development industry. I cannot see any other beneficiary here.
Our recommendations concerning the municipal structure are the following:
Remove the amendments to the Municipal Act and other related statutes from the omnibus bill so that they can be considered in conjunction with Bill 20, the policy statement and proposed further amendments to the Municipal Act. The scope of the proposed changes to the powers of local municipalities and the changes to the land use planning process require further study by all affected parties. Most members of the general public have so far had no access to this bill. It is irresponsible to proceed with measures whose costs and consequences have been so little examined.
Moving on to the conservation authorities: This is an area that has been almost totally ignored both by the presentations, as far as one can determine, to the committee and in the press. I'd like again to emphasize that 300,000 acres of conservation land are owned and managed by conservation authorities in this province. The conservation authorities were born in 1946. That's 50 years of history that is in danger of being wiped out by this bill, because what Bill 26 does is deliver the conservation authorities, bound hand and foot, to the municipalities. Fewer than half the participating municipalities can dissolve them.
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The second thing is that the province has directed that the interests of the conservation authorities should concentrate on flood-control structures and on provincially significant lands. Immediately you're looking at a situation in which all the floodplain management that the conservation authorities have built up and which is the envy of other jurisdictions is not covered unless those flood and fill regulations are embedded in an official plan.
I'm from Holland township in Grey county, and the local politicians up there said, "Think of the Thornbury dam, and think of Grey Sauble Conservation Authority going out of business." Then the minister is empowered to say, "Okay, Thornbury, you fix that." Thornbury can't; they don't have the resources. So the minister then can say to the Ministry of Natural Resources, "You take it on." The Ministry of Natural Resources does that, and then it is entitled to divide the cost among participating municipalities. The local politician says to me, "I don't want to be around when they get the bill." So that's what this is going to mean.
What this means for conservation generally is that CAs may cease to exist at the whim of a municipality. Individual municipalities may also decide to unilaterally withhold levies, and they've been encouraged to do this by the Ministry of Natural Resources in a directive issued in December 1995. This is not about cost cutting; this is about turf warfare.
If dissolution occurs, no process has been detailed in the bill for handling the assets, including this incredibly valuable land. The land will pass by default to municipalities, many of which have never handled conservation lands on their own and have no expertise or resources to manage them properly. In the event of dissolution, the whole flood control system in this province is in jeopardy.
I was told that there are only two rivers in Ontario, the Thames and the Grand, which have structures which can control flooding; the rest depend on management, on care of wetlands, on care of floodplain lands. Some of you may be too young to remember Hurricane Hazel; those of us who do remember what happened to structures on the floodplains.
Our recommendations, then, are that ideally the conservation authority section --
Mr Sampson: I'm out there every day.
Mr Agostino: I'm too young.
Ms Taylor: I'm not too young, so I'm giving my -- just a little side thing. I went to the dentist yesterday, and he was drilling away, and he said, "My God, this is copper" -- something or other -- "That hasn't been used since the 1950s." I said, "You don't even have to look at my -- it's like an archeological excavation; you know my age."
Recommendations: Ideally, I think, the conservation authority section should be removed from Bill 26. It's unconscionable, really, to bury the provisions for gutting an historic provincial institution in a bill like this. As well, the true costs of weakening CAs, turning 300,000 acres, potentially, of valuable land loose and passing on new responsibilities to municipalities, has yet to be properly assessed.
Failing the removal of this section from the bill, we have the following recommendations:
(1) The prime thing here is that you've got 40,000 acres of land purchased through the nature conservancy. We have a letter from the Richard Ivey Foundation, from Richard Ivey. They've given more than $1.5 million to purchase conservation authority lands. You've got private donors -- and we have one of them here today -- who have given time and effort and money because they believe that these lands are important for the future of Ontario. What kind of a message are you sending? I think you need to think about it.
Anyway, Bill 26 should clearly prohibit the sale of any land which has received private funding. Anything less constitutes a breach of public trust and sends a message that this government places little value on private enterprise, in the wide sense of that word.
(2) Bill 26 should require a clear majority of participating municipalities to vote for dissolution.
I just have one more quick thing to say, and that is on the Game and Fish Act. Again, you've heard this ad nauseam: We're not against cost cutting. We don't see costs being saved; we see increased cost to the province in those two areas. But in the Game and Fish Act, we are in favour of the setting aside of funds. However, notice where they're coming from. They're coming from, at the moment, hunting and fishing dues and fines.
This province is moving towards ecosystem management. We don't want to see a return to game management so we want provisions built into this section to make sure that ecosystem management is guaranteed and also to allow the committee that's being set up to be balanced with all interests and to look at other areas where they may get some income. Non-hunting and non-fishing users of crown land are an obvious part of it, and other areas.
I think with that, I will now turn it over to Lyn MacMillan, who has spent a good part of her life working for conservation in a number of ways.
Mrs MacMillan: Sorry, I only have nine copies, but perhaps you can share them. My name is Lyn MacMillan. I represent the MacMillan family. We live on a 160-acre farm in Maple in the city of Vaughan. The farm has been in our family since 1934.
We are environmentalists and have endeavoured to protect the 60 acres that are not presently being farmed by managing the woodlots, wetlands, and by planting over 10,000 trees along the windbreaks and the stream valleys of the Don River as it flows through our land.
I have worked as a volunteer with the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and other environmental groups for the protection of the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridges moraine for many years. The natural heritage of this province is very dear to my heart, indeed. My main concern today is the fate of the conservation authorities, which Marion has so clearly outlined, if Bill 26 is not amended.
We all understand that deep cuts are necessary all across the province, if our deficit is to be reduced. This government has already cut back the conservation authorities budget by 70%. That's a very, very strong cut, even higher than most cuts. Those of us who remember the hard years of the war -- now I'm really going back -- will know what it's like to face austerity; we certainly faced it then. We also know that it brings out the very best in people. Volunteerism was never stronger than during those times; also people took on new and demanding jobs that they never thought of doing in peacetime. The same urgency exists now, and people will rally to achieve our financial balance if you give them a chance.
Do not get rid of such historically important agencies as the conservation authorities. Let them regroup. Let them find other solutions to their budgetary problems. We all know the old saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Well, leave the conservation authorities alone. Leave them to work with the public and try and come up with a new look that will fulfil their mandate and make them leaner and better. Yes, over the years they have spent money; so has everybody.
Over the years, good and strong partnerships have been forged between conservation authorities and the public, as Marion mentioned. For example, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, a non-government charitable organization, has raised funds from the public, such as ourselves, to buy environmentally sensitive land that is in danger of being lost, and then in many instances has turned this land over to the conservation authorities for management. Thousands of acres have been saved in this way through partnership agreements, through initiatives of fund-raising. I can't stress this partnership aspect enough. We're not looking to the government to do everything. We've never looked to the government to do everything.
Then there's the Toronto Sportsmen's Show. It was started by one of Ontario's unsung heroes of conservation, Mr Kortright, and the profits of this show are turned over each year to conservation. So thanks to a generous donation from the Sportsmen's show, we have the remarkable Kortright centre, which is now managed by the MTRCA, the Metro Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, in Kleinburg. We are supporters and family members of this area. We've given substantial funding to them and it's introduced marvellous delights to two generations of children and to dozens of overseas visitors, who are always amazed and envious of our rich wildlife, biodiversity, and the way in which we protect our rivers and streams.
There are also individual donors like the late Mrs Glassco, who gave her valuable property to the Metro region conservation authority for the protection of part of the Humber Valley and for the enjoyment of a very grateful public.
Do not jeopardize this close working arrangement by phasing out the conservation authorities. You will lose not only some of this hard-earned and well-protected land but the public's loyal support, which is very valuable to you in these critical times.
Bill 26 proposes that the authorities can be dissolved by a vote of the participating municipalities. Provincial appointees will not be allowed to vote. I call this stacking the cards. The very people who would vote for the authorities to be continued will be barred from voting, the very people who would be eager to try and take new approaches to fund-raising will be dropped, and the public-spirited people who bring independence and strength to the authorities are to be pushed aside and discarded. That seems incredible to me.
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The excellent work that the Progressive Conservative Party has done in this field of conservation is being thrown away. Schedule M, part III, is not going to improve the conservation authorities, nor give them much of a chance to prove their worth. Bill 26 is certainly not carrying on the traditionally important contribution that this party has made in the protection of the Niagara Escarpment. I only have to remind you that it was the Conservative Party who put that through. It was the Conservative Party who allocated $25 million to the --
Mr Phillips: Progressive Conservatives.
Mrs MacMillan: Progressive; sorry.
Mr Phillips: Not the Reform.
Mrs MacMillan: I know, Progressive Conservatives. Excuse me. Well, if they're progressive, they shouldn't be doing this.
Anyway, they were the ones who gave $25 million towards the purchase of the land which has gone to the conservation authorities and is now being managed. We have one of the best provincial parks and conservation authority systems in the world and you have made tremendous contributions to them.
Now, um -- you've put me off with that joke.
Mr Phillips: Sorry.
Mrs MacMillan: This special and unique part of Ontario certainly didn't get to be designated a world biosphere reserve through actions such as you are now proposing. We're world famous along the escarpment, and all those conservation authorities who are part of it.
It has been precisely the hard work of the Progressive Conservative Party that has given us one of the best methods of environmental protection of any country in the world. Our rivers, our streams, our wetlands and our conservation parks are the joy and pride of all of us who are lucky to be living in this magnificent province. Stand by these commitments and these achievements. Don't allow them to be gutted.
No conservation authority can survive the proposals of Bill 26. They can be disbanded without any public consultation. They will be getting less provincial money, less municipal money, no provincial appointees. There will be indiscriminate selling off of carefully acquired lands, as Marion has explained. I don't want to see my tax dollars nor the money that we have willingly donated towards the protection of our environment go down the drain.
I ask that every single thing be done to retain the conservation authorities as they are today. Yes, they will have to retrench and they will have to cut their coats according to their cloth, but give them the chance to work out these problems and let them and not the municipalities be allowed to remain as the worthy stewards of our river valleys, wetlands, woodlots and recreational lands for the enjoyment of this generation and generations to come.
I do appreciate the opportunity of speaking before this committee and thank you very much for your attention.
Ms Taylor: We have one more person to speak. We have a local club represented here very ably by the Hamilton Naturalists.
Mr McHattie: My name is Brian McHattie and I appreciate the opportunity to speak this morning to the committee. I'm speaking from the perspective of a local organization, the Hamilton Naturalists' Club, founded in 1919 in this city. We've been around for a long time and work very closely with the conservation authorities. Obviously I'm speaking quickly here, as we have approximately two minutes or less, I guess, to get this across to you this morning, but I am speaking to the issue of the conservation authorities as well.
We see the conservation authority as both a grass-roots partner and a sister organization in this city, and the other conservation authorities that we work with in the surrounding area. I'd like to touch on two particular things that our relationship has brought to the conservation authority and that we've worked together on.
The first one is that we've contributed over $100,000 over the last number of years to protecting natural areas in Hamilton-Wentworth. We've given that money to the conservation authority here in Hamilton to allow them to purchase wetlands and woodlots, protect the Dundas Valley, the Beverly Swamp, local areas. I can say that the Hamilton Naturalists' Club is not going to agree to the dissolution of any of those lands because we've contributed funds to those lands and we have a strong stake in how those lands are distributed or dealt with in the future.
The second thing is, we've just completed a $275,000 natural areas inventory of all the natural areas in Hamilton-Wentworth. That was led by the Hamilton Naturalists' Club, and $30,000 came from the Hamilton conservation authority and funds from other conservation authorities as well. Without those funds levering other funds from the conservation authority and from the province and private organizations, the inventory would not have happened. The conservation authority also assisted in providing office space and technical guidance as well. Those are the intangibles that, if this bill goes through, may not be there for us in the future. An innovative partnership like this, where most of the work and most of the money is raised by a private organization, the Hamilton Naturalists' Club in this case, will not occur without a strong conservation authority movement.
I'd like to finish off by saying I'm also a Hamilton area business person as well. I just started a new company in the last six months or so that is based on ecotourism and strengthening the local economy based on sustainable development.
Hamilton, as you may know, and certainly Dominic and the people on this side of the table and on that side of the table probably know as well, is building a new economy based on sustainable development. We've just completed fairly recently, through the guidance of Mr Don Ross, a local councillor, the task force on sustainable development, which produced something called Vision 2020, and Vision 2020 is our plan for the next 25 years or so to bring this region into a very strong economic, social and environmental position. That is based at least in part on protecting our natural areas.
The business that I have brings people from around the world to the Hamilton area to see the escarpment, to see the wetlands, to see the Dundas Valley, and if those areas are either no longer there or are managed improperly because of the lack of funds and support for the conservation authorities, my business and the future of Vision 2020 will not occur in this area, in Hamilton-Wentworth.
I want to finish by saying there are a number of options available. As has been indicated, the conservation authorities are very effective organizations and are levering funds from a variety of areas, a number of options available. Money is available. It's a question of priorities. We have local priorities of expressways, of protecting natural areas and various issues like that, and I won't go into that, but the money is available and the opportunities are there.
I ask this committee to consider and pass the comments on to protecting the conservation authorities and altering this bill to reflect those views.
Mr Lounds: I'd just like to finish by thanking the committee for hearing us today. I'd like to leave a couple of thoughts with you. Between 1970 and 1990, provincial funding to conservation authorities declined by 55%. To contrast, the provincial funding to municipalities over the same period rose by 190%.
We're not saying don't rethink how we go about conservation. We're just saying let's think first before we move quickly on this. Thanks very much.
The Chair: Thank you for a very thorough presentation. Unfortunately, we've virtually no time left for questions or responses from either of the caucuses, but I do want to thank all of you for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.
Mr Phillips: Can each of us have one minute to respond?
The Chair: Okay. Quickly, then. We'll go with the opposition first.
Mr Phillips: I won't abuse this. The challenge here is that I think the government struck a deal with AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, without perhaps appreciating the fallout effect of it all. You've done a very good job of indicating that. I did say that time is very short. This bill will be law virtually in two weeks. We'll do what we can to bring your concerns to the fore.
Interjection: That would be terrific.
Mr Silipo: Very briefly, I appreciate very much your presentation. If we had time, there were a couple of points I'd want to pursue, but we talked earlier this morning -- my colleague Mr Christopherson raised the point -- about the categorization by the government of various groups into "special interest" groups as a way of dismissing then the points that are being made.
You made some pretty substantial points to us about the importance of conservation authorities, and part of what we've seen is that the haste with which this government has wanted to move on this bill has certainly caused, I think, some major changes and some major endangerment to the whole conservation movement to be part of this bill. Hopefully they will listen to some of the specific suggestions you've made, which we will pursue in terms of removing some of these sections and dealing with them in a more appropriate time frame.
Mr Sampson: I want to thank you very much for a very excellent presentation. I don't know three of the members at the table, but I certainly know indirectly one of the members at the table, and I can certainly say that we are listening to the points that have been raised with respect to conservation authorities and how we deal with the fact that we have to cut expenditures but also come to realize that what we've established in this province needs to be protected somehow.
Your suggestions with respect to changes that deal with conservation authorities in the bill I think are very valid, and we'll consider those. We have indeed heard them before from other deputants who have talked to the subject, and I'm encouraged to hear that the authorities are prepared to deal with the fiscal reality. Your mapping of the expenditures over the last while vis-à-vis municipal expenditures is certainly on target, should I say, but we all have to find ways to spend the money smarter and wiser, yet still somehow try to protect what we hold near and dear in this province. I think our natural heritage is indeed that. So we will be listening.
The Chair: Thank you once again for coming forward today and making your presentation.
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HAMILTON AND DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Chair: May I please have representatives from the Hamilton and District Chamber of Commerce come forward. Good morning and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have 30 minutes today to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for comments and questions from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce yourselves for the benefit of committee members and Hansard at the start of your presentation.
Mr Lee Kirkby: Thank you, Mr Chairman, and I will certainly attempt to make sure that what I have to say is short enough that I have the opportunity to respond to any questions my comments may raise. For those members of the committee who are not from Hamilton, and I recognize many of the faces around the table, and some of those faces from outside the community that we've come to know well over the last few years, we welcome you to Hamilton. As a chamber representative it would be completely inappropriate for me to come here and not offer the hospitality of our community for as long as you are able to stay. I'd encourage you to come back in December -- or now November -- for the Grey Cup.
My name is Lee Kirkby and I'm the executive director of the Hamilton and District Chamber of Commerce. We appreciate the opportunity to make a presentation on Bill 26. It is not my intention to present a detailed analysis of specific features or sections of the act, but to make primarily some general comments about the intent of the legislation as outlined in the explanatory note to the bill.
For the benefit of the committee and the record, a brief introduction to the chamber is in order. In doing so, it is hoped that some better understanding of the nature of the changes which have occurred in our community will be become evident as well.
The chamber currently represents approximately 875 organizations in the greater Hamilton area. These organizations employ in excess of 50,000 persons in our community. The chamber is the largest broad-based, general business organization in the community, drawing its support from all businesses of all types, from every sector and industry.
In the past year our membership has grown by almost 20%, and fully 70% of this growth has been in organizations of less than three employees. It is this statistic which reflects a significant part of the importance of the legislative initiative we address today. These small, entrepreneurial, independent businesses are the lifeblood of our new economy. Growing some of them into medium-sized associate groups and organizations is the challenge for us all in the next decade. While greater Hamilton has been highly successful in retaining much of its corporate business base and is home to some of Canada's most successful new enterprises, enterprises which have grown to become national and international successes, our future lies in nurturing even more of these organisations which can bring new wealth into our community.
The chamber supports the purpose of Bill 26, which is to achieve fiscal savings and support the growth of economic prosperity through public sector restructuring, streamlining and efficiency in the delivery of needed public services. It is clear that the restructuring of government service is long overdue. Significant operational changes which have been undertaken by private sector enterprises which were directly impacted by market forces have been under way in our community for over 15 years. Today we are seeing the positive results of these changes as our businesses and industries are expanding their global markets and bringing new wealth to our community. Recently, one of our local economic development officials was quoted as saying that a few years ago he could count the number of companies in greater Hamilton which were involved in export markets very easily. It numbered in the range of 30 to 40 companies. Today he says the number is in the hundreds: large and small, dealing in markets in every country in the world, involving tens of thousands of our citizens and bringing to our community the benefits of selling and trading with an international market.
These traded operations can only be successful in focusing their attention on their customers if they can count on a fiscally responsible and efficient infrastructure at home. One of the key elements of this stability is for our international debt loads to be brought into control and reduced. Recently, the chief operating officer of an international bank told a chamber meeting that in his estimate, Canada as a nation pays about a 2% interest premium on its international debt. Think what this figure means when you total the accumulated international borrowing of all sectors in our economy, combined with what is borrowed offshore by our federal government, our provincial government, our municipalities, hydro companies and private businesses. Multiply this number, which will be in the multiple billions each year, by that 2% interest premium. The number which results is staggering.
But that is not the total impact. To continue to attract domestic capital, we have to pay a premium to those persons who lend their money domestically as well. The premium may not be as high, but it is there and will add up to untold millions more.
If that 2% premium is applied to the $10 billion annual deficit of the Ontario government, it amounts to $200 million per year. If applied to the total Ontario debt, which is now running about $100 billion, it is a premium cost of about $2 billion per year. This is the amount we are paying higher than what we should have to pay were our fiscal and our political houses in order. It underlines dramatically how important the steps anticipated by the purpose of this bill are to the long-term wellbeing of our province. These premium interest dollars could be much better applied to providing meaningful employment and investment in the growth of our economy and in services to our citizens.
The chamber submits that it is the success of our province in becoming a welcoming place for investment, internal and external, the growth of our traded activities, both traditional and in those industries and services which are finding new demands in world markets, and the climate which is created to encourage people to apply their talents and entrepreneurial spirit which will provide the long-term means to maintain and enhance our quality of life and the services we have come to know.
Our governments at all levels are faced with the difficult decisions that many of us in the private sector have already faced. To be able to maintain those key and vital activities which can only be provided by government, it will be necessary to shed some of those activities which have less purpose or which could be provided by other means. Choices must be made, and they are and will continue to be difficult.
We support the principle of Bill 26 because it provides some of the flexibility and mechanisms required for the provincial government and municipal governments to commence this restructuring effort, improve the financial record of the province and signal to those who desire to take up the challenge that there are new opportunities available within our province for the expansion of economic activity.
The bill is very broad in the amendments and legislation it addresses. There are a few areas of the bill we would like to make comment upon other than the general comments outlined above.
Changes proposed for the Municipal Act and other statutes related to municipalities, specifically municipal fees or charges: Schedule M of Bill 26 provides amendments to the Ontario Municipal Act and various other statutes which propose to give municipalities and local boards broad new powers to impose fees or charges for any services or activities they provide. It also proposes the addition of a new part in the Municipal Act that establishes new general licensing powers for municipalities.
We support the goal of restructuring and in general support fees for service, as they are more directly identifiable by users with the services provided. They reflect a more accurate market understanding of the value of the service to the consumer. We have concern, however, that the application of this provision as currently worded will see municipalities imposing fees that are more in the form of a general tax and not a fee for service, as we would generally interpret the term. This application could see the impact of the efforts to reduce the cost of government to society in general diminished, as hard-pressed municipalities, instead of reducing the activities they undertake and controlling their costs, apply these new powers to seek new revenue sources for general purposes instead.
When coupled with the new provisions for licensing of businesses, we are concerned that these new powers could be used to create a new form of business tax rather than for the recovery of costs incurred in providing services rendered. We would recommend that the wording be clarified to ensure that the provisions provide for the legitimate recovery of charges for services directly rendered by the municipalities or other boards.
We express further concern that since government entities are essentially an unregulated monopoly for many of the service areas they undertake, some form of independent appeal mechanism must be provided so that fees or charges levied which are seen to be unfair or unjust may be challenged through a process independent of the agency imposing the fee.
The general licensing powers, part XVII.I: This new provision which grants general licensing powers to municipalities has the potential to add significant cost and complexity to business operations in the province. It has the potential to create barriers to business mobility, trade and competition within municipalities, as currently worded. We would caution strongly that if the wording is not changed, provisions be included that would ensure that municipalities could not unduly restrict business from operating across municipal boundaries. The outcome of the provisions, as they currently stand in Bill 26, could be a significant negative impact upon the ability of businesses to function and grow within the province.
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Health services restructuring, amendments to the Independent Health Facilities Act: We are not presenting to the committee on the 19th in Hamilton, so we thought it was appropriate to make some comment on the health provisions. Part IV of schedule F of Bill 26 contains amendments concerning the use of personal medical information. The proposed amendment grants the minister with new powers to collect, use and disclose personal information for specified purposes. While the goal outlined for these provisions -- to reduce fraud within the health care system and to assist in ensuring that only those services which are needed are provided by the system -- is laudable and important, we express concern that the current proposals do not provide a well-enough- defined standard for such intervention, given the highly sensitive nature of such records and the common understanding of privacy of personal medical records.
Amendments to various statutes with regard to interest arbitration: The amendments proposed for the several pieces of legislation included in this section of the act are generally proposed to provide for the consideration of the economic circumstances existent for the employer, the municipality or the province at the time an arbitration decision or award is considered. These provisions direct the board of arbitration to give consideration to the underlying economic components of the employer's situation, the broader community which provides the funding for the employer's operation, and the impacts upon the service levels which might be a result of an arbitration award.
We submit that these matters are very legitimate factors which should properly be part of an arbitration review, and support the provisions of the amendments as outlined.
The Hamilton and District Chamber of Commerce supports the goal which underlies the amendments outlined in Bill 26. We believe that all levels of government and the broader public sector in the province must be given the tools to restructure and adapt their operations to reflect the needs and realities of today's society.
This requires dramatic change in many areas and this bill has the potential to provide some of the tools to accomplish this objective. Through the public hearings process being undertaken, those areas of the bill which may be better worded or where better mechanisms can be provided to accomplish the end which is sought can be identified and modifications can be made before the bill and accompanying regulations are finalized.
We caution, however, that the government must be careful, in creating these new powers, that the appropriate checks and balances are in place to ensure that the goals outlined in the bill are really met. Where others submit methods which differ from those anticipated in the bill, we urge the government and the committee to give them serious consideration so that the best possible combination of solutions in the circumstances can be achieved.
One final word -- you never get out of Hamilton without there being one final word. Communities can provide their own methods of solution. The greater Hamilton community has a long-standing history of cooperative problem-solving, as we have faced difficult problems. Our health care sector has been a pioneer in the rationalization of services in many ways. Just recently we have learned of proposals to merge our two largest hospital administrations.
Other sectors of our public service have looked at ways to increase cross-jurisdictional cooperation for service gains and cost containment. As the result of the last municipal election, wherein the regional electorate voted for a review of local government structures, our constituent assembly is now hard at work seeking to develop a community consensus over how we wish to be governed in the future.
Through a long and arduous process involving a broad coalition of stakeholders -- and you've heard Brian refer to this -- both in Vision 2020 and also in the review of the water quality problems in our harbour, we've developed plans to solve some of our own problems, not on our own but with cooperation and support. This complex process is now becoming one of our community's competitive strengths. It took the collective power of many diverse interests to begin this rejuvenation in our harbour.
There's still a lot more that can be done. However, we would caution that solutions which may have application in some areas of the province may not be needed nor apply to every other area. Locally developed solutions to some of the problems we face may be better, faster and more effective than a made-in-Ontario solution wherein one size fits all. We urge all who are involved in these difficult decisions to be cautious about losing the momentum and resolve that these long-standing community-based mechanisms exhibit.
We appreciate the opportunity to appear, and I'm available to try to answer questions.
Mr Christopherson: Lee, thanks very much for your presentation. You say that when you come into Hamilton, you have to expect that there will be a final word. What they don't know is that we all fight to have that final word. But they'll realize that by the end of the day.
Mr Agostino: Every day.
Mr Christopherson: Every day. My comments would focus around the fact that it would seem, for the first time in the history of Ontario, we have a government that has decided to govern only for those they consider to be its supporters. For those of us in the opposition, there really seems to be an "us and them" mentality; there are friends and enemies. Clearly, they're doing what they can to support their friends and they're going after their enemies, as we see it.
You spoke in your brief, particularly on the last page, to focus on our community, about the benefits we've had from the cooperation in this community. That's been one of our strengths, given the pressures on our community, that people work together. An awful lot of those partners right now, Lee, feel like they're under attack. You just heard from the environmental movement, the labour movement; there are people in the health community, in the social services community. All the things that are the strengths of Hamilton in terms of working together to create a made-in-Hamilton solution, many of them -- the majority, in my opinion -- feel like they're under attack.
Do you not worry that this feeling of being under attack by the provincial government, with a municipal government that doesn't have the means to support them, is going to send a lot of those groups off on their own to retrench and not feel comfortable coming in under partnerships and thereby denying our community one of the strongest suits we have?
Mr Kirkby: It's difficult to comment in some ways, but I'll try. As you know, I attempt to stay out of party politics, but I could suggest to you that there have been times in the past when the sector I primarily represent has felt like it has been under attack by the governments that represent their interests as well. We have found that we have had to try to respond to that attack, but also to recognize that at times we have to reach out to those people who may be supporting the alternative point of view.
My only comment would be that I encourage those people who have that perception that says they are the victims -- and there's always this term, that there's a winner and a loser -- that sometimes the long-term results being sought cause actions to be taken that in the short run appear to be attempting to create victims. My sense for some of those groups is that it is a need to come to the table. They have solutions, and sometimes their solutions will be better than the one put forward.
The most important part is that action is necessary and we have to move ahead. If we think about what happened in this community, we've all been through the downsizing of our industrial sector. We've seen the situation. We've all worn it. We've participated with those committees that have helped to try to find new jobs and new training and new opportunities for people who could no longer be employed in that area, in order to protect the long-term strength and the opportunity to have them here. I think that's what we're doing now with some of our government structures.
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): Lee, good morning. It's a pleasure to see you again, and I thank you very much for coming forward and making a presentation.
In campaigning and knocking on doors, I was told constantly that we had to change the way we did things. This government is committed to change. I agree with you that there is some pain out there because of the steps that must be taken. Would you agree that with the debt load we have, keeping in mind that we spend $1 million an hour more than we take in, government must move and move quickly to ensure that we provide a future for the residents of Ontario?
Mr Kirkby: I would certainly agree with that. It would be very inappropriate for me to come and not say that as an organization we have strongly supported governments reducing their debt loads. One of the things that is very difficult to deal with is that we're talking about getting deficits down; we're not talking about getting to the point where we start to repay the debt load we're already carrying, and that's one of the most fundamental problems we have.
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I've used this analogy before: It's like me going out and being able to convince the bank that I should have enough money to buy the biggest house in town no matter what my income is. As long as they'll continue to loan me enough money the year after to be able to pay the mortgage and the operating costs, I can have that house. But some day, somebody's going to recognize that I don't have the income to service that debt.
My sense is that the 2% premium that, I was told by this bank official, who has only been in Canada for a year, we pay for our money is what the international community is charging us for living above our means. I guess that's the difficulty we have. I think the thing we need to recognize is that it does get shared across the table and we all have to wear part of it.
Mr Ed Doyle (Wentworth East): Lee, you mentioned how we had gone through such restructuring right here in Hamilton. Over the past 10, 15 years Hamilton was one of the areas that was hardest hit in the province, yet right now we stand in a position where we're at about 4.5% or 5% unemployment. We're one of the lowest in the country. To what do you attribute this? Do you attribute this to the initiative of the people of Hamilton? We're in pretty good shape. You mentioned yourself in your brief that you could count the number of companies that were involved in exports, and now they're in the hundreds. Would you agree that some of the things we're attempting to do will help to implement this kind of action?
Mr Kirkby: I think the answer to that is yes. That's the reason why we have supported the general purpose of the bill. The answer to the question of why our unemployment rate is substantially lower than it was, and in fact leading the country other than the city of Regina -- I don't really know why they suddenly jumped ahead of us -- the answer is because people are finding ways to put themselves to work. People are becoming earners of an income, not necessarily employed. I think there's a difference between those two terms, and we need to understand what that means in the new economy.
You come out of an industry that has probably been, for the longest of times, the forerunner of the virtual industry. A lot of people freelance in that industry and work for multiple organizations, but they earn a good living, and they are able to earn a living and pay their way and provide opportunity within the community. That's what we see happening. When I talk about those companies of one to three being a growth in our organization, many of those organizations are trading internationally. They're businesses of one and two and three people.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kirkby. I apologize for interrupting, but we have to move to the opposition time.
Mr Phillips: It's always curious to me whether organizations know what they're supporting when they say they support something. You probably heard the group that was concerned about the environment just before you. Your problem is, I think -- maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but the chambers line up in support of a bill that contains some really strange provisions which I'm not sure the chamber members perhaps fully appreciate your supporting. I wouldn't mind a response to that. Are you supporting the provisions that the environmentalists just before you were concerned about?
Mr Kirkby: I think I was very careful and very specific in the comment I made: We support the purpose of the bill and the intent of the bill. We offered some specific comments that we were able to identify that we think could improve the bill and suggested there may be instances where other parties will be coming before this committee and will come to the government with other solutions that they think should be incorporated in the bill. They're the experts in their fields.
We are quite prepared to suggest that we have not done a substantive, detailed analysis of every clause within this bill and every act that is affected by this bill to be able to come up with the perfect set of words that is going to guarantee that the absolute, perfect result comes out. So I think I'm being very careful and very specific in the terms that I'm saying: We are supporting the intent and the direction that the bill is taking to provide the flexibility for some steps to be taken.
The conservation authority locally is a member of our chamber, a strong supporter, and we support many of the activities it is involved in. It's one of those partners we've worked with. So where they can come forward and offer suggestions that say, "We think there's a concern here that should be addressed," I would encourage the committee to give that concern a reasonable ear.
I guess that goes back to that other comment I made earlier, that there are difficult choices to be made, and that is why we have the process we have before us today.
Mr Phillips: Does the chamber resent having to support just one bill when there may be many provisions in there that the chamber would have trouble with, but because you like some provisions, you have to support all of the bill? We will have one vote on this, Lee: "Are you for or against the bill?"
Just on the fee thing for a moment, you know the intent is to provide virtually unlimited flexibility for municipalities to impose fees. That's what the government says the intent is, and as you point out, you remove all of the opportunities to appeal that. You can't appeal to the OMB; where there used to be a referendum, you can no longer have the referendum, or you can bypass that by bylaw, and it may even be in the form of direct taxes. In other words, we've now had at least four municipalities say they look forward to this because it gives them the potential to introduce a gas tax.
If the bill is not amended to provide what you want, which is an opportunity for some appeal mechanism and a prohibition against these broad-scale, non-user-related taxes like a gas tax, would the chamber still be in support of the bill?
Mr Kirkby: I don't think we have looked at the bill in terms of saying it's a choice between rejecting it on the provision of one alteration or one recommendation, and I think that's one of the difficulties with any kind of legislation. I can't think of a piece of legislation that I have been asked to comment upon or to carry the comments of the chamber on in the seven years that I've served at the chamber that I would suggest we would support every provision of it. I would think that's one of the dilemmas of dealing with legislation, that in most instances you deal with compromise and you deal with a situation that says you have to weigh the merits both ways.
I can't tell you that we would withdraw our support based upon changes, because we also recognize that we have a second kick at the can on some of those provisions because we have a pretty good working relationship with our local municipalities and we would certainly be at the table dealing at that level, saying, "Guys, be careful of what you do and understand what the consequences of your actions are." We've been very successful in the last while doing that.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kirkby. I apologize for interrupting but we've come to the end of your time. I want to thank you for coming today and making your presentation to the committee.
TAXPAYERS COALITION BURLINGTON
The Chair: May I please have a representative from the Taxpayers Coalition Burlington come forward. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming to appear before our committee today. You have half an hour to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions and response from all three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce yourselves at the beginning of your presentation for the benefit of committee members and Hansard.
Mr Frank Gue: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Frank Gue and I am education chair of the Burlington taxpayers' coalition. With me this morning are Barb Newham, a director of the coalition, and Hugh Doull, who is president of the Burlington taxpayers' coalition.
By way of preamble, our organization, Taxpayers Coalition Burlington Inc, was founded in 1991. We're active in city, school board and region. Our membership list has several hundred names. Our mission is quite simple: Get value, which is to say quality, for money in tax expenditures and identify and elect people who will do this. We have strongly influenced the sudden levelling of expenditures beginning in 1991, which resulted, for instance, in the cessation of the average 18%-compounded-per-year climb in education costs. We represent Halton as well as Burlington, where it's necessary, for example, at school board and region.
Some general comments before we plow into the bill itself: We want accountability for spending at every level of government. For any activity, we desperately need to see a specific objective with measurable scheduled results from specific persons or departments. Market value assessment is an example of diffusion where this does not exist. It's impossible to identify exactly who's responsible, yet the operation rolls expensively onward. Another example is the reluctance of some politicians to hold referenda. So we ask you to rethink any shifting of decision-making to any who cannot be held accountable, particularly to unelected bureaucrats, and to avoid obscuring public view of who is responsible. We seem to see a little of that in the bill.
Also, please note that while taxes have been going steadily up, taxpayers' disposable income has been going steadily down. It is now about where it was in 1980. This has been largely because special-interests have acquired enough power to confiscate part of the living standards earned by others. We see Bill 26 as part of the mechanism for halting this trend.
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To get to the bill, for convenience we're using the paragraph numbers in the summary rather than the tremendous bill itself. Our health care comments, we recognize, properly belong in the other hearings, but they're brief and we make them here since they may not be made elsewhere.
Page 9, paragraph G.4: We question deregulating the prices of patent-protected drugs. With no competition, the possibility of developing unreasonably high drug prices increases. It happened in 1988; it'll happen again if we're not careful.
TCB is neither for nor against a two-tier health system. However, the medical monopoly should be broken up in terms fair to both doctors and the public. The German opt-in, opt-out system is worth studying. There are undoubtedly any number of others. See the green attachment to your packet for a Fraser Institute article on that subject -- very illuminating.
Page 12, paragraph M.1: Regional government can be expensive and unresponsive. Example: Ours is planning a water pipeline that will create a huge debt, just unthinkable in the mid-1990s. It'll raise taxes for existing taxpayers, increase congestion and pollution and not improve quality of life. Private partnering will merely make the extra costs to existing taxpayers harder to identify. Historically, the private partner gets any profit, but the taxpayer takes the risk. We are told the pipeline is essential to support GTA growth, but recall that Haldimand-Norfolk was estimated in 1974 to have a 1986 population many times what it is even now, but was saddled with a regional structure nearly as elaborate as Hamilton-Wentworth's.
We need other solutions. Example: London, UK, is a huge city that has no regional government or anything like it. Is that a model to study? If not, what is? Similarly, as mentioned before, MVA is a disaster. It's expensive, it's unfair, it's unstable, with powerful lobbies ramming it through against furious citizen opposition. Again, what are the objective, non-political, non-ideological alternatives? Bill 26, please help.
Page 12, paragraph M.3: Police services boards are insufficiently fiscally accountable. That day has passed. City councils cannot overrule their requisitions for funds. A recent editorial from the Globe and Mail, the ivory-coloured attachment, says well what needs saying about this.
Page 12, paragraph M.4: Privatization, partnering and user-pay must demonstrably reduce total expenditures as attested by a independent auditor. "Total" means both government expenditures on the formerly public service -- hence "directly" reducing taxes; it's got to be traceable by the auditor -- and the fresh private expenditure on, let's say, garbage pickup or something similar. Where the service remains public, user-pay must yield a genuine total cost saving.
What we're getting here is that we have to avoid having user-pay employed merely to reduce the cost pressures on government rather than genuinely to reduce total taxpayers' costs. The hazards of this are well documented in an Economist article entitled "Cooking the Books," which is the pink attachment to your packet. The Brits have had years of experience in this and they find -- they think -- that they are cooking their own books.
Page 12, paragraph M.5: Grants should be eliminated, period. Most folks think a grant is free. They calculate cost benefits, omitting grants from the costs or adding them to the revenues, overlooking that grants are also taxes, even where they come from lotteries. Grants, first of all, escape parliamentary scrutiny; second, easily serve political ends; third, often enable unfair competition; fourth, may finance projects better left undone -- if you want details on that, I can give you one or two; and fifth, diminish accountability of the recipients.
Grants create confusion in project financing. Governments may sell to citizens a proposal for, let's say, a recreation centre but will publish only the capital cost. Capital may come from development charges, grants and debentures, while operating costs, maintenance, depreciation etc are ignored. We taxpayers never know what added taxes the politicians are committing us to, and I might comment, they don't know either.
All taxing authorities, including the province, must declare a one-number, present-value cost of any project, showing all future costs, environmental included, properly discounted. This is an old and respected method of evaluating major projects. Ignoring it has contributed heavily to our debt problems. A frequent objection is that it's impossible to estimate the future cost, let's say, of paving a wetland or maintaining a certain structure. Well, if an important cost can't be estimated, the project mustn't proceed, and that's that.
Page 12, paragraph M.6: TCB applauds environmental preservation. However, we must not partially expropriate private lands. A government action to protect a wetland, say, or to rezone or to set up a landfill may dramatically drop the market price of a property. The owner has been partially expropriated without compensation and is unable to afford either to sell or to hold. The citizenry owes him something fair, a phrase we'll leave others to define and to quantify. TCB further is concerned that the scope of conservation authorities not be so diminished that our irreplaceable natural environments are paved over. There is room for greater efficiency certainly, but accompanied by increased effectiveness.
Page 13, paragraph O.1: We applaud the use of a sinking fund to cover closure costs but it should not be optional. It should be extended to all potentially damaging operations, for example, electroplating or tire storage. One simple regulation should suffice, specifically that the owner leave the site in the same condition, above and below ground, with particular attention to aquifers, as he found it. Before beginning, such an industry must post a bond sufficient to defray the cost of the closure. It would remain the owner's property, not the government's property, in escrow, accumulating interest until required.
In that connection we urge the minister to earmark revenues. Allowing receipts merely to enter into consolidated revenues has the effect that any prudent householder or factory manager could predict: Government overspends without really having much idea of how it happened, where it happened or how to control it. Just look at any auditor's report -- provincial, federal -- any auditor's report.
For example, at the time of the tire fire, the considerable revenue that had been collected under the new tire tax had of course been spent. There was no fund available from which to pay the costs. Taxpayers Coalition wants to know and wants you to know that the gasoline taxes go to roadbuilding or whatever is related, that road tolls pay for that road and so on. Without earmarking, we do not believe that this can be done, and history supports us.
Missing from the packet, and I hope not out of place here, is costs and structures of school boards: TCB urges the minister not to support elimination of school boards or make them a committee of a city council etc. This would not address the fundamental problems which are in the Education Act itself, the unions and the provincial school administrations, the various regional school administrations. The problem isn't in the boards and the money won't be saved by eliminating boards. The education system of Ontario is in deep trouble, only one aspect of which is its basic model of governance, which cannot do the job according to law that it is supposed to do.
We ask the committee to note recent history, such as the 89% plus constant dollars -- that's deflated dollars -- increase in education costs in Halton in a recent 20-year period during which student population fell 13% and quality of graduates remained below international levels. This happened with no legislative approval at any level, down to the school board itself when it is too late. This is taxation without representation, which often pays for failed education experiments unhindered by any taxpayer input whatever.
Some form of competition with or within public education would be one means of improving this. The public school system is a textbook case of the high-cost, low-quality results of a monopoly. A Fraser Institute article on this subject is the pink attachment. School boards need to be empowered, not marginalized. They report to the owners of the system, the taxpayers, but you would never know.
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Concerning downloading, TCB strongly urges the minister to ensure that the act make it very clear that downloading is not acceptable. We recognize the political risks in actually forbidding downloading -- you can get into the American merry-go-round -- but we feel that there must be strong moral suasion and other forces that the province can bring to bear to prevent it.
If the act does not do this, TCB can assure you that most local school boards, and certainly Halton's, will be forced by their administrations to raise taxes, and that this would happen exactly the same if school administrations were appended to a city council. Imposing a sudden jump in this huge tax -- 17% in Hamilton-Wentworth, we hear -- would invite a tax strike, agitation for which TCB has spent four years trying to damp down.
We urge the government not to give the slightest consideration to a poll tax. Remember Maggie Thatcher.
Closing comments:
A note on language: The word "allow" is often used, as in "allows hospitals to eliminate duplication." Perhaps the proper word is "requires." This denies the cynical critic the chance to accuse the government of euphemizing an unpleasant, unpalatable fact, and alerts the enterprises affected that these measures will not be optional.
A note on regulation: Words that Taxpayers Coalition dreads, "may make regulations," appear repeatedly in the bill. We must point out that every regulation requires civil staff to administer it, police, inspectors and so forth to enforce it and court and citizens' time to judge the inevitable appeals from it. This is a classic case of cost creep. Such costs have a ratchet effect; they can fairly easily rise but are so diffused through the system that they are nearly impossible to dislodge. Further, they give civil staff too much of a free hand to impose their non-accountable will upon the economy. We ask the government to find every occurrence of "may make regulations" and do one of two things: either find a way to eliminate the phrase or find elsewhere in the laws of Ontario an important regulation which can be rescinded. Frank Sheehan, where are you when we need you?
A note on citizen input: Health Minister Jim Wilson said recently that, "This government is not going to give special treatment to people who shout the loudest," and that, "The system will not be reformed by inviting special interests for their input, adding up their requests and greasing their wheels, with the squeakiest getting the most." We applaud this declaration but must point out that many people are not shouting; they are expressing in these rooms important views that have value and must be heard. We applaud the establishment of these hearings and strongly recommend that the government very widely publicize changes to the bill which will result from them. Its credibility will rise remarkably when this is done.
Reform is effective when it is done with, not to, people. The government must implement these reforms with people, not solely by using power. Taxpayers Coalition is very concerned about the powers that will be granted under Bill 26. We understand the need for prompt action; however, it may be that too much power will be granted to both politicians and bureaucrats.
It has been said that the test of good legislation is what can be done with it, not by men of goodwill but of evil intent. Apply this test by asking, if another political party were to request these powers, would the government support it? We suggest that, without diluting the excellent fundamental purposes of the bill, its provisions be re-read in this light and language and powers revised if you feel it necessary.
This makes Bill 26 a delicate balance between the urgent need for drastic action and an equally important need to avoid imposition of permanent undemocratic powers, which again would be very difficult to dislodge. Not to try to strike this vital balance is quite unforgivable, and not to succeed, in the light of the results of June 8, is unacceptable.
Ladies and gentlemen, we wish you good luck and wisdom in your deliberations. Thank you for your attention. We will answer any questions that we can.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Joseph N. Tascona): Thank you very much for your presentation. At this time each party has a chance to comment on your submission, and we'll start off with the government party. Each party has about four minutes.
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): Thanks for an excellent and helpful presentation. I want to assure you that the government is listening. By the time these hearings are over we will have heard, I think, over 360 delegations and we will have travelled to, including Toronto, 12 cities. We will be acting where we think there is a concern, and some themes have begun to develop already.
The previous delegation described a 2% interest premium we're paying as Canadians on government debt to foreign lenders. We know we're paying about 17 cents of every Ontario tax dollar on interest on debt, about 33 cents of every federal tax dollar on interest on debt, and if you could please comment on what will happen in Ontario if we don't act to address these problems.
Mr Gue: You mean, if we don't act to address the 17% or the 2%, which is --
Mr Young: If we don't act to address the problems of too much government and too high taxes --
Mr Gue: Oh, gracious.
Mr Young: -- and if we don't restructure. With particular emphasis, what will happen to people who are really in need whom we really want to help if we don't address these problems?
Mr Gue: It's easy to visualize. Many things that we take for granted will simply stop. Some Wednesday morning there will be no more whatever -- shelters for some kind of social distress or welfare or something. There simply will not be the money available. It's a choice between everybody sharing some of the pain and many, many people getting no share at all, none whatever. It's almost exactly analogous to the situation when an industry must downsize. It's heart-breaking to let good people go, but the choice is between letting some good people go and closing down the business.
Mr Young: Would it address your concerns on the powers in the bill if there were a sunset clause which said these powers disappear in two or three or four or five years?
Mr Gue: That would be an important contribution.
Mr Phillips: Just a temporary dictatorship.
Mr Gue: Benevolent.
The Vice-Chair: We have two minutes for the government. Ms Ross, please.
Mrs Ross: Mr Gue, you made a comment here that, with the reshifting and refocusing of government in the restructuring, you feel it's important that any decision-making be put in the hands of those people who are held accountable. Would you not agree that restructuring municipal governments and giving more tools for municipal governments to do their job effectively is doing just that?
Mr Gue: If I understand the bill, it does address that to an extent. The thing that concerns us, as I mentioned in the presentation, is that in parallel with that and possibly, if we're not careful, opposing that, would appear to be powers granted to folk in Toronto who do not see as closely as the local folk what the local problems are.
So I've got sort of a yes-and-no answer there. I'm not trying to evade your issue, MPP Ross, but the immediate answer to your question is, "Yes, that's good. Let's by all means have local people spend local money." The precaution is, "Let's not have Toronto politicians and bureaucrats ruling arbitrarily without consultation on something happening in Parry Sound or Burlington which they don't understand."
Mrs Ross: I would just like to comment that what I see happening here is exactly what you hope is happening, in that local and regional governments are given the authority and the ability to set the direction that their region, their city, their municipality wants to go, and not provincial politicians. In fact that is exactly what's happening here.
Mr Gue: That's the part we would say yes to.
Mr Young: Frank, we know that when the Liberals were in power they cut funding to education and when the NDP were in power they cut funding to municipalities. We're doing what we have to do to restructure Ontario and we're taking a lot of heat. Do you have any comments on that?
Mr Gue: Terence, that's either a huge subject or very, very compact. The big answer is, we've got to do something. We just cannot, as many people seem to feel, stagger along, hoping that things will be all right by the morning, that this is a bad dream and we'll wake up. That isn't going to happen. We do have to do something. Whether the restructuring --
The Vice-Chair: Sorry, time's up for the governing party. It's up to the opposition party if they want you to continue the answer.
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Mr Agostino: There are a number of points you raise, sir, and a number of concerns you've outlined in the bill. You talked about downloading and the effect that will have. What you have seen through the actions to date has been the most massive downloading to local government in the history of this province in regard to the extent and the nature of the cuts; at the same time the most massive shift, proposed in this bill, that we have seen in the history of this province to give municipalities new power to impose fees and taxes.
I can tell you that municipal politicians are not bad people -- I happen to have been one of them at one time -- but the reality is that there is going to be a direct impact here on local taxpayers. The deputy mayor of London said he welcomed such powers as the ability to dissolve local boards and commissions, to introduce new fees and user taxes and direct taxes, and of course urged the government to pass the bill right away because they want to be able to do that to offset the $15 million, for example, that they have lost in municipal funding.
I really see this as a shell game. It is not a tradeoff; it is simply a shell game. You take that money and you cut it from municipalities and you force the municipalities to be the bad guys who now have to impose user fees on garbage pickup and extensive fees on licensing a business and direct taxes as head taxes and gasoline taxes. Does that fit into your organization's goals and does that part of the bill, particularly to give the municipalities this new-found user fee power and this open-ended ability to tax, concern you and your organization?
Mr Gue: Let me fast-rewind for a minute, Mr Agostino. Maybe I could dramatize this a little bit by saying there hasn't been a penny of downloading yet. Downloading will happen only as and when local administrations and politicians decide that they can't hack this, that there's going to have to be an increase in some local tax or there's going to have to be a user-pay. That is when the downloading will occur, and some of it will occur.
The hope and expectation we have -- and it's backed up, as any economist will testify -- is that the closer to the user of the service and the supplier of the money that the money is spent, the better it will be spent. I don't want to wander too far from the topic in this room, but all you have to do is note what billions -- and I mean "billions" -- are dished out by the federal government on very questionable grants and projects and so forth to understand just how bad it can get when the user is not involved in the use of the tax money.
Let's narrow in from the global to the narrow. Let's think about user-pay garbage collection. Let me assure you, absolutely assure you, that if user-pay for garbage collection were instituted, the amount of garbage collected would drop by somewhere between 25% and 50% in the first year. That is the sort of thing, where downloading happens -- and it will; we recognize that -- that we want to see taxpayers storming school board meetings and stomping in and out of city council and making the people who are making those decisions understand what's happening to them in their homes.
The Vice-Chair: We're out of time for the opposition party. The NDP, Mr Silipo.
Mr Silipo: I just want to pursue actually this question of downloading, because as I look at the numbers from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in the area of the Halton region and the local municipalities, there's upwards of over $10 million in cuts in grants for the municipal level to those combined municipalities. That's just for this year alone, and a similar amount is likely for next year according to the announcement in November.
In terms of how you see municipalities looking at this and dealing with that reality and the powers that are in this bill for a whole array of not just user fees, but even a variety of taxes as we see them, you don't have a concern -- you have some concern because you obviously expressed it, but I guess I'd like to hear a little bit more from you about your concern around how municipalities are going to deal with that, particularly in terms of the time crunch they're in.
One of your sister associations, for example, made the point that perhaps one of the things the government ought to consider is, yes, proceeding in terms of the cuts, but giving municipalities more time to be able to adjust to those things and at the same time restricting and clarifying the use some of these new user fees and taxing powers so that we don't simply see one level of government reducing its funding problem by shifting it to another level for them to be able to tax the one taxpayer we all agree exists at the end of the day. What would be any comment you might have on that?
Mr Gue: Let me use as an example an arena with which you are much more familiar and I am much more familiar than the municipal one, which is the school systems. Halton has a $280-million to $285-million school budget. Intelligent and aggressive cost reduction, as done by the industries that support that operation, could reduce that cost by $25 million to $50 million in a period of two to three years. I'm sure that similar -- not the same -- things could be done at the municipal level. Because I'm more familiar with education, I am probably somewhat cynically in expectation that they could do better than the municipalities, but the same principles apply and that opens up a whole -- I'd need a morning, which I have given to school boards and to city councils, on productivity improvement in the private sector.
The hidden assumption in a great deal of what you say, Mr Silipo, is that you have to do all of this good stuff. You don't have to do all of this good stuff.
Mr Silipo: That's fine. I hear what you're saying. Even accepting that point, that you don't have to do --
The Vice-Chair: Unfortunately, we're out of time, Mr Silipo, at this point. Thanks very much for your presentation.
ONTARIO PROFESSIONAL FIRE FIGHTERS ASSOCIATION
The Vice-Chair: At this time we have the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association. I believe Mr Lee is the president. Who else is here?
Mr Jim Lee: Patrick De Fazio will be presenting on behalf of the firefighters this morning.
The Vice-Chair: Thanks very much. Nice to see you again. You can proceed at any time, Mr De Fazio.
Mr Patrick De Fazio: I list my credentials there for you to see. I'm an advocate at boards of arbitration; a nominee to boards of arbitration; president emeritus of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association. I'm also editor of the Intrepid/Fire Line publication, which is the official voice of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association. I was a professional firefighter for 36 years at the municipal level and retired in 1993. I'm also a general advocate in various areas.
You have a presentation before you which contains two exhibits. Tab A, which you have before you, would be a run-up of today's firefighter. It simply lines up what firefighters do for a living on a day-to-day basis. In tab B you would have police and fire comparability, which I'll talk to in the presentation of my brief.
What you notice in front of you here today are some Second World War veteran's medals. I said to a number of veterans that I would make some comments with respect to them and how they're forgotten about in this whole scenario with respect to certain changes in schedule M. Before I left I spoke to a number of veterans and I was given the privilege and the honour of bringing one set of medals from one veteran who asked that he not be forgotten in this whole particular conversation with respect to some of the benefits contained in collective agreements.
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I'll continue on with my presentation. First of all, I'd like to make a statement. Let me say at the outset that as a citizen of this great province I am deeply disappointed at the actions of this government and its desire to stifle honest disagreement with its aims and objectives. The clandestine fashion in which the omnibus legislation, Bill 26, was presented and the blatant attempt to prevent consultation on its contents is unprecedented in my recollection of governments in the province of Ontario.
It is a risky comment to make at the beginning of a presentation when one is hoping for change; however, the democratic process has to be defended and maintained, regardless of any other goal that may be desired. An election of a majority government does not bring with it the right to run roughshod over the collective voice of a group or individual people.
Broken promise: It is interesting to point out what was written to me as editor of our magazine, the Intrepid, by MPP Mike Harris just prior to the election.
Question: "If elected Premier...will you, or will you not attempt to make amendments to the Fire Departments Act for the province of Ontario?"
Answer: "The PC Party of Ontario has serious concerns about some of the changes that are contemplated with respect to the Fire Departments Act. 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 workers, as well as management."
I was the author of that letter that was sent to Mr Harris and I was the recipient of that answer. This information was disseminated to our membership through our network of district meetings, seminars and mail to 53 associations comprised of over 4,000 members. It was also presented to our convention in June 1995, just prior to the election.
The committee is obviously aware of the fact that there were no consultations concerning proposed changes to the act. There is no question in the minds of our members that this broken promise directly impacts on the integrity of this government. A method of salvaging this broken promise is to excise those proposed amendments to the Fire Departments Act from Bill 26 and have them dealt with by the appropriate stakeholders and the office of the Solicitor General for the province of Ontario.
Part 1, schedule M, power to municipalities: The Fire Departments Act for the province of Ontario, in my respectful view, is the finest piece of labour legislation affecting professional firefighters that you will find anywhere in North America. It has served the test of time and has provided citizens of this great province with uninterrupted fire and emergency service. Citizens can go to bed at night knowing full well that firefighters will respond quickly and efficiently, on a 24-hour operational basis, to any type of crisis.
In addition to the foregoing, you will find the following statement in the constitution of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association, in article 2, section 2, "Prohibition of Strikes": "No member of this association shall strike because we are required as firefighters to protect the lives and property of the citizens of the community."
Also contained in our constitution is a code of ethics of which the committee should be fully apprised:
"As a firefighter and member of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association my fundamental duty is to serve humanity; to safeguard and preserve life and property against the elements of fire and disaster; and maintain a proficiency in the art and science of fire engineering.
"I will uphold the standards of my profession, continually search for new and improved methods and disseminate and share my knowledge and skills with my contemporaries and descendants.
"I will never allow my personal feelings, nor danger to self to deter me from my responsibilities as a firefighter.
"I will at all times respect the property and rights of all individuals, the laws of my community and my country, and the chosen way of life of my fellow citizens.
"I recognize the badge of my office as a symbol of public faith, and I accept it as a public trust to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of the fire service. I will constantly strive to achieve these objectives and ideals, dedicating myself before God to my chosen profession, saving of life, fire prevention and fire suppression.
"As a member of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association, I accept this self-imposed and self-enforced obligation as my personal responsibility."
In retrospect, I believe that the legislators, when putting together the Fire Departments Act for the province of Ontario, felt the need to protect our commitment by inserting language that would serve to protect us in many ways. I refer you to one section in particular, and that is section 7 which reads as follows:
"7(1) Every agreement under section 5 and every decision or award under section 6 shall be in writing and is binding upon the municipality and the full-time firefighters.
"(2) Every agreement, decision or award remains in effect until the end of the year in which it comes into effect and thereafter remains in effect until replaced by a new agreement, decision or award."
A letter that I wrote under date of December 18 to MPP Gary Guzzo, Ottawa-Rideau, will set out my concerns very clearly:
"Re: omnibus legislation
"There are certain matters arising out of this proposed legislation that are extremely worrisome and causing great anxiety to our members as well as their families.
"Let me be more specific in one area. If for example, the fire service was regionalized in this area the region would become the employer. What happens to the collective agreement covering those employees who work for Ottawa, Nepean, and any other department who may form part of the region? It is being said that because the legislation is silent with respect to `successor rights' that the existing collective agreement would not flow to the new employer.
"I do not believe that it was the government's intent to strip professional firefighters of their collective agreements that have been in place for well over 50 years. These agreements have been negotiated without any interruption of fire service to the citizens in this area, and for that matter in the province of Ontario.
"I believe deeply that you also would be of the view that professional firefighters should not be subjected to this type of treatment. We have never done anything that would warrant this type of unprecedented impact on collective agreements.
"In short, we need your help in this connection. I would hope that you can arrange a meeting with me and possibly others as quickly as possible."
That meeting has not been effected as of this date.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for an individual to understand with great certainty the entire ramifications of the schedule M amendments to the Municipal Act. It is even more arduous to contemplate the impact the minister will have when he sets forth regulations that will supplement the thrust of the proposed amendments in section M.
What I do know is that under the present proposals there is the unfettered ability to literally destroy the collective agreements of thousands of professional firefighters in this province. This can be done as a result of groups of professional firefighters moving to a new employer by way of regionalization or privatization. In startling terms, it means that the collective agreement does not flow to the new employer.
This has to be a mistake. This is not democracy. This is subjective in every sense of the word. This cannot be the view of this government. There has to be some phantom scribe with an ulterior motive who would want to hurt professional firefighters and their families in such a spiteful way. Who in their right mind would want to tear apart in such a devastating way collective agreements that have taken well over 50 years to put together, with most of them by way of negotiation?
We have to be protected by successor rights. The agreement has to follow to the new employer. This committee has to prepare an amendment to this proposed legislation that would protect the professional firefighters and their collective agreements in the province of Ontario. The fire marshal for the province of Ontario, in his report to the Solicitor General, endorsed the concept of successor rights for professional firefighters in the province of Ontario.
Does it make any sense to any member of this committee, regardless of your politics, to allow a regional employer to have such extraordinary power? A new employer could say to a collective group of professional firefighters, "You do not have a contract and you will have to start negotiating from scratch." Absolutely absurd. And I am sure the committee can envision the problems that will ensue from this type of proposal.
The first convention of this organization was held in the city of Toronto on August 25 and 26, 1920. It might be interesting at this point to tell you who the officers of our association were at that particular time: president, P. Herd from Toronto; secretary-treasurer, D.H. Lamb from Toronto; first vice-president, S.B. Blacker from Ottawa; second vice-president, J. Hotrum from Hamilton. Of course, all these people are deceased.
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All of the foregoing firefighters and others were pioneers who started one of the greatest organizations in the fire service, an organization that has always had great respect for the institution of government and has never, as I understand the history of our organization, caused this government or any other government any problem. We have gone about our business utilizing the laws as they unfolded before us. If we had any concern, it was brought before the appropriate authorities and dealt with through consultation and negotiation.
As I proceeded through the history of our organization, I found a statement which sets out the attitude our organization had for the government of the day:
"Going into the 1940s, during the war years, the legislation committee recommended, and the body adopted, their report, that due to the present conditions of war that we do not antagonize our political friends by using too much pressure for legislation."
While we are talking about war, let me remind the committee in a very respectful way that our collective agreements contain retirees' benefits. Some of our retired people are veterans of the Second World War. These veterans fought to give us freedom, and freedom of expression; the right, without fear, to say to this government that in your haste to give municipalities unprecedented power, you forgot about our current people and our retired people, you forgot about our veterans. These people are extremely worried about benefits extended to them in collective agreements that impact on their very existence.
I ask this committee to think long and hard about what can happen to people if collective agreements are not protected by successor rights.
Part 2, schedule Q, proposed amendments to the Fire Departments Act: I will not read the criteria; you're very familiar with the criteria that will be put before the arbitrator if accepted. Before we even begin to examine the proposed criteria, a number of questions have to be asked. What do the criteria mean?
When you attempt to get answers from the government or the legal people representing the government, they are not in concert with each other. As a matter of fact, an astonishing answer received is that eventually the criteria will have to be tested by way of judicial review to really understand what each specific piece of criteria does in fact mean. This, of course, is extremely costly to all associations representing professional firefighters. It is no big deal for municipalities, as they are not, nor ever were, overly concerned about the cost associated with judicial review. Private legal opinions also vary as to what in fact the criteria purport to say to an interest arbitration board. If the persons responsible for putting the criteria together are in doubt as to what they have authored, then God help us at an arbitration board.
For example, are the criteria totally inclusive? Are these five criteria the only touchstone upon which the arbitration board may enter, or can other criteria be considered as well? Again, the answers vary depending upon whom you consult.
At interest boards of arbitration spanning a great number of years, professional firefighters have been compared with police officers. This is a major comparable used at all interest boards of arbitration and accepted by just about every arbitrator that sat on an arbitration interest board as it affected professional firefighters. The principle of parity between police and fire is well established and entrenched in the multitude of awards that have been handed down over the years. In the proposed criteria, it makes no mention of the police comparison. Does this mean it cannot be used? No one seems to be able to answer this question.
If the criteria are all-inclusive, then they are subjective in nature and put there for the specific reason of severely restricting what evidence can be brought before an arbitration board. This is undemocratic and wrong. All evidence adduced at an arbitration board should be permitted, and the board will properly weigh this evidence before submitting an award. This is the fair and right way, the only way. To exclude any information is to destroy completely the independence of the arbitrator and the board of arbitration.
Let us think for a moment what we're doing. Would we deny any evidence before a court of law? Absolutely not. There may be some evidence that is inadmissible, but that is decided by the judge based on argument. An arbitration board is a quasi-judicial tribunal, which is not required to follow the formal procedures of the court, but which is none the less akin to a court and whose procedures must therefore be governed by the rules of natural justice. An arbitrator must be completely unfettered. To do otherwise is to make a mockery of the arbitration system.
Let us now deal specifically with the proposed criteria.
"1. The employer's ability to pay in light of its fiscal situation."
Let me say at the beginning that the factor of the employer's ability to pay has always been taken into consideration at every board of arbitration I have ever attended. This would include as an advocate who has prepared and presented briefs to boards of arbitration on behalf of professional firefighters. This would also include sitting as a nominee on arbitration boards representing professional firefighters. It would also include sitting with respective firefighter associations at their table during a board of arbitration while I was president of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association for nine years.
All in all, I would think that over my entire career I have been present and quite active at well over 100 boards of arbitration. In all of these instances the employer put forth whatever arguments they cared to submit and they were carefully considered by the arbitration board. The associations were given the same treatment. In short, both were on a level playing field. To suggest otherwise by any group is complete nonsense and an unfair attack on arbitrators and the arbitration system in the province of Ontario.
What is really meant by "in light of its fiscal situation"? Does it in fact mean that the employer can spend the public chest on whatever they deem to be a priority until the purse is exhausted and then demand from the arbitrator that their fiscal situation now requires that no compensation be awarded to the firefighters?
This, in my respectful view, is creating an uneven playing field with the ground heavily tilted in favour of the employer. This is not right. The question to me that will invariably be asked is, "If the ability to pay is always taken into consideration, then what harm is there in putting it in writing?" The answer is simple. When you the government order an independent tribunal or arbitrator to consider certain criteria, you are meddling with the very essence of the independence of the quasi-judicial system. I ask you to think about that.
"2. The extent to which services may have to be reduced, if the current funding levels are not increased."
What jumps out at your right away in this connection is that the right of council to set the level of service has been usurped by the arbitration board if this proposal is accepted. Is this by design? Is it done on the basis that from a political point of view council will be able to say: "We did not reduce the level of service. It was done by an arbitrator." A quick read will tell you that this is intended to get the heat off the elected officials if there were to be a reduction in service.
"3. The economic situation in Ontario and in the municipality."
Again, the cost of living and many other factors are put before an arbitration board by both sides. The municipality will bring in the best of experts at considerable cost to demonstrate the economic perspective from whatever point of view they desire. This will be given the appropriate weight it deserves by the tribunal. This criterion does not have to be enshrined in legislation.
"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."
If the proposed criterion is all-inclusive, then this is a deliberate and blatant attempt to prevent the professional firefighter from using the police officer in the community as a comparable at a board of arbitration. I respectfully remind the committee that the principle of police and fire comparison has been accepted without exception for years at boards of arbitration. I list a few statements from different arbitrators to substantiate that point of view.
I don't intend to read all of those statements from those arbitrators. Also, as I indicated, you have an exhibit which goes back over many years establishing the principles of parity between police and fire officers in any community.
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I would ask you to go to page 16, the second paragraph.
The list is exhaustive and goes back over many years and clearly and concisely accepts the principle of approximate parity between police and firefighter salaries when put before a board of arbitration. The preceding criterion would seem to eliminate the using of this long-standing relationship. This is deliberate, calculated and a bald attempt to put professional firefighters at a distinct disadvantage at a board of arbitration. Hopefully, the committee can see through this charade and maintain the independence of the arbitration system without dictating any legislative criteria.
The employer's need for qualified employees: What does the foregoing criterion mean? Does it require the arbitrator to circumvent seniority systems or promotional systems in the collective agreement because the employer believes these systems do not produce qualified employees? The term is very broad and extremely vague. The employer can put any proposal they desire before an arbitration board if they believe existing qualifications for employees are deficient or lacking in any particular area. Of course, this is subject to any counter-arguments there may be from the association. The arbitration board will make a decision in this connection. That's the way the system works and has done so for many years, and without fault, I might add. Again there is no need to legislate a criterion that, in my view, is superfluous.
Obviously, someone has the ear of government concerning the arbitration system. The government unfortunately has accepted their views without any input whatsoever from the professional firefighters who operate under this system. This is totally unacceptable, and hopefully this committee will come to the conclusion that no legislative criteria are needed for an arbitration system that has served the needs of the public so well for so many years.
A freedom of association committee of the International Labour Organization concluded in 1985 that "if arbitrators are directly appointed by a government which lays down in legislation certain criteria which arbitrators are bound to follow in the determination of awards, it is inevitable that confidence in the system will diminish."
The presentation is respectfully submitted, and I appreciate the opportunity of doing so today.
Mr Agostino: A number of groups requested to present today, and unfortunately these gentlemen aren't here. Those who are here listening but can't present are: from the Hamilton Professional Fire Fighters Association, Henry Watson, the president, Jeff Wheaton, the secretary, Larry Staples and Walter Baumann, members; from the Stoney Creek Professional Fire Fighters Association, Len Wise, who is the president; from the Burlington Professional Fire Fighters Association, Jim Simmons, the president; and the president of the provincial federation of Ontario firefighters, Bruce Carpenter. These gentlemen were denied the opportunity to present today.
Yesterday we were told by firefighters making presentations that they saw this as a wage control bill for firefighters through the back door. This was a way for government to control wages and salaries, benefits and so on of firefighters. We were told that yesterday in Kitchener. Would you agree with that view?
Mr De Fazio: I certainly do, sir.
Mr Agostino: How do you see this impacting on the morale of the firefighters, on the safety, obviously, and the impact it would have on the reduction in services of the citizens you work for?
Mr De Fazio: It will definitely impact very greatly on the morale and, by extension, that will alter the safety of the service.
Mr Agostino: Is there a fear that because of the powers the arbitrators will have, it could reduce firefighting levels in communities to an extent that there would be real, significant difficulties in communities being able to respond to major fires or a rash of fires, say, at the same time in a community because of reduced levels of firefighters as a result of arbitrated rulings?
Mr De Fazio: We have that situation in the province of Ontario right now. This new bill will only exacerbate that situation.
Mr Christopherson: Good to see you both again. In my time in a previous life, two and a half years working with the police community and the fire community as Solicitor General, this was the biggest issue in terms of changes to all the legislation on fire services that haven't been looked at in over 50 years. I think we made some gains. I was looking forward to taking it further, but assumed the new government would follow through with the kind of process we had.
Clearly, you've been stiffed big-time; you really have. I suspect a lot of your members looked at this kind of commitment and said, "That sounds good enough to us, and some of the other things they're saying we like, and we're going to go with them," and now you're paying a horrible price.
I would suggest to you -- because there's not a lot of time for questions, I'm just going to make a statement -- that you've been had for two main reasons. One is that this government talks about public safety but it always means its own narrow definition of public safety. They do not recognize that the unions and associations and organizations that represent those individual people, whether they're police officers or firefighters or involved in emergency planning, whatever it is, those organizations play a key role. But unfortunately for you, you wear the label of "union," and therefore, you're special-interest and a lot of your rights just went out the window.
The other thing is that clearly there was a pact made with AMO and your concerns were not part of that pact either, and that's why you lose.
Mr Sampson: As it relates to this committee, I can assure you that you're getting a significant amount of attention in terms of presentations to this committee. If the agendas hold true for the rest of the session, we'll have met with nine of your groups. Generally speaking, they're all speaking to the same items and issues. I can assure you that this is probably above average, if I can say, to the opportunities other groups have had. We appreciate hearing these items, and we'll have to deal with them and we'll respond to them.
In terms of the mandatory criteria, the attempt of the legislation is to capture -- I think I heard it in your presentation -- many of the items or issues an arbitrator is considering when he or she makes a decision now. It's happening now. We should identify that and deal with that reality. We've heard from the taxpayer coalitions and a number of other groups that we have to deal with the fiscal reality. By the way, the arbitrator is not, in this legislation, empowered to reduce service; that is not the intent of the legislation and that's not the wording of the legislation.
I wanted to make sure you were aware of the fact that, certainly as it relates to this committee, your views are going to be heard for a significant amount of time and we will respond to them when it comes to the clause-by-clause review of the section.
The Vice-Chair: I'm sorry, that's all the time we have for this session.
Mr Lee: Tell me what number 2 says in the criteria. I'd be really interested to hear your interpretation of number 2.
The Vice-Chair: I imagine you might have another chance, Mr Lee, on that situation.
We'll recess to 1 pm.
The subcommittee recessed from 1208 to 1302.
MISSISSAUGA BOARD OF TRADE
The Vice-Chair: Good afternoon. Are you Charles Coles, chairman of the board?
Mr Charles Coles: Yes, I am.
The Vice-Chair: Thanks very much for coming. Can you just identify who is with you.
Mr Coles: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Charles Coles and I'm chairman of the Mississauga Board of Trade. I was president of the board in 1995 and am now past president, or chairman of the board. With me is Clare Halldorson. Clare is the policy adviser of the board.
I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee. Just to let you know -- Rob Sampson is already aware of this -- Mississauga is a city of 540,000 people. The Mississauga Board of Trade -- you've had representations from other boards of trade, I think -- is a private sector organization independent of government funding and solely reliant on membership fees as our source of income. The board of trade in Mississauga represents 1,300 companies, and those companies employ approximately 60,000 people. So we regard ourself as the voice of business in Mississauga.
We thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today on Bill 26. We would first of all like to commend you on developing the procedure to make representation on the bill and would emphasize that, overall, the Mississauga Board of Trade supports the goal of Bill 26. We do understand that significant restructuring and rationalization is required in the province at the present time with the economic situation that we have, with an annual deficit that is close to $10 billion and a debt that's quickly approaching $100 billion. So we do support the initiative that Bill 26 is, to move quickly to address the economic issues that have to be addressed.
We support Bill 26 because it strives to provide the means for the provincial government and the municipalities to reconstitute governing structures and rationalize services. In the end we believe this will result in a stronger Ontario and we will all be better off when that takes place.
We're not going to attempt to address all areas of Bill 26 today. There are some areas that we want to emphasize or focus on. One is the Municipal Act section, another is the Corporations Tax Act section, and the Public Utilities Act section.
First of all, in the Municipal Act section we want to address subsection 220.1(2), municipal user fees and charges; subsection 220.1(3), which is the direct tax issue; subsection 220.1(9), which is appeals to the Ontario Municipal Board; and subsection 257.2(1), which is licensing.
With respect to subsection 220.1(2), which is municipal user fees and charges, this is an area which would give local boards the power to pass bylaws imposing fees or charges on services or use of property in municipalities. Currently, user fees generate approximately 18% of revenues in Ontario. While the board supports the principle of introducing a wider array of fees, we would like to see in the act more definition with respect to the types of fees or charges that would be permitted.
We endorse the policy of an expanded user-pay system. However, we would urge the government to exercise discretion regarding the less advantaged citizens in our communities and their ability to pay for fees. We do not advocate the application of user fees for public facilities such as libraries, public parks, community centres and the like to youth, seniors and lower-income individuals. We think it's important that those facilities continue to be available to the general public, and often the disadvantaged people in our society are the ones who require access to those facilities even more.
The board also doesn't agree with user fees for essential services such as fire and ambulance services.
However, the board does believe in the basic user-pay principle, as I have mentioned. We think user fees could be given consideration in such areas as art galleries, municipal theatre tickets, refuse collection, spurious alarms from the increasing numbers of burglar alarms, and other municipal services.
What we would recommend to the government on this front is a study of the effects and implications of a user-pay system, and to provide definitions as to type of fees and charges that may be permitted under Bill 26.
With respect to the section on direct taxation, subsection 220.1(3), the bill proposes to give municipalities the right to impose fees and charges in the nature of a direct tax. We are, as the business community, very concerned about the municipalities being given the right to levy what would be regarded as direct taxes. We mention in our presentation that Peter Hogg of the Osgoode Hall Law School has written that the definition of a direct tax opens up the ability of municipalities to issue taxes such as income tax, sales taxes and gasoline taxes, and even poll taxes. We have concerns about that type of taxation being available to municipalities.
On the issue of gas taxes, I think you're probably all aware that in Mississauga we have a large transportation section who are members of our board. The trucking industry in Ontario is already at a competitive disadvantage and has a very difficult time competing with the large US trucking companies. We feel that if municipalities had the right to issue gas taxes, it would make a difficult situation even worse. So that's one example.
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We really feel that the term "direct tax" should be removed from the legislation because it opens up too wide a venue of taxes for municipalities to levy. We basically are opposed to the broadening of the tax base to another level of government.
So our recommendation in a nutshell is to strike the "direct tax" statement from the bill and also to make an amendment that would prohibit the imposition of gas, poll, sales or income taxes by the municipalities.
Appeals to the Ontario Municipal Board, subsection 220.1(9): This section proposes to deny citizens the opportunity to appeal imposed fees or charges levied by a municipality or local board to the Ontario Municipal Board on the grounds that the fees or charges are unfair or unjust.
We feel that the principle of being able to oppose or to appeal taxes is a fundamental right and that individuals and businesses should have the right to appeal this. However, we would submit that when appeals take place, there should be a user fee associated with appeals. That is presently the case with appeals, for example, on municipal tax assessments. There's a fee associated with that. So we would recommend with respect to this area of the legislation that an appeal mechanism be made available, but there should be a nominal user fee charged for that.
Subsection 257.2(1) is the area that involves licensing, and we are very concerned about expanding the municipalities' ability to license businesses. We know that they have the right to issue licences now to some degree, but we are very strongly opposed to the expanding of their ability to license facilities.
We are also concerned about the definition of "manufacturing," because there is an exclusion given in that section of the bill to manufacturing; however, a definition of "manufacturing" that is acceptable is a concern. Of particular concern in an industry that I work in would be the operation of quarries or concrete plants and whether that would be considered manufacturing or not, because if it was not, the licensing would be intrusive in the operation of these types of businesses in municipalities.
The particular areas of the licensing aspect that we object to are clauses (e), (f), (g), (h), (i), (j) and (k). We really feel that licensing is more regulation for business. You've heard and are aware of already the difficulties that many small businesses have with respect to bureaucracy and red tape, and we feel that by introducing further licensing provisions, this would be a problem for business: an additional regulation of business, additional red tape, additional costs. Basically, we fail to see why it's necessary in this bill. It does not improve the municipalities' ability to raise money.
In short, the board cannot see a rationale for the inclusion of this section in Bill 26, and we would recommend to the government that you strike the licensing section from the legislation altogether.
With respect to the proposed amendments to the Public Utilities Act, the board of trade endorses the amendment to the Public Utilities Act with respect to providing municipalities with the authority to pass a bylaw to eliminate the need to obtain the consent of the electors with respect to privatization. We think that in the delivery of municipal services this is the way of the future -- privatization, to a great degree -- and what this amendment does is make that possible. We are pleased to see that and endorse very strongly that provision in Bill 26.
With respect to the proposed amendments to the Corporations Tax Act, the board endorses the changes with respect to sections 5 and 7. Section 5 relates to the clawback of corporate income tax by the federal government, and we really applaud the move of the government to take these steps to prevent that additional clawback and also the additional clawback in the provincial legislation, which is referred to in section 7. In effect, the amendment is very positive because it eliminates the double clawback by causing the Ontario tie-in provision in the Corporations Tax Act to the federal act to be read as though the federal clawback did not apply. The board applauds the inclusion of section 5 as it eliminates duplication and a significant barrier to investment and growth, and we think that's very important.
As a strong supporter of increased research and development initiatives, the board of trade wholeheartedly endorses section 7, which proposes to provide an Ontario innovation tax credit in respect of research and development to eligible small and medium-sized Canadian-controlled private corporations with permanent establishments in Ontario.
In conclusion, the Savings and Restructuring Act is a very broad, complex piece of legislation. The board supports the general direction taken by the government in Bill 26 to rationalize and restructure the public sector in order to achieve savings, efficiency and prosperity in Ontario. We feel that to address these issues in a timely manner it's very important that this act be passed.
We feel we can no longer tolerate in this province mediocrity in the public sector. We really feel that the government, as many of us in business and industry have done, must get the greatest degree of efficiency. It is a very competitive world now. We're competing not only with other provinces and the United States but basically all countries in the world. We have to work to make Ontario competitive again, because we've lost our competitive edge. We feel that Bill 26 is really an additional step in doing that.
However, as we have already mentioned, although we support the aim of the bill overall, we do have some concerns with particular aspects of the act. We ask that the government review these concerns and consider the recommendations to amend the act to ensure that the legislation is applied to the people of Ontario in a fair and equitable manner.
Again, we would like to thank you, members of the committee, for this opportunity to make this presentation today.
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Mr Silipo: Thank you very much for the presentation. I would categorize your presentation -- and feel free to comment in any way you wish on this -- in terms of the various presentations we've heard from chambers of commerce, as being the strongest in raising a number of concerns and, even more than that, areas you're particularly opposed to. We've heard generally from chambers of commerce saying that they support the general direction of the bill, as you have done, and then they raise a number of concerns very similar to yours. I don't think any other chamber's gone as far as suggesting we ought to just take out the parts around direct tax and around the licensing provisions, so it's interesting to hear your comments on that.
I was also particularly interested in your sensitivity to the need to apply user fees. While you're saying you're in favour of some user fees, there is a need for those to be applied in a way that doesn't preclude the use of such facilities as parks, libraries or community centres for particular groups of people. I don't want to incorrectly categorize your position on that. Are you saying the way to do that is to delineate youth, seniors and lower-income individuals, particularly that class? I'm a little confused about how you would have user fees for some and not others. Or are you saying those are facilities for which there should be no user fees?
Mr Coles: Maybe there should be no user fees. An example where you could have user fees is where you've got adult use of playing fields and that sort of thing by sports teams. Maybe there could be an opportunity there for user fees.
Mr Silipo: Which happens now, generally.
Mr Coles: I think that sometimes happens now. That would be an example where it would be appropriate, but we do believe there should be a sensitivity. An example would be the libraries.
Mr Silipo: Yes. Those points about the effect of user fees on low-income individuals have been made to us by a number of groups. I was particularly glad to see it in your presentation.
There is one other point I want to pursue, the issue of timing and amendments. You're quite clear in saying you believe the government needs to proceed with its general approach to this, but clearly making some amendments. If it were concluded that the most useful way to get at some of the changes that need to be made is by taking a little longer -- I'm not talking about another year or even another six months but another couple of months -- to look more fully at these, to be able to understand, for example, these questions about user fees, to know what might be in the regulations, depending on what the government's prepared to do by way of amendment, a lot of the implications for this will not be known until the regulations are there. One of the things we've been suggesting is that the regulations perhaps ought to be made public and given some public airing before they're adopted. Is that something you would support?
Mr Coles: I'm not sure I would like to see the act as a whole delayed to any great degree, because it's important to get our financial house in order and that can't happen unless this act is passed. That is the reason it was introduced in the way it was, that it proceed quickly. Some of these areas maybe should be changed, and in the case of licensing we suggest it just be pulled out at this time.
Mr Sampson: Thank you, Mr Coles and Mr Halldorson, for taking the time to speak to us today. I want to pick up on the theme of the user fee. Before I do that, though, I'd be surprised if my colleague across the table didn't tell you that the mayor of Mississauga, at least in his view, has indicated that she desperately needs the gas tax to balance off the cuts her city is getting from the ministry. I can tell you that's not what she said. In fact, she's indicated in the press recently that with the way she manages the city's budget, she is prepared to deal with those transfer cuts as she has normally done, within a balanced budget framework and no new taxes.
She also told us, interestingly enough, as it relates to use of parks and parks facilities, that she and her council decided they would increase the rate for park usage for the baseball diamonds, for example, because she needed to have some source of revenue to cover the cleanup of the facilities. The end result was that there was no transaction fee for the use of the park, but the people using it kicked in and did the cleanup on their own behalf. That was her example of one of the areas where she felt she and her council were able to better manage within a cost-reduction environment. As you know, she's also indicated that she's not terribly keen about garbage tax.
With all this talk about taxation and user fees, the general theme of the bill, as you can probably guess, is to transfer responsibility for the management of the expenses as close as we can to where the revenue is sourced from and where the expenditures are made. Is that consistent with some view you think we should follow up on? Should we be looking to the municipalities to be more accountable to the taxpayers they represent?
Mr Coles: This whole initiative is very important and I think it makes a lot of sense. It's simply a matter of how far you go. Our concern with using the term "direct tax" is that it opens up for the municipalities a whole area of taxation where they haven't had the ability to tax before, and I'm not sure that's appropriate.
Mr Sampson: Unfortunately, the term "direct tax" in the legislation, as you could probably guess, is legalese to deal with the powers that we as a province are granted under the Constitution, so we're kind of bound up in that legalese. But the concept is that we're trying to pass to the municipalities -- there has been some indication from previous presenters that this is unwise because the local councils are not likely to use that power effectively and fairly.
Mr Coles: First of all, the initiative of transferring greater power and responsibility to the municipalities is good as they've been very hamstrung in their ability to react in certain areas, so in principle we would agree with that. But one of the things we looked at from a business tax point of view is that if a business operating in Mississauga undergoes specific types of taxation that they don't have to undergo in Oakville, for example, that produces an inequality that might be a problem.
Mr Sampson: But clearly the mayor of Mississauga, in your example, is going to have to deal with that reality or she won't have the business in her city.
Mr Coles: Or she's going to lose the business, that's correct.
Mr Sampson: Isn't that a fact of the way business goes and the way dollars flow? Eventually they'll go to the place where they get the best service for their tax dollars.
Mr Coles: No question about that, and the growth that has taken place in Mississauga over the past 10 years is an example of that, where you've got excessive taxation of business in Toronto and lower taxes in Mississauga.
Mr Agostino: I keep hearing things like "more accountability," and "more parity to municipalities." What we don't hear from the government side is "significantly reduced transfer payments." We're saying: "Municipalities, you're great fellas and you can do a great job there. We're going to give you all this new-found power." But what is the new-found power really for? It's power to levy new taxes, new fees, so what you're doing is giving the municipalities more power for direct taxation to make up for what is a loss of provincial funding, a significant reduction, up to 43% in some areas. The money is not going to come from the province, so we're saying to the municipalities, "You go raise it from your own local taxpayers." I guess it's your view that it would solve the problem of trying to bring provincial fiscal and taxation issues in order with municipal taxes or provincial tax.
Second, on the impact of the fees, we heard from the mayor of Guelph a couple of days ago that they're relishing the possibility that under business licensing for a restaurant, for example, where they can now charge only $20, when they look at the legislation, it allows them to charge a full fee and that licence could go up to $500. Would you support that for the businesses you represent, where a licence for a restaurant could go from $20 to $500?
Mr Coles: That would be a concern, for sure, but we would really have to look at the whole thing. We do understand that with this legislation and with, as you say, the cutting back of grants to municipalities and this whole area of accountability, there will be requirements to raise additional funds at the municipal level.
Mr Agostino: But how would your businesses react to the fact that their licences could go from $20 to $500?
Mr Coles: Obviously, they wouldn't be very happy about that.
Mr Agostino: So you would not support that component.
Mr Coles: I think you'd have to look at it in the whole context of what was taking place.
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Mr Phillips: I'd actually forgotten about the mayor of Mississauga's comments, but I have them before me here now.
Mr Coles: I'm surprised you could forget that.
Mr Phillips: I know that during early testimony it was asked, "Do you think this permits a gas tax?" "Yes." Then it went on, "Is it your understanding of a gas tax?" "Yes." Then she goes on to say, "When we discussed integrated transit in the greater Toronto area, the only way that we can have integrated transit in the GTA -- and we discussed it, all the municipalities involved -- was a gasoline tax. We would have to ask the government to pass that" -- till this bill came along. "Maybe now we might have the opportunity to put it in." So she's saying an integrated system with a gas tax.
Then it goes on to say, "Have your legal people looked at this, and does it permit a gas tax?" "That's our interpretation, yes." "Would it permit a sales tax?" "Yes." "So that too would be permitted." "According to our reading of it, yes" -- this is Mrs McCallion -- "it allows sales tax and gasoline tax."
It was very clear that the legal interpretation they're getting is that it permits a sales tax and a gas tax municipally.
Mr Coles: That's correct. We did follow up on that, and that was their legal interpretation.
Mr Phillips: Okay.
The Vice-Chair: We're out of time for this overall presentation. Thanks very much for your presentation.
Mr Coles: Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear.
PETER CASSIDY CONSULTING
The Vice-Chair: Our next presenter is Peter Cassidy Consulting. Mr Cassidy, welcome to the proceedings. You may commence at any time.
Mr Peter Cassidy: As promised, I'll be presenting alone, as I operate my business alone. I am a consultant, have been in that business for about three years. Prior to that, I used to be a lawyer in private practice for a few years and for a number of years working at a legal clinic here in the east end of Hamilton. Before that, I used to work for a living.
I'd like to begin my presentation by thanking Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservative Party for putting revolution on the agenda, even if you had to claim it was a Common Sense Revolution. You are to be congratulated on your brilliant strategy of wooing the voters of Ontario by promising them the impossible: doing away with the deficit while cutting taxes. The way you attacked the poor, immigrants, women and all the other target groups as some threat to peace and prosperity was a stroke of genius, though some may call it madness. The way you rammed through the early part of your agenda -- the cuts in welfare, gutting the labour legislation, the slashing of transfer payments -- that was terrific, in the full and original meaning of that word, "terrific."
But I must warn you, comrades, that the revolution is in danger. Across the land, the peasants are revolting. The opposition parties have been trying to fill their outdated role of raising questions in the Legislature and demanding public accountability. And now Bill 26, the enabling legislation which allows you to implement so much of your program, is being subjected to public scrutiny.
I'm here today to offer in some friendly terms what is to be done if your revolution is to succeed.
First, you must ignore any input from anybody, friends or foes. Ignore what the board of trade says, or the disabled groups or anybody when they suggest amendments or ways of dealing with legislation. It is not only that this legislation is key to the new order. People must become used to the idea they have no say in how Ontario is governed. And never again must any piece of legislation be forced to go through a process of public hearings, no matter how shallow or sham these hearings are. You've done it with Bill 7; you can do it again.
Secondly, you must make sure that no one is made aware of potential legal and constitutional challenges to the bill or any other parts of the legislative agenda.
Lastly, and most importantly, you have to be willing to live with the consequences of your revolution in the breakdown of the economic, social and political order of the day, including the rise of counterrevolutionary forces.
Why, you may ask, is Bill 26 so key to your revolution?
One example we can imagine is a situation where a man is required to pay his spouse, or his ex-spouse, moneys for child support. He cuts that money and tells her she can now put the children out to work or cut the amount of meals the children will have to eat. Under the old-fashioned way of thinking, this man would be considered a deadbeat for failing to provide the moneys required or be considered an exploiter of children. Under your new and revolutionary belief, he would be enabling the family, making them face up to the tough choices life has to offer. Live or die, it's up to them, and dad has the choice to intervene if he chooses. He's enabled.
Under the old system of belief, a provincial government that abandoned funding for services, leaving it to subordinate governments to cut services or impose user fees, would be seen as abandoning its obligations. Under the new and revolutionary belief, you're enabling the communities, forcing them to make the tough choices life offers. Live or die, it's up to them.
And under the old-fashioned system of belief, if a provincial government seized the power to make decisions by regulation or administrative order without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny, it would be seen as anti-democratic and illegitimate. Under the new revolutionary belief, the government is efficient and enabled.
And just as the deadbeat dad -- pardon me, the enabler of the family -- might have, under the old way of thinking, been taken to family court, there may be legal challenges to Bill 26 by those still believing provincial governments have responsibilities and can be held accountable.
The best way to avoid such challenges is to make sure people are never aware of the possibilities. It is important that people never be made aware that there is the possibility of referral to the Supreme Court of Canada for an advisory opinion on the validity of legislation and that referral can be made by the federal government or the provincial Legislature. Often neglected -- and what you certainly hope is neglected in the future -- is the right of the provincial Lieutenant Governor to refuse assent to a bill or to reserve that bill for the pleasure of the Governor General. I would suggest you make particularly sure that the members from Hamilton, who are known to be counterrevolutionary forces in the opposition, are not aware of this, for they might raise that issue of a referral off of the bill.
J.R. Mallory, in Social Credit and the Federal Power in Canada, documents how the government of Alberta during the 1930s and 1940s had its legislation regularly disallowed by the federal government, in essence gutting that revolution.
In a recent case, in 1961, the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan vetoed An Act to Provide for the Alteration of Certain Mineral Contracts, believing it was an important bill affecting hundreds of mineral contracts and he had doubts of it being in the public interest.
There have been over 100 pieces of provincial legislation disallowed since Confederation, and you want to make sure people are not aware of that. Hopefully, they remain ignorant, and your basic strategy is to keep the people of Ontario and the opposition parties ignorant.
Finally, as true revolutionaries, you must steel yourselves for the consequences of the revolution, including the breakdown of the current economic, social and political order and the rise of counterrevolutionary forces. From crumbling infrastructure to overcrowded hospitals and jails, from more beggars and prostitutes to more homicides and suicides, from confrontations on picket lines to stormings of the Legislature, we know Ontario is going to get uglier and uglier, meaner and meaner. You must be prepared to deal with that.
I began this paper congratulating you on your success in putting revolution on the agenda. I would conclude by cautioning that for every revolution, there is a counterrevolution. I wish you well in your deliberations. Ontario needs it.
I've provided for the committee an extract from an article from the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science dealing with the situation in Saskatchewan. At that time, the Lieutenant Governor thought a bill dealing with mineral contracts was an important bill and therefore vetoed it. I think if you look at that and look at some of the other material, you may find that there are potential challenges that come through to this legislation.
I do have, as I said, a certain sympathy for the Progressive Conservative government and what they're attempting to do. I can understand the belief of a political party that things have been wrong in Ontario, that there's a need to drastically change the social, economic and political order, and I can understand the desire to rush in and try and bring in those changes, firm in the belief that you know what is right; you have a mandate to do it.
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But I must warn that there will be times, and you're going through this now, when people want to have input in the process, when courts may be involved, when opposition parties may be involved, when the Lieutenant Governor or the federal government, other institutions or agencies, may be involved in that process.
Again, as I have stressed, I think you have to be aware of the consequences of what you're doing. You have to be aware, and I gather this has been discussed in various caucuses, that what will happen is that there will be drastic changes in Ontario. You will see more poor. You will more people begging in the streets. You will see a breakdown in a lot of ways of the basic system we've known, and you have to be aware, obviously -- you've gone through the situation of seeing security cameras down at Queen's Park -- that is going to happen, more and more. You've gone through the situation of London, Ontario, in the strike that took place there, and you have to be aware that more and more of that's going to happen. As you move sharply to the right, there will be a move from some to the left, and I ask you to consider all the consequences of what you're doing in this bill and what you're doing in your government.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Cassidy. At this time, each party has an opportunity to discuss your presentation with you. At this time, it's the governing party, and they have roughly a little bit more than six minutes each.
Mr Doyle: Hi, Mr Cassidy. How are you today?
Mr Cassidy: Very good, Mr Doyle.
Mr Doyle: Good. You mentioned you had concerns about the constitutionality of some of what we're proposing to do.
Mr Cassidy: Yes, sir.
Mr Doyle: Could you give us some specifics? What part do you think could be constitutionally challenged?
Mr Cassidy: I think that there is a general constitutional argument that public business must be done publicly, and, as I understand -- and it's difficult to go through the whole bill -- there is a claim by the government that the minister can now make those decisions or decisions can be done by administration, by regulation, by orders in council. Essentially speaking, a lot of decisions are now going to be made without that public scrutiny, without that public debate. That's one area.
The other area I guess has to do with the general idea of the obligation of a provincial government to provide certain services. If by a combination of the funding cuts and the sort of enabling legislation you're doing, where you're saying, for example, that municipalities can impose user fees or municipalities can cut services, and if you allowed those municipalities, which are essentially your creatures -- they're under your control -- to do that and you end up in a situation where, let's say, you have denial of services, that garbage is not being collected, that transportation is not being done, then I think you may be abandoning your responsibilities and may be challenged on that, or if you transform what were formerly public institutions that were available to the taxpayers as a matter of right into ones that are only available to those who have money, who can pay for it, you may be considered as abandoning their rights.
I would suggest the best way to deal with this, and you may wish to take me up on this, is to consult your own staff and legal counsel to ask them whether or not there are any legal problems with your bill. I've heard it from a number of people and the media have questioned that. You may ask them. It is quite possible for the government to refer provincial legislation off to the Supreme Court of Canada for an advisory position on the legality of the bill. That may be something you want to consider doing.
Mr Doyle: You mentioned in your presentation that you understood what it was we were attempting to do, and that is get the province out of trouble. I mean, this is what we're trying to do. Would you agree that a $100-billion debt is not a serious problem?
Mr Cassidy: I would agree that it is a serious problem.
Mr Doyle: Yes, it's a serious problem. How would you propose or what would you propose would happen to so many of the poor that you speak of if this continues? Because then we will lose even more services. Would you not agree with that as well?
Mr Cassidy: I would tend to disagree and I think there are solutions. I'm not necessarily trying to debate your political agenda.
Mr Doyle: No, no. That's right.
Mr Cassidy: I'm saying I understand to some extent the desire you have. I'm, I guess, trying to caution you that you may have to not rush as fast and as ruthlessly, if I can, in doing that. You may actually have to sit down and listen to the board of trade. You may have to sit down and listen to disabled groups. You may have to sit down and listen to other people. You may have to listen to the opposition parties. You may have to listen to the courts and the Lieutenant Governor and all the other institutions and work out a more consensual, if I can call it, approach, as opposed to: "We know what's right. We're going to go ahead and do it, and forget you."
Mr Young: In part of your presentation you say we're going to have overcrowded hospitals. We are so far from that, particularly in Metro, but we have in Ontario 6,700 empty hospital beds. There are wards closed off all over the province. If you put all those beds together you'd have 33 medium-sized hospitals empty. We're trying to address this situation. Do you have any comments on that?
Mr Cassidy: Again, I understand you are trying to address what you perceive as problems. I have some sympathy with that belief. My understanding is that as part of Bill 26 there is going to be a massive restructuring of hospitals. They are to a certain extent allowed to do it themselves. To a certain extent the minister maintains the power to step in, and that obviously will be addressed in the submissions on health. My understanding is that what may well be happening with Bill 26 and with the funding cuts and whatever else is that you will end up having inadequate health care in the province.
Mr Young: You also say here, and I assume you are saying it sarcastically, that we should not let people have any say and we should ignore input from anybody. We sat for one week in Toronto. We heard over 50 delegations. By the time it's all said and done, in this committee we will have heard over 360 delegations, including yourself. How can you say we're not listening?
Mr Cassidy: As I understand it, you didn't want to listen. Am I incorrect?
Mr Young: How can you say we're not listening?
Mr Cassidy: Do you allow for hearings unless there is opposition?
Mr Young: Let me get this on the record, because this is a myth the opposition are putting forward. When Mr Curling hijacked the provincial Legislature, which belongs to everybody in Ontario, there was an offer on the table for 360 hours of hearings which they had turned down. I don't know if you know that.
Mr Doyle: Correct. I was there.
Mr Young: That's a fact.
Mr Cassidy: Well --
Mr Young: So we did want to have hearings and we are having hearings and we are listening.
Mr Cassidy: Again, sir, and I'm trying to be as fair as I can in responding, I can understand that you want to put your agenda forward. I can understand you saying with Bill 7, your labour legislation, that you had a mandate to do that; you're going to undo it and not hold public hearings. I can understand the tendency of a government in your position to say, "We're going to go ahead and do it." I am suggesting -- and yes, you're right somewhat in saying there is a sarcastic tone there -- that you really can't do that, that you really should listen to the board of trade and you should listen to the disabled and you should listen to the people here who are speaking to you.
Mr Young: Imagine a situation where you have four levels of government and for whatever reason over the years the governments are not functioning and there is debt at virtually every level of government, certainly at three out of four, and there is a spending crisis approaching a fiscal crisis. What would you do?
Mr Cassidy: I'm saying I can understand where you come from, that you perceive a crisis, that you perceive you have the solution or you want to get the tools to do it. I can understand a business example where you come in as a new board of directors of a corporation or whatever and you say: "The corporation's in trouble. We're going to deal with it. We're going to lay off people, we're going to shut down, `bang, bang, bang,' move very fast." I can understand that. I disagree with some of the specific steps you're doing. But I guess even more importantly I'm talking about the process. Any manager knows you cannot just go in and, "bang, bang," do it. You've got to sit down and work with the people.
Mr Young: Just one more question. You made a comment on Bill 40, that we rammed it through or we got rid of it or whatever. It was a major plank in our election campaign. June 8 we got 82 out of 130 seats. We said, "It's killing jobs; we're going to get rid of it." How can you say the people weren't consulted?
Mr Cassidy: I think this is relatively good; I think we are dialoguing to some extent. I understand your belief on Bill 7. You did have a mandate to do that and therefore you did not need to go out to public hearings. I understand that --
The Vice-Chair: Unfortunately, we're out of time, Mr Cassidy, for this part. To the opposition party.
Mr Phillips: I'm not sure you understand the seriousness of the problem. The Common Sense Revolution, as you know, calls for a $5-billion tax cut. You realize the government has to find $14 million a day to fund that tax cut. That's $600,000 an hour to fund the tax cut. That's what this bill is all about, to find $5 billion a year in tax cuts. So obviously they've got to cut very, very deep on services. The problem is, I gather from the government, that the poor in this province have too much and the rich don't have enough. So they have to find a way --
Mr Cassidy: They've got to fix that.
Mr Phillips: They've got to fix that. They've got to find a way to find that $5 billion, and the way they have to do that is with this bill. They've got to take $250 million out of the pension fund of the public sector. They couldn't do it by regulation, so they've got to pass that law. They've got to pass a wage control portion for firefighters, police, hospital workers. They have to impose user fees on people who want to use libraries, on young people who want to use libraries. They have to take taxes up on businesses. It's serious because they've got to find $5 billion for a tax cut. Were you aware of the seriousness of finding $5 billion for a tax cut when you made your presentation?
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Mr Cassidy: To some extent, and again I understand there is a desire to bring about a revolution, to transfer power from one sector of society to another, and I tend to agree with you that basically speaking the desire is to transfer money from the poor to the rich. That is what they're doing, and in order to accomplish that very revolutionary change they have to use revolutionary methods, and their revolutionary methods are going to involve drastic damage to the people of Ontario.
Mr Phillips: Then you indicated there wasn't adequate consultation. Well, this bill was introduced on November 29 and they were prepared to give two full weeks before they made it the law -- two full weeks. It was going to become law on December 14. Introduced November 29 -- by the way, I would add that I think all of us were in what's called the lockup at that time -- we returned to the Legislature to find it already tabled. But the government was prepared to give us two weeks.
Don't you think two weeks is quite adequate to have a debate in the province on a bill that thick, amending 44 different acts, changing the lives of everybody in this province? Don't you think two weeks would have been completely adequate for that?
Mr Cassidy: I regret I must disagree with you on that.
Mr Phillips: I am trying. Of course you would. It's nonsense that they would think that was adequate debate. They say this is all the bill is about: fixing the deficit. If that's what it were all about, I think many people in this audience would say, "All right, we understand that." But this bill is all about finding the funds for a $5-billion tax cut, and that's why many people around the province are having so much difficulty with it. If it was just to fight the deficit I think everybody perhaps could band together and say, "Well, let's find a way to do that." But this is about funding a $5-billion tax cut. That's what the bill's all about.
Mr Agostino: I just want to follow up briefly on your point of consultation. Mr Young pointed out to you that we have been offered 360 hours and that you weren't aware of that. He said Mr Curling hijacked the Legislature. I can tell you that had Mr Curling and the opposition parties not done what they did in the House, you wouldn't be here today making this presentation. These presentations would not have occurred. Presentations across Ontario would not have occurred.
Yes, they were willing to give you 360 hours. They were willing to give people across this province about two days' notice to prepare on a bill that most government members have not even read yet, and they were going to have hearings up to December 21, between 9 am and midnight in Toronto. That was the extent of the 360 hours that have been offered to the opposition that they so much brag about, that there would have been more than what has been given here today to deal with a bill that will change dramatically the way we operate in this province and that will change dramatically people's lives in this province and that will give certain powerful sectors of our government, certain ministers and certain people across Ontario, powers that people have never had and should never have in a democratic system. That was their version of public consultation: 9 am to midnight leading up to Christmas, and giving people about two to three days' notice in order to come forward and make a presentation.
We've heard this morning and in the last few days from groups that have had two to three weeks and still could not prepare for this, still could not understand fully what that bill had in place, but they were going to give you two days. I'm proud of what the opposition did, I'm proud of what Mr Curling did and I think that move led to people in Ontario finally starting to understand the agenda and starting to understand what is in this bill and how draconian and regressive and undemocratic this bill is. If it hadn't been for the opposition and Mr Curling's action, that wouldn't have happened and you wouldn't be here today. What has been hijacked has been democracy and the way these guys want to run government. Do you have anything to say on that?
Mr Cassidy: Can I say I tend to agree with you and leave it at that?
The Vice-Chair: To members of the NDP. Mr Christopherson.
Mr Christopherson: Peter, I want to thank you for your interesting and innovative way of approaching this. I think it's very thought-provoking. As much as there are a lot of jokes and laughing here, I think there's dynamics as to what's going on that are underscored by the way you've presented it, which is unusual and unique but I think very effective too.
I also suspect that it's not unlike probably some of the advice that the government is indeed getting from some of its backroom planners: the approaches in terms of what they need to do to achieve what they've set for themselves -- and I agree with Gerry that in large part this is about paying for the tax cut -- and also talking about the implications of what they have to expect out there -- as opposed to in the bunker where the government is -- out there where the rest of us live. Your comments about what they have to face, with crumbling infrastructure and overcrowded jails and hospitals and all those kinds of things, are accurate. I suspect that they're acknowledging in their back rooms and certainly in the cabinet room that that is the case, and the strategies they're building on are how to deal with that.
Anybody who believes for a moment that the government was sincere in wanting public hearings, by virtue of the number of hours they're talking about, needs to take a look at the real record. The record is part of what's happening right now, that we can't fit in all the people who want to comment. We've still got business groups as well as labour groups and environmental groups saying, "We haven't had time to go into that part of it, but here's what we've got so far." This was all about trying to boondoggle the American public, and the Canadian public, because the two are linked.
Interjection.
Mr Christopherson: I think it's a Freudian slip, but it fits, because all through the holidays I kept thinking, as I watched Gingrich and Clinton, that's similar to what's happening here. There's not an argument about whether we need to deal with the debt or deficit, but there is a real difference of opinion on how we approach that. I think this government is very comfortable with the Gingrich style of Americanizing Canada and approaching North American politics and budget-making in that fashion. I really do. I also believe that over a period of time, Ontarians will react in the same way Americans are to Gingrich. His numbers are going through the basement, and the Tory numbers eventually will see that too as the true implications of what they're doing take place.
The fact of the matter is that this government took so much in such a short period of time and tried to ram it through a couple of weeks before Christmas. The whole idea was not to let people know what was going on. They can deny that all they want; I'm convinced in my heart. I was one of the ones, like my colleagues here, who surrounded Alvin Curling to make sure that what happened with Bill 7, which was a disgusting, disgraceful display of abuse of democratic power as has ever happened in the province of Ontario, didn't happen again. The government can say as much as they want that they really wanted public input. They did not. They wanted to bamboozle the public, they wanted to ram this thing through as fast as they could, the revolution all in one big move, and then let the people figure out what happened afterwards as they're dealing with the devastation that remains in Ontario, or at least what used to be the Ontario we know. That's the agenda. That's what's going on.
They were trying to avoid exactly what's happening here now, and that is, group after group and community after community coming out and pointing out that in this legislation you're dismantling all the good things that make this a great place to live. That's what you're doing and that's what they tried to avoid, and that's why we're trying to do everything we can to extend the hearings even longer, not because it's a good opposition ploy but because that's what needs to happen if you really cared about the law and its implication on the people of Ontario. You would take more time to look at Bill 26, and that's the opposite of what the government wants.
I want to ask you, on one of your pages where you do talk about what will happen with regard to crumbling infrastructure, and you say there'll be more beggars: Could you just explain why you think that will happen? The government believes -- I accept that it believes -- it is doing something that's good for Ontario, that this is going to make Ontario a better place. Obviously you don't believe that. Can you just expand a little bit on why you think we're going to see this kind of deterioration in Ontario?
Mr Cassidy: Again, I think this bill is part of the enabling of the revolution. I think there is a basic agenda. As one of the opposition members pointed out, there is a certain economic agenda. There's a certain idea of transferring money and wealth and power, certainly in terms of the welfare cuts, whatever, and in terms of the idea that a lot of public services may now be subject to user fees. You may have transportation systems where you have to pay more money or you're not going to have those services. There is going to be a transfer.
We are going to see more poor. You are going to see more people out begging in the streets. If you cut welfare 25%, and I'm trying to be as fair as I can, I hope you understand very clearly, members of the government, when you cut welfare to that level, you're going to see more people begging in the street, you're going to see more women forced into prostitution and you're going to see more crime. You're going to see that. That's going to happen. You know that, everybody knows that. You can't avoid that.
The Vice-Chair: Unfortunately, we're out of time at this point. Thank you very much for your presentation.
Mr Silipo: Mr Chairman, on a point, if I may, while the next presenter is coming to the table, which I meant to raise at the end of the last presentation: In the presentation from the Mississauga Board of Trade, there was reference to an article that I certainly think would be of interest to the committee. There was a reference to an article by Peter Hogg in Constitutional Law of Canada on the issue of direct taxation. I wonder if we could ask legislative research to get committee members a copy of that.
The Vice-Chair: Yes.
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PATH EMPLOYMENT SERVICES
The Vice-Chair: Our next presenter is PATH Employment Services. Welcome to the proceedings. It's Ms Mallett, and we have Sal Vella who is with you?
Ms Aznive Mallett: Yes. First, the technical side. Can you hear me? Is the microphone close enough?
The Vice-Chair: You could speak a little bit louder, if it's possible.
Ms Mallett: I can't speak very loud. That's why I'm asking.
The Vice-Chair: Okay, sorry. Maybe we could move this.
Ms Mallett: My name is Aznive Mallett. I'm the executive director of PATH Employment Services. I also volunteer in this community and I'm dedicated to disability issues and the disability movement that probably started to gain momentum 10 or 15 years ago. The key reasons I'd put down were probably Rick Hansen and his Man in Motion tour around the world.
PATH Employment Services is an employment service for people with all kinds of disability as well as people recovering from drugs and alcohol etc. We have been very successful in finding people work, and of course that makes economic sense. Everybody would like to be financially independent as opposed to being dependent on government dollars with all the strings that are attached. We would like to earn money, spend money and prosper, and help the economy to prosper. That goes to everyone I've met who has a disability.
I've asked Sal Vella to join me. He is the present president of United Disabled Consumers -- I'm past president -- and he wants to speak specifically about one issue. He'll do that after I do this part.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today, but it is intimidating. There's a big group of people here. I'll try to stay on track. I haven't had a lot of time to prepare for this because, as was said a few minutes ago, it is a large document and it's very difficult and time-consuming to go through it. I'm giving it a stab. I probably will miss some things and hopefully other people with disabilities will have the opportunity to pick those up.
Bill 26, the savings and restructuring legislation, is an amazing piece of legislation. I'm amazed at the depth of it. It seems to be very far-reaching, and it has the potential to do a lot of good and the potential to go off on a tangent and do some dastardly deeds, I suppose. It worries me.
Many of the changes are necessary, many of the changes are timely, but this bill I think chills people with the fear of, where will it stop, what are the parameters? There are many easy ways of fixing things in this world, and sometimes the Band-Aid fixes lack the depth of analysis that would make it work, and make it work for everyone, and looking at how this will impact on what people are living with, the people at the grass-roots level.
What I'm saying is I would like to ensure that there are a lot of people involved in developing things like this so that what will happen in the end is that it could allay our fears. People's lives can be in jeopardy with this legislation and it can change everything. It has a ripple effect in that it can be far-reaching, far beyond what was anticipated and planned. I believe the people who have made this legislation have probably done it in the best interests of the people in Ontario, but our infrastructure is tender, it's fragile, and I'm worried about it crashing down around us, again at the grass-roots level.
People with disabilities must be included in the planning, policy development, legislation development and implementation and, most important, the evaluation of what is implemented. I think with that you will be virtually allowing us to have a say in our future, and we have a stake in our future just as everyone else does. This government, as any government, must never work in a vacuum. That would defeat the opportunity to be informed enough to develop the best legislation and achieve the best results and practices.
This government in the Common Sense Revolution made a commitment to people with disabilities, and I guess I'm saying we're going to hold you up to doing that. You made that commitment. We're going to watch and we're going to talk to you. Please continue to allow us to talk to you. We'd like to make you stick to that. Specifically, again I'd like to say people with disabilities want to work, and we will be looking to you to continue to allow us to work as we have been gaining, as I've already mentioned, in the disability movement.
To do this, we need to have equal opportunity to receive education and training, and the training must be quality training with the same standards as the training that is delivered to other people, not just people with disabilities. I think when this happens, the employers will hire us, with or without incentives, and perhaps with or without the Employment Equity Act.
But my experience has always been that even with the best intentions, people are people, and until they are forced to do something, it's easier to avoid doing it. Hiring people with disabilities at times is a new and challenging thing, and it's easier not to do it. Employment equity legislation gave a direction to people that this is what the government wants and expects.
I'm going to touch on several parts of the legislation and, as I said, I haven't had a lot of time to go into it with a lot of depth, but I'll take a crack at it.
Health care concerns: We have been deinstitutionalizing for several years. I will assume people know what that means. More and more, there are fewer and fewer beds, and more and more, people with severe problems and needs are on the streets. Maybe that's not bad. We would all like to live in our community. A community is made up of everyone. But there needs to be more put into the community to care for people who are now no longer being looked after in institutions or hospitals. It's not enough to just keep cutting and cutting. Please, continue to ask yourselves what you are putting place to pick up the slack. There is a lot of slack, and it's continuing to grow.
There is a reduction in hospital beds, a reduction in institutions, a reduction in diagnostics, a reduction in drugs. There's a reduction in the community services and a reduction in adaptive devices and prosthetics. Totally, there's just too much reduction and, just to give that a further push, there's an increase in user fees. User fees, left, right and centre, everywhere I look through this legislation there seem to me more and more opportunities for user fees, and I frankly don't know how anybody's going to manage with all of this.
I believe there is a drastic deterioration in the quality of health care and I think it's going to deteriorate further. As an example, I know a woman in this community who is just a dynamic person and, when she's well with her medication, she is just phenomenal. She has a mental illness and without the medication, she goes into psychosis and she sees and hears things and she is a totally different person. If she can't have this expensive medication, she can't function on a daily basis, never mind as someone who can work and is a viable, intelligent person with the medication. I'd like you to keep hold of that thought, and I think Sal will be expanding on that in a moment.
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There is also the deterioration in health care in that people now with three months' training are providing medical services. They don't have the background, they don't have the depth to provide these services, but this is what's happening. The legislation, as I read it, is going to allow more and more of this to happen, and I'm concerned. Frankly, it's dangerous. As a person, as a human being, as a citizen of Ontario, this is probably going to impact me, and it scares the hell out of me. It really scares me. I don't think this is your intent, and that's why I think it's important that this be pointed out to you, so that you can try to prevent it from going to that depth.
With the reduction in health care and the increase in user fees, I'm concerned that single mothers with children will not take their children to the doctor or to the hospital, and now we're allowing a whole new problem to develop and to grow. Preventive medicine has worked well for us over the years. I don't believe this is what the new government wants, and maybe you can confirm that when I'm finished speaking.
When you're eliminating the duplication that does exist and, through coordination of services, reducing that duplication, will you please continue to ensure that you're not reducing services. That will be part of that ripple effect that needs to be kept in hand, and you need to do that continuously.
Redefinition of insured services: I believe you're allowing discrimination as to age already and I'm concerned that the changes to the definition open the doors for discrimination on grounds of disability as well. I'd like you to please be aware of that and please ensure that doesn't happen. Again, we've made tremendous movements forward, provincially and federally, over the last 10 or 15 years in our disability movement. We want to be mainstreamed and we want to do the same things you do.
Access to information: People with disabilities cannot easily access information due to their disabilities. Some of us have communication disabilities. Some of us have physical disabilities. Some of us can't see. Some of us can't read. Because of that, we're already at a disadvantage. By changing the access to government information, people with disabilities are going to be further isolated.
Apparently now Bill 26 imposes fees for personal information, and it seems to me that with this and the disadvantages we already have, people with disabilities will not have any knowledge of whether or not government information is accurate. We won't be able to check that.
Interest arbitration: In the interest arbitration, arbitrators may reduce the essential services that people with disabilities rely on, essential services such as hospital workers, police departments etc.
The Municipal Act: Municipalities now must impose taxes to make up for the cutbacks from the provincial government. We're concerned about where these will come from and how they will affect people with disabilities. Again, where does it end? Where are the parameters?
Responsibility and accountability: We would like to make sure that there is an inclusive approach to developing changes and monitoring the changes.
Individual interpretation of policy by local bureaucrats creates a further problem. You may put the legislation in place and think it's easily defined, but when that definition is being interpreted at local levels, I don't know what your guidelines are and your measures and whatever else exists to make sure that it's being interpreted the same way within different communities.
We want and need to be part of the mainstream of Ontario. The best way to be part of the mainstream is through financial measures, and financial independence really comes through employment.
We need to make sure that all the training and education available to all the citizens of Ontario are at a standard level and not substandard. I'm afraid it has been substandard. It doesn't work for able-bodied people and it certainly doesn't work for us.
In terms of education, I think there will be fewer students. There will be less money to accommodate people with disabilities. Tuition costs are going up, and options for people with disabilities are dropping. If we don't have education and we don't have quality training, we can't work.
The money for transportation is also decreasing, and accessible public transportation needs to go in the way of mainstreaming, as has been started over the last few years. There needs to be a strong movement towards allowing people with disabilities to travel for the same number of hours and to the same extent that other people do. As it is right now, people in Hamilton cannot travel to Toronto. To do that we would have to go through different communities with different parallel services and it would probably take a day to get there.
General welfare, and I'll just touch on this briefly: There's a 21.6% reduction in general welfare, and one of my concerns is that although people with disabilities appear to be protected from that clawback, parents of children with disabilities don't seem to be protected. They have extra costs and expenses in terms of everything that child has to do, from access, to food, to everything you can imagine, and I don't believe they're being protected.
I'd like to know what is being done to include people with disabilities and protect access that has just been gained over the last few years.
In summary, I'd like to ask you the question, who is going to be monitoring the ripple effect of this legislation, how it is actually implemented and how it affects those areas of lives that, no matter how much you plan, you will not anticipate? The effects will go that far. Are there opportunities for checking and adjusting the effects of this legislation through open and inclusive input?
Mr Sal Vella: My name is Sal Vella. I'm the president of United Disabled Consumers, which is a self-help advocacy organization for persons with disabilities in the Hamilton region. Our mandate is to represent the disability community, educate the public, and conduct surveys and research on issues impacting persons with disabilities. We have also participated in many consultations directed at overcoming the disadvantages faced by people with disabilities.
UDC has a number of concerns regarding Bill 26, but as a result of time constraints and because my colleague has touched on those concerns, I will focus on drug affordability for persons with disabilities.
Under schedule G, the Ontario drug benefit plan will be amended to permit copayments. UDC has consistently opposed copayments under the ODB in the past and is strongly opposed to their introduction in this bill. Numerous studies have shown that copayments often deter people who need medications from obtaining them. The result of not obtaining needed drugs may be hospitalization or additional utilization of health and social services, depending on the nature of the illness or disability. The cost saving to government obtained by this measure is not realistic.
UDC has particular concerns for those with higher drug costs and lower incomes. The government has proposed a $2 copayment per prescription for social assistance recipients and other low-income groups. However, the exact amount is left to the regulations. Also, if the legislation is passed, in future the copayment may be increased significantly.
While $2 may seem a modest amount to pay for a prescription, persons with disabilities and significant health problems who have to pay for several prescriptions each month will find this a major barrier to obtaining needed drugs. It must be remembered that persons with significant drug costs related to disability and illness typically have other disability-related costs for items and services, including assistive devices, personal care, transportation and non-insured health services.
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As entitlements are being reduced and copayments introduced for these items and services by all sectors -- governments, for-profit and non-profit organizations -- it becomes more and more difficult for those most in need to pay for them. Many persons with disabilities in Ontario have already been subjected to a 21.6% social assistance cut. These include people who may be immediately eligible for family benefits but whose transfer from general welfare assistance to family benefits is, at best, taking several months.
UDC has particular concerns about groups such as persons who have a history of psychiatric treatment. Even though psychiatric consumers may be in great need during acute episodes, they often are unable to obtain family benefits at all because of the uncertainty of their prognosis. But when individuals on GWA who have already lost 21.6% of social assistance income are faced with a copayment as well for psychiatric medication, the result will often be that they won't buy the drugs. This may lead to hospitalization or increased demands on community services.
Other people with disabilities report difficulty in obtaining family benefits; for example, those with learning disabilities or environmental sensitivities. There is great concern among UDC members and others active in the disability community about the narrowing of the definition of "disability" under the family benefits or a successor guaranteed support plan. The Minister of Community and Social Services has referred to this generally but has not made his plans known to anyone yet.
Another class of social assistance recipient faced with the 21.6% rate cut are parents of children with disabilities, whether in one- or two-parent families. Unless the parents are also themselves disabled, these families have already had a significant income loss, and the copayments will add to their difficulties in caring for their children. The cumulative effect of all these cutbacks in some cases will be that the parents can no longer cope with their children, who will require residential or institutional placement at a public cost of up to several hundred dollars per day.
The new Drug Interchangeability and Dispensing Fee Act will provide that funding for drugs be at the level of the least expensive, interchangeable alternative. The problem with this approach in practice is the definition of "interchangeability" and implementation of this rule. Many persons with disabilities and serious illnesses require a more expensive alternative drug because of circumstances such as the following:
The person requires a longer-acting drug because of limited availability of an attendant or counsellor to assist him in taking the medication.
The person requires a more expensive alternative drug because of allergies or potential adverse drug reactions which may be associated with non-active components in the medication.
The person requires a more expensive alternative drug because of potential adverse interactions with other medication which he or she is taking.
Special authorization may be obtained in such situations, but the process is very slow and difficult now for consumers, and increased pressure will be placed on this system by stricter rules. For reasons indicated above, persons with disabilities will find needed medication unaffordable if they can only get payment for an interchangeable drug which does not really meet their needs.
The new legislation will also deregulate drug prices in Ontario, which creates a potential major problem for many persons with disabilities who have a limited ability to comparison-shop or negotiate prices with pharmacies. They and their families will, in many circumstances, have a more difficult time in obtaining essential medication unless safeguards are put in place.
Mr Agostino: I want to commend Ms Mallett and Mr Vella for an excellent presentation and for the tremendous work they have done in this community over the years in advocating and working on behalf of disabled people across Hamilton-Wentworth. It's well appreciated and recognized. I think you've made the case well.
We all recall the Common Sense Revolution and the document that swept the Tories to power. One line from that keeps sticking in my mind: "Aid for seniors and the disabled will not be cut" -- will not be cut. That was their platform in regard to benefit changes. Still, 12,000 disabled across Ontario have today had their benefits reduced because they have not been moved to family benefits yet. A drafting error would've eliminated funding for about 100,000 disabled, had the opposition not jumped on it, and there are user fees for prescription drugs. We're now seeing an act, as you outlined well, that is going to give the minister unlimited power to do whatever he or she wants with that aspect of user fees without even having to come to the Legislature. We have seen a situation where the ongoing attack on the disabled community continues.
What options is a disabled individual going to be faced with when it comes to having to choose between affording medication, sometimes a lot of medication, open-ended user fees that may be implemented, trying to meet those and the needs of shelter and housing and every other need they will have on limited income? What sort of options do you envision that someone receiving a disability benefit in Ontario will be faced with?
Mr Vella: I feel they will be in dire straits. I can give you some examples of people who have faced such problems. I know of one person who had been collecting unemployment insurance until October. When October came and his unemployment insurance ran out, he had to go on welfare for two months; this is the waiting period before family benefits kick in. This person, at the time of unemployment insurance, was earning about $950 per month. Out of $950 per month, because of that person's disability, he had to pay out of his own pocket for medications. The medication expenses monthly were about $350. You take away $350 from $950, and that leaves that person $600 to live on per month. This person is a disabled person, and during the welfare gap while waiting for family benefits, medication was covered through welfare. However, he was only receiving $520 because of the reduction of welfare from $630 to $520.
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Vella, I'm sorry to interrupt. I have to go to Mr Christopherson's time.
Mr Christopherson: I want to join Dominic in acknowledging the contribution that both Aznive and Sal have made to our community. It's good to see you here continuing the fight and the struggle.
I'm going to be very interested to hear my colleagues in the Legislature from the government back benches, and I say this with great respect, but particularly my colleagues from the Hamilton-Wentworth area, with regard to making the commitment you're looking for, that they will go back and talk to their caucus and their cabinet colleagues and make sure that anything that's in Bill 26, and you've already pointed out some things, that breaks the promise of not cutting benefits to the disabled and seniors is done and that they're successful.
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I really hope I hear that commitment today from them. I think you're entitled to it, the rest of the people of Hamilton are entitled to it and it's no more than asking that their commitment be met. When we have full public hearings like this, that's exactly what it's for.
It would seem to me the government has already broken that commitment in terms of the cuts its made in the areas you've talked about, with families that have disabled members and people who are caught in the transition, but as we speak to Bill 26 specifically, then I think those areas that clearly are a blatant violation of that promise and will detrimentally affect the quality of life and standard of living of physically challenged individuals in our community will not be allowed to stand, that indeed they would go back.
In the short time, if there is time to pose a question -- there's not going to be. Then government members are next and I hope I hear that commitment from them and we'll keep the Hansard and they'll be accountable.
Mrs Ross: Hi, Aznive and Sal. I want to thank you both for coming forward and making your presentation here today. I also want to tell you that the government is listening. We are concerned about your concerns and we will take them forward.
A lot of what I hear from you is fear, and you've said that yourselves, that you're afraid of what's in this bill. I just want to let you know that I'm sorry fearmongering is going on. You've said yourself that you've seen, and I'll use your quote, a drastic deterioration in health care over the last number of years.
One of the things we want to do is allow that restructuring process to take place in the hospitals. We want it come from the municipalities so that they'll tell us how they can best deliver those health care services because who knows health care better than the people who live and work in the community and have access to the people who require that service?
I'd like to ask you, in light of what's happening in Hamilton, and I'm sure you're aware of the restructuring process that's going forward, why would you object to that type of process?
Ms Mallett: On what you just said, in terms of who better knows than the hospital, the problem is that people are trying to make decisions based on dollars as opposed to based on what is the need and what is the quality, and hospitals are now also hiring substandard people, nurses are being deskilled and services are being changed to provided by attendants as opposed to RNs or RNAs or RPNs as they call them.
I know this. I live with it every day and I have seen in the last three months a major problem in the kinds of people who are going to be providing services to me, and I've had a crisis already as a result of it. They're trying to send in people who are not registered nurses to do what are medical things.
You're right, if you give the decision to the hospitals, they're going to make those decisions but again based on economics and not based on what's right. Unless we're in the loop and you hear from us and you hear from us what's going on and what might be wrong, you don't even know that.
The Chair: The half-hour has come to a close. I want to thank you both for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 3906
The Chair: May I please have the representative from CUPE Local 3906 come forward. Good afternoon and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour this afternoon to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions or response from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if for the benefit of Hansard and committee members you'd introduce yourself at the beginning of the presentation.
Ms Catherine Hudson: My name is Catherine Hudson. I'm the president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3906, which represents 1,500 teaching assistants and part-time instructors at McMaster University.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to make this brief presentation on Bill 26 here in Hamilton. I would particularly like to thank the honourable Alvin Curling for making more than 360 hours of public hearings and debate on this important piece of legislation possible.
Mr Young: Less now; it's only 300.
Interjections.
The Chair: The presenter has the floor.
Ms Hudson: I believe this is my time. Thank you.
I'll be looking at this bill both in the overall context of the Conservative agenda for Ontario and more specifically at the results of this agenda at McMaster University.
The province of Ontario has until very recently existed as a community with a commitment to the public good of its citizens through the provision of public services by municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals. The Harris government is in the process of transforming this community of Ontario into Ontario Inc, a corporation with a commitment to the private good of only some of its members.
The tools being used by this government are those which are available only to those in their position of power: budgets and legislation. One of the first tools that was used to begin the transformation of Ontario from a community into a corporation was Bill 7, which became law early in November 1995. There were no public hearings on that large package of legislation except for those held by David Christopherson, Labour critic for the NDP. As I pointed out in my submission at those hearings, this unprecedented rollback of labour legislation weakened the job security of those who deliver public services. The path to privatization was being prepared.
Next came the fiscal and economic statement, the budget, of November 29. This hammer, which drove down transfer payments to the group now known as MUSH, appropriately enough, has now, with Bill 26, been handed over to those wounded sectors themselves, with an invitation to drive a spike into the heart of Ontario as a community.
This hammer accomplished more than one goal for a government set on privatizing Ontario. With this tool, the government effectively downloaded the so-called deficit crisis on to providers of public services. At the same stroke, the government was also downloading its own corporate agenda by withdrawing the funds necessary to provide public services. Thus they were paving the road to user fees and privatization. Now the government was well on its journey down the road to Ontario Inc.
Now we have before us the spike, Bill 26, the Savings and Restructuring Act. This piece of legislation which, like Bill 7, was not intended to be subject to extensive public hearings at all, purports to equip the public sectors with the tools they will need to carry out the agenda of the government as imposed on them by the budget. The tools, of course, are the hammer and spike chosen by the government and the intended use is clear.
Most obviously, Bill 26 will push municipalities to provide services on a cost-recovery basis. By cutting provincial financial assistance, municipalities are forced to either cut costs by reducing or eliminating services or to raise more revenue. Bill 26 provides them with greater power to raise revenues through licensing fees, user fees and taxation.
When we consider the total effect of such a shift on average and low-income taxpayers, the regressive implications of user fees become very clear. Income taxes collected by the provincial government and transferred to municipalities are largely determined by a progressive, graduated system which draws more revenue from wealthy taxpayers who can afford it. In stark contrast, user fees apply as a flat tax on all users, regardless of their income or ability to pay. Of course the result will be that such fees will make important public services completely inaccessible to Ontarians with modest and low incomes.
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To go broader and deeper, the Ontario Unconditional Grants Act is being replaced with the Ontario Municipal Support Grants Act. Bill 26 will give the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing the power to decide what standards of service municipalities must meet as a condition of receiving provincial grants which are currently provided unconditionally.
Presumably, the minister could then insist on a cost basis that municipalities provide lower standards of service to their constituencies. The minister would be able to insist on user fees. The minister would also be able to demand that services be delivered in a particular way by contracting the work out or insisting on privatization.
If a lower tier of government opposes the contracting out or privatization of a particular service, the municipality could be penalized or forced to conform to the minister's wishes. Municipal councillors will either be forced to swim with the right-wing current or have a heavy price exacted on themselves and the constituencies they represent.
The providers of public services, hammered by the funding cuts, are now to pick up the hammer and drive a spike through the Ontario we once knew. The government is also claiming the power through orders in council to use those tools itself if the other groups are too squeamish.
The hammer has certainly been applied to the universities with massive funding cuts. One of the spikes handed on by the government to the universities was the ability to raise tuition fees. There is clear pressure on the universities to raise tuition the full 20%, further limiting access to university education based on income. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that this government will hesitate to provide further spikes to the universities to hammer into their constituencies.
Bill 26 provides the model of the sort of restructuring the government wants to see happen and a strong indication of its willingness to apply restructuring to the universities should those institutions fail to do business.
As Mr Snobelen, the Minister of Education, said in a recent exchange of letters with Professor Beiner of the University of Toronto: "Partnerships must be formed between institutions and the business and industrial sectors of our economy, wherein both can benefit from the research and knowledge generation which the partnership can support. Institutions must find alternate ways of doing business, such as technologically mediated instruction techniques, to reduce their high costs of doing business."
The implications are obvious. Universities are businesses that must serve the interest of business and operate as businesses. The government is prepared to not only tell Ontario's universities what can be researched, but also how it is to be taught.
There is talk of closing down not only individual courses and classes but entire departments, be they arts, humanities, engineering or business, that do not serve the interests of a rationalized Ontario Inc. Those courses that survive must operate in partnership with business and industry. What is researched, what is taught, what is learned will all be determined by a corporate agenda and taught in a corporate, businesslike fashion.
The government is also prepared to tell the universities what teaching methods are to be used: practical business methods such as technologically mediated instruction techniques. What does "technologically mediated instruction" mean in practice? It means learning from videotapes, with no human instructors available to answer questions and assist students with their learning. It means interacting with computers instead of professors. It means no highly educated experts with years of teaching and research experience are welcome in the classroom, because they cost too much. It means one more community in Ontario will be transformed into a corporation.
The impact of the Harris government funding cuts and the spikes of restructuring is now being faced by the members of my union, the teaching assistants and part-time instructors at McMaster. Right now, the introductory psychology course, with over 2,000 students enrolled in it, is being taught by a combination of video machines and 40 teaching assistants. McMaster University is now claiming it cannot afford these teaching assistants. We think it likely that many of them will be replaced by technologically mediated instruction techniques; for example, more VCRs. Apart from our concerns over lost jobs, we fear the impact on the quality of education of our community.
Even as I present to this committee, my union is negotiating for those very part-time instructors and the services they provide to McMaster University and the Hamilton community. I have just now walked over from the Connaught, where I am in mediation talks with the university. Part-time instructors are highly qualified educators who are hired on a per-course contract basis. That professor of history or poli-sci or mechanical engineering you took a course from at night last year was paid just over $7,500 to teach from September to April, and she has no benefits. She's paid less than the graduate student teaching assistant whom she supervises.
When I return to mediation talks, in about 10 minutes, probably, I'll be sitting down to negotiate for professional educators who make it possible for McMaster to deliver its programs, who make university education available to working people in the Hamilton community, professional educators who in fact make a profit for the university because of a combination of extremely poor pay, a complete absence of benefits, and the university's willingness to threaten the quality of education by having the largest first- and second-year classes in Ontario.
The university is revealing to us the face of Ontario Inc by offering part-time instructors no increase in pay, no benefits and a three-year contract. We've been told, "You have no rights." It would appear that the university, a public good in the community of Ontario, has seized the tools handed to it by the Conservative agenda. This agenda is facilitated by Bill 26, which legitimizes reduced services, higher tuition and the devaluation of providers of the public good.
As with the municipalities, schools and hospitals, it is neither necessary nor desirable to utilize the tools of Bill 26. In the particular case of the university, it is not necessary because part-time instructors profit both the university and the community. It is not desirable because the public good of access to university education will be diminished.
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In this presentation I have taken you on the journey which has been mapped out for the citizens of Ontario by the Harris government. A turning point in this journey is Bill 26. This so-called enabling legislation will indeed enable. It will enable the Conservative government to transform the community of Ontario, with its historical commitment to the public good of its citizens, into Ontario Inc, committed to fostering the private good of some of its members.
Ladies and gentlemen, just as the members of my union are at this moment at the ballot box rejecting the Mike Harris agenda, I urge you in the Legislature to reject Bill 26. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. We have a little more than three minutes per caucus for questions. We'll start with Mr Christopherson. Mr Silipo. Sorry.
Mr Silipo: Just quickly; I think Mr Christopherson may also have a question. Thank you for your comments. This is I think one of the few presentations which have brought to our attention the implications of this legislation on the post-secondary education system. I appreciate that. You've outlined very clearly those implications, certainly one of them being the increases in tuition fees, which is another way of the government simply shifting over to individuals, regardless of the ability to pay, the costs of, as you've described it, living in the new Ontario Inc.
I guess the one question I have for you is that, given the reality that at the end of the day the bill will be passed, we hope there will be at the very least some amendments. We'll wait to see what comes from the government. I wish I could say that the government is going to heed your call to reject the bill. I don't think that will happen. In light of that, what is it that you think we can do, beyond what's happening through these hearings, to impress upon the government that really the course of action it sets upon will not only radically change the province of Ontario as we know it, but will in fact result in the kind of mean and survival-of-the-fittest kind of society that you've described very much in your brief?
Ms Hudson: I think I'd be able to answer that if I knew who the government was listening to, because my group, my union members, may be among the very first caught in the latter stages of negotiation, when this has come down, to see and experience and know what that hammer is going to feel like. But this is going to continue, obviously. So whether it's going to be a cumulative effect of many diverse voices from many groups or whether it's one particular sector that is going to catch the ear of the government, I think it remains to be seen.
The Chair: Just under a minute there, Mr Christopherson.
Mr Christopherson: Thank you very much, Catherine, for another excellent presentation. It's the second time I've heard you present on provincial matters and I continue to be more impressed each time. I think you've done an excellent job of outlining exactly the framework this government is operating within in terms of the decision-making and its objectives and who wins and who loses.
The only thing I might either add or accentuate is the fact that in addition to everything you say here, we also have the absurdity and, quite frankly, the insult to our collective intelligence of saying that while all of these things are going to happen, there will be a 30% tax cut. Under the current tax system, certainly -- I don't know what plans they have to mitigate that -- the wealthy will benefit much more, far more, from a 30% tax cut than the average working person, and even more so when we begin to look at the user fees, the proposed property tax increase that will also have to be there if local governments aren't going to decimate services and jack up user fees so high that they're out of reach of all but the most affluent in our society.
The Chair: Mr Christopherson, you're going to have to leave that as a statement. I apologize.
Mr Christopherson: That's fine.
The Chair: You just had a minute there. Thank you very much. Mr Young.
Mr Young: Just as an example -- and I'm not saying you're doing this to us; I'm saying someone has done it to you, fearmongering about Bill 26. Did you know -- well, I'm going to assume you know -- that 140,00 new low-income people are going on the Ontario drug benefit plan in Bill 26? We don't hear much about that because it's not getting publicized as much.
But, you know, just about half of your presentation addresses education, and virtually all the issues you raised, I dare say all the issues you raised, are not in Bill 26. It's important to note that. With regard to your comments --
Ms Hudson: Would you like me to respond to that?
Mr Young: I'll give you a chance, yes. With regard to technologically mediated instruction --
Ms Hudson: There is going to be a question?
Mr Young: -- what we're trying to do in education is address new technology so that people can learn in different ways. Some of it will be computers. Some of it will be on video from home, which will be a big advantage to disabled people and single parents and people on welfare. They'll be able to learn and get more training from home on the cable network.
One of the best examples, a fabulous example from your own university, is the MacWaTor project whereby McMaster, Waterloo and University of Toronto had combined their engineering faculties to create the largest in Canada and one of the best in North America, maybe one of the best in the world, engineering schools using two-way video technology. It's a fantastic initiative: very, very progressive. We're very proud that's happening, and I don't want the government to take credit for it because the universities should take credit for that and they deserve it.
Also, your comments about business agenda: McMaster currently is doing applied research for businesses, and doing it very, very well, in telecommunications as well as some very progressive cancer research, and certainly no one's telling people what to study in the other courses.
Your comments on closing down arts, humanities, engineering and business schools I think are totally misplaced. What we're talking about is taking centres of excellence in universities that are already there, and colleges, and developing them and letting them blossom so that students can attend the best universities, the best schools in North America or the world, right here in Ontario, and that's what we're trying to do.
I'm sympathetic to your members' plight, and it's not easy. The average taxpayer in Ontario hasn't had a raise for seven years either. I think there's a spike in Ontario's heart, and that's the 17% of every tax dollar that goes to pay debt in Ontario. I'd like to ask you what you would suggest to us, how we can address that.
Ms Hudson: You want me to address the deficit problem?
Mr Young: I would like you to help us be part of the solution. We need your help, yes.
Ms Hudson: Well, since I'm here to talk about the university sector, I would say to you I'd be happy to address McMaster's problems if their books weren't closed and secret. Tell them to open their books. It's a public institution that has no accountability.
Mr Young: Well, as you know, they are not a public institution.
Ms Hudson: Public, private --
Mr Young: They are totally independent from government. But can you suggest to us, as a union member, how we can address these --
The Chair: Mr Young, perhaps she'll be able to suggest that to you in another forum, because your time for questioning is exhausted and I have to move to the opposition caucus. I'm sorry. Mr Phillips.
Mr Phillips: I don't think you're here for fearmongering. It was these people who ran on a platform of not increasing fees for seniors on drugs. They said there would be no new user fees on drugs, and as soon as they get elected they impose a fee on drugs that they said they wouldn't do. It was this group that said they would never touch health care, not a penny, and they're cutting a billion and a half dollars out of health care spending. It was this group that told students in this province that there would be a modest increase in tuition fees, and that in this document are increasing tuition fees for students by 20%.
Mr Young: There's nothing in that document --
Mr Phillips: Well, excuse me, but you have already told us that the document implements this; this document increases tuition fees for university students by 20%. That's what your document says. And so I resent the government's saying that you are fearmongering. You are simply repeating the facts that they're playing out there.
My question to you really is this, because I think we see a government intent on introducing a wide variety of user fees. They've indicated they're very supportive of fees to use libraries for young people, and then they say, "We're happy to see maybe that people who can't afford it will go out and find a corporate sponsor so they can use it."
I'd like to get from you and your organization a broader sense of what the implications are as we move to an Ontario that, more and more, introduces user fees, often for those who can least afford it, so we can find $5 billion to give a tax break to those who can most afford it. What kind of Ontario are we heading towards?
Ms Hudson: I think I will stay with my analysis that we're moving from the community to a corporation, from the community that had a traditional commitment to the public good to a corporation that's committed to the good of the private few.
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Mr Phillips: The government has said that the deficit is so urgent that we can't even wait for public hearings, we've got to move on it because it's so desperate. How does your membership feel when they realize the government is going to cut out $8 billion of public spending and $5 billion of that $8 billion every year will go to a tax break? If you're making $150,000 in this province, you're going to get a tax break of $5,000 a year, you're going to take $5,000 more home a year. How does your membership feel, as you head back in one minute to the table, that that is the fiscal plan of this government?
Ms Hudson: Clearly I don't think not only my membership but most people who are going to be paying for the tax cut for someone else are very happy about it. Currently my membership are engaged in an active resistance.
The Chair: Ms Hudson, unfortunately your half-hour has come to a close. I thank you for coming forward this afternoon and making a presentation to the committee.
BURLINGTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CITY OF BURLINGTON
The Chair: May I please have a representative from the Burlington Chamber of Commerce come forward. Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour this afternoon to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions or responses from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it you'd introduce yourselves and your organizations for the benefit of committee members and Hansard.
Mr Scott McCammon: Good afternoon. My name is Scott McCammon. I am the executive director of the Burlington Chamber of Commerce. Before I go any further in my presentation, I'd like to introduce Alderman Mike Wallace of the city of Burlington. The city was unable to get a presentation time here today, so in the spirit of the public and private sector cooperation talked about in Bill 26, the chamber of commerce has asked the city to share our time. Because of this, my comments will be brief.
The Burlington Chamber of Commerce represents approximately 900 companies in the Burlington area. Our membership is extremely diverse, with companies ranging from the home-based entrepreneur to Maple Leaf Meats with well over 1,000 employees. However, because of the nature of business in Burlington -- 84% have 25 or fewer employees -- our membership is also predominantly small business.
Regardless of the size of a company, though, the effect of overregulation, overtaxation and overgovernment can be the same. Our chamber of commerce sees Bill 26 as the necessary tool for the provincial government to get on with its mandate to dramatically restructure and reform government. With deficits averaging near $10 billion annually over the past four years and an accumulated provincial debt of more than $90 billion, it is clear that the Ontario government must -- I repeat "must" -- act quickly and decisively to reduce spending and control efficiencies.
Government can no longer afford to be all things to all people. The Burlington Chamber of Commerce believes strongly that the role of government in today's economy is to create a climate that will encourage people to go into business, to attract new jobs and investment and to help businesses grow. It's amazing to us that the words "profit" and "growth" have become dirty ones. Ontarians must realize that sustainability and profitability of the business community have a profoundly positive effect on the community generally.
We support Bill 26. It gives government at the provincial and local levels the ability to begin the restructuring efforts needed to improve the province's financial strength. It also sends a very strong message that Ontario wants to work with the private sector to create jobs and foster economic growth.
The Burlington Chamber of Commerce and the city of Burlington already have begun a relationship that allows the chamber of commerce to provide services previously done by the city. This eliminates duplication and it also reduces costs for the municipality. This is clearly the type of direction that is encouraged in Bill 26.
Because of the need to keep my comments brief, I would refer the committee back to the presentation made by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce at the Toronto hearings. Our chamber fully supports the positions and the amendments put forward at that time. Today in particular we would like to highlight our support for concerns over part XVII.1, giving municipalities general licensing powers. We feel the proposed amendment needs to be further clarified and defined to ensure that municipalities do not unfairly restrict businesses from operating and surviving.
Having said that, our chamber welcomes the increased responsibility and control being given to local governments. We have a very good relationship with local governments, including the city of Burlington. Our municipality deserves kudos. They have a strong track record for being fair, sympathetic and professional. Quite frankly, we feel, as the local chamber of commerce, it's at the local level that we have the greatest amount of impact.
As stated, the Burlington Chamber of Commerce supports the broad direction being taken by the government through Bill 26. With $1 million an hour being spent by the province to service the debt, it is clear that radical change is needed.
In his book Canada at the Crossroads, Michael Porter said:
"If the current trajectory continues, the standard of living of Canadians seems to be destined to fall behind. Yet there is nothing inevitable about this outcome; Canadians have in their hands the power to change it."
That book was written in 1991, when the interest payments on the debt amounted to 8% of provincial expenditures. As you well know, they're now at approximately 20%. Bill 26 gives the power to change, and while change can be frightening and challenging, in the province of Ontario it is absolutely necessary.
I appreciate the opportunity to make these comments.
Mr Mike Wallace: I would like to thank the chamber of commerce on behalf of the city for giving us this opportunity to share the time with them. As Scott has mentioned, we have worked closely with the chamber on a number of issues, really a partnership-type arrangement in a number of areas. This year the chamber is doing in conjunction with the city the business directory that the city used to produce at a cost saving to everyone, and hopefully a better product will be on the street.
I would like to thank the staff of the city of Burlington, who worked really hard, a lot of overtime hours, to get this position paper together. The time frame was quite tight and they've done an excellent job.
One thing I'd like to point out is that this is not an approved position of the city of Burlington as yet. We have a city council meeting on Monday night. The committee I am the chair of is the committee to review government structure, which has taken on a number of roles this year, looking at GTA and the number of aldermen per ward, and this issue also came on the table. This has been approved by the committee that I am chair of and will be going to council for full approval on Monday night.
Instead of just reading it to you, since you all have a copy -- and I know you haven't read it yet but I'm sure you will -- what I would like to do is just go through and speak to it, based on the headings that are there.
Statement of support: In general, the city of Burlington is in support of the changes that Bill 26 proposes in relation to municipalities. Just to let you know, there's an attachment here called For the Record. It gives a little bit of history of innovation that the city of Burlington has taken on over the last couple of years. We think that we're a mature enough group as a political body, as a municipality, as a government, to make the tough decisions and to implement change when change is necessary.
In regard to the statement of support, however, what we're looking for and what I think the province is looking for is further independence from the province, the municipality and the ministerial sector. Our goal would be to be self-sustaining and that we would not need any funding from the province eventually. To that end, we're certainly encouraged by some of the things that are happening.
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Freedom to act: Really what we're talking about in this section is that it's nice to give us the power to do some things, to take control over our own municipality and our own affairs, but please, please don't regulate us to death. It's like buying a house. It looks good from the street, but the plumbing and electrical are no good and you can't live there. It's not going to do anybody any good and we won't be interested in it.
We're somewhat concerned that there is quite a bit of empty space in terms of the ability of the minister to place regulations. We haven't seen any of those and we're not sure what the effect will be, so what we're asking under that section is, do not overregulate us. You're headed in the right direction. When you do propose regulations, make sure you get the municipalities involved, make sure we can live with them and that they make sense to us as well as yourselves.
Municipalities to be recognized as independent governments: Often the feeling has been that we're not constitutionally recognized, that municipalities are really children of the province and we feel the municipality -- speaking for Burlington -- is mature enough politically in its professionalism and in terms of being able to provide efficient services and always looking for improvement that we don't need to be the child of the province any more.
We have two suggestions at the bottom of the page that would give some support to that in terms of the act, schedule M, maybe in the preamble or somewhere. The two statements are (1) authorize local governments to exercise their powers as if they were a separate level of government and (2) provide more autonomy to municipalities with reduced provincial participation.
This is to clearly define the intent of what you're trying to do in schedule M, because there was some confusion, when we were looking at the act, in that you were telling us you were going to free us up to do more and then it looked like you were going to regulate us to death. We thought if we could add a couple of statements in the preamble, that would certainly give the intent of what you are trying to do. We would like to see that added if possible.
With the addition of those in the preamble we feel that there is a possibility of reducing your conditions and standards on grants and reducing the scope of the authority of the minister in favour of a general framework by which municipalities are to act, to perform, to provide services.
We have real concern about the efficiency reports aspects of this section. We feel, and I think rightly so, that the taxpayers of Burlington will be paying the bill for the municipality and they have the common sense and the ability to determine whether we're providing service efficiently and effectively.
We don't see any value in an efficiency report from the minister, and we also are concerned about how arbitrary it could be that Burlington is requested for an efficiency report on a particular item or on an area of service, or on our services completely and the costs associated with that. We are not sure what the repercussions would be if the efficiency report wasn't to the province's satisfaction and then Oakville did not have to do it. There's no consistency there and we really don't believe you need an efficiency report.
The basic rule is, if you're not paying for us, you don't get a say. I think that's fair and I think that's how it works pretty well everywhere else. We're reducing our income from the provincial coffers and we feel we're mature enough, able, capable, and have the professional staff and the professional, political leadership to be able to make decisions that will be appropriate for this city. If we're not, they'll kick us out and change us at the next election. I think that's where the decision should be left, with the citizens of Burlington who are paying the property tax.
Opportunity for reassessment of relevant service providers: very important to us in Burlington. We've done some changes recently between the region of Halton and ourselves in terms of who's providing -- in this case it was garbage services, and we have chosen to regionalize it. We believe this is a very good step that allows us to determine, with the consent of the local taxpayer who is paying the bill, who should be providing the service and at what level.
The one concern we have is that there is a section in there that would still allow the province to determine which powers are transferrable. We feel this is not necessary, that we can negotiate with local municipalities, with the region, to do that for us. I think every service should be on the table. For every service we can provide better -- in a different manner, with a coalition of municipalities, through a regional government or locally -- we should have the right to be able to determine that and the province should honour that responsibility.
The next section is, "Freedom to Apply User Fees to be Cautiously Considered." There was quite a bit of discussion about this. There is lots of talk going around in the press about a poll tax and a gasoline tax and so on. The opinion we had from our legal department was that you couldn't do a gasoline tax even with this legislation, and we took their word for that.
We have some concerns. We don't feel that the city will be looking at user fees to replace the income we're losing from the province. The city of Burlington is looking at a 32.4% decrease in our revenue. We had money from the province of $8.5 million in 1995; we're looking at $5.7 million in 1996. The committee, as we met, discussed the issue of whether we could use user fees to recoup this loss, and we felt obviously not. We have a commitment at the city of Burlington that we would not be raising taxes due to restructuring of government, and we feel this is part of that.
The discussion was really about the opportunity to have a universal -- it's called a poll tax, where whether or not you're using the service, you pay the levy. Our feeling was that that was not something Burlington would be rushing out to do. We didn't think it was appropriate.
We appreciate that it's in there that we have the ability to make changes in terms of taxation and user fees, but we don't see it as the answer to all our problems and we will not be using it to that end. That was the direction from the committee.
One area that is of particular interest to our municipality is the request for amendments to the Fire Departments Act. There are five criteria to assist the arbitration of labour disputes. We have set out amendments we would like to see included, the actual wording, and I'm going to read those for you:
Criterion 1: "The employer's ability to pay in light of its fiscal situation." We would like to see included "and without any increase in taxes." The arbitrator, as I understand, has had the ability in the past to say, "Ability to pay is one thing, and you do have the ability to pay because you can always increase taxes," so we would like that ability to the arbitrator to be limited.
Criterion 2: "The extent to which services may have to be reduced, if the current funding levels" -- and we would add "and taxation levels" -- "are not increased." We would like to add: "The board of arbitration shall accept as final and conclusive any statement by the employer as to the financial record or condition as verified by the employer's auditor or senior financial officer responsible for the preparation of the employer's financial statement."
We're saying we do not want the arbitrator to determine service levels for us in the city of Burlington. They have to respect that we have decided that we are going to provide X level of service, and when we're in salary negotiations that has to be respected, and any deviation from that they cannot determine. If we decide we want to keep that level of service, they have to keep that in mind when they're ruling on the debate.
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Criterion 4: "A comparison, as between the employees and other comparable employees in the broader public sector" -- and we would add "or in the private sector" -- "of the terms and conditions of employment." I think it's only fair that we compare our public employees not only to other public employees within the province and within the area, but a fair comparison to what the wage settlements are for the private sector in the area should also be considered.
The final thing we'd like to see included is: "A board of arbitration shall not award a wage increase that exceeds the percentage increase in wages negotiated by another bargaining unit of the employer or the municipality in a similar or substantially similar time period. This percentage wage increase is inclusive of non-union employee groups."
The simple concept is this: If we've negotiated with one union for a 3% increase and they have accepted that, we don't think that through arbitration the fire department can go above that. Period.
That's basically what we're saying, that the fire department is municipal employees, as is our clerks department, as is our public works department, as is our recreation department, and we're trying to treat each employee group as fairly as possible. If we've been able to come to an agreement on wage increases in one area, it is not fair to those employees that through an arbitrator another group of employees gets a higher wage increase, and we would like to see that included.
The final thing we want to touch on, just briefly, is that under boards and conservation authorities there are some changes allowing the municipality to determine their existence and their function and so on, and we would like to see the library board included in that. I believe we're under the understanding that it's got a one-year reprieve, but we don't see what the one year will do; we would like to see it included now so we can go on with the discussions about what we would like to see done in that area.
The final thing is that the conservation authorities, it looks like to us, have the ability to determine a levy for the work they're doing, without any consultation with the municipality, and pass it on through the municipal tax base without us having any question about it. They could pass that cost on to the taxpayer unilaterally without any discussion from the city, and we would like to see the municipalities be involved in that area.
To conclude, Burlington city council appreciates the opportunity to submit the comments. We will be approving this on Monday, hopefully. If there are any changes, they will be highlighted and that will be sent to you. That concludes my statement.
Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): Good afternoon, gentlemen. I appreciate in both your presentations that you recognized the need to restructure and retool the way we do government at all levels, and also that you recognized that the powers and authorities granted to municipalities are not a bargaining chip to compensate for the reduction in funding. In fact, the reduction in funding is a reality, and if these tools were not handed, the reduction of funding would still be there because the people of Ontario don't have the money. It's that simple.
In your presentation, when you talk about the user fees and the minister's ability to regulate and so forth, you suggest that should be taken away. We've had a lot of presentations from deputants who have a concern that the local politicians will not be accountable or will not be using these powers correctly. You suggest that the province should recognize municipalities as a level of government as opposed to a creature of the province. Then under "Freedom to Apply User Fees," you suggest that you want the province to be cautious with what we allow.
Mr Wallace: I can clarify that for you. Under being cautious on user fees, the feeling of the committee was that we didn't want to come here and let you think we were terribly excited, that we were going to rush out and apply user fees to sidewalk snowplowing and snowplowing and everything else, and that you should not view this carrot of user fees as a replacement for the funding we're losing. We're telling you that we are looking at service cuts based on what the budget looks like. We appreciate the opportunity and we think we deserve the ability to do user fees, but we're trying to get the message to you: Don't expect us to be replacing your decreased --
Mr Hardeman: The other area that concerns you -- you mentioned the issue of efficiency reporting. As you read the act you would recognize it also includes block funding. Conditions will be removed on a number of items of funding, such as the road funding, and in the future there may be less of that type of reporting. Would it not seem appropriate to have a statement in the act that says you will be obliged to provide this type of funding when the minister requests, if it were to replace other types of reporting?
Mr Wallace: Right now we are required to give you financial statements and we feel that's enough. We don't know what an efficiency report is. We haven't seen it. We don't know what the criteria are. And we do not know what the consequences would be if you decided we were providing a level of service that was too high or too low, based on an efficiency report. We think that from the financial statement you can see how we're spending the money, and that should be sufficient.
Mr Phillips: I want to start by talking about your negotiations with your fire department and what your proposal will do. I assume you have a good relationship. Here's how I think the collective bargaining would work with them under your proposal. First, you would say to them, "This is our fiscal situation and there'll be no change in taxes." Second: "You have no right to look at our fiscal situation. We're just going to give you the fiscal situation, our audit statements. Trust us. That's it. You have no right to go beyond that." That's your criterion 2. Then on 4, if you're able to get an agreement with part of your employees of, let's say, a 4% rollback in wages, you would then say to your fire department: "There's the ceiling. The most you will get will be a 4% rollback." Some people earlier today called this the Harris wage control act. It's now looking like the Harris wage rollback act.
If you were the fire department in Burlington heading into collective bargaining with the city, what possible chance do you have when you've got these rules as you've laid them out?
Mr Wallace: First of all, to respond to the rollback issue, I believe the wording is "shall not award a wage increase." My interpretation of that is that if the fire department could demonstrate, based on other factors, that the work they do compared to other employees in the marketplace who got wage increases, either firemen or other occupations, that would certainly still be on the table for them. What we're saying in that portion is that if we were negotiating and we got 4% from other worker groups as an increase, they're not the benchmark for those wage increases.
The other thing is that I don't see where the problem is with having our audited financial statement as -- I don't know whether you're implying that it's incorrect, inaccurate or misleading, but we feel it's a clear picture of the financial aspects of the city and it's fair to everyone and it's understandable by anyone in that position, and we can go from there.
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Mr Silipo: This is one of the points I wanted to pursue as well. I look at your amendments, and in fairness, others who have come before us have suggested that on the arbitration pieces of this, those same or similar amendments ought to be made so as to make the sections that are in the legislation even tighter than they are. I guess I would really ask you, why not then simply say the wage increase will be whatever the municipality will deem it to be? What's the difference between what you're proposing and that? What's left for an arbitrator to determine?
Mr Wallace: In most cases, 99% of the time, the reality is that we hope to come to an agreement with our firefighters and all other union groups and non-union staff on wages before it gets to arbitration. We would like a settlement long before that. I think we can accomplish that, in most cases, in the city of Burlington. I think the city has a fairly good history in terms of those groups.
Mr Silipo: Then why do you need these draconian measures in here, if you're confident and if your history has been that you can get those agreements?
Mr Wallace: We feel that this makes it fair to all employee groups within the city.
Mr Silipo: Explain to me a little bit more why it makes it fair for an arbitrator to basically have no choice but to impose the wage settlement that you as a city would say, and as the employer would say, "This is what we can afford; this is what it should be and this is it; that's the end of the discussion"? What's left for an arbitrator to determine in the balancing act that he or she is trying to perform?
Mr Wallace: What we're trying to do here is to give some parameters to our negotiating. As you know, we are under constraints and this is what's fair to all employees of the city, to the municipality. We get into difficulties, as I assume you can attest to, that if one employee union group gets a 2% increase, and through interest arbitration, which is not available necessarily to all the groups within the municipality, the firefighters get 7%.
Mr Silipo: Come on. That's just not --
The Chair: Thank you, Mr McCammon and Mr Wallace.
Mr Wallace: We have had in the city of Burlington larger increases.
The Chair: Perhaps you gentlemen can continue this at another time. The half-hour time limit has been exhausted. I want to thank you both for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.
Just a quick announcement before we go further: I'd like to be able to leave that door open because, frankly, it's driving everybody crazy and it's pretty disconcerting to presenters as it opens and shuts and makes quite a loud bang. If we could leave it open, I'd appreciate it. If you do go out to have a conversation, please take it away from the door and allow us to keep it open so we're undisturbed in here. I would appreciate your cooperation with that.
ONTARIO SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' FEDERATION, DISTRICT 8
The Chair: May I please have a representative from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, District 8, come forward.
Mr Silipo: While they're coming up, could I just ask for your help with something. There's been some mention in the question and answers about amendments. I think from the government side we've had some indication of their willingness to look at some amendments. Could we get some indication from Mr Sampson or anyone else from the government side who may be able to tell us when we may see some of those government amendments?
The Chair: Mr Sampson, would you like to respond to that?
Mr Sampson: We're listening to the deputants as they come forward and the depth and breadth of the amendments will be determined when we've had a chance to listen to people. We've got another week of hearings in another part of Ontario. I think the people in northern Ontario -- that's the area we'll be going -- have a right and entitlement to have some time with this committee before we start to cast amendments.
Mr Phillips: They'll all be done over that weekend.
Mr Sampson: My guess is that the amendments will come forward when we have a chance to review the document in the following week.
Mr Silipo: I would just lodge the point with the committee members, perhaps for them to pursue it with whoever is giving them direction here, that it certainly would be helpful, it seems to me, to have some indication of some of those amendments.
I'm sure if some of those amendments meet some of the concerns of people appearing before the committee, it would certainly be useful. The government continues to tell us that had this bill been passed before Christmas, they would have been prepared to make some amendments, so they must surely know already what kinds of amendments they're looking at. I think it would be useful to start to see some of those amendments before the hearings conclude.
The Chair: I'll leave that thought with Mr Sampson as a very strict concern of yours, Mr Silipo.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming forward this afternoon to make a presentation. You have half an hour to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions and responses from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you'd all take the time at the beginning of your presentation to introduce yourselves for the benefit of committee members and Hansard.
Mr Jim Douglas: Good evening. My name is Jim Douglas. I'm chairing the delegation from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, District 8. On my right is Bev Wilson, also an education employee in Hamilton. Betty Ann Bushel is to my left and Rick Kowalchuck to my far left.
The question we were asked when we asked to get on the agenda was, why would educators want to be here for the hearings for Bill 26? We'll start from there: Why are educators here?
With the demise of so many of our social institutions, it has fallen on educators, more than ever before, to teach our children more than academics. All school curricula today are centred around concepts of good planning, clearly stated goals, sound decision-making based on solid understanding and knowledge, strong adherence to the concepts of fairness, and above all a commitment to principles of democracy and civil rights which have bestowed upon Canada and Ontario their status as exceptional places to live and raise our children.
We are here because so much of Bill 26 is contrary to what we teach in our classrooms and expect of our students, the future citizens of this province.
Again and again throughout the bill, actions are suggested that appear to be based on misconceptions of how our institutions work, suggesting a serious lack of knowledge or a carefully disguised attempt to get our citizens looking one way while their society is radically changed in a direction that is not in their interests.
If clearly stated goals are lacking, so is any commitment to the principles of democracy and fairness. Throughout Bill 26 there is a consistent current of arbitrary power, replacing democratic safeguards, and it dictates subverting consultation.
Ms Betty Ann Bushel: One of the responsibilities that we as educators take most seriously is our responsibility to prepare our students to become knowledgeable, active, informed citizens. In Hamilton, as in other urban areas, students are experiencing participatory democracy for the first time in their lives. Many of our students are. The processes used by this government in attempting to bulldoze through this massive piece of legislation and others, such as Bill 7, are an embarrassment to any educator who is proud of this province's democratic tradition.
At this point I would like to express our gratitude to the opposition, especially to Mr Curling, for convincing this government that these committee hearings had to be held. It's so very unfortunate that the government made it clear that they planned to bypass this process and to limit the opportunity for the opposition parties to debate the bill.
We teach our young people that in a democracy the opposition parties have a clearly defined role. They serve three specific functions. First, they restrain the party in power by examining its proposals. They may support the government bills when convinced that such measures will benefit the province. Finally, when the opposition parties believe that a bill could be improved, they will criticize the measure in an effort to have the government reconsider, drop the bill, make amendments. These are the things we teach.
Totalitarian governments, of course, avoid examination and criticisms quite easily by simply not allowing any opposition. When the citizens of Ontario see a government that continues to take active measures to avoid criticism and examination, we have to begin to worry about the advent of totalitarianism in this province. This government is providing a very negative model for our youth, and our youth are the future of this province. The lesson from the Harris government at this point in time would appear to be that might is right.
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There are many aspects of this bill that are undemocratic. Some, in fact, violate the traditions that Canadians have come to expect. This begs a number of questions:
Why would a democratic government want the right to collect, use and disclose personal medical information?
Why does this government need to expand the power to refuse access to records?
Is it appropriate for a democratic government to place itself above the law by enacting a bill that will reverse court decisions, in particular one that states that "the government must be seen to be obedient to the law"?
Why does this government need to enact legislation to bypass various review panels and appeals boards?
Why, throughout this bill, is more and more power given directly to ministers while ensuring that they are protected from any legal liability for their actions and decisions?
Why would this government give municipal government the right to dissolve a democratically elected school board whose members are elected directly to be responsible for education, whose platform in that election is their attitude and their policies about education?
Municipalities could stand in the place of the dissolved or changed board. If in fact that is the intent of this government, then you should say so, so that everyone clearly understands where we all stand. If these initiatives are intended to facilitate the introduction of privatization measures and contracting out, then that also must be clearly stated. As citizens of Ontario, we should know your agenda and we should be able to make judgements about the course that you are truly embarked upon.
We question the wisdom of these reforms. Unenlightened municipal councils, impatient at the fiscal autonomy of school boards and the obligation of municipal councils to pass on unamended the school board's mill rate, might be very tempted to dissolve a board and place it under the wing of a committee or council. This would be a grave error.
Our locally elected school boards have served us well. The architects of Ontario public life, in the early years of our province, had great foresight when they designed boards whose sole purpose was to govern local education and who had the powers, in conjunction with the province, to raise the funds necessary to do the job required in that locality. Such a structure has provided a solid local base for public education across this province. This structure must not be abandoned lightly in the name of short-term fiscal expediency.
Ms Bev Wilson: To go back to the question, is it appropriate for a democratic government to place itself above the law, a law which governs other employers?
Schedule L suspends the provisions of the Pension Benefits Act governing the windup of the public service and OPSEU pension plans. These changes facilitate privatization and downsizing by stripping public employees of pension rights they would normally have under the law. Cabinet becomes the supreme authority over the windup of the pension plans of government employees. The government exempts itself from the normal obligation of an employer during a mass layoff.
The prohibition sections of section L place the government above the reach of the law if it chooses to repudiate its obligations. It is exempted from proceedings.
The government will be in a position of having snatched both jobs and pension entitlements from Ontario citizens. The whole of section L represents an irresponsible abuse of authority and it should be removed in its entirety from Bill 26.
Amendments to the Pay Equity Act are unjustified. They eliminate the proxy method of redressing discriminatory wage practices. This is an unjustifiable and retrograde step. Women are shouldering a major share of the government cuts which have been previously announced; they will now be deprived also of equitable pay. Women are double victims of these government policies. Schedule J violates all standards of fairness and of fundamental justice. It should be withdrawn.
Mr Douglas: Regarding the amendments to various statutes with regard to interest arbitration, the premise of the amendments contained in schedule Q to the School Boards and Teachers Collective Negotiations Act governing arbitrators is that education costs in Ontario are unjustifiably high and that therefore arbitrators must be instructed to keep compensation settlements low.
Let's look closely at this premise. The November 29 economic statement indicated that the Ontario average expenditure was 10% higher than that of other provinces, creating a supposed overexpenditure of $1.3 billion. The data used pertained to the 1994-95 school year and contained both private and public expenditure. There was also a serious peculiarity in the data. Although the expenditure included the funding of kindergarten, the kindergarten enrolment figures were not factored in. As the kindergarten enrolment in this province was approximately 100,000 pupils, the per-pupil expenditure figure was raised considerably. This adds to the illusion of excessive expenditure levels.
OSSTF has received the latest data from StatsCan for per-pupil expenditure in 1995-96; they show a different picture from those quoted by Mr Eves. For all provinces and territories, we are comparing similar data. Expenditure for private schools has been removed where possible to do so. We've put the chart in front of you so that you can see the data for yourselves.
This data indicate that Ontario ranks sixth in level of pupil expenditure, after the territories and three provinces. Ontario, at $6,961, is 2.4% above the Canadian average of $6,796. Two years earlier, it must be noted, the Ontario per-pupil expenditure was $7,490. If Ontario is excluded from the national average, as the Treasurer seems to have done in his calculation, then the Ontario average is 4.15% above the Canadian average. As Ontario has the highest per-capita personal income in the nation, our per-pupil expenditure level is not by any means out of proportion.
I would add to that, with two of us being educators in the field of English as a second language, that we are dealing with certain situations in this province that are not typical and not even seen in many of the other areas of the country.
Other data from the United States indicate that Ontario ranks in 29th place compared to American states. Ontario's per-pupil expenditure is US$300 below the US average and below all of the New England, mideastern and midwestern states, and those are our nearest competitors.
There is only one conclusion possible: Ontario's education expenditure is not excessive. The Treasurer is creating a myth of overexpenditure to justify the budget-cutting measures that are supported by Bill 26. This expenditure has been dropping for several years, thanks to measures like the social contract. As $400 million was removed from the operating grant base by the social contract, the economic statement cuts add another $400-million reduction. The operating grant has been cut from $3.8 billion to $3 billion, a reduction of over 20% in two years.
The history of recent salary settlements in education shows that salaries, reflecting the cuts indicated above, have either remained frozen or dropped. Younger teachers have been especially hard hit by the social contract, which froze annual increments. Workloads have increased and hundreds of millions of dollars in pension offsets have already been returned to the province.
Our local situation further highlights the facts of funding public education. The first tabling of the 1996 budget for the Hamilton Board of Education, as reported in the Hamilton Spectator, shows that to maintain the status quo will result in a $26-million operating deficit because of provincial grant reduction and the pooling of assessments with the Catholic system.
Let us clearly understand that the 1995 status quo includes a reduction in teachers of 8%, in office and clerical staff of 10% and in caretaking staff of 15%. Education workers are in their third year of a wage freeze and have seen social contract days on top of that.
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This translates into a 17% local rate increase or more cuts. The current government has of course encouraged the latter, but it is here, when the magnitude of this financial shortfall is imposed on the realities of operating our education system, that the questions about the government's understanding of the system or of its motives arise.
Our schools operate from September until June. That is a practical reality. This means that in the real world any implementation of service cuts must be loaded into the last four months of the year. To quote one of our local superintendents of education, the $26 million translates into a layoff of 1,650 teachers, more than the entire staff of our elementary schools.
Is this just ignorance or does the government have some other agenda it's not willing to share with the citizens of this province?
There's no need to instruct arbitrators in the world of education to further bias their decisions in favour of employers. Political interference in criminal law is intolerable. Asking arbitrators to put the Common Sense Revolution ahead of fairness, equity and justice in contract law is no less intolerable. To retain the confidence of those whose economic circumstances are vitally affected by their decisions, arbitrators must be seen to be absolutely neutral. If they lose their autonomy and are seen to be acting as agents of the government or the employer, they lose their effectiveness.
The impact of the new guidelines for arbitrators would be significant.
Paragraph 2 of the criteria requires arbitrators to consider the "extent to which services may have to be reduced, if the current funding levels are not increased." Arbitrators heeding this section would take on the powers that democratically elected and accountable boards of education normally exercise in deciding the appropriate level of service that will be delivered. No arbitrator should venture anywhere near this essential area of board jurisdiction, and to instruct them to do so again suggests that this government has an agenda it is unwilling to openly share with Ontarians.
Paragraph 5 is equally disturbing, requiring that an arbitrator consider the "employer's need for qualified employees." What possible justification is there for an arbitrator's intrusion into an area that has been established through careful, sometimes regulated, practice that relates the level and type of qualifications to the type of service delivered? OSSTF is convinced that no arbitrator would willingly take on this responsibility, nor should they be asked to do so.
Ms Bushel: Before inviting questions, I would like to make you aware that this is the first time I have come to such a venue without having read all of the bill, cross-referenced all of it and felt that I had a good knowledge of what was involved in the legislation and all the other dominoes that would fall because of it. Of course, I have never seen a piece of legislation that affected 44 other bills. I have not been able to do, nor have any of us been able to do, the homework that we feel should have been done. For us it was an impossible job.
Having said that, I thank you for giving us this opportunity to express our concerns and we'll take our chances if you do have questions. We'll do our best.
The Chair: We have a little under four minutes for questions. We'll start off with the opposition caucus.
Mr Agostino: First of all, I want to thank the presenters for an excellent presentation, clearly outlining the faults in the bill as they apply to education. I think you've made an excellent point in regard to the message we're sending to students and to young people across the province on what democracy's all about and what a government can do and how dangerous a government can be once it has a majority government of this size if it's not going to listen to the people across this province. I think it's a lousy example to send to young people.
We're all familiar with the Common Sense Revolution, of course. Let me quote: "Classroom funding for education will be guaranteed." That was the cornerstone of the commitment. Health care, classroom, police, they were all going to be guaranteed that they were not going to be affected, and we've seen those betrayals every single day so far.
You made an excellent point in regard to school boards and how they're now operating in comparison to municipal councils taking over. I tell you, I had the opportunity to serve seven years on a school board, I've served seven years on municipal council, and clearly I understand the difference between the roles, the functions, the politics that are involved at a council level that are not involved at a school board level -- I know in this region -- and the significant difference in how the two operate and how they should operate.
Your concerns in regard to school boards being taken over by municipalities I think are well-founded. The government members are going to tell you they're going to protect school boards by regulation, that they're going to protect police services boards by regulations, but I think you should remember that a regulation can be changed by a stroke of a pen in a cabinet meeting, without any public consultation, without any public debate, without any opportunity for what you're doing today. That is the protection that school boards, police boards and others would have if this government protects them by regulation rather than legislation. That is significant and I think you should be well aware of that.
Just a question in a general sense: What do you see as sort of the immediate impact in the classroom for the students, for the average person out there who has a son or daughter or child in school today, once these cuts take effect and a new budget year is set? What do you see as that immediate impact in the classroom and what price will the kids pay as a result of these cuts?
Ms Bushel: If you want the answer to that, we'd have to have a full day. Those parents will see an impact. Their teachers do not have the same time to spend with each individual kid. We have already seen an increase in class size. With that comes increase in stress. At the same time, there is just an unbelievable increase in the adverse conditions our children live under. The number of disadvantaged, the severity of those disadvantages, the kids who come to school and sit there tensely, staring off into space because both parents have been laid off, one's about to be laid off, those are very real situations. That is a human being sitting in a classroom of 25 or 30 in a very volatile situation and there will never be just one. The energy that takes from a teacher affects all the students. The negative feelings the student is giving off affects all of them. And that's only the most obvious.
Mr Phillips: The changes in arbitration are enormous. I think the playing field was a bit like that, and it's like that now. My question really is this, and I'll try and make it very brief: My concern is that if I'm a school board, I see very little sense in negotiating with you. I would be trying to get to arbitration. There is only one route to arbitration, unfortunately, in education: There has to be a labour disruption. When I say "unfortunately," that's the route it takes. My worry is that by taking away the level playing field, I think one side has an interest in having arbitration with no real negotiation. What do you think the impact will be just in terms of the labour relations between school boards and the teacher organizations as a result of the change in the arbitration process?
Mr Douglas: These are the realities I think we'll be facing if this legislation proceeds as it is written. There will be virtually no reason for a school board to sit down and bargain in good faith at all. You will probably begin to -- well, we shouldn't get too carried away, but if you know you're not going to get a fair shake when you sit down, you're not going to sit down. That will not lead to more harmonious relations in the province. It will certainly lead to more disruptions in the classroom and, generally speaking, it will lead to a general deterioration within the classrooms right across the province.
Mr Silipo: I want to pursue a couple of points. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you in particular for, within that presentation, attacking one of the myths that the government has tried to perpetuate, that we have an overexpenditure of funds in education, pointing out that on a true comparison between this jurisdiction and others, we're really not spending that much. The cuts, the $400 million this year -- we have to stress "this year" because we don't know next year. We can only assume, on the basis of the government's record so far, that there will be further cuts next year. We agree with you that it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to find $400 million without affecting classroom funding, despite the pledge that the government made during the election that it would protect classroom funding.
One of the things we continue to hear from the government as a way of justifying what it's doing is that -- the position kind of varies a little bit, but it's essentially one of a couple of positions. It's either, "We consulted during the election and therefore we don't need to consult; we have a mandate, we can do what we think we need to do," or "There's such a crisis out there that we don't have the time to have the luxury of consulting and discussing."
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I think the other thing that I appreciated very much in your presentation and would ask you to comment any more that you want to on this is of reminding of us that in effect we're not talking here about something that's a luxury. We're talking about a process that is part of the democratic process of government that we have in this province and that when that disappears, then not only is the government able to use its power to put itself above the law, as it's doing in the case of the pensions for public service employees, but it's also then able to discriminate against the lowest-paid group of women, as it is doing by removing the proxy pay equity provisions, as well as introducing wage controls by the back door, as it's doing with the arbitration changes.
Again, I just really want to stress the point that you made about what kind of lesson is that to our young people about the way in which the democratic process functions in this province.
Ms Bushel: I was just going to say, with two of us who teach immigrant, refugee newcomers to this province, that is the reality. I've participated in some of the federal government hearings into our immigration numbers and ended up convinced that this will not be a viable country without immigration, so we accept that.
Dealing with students who come from totalitarian states, listening to their stories, learning how their governments operate and then watching a government here trying to bypass the process, trying to rule by regulation rather than use the parliamentary procedure that's established, is frightening for our children and it is frightening for me.
Mr Young: Measuring the amount of money spent on education is one thing, and I guess the debate'll go back and forth etc, although I have concerns about your comparisons to the American states because there are major cultural differences in education. For instance, I notice New Jersey is number one, but they have police officers marching the halls and they have metal detectors. There are cultural differences that make a difference. What we want to measure in education is outcomes. We want to measure what children are learning and how well they learn to think, how well they can read and write and how well they understand mathematics and computers. So that's what we're wanting to do.
You quote from the Hamilton Spectator that to maintain the status quo will result in a $26-million operating deficit. The status quo is not an option. We had a democratic election on June 8. We won 82 out of 130 seats, which in a multiparty system is a major win, a major majority, and we were elected to do a job.
You made a comment that much of Bill 26 is contrary to what we teach our children in the classrooms. What I hope you're teaching our children in the classroom is the fundament of democracy, that governments are elected to create law, to make law according to the will of the majority. I hope that's what you're teaching our children. I'll tell you my concern. On Wednesday, a seven-year-old boy in Etobicoke was sent home with a political message in his lunch-box from a teacher and from the teachers' union which said, "Cuts hurt kids," which I think is totally inappropriate. That's the kind of thing they do in Cuba and other totalitarian governments. Do you agree --
Interjections.
The Chair: Order.
Mr Young: Do you agree that children should be used to carry any political messages home in their lunch-boxes?
Mr Douglas: I'm not sure --
Mr Young: Because I want to know, and I think the parents want to know.
Mr Douglas: If you're talking about the democratic process etc, it's already been pointed out that one of the key pledges of this government was that classroom funding cuts would not be enacted.
Mr Young: Would you please answer my question, because I think the parents want to know. Do you think it's appropriate for unions to send political messages home with children in their lunch-boxes?
Mr Agostino: If it hurts the kids, they should.
Mr Douglas: I don't want to speak for whatever person did this, but --
Mr Young: Mr Agostino thinks so. That's on the record. You do or you don't?
Mr Douglas: When you provide forums like this, it makes that kind of message deliverance a little less necessary. When you refuse to hold hearings, when you refuse to hear from people, then it makes it a little easier to come out and --
Mr Young: Would you like the police to send messages home in the lunch-boxes, would you like other government bodies to, because I wouldn't.
Mr Douglas: I get messages from my local MP in my mailbox all the time.
Mr Young: No, through your children's lunch-boxes.
Interruption.
The Chair: Order, please.
Mr Young: You're being flippant about a very serious issue and I wish you'd give me a straight answer.
Mr Douglas: Mr Young, let me ask you this. Your government sent home its own propaganda through our children's lunch-boxes regarding the college of teachers. Nobody gave you the right to use the education delivery system to access parents over something that again, in our view, is just another attempt to circumvent what already exists and hammer us from behind.
Mr Young: What, to ensure that teachers have a standard just like every other profession in the province?
Mr Douglas: There's no comparison between what you're calling a college of teachers and a college of lawyers or a college of doctors.
Mr Young: We can debate that another time.
The Chair: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.
POLICE ASSOCIATION OF ONTARIO
The Chair: May I please have representatives from the Police Association of Ontario come forward. Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour this afternoon to make your presentation. You may use the time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation to receive questions and responses from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time at the beginning of your presentation to introduce yourselves for the benefit of Hansard and the committee members.
Mr John Moor: Good afternoon and thank you, Mr Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to be here this afternoon. My name is John Moor and I'm the president of the Police Association of Ontario. I am also a sergeant with the Windsor Police Service and I'm also the president of the Windsor Police Association.
With me today on my left is Brian Adkin, president of the Ontario Provincial Police Association. On my extreme right is David Griffin, our administrator of the Police Association of Ontario. On the right to Mr Griffin is Paul Walter, president of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association.
We'll each be making submissions to the committee in our 30-minute time period and we will be filing copies of our submissions with the committee, and with supporting documentation.
We are here today on behalf of the 23,500 front-line police officers and front-line support personnel in Ontario's 103 police services. We are here to express our anger over the abandonment of the promises made by Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservative government to guarantee police funding. If Bill 26 passes as it stands today, Mike Harris is simply handing over the knife to the municipalities to make the cuts to law enforcement and public safety.
In 1992, Ontario's police personnel erupted over their treatment at the hands of the previous government and took their message to Queen's Park. We're here to tell you today that maybe the MPPs still don't understand how under siege the police feel -- under siege from crime and from politics.
In 1992, Mike Harris stood in front of the Legislature and told those thousands of police officers, support staff and their families that a Progressive Conservative government would be different. He told us that a Mike Harris government would provide more priority and more support for the police. Frankly, we believed him.
In the Common Sense Revolution, on page 8, Mike Harris told the citizens of Ontario that a Progressive Conservative government cared about public safety. He told us, "Funding for law enforcement and justice will be guaranteed." Again, we believed him.
In the Progressive Conservative Blueprint for Justice and Community Safety in Ontario, he told us, "Funding restrictions have direct effects on the ability of police to meet the needs of their communities." He told us that his government would "work directly with police and municipalities to determine" police staffing needs and "mutual funding arrangements" and "that the police should be given greater priority and support...including the allocation of existing resources." We believed him again.
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During the election campaign Mike Harris wrote to us and told us his government would "take the cuffs off the police and put them on the criminals" by giving the police the support and the tools they needed to fight crime. Again, we believed him. We believed because we know how violent crime is increasing. We know too well the truth in the statement in the speech from the throne that "Feeling unsafe in our homes and on our streets makes victims of us all." We know the system is broken and the time has come for change.
On November 29 of this year we stopped believing. On November 29 we felt we'd been betrayed. The cuts to municipalities announced that day, combined with the measures in Bill 26, are convincing evidence that there will be no guarantees. The citizens of Ontario, and the police personnel we represent, have been betrayed. Police will not be given more resources, we will not be given the tools we need to fight crime because the best tool in fighting crime, as we know it, is more personnel. And it is all too clear how the government spending cuts are going to impact on front-line policing.
Solicitor General Bob Runciman was quoted yesterday as saying he thinks we're overreacting. He might want to talk to his colleagues and see what is happening in their own neighbourhoods. There's ample evidence unfolding right now that municipalities are planning to make deep cuts to police spending. In North Bay the police services board has been asked to reduce its budget by more than 10% over the 1993 amount. At least one in nine of the force's 89 officers and 36 civilian support staff are expected to be reduced and not replaced, along with drastic cuts to part-time, temporary staff and overtime. That's in the Premier's own backyard.
In Waterloo region, the data are just as frightening. Currently the Waterloo Regional Police operates with 532 police personnel and 172 support personnel. Because of previous cuts under the social contract and the expenditure control program, they already have fewer police today than they did in 1993. Now they've been told they have to cut their police budget by an additional $3.25 million. That's the equivalent of 80 to 100 full-time positions, or 10% of their staff.
Many other municipalities have yet to declare their cuts, but have made it clear to the police services that the cuts are coming and they're going to be big. Paul will speak in a few minutes about the expected impact on Metro Toronto.
The measures affecting municipalities under Bill 26 are intended to be tools to assist the municipalities in coping with the cuts, cuts that for policing were not supposed to occur and cuts that certainly should not be allowed to proceed.
We've been told by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Al Leach, that schedule M of Bill 26 was not intended to apply to police services boards. If it wasn't intended to apply to police services boards, why isn't it clear that it doesn't apply to police services boards? He's told us that an amendment is to be introduced that will exclude police services boards and school boards from schedule M. We implore this committee, and the government of Ontario, to ensure that this is in fact the case. A regulation to protect these boards for the time being is certainly not enough. It doesn't go far enough and it doesn't offer enough protection. The power to eliminate the independent control -- and if you stop and think about that, eliminating the independent control of police services in this province -- can't be subject to the whim of cabinet. It certainly can't. We will see some very serious problems in policing if that were ever to occur.
There's a lack of equity within police services of which the committee may not be aware. In a small community that's less than a two-hour drive outside of Toronto, a police chief just recently received an 11% increase in salary. That's right, 11%. The social contract has literally frozen, and in most cases reduced, the income of front-line police officers in this province, yet the government still rewards their managers with generous and more than generous increases. It's this double standard that underlines the obvious need for more open disclosure of senior management wages. You do not need Bill 26 to achieve this. This could have and should have been achieved separately and apart from this legislation.
There are no secrets, however, when it comes to the wages and benefits that are paid to police officers and the support personnel in this province, because there's nothing there that we should be ashamed of. Like many other people, our jobs continue to get tougher and we continue to have less money to take home to our families than we did the year before. As taxpayers, we police personnel expect to bear our fair share. However, we do not expect to have to pay twice.
We have been told that schedule Q is intended to prevent excessive increases in the public sector, with claims that arbitrated settlements in the public sector have exceeded negotiated settlements in the private sector by at least 2% per year. In police labour relations, this is simply not true.
We are deeply troubled by the proposals tendered to this committee by the people we work for. They, more than anyone, know how difficult it has become for police to police the communities, how hard our members work and how thankless this job can sometimes be. Their conduct, quite frankly, in front of this committee is nothing more than shameful and only serves to further erode the already poor morale across this province in police services.
We'd like to dispel a few of the myths that are being generated about police arbitration.
Police associations are not eager to proceed to arbitration. Nine out of 10 police collective agreements over the last 10 years have been resolved through negotiated settlements. If a negotiated settlement cannot be reached, a conciliator must be appointed, must meet with the parties and must file a report if the conciliation fails. Then an arbitrator is appointed. The arbitrator must hold hearings, and in all likelihood it's going to be well over two months before that arbitrator hands down his or her award. For this reason, the majority of negotiated agreements are established well before the first arbitrated award is handed down.
Arbitration awards have, on average, virtually replicated negotiated settlements. While some awards may have exceeded negotiated settlements, others have resulted in less. On the whole, there is absolutely no disparity.
Police personnel are precluded, as we should be, from any strike action. The current system, while far from perfect, has not favoured employers, nor has it favoured employees. That's what we really want and what we are asking for: the opportunity to resolve our disputes in a fair and equitable manner. The proposals put forward by our employers cannot in any shape or form be adopted by this committee. They will, for all intents and purposes, virtually eliminate the collective bargaining structure as a means of resolving disputes. It would be absolute betrayal.
The funding cuts announced in the financial statement and the so-called tools under Bill 26 cannot be applied to the police. We are enclosing a resolution adopted by representatives of our organization from across this province earlier this week. We implore the government of Ontario to fulfil its promises by imposing a moratorium on funding cuts and by excluding police services and police personnel from the provisions of Bill 26.
I would now ask that Brian Adkin elaborate on the issues as they pertain to the Ontario Provincial Police.
Mr Brian Adkin: Good afternoon, Mr Chair, committee members. My name is Brian Adkin and I'm the president of the Ontario Provincial Police Association.
We know that there are tough choices to be made, given the financial decisions of the provincial government. Premier Harris knew that when he campaigned for election. He knew that priorities had to be identified and that some services would have to be cut. He campaigned on this basis and promised the citizens of Ontario that his government would maintain its priorities and guarantee funding for law enforcement.
As John indicated, that guarantee isn't there in Bill 26 and the financial statement. But crime is there, the violence is there, the lack of respect for authority and the rights and property of others; it's all there. Our society is burying too many victims of violent crime. Violent crime is increasing, while our ability to respond to these crimes is constantly being reduced. I've been to enough police funerals to know that we're burying at least one murdered police officer a year. It doesn't just happen in Metro Toronto; it happens in rural Ontario as well. It happens in smaller centres like Sudbury, like Minden and like Arthur, Ontario. It can happen in your neighbourhood or mine. None of us is immune to crime. It can happen to any one of us. It's happening everywhere.
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We've made our views known to your colleagues. The Solicitor General is quoted as saying we're overreacting. We don't think so. The accountants have taken over and reductions are the only thing that matters.
In the OPP, 300 layoffs are pending for civilian support staff. Police officers will have to pick up the work that they do because their work is equally important in getting our job done. Our recruit enrolment has been reduced, and as a result we won't be getting the officers on the street to replace those who are retiring and there will be nobody there to pick up their work. As municipal police services are cut, it will only increase the demand placed on the OPP to provide services that the smaller municipalities can no longer handle.
In addition to our conventional policing role, we are also required to respond to any type of major occurrence that occurs within the province. This places our officers who attend the major occurrence under pressure and as well requires us to maintain our policing role at an effective level in our regular detachment areas. This affects everyone.
We believed Premier Harris when he said that 24-hour policing was important to a Progressive Conservative government. When he spoke of the reduced number of police officers, we expected that he was going to do something to change that. This government told the citizens of Ontario that they would. They told us that our views mattered and that the police were their friends. If the members of this government, present company included, think that we can still be friends, you need to think again. Friends don't break promises that are of life-and-death importance to friends. Crime is getting more violent each day. We're not winning the battle, and the generals are retreating. What type of message does this signal to the troops?
We're here today to get this government's attention, because in the singleminded focus on reducing costs, it is about to break an equally important commitment: to reduce crime through the guarantee of funding for law enforcement. It is critically important to public safety and to our safety.
Bill 26 applies to our members under the provisions of schedule Q. We too take exception to this legislation. The OPPA prides itself on the strong history of good labour relations between ourselves and our employer. In fact, the parties have only found themselves in one interest arbitration in the history of the OPP. In 1992, the bargaining committees for the association and government reached a tentative agreement on a two-year contract. The membership of the OPPA did not ratify that tentative agreement and we proceeded to arbitration. The final result was that the arbitrator awarded the agreement that had been negotiated by the committees. This is far from convincing evidence that there is any need for change in our ways of doing business.
Police associations are not the uncooperative and greedy aggressors that our employers would have you believe. In June 1993, the police associations were the only employee group still at the bargaining table when the first round of social contract talks broke down. We were still there when everyone else had given up and walked away.
When the government mandated the social contract agenda through legislation, we too had concerns, but we did what we had to do and worked to find solutions. We struck the first agreement arrived at under the social contract and negotiated a successful agreement to produce savings. Additionally, we participated with our management and reviewed all aspects of the force to glean any savings where possible. Our entire organization was restructured. It also resulted in enhancement to our service delivery. This reorganization is under way and has eliminated any areas which are not absolutely essential to the operation of our force.
All of our municipal counterparts negotiated local social contract agreements. Not one police force went to "fail-safe," and only one police employee had to be laid off in the entire province.
As part of the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services, we will no doubt be asked to cut our budget. Our message is that we have no areas where we can cut. Our reorganization is dependent on technology and we do not have sufficient funding for this item. Rumoured cuts to jails, courts and other services will increase our work in rural Ontario. Our costs and demands for service will increase, and the people of rural Ontario should not be forced to accept under-policing. Budget cuts to the OPP will make service delivery to the residents of Ontario more difficult.
The anticipated impact of these cuts will be felt on police services across the province. In Mr Tascona's riding of Barrie, they have been operating with four fewer officers than the authorized strength of 100. The chief has been told to dispense with plans to hire five more officers. In addition, they are talking of reducing the number of officers by four more, eliminating four cadets, cutting back on part-time communicators and court security, reductions in salaries and cancelling plans to enact a much-needed 911 system. These plans are to address current financial concerns and do not take into account the expected fallout from the financial statement.
Here in Hamilton, the police services board has advised the association that it plans to adapt to any reductions in the police budget imposed as a result of the financial statement directly through staff and wage cuts. In Niagara region the police budget is expected to be cut by $3.75 million, reductions which are comparable to those earlier mentioned being forecast in Waterloo.
The Ontario Provincial Police Association is united with our municipal counterparts in the call to place a moratorium on police funding cuts and to remove police, including the OPP, from the provisions of Bill 26.
Mr Paul Walter: Mr Chair and committee members, my name is Paul Walter. I'm the president of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association. The purpose of my segment of our presentation this afternoon is to describe to this committee the policing environment in urban communities throughout this province.
Before I do that, let me say that it is well known that police officers have treated the election of the new Conservative government as a positive sign. During the election, the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association forwarded questionnaires to all Metro-area candidates in addition to holding comprehensive discussions with Mike Harris, who is now the Premier. Candidates who responded in a supportive manner were then endorsed by the association in a full-page ad in the Sunday Sun. Our ad was intended not only to signal our support for this government's position on law-and-order issues, but as a public statement of our determination to hold the endorsed candidates accountable on behalf of all Ontarians. It will not surprise many of you to know that most of the candidates listed in the ad are currently serving as government backbenchers or cabinet ministers.
That level of support, however, was dealt a dramatic blow with the introduction of Bill 26. I can tell you very directly, and I say this in the strongest possible terms to the government members, that police officers across this province feel a tremendous sense of betrayal at the hands of this government. I can honestly say it has been a very long time since I have witnessed police officers as angry as during our discussions of Bill 26 at our provincial meeting held on Tuesday of this week.
Schedule Q of the bill, as it relates to policing, is nothing short of an attack on police officers across this province. We find this to be totally unacceptable, especially coming from this government.
Over the past number of years, the citizens of this province have experienced a very disturbing increase in all forms of criminal activity, in particular violent crime. This has all been documented by Statistics Canada figures that show huge increases over the last decade in virtually every community in this province, and we as police officers have seen that change first hand. As police officers we are extremely concerned over the deterioration of the level of safety for both the public and police officers in our communities.
Contrary to popular belief, the problem of crime is not just a Metro Toronto problem. Look at the stats. Certainly in our own case, in the last 10 years violent crime in Metropolitan Toronto increased by 75%, assaults by 97%, and armed robberies jumped by 164%. These extraordinary numbers can be found in many other jurisdictions across this province. For example, Ottawa, Peterborough, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and many other communities have experienced larger increases in violent crime than Metropolitan Toronto.
The member from Durham may be interested to know that, according to Statistics Canada, the rate of robberies with a firearm has increased 353% in this area alone over the past decade. Furthermore, most members of the Legislature would probably be surprised to know that Canada now leads the industrialized world in the frequency of bank robberies, well ahead of the United States.
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As crime rates have been doubling, in my community police strength has dropped by 700 police officers, and that's just over the last five years. We have over 300 fewer police officers today than we did 20 years ago. Given the growth in crime rates as well as the growth in population, this fact is truly frightening. What is even more frightening are comments made by Chair Prinsloo which seek to further reduce policing levels. As police officers, we find it unacceptable that our citizens do not feel safe in their own communities, and it is clear that our priorities must change. It is not acceptable to have 250 more officers retiring in Metropolitan Toronto by the end of March 1996 -- that's only in another two and a half months -- with absolutely no plans whatsoever to replace these police officers.
Actually, I had contact with our separation and retention unit. They've indicated that there are 238 officers whose retirements are irrevocable and they're looking at probably another 125 to 150 who will be taking this package by the end of March -- no plans whatsoever in place to replace them and no strategy with regard to maintaining both front-line and support policing. With those retirements as well are a great number of civilian members of the force who will be leaving. I think that in itself says something.
Police management and police services boards will tell you, of course, that all is well. They will tell you proudly that they are committed to maintaining front-line policing. You are supposed to be comforted. The reality is quite different.
In order to maintain front-line personnel, the force in Metro Toronto has decimated or is about to further decimate the valuable but low-profile specialized units that have contributed so much in the past to ensuring Metro remains a safe community. To ensure bodies in blue are readily visible on foot patrol and in patrol cars, our members must be transferred out of the sexual assault squad, for example, or the street crime units, or the fraud squad, or community programs, or forensic identification, or the intelligence unit, or detective units. Safety is suffering. The reality is that we need more than just front-line personnel.
Another statistic that police management is slow to publicize is that although on paper the number of front-line officers looks the same, in reality fewer may actually be at work. When you ask older officers to perform tasks better performed by younger men and women, the result is that more on-duty accidents occur and sickness increases. So ask not how many front-line officers there are on paper;, ask how many are out on the streets protecting you.
We know full well that there are insufficient cars to cover designated areas. Some areas in Metropolitan Toronto are not patrolled at all. These are taxpayers who are paying the same as their neighbours blocks away who do have police patrol, and others have absolutely none. Where 10 or 12 cars were the norm in a police division some years ago, on a good day today there might be three or four police vehicles. There are insufficient officers to provide protection for each other, let alone the public. Time and again there are no units available to respond to often very serious incidents. I am not guilty of scaremongering; police services are guilty of not telling it the way the rank and file know it to be.
I'd like to ask my colleague Dave Griffin if he could just distribute some documents. These are confidential police-use only. There are only 10 documents, and I would appreciate the press not being given copies of them. There are two incidents which I would like to bring to your attention. I have a binder full of similar situations and it's by no means exhaustive. It's just situations that were forwarded to me.
Number one you'll find is a situation in 11 division. At the top it says "Group D-11" and it's on page 2. It's a situation where a man in his 30s was being stabbed. It was being witnessed by his eight-year-old son, who had called 911. As you follow through with the way the calls were treated, there were no units available in 11 division to attend. Eventually, a sergeant in 12 division, not familiar with the 11 division area, did respond. As we work our way through these call sheets, eventually an 11 division unit became available, responded, and because he was familiar with the geographic area in which this stabbing took place, was able to chase down and arrest the suspect.
I'd like to draw your attention just very briefly to page 3 on the right-hand side where it says "remarks added," and down about nine lines where it says "1925 hours." At this particular time you will see that there's a series of initials and numbers: "NUA" means no unit available; "11" is the division. So at 7:25 at night, when this very serious crime was taking place, and who knows, if some other disaster or crisis occurred there would be no vehicles available anywhere, it says no units available 11 division, no units available 12 division, no units available 22 division, no units available 31 division and only one car clear in all of 13 division.
Is this what taxpayers are paying for? Is this the type of police protection that they deserve? I can tell you that police officers who work at night who live within Metropolitan Toronto are nervous for their own families simply because they know there isn't sufficient police personnel working in the divisions in which they live.
The second one, and I'll be very brief on this, is an occurrence which happened in 54 division. At 10 o'clock in the evening an east-end cab driver was held up with a knife. There were four suspects: three females, one male. There was a full description of those individuals. As soon as the robbery took place and these suspects fled, he called through to his dispatcher and notified the police. As you'll see all through this occurrence, there were no units available. The call kept going in, at 10 o'clock at night, at 20 after 10, at 20 to 11, at 11 and at 20 after 11. This individual who had been robbed at knife-point by four suspects who in our view could easily have been apprehended if there was sufficient police personnel available was directed to drive to 54 division, where he could report the fact that he had been robbed at knife-point, and no police officers attended.
Like I said, we can recite horror stories here until this committee is through its deliberations. These are part of the problems we're facing that we're concerned about. These are part of the problem and that police officers, when they're attending a scene, have to know that there's sufficient backup to be able to protect them in the event that someone is armed either with a knife or, in an unfortunate incident the other day, with a sword, and of course we know what happened with Todd Baylis.
The Chair: Excuse me, gentlemen. We've exhausted the half-hour presentation time allotted to all groups. I will allow you, if you'd like, to quickly wrap up. We've gone beyond the half-hour. I don't want you to get caught without doing your wrapup, which I'm sure is important to you. I just wanted to let you know that.
Mr Walter: Thank you, Mr Chair. While my colleagues have spoken about the harsh consequences of the passing of Bill 26 in its present form, the chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board has provided concrete examples of the policing environment this new bill will foster, and that was in her deputation before this committee on Friday, December 22. Ms Prinsloo has asked the committee to increase "legislative clarity to confirm that an arbitrator need not be concerned with the consent process in assessing the impact upon services if funding levels are not increased." If anyone has any doubt whether a police service will be reduced under this legislation, they need only examine the intentions of the board, as stated by Ms Prinsloo.
Mr Phillips: If I might, Mr Walter, but this group represents a very large body. I wonder if the committee might consider extending their time for --
Interruption.
The Chair: Order, please.
Mr Phillips: I didn't do that to get -- I think, in fairness to the group, if the other committee members would agree, it happens that we have the OPP here, we have the Metropolitan Toronto Police and we have the Police Association of Ontario. We have agreed to rules here and I realize we're breaking the rules, but I wonder if we might not, just because it obviously is an important presentation, all agree that we could extend it for a few minutes.
Mr Sampson: If I can get the consent of the other side of the table. Let's not establish a precedent for the subsequent meetings, because I think we've tried to stick close to the agenda, given the fact that a significant number of people have come out here. I would be prepared to suggest that we do allow additional time to finish up. I believe you're almost at the end of your written submission. Is that not correct?
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Mr Walter: There is one verbal that I would like to highlight which might take about two minutes.
Mr Sampson: I'd be prepared to concede to that.
Mr Phillips: Couldn't we go to five minutes to 5? Would that be acceptable?
Mr Sampson: Well, we have the other group.
The Chair: I think Mr Sampson's request is that they get the five minutes to complete their presentation but that this not be used in future as a precedent by the opposite side of the table.
Mr Phillips: If I might, Mr Chair. I think each party may want to at least comment for a couple of minutes on it. We did that to another group earlier.
The Chair: We had a minute when we did it.
Mr Sampson: My other suggestion, Mr Chair, is that if you want to have a recess, there are more than enough individuals on this side of the table and on the other side of the table, certainly a number of supporters of the group in the room. I'd be prepared to entertain that we adjourn for a few minutes and allow them to have some face-to-face discussion as opposed to a document. It does --
Interruption.
The Chair: I'm going to rule that we'll allow the gentlemen to finish the presentation, we'll allow a quick comment from each person at the end of the presentation, as we have done once before, and then I'm actually going to call a recess so that we can find the next presenter, and perhaps there's going to be movement in and out. So, gentlemen, please finish your presentation. You'll have a quick minute for commentary from each party. It is agreed upon, I believe, by Mr Silipo and Mr Agostino that this won't be used as a precedent again in the future.
Mr Silipo: Look, Mr Chair, we have at least three different organizations in front us. They've been here three different half-hours each. I think it's fine.
The Chair: Carry on, gentlemen.
Mr Walter: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. On a day in the latter part of May I attended at 198 Queen Street West in Toronto, which is about two blocks west of University Avenue. At that time I was with the now Premier of the province, Mike Harris. We went into a convenience store. I would like to read -- I'm sure you're more than well aware of the speech from the throne. What Lieutenant Governor Jackman said, very briefly, is:
"Feeling unsafe in our homes and on our streets makes victims of us all. There are too many stories like that of Mr Pat Haghgoo, who is here today. Mr Haghgoo is a Toronto convenience store owner who has been robbed more than a dozen times.
"He puts in long hours and works hard to serve his customers and succeed in his business. He asks little of government, but he does expect government to make sure that the streets are safe and the punishment for lawless behaviour fits the crime.
"The new government is committed to shifting the justice system's focus away from concern only for the criminal, to include concern for the victim. It will ensure that our justice system is up to date, is more efficient, and concentrates on serious crime."
Certainly Mr Haghgoo has had a lot of people in his camp. Since that occurred, and since the government took power in June, this shop owner unfortunately was again subjected to an armed robbery. Again his premises were torched and an arson committed and a major theft occurred from his store, all of which were reported to the police and properly occurrenced. There were numerous other less serious criminal offences which took place.
His area for the most part has a vehicle assigned to it which is what they call a response vehicle for non-serious criminal offences and generally doesn't meet with regular police patrols. He still has the same problems, as I understand it, as he did prior to that. We're concerned, and that's why I appeared with the Premier, for the taxpayers. We are concerned when a home is burgled. We are concerned when places are broken into and just around the corner from where I live two people are murdered in their beds.
This is a serious situation where we implore you to make sure that whatever you do in your deliberations, focus not just on budget cuts and restraints but focus on, what do the people of Ontario want? What do businesses want that come here? I guess Metropolitan Toronto is more or less the engine for business within Ontario. How many businesses are going to locate in Metropolitan Toronto if they know they may be robbed in daylight hours? Even one of the Solicitor General's assistants was stabbed on his way to work just a couple of months ago. How many people are going to go to restaurants and theatre if they know the likelihood of being assaulted and robbed is very great?
In my view and in the view of my colleagues, you've got to remain focused. We know you have an agenda, but you can't sacrifice all the other good, all the other principles, the safety of the community, to meet your financial objectives. There may be other ways to do it; I'm not sure, and certainly we can't resolve it here. But please, I implore you, before you go ahead with this legislation, know its ramifications, know its consequences, and for God's sake protect the citizens of Ontario.
Mr Christopherson: It's good to see you all again.
Mr Walter: Yes. You're friendlier this time.
Mr Christopherson: It's amazing how much less pressure there is this way. It's also interesting that at this particular moment in time, both of us, for very different reasons, wish there were a different configuration of the tables as they now sit.
I want to say on a serious note that when I was first sworn in as Solicitor General, I said very clearly that I was very proud to be associated with the police community in Ontario. I continue to feel that way, without question. The police in Ontario are not perfect but they're as good as anybody else has in the world, and I'm still damned proud of every police officer in this province.
Mr Walter: Thank you.
Mr Christopherson: You've been doubly screwed. Not only as workers have you been betrayed in terms of rights you had as workers under legislation, but you had very clear, specific promises that are now being broken, and it's not a wonder that you're as angry as you are.
You also need to take a look at the corrections side of things. There have been cuts in that budget when there were promises that there wouldn't be. We've seen an assistant deputy minister resign in the Attorney General's office, and it's alleged that the reason is that he sees a deterioration of the administration of justice and the court system as a result of the cuts. Across the board -- we had firefighters in here earlier today who are colleagues of yours in terms of public safety who feel exactly the same way as you. They've even got a commitment from then leader of the third party Mike Harris on a videotape to their convention that he wouldn't make any changes without consulting them. He didn't talk to them at all, brought in Bill 26, and stiffed them the same way you're being stiffed.
The Chair: Mr Christopherson, would you wind up.
Mr Christopherson: Don't stick to the 60 seconds as a hard and fast thing; this is important for us too.
The Chair: I realize that, but please just wrap up.
Mr Christopherson: The issue of arbitration is a key one, not just for you but for everyone in the public sector. I hope you'll stick united with everybody else who's facing the same kind of attack you are. If they can get at you and police and others in the public sector, they can get at every single worker in this province. Quite frankly, I think that's in part what this is all about: Go after the toughest, bring them to their knees, and then you can easily go after everyone.
The other thing I know very specifically, particularly through the OPP, is that the amount of re-engineering and restructuring that's gone on with the limited dollars that were available, and I recognize they were limited, has meant there's been a great deal of change in policing in Ontario and the way it's been administered. I can't imagine, for the life of me, what it would be like continuing to sit in the office of the Solicitor General and envision how policing can continue in an effective manner with the changes we've already made and then rip out of the heart of it the millions and millions of dollars that are being proposed to be taken out.
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I want to wrap up by saying to you that you are now facing very clearly the same circumstance that an awful lot of people in Ontario are, that is, "The deficit and debt can be brought under control, we can reduce taxes, and don't worry about it. Somebody else will have to feel the pain." The reality is that that kind of formula doesn't work. You can't do all that at the same time. I'm glad at least that you're throwing your weight -- and it's significant -- behind the fact that all of this cannot be done so deep, so quick.
I would urge you to start including in your comments the fact that the tax cut is not necessary, that if you put that money alone back into policing and other public safety issues, that would go a long way to making sure there's enough money to do the job.
The Chair: Mr Christopherson, I'm sorry.
Mr Christopherson: Boy, you guys really like to stifle debate, don't you?
The Chair: I've been more than flexible. Mr Tascona?
Mr Tascona: We're open to debate, but I thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak. I certainly am aware of what's going on in Barrie. I was a councillor in Barrie. I don't share the approach being taken by that police services board. In fact, there are going to be replacements on the board because of things that have happened.
But I can say that I've been a big advocate for 911; I've been leading that. And in terms of the approach you're advocating, of the focus being on law enforcement and the safety of the public, we tried to take some measures early in our agenda with respect to introducing hollow-point bullets, parole board appointees having police experience etc, and introducing victims' rights. Those are measures that we hope are in line with what you're looking for in terms of providing, for the police officers and for the public, a more safe environment.
I'd also like to say that I appreciate the approach you've taken. You realize we have tough choices to make. I think you also realize that the situation we're in is something that has to be addressed.
With respect to the area you talked about in terms of schedule Q, we had the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards in here already and they echoed your views with respect to deleting such factors as 4, 6 and 7, which are already in the Police Services Act.
I find the approach you've taken very constructive. It gives us something to work with in terms of schedule Q. I know you've met with the Minister of Labour, Mrs Witmer, and I know we would like the consultation, because this is a part of the consultation, to continue. If you have any further refinements you'd like to see to schedule Q or any other areas, please come forth. We have another week of hearings to go into the north and then we're going to be dealing with all the parties in clause-by-clause review, and that's a very important part of the process also.
I'd like you to know that the process isn't finished here today. We'd like to hear from you and we certainly share your views in terms of the importance of this issue.
Mr Phillips: I appreciate the presentation. I think Paul knows I have a little appreciation of the challenges. I've coached hockey for the last 10 years with a Metropolitan Toronto Police officer who gives me good insight into the challenges.
Let me just say that you have been betrayed. I don't think there's any other word for it. The Common Sense Revolution is all about cutting deep, deep, deep: Cut $8 billion out of provincial spending to fund a $5-billion tax cut, and it doesn't matter who suffers as a result of that.
You're also a victim of an agreement between the government and AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. They were told they're going to have their grants cut substantially. "How can we keep you quiet about that?" And you now see the results of that: this arbitration process. There is zero doubt that it tips the scales just like that. If I were in your shoes I hardly know why you would even have any opportunity at the bargaining table, the employer is going to want to get to arbitration so fast.
I earlier thought this was the Harris wage control bill. It's now the Harris wage rollback bill. I believe there are negotiations going on out there right now to roll back wages from non-unionized workers or workers who may not have a powerful union. When you get to arbitration with this proposal I tell you the arbitrator under the ability to pay is going to have to look at that.
The other thing you're suffering from is that I think the government's made a commitment to the municipalities to eliminate police services boards. Temporarily, they're going to be protected by regulations, but AMO couldn't have been clearer. At this time, powers of dissolution of police boards may not be included, but AMO's made its position very clear on special-purpose boards: "We're encouraged the government will be reviewing the role of police services boards in this context."
So your second major concern about how police organizations will be governed in the future I think is legitimate. I feel badly for you, because I think what is being proposed here represents the biggest change in the relationship between the police organizations and the community that we've ever seen. Your whole bargaining position will change dramatically, and the way you work with your police services boards will change dramatically.
The day I got the bill, I asked myself, "Where is probably the most dangerous part of the bill?" I decided it likely wasn't at the start of the bill but at the end of the bill, so I flipped to the back of the bill. What's the last section of the bill? It's the arbitration process. That's where it all is, at the back of the bill. I figured that's where the dangerous part would be, and it is there.
I would just offer this assurance to our police organizations on behalf of our party: It is essential that you have fair bargaining rights -- not that you have unfair bargaining rights and not that your employer has unfair bargaining rights. You are owed fair bargaining rights because you can't strike; you have to rely on your bargaining position and the arbitrators. We will fight. This bill is going to be voted on on January 29, unfortunately. We cannot get them to move that. We've got two weeks to make the changes. We'll be doing our best to get, for your organization, fairness in this bill. It does not exist right now. We'll do what we can.
The Chair: Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation to the committee.
I'm going to call a five-minute recess. Mr Phillips, Mr Silipo and Mr Sampson, I would ask that your members who received the document -- it was asked to be between yourselves. Just hang on to that. We're going to have to have a discussion about that at the end of the session. We'll be back at 5:05.
The subcommittee recessed from 1658 to 1711.
DAVE WILSON
The Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to the committee. Sorry for the delay. I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce yourself for committee members and Hansard.
Mr Dave Wilson: I'm Dave Wilson. I'm a municipal councillor in Hamilton. I sit on both city and regional councils, as I explain in my brief. I have handed copies to the secretary and I'm sure you have those by now. The very least I can say is that I'll be a lot less intense than the last presentation.
I want first to thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to make a presentation to you today. As I was preparing my submission and rethinking some of the issues, I was at some points almost overwhelmed by the sheer volume, so I beg your indulgence as I try to make my points.
By way of introduction, I am a member of city council in the city of Hamilton and, by virtue of that office, also a member of the council of the region of Hamilton-Wentworth. I have the honour of being the chairman of the licensing committee at the city and of the environmental services committee at the region.
I'm sure my colleagues at both levels would want me to make it clear that my remarks are personal and do not represent their views. However, both Mayor Morrow and Chairman Cooke have asked me to extend their greetings to you and welcome you to the city of Hamilton and the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth and to assure you that our collective views will be forwarded to you in writing.
To start on a high note, to make my position clear, I want to express my support for schedule A. It is my belief that public disclosure of both public salaries and public benefits is long overdue and is a very positive step.
I believe that with respect to both the freedom of information act and the municipal freedom of information act, some amendments should be made. While I appreciate that these acts can be abused, I believe the proposed changes are unnecessarily heavy-handed. It seems to me that rather than making information impossible to obtain, a more appropriate mechanism would be to allow the occasional requester the information as per our current policies, and then for those who do make excessive use of the system, the regulations should allow for aggressive cost recovery.
I checked with our regional city clerks today. In the city of Hamilton, in the course of an average year, we have 100 informal requests of people who simply walk up to the counter and ask for information and about 30 to 40 actual formal requests for information. From our perspective and considering our budget, those are fairly minor requests, although we do understand that there are some people who are more than abusive of the system.
In terms of the ability of the municipalities to levy user fees, my next point, I understand that AMO has calculated out that on average the transfer payment cuts made by the province, if they are directly passed on to the taxpayer without mitigation, would result in a property tax increase of $250 a household. In the case of the city of Hamilton, that would be apportioned out at a little over $60 per household, an increase greater than has been imposed by the municipality over the last seven years combined. I need not remind any of you, I'm sure, that property taxes are one of the most regressive forms of taxation and have little, if any, relation to the individual's ability to pay.
While I appreciate that there is a provincial problem, what has now happened is that the retired couples on the street or the widow down the street are going to bear the brunt of the problem in many instances, having had little to do with the problem's creation. We all, I'm sure, as politicians -- and you're contacted by your constituents on a regular basis -- hear the horror stories of people who are having difficulty with their taxes, federal, provincial and municipal. But in the case of municipalities, as you know, it isn't an income-based system; it is based on property values. It makes it very difficult for people on fixed incomes to keep up to the pressure of property taxes. That's one reason I have been personally opposed to those particular changes.
It is crystal clear that no municipality is going to pass those cuts on directly, short of one that has decided to commit collective suicide. So while we have additional authority to generate revenue, it will in no way make up the additional responsibility we will also be handed.
User fees implemented in a thoughtful and appropriate way make sense, but the current financial crunch will force and has forced municipalities to look at concepts unheard of in recent memory and ones that will once again punish those least able to afford them.
Obviously, one of the major goals of this bill and a stated objective of the government is to restructure and reduce government. I certainly agree that anything that simplifies the structure and enhances the services of municipal government, while protecting the rights of the general public, is a step forward. However, I firmly believe that the actual structure of municipal councils should be left in the hands of the municipality.
While Glanbrook has a population of less than 10,000, it has a council of seven members, clearly out of proportion with Hamilton where a population of 317,000 has a council of 17; but equally clearly the people of Glanbrook have accepted that and are prepared to pay the cost of overrepresentation. I do not accept, as a rule, the argument that fewer politicians make better government automatically; otherwise the logical conclusion would be that one person would be the best form of government. I say this somewhat facetiously --
Mr Phillips: That's what the bill's all about.
Mr Wilson: -- only one or two members of the committee would perhaps argue that the 99 federal MPs, 98 elected from the same party, would have better representation than we do provincially with 130 MPPs. Diversity of opinion and honest debate can often come to a better and wiser decision.
If cost is the issue, then pay them less as municipal politicians. If structure is the issue, transfer payment cuts and other provisions of the bill will leave us little choice but to take that action in any event.
With a broader perspective on the issue of restructuring, I have no wish to be a petty tyrant, and I urge you reconsider or to consider the previous point that too much control over too many areas will lead to more problems than it resolves.
With the greatest of respect, there are too many provisions, I believe, in the omnibus bill that allow municipal councils to take too much authority. And with the greatest of respect, we're not brain surgeons, and I use the term advisedly. We're human beings with the same flaws and we make the same mistakes as other people do. With respect, I think in many respects the senior levels of government have more authority and more staff to make those kinds of decisions. Municipal councils are not always perfect, as are other levels of government, but I don't want to give them authority they don't currently have if they're going to abuse it, and I suspect in some cases they will.
On one last point, I want to urge you to consider the devastation that the conservation authorities are undergoing across the province. From my perspective, they provide a low-cost and positive addition to the communities they serve. In my heart, I believe that their loss will be one from which we will not recover. So I really urge you to take another look at the conservation authorities.
I want once again to thank you for your attention and interest, and I wish you well in your ongoing deliberations.
I ran into MPP Ross in the hallways of city hall earlier and she said if I spoke briefly, you'd not only appreciate it because it's near the end of the day but it would also give you a chance to ask a few questions. So I thank you very much for your attention once again.
The Chair: Thank you very much, and you're correct. We have seven minutes and a bit for questions from each caucus. I will start with the government caucus; Mr Sampson.
Mr Sampson: Is it your view that putting conservation authorities under the authority of local government is going to mean they'll disappear or they'll be decimated? Can't you see some way that they'll carry on the good work they do, just in a different form?
Mr Wilson: In Hamilton-Wentworth, we're lucky in a sense that the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority has -- and I know Mr Stacey is here to speak on their behalf -- revenue sources that are not usual for conservation authorities. So in a sense, Hamilton-Wentworth and the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority will be better off. But my real instincts are that, because the focus on the conservation authorities tends to be environmental issues and the protection of the watershed, much more attention is paid to those issues and they'll do a better job of it.
With the transfer payment cuts they're getting -- and I know the figures are floated around of about one half of 1% of all the cuts are to conservation authorities -- I really think that that's money that should be kept in the budget, because in fairness I really think that the conservation authorities are in jeopardy.
Mr Sampson: We have hospital boards and university boards that are run totally volunteer. Is it not possible that could work for conservation authorities too?
Mr Wilson: It would be extraordinarily difficult. I know in our situation -- that's the one I'll speak to, because that's the one I know the best -- this conservation authority has been blessed over the years with a lot of foresightedness and they have a lot of property. I think it would be very awkward to run them with volunteers. I know that the authority board itself is very active. As a matter of fact, I sit on the authority boards. They're very active and they do the best they can, but I really can't see a way to do it with volunteers.
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Mr Young: Out of 38 conservation authorities in Ontario, one of them recently spent $500,000 on an abandoned railway track, which I would view as nice to have, but we're making financial funding reductions which are very tough and are tough for the whole province of Ontario. Would you deem that as an appropriate expenditure in the current financial state of the province?
Mr Wilson: In fairness, I think you have a point, that in some respects the conservation authorities have expanded their properties, perhaps at the expense of their existing properties. So I don't have as much difficulty with the concept of cutting back on the purchases of properties, but I do think that the basic fundamental portions of the conservation authorities that are left should be protected.
Mr Sampson: If I may, if I could sort of paraphrase, the general theme is, a little bit more authority and responsibility would be nice, but not too much. Is that basically where I hear you coming from?
Mr Wilson: Yes, I think so. In fairness, and I don't want to speak for my colleagues who aren't here, but in most municipal councils they tend to be part-time politicians, with few exceptions, and they don't always do as good a job perhaps as they could of studying the issues. You people clearly live and breathe this on a daily basis. For most municipal politicians, that is not the case. Sometimes my fear is that they make decisions perhaps not capriciously but without the proper information and debate. I think that, in fairness, as I said before, the senior levels of government quite often are better decision-makers. I don't always agree with the decisions that the federal and provincial governments make, but I think they make them with more information than the municipal councils often do.
Mr Sampson: And would that additional responsibility that you would maybe not want to have include the library boards? Because we've had some discussion from representatives of library boards in the past that tell the councils, "Hands off," basically.
Mr Wilson: I also sit on the Hamilton library board.
Mr Sampson: That's why I asked that question.
Mr Wilson: I like to keep busy. I understand the intellectual freedom aspects of the library board, and I would say that there are more areas of jurisdiction for the city or the municipalities to take over with respect to the library boards, but they shouldn't be taking over the entire library board. It politicizes library boards in ways that are perhaps not appropriate.
Mr Sampson: Right, because they're funding the operation of the boards, for all intents and purposes, and the library itself, and I guess if you believe that -- I think we have a phrase we heard that, "He who pays the piper should call the tune." Is that something that you would see operational or the appropriate way to proceed with respect to library boards?
Mr Wilson: In fairness, no. I think that in Hamilton, once again I have to say that our experience has been that the library boards have been very thoughtful and they've worked through very difficult situations and have been able to manage their affairs quite admirably with very little intervention from the city of Hamilton's council. I suspect for the city of Hamilton to take it over -- in fairness, most of us were interested in municipal politics when we entered the field, and I have no more wish to be a school trustee, or I would have run for school trustee, or to run the library board, other than as a representative of the council who sits on the library board, than I currently do, if I'm answering your question.
Mr Sampson: Switching topics slightly, the city doesn't charge for garbage?
Mr Wilson: No, we don't, not directly.
Mr Sampson: Why is that? Because you do have that authority now. Why is it?
Mr Wilson: It's been an ideological debate and it's been a practical debate. There are those members of council who see that as a tax grab in a sense. They see that as something that would be politically unacceptable. They've heard from other municipalities, and there are very few large municipalities that do that, but they've heard from the smaller municipalities where that has happened that it has not been well received by the general population. When it has been raised in the press in the Hamilton area, we are often inundated with phone calls from people who are opposed to it. So while we have done just recently a survey as a regional municipality to take a look at those types of things, it is generally not well received politically.
Mr Sampson: So even though you have the authority for sort of a user fee type of arrangement, what's really dictating whether or not council will proceed on applying or implementing a user fee is basically the response of the taxpayer and voter saying, "I don't want it."
Mr Wilson: In this instance, yes.
Mr Sampson: And do you get the sense that the taxpayer and the voter would continue to behave with respect to other user fees that your council might choose to implement, whether it's pursuant to this legislation or any other?
Mr Wilson: We have, as both levels of municipalities in the Hamilton area, put in other user fees. Garbage is treated separately I think in most people's minds, simply because they see it as a very basic and fundamental service that should be provided by the municipality. I think that's why it's poorly received from a constituent point of view. My real belief is that they're prepared to accept user fees in other areas to a certain extent. As I said in my brief, sometimes user fees make sense, as I made the point with the freedom of information act. I think in those cases where you have abusive people, user fees make some sense, but to give the --
The Vice-Chair: Excuse me. We have to give the opposition some time.
Mr Wilson: I'm sorry. My apologies.
Mr Agostino: Mr Wilson, on your lines of user fees and costs and impact, we have heard across Ontario, we heard the deputy mayor of London, Deputy Mayor Hopcroft, talk about how they can't wait for this bill to go through so they can start imposing the user fees to make up the loss. The mayor of Guelph, two days ago in Kitchener, said that as a result of the new powers that he's now going to have -- and you'd be familiar with the licensing end -- a restaurant licence which now a municipality can charge up to $20, they now are going to be able to charge the full value of that. So a restaurant licence, a small business, will go from $20, say, up to $400 or $500 based on the cost of that. The mayor of Mississauga talked about gasoline taxes and so on.
Do you envision municipalities, having to deal with this massive cut of 40% or 43% in transfer payments, having to use user fees and those types of levies to offset some of that rather than tax increases or a mass reduction in service?
Mr Wilson: I suspect most municipalities will do a variety of things. They will raise taxes, they will probably, unfortunately, lay off people and they will also implement a broader range of user fees.
We have, as I said, implemented them in this region, but we have done it cautiously and where it made some sense. My fear, as I said in the brief, was that we'll be not perhaps forced, but stampeded into making some pretty aggressive and pretty unacceptable user fee increases. An example of a restaurant licence, as you said, going from $20 to $400, I think is probably not on the table in this region, but I think things in that magnitude could perhaps happen.
Mr Agostino: Just along the lines of the aspect of the bill as it relates to fire and police services where you're aware the arbitrators and the powers the arbitrators have and will have under this new bill would dictate and often could -- in the way the bill is worded it could give an arbitrator the power to bring services to a certain level, but I think it also would work the other way: It would give the arbitrator the power to reduce services if the arbitrator felt that the ability to pay was not there.
As a municipal councillor, are you concerned about the fact that you may have some independent arbitrator tell you how many police officers or firefighters you can hire in your own community?
Mr Wilson: The short answer is yes. I have spent most of my life doing collective bargaining and representing people in my past background as a labour person, so I'm concerned about that. I have concerns in the general area of the interest arbitration as well. But yes, I would say the answer is yes.
Mr Agostino: Thank you. Mr Phillips wants some time.
Mr Phillips: One of the challenges in this bill is that frankly we're not sure what the government really wants to do in some areas. We have a suspicion that behind the scenes, Mr Leach and AMO have worked out a deal here and they know what it permits, but we have to kind of guess at what it permits. That's true in the fee area and it's true in the licensing area. As a matter of fact, as we go around Ontario, different municipalities are telling us different things. They've looked at it and they kind of know what it says.
The reason it's so important to us is because once this bill comes into law, it's going to unleash a whole bunch of activities. There's no question of that. There's going to be all sorts of Harris fees all over the place.
My question really is, I gather your council has had an opportunity to discuss this. I gather you've had some briefings by your staff on it. I gather council has asked some questions on what does this permit and what does it not permit.
Mr Wilson: That would be a valid assumption, but it would also be wrong.
Mr Phillips: Oh.
Mr Agostino: Remember his earlier statements?
Mr Phillips: Oh. Well, imagine you did have such a meeting because a bill this important, that impacts this much on both the region and the city, I would have thought maybe the council, because it's that important, might have wanted to have some idea of what "direct tax" meant under fees, and under the licensing, if you remember the language, "requiring the payment of licence fees which may be in the nature of a tax for the privilege conferred...."
Imagine staff had advised you, what would you think that permits you in the licensing area? We surmise, for example, that you could say to a retailer, "We want a nickel a package of cigarettes that you sell, because we think we have a certain number of expenses around smoking here in Hamilton, and our licence fee will be in the nature of a tax," not just an annual fee, but in the nature of a tax. Do you think that is permitted under the licensing portion and what do you think is permitted under the direct tax portion in the fees area?
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Mr Wilson: You're quite right. It isn't that our councillors haven't taken this very seriously. We do have our staff working on it. It's just that collectively it's been difficult for us to put our heads around it. As you know, we're going through budget processes right now as well. It's difficult to answer that question, as you say, because it isn't particularly clear, from my perspective and from my reading of it. I spoke to both the city and regional solicitors about their interpretations of it, and they're not quite clear either and have asked, I believe through the normal processes, for further clarification. As you know, the devil is in the detail, and as you would know as a former Minister of Labour, it's the regs you worry about, and I assume when they come out --
Mr Phillips: I didn't know that. Yes, I did know that.
Mr Wilson: I'm sure you did.
Interjection: You didn't know you were Minister of Labour? I remember that year.
Mr Wilson: It's the regs we are concerned about and where we really will, I guess, get the final answers on exactly what they mean. From my perspective, it is pretty broad in its interpretation.
Mr Phillips: The restructuring proposals are intriguing to us too in that here's how we interpret the migration of services: Imagine that --
The Vice-Chair: We're out of time. The NDP, please.
Mr Phillips: Well, just imagine that.
Mr Wilson: I will imagine that.
Mr Phillips: Think about it.
Mr Christopherson: Welcome, Dave. Some will know that I was a predecessor of Dave in the seat he now holds on city and regional council, so it's interesting that you and I should talk about issues like this in our respective roles.
Mr Wilson: We'll see if you made a wise decision in asking me to run, anyway.
Mr Christopherson: That's right. Well, you're doing a good job. I want to focus a little bit on the way things are being realigned in Ontario in terms of the way things are funded and ask you just in general, given that your ward is made up predominantly of working people, whether overall the move away from provincial funding through transfer payments to municipalities versus increasing user fees, new user fees, albeit with the controls that come with it, on balance, is a good deal or a bad deal for the average constituent you represent?
Mr Wilson: For my constituents, it's been a very bad deal. I say this without being too partisan. If you understood my area of representation as Dave would, it tends to be a working-class neighbourhood with modest homes and people of modest means in many respects. I know from speaking with small business people that business has declined dramatically. They anticipate that it will only get worse as well, because it does have the tendency, as I said earlier, with transfer payment cuts, that if property taxes go up, it is going to make life that much more difficult for them. I know, as I said recently, that children who go to school with my children are having a difficult time in many respects. Some of them are now coming to school without lunches, when they were coming with lunches before. It's absolutely clear to me that if we have to implement user fees it will be that much harder on them.
The whole question of garbage fees: If we charge people for garbage, we couldn't charge a certain amount in my ward and a certain other amount in another ward. It will be charged the same everywhere. The people I represent will have a much harder time doing that than will the people in more affluent areas. So I absolutely 100% agree.
Mr Christopherson: I continue to be somewhat baffled, having been an alderman and a regional councillor for five years before I went to Queen's Park, on the response of municipalities. I understand AMO is happy because it seems to have gotten everything it ever wanted from a provincial government. It's amazing the number of things on their wish list that they now have in their Christmas stocking. But that's always at a broader level and doesn't necessarily reflect where individual aldermen and councillors are coming from. Maybe you can help me.
I still don't understand why so few individual councillors and aldermen are speaking out if you accept that there are more ordinary working people of modest means than there are rich people, which tends to be the case. You are one of the only ones in Hamilton, in the whole region, I saw responding when the financial statement was made about the massive cut in transfer payments. You were the only voice. Why do you think others are so reticent to say anything?
Mr Wilson: Frankly, I'm puzzled about that myself. I'm not really clear on why people haven't been more concerned. I know as an example that very few people had actually applied for standing, and it really does baffle me because it has such broad implications for us, and whether you agree with the provisions or not, there's clearly a lot there for municipal councils to deal with. I honestly can't answer why they haven't been more responsive to it.
Mr Christopherson: The only thing I can think of, having sat there, so you're not clouded with all the misty stuff, is that the individual elected people have bought in to the idea that more power and more control at the municipal level, carte blanche and regardless of anything else, is good and therefore, they're swallowing this medicine. That's the only thing I can think of, that they feel and believe it and that it's just an honest disagreement philosophically about whether or not that's in the best interests of the majority of Ontarians.
Mr Wilson: It is absolutely clear that many of my colleagues, perhaps a majority, are absolutely thrilled with the legislation, that in many cases they're quite happy with the new powers that municipalities will have, and they see, as an example, with respect to the library board, that they'll have more authority and more ability to do things in the way they would like to have them done. I, as I said, don't think that's a particularly positive thing, but you're absolutely right, it's very clear that some of them would like the expanded powers.
Mr Christopherson: I think what'll be interesting is to watch, in the 1997 municipal elections what individual aldermen and councillors are facing on the doorstep, as they're going to be attacked by working people who now have a rawer deal than they had before under the other alignment, and those politicians can only stand on the doorstep and say, "It was the province that did it, not me." I've got to believe that's what's going to happen. It'll be interesting to see whether or not they're able to pull that off.
The other thing I wanted to ask you, was that one thing the government asked for and said it expected from municipal governments was that they would accept these cuts in transfer and there'd be no increase in property taxes, that they should be able to do that. Just how close to reality is that, as you see it?
Mr Wilson: It's not going to happen. It's absolutely clear there will be property tax increases as a result of the municipal transfer payment cuts, without question. We were at approximately zero at one point, and now we're at seven, so the difference, at least at the regional level, is a 7% increase as a result directly of the transfer payment cuts. There's absolutely no question in anybody's mind, whether they agree with the bill or not, that there will be property tax increases as a result of it.
Mr Christopherson: We hear business worried that some of the powers that are given them -- they want the powers to be given to municipalities but they don't want them to have too much power. They want them to be able to have some alternative source of revenue, but they don't want business to be it, and one can understand their position, "Don't charge me a licensing fee that goes beyond the cost of issuing me the licence because you're short money for social services or environmental needs." Yet the reality is that if local governments have to replace it, they're going to have to go after the people who have it to a large degree, which is going to be business. In the end, I suspect business may not be as thrilled as they think they're going to be with the implementation of this legislation.
That's the thing we're not doing, explaining it as a complete realignment in the way we fund the services that are closest to us and our families and our homes. It has a negative connotation in terms of what it means.
The Chair: Thank you for coming forward today to make your presentation to the committee.
HAMILTON REGION CONSERVATION AUTHORITY
The Chair: May I please have representatives from the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority come forward. Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the standing committee on general government. You have half an hour today to make your presentation. You may use that time as you see fit. You may wish to leave some time at the end of your presentation for questions or responses from the three caucuses. I'd appreciate it if at the beginning of the presentation, you'd introduce yourselves for the benefit of committee members and for Hansard.
Mr Alan Stacey: My name is Al Stacey. I'm chair of the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority. I have with me today to present to the subcommittee of the standing committee our general manager, Mr Ben Vanderbrug. You all have, I think, our blue folder in front of you, and as I understood, you've had a long week and a long day and we're the last presenters. We'll keep our remarks at this point to the prepared text.
Members of the evidence subcommittee of the standing committee on general government, we certainly welcome this opportunity to speak to you on behalf of our authority and I think on behalf of many of the 38 authorities that have not had an opportunity to present evidence before your subcommittee.
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Half a century of exemplary environmental leadership is in danger of being crushed under the weight of fiscal restructuring. At a time when many jurisdictions over the world are implementing planning on a watershed basis, Ontario could lose its conservation authorities, the very models on which modern watershed management is based.
Resource management on a watershed basis is now universally recognized as the most pragmatic way of solving many of our environmental problems. The watershed model allows representatives from all affected communities to make decisions without concern for parochialism, because they know that watershed units, land areas that drain into specific bodies of water, are not impeded by municipal boundaries. Using the watershed model, drought, flooding, pollution and erosion problems are being remedied, which in turn helps protect the biological diversity of wildlife and flora.
More importantly, watershed planning effectively integrates -- and I stress "integrates" -- urban development with the environment, and many municipalities in this province are now working cooperatively with conservation authorities in conducting planning on a watershed basis.
It's also important to recognize that the provincial government has utilized the expertise of conservation authorities across Ontario to deliver environmental services and undertake programs for the acquisition and protection of Niagara Escarpment lands, sensitive wetlands, the Great Lakes shorelines and the management of other provincially significant natural features. As a result, more than 121,410 hectares have been designated conservation lands in Ontario, and nine million people, 90% of Ontario's population, now live now within the boundaries of a conservation authority.
The Hamilton Region Conservation Authority has not let the success of its past dictate its future. It has recognized Ontario's economic realities and has for years operated under a business plan designed to decrease dependency on provincial funding and to increase other revenue sources without placing undue strain on municipalities.
If I could draw your attention to the attached graphs which are in your folder, the attached graphs show the HRCA has managed to reduce to 10% the provincial contribution towards our combined budgets, while the municipal levies have been maintained at approximately 35%. The balance comes from other funding sources -- user fees, interest earned on reserves, special provincial and federal grants -- which over the past 15 years have increased to approximately 55% from 5%. Our future business plan calls for less dependency on the province, a stabilized municipal levy and an increase in new funding sources.
What our business plan did not anticipate was the possibility of drastic reductions in the municipal levy. We recognize that a hold-the-line municipal levy may not be realistic due to the provincial cutbacks faced by our municipal partners. Accordingly, numerous suggestions to our mandate and organizational structure were made, which has enabled us to lower our 1996 municipal levy requirements by approximately 15%.
However, if Bill 26 is adopted, municipalities would be obligated to match only the level of provincial transfer payments for the maintenance of flood control structures. Other environmental programs will be deemed discretionary and will be subject to negotiation with our municipal partners. On a provincial level, this could endanger the watershed network of 38 authorities. Limiting authority and municipal funding to the funding of flood control structures leaves a vacuum that over time, perhaps a short time, could result in the loss of lives and property damage far exceeding any savings from the imposed cuts.
While budgetary challenges have necessitated cutbacks in most provincially funded programs, the need to maintain an environmental legacy for future generations has not diminished. In fact, if growth resulting from fiscal cuts and the devolution of power does occur, as I'm sure the government hopes it will, there will be even more urgency to maintain the conservation authority's crucial role in protecting the environmental health of our province in the watersheds we serve.
It is for this reason we are urging the provincial government to rethink the implications of Bill 26. More specifically, we suggest the following:
(1) Currently, the appeal process is limited to section 21(h) -- and those are attached as addendum -- of the Conservation Authorities Act, which permits a member municipality to appeal the apportionment of a levy. The process could be broadened to allow an appeal when the majority of member municipalities consider the total amount of the levy unreasonable in light of municipal fiscal constraints.
(2) A change in the Assessment Act recognizing the significance of conservation authority holdings would have a tremendous budgetary impact. Currently, the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority pays more than $600,000 in realty taxes, plus charges for local improvements. Conservation authorities should not be forced to assume such a heavy tax burden. These lands have no developmental potential and are owned solely for the preservation of our environmentally sensitive areas and the enjoyment of the public.
(3) The HRCA, like other conservation authorities, has an enviable record of obtaining property through donations by landowners. However, the bottom line tax benefits to donors are minimal and legislative changes are badly needed to make it more attractive for potential donors to contribute property which would be invaluable to this province's environmental and economic future.
Most conservation authorities have charitable foundations which are established for the purpose of raising funds for the authority they serve. It is usually through these foundations that land donations are made. A large number of institutions that rely on charitable donations have been given the right to establish crown foundations. We believe this right should extend to conservation authority foundations. This would go a long way towards increasing donations of environmentally sensitive properties.
(4) We believe the intent of the proposed amendments to the Conservation Authorities Act contained within Bill 26 is to lessen the dependency of conservation authorities on provincial funding. We also believe it promotes an entrepreneurial spirit by encouraging conservation authorities to enter into partnerships and contractual agreements with member municipalities and other public and private sector organizations.
The proposed amendments and suggested ministerial regulations should in no way restrict conservation authorities from doing business, as long as negotiated partnerships and cooperative ventures meet the parameters set out in section 20 of the act, which deals with conservation authority objects. That is also attached as an addendum.
(5) It would be short-sighted to sell lands currently owned by conservation authorities and many authorities are facing this very real possibility. The preservation of our natural habitat, including environmentally sensitive areas, will be one of the primary ecological issues in the coming century. Locally, the conservation authority has been the agency to acquire environmentally sensitive lands. We want to continue our land acquisition program, and a change in the legislation which would allow us to debenture for the purpose of acquisition of environmentally sensitive holdings would help make this possible.
I should note that the majority, if not all, of those suggestions would come at little or no fiscal cost to the province or the taxpayers.
(6) The Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario made a presentation to the standing committee on general government on Tuesday, December 19. At the time, a written brief was submitted with recommendations on possible changes to Bill 26 respecting the Municipal Act, the Ontario Municipal Support Grants Act and the Conservation Authorities Act. The Hamilton Region Conservation Authority fully supports the ACAO's comments and we urge the standing committee to recommend approval of all of the suggestions. For your information, we have enclosed a copy of that brief.
We want to continue our environmental role in the Hamilton region and, as partners, work towards the high environmental standards this community deserves. A healthy society needs a healthy environment. We need the tools to make this possible. It is in this context that we ask you to give serious consideration to our submission. The suggested changes to Bill 26 will make this possible, without serious provincial fiscal implications.
The Chair: We have six minutes per caucus for questions. We'll begin the questions and response with the members of the opposition party.
Mr Phillips: I'll start off. I appreciate the brief. This morning we heard, as you may or may not be aware, from the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, and I thought it was a very compelling brief.
One of our challenges here, as you've seen today, is that we're ranging all over the place with the bill, so we have very little time, unfortunately, to devote to any one area. My understanding of the intent of what the government is doing here is, first, there's no question it is backing off on its funding for conservation authorities. They've made that very clear. They're cutting it from $34 million to $10 million and they have said, "We are going to provide funding for two things: flood control" -- I think I've got it right -- "and $2 million each year for maintenance of provincially significant conservation lands." Everything else is up to the municipalities.
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The second thing they're doing is making it dramatically easier for local municipalities to, I gather, disband conservation authorities by saying, first, we take off the conservation authority any provincially appointed people. You get it down just to the municipal people. Then I think it says they have to have a meeting to decide on this. Then I think the municipalities are faced with an interesting dilemma, because the conservation authority's funding is cut to a third of what it used to be, so what's their future role?
I'm wondering, does the conservation authority in this area support that portion of the bill that changes the intent of the conservation authorities as supported by the province, and should we be at all concerned about the proposals here that essentially force the vote on the preservation of the conservation authorities?
Mr Stacey: A loaded question. I appreciate it, and we'll certainly try to answer it, if the committee members will permit either Ben or me to field some answers here.
I don't think there's any question that the authorities realize that the province wants to get out of the conservation authority business. I guess there's a tinge of regret, if we can afford that in these fiscally difficult times, that a partnership between the province and the municipalities that has lasted 50 years is no longer, certainly, an equal partnership. However, I think we can probably live with that. I say that given the fact that we have taken, I think, an unconscionably large cut. We're obviously trying to focus on Bill 26 here, but I don't think you can remove our recommendations there from the fact that it goes along with a 70% cut to conservation authorities.
I certainly would put the question back to the province: Why among all the transfer agencies were we cut to that extent when other transfer agencies were cut perhaps in the range of 35% or 40%? Clearly, the province does not want to spend money on conservation authorities.
I think many authorities would be pleased to have closer ties with municipal governments. We certainly have in this region enjoyed good regional support, and I don't think we're afraid of strengthened ties, fiscally or otherwise, with our local municipalities. That's why we've asked for some of the changes we have in Bill 26. But we've had a double whammy, if you want, of very deep fiscal cuts that for many authorities will be impossible to sustain, plus the implications of Bill 26 which will, as you correctly say, put municipalities in a very difficult position. It will come down to whether or not they want to maintain the kinds of services that authorities have provided in the past. For the sake of $10 million or $20 million, I think it would be a shame to lose this model that has worked so well for so many years.
Mr Phillips: I'm personally very concerned about it. I wish that I personally had more time to perhaps understand the full implications of this. That's why we rely on conservation authorities to give us a hint.
What I'm concerned about, and the naturalists this morning raised it in fairly vivid terms for us, is that as the government's going through some very massive cuts in expenditures -- we've relied historically on the conservation authorities to be the custodian, if you will, of much of our environment. At the very time that all these changes are taking place, I see the conservation authority's role changing fairly fundamentally in some areas.
Maybe in some areas the municipalities will feel they can muster up the money to step in, but it's going to have to be new money, because you're losing, as you say, 70% of your funding from the province. But I suspect in the environment of all the other challenges they face, it's going to be difficult for them to find new money for conservation authorities. So we're going to see, I think, the risk of a fairly fundamental change, and when your back's against the wall, sometimes you do some unusual things. I appreciate you've got a really good relationship in this area, but the bill doesn't apply just to this area, frankly.
Are we putting at risk, in your opinion, in any significant way the environment across Ontario with these moves, or should we essentially say: "Look, don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal"?
Mr Stacey: I guess, Mr Phillips, I would throw it back to you, and without playing the role of Chicken Little and "The sky is falling," I think there's a very real possibility that there will be areas of the province that will not have authorities in the very near future because of this, because of fiscal cuts primarily. There will also be areas where municipalities will not pick up many of the regulatory and statutory obligations that authorities are currently being asked to do on behalf of the province. I would ask, then, who's going to be looking after life and property should flooding occur and should development that occurs on a watershed exacerbate some of the flooding conditions? The definition of funding that the province is going to continue related to dam maintenance is too narrow and it's certainly a very outdated view of what authorities do in order to maintain and integrate development with the environment.
The Chair: Sorry to interrupt, but we have to move into the time of the third party.
Mr Christopherson: Your very situation is probably the best example of the difficulty with Bill 26. Ordinarily, even in tough times, the environment is of such importance to the average Ontarian that when anything substantive is proposed to change the rules around dealing with our environment, there's a lot of attention paid. The fact that you've just been sort of lumped in to Bill 26 last here, there's no media here -- I'm not faulting anybody except the circumstances that got us to this point, and the government has to bear the responsibility for that. Again, I think there's more and more evidence that there ought to be longer hearings on this and I think the government is going to regret the way they've rammed this through, as they will regret ultimately what they did with Bill 7. However, that is that.
I also think it's important that we look at the example of Hamilton. We have a tremendous history to show the rest of the province in terms of the environment and what happened in the past and what's going on now and what it means for the future. I always point to our Hamilton harbour. That was the key ingredient for the steel industry and then other heavy manufacturing business and industries to come into this area because of the transportation network and the other benefits of being near a beautiful port like Hamilton and then into the Great Lakes system and access to international waterways.
There wasn't too much attention paid to the environment at that time, and when we look now at the billions, literally billions, of dollars that all three levels of government and the private sector are having to cough up now to try to reclaim our harbour, one can see that, had we had a chance to do it over again, I think we would do it somewhat differently, certainly not to the point where we would deny the industry, because that was the bread and butter of this area in terms of jobs and the economy, but we would be smart enough to realize that putting in some environmental protection would be good for business, good for the community, good for taxpayers in the long run. We learned that lesson.
I agree with Gerry Phillips that there's just not enough time to look at this in the way that it deserves, but my real fear here is that what we're seeing is short-term gain for long-term pain, which is really a turn and a twist on what Tories normally talk about when they're doing this sort of thing; they talk about short-term pain for long-term gain. It's reversed with the environment. They may save a few bucks now, they might make it easier to develop on some lands, and that may create a few short-term jobs, but in the long run, letting our environment go to the dogs is not in the best interests of business, the community or families. It's just not.
My question to you, so that we have it on the record, is worst-case scenario, and I offer up that it be the worst-case scenario. But in that scenario, what sorts of things could we be fearful of in the Hamilton-Wentworth area specifically? Not in generalities, but very specifically to our community, the broader community here, what sorts of things in a worst-case scenario might we be looking at if 26 is rammed through the way it is?
Mr Stacey: Perhaps I'll give Ben a chance to start comments on that.
Mr Ben Vanderbrug: I would say one of the key concerns we have is the lack of having a local organization that will look after the stewardship and look after the acquisition of environmentally sensitive areas. In our brief we made it very clear that this will be the prime environmental concern in the next century, and people may disagree. Arguments have been made that you don't buy land under these difficult economic circumstances. We take a different point of view: The buying of land, of environmentally sensitive property, is extremely important to the long-term health of this community and to the long-term health of the province. I'm very concerned that that may disappear if conservation authorities don't have the legislation that we have at the present.
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If I can just make another comment, Bill 26 will certainly have very serious ramifications. However, the amendments that we were suggesting and that the ACAO is suggesting won't cost the province all that much money, and we can work with Bill 26 if these amendments are being made. It's not a big deal. When the amendments are being made, we have the tools to again become an effective organization -- mind you, less responsible to the provincial government, but we already are in that mode anyway. We weaned ourselves away deliberately from the provincial purse, because we saw the handwriting on the wall. That's why right now only 10%, and with these cutbacks less than 5%, of our money comes through transfer payments. So we're well positioned to accept that provincial loss. But the potential loss of the municipal funding is crucial to us, and that's where I think Bill 26 needs to be looked at very carefully and where the very practical suggestions we've made for amendments should be taken into account.
Mr Sampson: Thank you very much for coming today. This morning we heard from the people representing the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. While they were concerned with respect to the sale of land, their concern was more with respect to the sale of land that had somehow been acquired by funds that weren't received from the province. I think they realized that within Bill 26 it said that if the land had been acquired by the use of provincial money, the minister must approve the sale of that land.
The drift of their suggestion to us was, "Listen, if we raise money privately and we acquire land using those proceeds, we also have to protect the sale of that property as well." Their suggestion to us -- actually, it wasn't in this committee; it was outside -- was, I think, that we might want to consider that somehow the people who provided the capital get the say as to whether the property should be sold, most of the money being raised by private donations from various sources. I think one of the ladies who spoke to us this morning had been a provider of significant capital to one of the authorities. Will that deal with the issue of the sale of land and your concern with the sale of significant property?
Mr Vanderbrug: I think in our case land acquisition is so important that the sale of land would be last thing we'd looking at as a way of balancing our budget. Especially in an urban area like Hamilton, it is crucial that we protect those lands.
There may be a few surplus properties where we were required to buy more than we really needed, as sometimes happens, where there may be a sliver of land that could be put on the open market. We've set up a special reserve, so the proceeds from that sale would be put in a land acquisition reserve for the purpose of more critical acquisitions. So I don't think the issue of us selling off lands that were supported by outside owners really is an issue, because it wouldn't happen here.
Mr Sampson: Let me switch then to the other side of the equation, which is the acquiring of the land and your suggestion to us that we consider something in the form of a debenture. How do you see that working?
Mr Stacey: If I could start off, I think one of the difficulties, and I guess there's a strength to it, is that we've had to buy land in today's dollars and pay it up front, even though the land and its uses are of use for many generations to come. I think it's accepted practice in many jurisdictions that even public land sales be spread over the user groups and the generations that will benefit from it. So that's really the intent of asking for an opportunity to debenture rather than have to pay full cash value. Mind you, it's left us debt-free, so certainly that's an advantage, but I think, coming into these difficult fiscal times, debenturing is really an answer.
Mr Sampson: I would have thought that being debt-free in these difficult fiscal times was an advantage. It's certainly something I wish we had in the province here.
Would you see the conservation authority being solely responsible for repaying this debenture, or do you see the province having to stand behind the paper, saying, "I'm here too," in case the authority --
Mr Vanderbrug: Our land acquisition program, and we are perhaps one of the few authorities still buying land, is almost entirely funded by outside sources; there is no taxpayers' money involved.
Mr Sampson: Currently, yes.
Mr Vanderbrug: The only concern we have, and I think Mr Stacey alluded to it, is that sometimes that money may not be available at the moment you need it. If at that point you can debenture or go to the bank and borrow and pay it back whenever funding is coming in from outside sources, that is really what we are talking about.
The Chair: Thank you. Sorry, Mr Sampson. We have come to the end of the time.
I want to thank you gentlemen for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.
Mr Phillips: I move we are here for another half-hour.
The Chair: I am not going to entertain that motion.
A quick announcement just to let everyone know that I have collected from committee members the confidential police documents which were given to us, and we've handed them back to the police officers. Mr Christopherson did that on his own.
Another note for members leaving on the bus: Could you go there quickly. They would like to get away as quickly as possible.
Mr Agostino: You guys don't want to hang around in Hamilton, eh?
Mr Young: A point of order, Mr Chair: It is an administrative order, but it is important to me. I was using my notebook computer here for a couple of days and have all my notes for the last two days on it. Today I was told that I couldn't use it. I have had my executive assistant call to the Clerk's office in Toronto, and I realize it is secondhand but they did say it's up to the Chair. There is no rule in the House or anything; it's up to the Speaker in the House, and I understand that is a different issue. But on the road it is a little bit different. It's a very valuable tool, it's fairly unobtrusive, and I would appreciate being able to get a power source to this so I can use it. The battery is run down right now.
The Chair: Mr Young, if you will permit me the latitude, I'll consider that on the weekend and make a ruling on Monday morning.
Mr Young: I'll bring it with me, just in case.
The Chair: The committee is adjourned until Monday morning at 9 o'clock.
The subcommittee adjourned at 1809.