FEWER POLITICIANS ACT, 1996 / LOI DE 1996 RÉDUISANT LE NOMBRE DE DÉPUTÉS
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO MUNICIPAL ASSOCIATION
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO ASSOCIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE
THUNDER BAY COALITION AGAINST POVERTY
ONTARIO SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' FEDERATION, DRYDEN-SIOUX LOOKOUT-IGNACE DIVISION
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO WOMEN'S DECADE COUNCIL
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO SMALL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
CONTENTS
Thursday 21 November 1996
Fewer Politicians Act, 1996, Bill 81, Mr David Johnson / Loi de 1996 réduisant le nombre de députés, projet de loi 81, M. David Johnson
Mr Robert Davidson
Mr William Salonen
Mr Gordon Griffiths
Mr Jim Dunphy
Mr Hubert Morrison
Mr Craig Nuttall
Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association
Mr Gordon Armstrong
Canada's New Democrats
Mr Iain Angus
Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce
Mr Dick MacKenzie
Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty
Ms Chris Mather
Ms Florence Buffington
Kenora Board of Education
Mrs Marion Helash
Mr Dean Carrie
Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, Dryden-Sioux Lookout-Ignace Division
Mr Jim Follis
Mr Brian Kenny
Mrs Darlene Guinn
Mrs Lynn Beyak
Northwestern Ontario Women's Decade Council
Ms Chris Mather
Mr Udo Staschik
Northwestern Ontario Small Business Association
Mr Douglas Guinn
Town of Fort Frances
Mr Glenn Witherspoon
Mrs Sharon Tibbs
Mr Deane Cunningham
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT
Chair / Président: Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls PC)
Mr JackCarroll (Chatham-Kent PC)
*Mr HarryDanford (Hastings-Peterborough PC)
Mr JimFlaherty (Durham Centre / -Centre PC)
Mr BernardGrandmaître (Ottawa East / -Est L)
*Mr ErnieHardeman (Oxford PC)
Mr RosarioMarchese (Fort York ND)
Mr BartMaves (Niagara Falls PC)
Mrs SandraPupatello (Windsor-Sandwich L)
*Mrs LillianRoss (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC)
Mr MarioSergio (Yorkview L)
*Mr R. GaryStewart (Peterborough PC)
*Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre / -Centre PC)
*Mr LenWood (Cochrane North / -Nord ND)
*Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre / -Centre PC)
*In attendance /présents
Substitutions present /Membres remplaçants présents:
Mr MichaelBrown (Algoma-Manitoulin L) for Mr Sergio
Mr SteveGilchrist (Scarborough East / -Est PC) for Mr Flaherty
Mr MichaelGravelle (Port Arthur L) for Mr Grandmaître
Mr HowardHampton (Rainy River ND) for Mr Marchese
Mr JohnHastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC) for Mr Carroll
Mr FrankMiclash (Kenora L) for Mrs Pupatello
Clerk / Greffière: Ms Lynn Mellor
Staff / Personnel: Mr Ted Glenn, research officer, Legislative Research Service
G-2463
The committee met at 0900 in the Best Western Motor Inn, Dryden.
FEWER POLITICIANS ACT, 1996 / LOI DE 1996 RÉDUISANT LE NOMBRE DE DÉPUTÉS
Consideration of Bill 81, An Act to reduce the number of members of the Legislative Assembly by making the number and boundaries of provincial electoral districts identical to those of their federal counterparts and to make consequential amendments to statutes concerning electoral representation / Projet de loi 81, Loi visant à réduire le nombre des députés à l'Assemblée législative en rendant identiques le nombre et les limites des circonscriptions électorales provinciales et fédérales et à apporter des modifications corrélatives à des lois concernant la représentation électorale.
The Acting Chair (Mr John Hastings): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, members of the public. We'll get this session of the standing committee on general government going. We have our first deputation here. Before we proceed, Mr Miclash would like to say a few words of introduction.
Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I would just like to welcome all the committee members and the people from Toronto to Dryden. I know that for a good number of people who are here today, it's their first trip to Dryden. I hope it's an enjoyable one and wish you all the very best in your stay in Kenora riding. Again, thanks for coming to Dryden, and we look forward to the hearings.
ROBERT DAVIDSON
The Acting Chair: Mr Davidson, would you please identify yourself for the record. You have about 20 minutes. If you want to take up all that time, fine, or if you want to be more brief and allow for questions, we're at your disposal -- however you want to use the time.
Mr Robert Davidson: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before I begin my presentation, I'd like to thank the members of the riding and the association for allowing me to make this presentation here this morning.
The last 10 years have been tumultuous, challenging, invigorating and marked by change. Restructuring is happening across the province in most areas of the public and private sectors. Currently the public sector must deal with the challenge of an unprecedented deficit reduction initiative. Bill 81 has determined a reduction of some 27 members of provincial Parliament across Ontario, reflecting savings of several million dollars and a shift to greater empowerment for municipal governments.
Our strength for the most part comes from NOMA, FONOM, and ultimately AMO, who bring our concerns to the provincial government and assist us in many ways to understand the position of our government.
Recently, Northern Development and Mines Minister Chris Hodgson assured us that we would be treated fairly. Our direct contact to the minister's office and our northern representative, Bill Murdoch, are most encouraging when our concerns require immediate attention.
In summary, when change is all about us, cost-management efficiencies are the order of the day, not only by the province but also the day-to-day operations of our communities. Therefore, in my view, Bill 81 does seek out additional efficiencies for Ontario taxpayers and should be considered a positive indicator for our province.
I take this opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to commend our provincial government for its courage to care and once again give some meaning to the word "Ontario."
The Acting Chair: We have about 15 minutes, so we divide it with five minutes each for each caucus, starting with the Liberals.
Mr Miclash: Thank you very much for your presentation, Reeve Davidson. You mentioned Bill Murdoch's name. Bill is the northern development parliamentary assistant, the parliamentary assistant to Chris Hodgson, and he has indicated that he will be voting against this legislation. Were you aware of that?
Mr Davidson: He will be voting against this legislation?
Mr Miclash: Yes. He has indicated that on the public record.
Mr Davidson: I wasn't aware of that.
Mr Miclash: Well, he certainly has. He was one of the authors of the document A Voice for the North. He and a number of members travelled the area before the last provincial election, and in that document they indicated that the north needed more representation, not less. He was very clear on that and very clear in that document. This was the document A Voice for the North, authorized by the now Premier during the past campaign, in which they were selling the fact that northerners needed more of a voice at Queen's Park. Were you not aware of the document A Voice for the North, copublished by Bill Murdoch, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Northern Development and Mines?
Mr Davidson: Not that specific document, Mr Miclash. I can't say as I'm totally familiar with it.
Mr Miclash: What I'm saying is that what we were getting here in northern Ontario was A Voice for the North, a document being sold to northerners, but that's not exactly what the entire province was getting. For you to make comments such as this, saying that Bill Murdoch is effectively representing you when he tells us that he does not support this legislation -- I'm confused.
Mr Davidson: I'm not sure what he tells you, Mr Miclash, but I know Mr Murdoch personally and he takes our concerns to the province in a proficient and timely manner.
Mr Miclash: Reeve, I'm confused. You don't have a concern about this, yet Mr Murdoch has said he's going to vote against this legislation. Is he effectively representing your views at Queen's Park?
Mr Davidson: I expect he would be.
Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): One of the concerns northern people might have -- to be clear about this legislation, the province is reducing the number of provincial ridings by about 20%. In northwestern Ontario, the province is reducing the number of constituencies by 40%. You have no concerns that the influence of northern people, not just in this government but in any government which may follow this government, will be diminished? You think that won't affect northern people and their representation, to lose 20% more of their constituencies than the rest of the province?
Mr Davidson: I don't think it will have a tremendous effect. In these days of restructuring, as you're probably well aware or should be, the efficiencies we're looking at across the province are absolutely necessary. If I didn't believe that -- I may not be in favour of this bill, but as a result of that restructuring process and the massive deficit we've incurred in the last number of years, we have to do something and we have to do it very quickly.
Mr Michael Brown: No one is suggesting that restructuring is not a good idea. No one is suggesting that the world remains identical to what it was a year ago, even. What we are suggesting is that in the federal experience, when they looked at how the boundaries of Canada would be redrawn -- and that's an important point: the boundaries of Canada, that there would be adequate representation for all areas of Canada. In the mix in Canada, we don't fare badly in northern Ontario.
You have to understand that places like Prince Edward Island have four MPs in Canada for what is essentially one seat anywhere else in Canada. The same applies to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. So rural northern areas in Canada, in the Canadian context, are represented quite well. In the context of Ontario, we are losing a dramatic amount of representation. Do you think that makes sense? Why didn't the province of Ontario have an electoral commission to do this?
Mr Davidson: I guess the other thing you have to reflect on, Mr Brown, is the fact that bringing these provincial riding boundaries in line with the federal should also show some efficiencies at election time: polling stations and so on.
Mr Michael Brown: If that's the argument, the obvious thing to do is to hold provincial and federal and municipal elections on the same day. Do like the Americans do: Elect your dogcatcher on the same day you're electing the Prime Minister of Canada and the Premier of Ontario. I find that argument to be less than convincing. Would you be in favour of having municipal, provincial, federal and dogcatcher elections on the same day?
Mr Davidson: When you talk about the area of the north, we have a lot of vast area up here, covered with a lot of lakes and forests and so on. I'm wondering if the per capita representation of ridings in the north is equal to those in the south.
Mr Michael Brown: You would be pleased --
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Brown. Mr Wood?
Mr Michael Brown: Thank you, Mr Hastings. You've been most generous.
0910
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): Thank you for your presentation. I can see through this that you're putting a lot of respect for Chris Hodgson and Bill Murdoch in, saying they will represent the north when there are five fewer representatives for northern Ontario. Over the last 16 months, from what I can see, and I'm the parliamentary critic for northern development and mines and tourism, I haven't seen any interest or any want on their behalf to represent northern Ontario at the Premier's level. All we've seen is an attack on transportation, an attack on the amount of money being spent on roads, the amount of transfers going to municipalities. They should be speaking out for northern Ontario, saying, "Well, 80% of the land mass of the province is within northern Ontario," yet they're not speaking out as a voice for northern Ontario, from what I've been able to gather, since 1995 when they were elected. I just wondered if you wanted to comment on that.
Mr Davidson: Very briefly, Mr Wood, we're talking about efficiencies in Ontario. Many times I think that focus gets lost in other political debate. I've listened to the House with a fair bit of interest in the last number of months. It's efficiencies we're talking about. If you want to believe this province doesn't have a massive deficit that needs to be dealt with, maybe you're right, but I don't share that view with you. I think we've got a problem and I think it has to be moved along rather quickly to get this province back on track. I don't think you can argue that, can you?
Mr Len Wood: The debt and deficit were there in --
Mr Davidson: Can you argue that?
Mr Len Wood: I'm not arguing that the debt and deficit don't have to be brought under control, but why should northern Ontario --
Mr Davidson: Is it real?
Mr Len Wood: Why should northern Ontario pay the full price?
Mr Davidson: Is that deficit real?
Mr Len Wood: In 1992, there was --
Mr Davidson: I asked you, is that deficit real?
Mr Len Wood: Sure, the debt is real.
Mr Davidson: Then we have to deal with it.
Mr Len Wood: We've seen that over the last 50 years, the Conservative government borrowed each and every year $42 billion before they left office in 1985. The Liberals borrowed each and every year and the NDP borrowed each and every year. But that $50 billion or $60 billion of debt, accumulating up to $100 billion, can't be paid back on the backs of northern Ontarians, as far as I'm concerned.
I'll just give you a statement. In 1992 the Harris Conservatives, at that time, when they were the third party, brought forward a private member's resolution proposing to limit the geographic areas of constituencies in Ontario to reflect the varying conditions and circumstances and requirements regarding representation as between rural and urban electoral districts. That particular resolution passed. If you go back to 1983, when there was a Conservative government, they were saying at that time that northern Ontario should be respected with a minimum of 15 seats in northern Ontario, and I'm just wondering what has changed so drastically.
If you're looking at eliminating five provincial members of Parliament, you're talking about $2.3 million in actual wages lost. At the same time, the present government is going to go out and borrow $22 billion and add to the debt so they can give the wealthiest people in Ontario a tax break. I'm just wondering where the common sense is in all of this spend, spend, spend, at the same time as northern Ontario is going to lose representation.
Mr Davidson: It may not be easy, Mr Wood, to grapple with those questions. You either have to believe it or you don't. I happen to believe there's a deficit.
Mr Len Wood: We all believe there's a deficit.
Mr Davidson: I think Ontario is in trouble, and we're going to come out of it, but I think we have to get on with it and somehow get away from this backbiting and internal fighting among parties. I don't like to hear that when I see it on the television. It gives me a lot of concern because it cuts into a lot of progress. I think we need progress, not opposition to sound, well-thought-out ideas.
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): I think we should correct the record. The NDP is having major trouble with the numbers again. We did not borrow $42 billion every year. When the NDP took over from the Liberals in 1985 the debt was $42 billion. I'm not supporting government debt -- we're trying to get rid of government debt -- but you have your figures wrong, Mr Wood.
Interjection.
Mr Young: Yes. That's when you took over from the Liberals. That's not what Bill Davis left this province, or Frank Miller.
Mr Michael Brown: What did Bill Davis do?
Mr Young: I want to talk to you, Mr Davidson, about representation because I'm fairly new at this job. I've been on the job 17 months. I have about 100,000 constituents, 72,000 voters, and I'm thinking how they contact me.
First of all, the number of them who contact me directly, other than running into them in the grocery store and stuff in the riding, is really only about 1% to 2%. Of that, about 80% is by telephone and about 10% is by fax and letter and then probably a little under 10% is in person. What I'm trying to understand is, what does representation mean? Does it mean that you talk to every person in person? In reality, my constituents all live within a 25-minute drive of my office, but it's a fact of modern life and modern technology that people use the telephone and they use the mail. It's also modern lifestyle. People are too busy.
I'm trying to understand the difference that the distance creates and I'm not sure it makes that much difference when you're contacting your representative by telephone, by letter or by fax. I want to ask you, in your view, isn't real representation the most important issue, the performance of the member of Parliament, that is, somebody who answers their letters, somebody who returns their phone calls, somebody who takes your personal issue to Queen's Park to go to bat for you or someone who takes northern issues, the voice of the north, to Queen's Park to go to bat for you? Isn't that the most critical part of representation?
Mr Davidson: I would have to agree with that, Mr Young. On that point, since I've been reeve of Atikokan and I'm going on my second term there now, I've not seen our member at a council meeting in six years.
Mr Young: That's a shame.
Mr Davidson: We try and reach those people, but --
Mr Miclash: Who is your rep?
Mr Davidson: The Rainy River riding, Frank, has a representative there.
Mr Miclash: Represented by?
Mr Davidson: Howard Hampton.
Mr Miclash: I just want to get that straight.
Mr Young: This is my time.
Mr Miclash: I just wanted to get that on the record.
Mr Davidson: We've got northern development and mines people working out of our community who are a direct link from the people to the government on special initiatives that residents may or may not have. The fibre optics work that's going to take place in telecommunications is going to further enhance the less need for politicians across the province, and I think we should all get behind that initiative and look at it as a positive thing, as a cost saver. If somehow that money could be diverted over to the health care side of things, that would be a tremendous step forward for all of us.
Mr Len Wood: It's more for tax breaks for the wealthy.
Mr Davidson: Yes, but how do we know that? I didn't see anything in writing that tells me that, Mr Wood.
Mr Len Wood: It was in the last budget.
The Acting Chair: Mr Wood, please. Mr Young has the floor.
Mr Young: Steve, do you have question?
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Thank you.
The Acting Chair: One minute, Mr Gilchrist.
Mr Gilchrist: I'll be very brief. I just wanted to highlight something and get your feedback. One of the things that this bill does is undo at least a decade of failure to recognize the shifting population across the province. It really has to be put on the record that the part of Ontario that loses the most seats is Metro Toronto. It loses the most in absolute terms and it loses the most in terms of percentage in the House because, quite frankly, there's been greater growth in the 905 area around Toronto than within Toronto itself.
Right now, Mr Hampton -- you brought up Rainy River -- represents 19,000 voters; Mr Palladini represents 129,000. Do you think it's fair that one member would have six and a quarter times the workload of another member, and do you think that would more than offset whatever geographical realities face Mr Hampton up here?
Mr Davidson: That's a valid statement, Mr Gilchrist, and that was the point I was trying to make to Mr Wood here, that those numbers are certainly not equitable when you compare them and that there is a need to address that. I think the people of Ontario are very pleased with that move that the province is doing, looking at it as another efficiency that needs to be done.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Davidson, for coming in today and appearing before the committee. We appreciate your comments.
0920
WILLIAM SALONEN
The Acting Chair: Would our next deputant come up, the mayor of Dryden, Mr Salonen. Welcome, Mayor Salonen.
Mr William Salonen: Good morning and welcome to Dryden. I'm very happy that this committee has come to northwestern Ontario to hear our point of view. I don't like the idea of giving out my brief. It's not a good teaching technique to give you material because maybe you won't pay attention, you'll be reading or shuffling, but since the young lady asked for it, I gave it to you.
In my past life, I was a teacher. Just to update you, I'm now starting my last year of my second term as mayor of Dryden and, prior to that, I was a councillor for eight years.
As you know, northern Ontario has only a very small voice in the Who Does What panel and on its panels. In fact, I don't believe we have any elected officials at all giving input into the Who Does What process.
This fact is very obvious when one reads the recommendations from the Who Does What committee on the issue of educational reform. This panel "recommended that the number of school boards be substantially reduced to be consistent with regional and county boundaries." Here in northwestern Ontario we do not have regional government; nor do we have counties. We are wondering where we fit in this recommendation.
Therefore, I am very pleased to see the committee here in Dryden this morning. You will have the opportunity to hear from Ontarians from the northwestern part of this great province and to get our views at first hand.
I will say at the outset that I am not in favour of reducing the number of ridings in northern Ontario. I will base my short presentation on three words -- and from hearing Mr Davidson I wish my presentation was longer. There'd be less time for questions. I repeat, I will base my short presentation on three words: "consideration," "land mass" and "geography."
The proponents of the redistribution legislation want the ridings to be based on population. In a large province, such as ours, I feel other considerations must be taken into account. I would like to present to this committee a comparison of two ridings to accent my point.
Let us take the proposed riding of Kenora-Rainy River and compare it to the riding of Don Valley East, which is a mid-Toronto riding. The population of the Kenora-Rainy River riding would be some 75,000 while the Don Valley East riding is 107,421. On the surface, one representative for each of these groups of people seems fair. But let us take into consideration land mass and geography.
In the Don Valley East riding, one could drive from the east boundary to the west boundary in 10 minutes, from the north boundary to the south boundary in 10 minutes, and I would think that it would not take much longer than 10 minutes to get to Queen's Park from anywhere in the riding.
Now let us look at the Kenora-Rainy River riding. From the east boundary to the west boundary is 500 kilometres, at least a five-hour drive. From the southern boundary to the northern boundary is 920 kilometres. You can't drive it. There are no roads to many of the northern reserves. A car and a plane trip is many hours, depending on where one would begin the air portion of the journey: Red Lake, Sioux Lookout or Pickle Lake. The representative also has the travel from Queen's Park to the airport before three hours of air travel to get to the riding.
If Ontarians are to be treated fairly, the factors of land mass and geography must be taken into consideration.
It is my belief that much of the interaction that an MPP has is with local governing bodies. In the Don Valley East riding, the MPP has one mayor, one council and one bureaucracy to interact with. A Kenora-Rainy River riding MPP would have 26 mayors or reeves, 26 councils, 26 bureaucracies and 50 chiefs and 50 band councils as well as numerous local roads boards to liaise with. Due consideration should be given to this fact.
Other governing bodies in Canada have given consideration to geography. I point to the majority of the national curling championships. Each province and territory, along with a team from northern Ontario, compete at a majority of the major events.
The Canadian Hockey Association, whose headquarters are in Ottawa, recognizes a branch from each province except for Ontario. In Ontario there are three branches: the Ontario Hockey Association, the Ottawa District Amateur Hockey Association and the Thunder Bay Amateur Hockey Association. The Thunder Bay Amateur Hockey Association boundaries include the area we know as northwestern Ontario, and we are given the same rules, regulations and respect as every province in Canada.
My point is that representation by population does not always make sense, and I believe these governing bodies have taken other factors into consideration.
Another example, which I heard earlier this morning, is Prince Edward Island, with some 94,000 electors. They have four federal ridings and 26 provincial ridings. If representation by population was the criterion used for seats, where would the Prince Edward Islanders be?
In the case of northern Ontario, I truly believe that consideration to land mass and geography must be taken into consideration. Therefore, I conclude that the Kenora and Rainy River ridings should remain as separate entities.
We all understand that our fiscal House must be brought in order. Not too many months ago I saw a political cartoon that pointed at the restructuring of business and government. It was three pictures and it only had three words. They were "downsize, rightsize, capsize." Thank you.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mayor Salonen. We have five minutes per caucus and we'll start this round with the New Democrats.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for our presentation, which is a completely different opinion from the other town that presented just prior to this.
Along the lines of your presentation, in some of the ridings in the north, 40 out of the 50 states would be smaller than some of the ridings that we have in northern Ontario. I know the Kenora-Rainy River riding is going to be huge. One of the ridings that I represent now would be enlarged to make sure that the member would have to travel about 760 kilometres from one end of the riding to the other to be able to represent the people.
I'll just go back to some of the comments I made earlier. It's kind of interesting that in 1992 the Harris Conservatives introduced a resolution asking for the limit on the geographic areas in the boundaries of Ontario during the next redistribution, and then a short time later just did a reversal of it, even though the federal redistribution is going to mean an increase of four ridings in Ontario. It's going to go from 99 to 103, whereas Mike Harris and his Conservatives are saying that they're going to reduce from 130 down to -- originally it was 99, now it's 103.
You said quite clearly in your presentation that you don't think it's fair to northern Ontario. I'm just going to give you an opportunity to elaborate a little more on that if you want to, and then I'll have another question probably.
Mr Salonen: Some of those facts I did not realize. To my way of thinking, so many other factors have to be put into the equation before one can make a judgement. I tried to emphasize this morning some of the factors one must consider. One must also consider, if this riding was restructured, whoever represented the riding of Kenora-Rainy River -- I sure wouldn't want that kind of job -- to truly represent those people, you would hardly ever be at home. Your home life would be next to nil once you came back from Queen's Park to visit.
There are very simple things, one might think, but to the people making the request, they are important: 100th birthdays, 90th birthdays, those kind of things. If the representative is in the riding, I know the representatives here try to attend those kind of things, and to go from one end of the riding to the other and represent the people fairly would almost be an impossibility.
0930
Mr Len Wood: We heard the comment from the previous presenter that Howard Hampton did not attend council meetings. I personally represent Cochrane North right now where I have the municipalities and towns as well as reserves where the chiefs and band councillors have meetings, the town councillors have meetings.
I feel with sitting in the Legislature six months of the year or seven months of the year and being back in the riding it's physically impossible to attend very many of the town council meetings. If you do attend regularly, you're talking about 18 or 20 meetings a month that you're going to have to attend of local council meetings. I just wonder if you have a comment on that, because representing the north, I know that it's physically impossible to attend all of these particular council meetings.
Mr Salonen: Regarding council meetings, I don't know if I would expect a representative to attend council meetings, but I know our representative does attend meetings of council, not on our council night, and we have a chit-chat.
Mr Len Wood: Yes, I do the same thing.
Mr Young: Thank you, Mayor, and thanks for letting us come to your nice city. It's the first time I've been here and I'm learning a lot more every time I come up to the north.
Mr Salonen: I wish you would have landed in Sault Ste Marie and driven up here and took a real close look.
Mr Young: Exactly, you get a real idea. That's right.
You made a comment that none of the government members have input into the Who Does What panel. I want to tell you, because I think it's very important, last spring we had a series of caucus meetings on Saturdays from 9 till 3 roughly, six-hour meetings, a series of them, where caucus members came and debated thoroughly who should do what and who would pay for what. I want you to understand that. That was as far back as the spring, and there have been numerous other opportunities to discuss those issues. So I want to assure that that is not happening.
It seems that your concerns and the power of your argument is based on the distance and the drive times between communities in the north, and yet the reeve of Atikokan has told us this morning that the current representative of Rainy River has never attended a council meeting in Atikokan. So what would change?
Mr Salonen: Maybe the representative.
Mr Harry Danford (Hastings-Peterborough): That's kind of hard to follow up on. But with that in mind, and we talk about geographic areas as well as population, I guess I'll speak to it directly and use an example. I have the largest riding in southern Ontario, I believe. It's a rural riding. It takes in two counties. The new riding would take in actually three, if I ran where I reside. You spoke about, and it has been made evident this morning, other representation as far as council meetings and that sort of thing are concerned. I think it's in the organization and how the member deals with their constituents and how they deal with their riding.
In our case, I have 34 municipalities. I meet with them twice a year on a regular basis, every one of them. They all have their chance to bring their issues. It's their agenda; it's a wide-open discussion. There are many ways to deal with large areas as far as that is concerned and allow the right feedback to come to us as MPPs so that we can take those concerns to Queen's Park. I just wonder how you'd respond to that sort of thing.
Mr Salonen: Do you have one meeting where several councils come together or do you go to each council separately?
Mr Danford: We do it in groups, because I think we as MPPs have to make the best use of our time so that we represent the overall interests of the people.
The other thing I'd like to mention -- I don't know how much time I've got left -- is that municipal councils, I still feel, are very accountable to the public because they're very close to the public and therefore they bring the public's interest and I think it's the best avenue for us as MPPs to take that back to Queen's Park. That's why I develop it that way. As I say, we meet regularly twice a year and then as needed, and I attend council meetings as well. I think there are ways to do this. It's in the organization of the member and how they proceed with it.
Mr Salonen: I agree there are ways to do it, except the area we're talking about is so spread out. We have these sessions with our municipal association, the Kenora district association; Rainy River district also has their meeting; and then we get together at NOMA, the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, as you understand. We have those kinds of meetings. Our representative comes to Dryden. They're not at council meetings, but we have a meeting of council with our representative. We also do that with our federal rep and I know they do it with the other organizations within the Kenora district.
It would be a lot of travelling, especially for the reserves. There are many I've never gone to. That is a real commitment. I know that much of the work with reserves is a federal responsibility but there also is provincial responsibility. If you were doing what you are doing, you would be a representative who is doing what I would think should be done in meeting with the municipalities. I agree that we're the closest to the people.
Mr Danford: I appreciate that comment.
Mr Miclash: Thank you, Mayor Salonen, for your presentation. As you were indicating, in the combination of the two ridings, it would certainly become a challenge to represent that one third of the provincial land mass, as has been indicated a good number of times. You've indicated the distance as well. I have to say that when the House leader introduced this legislation I asked him what the distance from Fort Severn to Rainy River was. I don't think he could have told me exactly that it was 700 kilometres from one corner of the riding to the other corner of the riding. You bring forth some good points in terms of both land mass and geography.
Morley Kells is a Conservative MPP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, and I have here one of his reports from Queen's Park. We've seen these in the ridings of all the members throughout Ontario. In his report he indicates that at Queen's Park power is centralized in the office of Premier Mike Harris and very little is shared with the cabinet. During the last campaign, Mr Harris had indicated that he would "work closely with northern municipalities to forge a new and better working relationship." Have you seen that work on behalf of the Premier's office?
Mr Salonen: No.
Mr Miclash: How do you think that could be changed?
Mr Salonen: Someone from Toronto should be getting that information out, I assume. We get enough paper already, but we're a paper town, so we don't mind. Just keep it coming. It is a lot of responsibility just to read all the material and I haven't read that particular bit of literature.
Mr Miclash: So you don't feel that the Premier is actually following up on the commitment that he would work closely. I guess another commitment he made is that he would reduce the downloading on municipalities. In your view, has he done that? He indicates that he would have a working relationship that would keep northern municipalities in mind and that the downloading would be taken into consideration and reduced to municipalities. Have you see that happen?
Mr Salonen: I haven't seen it happen yet, but all of the results of the Who Does What panel have not come out and that to me is a real concern. Everything seems to be backing up against this big dam with all this information coming in regarding policing and regarding restructuring, regarding welfare. We don't know what's going to happen and some time pretty soon it's got to be released. This dam's going to burst.
For example, we're talking restructuring around Dryden with our neighbour Barclay and with some unincorporated areas etc, and if the policing issue is settled, I think it's going to make a big difference to some of these people of how they're going to consider restructuring. It just keeps building up and building up. We hear recommendations from the Crombie committee that are going to the government and then we hear reaction to the recommendations, and we don't know what's happening. All we're getting is a lot of literature and a lot of confused information. We get the one side; we get a retraction. To me, for a municipal councillor, it's very difficult right now. I'd like to see, hopefully -- we've heard by the end of November -- that the government is going to let us know what's what.
Mr Young: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I wonder if we could ask Mr Miclash, because he's quoting from a document, if he would table that document for the committee.
Mr Miclash: It was a brochure during the campaign. I will certainly find that information --
Mr Young: I understand what it is. I wonder if you could table it so the rest of the committee members could look at it.
The Acting Chair: Would you consider tabling it?
Mr Miclash: He went on to say as part of the new relationship --
Mr Young: No, I'm not interested in giving you more time. I'd like to read it myself.
The Acting Chair: Mr Miclash, would you consider --
Mr Miclash: We will certainly table it, yes.
The Acting Chair: We're out of time. Thank you, Mayor Salonen, for appearing before the committee, and thank you for your witty and incisive responses as well.
Our next deputant is Mr Brunner from the Kenora Federation of Agriculture. Is he here? No.
0940
GORDON GRIFFITHS
The Acting Chair: Mr Griffiths, would you like to come to the table and make your submission? Identify yourself for the record and --
Mr Gordon Griffiths: Do I get 40 minutes, then?
The Acting Chair: I think you still get 20. You can use it however you wish for your whole submission or whatever is left we'll split up among the three caucuses.
Mr Griffiths: First of all, good morning. I'm pleased to be able to make this presentation this morning. I'm Gordon Griffiths. I ran as a candidate in the last election for the PCs and I had to address this issue to myself way back when the Common Sense Revolution came out. I'd like to make some comments as to how I analysed this myself, without even talking about party lines.
Democracy is people. People make democracy, not land mass. People have a chance to vote. We talk about majorities; it's up to people, if they want to take the opportunity to vote, to stand up and be counted. But democracy is people, not land mass, and we cannot forget that. Northern Ontario isn't different from any other place in a democratic society.
We live in a democracy up here in the north. As I was thinking about it, it's become, I think, politically popular for some of the opposition members to whine and complain about how we're treated in the north, and many people are starting to believe it. Again, I disagree. We have some differences in the north, yes we do, and it's distances between communities. We don't have the population that you have in the south, but we have a lot of similarities too. I go back again to democracy, not land mass.
A lot of the problems or difficulties, the way I see it, that we have in the north are with bureaucracy in Toronto when they are trying to make decisions on legislation and policies. It's not with representation, it's not with the MPPs; there are other difficulties.
That's where it brings up another point. Do people in the north know what they're talking about when they're talking about representation? I think that is where we have a difficulty. People are frustrated today, yes, but is it with representation or is it with service? I think there's a difference there. Representation in a democracy is by people, and with the proposed legislation we are being treated fairly in a democracy. Service is something different. When we have these difficulties that I'm speaking about with some of the bureaucrats, that's now service. Mike Harris has always spoken about service: service in government and service with the MPPs also. It's up to the MPP to make sure they have an organization in place to deal with these issues. You need staff. How many times does the MPP actually go and deal with problems in a constituency? It's a staff member who does it. We're talking about service.
I think the frustration in the north -- there was a benchmark in the north set a few years ago by a fellow by the name of Leo Bernier. When I talk to people about amalgamated ridings they say, "Yes, if Leo was running there would be no problem." There's a benchmark. When you have people of the right quality with the right feeling, right here, you're there for the right reason, you can get the job done.
I think it's more the quality, not the quantity. I believe that through that period of time that I was speaking about, everyone in the province knew where northern Ontario was, knew all about northern Ontario. People are being frustrated because, yes, we've lost some ground. We have lost some ground.
My other point is when you talk about the numbers. We lose five in the north, 22 in the south. After Leo retired, we had a rookie MPP sitting on the government side of the House after that next election. Maybe if there were fewer people you wouldn't be referred to as "what's his name in the back row." There would be fewer people and it would be a lot easier to get your job done.
There's a football game coming up on Sunday. I don't want to talk about the outcome of it, but I think Toronto has the edge. If, before the game, the officials said to the Edmonton Eskimos, "If you will send five of your players back to the dressing room, we will send 22 Toronto Argonauts back to the dressing room," what do you think would happen? I don't think they've got to go back to the locker room for that one. If I was representing this area, I would look forward to having fewer people down here, and this is the way I analysed it before the last election. I think this is great for northern Ontario. I think it's good for the mayors; I think it's good for various organizations. There are fewer people down here to compete with.
You people are MPPs. You know that even within your own parties there's competition: This riding wants this, this riding wants that. The less people, the better. Get a roomful of people and try and solve something. The more people, the more difficult it becomes. I would look forward to having less, as I'm talking about with the football game; there are going to be less people there whom you have to work with and convince to get things for your riding.
I also think as the ridings are larger we would see more commonsense decisions being made. I disagree with some of the expenditures of the last government, but we've seen moneys going into ridings where there was a member on the government side of the House. If the ridings are larger, maybe we'll have some more common sense. If there's work needed in another area, maybe it will get done and the money won't go just to support that candidate in the next election.
I also say that if people feel they can't do the job, don't run. It's very simple. I wonder too at the message that is coming out right now. We heard from our member that this government is going too fast. Now all of a sudden we're going too slow because we're going to interfere with his Christmas holidays. I'm concerned. Why is the member there? We're really concerned about taking time off for Christmas holidays. Shouldn't we be worried about legislation? Shouldn't we be worried about reducing the debt? Shouldn't we be worried about a lot of things other than not going to get time off for Christmas holidays?
On representation: We went through the VLTs. Our member voted against it, then when it came to third reading didn't show up; we didn't have representation. Now people are talking about representation. This is where the frustrations in the north are coming from. The job's not getting done. Federally we had a member who voted for gun legislation. The people up here didn't want him to vote that way. So it's not the number of people; it's the way they're doing the job. That's where the frustrations are coming from, in my mind. If we send the right people, the job will get done.
People are also very afraid of change. Not too many people are from the north, but welcome to the north because this is the example I'm going to use. I'm going to show my age a little bit too, I guess. I was quite young but I did catch the end of when the horse was replaced by the skidder in the logging operation. For the people who were involved in that, there were very few people who said that skidder would work. That was the biggest joke there was, that this rubber-tired machine was going to go out into the bush and replace the horse. This was change. What a joke. Take me to a logging operation somewhere today and show me a horse. I'll take you and show you skidders. Yes, they're more powerful, a little more sophisticated, but the basics are the same. We're in the process now of change and I say when this is done and down the road when we judge this, it'll be the same result. We'll have skidders instead of horses. The skidder pulls a heck of a lot more wood than a horse does.
There are opportunities within this change. We should welcome the change and work within it. Don't just sit back and say, "It's not working very well now, so we'll make sure it doesn't work in the future." Take it on as a challenge. Let's not be scared of change.
I heard a comment from our last speaker and I think I heard -- it was hard to hear back there -- about the MPP having trouble getting around to birthday parties and so on. If I lived in Sioux Lookout, for example, is it more important for the government to spend an additional $400,000 on an MPP or should we try and put some blacktop on that highway going up to Sioux Lookout? Where is a dollar better spent? That's getting to be a pretty expensive birthday party.
We have to look at priorities in this province and we have to get it together: What do we want? A lot of people would much rather drive on that new asphalt than have that situation. We're also going to have a lot less red tape down the road in this province. That is going to help eliminate some of the workload.
Getting back to this servicing, if people understand the difference between representation and service, and we can get those two divided and the service end is starting to be looked after, I don't see a problem.
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My last comment is that after I looked at this and welcomed this, there are actually some savings involved. Savings are last on my list, after I see all the benefits of going in this direction. I think anyone in organizations or anyone in municipal politics should take a step back, take a look at this and say: "There are less people down there. The person who goes, if we get the right person, is going to have a lot more voice than we have now, getting lost in the crowd."
In closing, I go back to the horse and the skidder. The skidders still have engines, rubber tires, transmissions, but there's been some adjusting done. I would say that as we go through this, if we have to address it again because there are some difficulties some places, let's address it. But I can't speak out against this because of the fears that some people have. I would actually, as a representative, welcome such a situation.
The Acting Chair: Mr Griffiths, we have some questions for you, three minutes to each caucus.
Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): Thank you, Mr Griffiths, for the presentation. I hope you'll excuse me. You've expressed your position and it coincides with my position on the bill. I just want to quickly use the time. The previous presenter spoke to the issue of the Who Does What panel, and I recognize everyone is anxiously awaiting the results of that and the government's implementation of the recommendations. You said there was no elected northern representation on the panel, and just for the record I wanted to correct that. I believe the chair of the Lakehead Board of Education is on the subpanel to deal with education.
Mr Griffiths: Yes.
Mr Hardeman: To clear up the issue of what the panel recommended, to align school boards with county boundaries, I think we would all recognize there are no counties in northern Ontario. I just wanted, for the record, to read into the record what their recommendation on the alignment of school boards was. It says:
"Where practical, public, separate and French-language boards should be of the same physical jurisdiction as a municipality. For efficiency, this could be a lower-tier municipality, an upper-tier municipality or several upper-tier municipalities. It could also mean a single public board equal to one upper-tier municipality and a separate board for several upper-tier municipalities. This alignment will allow better cooperation among school boards and municipalities in the recommended restructuring of service delivery."
Would you suggest that this recognizes the differences between northern and southern? In southern Ontario we also have a lot of municipalities that do not have a two-tier system. Would you suggest that this does look after the situation of the differences between northern and southern, that they did understand there is a difference?
Mr Griffiths: Yes, definitely. My understanding, as there was some restructuring and reductions made to municipalities, is that the north got off easy compared to the south, if I'm correct. I'm not in municipal politics.
The other thing I have noticed in the north is that there have been a number of cabinet ministers and many MPPs coming up here since the last election to say we're being ignored. I guess the truth is that, as voters, we didn't elect anyone -- something I noticed through the campaign that I was surprised about was the lack of understanding of politics in our province. I didn't realize it was to that degree until I got into it. The people don't seem to understand. They sometimes expect things that can't happen.
Mr Miclash: Gord, it will be hard to believe I'm going to take exception to some of your comments, but I certainly will. I must remind you that I have run three campaigns. I've run on my record and it was a 4,000-vote plurality last time. So I must remind you that I'm not the little name in the back rows you suggested I might be.
In terms of the VLT vote, and this is an important point as well, my flight was ready to leave Kenora at 8 o'clock Monday morning to fly back to Toronto, the normal way I get back to Toronto; sometimes I go back Sunday. I did not get into Toronto till midnight on Monday. The vote was called by the government at 3 o'clock. There was no notice before that. That's just an example of what it takes sometimes to get from the Kenora riding to the government. The vote was called at 3 o'clock.
Mr Griffiths: That's what we call a very convenient snow storm.
Mr Miclash: Let's put that issue to rest, because I've indicated a good number of times my feeling towards the VLT legislation. I think I've made that very clear to the folks in northwestern Ontario after the committee travelled to Kenora and we listened to the presentations, as did the government and the members of the opposition on that committee.
I must go to the parliamentary assistant's comment again --
Mr Griffiths: Frank, can I just ask --
Mr Miclash: -- where he has indicated he will not support the legislation. This is the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Northern Development, we must remember; this is the coauthor of A Voice for the North. He was the one who ran and became a member of the government and has indicated he will not support this legislation. Do you not agree with what he has indicated in terms of northern representation?
Mr Gilchrist: Excuse me, Mr Chair, on a point of order.
The Acting Chair: Mr Miclash, I'd like to caution you as to the approach you're taking here.
Mr Michael Brown: Mr Chair, you have no right to tell any member when he's speaking what he can speak about. He's got no right to heckle, to ask for points of order on Mr Miclash's time.
Mr Miclash: I listened to the rubbish from him. What are you talking about? I just listened to five minutes of his comments and you're saying I can't comment on what he said about representation in this riding?
The Acting Chair: All right, go ahead. You've got one minute left.
Mr Gilchrist: You're talking about according to Mr Murdoch. We just phoned his office and he said he never said that.
Mr Miclash: He has indicated that he is not going to vote for the legislation; he has indicated that.
Interjections.
Mr Miclash: Oh, so you're going to twist it around now. What he has said, you're going to say is not true.
The Acting Chair: Order.
Mr Griffiths: We're eating up my 20 minutes here. First of all, I'd like to get back to the issue, now that we're playing this game. You said you made it very clear about the VLTs. You voted against it, but you spoke for it in Kenora where nobody could hear you. Could you tell us today where you do stand, because nobody knows, I'm sorry.
Mr Miclash: I've indicated very clearly that VLTs will help the economy of this area and that we would work very closely with any organizations in this area that wish to implement VLTs in their establishments. I've made that very clear.
Mr Griffiths: If you'd made it Monday, you would have voted for it instead of against it like you did on second reading?
Mr Miclash: I certainly would have, with the blessing of my caucus. The argument I put forward to them, I would have voted --
Mr Griffiths: Okay, we just wanted to get that clear.
Mr Michael Brown: Mr Murdoch didn't appear because he was going to vote no.
Mr Miclash: Yes, let me make that point. Mr Murdoch was not there.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for coming forward with your presentation. I noticed during your presentation you were saying that people in northern Ontario are fearful of change. I would beg to disagree with you on that, because I've been in northern Ontario for the last 40 years and northern Ontarians are prepared to make change at the balloting boxes. We saw that. We saw three different majority governments in the last number of years. People are not afraid to vote for change.
But when we're dealing with legislation of this kind, one of the reasons the demand is made that we have public hearings throughout Ontario, especially northern Ontario, is that when there is no representation whatsoever on the government side, because the people saw fit not to vote any Conservatives in northern Ontario into the present government, the present members who are on the committee have an opportunity to travel around northern Ontario and listen to public presentations, like you're in favour of them and there were others who presented before who are strongly opposed to it, especially when you look at the fact that one representative is going to be expected to represent areas that are bigger than countries like Spain, Germany and Italy.
There are other changes that could be made as far as representation at Queen's Park is concerned. In all cases in the history of Ontario and Canada, it has always been the electoral boundaries commission that has gone out. The last federal riding redistribution was done by the electoral boundaries commission. There were minor adjustments made after Mulroney was thrown out of government. With the new government, they made some minor changes in Timmins-James Bay, and they listened to the people.
In this particular case, it is a government with the majority of seats in the Legislature that has determined that it is going to ram the legislation through. Had we not made a big fuss in the Legislature, we would have had no public hearings whatsoever and this would have become law without anybody knowing about what was going on, the same as they tried to do with Bill 26. So democracy was being shut down as far we were concerned. I don't believe any government party should be taking control away from the election commission, where they go out and study the boundaries, rather than a political party ramming it through the Legislature. I just wanted to know if you had any comments on that.
Mr Griffiths: My first comment is that when you said about the people in northern Ontario being nervous of change, people generally -- I'm not just saying northern Ontario -- are nervous of change. I think any place across the country, probably in North America --
Mr Len Wood: But they've been making the change. They've had three different majority governments in Ontario.
Mr Griffiths: There are changes going on all over North America. People are nervous in all walks of life, but changes are being made and they're working out.
Mr Len Wood: The next election, there will be more changes. They'll throw out this government and they'll put another one in.
Mr Griffiths: Don't bet the farm on it.
Mr Len Wood: Oh, yes, it's happening. You see the polls going in the right direction.
Mr Griffiths: You must be reading different magazines than we are.
Mr Len Wood: Do I have more time, Mr Chair?
The Acting Chair: No. Thank you very much, Mr Griffiths, for coming today and making your views.
1000
JIM DUNPHY
The Acting Chair: Could we move to the next presenter, Mr Dunphy.
Mr Jim Dunphy: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the wonderful north. I am a municipal councillor in the town of Keewatin; however, I am here today as a concerned individual citizen of northern Ontario. I do not represent my council; however, I come with municipal council experience. Nor today do I represent any particular political colour, so I'm trying not to engage in any political debates with any members of the committee. It's been very interesting the last hour listening to what has been happening and so on. It's very nice this morning to have the opportunity to address members of all parties of government in the north, where a lot of the action happens.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today on this very critical issue of Bill 81, which will greatly affect northern Ontario. If this bill is passed in its present form, its results could be very devastating for the people of northwestern Ontario. We will no longer be able to be properly represented in the decision-making process of this province. In these times of rapid and sometimes drastic changes currently being made by all levels of government in our communities, our province and in our country, it is critical that we have the best representation possible at all levels of government. We will not have that if Bill 81 is passed in its present form.
I think it accurate and without prejudice to say that the majority of the provincial decision-makers in this province do not even have a realistic understanding of the province's vastness. I ask the members of this committee, do you really know how far it is from Ottawa or Cornwall to the Manitoba border? I can tell you, it's a great distance. It's over 2,000 kilometres. I've driven it a number of times. I live in Keewatin and we in Keewatin feel that we are the first community in Ontario, not the last.
I'd ask the members of the committee to have a look at a government publication known as the Ontario roadmap. The province is so big that we can't even put the entire province on one side. Not only that, but we can't even put the two sides in the same scale to represent the entire province.
Ontario represents a vast land and a very unique group of people. I'm not going to get into words like "distinct society" and all of those. We'll leave that to the feds.
It is often all too obvious to us here in the northwest that those in the south have very little knowledge of where we are, much less understand our needs. Therefore it is even more critical that we have adequate representation in the north to represent the north. It's not uncommon, in some of my various jobs that I've had and my careers, to have received phone calls from people in Toronto with all innocence and sincerity saying: "Hey, look, I'd like to meet with you next week. I'm going to be in Thunder Bay. Can we do lunch?" They don't realize that I live five and a half hours from Thunder Bay. They have no concept of the distance.
I have had cabinet members -- I won't go into which government it was, and I've been around this province for quite a while -- come to the Kenora-Keewatin area, have been driving them around, showing them the community, and they say: "Hey, we've got two hours. Can we go over to Winnipeg for supper?" They have no idea of the size, the vast area of this country of ours, and more specifically the province of Ontario.
It's really difficult to understand this size unless you have travelled it. I feel strongly that every person who is elected as an MPP to the Legislature of Ontario should get on a bus in Ottawa some day right after the election and take a drive all the way across, and come back down through the southern route and maybe do the northern route in the other direction.
The riding specifically that we have that is being proposed here in this area is over 337,000 square kilometres. That's a huge land mass. I came from the Maritime provinces many years ago; that's where I grew up. That area is larger than all three of the Maritime provinces. Somebody earlier said that the province of Prince Edward Island has, I think, three or four federal members and 20 or 25 provincial members. The Ontario government wants one member to represent the same area.
I could go on all day -- a number of people already have -- and you're going to hear a lot more comparisons of land mass to areas in Europe and Canada and other places in the world, but I think you get the idea that this is a pretty big riding.
It would be physically impossible for any one person to adequately represent such a large area, not only because of the area itself but because of the entire geography. A gentleman over here said earlier in his comments something to the effect that he represented the largest southern riding. This will be without a doubt the largest riding in Ontario. I believe, sir, you have four-lane highways. We don't. I believe, sir, that you have very little snow. I talked on the Internet just last night to someone in southern Ontario and I think they had two inches in Peterborough. We've got three feet just this week. I think those are considerations.
Mr Miclash, in his comments about not being about to get to Toronto -- we are very well represented in these ridings now, I must say, by both Mr Miclash and Mr Hampton, and I'm not taking sides in either direction. It was true that there were no airplanes flying out of the town of Kenora on Sunday or Monday. You can't get to Toronto just whenever you want. It depends on the weather, and we don't have too much control over the weather. We can't just say, "Okay, I can't go by air so I'll drive down," because he wouldn't be there yet if he was driving. I drove back from Toronto about a month and a half ago in a bus. I left Toronto on Thursday morning; I had lunch here at the Husky next door on Saturday -- not on Thursday or Friday but on Saturday -- and I still wasn't home.
I think we should consider what this part of our wonderful province really represents. We have a wealth of natural resources, all very lucrative to this province in terms of royalties, stumpage fees, taxes and all the other user fees that we have now and that are going to come in the future. We have a forest industry that has a major impact on our labour force and produces high-quality products that are in demand all around the world, anything from kraft pulp to newsprint to very high quality finished paper, produced right in this community. We've got a large mining industry, rich with gold mines and all of the other minerals that you want to name, producing a number of raw materials and finished products that support many other industries locally, provincially, nationally and internationally. We have to be very concerned about those. These and our many other resources produce a lot of spinoff industries -- construction, sales, equipment manufacture, recreation and many, many more. We in the north want to be very sure that these industries are well represented in the Legislature.
1010
The big one that we really have here is water. We've got clean water that we can go out to many lakes and drink without having to fill it with Javex and all of the other wonderful filters and purifiers that other areas have to use. This is a very scarce commodity, not only locally or provincially or nationally, but in the international market. The Americans would love to have Lake of the Woods in their whole United States, rather than just the small bottom borderline.
Northern and specifically northwestern Ontario is known worldwide for its tourism resources. Hundreds of thousands of tourists come here each year to enjoy our beauty, our clean environment and our resources. We want to ensure that we have representation in Toronto that will keep all of those good things in our tourism industry so that these people from Europe and Asia and all other parts of the world will keep coming here, spending their dollars to increase our own economy.
These are just some of the valuable assets in our area, and this government is proposing that it all be represented by one member? That's not really realistic, I don't feel. We have to bear in mind that about 100 years ago, where we're sitting today was not part of Ontario; it was part of Manitoba. Somewhere along the line a few years later there were some border negotiations and the border line moved over to West Hawk Lake. Ontario wanted us then. I'd venture to say that today if we only have one representative in Toronto, I question how serious that is, but boy, Manitoba would love to have all of our resources and our tourism opportunities. Just come to Kenora in the summertime and see the 20,000 Manitoba cars. We love them.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're a very hardworking and proud group of Canadians, more specifically Ontarians, and we want to continue to be. If the proposed new riding comes into being, and many people have used and will continue to use these statistics today, it will have more than 25 municipalities and organized areas, as well as 50 first nations communities, with a total population of just 75,000. But I ask, can one MPP represent this number of communities adequately?
I know Toronto is a very large city and I don't debate that in any way, but they have a lot more than one person for that one municipality and there's a system of government just like any other there. They have a municipal council, and that's who the government should be directly dealing with rather than all the little facets of the city. Possibly a more fair distribution of this riding -- and this is a suggestion -- could be a division into two ridings: a distinctly northern riding representing all areas north of 51, and a southern riding representing the remainder of the proposed area.
In the previous paragraph I neglected to mention that this riding contains in excess of 50 first nations communities, and they are basically in the northern half of our riding. This would give our first nations communities a more clear and direct voice in provincial affairs. These people would represent ownership of huge land masses in this province. These people should have a direct say in the future through our legislative system.
Looking at northern Ontario in general, we will all be very underrepresented with the proposed reduction of 15 to 10 MPPs. It will not give the north in general a fair voice in our Legislature: 87% of the land mass represented by 10% of the people.
Using the federal riding maps as a guide is not really a fair comparison for our area. Did the Maritime provinces use that? We don't have just one representation for the Maritimes; I believe there are probably 10 or 12.
I feel there must be a fair blend of representation based on a combination of geography and population. Both must be considered. I have no problem with change, but we all have to look at it very carefully to ensure that it's a change for the better and not just a change for the sake of change.
I ask that you carefully once again look at our map and reconsider the proposed changes in all the north. Try to get a map, though, that has all of Ontario on one side so that you can see what it's all about.
In our case our local MPPs are very good. We are represented well in northwestern Ontario, as I said before, by Mr Miclash, and I'm sure Mr Hampton represents his people well in his riding. The only way we could be well represented with the new riding that is being proposed, that I hope is not going to be changed, is that we go get the guy down south called Superman, but I think he's kind of busy in Gotham City these days and not really available, because he's the only guy who could get around this entire riding of this size.
It is important. I've heard comments this morning that it's no big deal if the MPP can't go out to a birthday party or the MPP can't go visit somebody in Sioux Lookout or Big Trout Lake or Keewatin. That is a big deal. That's why we elected the MPP: We want to see this person. We don't want his assistant or his assistant to the assistant to the assistant or the secretary to the assistant or somebody like that. We want to see the MPP.
In our case we've had very good fortune, I guess partly because Mr Miclash comes from our community. He has visited our municipal council meetings and he has attended many functions in Kenora and Keewatin and all of the other communities in the riding. He has also attended many functions in the far north, which is not even being mentioned today as to travel problems, when you have to take a scheduled airline that has four seats in it and if you're lucky it goes today and if the wind's blowing it can't, or if the lake's not frozen, it's not going to make it in for the next six weeks until it does freeze.
Please keep in mind there's much more to this province than Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe. I trust you as a committee will listen to our concerns and take them back to government. Mr Chairman, I was really concerned this morning when I was driving down in my two-hour drive to get here that I heard a comment on the radio that your comments in the south were very good and nobody wanted a change and you really didn't see a lot of need for change in this legislation. I ask you, sir, to reconsider that and think it over very carefully after you've heard what the people have to say here in the north today, and that's not being disrespectful, sir, when I say that.
As well, I feel it's critical that our local MPPs be given an opportunity to address and offer their valuable input and experience to this committee. I realize that it was a decision of this committee not to have them make presentations at the public meetings and I fully agree with that. This does devote all your public time to the public, and that is very important and I think it's wonderful. However, possibly a time could be set aside at the completion of the hearings for their input. I realize that they have fair and ample opportunity to address the issues in the Legislature, but very often that is too late. The third reading will have all of the changes and it will be very difficult for them to make good and open suggestions at that time rather than political debate that we even see going on here today.
Once again I thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my comments and concerns with you this morning. I ask that you give this legislation very serious consideration and I wish you well in your deliberations. Please enjoy your visit to the northwest and come back at any time.
The Acting Chair: Thank you for appearing before us today, Mr Dunphy. Thank you for your vigorous views. Have a safe drive back to Keewatin.
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HUBERT MORRISON
The Acting Chair: Our next deputant is Mr Morrison, the mayor of Sioux Lookout.
Mr Hubert Morrison: Can't say the first name, Chair?
The Acting Chair: Welcome, Mayor Hubert Morrison. You have 20 minutes you can use however you want.
Mr Morrison: My name is Hubert Morrison, of course, and I'm the mayor of the town of Sioux Lookout. I want to thank you for this opportunity to voice my concern about Bill 81, the Fewer Politicians Act.
I'm in my second term on council in Sioux Lookout. Prior to that I was employed for 36 years with the provincial government, 31 years under a Conservative government and five under a Liberal government. All of the time that former member Leo Bernier was in the House, I was there. I might say that many times over the years Mr Bernier and our current member, Frank Miclash, have taken trips with me into the far north with aircraft and under various and trying conditions. They had to pay their own way, mind you. Right, Frank?
Mr Miclash: Certainly.
Mr Morrison: In any event, because this act will directly affect the future of citizens of Sioux Lookout and northern Ontario, it is appropriate that Mr Harris's government hear our concerns through these public meetings.
As the mayor of the town of Sioux Lookout, I do understand the government's desire to address the issue of the deficit. While I may not entirely agree with all the actions being taken, particularly the timing of these actions, I realize that something has to be done to resolve the province's financial problems. Some of the actions, such as the reduction in transfer payments to municipalities, cuts to health care and education, reduction in funding for maintenance and repair of highways, have a serious impact on the residents of northern Ontario.
Believe me, I drove down Highway 72 from Sioux Lookout this morning and -- well, it's about the same as it has been for years anyway. The effects of these changes will be far-reaching and will require a great deal of rethinking and reorganizing how business is done in the north. As a politician, I can live with and accommodate most of these changes. However, there is one change that I cannot accommodate: reducing northern Ontario's representation in the provincial government.
Under Bill 81, the new Kenora-Rainy River riding will be one third of the land mass of Ontario. The new riding will include more than 25 municipal councils and local service boards and more than 50 first nations communities. I can tell you that, throughout my 36 years, I have visited all of those communities many times. It is totally unrealistic to expect one person to adequately represent this large geographic area. One person, no matter how dedicated, cannot visit all the constituents in this proposed large region on any kind of regular basis. Not only would it be impossible to visit the constituents in this large riding, it is unreasonable to expect that one person can thoroughly understand and adequately represent a riding of this kind of land mass.
It is also likely that residents in the riding would have limited access to this representative because of the size of the riding. It would be more difficult for individual residents to contact their representative personally for support of an issue of concern because, while a majority elects a representative, it is not possible that the residents in the far reaches of the riding will know their representative well enough to rely on his or her support when they need it.
You've heard this one before, but I'm going to say it again. The number of people in the new riding would be in excess of 75,000. This may not be a large population for an MPP to represent. I heard a joke while I was watching the legislature channel. One member, I believe, said that trees don't vote. No, they don't vote but they bring in a hell of a lot of dues and money to the government that goes down there.
This may not be a large population for an MPP to represent. What I ask the government to do is keep in mind the area the 75,000-plus live in, an area larger than Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick combined, and a previous speaker had mentioned the Maritimes. It is insulting to the residents in the north to suggest that one individual, no matter how dedicated, can adequately represent this number of constituents in a riding that covers one third of the land mass of Ontario.
This leads to a question of representation in the provincial government for northern Ontario. The present provincial government elected no members west of the Premier's riding of North Bay. The north represents 87% of the land mass of Ontario and we presently have 12% of the MPPs. Under Bill 81, the north's representation will be reduced to less than 10%. Although residents of northern Ontario have less representation than other areas of the province, we pay the same taxes. This is very close to taxation without representation. I believe our neighbours to the south, the United States, went to war on an issue similar to this.
My understanding is that Bill 81 will reduce the number of Ontario MPPs from 130 to 103 and, further, that the MPPs representing northern Ontario will be reduced from 15 to 10. If the government proceeds with this redistribution, northern Ontario's representation will drop by 33.3% while there will be an increase of 5.5% in MPPs from the 905 or greater Toronto area belt. How can the Premier balance this with his promise to provide a greater voice in the north as he did in his A Voice for the North publication during his last campaign? Premier Harris stated in A Voice for the North:
"The people of northern Ontario have given us a clear message: Their needs and concerns are not being met by the provincial government. They feel left out of the decision-making process. Inappropriate and unnecessary laws and regulations, designed to meet the concerns of the urban south, are being imposed on them. Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservative Party are prepared to act."
With Bill 81, it appears Mr Harris has acted. He has reduced that voice; reduced that representation which he suggested we need in the north.
In addition to reducing the voice of the north, Bill 81 ties the boundaries of provincial ridings to federal ridings. When the federal ridings change, so will the riding boundaries for provincial elections. Where is the autonomy for Ontario? Shouldn't we have the right to set the boundaries for the ridings for the provincial election?
As the mayor of Sioux Lookout, I strongly recommend the Kenora and Rainy River district not be combined. Our voice in Queen's Park is limited as it is and combining the two ridings is close to eliminating our voice entirely.
A little while ago when one speaker was up, I thought I was watching the Legislature channel when I saw the banner going back and forth, and then I finally realized I had to turn that on this afternoon to see that when I get home.
I thank you for allowing me this opportunity to make this presentation.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mayor Morrison. We have about nine minutes for questions. We'll start with the Liberals.
Mr Miclash: Hubert, thank you for your comments. You certainly bring back some memories of our first trip back in 1987. That was my first trip into the northern remote communities.
Mr Morrison: Got your eyes opened, didn't you?
Mr Miclash: I certainly did. I just wish that other members of the Legislature would make that trip to find out exactly what we're talking about here because I know a lot of them would have not visited a remote first nation community, one that can only be accessed by air. It certainly was, and it's been quite an experience since 1987.
I want to get back to your concept of recognizing the land mass and the population in northern Ontario. As you say, this will bring great change should this legislation go forward as it's proposed. We know that the federal government has a federal boundaries commission. Do you see a need for a provincial boundaries commission and, if so, how would you see it looking at this question that we're looking at today?
Mr Morrison: I'm not sure that I see the need for a provincial commission. I haven't thought that much about it, Mr Miclash. I don't know.
Mr Miclash: We've spoken -- and the previous presenter brought this up -- about splitting the riding into two distinct areas: one that would represent the far north north of 51st and one that would represent the southern portion of this region. How do you feel about that concept?
Mr Morrison: I think that's a workable concept, from my point of view. I have talked to others on that particular concept. Maybe what we need is a native representative across the north and so on in the south.
Mr Miclash: Do you see a commission such as this taking a look at -- as I indicated, it happens at the federal level right now where they actually take a look at the regions. It has been indicated a good number of times here this morning that various regions of this country are recognized for the lower number of people but the larger land mass. Do you see a commission possibly working in that area to maybe recognize that and present that case?
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Mr Morrison: Yes, I think a commission could look at that and recognize that, for sure.
Mr Miclash: At the present time it has been said that with less representation in the House, in essence what we're doing is giving more power to the Premier. I quoted from a document earlier where one of the MPPs from the Conservative government said that many of the decisions were made in the Premier's office, and some people have indicated that we're giving more clout to specific interest groups and taking away from the representatives across the province. Do you agree with that statement?
Mr Morrison: I don't agree with that.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for your presentation. I've been listening very carefully and I notice that on page 2 you say it's insulting to the residents of the north that one individual could represent the expanded boundaries. You're of the same opinion as Mayor David Hughes from the town of Cochrane, as was quoted in the Timmins press, saying that it's another slap in the face for northern Ontario from Mike Harris, when he campaigned for one thing during the election campaign, that there's going to be a voice for the north, and then he turns around and slaps northern Ontario residents with a bill of this kind. Even the title of it, the nickname they put on it, "fewer politicians," is saying that there will be no voice for the north.
That's in addition to the reduction they have in MNR, OPP, health care and education. With a lot of these services, the bodies are being moved out of northern Ontario into southern Ontario -- from Burk's Falls or the North Bay area -- and the towns are ending up with empty houses as a result because people are not moving back in. Nursing homes are being closed down, we have empty MNR buildings, but a lot of the government services are being increased into the Premier's riding.
I think you made an excellent presentation saying that there will be no voice for the north and it was misleading to think there would be during the election campaign, when you come in with legislation of this kind in addition to all the cuts: the closing of hospital beds and threatening the closing of hospitals. Which direction are we heading in in northern Ontario? Are we going to have a voice at Queen's Park or is it going to end up being two provinces, as some have indicated that it should be? If 87% of the land mass cannot get a voice at Queen's Park, is it heading towards a separation into two provinces where you have the large urban areas representing one province and northern Ontario representing another province? The renewable resources are all here and they're being used. I just want to know if you want to comment on that. I don't know how much more time I have, so I'll leave you some time.
Mr Morrison: I tend to agree with you, Mr Wood, on the issue. With the making of one large riding -- as most of you here are aware, the closest to the people are municipal elected officials, and I feel that the next closest are provincial members, and then the feds. Sure, that's a large riding federally. That member does not have to be nearly as close to the people as the provincial members do, and certainly not as close as municipal officials. I just don't think it's a good idea to combine that into one large riding. I just don't see how one person, it doesn't matter who it is, can cover that area.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate your coming before us here today. The diverse views, obviously, we find very interesting, the diverse views we have heard from people living in the same area. In Mr Griffiths's comment earlier, certainly one thing I can agree with is that representation is not about whether you are there to deal with a specific problem. Our staff deal with 95% of our problems anyway. It's whether you can articulate the concerns of the north --
Mr Morrison: I disagree with Mr Griffiths.
Mr Gilchrist: That's fine. It's whether you can articulate the interests of your community down at Queen's Park, particularly when it comes to drafting legislation. I look at the map of northern Ontario right now and the area north of the 51st parallel was represented by three members, is represented by three members. I know the north has very different realities from the south. There is no doubt of that on this side of the House either. But when we look at what the north is comprised of, obviously you would agree, I would think, that Sudbury and North Bay and Thunder Bay and the Sault are just as urban as Peterborough or Barrie or Kitchener or Hamilton in the south, so let's not confuse those ridings with the kind of problems in the rural northern ridings.
And when we look at the rural northern ridings the extent of change isn't that great. When the federal commission went around -- I'm reading from the report, page 14: "Few submissions were heard in Thunder Bay concerning northwestern Ontario, and the commission was able to accommodate most requests made for this area." There was only one request that affected this whole section of northwestern Ontario. "The commission slightly adjusted the limits of Thunder Bay-Atikokan with Kenora-Rainy River to include a small population just south of Finlayson Lake with Thunder Bay-Atikokan and thus follow the geographic orientation of this isolated community."
I guess I'm confused. If the MPs believe, and the people in northwest Ontario obviously agreed or they would have made submissions to the federal boundary commission, that MPs can represent, down in Ottawa, the federal issues that affect the people in the north, why is that any different for MPPs being able to represent provincial issues down at Queen's Park?
Mr Morrison: Most of the things we deal with in the municipality are dealt with through the provincial government. We deal very little with federal MPs. It gives them a much easier chance to handle this large riding. It's obvious to me, member, that you are not familiar with the north.
Mr Gilchrist: Well, I grew up in a pulp and paper family --
Mr Morrison: Where was that?
Mr Gilchrist: I can say I have been touring through the north since I was four years old. I can tell you there hasn't been a workday, probably since the election, that we haven't had members and cabinet ministers in the north. In fact, the last time I was in Thunder Bay we had 18 members, two cabinet ministers, there on one day, coincidentally, all passing through for different things, and we'd had two other cabinet ministers in the previous two days.
Mr Morrison: Thunder Bay is not the north.
Mr Gilchrist: No, passing through, I said.
Mr Morrison: When I talk about the north, I talk about from here north. I have not seen a cabinet minister here since your government has been in power, and I am of no political stripe.
Mr Gilchrist: I know of four that have been through here, at least.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mayor Morrison for coming and making your views known.
Mr Morrison: I can talk to you about this later if you wish.
The Acting Chair: Perhaps you two gentlemen could discuss it later. Our next deputant is -- Mr Angus is about to get here. His car went off into the ditch, I believe. Mr Angus will be here at about 11:45 am.
Mr Miclash: What was the reason? I'm sorry, Mr Chair.
The Acting Chair: His car went off the road. He's going to be here very shortly.
Mr Miclash: That's what happens in a northern municipality. Here we are.
Mr Len Wood: And the Conservatives are laughing about it.
Mr Miclash: Take that back to your Premier. Take that back to him.
Mr Young: You can't blame our government because he goes in a ditch. Get serious.
Interjections.
The Acting Chair: Mr Young, Mr Miclash. Gentlemen, ladies, we have people here today. We didn't come to discuss among ourselves. We are here to hear the representatives of the public. May we proceed, please.
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CRAIG NUTTALL
The Acting Chair: Mr Nuttall, please identify yourself. You have 20 minutes in which to make your views known.
Mr Craig Nuttall: My name is Craig Nuttall. I have a consulting business that does consulting in the northern reserves, Fort Severn, Deer Lake and so on. I do consulting work for sawmills in the area of Rainy River as well as Kenora and Fort Frances.
I'm simply amazed to see today that we're having these hearings and some of the people are acting like we see in question period, just so they can grandstand and make hollering and screaming. I don't think that's what we need in the north. We have to have civil people talking about issues.
Now, let's talk about Bill 81. It really amazes me. The government has said, and most of us have gone along with it, that we have to downsize, that MNR has to decrease, and corporations are decreasing, with less management and working harder. All of a sudden, the MPs are saying: "Don't touch us. We love to do what we do and we love our salaries."
I've got a quotation here from the Atikokan. The leader of the Liberal Party has said she can look after Atikokan and Fort William because she believes that she would be able to stay in close contact with the people. I'd like to say that the Atikokan population, with this new bill, would be 76,922. Kenora's population, that our member would have to look after, is 76,320, 500 more people than Mrs McLeod said she would have no problems looking after.
Interjection.
Mr Nuttall: Frank, I have the floor for a change, thank you.
It amazes me that we say we are not being looked after in the north. My God, we're getting rid of 22 members from southern Ontario that we have to hassle with all the time to tell us where we are. We're losing five, granted, but let's look at what the north has. We have the Northern Ontario Development Corp offices. Every office in every community has a northern development office that looks after thousands of requests from citizens in northern Ontario, which the southern politicians don't have. Every one of the members on that side knows that the Northern Ontario Development offices are a plus for our area.
I was on council for six years before my term expired and I can tell you that the only time we used our provincial member was to cut ribbons. Most of the time when we needed a provincial member we had to ask him to come up, and then he would lobby for us. That's the only time. Our member talks about -- and I really think this is great -- Bill Murdoch voting against the bill. The vote hasn't even come to the floor yet.
Mr Miclash: He said he would.
Mr Nuttall: Our member has voted twice against the VLTs and then got the voter's sickness that he couldn't be in Toronto. Let me tell you something: If the bill was important enough and he knows the Legislature is sitting, I would be in Toronto for that vote, to stand up for your people.
Mr Miclash: Yes, and miss constituency week.
Mr Nuttall: They say the voice in the north is going. Well, I can tell you that we, through the Minister of Northern Development and Mines, many times go down to his office and ask him for things that we can't get from our local member because he's too busy in the Legislature complaining about what the government's doing. I think we need an MPP who's a worker, who for a change doesn't lobby and get up in the Legislature, and the only time he does is when members from our community are there.
Let's look at the cost: What does an MPP cost us? It's $400,000 a year when you look at the salary, the secretaries and so on, $400,000 a year that could be spent elsewhere, in our hospitals, on our roads -- and I must say the government is doing a good job on roads. This is the thing that really gets me. Then we did have public hearings in the federal process. Not one of our members was at those hearings, not one, not the NDP, not the Liberal; no one was at that hearing complaining about it. So are we getting what we deserve? I think we are, with the members we have now. We have to have a strong voice in northern Ontario and we have to keep the northern development offices open and use them as a liaison. They do a tremendous amount of work for us, and that's what we need.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Nuttall. We have nine minutes for questions. We'll start with Mr Wood.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for your presentation. During your presentation, you put a lot of emphasis on the fact that northern development offices are going to stay open. Do we have any reassurance that you're getting from your people that during the next round of cuts, which is going to be announced next week, another $3 billion, that the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines will not be attacked as severely as they were in the last budget and that there's going to be money available for protecting and increasing jobs in northern Ontario, as there was over the last number of years?
I don't have that reassurance. I understand it's going to be a severe cut-and-burn, slash financial statement and that's part of reducing the $8 billion. Then there's got to be an additional $6 billion per year found to give the tax break, so I'm just wondering where your reassurance is. You're saying you're in favour of reducing the five politicians. What is northern Ontario going to end up with, with cuts to education and health care and what is coming?
Mr Nuttall: Being a realistic person I don't look in crystal balls. I look at reality and deal with it when or before it happens. In my experience in municipal council, if we were to do guesswork all the time I don't think we'd accomplish anything. If the offices are working, why would we discontinue them? You're from the north. You should understand that you probably have a lot of inquiries coming into the northern development and mines office. It probably helps you as a member because you don't have to deal with the day-to-day operations.
Mr Len Wood: We don't want to lose them.
Mr Nuttall: That's right. But you're assuming we will lose them and you're guessing -- again, fearmongering.
Mr Len Wood: I'm not guessing. I'm saying, "Where's the $3 billion in cuts going to come from?"
Mr Nuttall: I have no idea, sir. You should know more about that than I do.
Mr Len Wood: And where is the $6-billion tax break going to come from?
Mr Nuttall: You keep throwing in the tax break. Let's talk about whether the offices will be gone. I don't know if they will be. If you don't know, nobody knows.
Mr Len Wood: There's been nothing happening in the last 16 months with northern development and mines with Chris Hodgson.
Mr Young: I would like to clarify. One of the people opposite tried to indicate that somehow it's the government's fault if somebody drives off the highway. I didn't make light of it at all. But there are problems on the highways everywhere. I drive on the QEW over 30 kilometres a day to my office, with thousands of other people. I see accidents daily. It takes an hour to drive 30 kilometres. There are people reading, eating, drinking coffee and talking on the phone. It's dangerous on highways everywhere. I want to clarify that.
Mr Len Wood: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I don't believe he has any right whatsoever to correct my record. I made the statements. I accused him of laughing at people who are going off the road and I stand by that.
Mr Young: Mr Chair, will please stop the clock?
Mr Len Wood: And I stand by that. He can correct his own record, but not my record.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Wood. Mr Young, continue.
Mr Young: Getting away from partisan politics, Premier Harris did something -- one of many things he's done that I'm very proud of -- which was to increase the representation and provide better representation in the north. He initiated a meeting of the northern caucus for members of both the federal and provincial governments of all parties. I was very proud of that and I think the people in the north were proud of that. It was attended by the federal Liberals, provincial Liberals and PCs, and the NDP boycotted the meeting for some reason. I think that's a disgrace, because the best way to get representation in the north in addition to the current MPPs is to get people together who represent the north and address the issues. Can you comment on that, please?
Mr Nuttall: I was very disappointed that they didn't go because I think there was a lot accomplished. In talking to a couple of federal Liberal MPs who were there, they said they wished the provincial representatives were there because it was a very worthwhile meeting. They talked about issues, and Joe Comuzzi was there, and he said he thought it was good and that he was very disappointed that our member -- probably stranded somewhere with voter's flu -- was not there. It's amazing that they cry the blues about what they want to do but they're never there.
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I'd like to make one statement here. One presenter said we haven't had any cabinet ministers in this area. I would like to say we have had cabinet ministers in this area. We have had the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs here; we've had Chris Hodgson here; we've had the Minister of Education and training in Kenora; we've had Palladini down here; we've had numerous members down here. So we have communications with them, and they do correspond with us, and I think it's great that they're doing what they're doing.
Mr Miclash: Before we begin, Mr Nuttall, are you the president of the local Conservative association?
Mr Nuttall: Yes, I am, and also the same as what Pat Skillen was: president of the federal Liberal association, when he made a presentation for the VLTs.
Mr Miclash: Thank you very much. I just wanted that on the record.
The previous presenter indicated that in A Voice for the North, the document that I'm sure you're aware of, the Premier said that northern representation needed to be improved. He felt that a Mike Harris government would increase northern representation. Do you see this bill doing that?
Mr Nuttall: I think he did A Voice for the North before the election, and he was hoping we would get rid of our sitting member, but it didn't happen, therefore I still think we have a voice in the north. We have the cabinet ministers coming here. There's an opportunity to talk to them. In fact, we have Dianne Cunningham coming here on December 3 and 4. She'll be going to Kenora again to speak to the women's resource centre at a public meeting, and we hope you're there, Frank.
Mr Miclash: It has been indicated by Mr Murdoch that he will vote against this legislation. We know he was one of the authors of A Voice for the North, the document the northern Conservative candidates carried around with them and held near and dear to their hearts. Are you saying you disagree with the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Northern Development and Mines?
Mr Nuttall: Mr Miclash, I'll tell you something: Mr Murdoch hasn't voted yet. You voted twice on the VLTs, stood up in the Legislature and said, "I vote against them." The third time you didn't go to the vote but you voiced your opinion in the press and you weren't there. So I don't know how Mr Murdoch is going to vote. Again you're assuming.
Mr Miclash: Would you kindly present to me the evidence that I voted against the VLTs at any time in the Legislature?
Mr Nuttall: It was in Hansard, and you stood up in the Legislature. We watch the comedy hour you put on.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Nuttall, for appearing before us today.
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO MUNICIPAL ASSOCIATION
The Acting Chair: Our next deputant is Mayor Armstrong. Would you like to come to the table and give us your views on Bill 81?
Mr Gordon Armstrong: It's a privilege to be here today. I'm here to speak on behalf of NOMA, Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, and most of you probably know what NOMA is about. It represents 50 municipalities from White River to the Manitoba border. This area is presently represented by five MPPs and I want to share with you today the concerns we have with reducing the number to three MPPs throughout the great northwest. We are very concerned about that.
The reason we are concerned, I believe, is that we have many unique situations in northwestern Ontario that you should consider when you're making your recommendations. Such things as the vast area, distances between communities, weather, the diverse people and accessibility of the present MPPs are some of our concerns. We believe that these conditions are different in northwestern Ontario compared to southern Ontario. I would like to go through the points I've raised here and then make my concluding remarks.
Distances: The present riding requires our MPP to drive approximately eight hours from one end of the riding to the other. I left home at 7 o'clock this morning and just arrived about five minutes ago to make this presentation to you today, and I'm still within the riding you're proposing to put forward. That's four hours. I had to pry my fingers off the steering wheel because of the driving conditions; I was like this. This is different from southern Ontario, where an MPP can visit his or her riding in about two hours of travel time. If you combine the Kenora and Rainy River ridings it's impossible for one person to drive and visit all areas of his riding within at least a day.
The weather is also a very big concern to us. In winter months travel in northwestern Ontario is much more unpredictable, treacherous and stressful than in other parts of this province. This also hinders people from having access to their MPP. If I hadn't driven through snow and slush and ice to be here this morning NOMA would not have had a voice here today. But I believed that it was important enough that I took that risk, and there's a stress; you feel very stressed out when you drive for four hours and you're like this every minute of the time. You don't have those conditions in southern Ontario.
The diverse people: We have a wide variety of peoples in the north. We have 50 first nations communities, and lots of them are not served by roads. They have to be flown in, and each one of them is a diverse community. We have many farming, industrial, mining and forestry communities. They are very diverse. We believe it is almost impossible for one MPP to visit every one of these areas and understand the conditions of each community.
The most important part is accessibility. This concern is of utmost importance to everyone. Whether we live in southern Ontario, northeastern Ontario or northwestern Ontario, we all believe that our MPP should be accessible to us. I believe that's a true statement. If we were to increase the present area, our MPP would be less accessible. In southern Ontario a riding boundary could be moved 20 miles and perhaps include 50,000 to 75,000 people and still be accessible to the people they represent. This would not be the case in northeastern or northwestern Ontario. To increase the distance by hundreds of miles might not increase the number of constituents as in southern Ontario, but increased distances would be reduce the accessibility of MPPs substantially.
If you have to put four hours on the road to try to meet with one person and four hours to meet with the next person, you're not going to be accessible. If you have to travel more than four hours, eight hours on the road, whom are you going to be accessible to? One a day. We ask you to think about the difference between having to travel all this area and be accessible and travelling for an hour and being able to meet with anyone you wish and as many as you wish. There's a big difference.
The next point, the difference between federal and provincial representation: The MP who represents northwestern Ontario in Ottawa deal with issues far removed from the local level whereas the MPP deals with concerns that are more directly related to the people, like education, health and municipal law. What I'm talking about there is that our Liberal member for this area deals with totally different things from Frank or Howard or others who serve this northwest area. They deal with different topics. They deal with more relevant topics that we deal with every day, and we want you to consider that as well.
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In conclusion, we want the government of this great province to take into consideration the above concerns while making this decision. The distances, the accessibility, the diversity of the area, the uniqueness of the area -- this is something that makes Ontario so beautiful, the fact that we're so unique, but it's also a problem that should be dealt with on an individual basis. We don't all fit the same shoe size in this room, so why should we think we should all fit the same criteria when we're trying to make riding boundaries?
We're not trying to get something over and above our counterparts in southern Ontario. All we want is for you to consider both areas having accessibility, and it's much more difficult to have accessibility in northwestern Ontario than it is in southern Ontario.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is my presentation to you today. There are a couple of letters attached, one I wrote to the Premier and one that was written by the president of Rainy River District Municipal Association. I attach them just for information's sake. I thank you very much and I would be willing to answer any questions.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mayor Armstrong. We have 12 minutes left, so we'll start with the government.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Mayor Armstrong. I appreciate your taking the four hours to come up and see us. I've driven that same route and the weather wasn't quite that bad, but I do know what an arduous drive it is.
Just a couple of things to start out with. I don't mean this to be at all combative; I'm genuinely curious. I'm looking at your own letterhead and you show that NOMA represents an area actually greater than the territory of the three proposed northwest Ontario ridings. Would you say that NOMA does a good job of representing the interests of the constituent municipalities?
Mr Armstrong: We have one president, one past president, one first vice-president, one second vice-president, one third vice-president and one fourth vice-president -- it's a combined effort -- plus an executive director.
Mr Gilchrist: But you have no problem addressing the geographical realities, and the fact that it's centred in Thunder Bay has not been a particular --
Mr Armstrong: The executive director lives in Thunder Bay but I live in Rainy River and we do a lot of our work by telephone.
Mr Gilchrist: I'm just trying to pick up on your point of accessibility because again, and not to be repetitive, with everybody who asks to see me in the riding being accommodated on Fridays during constituency day, I'm lucky to have eight people who actually want to see me in person.
On the other hand, I'll probably get 100 to 120 phone calls a week personally over and above what my staff deal with. And almost invariably, any industry or any union presentation -- I had the firefighters come down and see me; in fact, three different groups in the last two days -- almost always do it at Queen's Park because it's the best use of their time. They can get around to see all the MPPs in the course of a day or two.
How do I relate that to the fact that even Mr Dunphy himself earlier mentioned that he was talking over the Internet to someone down in Peterborough to determine the weather down there? We have all sorts of technology at our disposal. The members in the north don't even have the 1-800 phone service charged against their budgets. So whether it's phone access or Internet access or video conferencing, why wouldn't we be looking at new and innovative ways of making sure the member is available in some form, but not necessarily by forcing them to get out and drive four hours to see one or two constituents?
Let me ask you one other point, because I know our time's limited, and you could respond to both. Right now the members are spending four days a week at Queen's Park and one day effectively doing constituency work, but that is totally their choice. If it really is the case for the three or four geographically large northern ridings that it takes time to get from point A to point B, why wouldn't the members then, who have absolute power to do this, simply say: "I'm going to be up here Thursday and Friday. Thursday I will spend in Kenora and Dryden, and Friday I will spend in Rainy River and Fort Frances"? Surely that's an option. Why couldn't the members do that and organize their time better?
Mr Armstrong: I think that's probably a question the member could answer himself. Then you've got them trying to decide who's important, their constituents or sitting down in the House. Which is most important, the chicken or the egg? I'm not prepared to answer that question on those grounds. How can I decide what's more important, whether they're in the House for a debate or whether they're up in the riding? Yes, they can make their own decisions of where they are going to be.
In answer to your other question, a lot of areas in our riding do not have the joy of the Internet. We do not have the joy of telephones that you can ride around in the car and talk on that you have.
Mr Gilchrist: It's funny you mentioned that, because a Liberal member who was with us in London, Ms Pupatello, said, that "What was so striking" -- we were talking about the northern aspect -- "was that northern communities really hadn't reached the level technologically to even afford a cell phone in that area. That's why it was a bit strange, because I think that may come in a couple of decades...." I was intrigued to see that Dryden is on the front page of the paper today announcing that in the next couple of months, or weeks even, you're going to have cell phone service in this town. So if we want to talk about who's out of touch, I suggest that if that's the Liberal view of what the north is all about, I find that quite distressing.
Mr Miclash: One of the previous presenters indicated that Mr Harris had made a commitment to the people of the north, and I go back to that commitment. Mr Armstrong, I'm sure you're familiar with it. It comes from A Voice for the North, the campaign document that Mr Harris and the many Conservative candidates across the north presented to the people. In it, he indicated, "The people of northern Ontario have given us a clear message: Their needs and concerns are not being met by the provincial government. They feel left out of the decision-making process.... Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservative Party are prepared to act."
In your capacity in the area of northern Ontario as a reeve, do you feel that Mr Harris has followed through on that commitment?
Mr Armstrong: The Who Does What committee that's been probably at the top of everybody's mind over the last six months, when it was first set up, had 12 members. All these 12 members were within a 500-mile radius of Toronto. I don't know what that tells you, but that tells me that there's nobody on that panel who knows what northwestern Ontario's all about.
Mr Miclash: So what you're telling me is you feel he hasn't followed through on that commitment?
Mr Armstrong: On that commitment, he has appointed someone now, but there was never any official announcement of that person. I am still waiting to receive an official announcement of that person.
For northwestern Ontario, my point of view has always been that I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. That's a part that I've presented in anything I've written to the ministers on behalf of NOMA, that we want to be part of the solution. That's what we want to be today: part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): Mayor Armstrong, it's great to have you actually representing NOMA as well as, of course, your second hat of mayor of Rainy River. It's important because I think one of the things that's not being recognized as quickly today is that we are talking about also the melding of two other ridings, essentially the Port Arthur and the Lake Nipigon ones. In essence, Lake Nipigon riding is disappearing.
I think I'm beginning to see what the problem is in terms of this government's absolute lack of understanding. We hear it through Mr Gilchrist. Obviously Mr Gilchrist doesn't think it's necessary for MPPs to meet with their constituents. Obviously he doesn't think, basically speaking, you need that. It's because he has a very different way of approaching his job and he does it on the basis that you can do it all by phone calls.
The fact is, I think it's really important for Mr Gilchrist and all the government members to recognize that the ridings do not belong to the MPPs. We are but mere temporary occupants of that position. The riding belongs to the people. The people up in northern Ontario determine that they want to meet with us, and we want to meet with them, so we certainly will drive those distances.
The fact is, the reason we are up here in Dryden -- and we should be in other communities but you wouldn't let us do it -- is so you can understand that better. To simply say, "Well, it's very nice to be here. We've been here before," you've got to recognize that if you wish to represent your constituents and you do it well, as we all do, we want to meet with them, they want to come down and see us, we want to go and see them and we insist on doing it. It isn't just cutting ribbons; it's getting involved in a variety of issues that are completely different from the issues that you clearly deal with.
I know that certainly representing the North Shore communities as well, Mr Armstrong, that's one of the concerns they have. This committee and some of these previous presenters are really quite saying that Lake Nipigon doesn't need a representative. They're willing to say that. They're saying that Kenora-Rainy River can do with one representative.
It's astonishing to listen to members from the north -- of course they are members of the Conservative Party, and that may explain perhaps why they're doing this, although even that's beyond belief -- that you would actually say, "We can not only make due, but we welcome less representation." I find that beyond belief. It's been difficult sitting here this morning listening to that when indeed we want and deserve more representation, not less. The least this government can do is maintain the level of representation. I hope they will still consider that.
Mr Armstrong: To comment on that, I think the point I'm trying to make is that, yes, we have technology and, yes, we can use the telephone, but we still need that personal interrelationship with our MPP, whether it's a Conservative, NDP or Liberal. In my job I try not to differentiate. I think that I have to try to represent everybody of all colours, all stripes. So I'm here not trying to impress anybody. I'm here to say keep the accessibility of people and consider the distances and the weather and all these things when you make your decision on accessibility.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you very much for your excellent presentation. It shows that you're representing northwestern Ontario in your presentation and also a lot of the views of northeastern Ontario.
I disagree strongly with some of the comments made by Mr Gilchrist, because the technology in a lot of areas -- I don't know; I'm from northeastern Ontario, but there are a lot of communities and people out there who still have party lines: five, six, seven, eight people on party lines. They don't have the use of the fax machines, they don't have the use of the computers, because the capital dollars have not been spent there the same as capital dollars have not been spent for four-laning highways and making it accessible so that we could have better tourism, people coming through for tourism and just travelling around through northeastern and northwestern Ontario.
Then we see a silly campaign promise that was made for fewer politicians and we have Mike Harris and his Conservatives trying to ram it down the throats of everybody, especially in the geographical area where 87% of the population do not want this legislation being brought forward. But it's going to be brought forward, and from what I can hear in the presentations that I've listened to the day before this and today, the Conservative caucus members here are not going to listen to any amendments that are being brought forward. They're just going to bring this back into the Legislature, ram it into law, and it'll become law probably before the Legislature adjourns December 12. I'm just wondering what reaction you would have to this happening.
Mr Armstrong: Of course we'd be very disappointed, because we feel that personal representation is a right of every individual in Ontario. If that is changed, then I am disappointed.
As far as the technology is concerned, I was at a friend's house last night. He lives about 20 miles north of Barwick. It costs him $60 a month to have a private phone. He runs a big business back there, a big farming business: $60 a month just to have that private phone. You can get technology but the price is still heavy in northwestern Ontario.
But I want to go back to my first statement, that I want people to be people and to have access to people. I think that's what we want you to take back, the message from us: Please keep the people accessible to the people. We're not machines.
Mr Len Wood: People in northern Ontario take their politics very seriously. Talking from personal experience, having been elected the second time now to government, people want to see their local member of Parliament. They want to be able to talk to him. They want him to be able to sit down in groups and discuss their concerns and get feedback. They don't want to be able to do like Mr Gilchrist is saying: "We'll send a fax or we'll put it on the Internet. A telephone call is all that they deserve." In northern Ontario they take their politics a lot more seriously than that and they want the personal contact. I agree with you.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mayor Armstrong, for coming down from Rainy River and making your views known, and NOMA's views as well.
We will recess until 12:45 pm Dryden time, unless Mr Angus is here. Is Mr Angus here? We'll leave a note on the door for him. That's where we'll start this afternoon.
The committee recessed from 1115 to 1245.
CANADA'S NEW DEMOCRATS
The Acting Chair: Our first presenter is here. Mr Angus, welcome. I hope you got your car going. You have 20 minutes to use on your own, or if you end up short, we'll divide the time that's left equally.
Mr Iain Angus: Fair enough, Mr Chairman. If you could give me a 10-minute note in some way to let me know. Let me start by thanking the committee for its flexibility in dealing with my reality this morning.
Mr Gravelle: Hi, Iain.
Mr Angus: Hi, Michael. I can't very well accuse you of being late, Michael, given what's happened to me.
I also want to thank the committee for holding hearings here in Dryden rather than in Thunder Bay, which is more traditional, because, quite frankly, Thunder Bay won't be affected by this legislation. It's Kenora, it's Rainy River, in terms of the districts, it's Lake Nipigon, that other part of the Thunder Bay district that will have the greater impact.
Let me start by giving you a bit of my background, because I think it's relevant to my appearance today. Although I'm listed with my federal party president hat on, I chose that because it's a broader perspective than the fact that I'm the president of the provincial riding of Fort William and the president of the federal riding of Thunder Bay-Atikokan.
From 1975 to 1977, I was the provincial member for the riding of Fort William, the riding now held by Lyn McLeod. From 1984 to 1993, I was the federal member of Parliament for Thunder Bay-Atikokan. So I've got the experience at both levels.
I'm currently operating as a transportation consultant and have done two contracts which have brought me throughout northern Ontario by road and a little bit by air, and actually have seen some of the communities that I had talked about, as both a provincial and a federal politician, but never had visited.
I come before you today dealing not so much with the big-P politics of this decision, of the decision by this government to adopt federal boundaries, but to try to give you a sense of what it's like on the ground.
My experience in getting here this morning is part of that. My original intention had been to bring in a large green garbage bag, put it on the desk beside me, which would include my big winter boots, my second parka, my ski pants, my toque, my mitts, the candles and the matches that are part of the kit that elected members have to carry with them through this region. Although today was my first accident, my good friend and colleague Howie Hampton has rolled his vehicle many times, has bushed his vehicle many times as he travels from community to community. It's just part of the way of life in the north, and so far I've come through unscathed.
When you're servicing at a provincial level -- and I emphasize the term "servicing," because as an elected representative from this part of the world, you're more than just a vote in the Legislature; you're the go-between between the people and the government of the day, no matter what stripe, whether it's Tory, Liberal or NDP or something that may arise in the future. You're the go-between.
The provincial level of government is much more in the face of everyday residents, and I don't mean that in a negative way. The Ministry of Natural Resources is referred to as "the ministry," because it controls so much of the lives of the people in northern Ontario. If you folks haven't already experienced it, wait until the first time there's a screwup in moose tags. You will know -- certainly up here we will know -- the impact on daily life, because that's important to people. The same thing with decisions on where offices are, where the conservation officers are. Many times as a federal member, sharing an office with the provincial member -- Howie Hampton in Atikokan -- I had to deal with provincial issues, because I was there on the spot and they wanted to talk to a politician to get a point across about what the ministry was doing to them or wasn't doing for them that particular week.
Health care, community and social services, workers' compensation are front-line issues, where people turn to their provincial member more often than they turn to their federal member. Let me give you a comparison between workers' compensation, a provincial issue, and unemployment insurance, a federal issue. When you have a workers' compensation constituent come into your office, they bring their life in a file folder, and you've got chapter and verse for five years, 10 years, 15 years that they've fought the bureaucrats and fought the system.
On the other hand, you can get a call about somebody who hasn't got their UI, and all you need is a social insurance number and a piece of paper giving you permission to access their UI file. It's fairly simple to respond to. You might get an answer they like, you might get an answer they don't like, but it's very easy to deal with through a telephone call. You don't have to see them face to face. But provincially, people want to look you in the eye and talk to you about the issue of the day that concerns them, whether it's something that has been created by the provincial government or whether it's something that's just in the provincial government's jurisdiction.
When you look at increasing the size of the ridings -- and I've given you copies of the three federal ridings as they now stand, because there has been a change from what I ran on in 1993 and what others will run on next year or the year after, whenever the federal election is called -- those are humongous pieces of property. If you look at the Kenora-Rainy River riding, you find Dryden on that map and you go north a couple of hundred miles and you take a block of land out of there that used to be called the Reed tract -- it was a forest where there was incredible conflict back in the mid-1970s over whether or not it should be logged. I took that block of land, took the roadmap of Ontario and found that if you drew a line between Windsor and Toronto and a line parallel to that around Parry Sound, squared it off, that was the size of that one forest in northern Ontario.
If you extrapolate that to what that means in terms of the geography that has to be travelled in order to see people, to hear from them, to deal with them, it's an incredible distance. Whether it's Frank Miclash representing the riding of Kenora, Howard Hampton representing a smaller riding of Rainy River or Gilles Pouliot representing the riding of Lake Nipigon, those gentlemen -- and it doesn't matter what party is in -- have incredible distances to travel in order to see their constituents and be seen by them. By increasing the size of the ridings, you're taking away from the time that constituents have with their members.
Let's take a look at Thursday night. Frank or Howie or Gilles, coming out of Queen's Park at the end of the day, can get to Thunder Bay 8 o'clock, 8:30, something like that -- I know there's a flight to Fort Frances around 9 o'clock. After four full days in the Legislature -- and I don't care whether Howie's the leader or just an ordinary member, those days are full -- you fly to Fort Frances or you get off in Thunder Bay and rent a car and drive the two hours to Atikokan overnight there, and it goes on and on like that for the rest of the weekend: trying to be in two places at once, even though they're 80 miles apart, 120 miles apart, 60 miles apart in terms of Lake Nipigon riding. That's time when you're not productive. Communities don't schedule things to accommodate you, by and large.
I gather there was some reference to members of the Legislature attending city council meetings. Well, most of them are on Monday nights. If you look at the new riding of Kenora-Rainy River, there are 50 reserves which all have band councils, there are I don't know how many other non-aboriginal communities. It would take you two years to do a cycle of getting to every municipal council. That's not good use of your time or good use of their time. It's better to focus on when there are issues where they need you and you can get in there and sit down with them and work it out.
I want to briefly touch on the winners and losers, and I'm not talking politics here, I'm talking communities. In Kenora-Rainy River, there will be no winner or loser unless the member who is elected has a family who lives in the riding. Then they will become the member for whatever community they live in, because that's where they're going to go back to -- that's where the spouse is; that's where the kids are -- or they're going to move them to Toronto.
In Thunder Bay, the new Thunder Bay-Atikokan and new Thunder Bay-Nipigon provincial ridings, the members will be from Thunder Bay. They won't be from Marathon, they won't be from Atikokan. I'm not being parochial here per se, but that's the reality. That's where the biggest lump of voters are. By forcing the merger of the Lake Nipigon riding with the old Port Arthur, you're disfranchising those smaller communities having the right to have an elected representative from their community just by sheer numbers.
I've represented one of the smallest ridings provincially in northern Ontario, one of the smallest ridings federally in northern Ontario, and those are very easily done. Atikokan is two hours away, and in fact for some part of the year it's on a different time zone. It's an hour up and three hours back, so you can make an early meeting, but then you've got three hours on the road, in effect, in terms of when you get back home and get to bed. It's not as simple as just saying: "We'll adopt the federal boundaries. Everything will be hunky-dory." There will be impacts. People will be disfranchised. They will not see their member of the Legislature as often as they do now and, again, it doesn't matter who those people are or which parties they represent. It's just physically impossible to do.
One final note: Think about what you were doing on Remembrance Day, November 11, in your own constituencies and how many invitations you had to be at the cenotaphs. Some of you might only have had one; others might have had two or three within a reasonable geographic distance. But think about Frank Miclash. Where was he? Was he in Dryden at 11 o'clock and then made the rounds of the Legion in Kenora at 3? Or Howie Hampton trying to hit five communities all on that day? That's the reality that members of the Legislature have to deal with in northern Ontario in terms of being able to serve and be seen to serve their constituents.
I've got a lot more I can say, but let me leave the few moments for you folks to raise the questions you think are appropriate.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Angus. We have six minutes for questions that will start with Mr Gravelle.
Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much, Iain, for being here. I think it's very clear to all members of the committee that you're an extraordinarily important addition today because you represent somebody who has been there as a provincial member and as a federal member, and the examples you used were perfect. You're right, we could use a lot more time.
You made mention of the fact that you were glad the hearings weren't in Thunder Bay if Dryden was a choice, and I sure do agree. I would submit it would have been a good idea to have them in Geraldton as well or Longlac or Marathon because, in essence, the fact is that Thunder Bay specifically is not affected -- you're right -- but it will have an impact in that the new member for Thunder Bay-Nipigon, whoever that member may be, in order to do the job will be spending a great deal of time obviously in the other communities.
I just really want to say I think any opportunity we have to explain better, particularly to the members from southern Ontario, just what the realities are can only hopefully make a difference. I hope they take that into consideration. I want to thank you for making those points and wish you had more time to elaborate further.
Mr Angus: The committee might want to drive to Sault Ste Marie tonight instead of flying.
Mr Gravelle: There's an idea.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you, Iain, for coming forward and giving us your experience as a provincial member and a federal member. We've heard in some of the comments from the government members that people are not really that important, that you can put 100,000 or whatever there and people can serve them through faxes and telephones and cellular phones and this and that. They don't have to really be out there talking to them. We heard some of the comments from one of the Conservative members, saying he might get eight people come in to see him on the weekend and the rest can be all done by telephone.
My point is, and I'm sure you want to comment on it, that northern Ontario politics are different than southern Ontario. They take it more seriously and they want to see their local member, whether provincial or federal; for example, you took the ditch today and I'm happy to see that you didn't hurt yourself as a result of it, but the roads are slippery a lot of the time, fog and one thing and another, and getting around. I'll let you make a comment on that.
Mr Angus: I can recall one occasion, and this is when we were in government in Ontario, that Howard Hampton, as the Minister of Natural Resources, was making some changes to stumpage fees and there was a major concern by the independent loggers. They just circled the office in Atikokan. They were able to get access to their member of Parliament, who was also the minister, to say, "Hey, Howie, do you realize that this is what the impact is on us because of it?"
They were able to affect public policy in a face-to-face way where they couldn't do it because of their language skills, because of the fact that they're in the bush for 12 hours a day and they're only home on the weekends and that's the only time they can talk to politicians, and they were able to reach Howie. I don't just mean Howie specifically. I'm sure Frank has experienced it and I know Michael, in his new career, has got a bit of that. I'm sure others have had that happen to them.
In northern Ontario it's really important to be able to see that politician to dialogue with them directly. You may not end up agreeing, but when the member casts their vote, the very least he or she will know is where the people affected by that issue will stand. You don't get the same sense from a fax or from a telephone call because, let's face it, folks, we all have staff. The staff are the ones who tend to handle the calls, to be on the receiving end, and will report to the member, but it's not the same as having a face-to-face go-at-it with a trucker or a logger or a day care worker where you can really see what they're talking about.
Mr Len Wood: I can vouch for the fact -- I was with Howie during that tour -- that people want to see you in person.
1300
Mr Young: I'd like to draw on your experience and ask your views on how we might increase the representation of the north in various other ways. What you said is true: The incumbents right now can't attend 26 municipal council meetings. They can't; it's impossible. Mr Miclash indicated he had seven invitations to cenotaph ceremonies on Remembrance Day. You can't. It's not possible right now.
There are a number of other areas of things we could do as government to increase representation and communication, because most of government is communication. One is the northern development offices, how they might be used better by local representatives, MPPs and MPs, to get the message down. Another is northern caucus meetings, which the Premier initiated and the federal Liberals attended. That's another.
Another, if you could comment, please, is the potential to use modern technology. We have two-way video technology that's coming on stream that can go over ordinary telephone lines. We could use that so constituents -- not to replace the MPP, but to embellish the communication. There's also the possibility of additional staff or resources for MPPs in the north so they can get around a little better and have the resources to communicate better. Could you comment on those areas?
Mr Angus: Certainly the northern development offices over the years have provided a very valuable function, as has the Ombudsman's office. But there comes a time when people are more comfortable dealing with the elected representative.
Mr Young: I understand that it's not the thrust of your message, but with your experience -- there are four ways that we could increase communication. Could you see how that might be helpful?
Mr Angus: Fair enough. Let me deal first of all with the high-tech stuff. Yes, that is a real option, but at this point in time it's only an option for those people who are in the educational field, the government field and perhaps the industries themselves. It doesn't work for the logger, the miner. We have individuals in this region who don't have telephones.
Mr Young: But certainly anyone can get access to a telephone at some time during the week.
Mr Angus: But a lot of these folks don't have access when you're available, in terms of your staff, your offices. It's Saturday, it's Sunday, it's late at night, after they've finished stripping down the rig and rebuilding it so they can work again on Monday. There are incredible stresses on folks. And I'm a junkie in terms of high-tech, so I'm speaking from a knowledge base. It doesn't work for everything. There are still things on which people want to see their member face to face. They don't buy in to the new technology.
Staff resources, of course. When I was elected we didn't have constituency offices. That was provided partway through my term in 1976 where we actually had money for offices and a staff. Subsequent to that, all of us pressured the government of the day to create the worker adviser to try and take the workers' compensation load off, out of our constituency offices. The same thing for the Ombudsman. Those are resources that were put in place to try and deal with the load. But as society becomes more fragmented, I think we're finding that the load on the constituency offices is even greater today than it was in spite of all those additional supports.
Mr Young: But what if you had more money for another constituency office in another community?
Mr Angus: Let's deal with that. Provincially, Frank has two: Kenora and Dryden. That leaves out Sioux Lookout, Ear Falls, Red Lake and the far northern reserves. Howie Hampton has one in Atikokan that I used to share with him, and another one in Fort Frances. At the very least, one would assume they would get to keep four, whoever the new member was. But that still leaves a whole bunch of the area out of touch. Federally, Bob Nault only has one; it's here in Dryden. Does that make it better?
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Angus, for coming today and presenting your practical and unique views on your experience from your federal representation. We appreciate it.
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO ASSOCIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE
The Acting Chair: Our next deputant is Mr Dick MacKenzie. You have 20 minutes, Mr MacKenzie. You can use it how you want.
Mr Dick MacKenzie: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman, and thank you for being here, members. I bring greetings and apologies from our president, Dave Barker, of Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce. He's in Geraldton and it would have required a 16- to 18-hour drive to be here, and my drive is only about three hours. I'm past president of the association and I come to greet you.
Frank Miclash is our member of provincial Parliament in this riding, and I fear for his health. When he first started here some years ago he was a robust man, he was a portly gentleman. He was all of these things. He has spent the last seven, eight years flying his own plane around here to some of the many reserves and remote communities, some of which have no roads, many of which have no road access to them at all. He has driven around the riding. He is now a shadow of his former -- he's a skeleton. If this riding is expanded, I fear for the health of the person trying to represent it.
The new riding in this area being proposed is roughly the size of Newfoundland, with Labrador included. The new riding being proposed is roughly three times the combined land areas of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Or here, if we look south to another set of circumstances, the new riding being proposed is approximately the size of the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, our two closest neighbours to the south, combined. It's an area with maybe 50 reserves, half at least of which have no road access. Many of the people there have no electricity, no running water. Some of those communities have one phone, one community phone in the whole community.
The new riding -- I would like you to picture this -- could entail a representative going from his constituents in Rainy River to his constituents in Fort Severn. That would entail about a 300-mile car drive, about five hours of driving, for instance, from Rainy River to Sioux Lookout, at which point he might catch a plane for the other 450 miles and three hours of flying to Fort Severn. A person wouldn't always go to those extremes, but this is one enormous riding. There are some who think it's the largest one as is, in Ontario, and that it may be too unwieldy for proper representation now.
NOACC believes this will make it an impossible feat for any member to adequately represent. With democracy and representation being the cornerstone of this province, we really believe that expanding the boundaries of these already huge ridings in this part of the country will make it impossible for the citizens here to have proper representation, and they do deserve it. We're composed of a very vibrant, rich native aboriginal culture, and we have many immigrants to this part of the world, who raise families, who work in the mines, the forest industry. Mining contributes 30% of the mineral production of this whole country of Canada, and roughly 27% of the forest products. These are exportable products. Immigrants, residents who have lived here for many years, and increasingly the native populations are part of these enrichments to Ontario and to Canada and they deserve good, proper representation.
I'd like to leave some room open for questions and for those people to follow me. I don't have a lot more to say except to point out the enormity of the existing boundaries, the absolute impossibility of proper representation with even increased riding sizes in this part of the country. I'd like to say that NOACC thinks it'll be a sad day for the citizens in northwestern Ontario if these changes take place.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr MacKenzie. Our first question is to the New Democrats. Mr Wood, you have three minutes.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for your presentation. We've now heard from the chambers of commerce for this particular region, that they're opposed to losing the democratic right of representation in the area, and we've heard from the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association that the fewer politicians bill is the wrong way to go. When you create ridings that are bigger than Italy, bigger than Spain, bigger than Germany, how are the people in the small communities going to get proper representation at Queen's Park for their way of life, whether it be education issues, whether it be health care issues, whether it be a number of other issues out there, whether it's the renewable resource issues, hunting and fishing, how are they going to be able to get representation one-on-one with their local member of Parliament?
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I've heard from one of the mayors in my riding, who is saying he's a Conservative by choice but he thinks it's very unfair for Mike Harris to keep slapping the people in northern Ontario by this particular bill and by all the reductions in the maintenance of roads and the funding for airports and the shutting down of an airline -- just continuously one thing after another over the last 16 months, and now, to top it off, saying there are going to be fewer politicians in the area.
Do you really believe there are going to be amendments to this legislation by your presentation today and by listening to some of the comments that have been made up until now, since Bill 81 was introduced? I'll leave it at that, if you want to comment on it further.
Mr MacKenzie: Yes, sir, I believe this will be taken to heart or I wouldn't have driven three hours in this kind of weather to make this presentation and NOACC wouldn't have asked me to do that if we didn't think it would make a difference. I do think it'll make a difference. I do think it's important that we not only point out the enormity, the size and the difficulty of representing people here, but the diversity of the people.
I wasn't so inclined to draw comparisons between Italy and Spain, but let me draw one more comparison that I forgot to point out before. I superimposed a map of the proposed new riding of this part of Ontario over southern Ontario. There were some places that had to be tucked and I had to take in a little bit of Quebec to make it sort of symmetrical, but the riding went from Windsor to Ottawa, up to Sault Ste Marie to Timmins and down the Quebec border to the US. It included Sudbury, North Bay and all those kinds of places. That's a little closer to home, I think, for an illustration than Italy and Spain and France might be. But to answer your question, yes, I think it'll make a difference. I am very confident that it will.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Mr MacKenzie, for taking the time to drive in to see us here today. One of the things that personally, and maybe I can speak for some of our other caucus members, I'm having trouble wrestling with is that so much of the presentation time has dwelt with the vast, less developed areas in the far north, if I can make that distinction. Less than 2% of the population in what's considered northern Ontario is north of the 51st parallel.
I have to ask you a very serious question. It's one thing to talk about access. It's my understanding that 49 of the 50 first nations communities you talk about have a fax machine and only one, North Spirit, doesn't; it has 247 people and has one phone, but they're the only community that doesn't have fax. And there's no doubt they deserve access to their member.
But where do you draw the line in terms of the responsibility we have to taxpayers? The suggestion has been made, perhaps not overtly, but a number of presenters and certainly a number of opposition members have alluded with some reverence to their perception that PEI has greater democracy because there's only one MLA for roughly each 4,000 people. If we followed that model, Ontario would need 2,750 MPPs, at $400,000 to operate each member's office and budget.
Where do you draw the line in terms of the distinction you make between the access but the responsibility that we each have to have a reasonable workload? Do you have one member who serves everybody north of the 51st parallel? I would also ask you to respond: There are three members right now who go north of the 51st, and that will continue to be the case. The boundaries shift slightly, but again we're not talking a huge variation in population. If three members can serve it now, if three federal MPs serve it now and will serve it again in the future, what is so dramatically wrong with the particular boundaries that have been chosen in this? Where would you draw the line about how many people the member in the far north should be representing?
Mr MacKenzie: There probably are some models of different kinds of representation, but to focus simply on population -- the question I would ask is, how can any person in good conscience in a democracy leave people unrepresented or severely underrepresented? That's really the case here. There might be models. It may take some innovative thinking, some innovative programs. As much as people hate to hear it, the States have two sets of representation. They have some that are represented by population and some represented simply by area.
Mr Gilchrist: But the hard numbers, as you look at the actual boundaries and the actual population, is that the federal, non-partisan commission that drafted these boundaries built in a 40% differential, even when you count the urban centres of Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie and Sudbury -- a 40% differential. Do you really mean to tell me that you think that isn't enough allowance for the different geography?
Mr MacKenzie: I don't understand the --
Mr Gilchrist: Forty per cent smaller than the -- you said population isn't the only thing and I agree with you, but if you're doing a tradeoff against population, do you not think 40% differential was an accurate and adequate reflection of the increased demands that geography poses on those four ridings?
Mr MacKenzie: I'm sorry. I still don't quite understand what you're saying.
Mr Gilchrist: The population of all the northern ridings, on balance, the average population for each riding, is 40% less than those in southern Ontario. Clearly the boundary commission did build that into account and they did reflect the fact that it takes longer to get between towns. They have said, "We will give you a 40% smaller population base to make that consideration." Do you think it should be even more than 40%?
Mr MacKenzie: I don't even see it in those terms, sir. I see it as an inability to represent the people within an area. I'm talking about distances of eight hours between towns, in some cases. Those are extreme, but I'm talking about hours between towns. It's a very unproductive use of an MPP's time. I'm not even speaking federally. I'm not suggesting that they're doing a heck of a good job either serving such huge boundaries. I guess the assumption is that they are, but I am not certain that's the case.
Mr Miclash: Thank you for your comments. I appreciate your concern for my health. I have to say that it's been a little bit of work, but it's gone. Anyway, I think you've made a great contribution here. Both Iain and you have given an excellent representation on the geographic area. I think that's a major point that the members of the government are missing, the actual geography, and then combined with that are the requests for a good number of constituents to meet with us on a face-to-face basis.
Dick, you're with the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce. They normally have an annual meeting with the Premier and the cabinet to discuss issues of the north. When was the last time that meeting took place?
Mr MacKenzie: It was two years ago. Last year was the first year in 43 years that the sitting government didn't meet with NOACC.
Mr Miclash: So last year was the first year in 43 years --
Mr MacKenzie: Since I believe 1952.
Mr Miclash: -- 1952, that the provincial Premier and cabinet would not meet with the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce. Let me bring a quote back to you. It was a quote in a document that we saw during the campaign. It was called A Voice for the North and it was a document compiled by the Conservative members of that time and endorsed by the Premier. It said in the document: "The people of northern Ontario have given us a clear message: Their needs and concerns are not being met by the provincial government. They feel left out of the decision-making process.... Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservative Party are prepared to act." In your opinion, have they acted on what he said they were going to act on?
Mr MacKenzie: No.
Mr Miclash: No. Thank you.
Mr MacKenzie: No, I simply have to say no. I am speaking on behalf of an organization of many constituents. You've asked my opinion. My opinion is no, they haven't acted on it. It's the only government which has failed to even answer invitations. The Premier has failed to answer invitations to be our guest speaker at our annual meetings the last two years.
It is the first time since we started going to Queen's Park. I must say that it's closer for members from the western part of this riding to drive to Vancouver than it is to drive to Queen's Park, but we've gone there every year faithfully since 1952.
Mr Miclash: That's a good point. I would just like to echo your point that you made that it will be a sad day for the citizens of northwestern Ontario should redistribution happen. Again, I thank you for your presentation.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr MacKenzie, for coming in and making your views known to us today.
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THUNDER BAY COALITION AGAINST POVERTY
The Acting Chair: We go to our next deputants, the Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty. Would you state your names for the record and give your positions or who's going to speak.
Ms Chris Mather: My name is Chris Mather. I'm the coordinator for the Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty. Ms Beulah Besharah is our board president, and this gentleman is Andy Saxberg, one of our members and volunteers.
The Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty is a non-profit agency concerned about the depth and extent of poverty in our community. We provide public education on poverty and related issues, attempt to influence the policymaking processes which affect people with low incomes, operate a food bank, a drop-in centre and a good food box program. At this point I want to add that we are a non-partisan group. None of us has been a candidate for any party. Mike will tell you that we frequently try and affect the Liberal policies that are being made at the federal level, and when the NDP are back in power we're going to watch those guys to see what they do for low-income people.
In regard to that then, I hope you'll take my next comments in that light, that we're a non-partisan group. I feel that I have to make a comment about what happened this morning. When we heard that Mr Angus had gone into the ditch, one of the members of the Conservative Party made comments to the effect that it was similar to his philosophy being "in the ditch." I feel that something should be done. Somebody should find out which member said that and some censure should be made of his conduct.
We also want to say that we're very disappointed by today's hearings. It was a big deal for us to come up here. I got out my best suit, right? We closed our office for a day. We spent a lot of time on our presentation. This morning we again heard a Conservative member, and because of the TV camera we don't know which one it was, making the comment that he was in favour of this bill. Now, we thought they were coming up to hear our opinions and then make their minds up. It would appear that they have come up with their minds made up, and that's very disappointing to us. I'll continue with the rest of my presentation.
We have great concerns about how the proposed changes to ridings will affect people in the north, and especially poor people in the north. Before we provide our specific concerns, however, we wish to address the process which is being used to make these changes.
Reducing northern representation at Queen's Park is a major change. When it was mentioned during the last election campaign that riding changes were being considered, we assumed that the process used to determine such changes would be open, intensive and involve the expertise of people familiar with the ridings under consideration. We envisioned extensive public consultation and a multiparty search for a consensus as to what was best for each riding. In early October we heard that Bill 81 was being presented as a fait accompli and would be passed without public hearings. We believe and wish to state firmly and for the record that this government should be ashamed that it was only after pressure from the opposition that it agreed to hold public hearings on the Fewer Politicians Act. We wish to be clear that we consider holding only three days of hearings in the north, a vast area encompassing 87% of Ontario which stands to lose one third of its MPPs, is a laughably transparent attempt to claim that public input has been solicited.
We were chagrined to learn that our hopes for a consensus approach to riding changes was neither naïve nor an unheard of concept in Canadian politics. We found reference to changes introduced by a Conservative Ontarian provincial government in 1943 which received the approval of the opposition. We also found reference to a process used in New Brunswick which was supported by all the political parties and which used extensive public consultation. We want to know why the people of New Brunswick can have that kind of process and the people up here can't.
Turning now to our specific concerns about the plan for the north, we must first address the realities of being a northerner. Life up here is inescapably coloured by two factors: our geography and our climate. No decision about service in this area can be realistic unless it takes those two factors into account. We expect that this committee will hear about our geography and weather several times -- and we know you've heard a lot already today, several times, about those two things -- but perhaps repetition will bear fruit.
The proposed new riding of Kenora-Rainy River will be one third the size of Ontario. One person cannot service that area. It's very possible that some members of this committee represent ridings in which it is possible to telephone from one end of the riding to the other without incurring long-distance charges. Such members can be forgiven for not realizing that some parts of our region only have radio phone service. Radio phone charges are higher than groundline telephone charges.
Also, as at least one cabinet minister has been made aware, the cellular telephone network does not extend over much of northwestern Ontario. Therefore, even for such a simple thing as a phone call to a constituency office, costs can be higher in the north than in other parts of the province. This is a consistent reality of life in the north. The proposed riding changes will only exacerbate this difficulty. As an anti-poverty group, we know only too well that this difficulty is worse for low-income people.
This committee must take into account that deciding upon the boundaries of a riding should not be based solely upon the size of that riding's population. That is just too simplistic. The level of service provided by the member will depend on the distance to be travelled to each community within the riding. In the north, of course, during the winter months travel depends upon the weather. It's by no means unusual for the Trans-Canada Highway to be closed, and even when it's open there are advisories about reducing speed. Serving a northern riding in winter is not the same as getting on the subway in Toronto.
Our home community is in the Port Arthur riding, to which it is proposed to add nine additional communities and seven Indian reserves. These communities and reserves are distinct from each other and from Thunder Bay, both in terms of their demographics and their service needs. Many of these communities, as is true throughout the northwest, have very high levels of poverty, an unstable or one-industry economic base and low levels of in-town services. They deserve and need considered and extensive attention from their provincial representative.
From Thunder Bay to Marathon, the next distant community in the proposed riding, is approximately 310 kilometres. The citizens of our riding will experience a decrease in service from their MPP if its boundaries are enlarged. Consider if the member tries to spend just two days per year in each of the new communities, which isn't a high level of service. The member will be absent for 30 days more per year from Thunder Bay, and that's a significant figure given that the member's already absent four days a week when the Legislature is sitting.
It is planned that the new ridings will match the boundaries of the federal ridings. It appears to us that this ignores the basic and profound difference between the two jobs of member of Parliament and member of provincial Parliament. The kind of programs and services administered by the provincial government have a more immediate effect on the day-to-day lives of the average citizen than do those provided by the federal government. MPPs are called upon to act as advisers, advocates and even a form of ombudsman for their constituents. Everything from northern travel grants to workers' compensation to highway maintenance complaints are brought to the MPP. Without in any way wishing to downplay the importance of a federal MP, we must ask, how often does one apply for a passport? How concerned is the average citizen with Seaway issues?
Over my 15 years as a social worker, I have never advised a client to approach a federal MP for help with a problem, and I estimate that I've referred people to a provincial MPP at least a dozen times a year. During the last six months, such referrals have included a disabled woman whose hydro was to be disconnected because her provincial social assistance cheque was delayed. That poor woman spent a whole day in Mrs McLeod's office getting things straightened out. Another example is an elderly woman who required financial assistance to accompany her husband to Ottawa, where his heart surgery was scheduled. This is one of those ladies who has a great deal of problems with her lungs and she wanders around with an oxygen tank. Mr Gravelle's office introduced her to a program through which she could receive donated frequent flyer points. Most recently, we've had a woman whose child support cheques had not arrived. We've had no success with that one yet.
Just yesterday we referred somebody who again is having problems with social assistance to Mr Gravelle's office. Her child's teeth have been broken, her cheque has been held up, and the child is in considerable pain from the poor dental care they're receiving. Another example yesterday which we referred to Mrs McLeod's office was a woman who's having her hydro cut off in Marks township, which is just outside Thunder Bay. She doesn't even have any wood to keep her wood stove going.
It's important that this committee not make the mistake of thinking that adequate service can be provided by telephone. The types of problems we see brought to members' offices involve extensive paperwork and records which need to be reviewed before deciding what can happen on the situation. As an anti-poverty group, we're too well aware that poor people are intimidated by bureaucracies, especially in light of the current climate of poor-bashing, and need face-to-face contact with a member or their constituency workers in order to be able to explain their situation.
Indeed, since the cuts to social assistance, many of the poor people with whom our group comes into contact can no longer afford a telephone at all, or else they have a toll-denial feature on their phone which makes it so that they can't make a long-distance call. They can't even call a 1-800 number. That's real. That's not something I'm making up. In my work I have difficulty contacting poor people simply because many of them no longer have access to telephones.
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Travel within the new, larger ridings will be difficult for poor people. Again, Marathon is the farthest community away from Thunder Bay in the new riding. The return bus fare from Marathon to Thunder Bay is $81.11. Please listen to this statistic carefully: It's $81.11, a return bus fare. That's 42% of the maximum this government allows a single adult on social assistance for food, clothes, laundry, transportation and personal care per month.
So far we've been concerned with the member of provincial Parliament as a service provider to the individual constituent. The other role we see for our members is as advocates for the region as a whole. The north has a different culture, different problems, different needs and a different economy. We need and expect our representatives to communicate for us to the south. Certainly there's a belief up here that, even with the number of representatives we have now, the south doesn't listen to or understand our concerns. Taking away one third of our access to the decision-making will further lessen the understanding at Queen's Park of our needs and our problems. We believe that relevant decision-making depends upon adequate information.
In summation, the Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty is opposed to the riding changes as outlined in Bill 81. We believe that the increase in size of some northern ridings will effectively disfranchise part of the electorate. Service provision by MPPs will deteriorate, as will the north's ability to have a voice at Queen's Park. If redistribution of ridings is believed to be necessary, and we're not denying that maybe some change is necessary, we call upon the government to institute a comprehensive, multiparty approach to riding changes, an approach based upon consensus and extensive public input, an approach predicated upon achieving a system of ridings based upon the needs of the electorate. We believe that it is incumbent upon a government with such a large majority to ensure that major changes to the electoral system be carried out in as democratic a fashion as possible. Thank you for your attention to our presentation.
Mr Young: I'd like to ask you a question related to our provincial community because it's something every member of Parliament struggles with every day. We have a monstrous provincial debt of about $100 billion; 17 cents of every dollar the province takes in, from all sources, goes to pay just interest on that debt. It's about $8 billion a year. That debt is increasing this year another $8 billion. It's a growing threat to everything we hold dear in our communities, whether it's the north or the south. I just wondered if you recognize the seriousness of this debt and this deficit and if you could recommend how to address it or where else we might make reductions in spending, because we're looking at everything to make that happen.
Ms Mather: Certainly. Probably the most important suggestion I would have for you is that you not borrow any more money to fund your tax cut to the most wealthy in this province. That's my answer.
Mr Young: That's the extent of your answer?
Ms Mather: That's the extent of the answer, yes.
Mr Gilchrist: I'll be very brief. I have just two comments arising from your presentation. First off, you remarked about something you'd heard from one of the members on our side. I hope you didn't come here suffering under the delusion that, considering they've already voted against in second reading, the other side is here with an open mind.
I have to comment on something else. I don't know what the source of your information is, but I must say it's completely untrue. I don't know why you seem to think it was the opposition that forced these hearings. As the person the House leader asked to take carriage of this bill, before the first House leaders' meeting, I made it clear that I wanted public hearings.
Let me just say for the record that this is the first time when the House is in session in 10 years. The Liberals never did it. The NDP never took a committee on the road in 10 years to have public hearings while the House was during its normal legislative session. The opportunity and the idea originated with the government because we want to hear concerns, constructive, useful suggestions. We don't need rhetoric but we appreciate the submissions we get up here and we take them to heart.
I would appreciate if something a little more balanced, in terms of an approach to some of this information, were taken before you so readily slam our government, as you have in your preface in this.
Ms Mather: What was the question, Mr Gilchrist? I didn't hear.
Mr Gilchrist: It was a comment.
Ms Mather: Okay.
Mr Gravelle: Thanks, Chris, Beulah, Andy. It's great to have you here.
Mr Gilchrist, if I could just quickly comment to him, you were certainly quoted quite audibly on CBC Radio saying you didn't expect any changes from these committee hearings.
Mr Gilchrist: I said, "Boundary changes."
Mr Gravelle: The point is, if you're here to listen, you can well listen to the details that were put forward by the Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty, who very much have given a different angle in terms of how it's affecting people who simply can't access the services. I am very grateful, because you went into some great detail and covered a lot of the areas.
One of the things that was talked about earlier was, and I think it was mentioned, actually, by Mr Gilchrist previously, where do you draw the line? For Mr Young to basically talk about the debt and deficit, your response was absolutely correct. They're going to take $5 billion a year from revenue to fund their tax cut.
In terms of drawing the line, it seems to me an appropriate amendment that could come forward would be to maintain the level of representation we now have in the north. Many of us would certainly argue that it's not enough as well, but certainly if the government wished to support that, based upon what they've been able to hear, I take it you would probably accept the fact if they maintained the number of ridings in northern Ontario, which would still be a very small percentage of the House.
Ms Mather: Yes, what we're asking for is that it be maintained as it is and not made worse. I know when I mentioned the tax cut Mr Young just dismissed what I said as being a party line. I want to reiterate that if the Liberals or the NDP were to introduce such a measure we'd be going after them too, Mr Young. It's the policy, not the party that we're after, okay? Thank you, Michael.
Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): Do you see this bill as changing the fundamentals of democracy, at least in terms of northern Ontario?
Ms Mather: I'm speaking as an advocate for low-income people. I think one of the things about democracy is that for low-income people, for the poorest people in society, it's very hard to get access to the political process. Because they don't have a lot of money to spend and they don't contribute to campaigns they get discouraged enough and they don't even vote. One of my big tasks is to try to get them to vote for any party. Because of that, they're already disfranchised. Cutting down the number of people they can go to is going to disfranchise that group even more. I'm trying to speak as a low-income advocate here.
Mr Hampton: If the government were to design a process that actually considered people's views, in other words a consultative, consensus-seeking process that actually went out and spent a fair amount of time seeking the views of people across the province, what do you think that process would look like, in your view? How would you design that process, since I think we are dealing with one of the fundamentals of democracy here?
Ms Mather: I think a process like that would have to be very user-friendly. I'm just speaking for the group we represent, the section of the population we represent. Low-income people are intimidated by people like you, even by people like Mike, by people who try to be really friendly; they find them intimidating. It needs time spent. It needs to be introduced in easily understood language. We try to take the stuff we get about politics and translate it into an easier-understood format. A process like that would have to happen.
We've presented at a lot of hearings. Quite often during the breaks Conservative members will come to me and say, "We do have concerns about low-income people," and I always make the offer to them, "Well, if you really want to know what low-income people think about things, if you are concerned about that, give me a call and I can arrange for you to talk to some low-income people." I can invite you to our food bank. Since the cuts to social assistance we have probably about 600 people going through our food bank every month. Nobody has ever taken me up on that -- NDP, Liberal, Conservative. Mr Young, really I'm not a party person. Nobody takes me up on that.
Mr Young: We all have low-income people in our ridings, we all have food banks.
Mr Hampton: Excuse me, I thought it was my time, Chair.
I want to correct something that Mr Gilchrist said. You see, ordinarily committees don't sit while the Legislature is sitting. Ordinarily committees will sit during January, February and March, when the House is not sitting. That way you have a fair amount of time to actually consider bills and discuss them. The reason we're only having three days of hearings on this in northern Ontario and one in southwestern and one in southeastern Ontario is that the government has said they want this passed before Christmas. They don't want any further hearings. They don't want two or three weeks of hearings on it during the January, February, March period when those kinds of hearings would ordinarily be accommodated.
Mr Gilchrist: Why did your subcommittee member vote for it too?
Mr Hampton: We recognized these were the only hearings we were going to get.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Ms Mather, for coming in. Have a safe trip back to Thunder Bay, although I think you have another presentation later.
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FLORENCE BUFFINGTON
The Acting Chair: Could we have Florence Buffington come and make her presentation to the committee.
Ms Florence Buffington: There might be a few additions to my presentation as it goes along. It's a good thing I didn't spend too much time doing this because I'd be off on tangents by now.
I'm Florence Buffington and I consider myself lucky to live in the Rainy River riding, where our MPP is Howard Hampton. It is also one of the ridings that Harris wants to do away with.
I've watched on TV as Bill 81, the Fewer Politicians Act, has unfolded over the last few weeks. This government is simply not listening to the NDP and Liberal MPPs when they speak of the negative consequences the passage of Bill 81 will have on their constituents.
When you speak of fair representation, please be kind enough to remember that everyone in Ontario is not a Conservative, and not all Conservatives believe in this venture. Residents of northwestern Ontario expect our MPPs to attend many different functions, as I'm sure all of you attend. These range from weddings, funerals, meetings with town councils, agricultural, forestry and tourist groups, Ducks Unlimited, agricultural fairs, social agencies, first nations, hospital boards, and the list could go on and on. Each of these groups wants and deserves time with its MPP. I think something that has been forgotten about in this process is that we are the people. You are the servants of our wishes and our views. That's what you decided to do for a job, and we want time with you.
These functions, meetings etc are vital in communities like ours. It makes the people of northwestern Ontario feel closer to and part of the legislative process to know and be known by our MPPS, that we have a direct link to the provincial government and that our issues are considered to be important to Ontario.
This sense will be impossible under Bill 81. How can one person be able to know and be known in an area that is one third of Ontario's land mass? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize this is an impossibility.
Bill 81 has nothing to do with mirroring the federal government boundaries. There is a hidden agenda of giving more power to urban Ontario at the expense of rural Ontario. The Conservatives know this and they are counting on the political gains they will make by providing suburban Toronto -- Brampton, Mississauga, York, Scarborough and the like.
Gone will be the days here in the north when you will see your MPP at a local function, because in this riding it means going from an area of 33,000 square kilometres to an area of 360,000 square kilometres. How will the MPP for this area give adequate representation when there will be no physical way to do it? Not everyone has access to fax machines, e-mail, or wants them. We still want to see a living, breathing person.
The government rhetoric is the savings, savings, savings; just less staff, fewer offices, less, less, less. The fact is, Conservative spokepersons have stated in the media that, at most, $1 million will be saved per year. There will be no savings on travel, mailouts, phone and fax. The MPP will still need to travel to outlying areas. The residents of these areas will expect to be heard from and see their MPP, which they should. Staff at constituency offices are still going to have to help the constituents. Additional staff will need to go into existing offices, if not branch offices open up.
I suspect from the way these changes will affect rural Ontario the intent is to give urban Ontario more power over rural Ontario. To place population as the means for representation and to neglect other demographic factors is wrong. We keep hearing, "Move on, join the global economy" etc. Well, using population as a determining factor is from the old school of thought.
There are many aspects within Ontario that Harris and the Conservatives will have to address. In northwestern Ontario there is a higher ratio of seniors. To be fair, should some have to move out of this area? There are more trees in northwestern Ontario. Does this mean they'll need to be uprooted and shipped down east? We'll have more lakes in the riding with these changes. What should we do with the excess water? By now, you're thinking, how dumb is this woman? Well, these comments are as dumb as Bill 81.
Combining Rainy River, Kenora and part of the Lake Nipigon riding will increase the number of first nations in one riding from 11 in Rainy River to almost 50. How can this help first nations? With the complex concerns first nations face, this proposed change will hinder their ability to be heard at the Legislature, or is this another hidden part of the Conservative agenda? If anything, the provincial government should be looking at increasing the representation at Queen's Park for northern and rural Ontario.
I have a solution for the Conservative members to take back to cabinet. There will be a municipal election in November 1997. At that point in time the government could hold a referendum on the issue of redistribution. A straightforward question similar to this could be asked: Do you believe the boundaries for the provincial riding should be the same as the federal ridings? Yes or no.
I realize this leaves the first nations out of this process, but a separate referendum could take place on the reserves or the actual vote could take place on a separate ballot at the provincial election and let it be a majority, 50% plus one, that decides if there is change to the ridings.
Yes, I understand this holds off the process but since in the last provincial election the Conservatives did not have 50% plus one of the popular vote and since population is used under Bill 81, then the bill is already flawed. Let the voice of Ontario be heard on this major issue. There would still be enough time before the next provincial election to implement the changes if the people decide, not the people sitting down in Queen's Park decide, but the people.
I honestly believe our riding will end up with a nameless, faceless representative who is asked to represent all communities and all first nations in an area almost the size of Sweden. The fact is that this nameless, faceless individual will see many communities and many first nations fall through the representation cracks and many people will begin to wonder why we have provincial representation or, for that matter, a provincial government.
If the provincial ridings mirror the federal ridings, why not give all control back to the government of Canada and simply become one big city -- Toronto?
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The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Buffington. The first questions, we have two minutes each.
Mr Miclash: Florence, thank you for your presentation. You've touched on something that I mentioned this morning and I would like to get your comments on it as well. We know there's a federal boundaries commission that took a very close look at how the federal government would lay out its boundaries in terms of the various population areas in Canada, whether it be the east coast, whether it be the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, or even northwestern Ontario. Would you see much use in a provincial commission taking a look at the boundaries of Ontario?
Ms Buffington: If it's a commission that is really going to listen to people and that people will actually have input into it. I know myself today I drove up from Fort Frances, and that's 200 kilometres away. When I leave here, it's another 200 kilometres back, and I considered that this hearing was close enough so that I could even attend it. Where are the people from Fort Severn? Where are the people from all the other areas who won't have the opportunity to even be at something like this today?
Mr Miclash: You're correct. Another issue that I brought forth this morning was something that was raised in a Queen's Park report, and I'm sure you've seen some of these in your riding from Howard. It's a Queen's Park report from Morley Kells, a government member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore. In here he says that Queen's Park power is centralized in the Office of the Premier, Mike Harris, and very little is shared with the cabinet. I think that's a unique quote coming from a government member.
My question around that is: Do you see some of the power, or even more power, going into lobby groups if this legislation should go ahead?
Ms Buffington: I suspect from what has happened with the tax breaks and the other things like that that somebody definitely has the ear of the government. It's not the poor, it's not the people -- we know who it is. It's big business.
Mr Hampton: Thank you for taking the time to be here today, Florence. The government members take the position that since these proposed constituency boundaries are okay for the federal level, then without any further thought they must be equally okay at the provincial level. Part of what bothers me about that, and you've talked about it here and the other deputants talked about it as well: in my experience, provincial members deal with things like health care, education, streets and roads, condition of our highways, sewer and water, whether or not people can get birth certificates, whether or not they've got a health card, whether or not they get their student loan or whatever. In effect, these are issues that touch people on a almost day-to-day basis. You've said you want access to political representation where you can actually, from time to time, meet the person, talk to the person. How important is that in those kinds of issues?
Ms Buffington: It's very important, especially when you're deciding to vote, who you should even vote for. If you never see the person, how can you possibly know if they're taking care of your representation needs at the time or not. I know in our area we're very lucky to see Howard, and yet you still hear, "He's never in the riding." Well, he's probably in Emo or Rainy River or wherever. The same goes for Frank in his riding. I'm sure he hears that from people all the time too.
The ridings are so big you can't -- unless you're going to get whoever is the next MPP Superman's cape and they can jump up and fly around and go from this place, it's not going to happen; it isn't that way. You're stuck by bus schedules, road conditions. Look what happened today to people on their way here.
Mr Hardeman: Thank you very much for your presentation. We've heard a lot about the size of the ridings and in fact that it will be very difficult for the member to get around and to represent the constituents or to be seen by the constituents as well as they presently are.
But in your presentation you also mentioned that the restructuring will require more staff in the constituency office to deal with the more constituents one will represent. I guess I have some concern. Recognizing I suppose that the function of the constituency staff is to deal with the complaints or the concerns coming into the office that are presently arriving by phone, fax or whatever method, generally the number is not people who walk in the front door in my southern Ontario office, and I expect that's somewhat similar in northern Ontario. Would the amount of work that's being done in a constituency office not relate to the number of population in the riding as opposed to how far away the calls are coming from?
Ms Buffington: I'm sure Frank's offices take care of many concerns and complaints or inquiries, the same as Howard's office does or Gilles Pouliot's -- his too, his clerk. Those people are still going to need to get in touch with somebody. If the staff is busy taking somebody else's call, you need more people to deal with those issues.
Mr Hardeman: From a constituency office point of view, if one represents 100,000 people, on a percentage basis, and we'll just use a percentage of 10% because it's easy figuring, 10% of the people are going to require some help from the constituency office. In my southern Ontario riding of 100,000 people, my constituency staff is going to have to look after 10,000 people who need some assistance. If you lower that amount of population, would the number of calls not, in your estimation, also go down comparatively? Do the people in northern Ontario need more help from their members than the southern Ontario people?
Ms Buffington: It might very well be that down east where people are closer to specific agency offices they go into those offices, let's say for getting a passport or for doing whatever they need, death certificates, birth certificates, things like that. They might actually have an office agency that they can go in and receive those things where in this neck of the woods those offices are being closed down all the time.
It still might be that the regional office for most things around here was in Thunder Bay or the Kenora area, so people in Fort Frances didn't even know sometimes where to go to. So that call they might be making or going in with that inquiry to the MPP's office might be if they'd known exactly where to go before, they could have gone to that place initially.
Mr Hardeman: Just as a final point, in your estimation, on a percentage basis would the people in northern Ontario contact their MPP more than people in southern Ontario?
Ms Buffington: I wouldn't have access to that information. I'm sure Mr Miclash or Mr Hampton could tell you how many calls they get into their offices. I don't have that information.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Ms Buffington, for coming and making your views known to us today.
KENORA BOARD OF EDUCATION
The Acting Chair: The next deputants are from the Kenora Board of Education, Mr Carrie and Mrs Helash.
Mrs Marion Helash: We would like to thank the members of the legislative committee on general government for this opportunity to present our views on the proposed reduction and redistribution of provincial ridings. The issue is very important to Ontarians living in the north, and we trust that our brief comments will be given careful consideration. We will address some general issues of concern which will no doubt be repetitive for you here today, as well as issues of particular concern to us as school board trustees and staff.
At the outset, we want you to know that we understand the fiscal situation in the province today. We understand what a difficult task it is to balance Ontario's need for government services and representation with the need to get our fiscal house in order. We are particularly concerned with the needs of northern Ontarians, as we're sure you can understand. The question which needs to be addressed today is whether the proposed redistribution of provincial ridings will help us or hinder us in achieving that balance.
In order to properly represent the wishes of his or constituents, a member of provincial Parliament must be able to make contact with those constituents in a meaningful way, on a regular basis. The ability to represent constituents in a riding is in part a function of the total population in that riding and is in part a function of the geographic size of that riding and the distribution of constituents within that riding. The principle of representation by population must be tempered in practice by geographic reality. There are numerous obstacles to effective representation in the north, such as the distance between communities, the lack of transportation infrastructure and alternatives, and the lack of advanced communications technology.
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We believe that ridings in geographically large but sparsely populated areas should contain smaller populations than the ridings in more densely populated areas. The proposed federal riding which our school board jurisdiction would fall into would be Kenora-Rainy River riding, which we have heard encompasses one third of Ontario's land mass. We do not see how one MPP can effectively represent such a large area when the issues and concerns are focused so much more at the local level than for a federal MP.
We do not foresee an immediate financial benefit to a realignment of provincial ridings with federal ridings. Unless the province is prepared to live with the vagaries of federal election timing, we will still need separate enumeration processes. We have yet to see evidence that a permanent voters' list can be maintained on an ongoing basis at less expense than the current cyclical process.
Provincial MPPs must monitor the impact of provincial policies on individuals and local organizations, such as school boards. We depend on our local MPP to be familiar with the condition of our schools, the nature of our programs, and the social and economic conditions in our community. We depend on our local MPP to represent our interests to the government of the day. In the proposed Kenora-Rainy River riding, our school board would be competing with many other northern school boards for the attention of one overworked MPP, while in the south some school boards would have the luxury of one or more MPPs dedicated solely to their jurisdiction. We are concerned that our needs will not get the attention they deserve.
The last provincial election polarized the province along north-south lines. There are no members of the governing party in the north, as we define it. The proposed reduction in representation for northern Ontarians would further alienate us from our government.
Will the reduction in the number of MPPs prove to be a false economy? We know that the cost of our political representatives is a tiny fraction of the total cost of our provincial government. Our MPPs may be the best bargain in government, after school trustees and municipal councillors. They are all watchdogs of the public purse elected to serve the best interests of taxpayers. We believe taxpayers in the north would be willing to pay a tiny bit more in taxes to ensure their voices are still heard far away in Queen's Park. We ask that you soften the blow to northern Ontario as you redraw the electoral map. Thank you for listening to our presentation.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mrs Helash. We have 15 minutes, 5 minutes to each caucus. This time we start with the government.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you. I appreciate your presentation here before us today. A couple of things to start out with that haven't been dealt with so far today in any of the hearings. I would suspect, as the chair of the board and someone who is as much a part of the democratic process --
Mr Hampton: Chair, could I interrupt for a minute? The first presenter that I remember was the Thunder Bay Coalition Against Poverty, and I believe the government started off first. Then there was Florence Buffington, and I believe the Liberal caucus started off first. Now we're on the Kenora Board of Education, and if there's a rotation I believe we would come next.
The Acting Chair: Sorry. Please accept my apologies.
Mr Hampton: We are supposed to be following a rotation, aren't we?
The Acting Chair: This northern air has got me all up and down, Mr Hampton.
Mr Hampton: It seems to do that to a lot of government members.
Interjection.
Mr Hampton: You are right; it will be very temporary for some of you, Terence.
The Acting Chair: My apologies. Go ahead. We have five minutes.
Mr Hampton: I wanted to ask you this: You pointed out that in fact there are many boards of education, many communities spread across the map in northern Ontario. For example, one MPP may have to deal with six or seven boards of education and represent their views at Queen's Park, or one MPP may have to deal with a diversity of municipalities and have to represent their views at Queen's Park. I think you have an excellent point there. You should be aware that in the next stage in this, the government may also do away with your board of education and your municipality.
Mrs Helash: We are very aware of that, thank you.
Mr Hampton: Yes. You draw attention again to the difference between being a federal MP and a provincial member of the Legislature. I wrote down some of the things a federal MP would ordinarily deal with in their work at Ottawa: issues of defence, issues of foreign affairs, issues of international trade, issues of interprovincial government relations, issues of the Constitution and so on. I want to ask you: Do any of those things, in your mind, touch people on a day-to-day basis?
Mrs Helash: No, they don't touch anybody really on a day-to-day basis. They're generalized.
Mr Hampton: You come from the Kenora Board of Education so you have been involved in local government of one kind of another. What are the things that touch people on a day-to-day basis, that people want to know about urgently, that their health may be in jeopardy etc? In your mind, what are the things that touch people on a day-to-day basis and often require closer representation, closer accountability and so on and so forth?
Mrs Helash: Education and health.
Mr Hampton: What disturbs me about this is that on the very things that matter most to people, as you say, education and health -- how is the health care dollar going to be spent? Is our hospital going to be closed? Is it going to be downsized? How is the education dollar going to be spent? One of the things that worries me about this bill is, on those very issues that concern people the most, I would argue this government is going to increase the distance between the citizen and their elected representative, is going to increase the distance between the citizen and, eventually, their government. Do you think that's a good thing?
Mrs Helash: No, it's not. It can't be a good thing because we're a democratic country. If we're a democratic, we have a right to a voice and we have a right to a voice that will be heard.
Mr Hampton: I am not someone who is opposed to redistribution. I believe that every 10 years or so we should look at the electoral map and we should decide on how people are being represented. But in my view the representation of people and how people are impacted by that representation goes to the heart of democracy. It's what democracy is all about. If we're going to have redistribution, how do you think it should be carried out? Should there be a committee that spends a lot of time in communities? Should it just be a bill like this? How do you think redistribution or proper representation ought to be considered and dealt with?
Mrs Helash: I would think it would have to be an issue that's well thought out, that's dealt with within the communities, and that we get advice from people who work and live within them, like our representatives in our area. I would suggest that you and Mr Miclash would be very good at knowing exactly how long it takes and how hard you have to work to meet with your constituents.
Mr Gilchrist: We'll start again. I appreciate Mr Hampton going first, because I'd like to not so much rebut, but he cited a number of federal issues. I would agree that the ones he read out probably wouldn't touch anyone anywhere in this province, never mind northern Ontario. But I wonder whether you would feel the same thing about Agriculture and Food Canada, all the food inspection that's done in this country; veterinary inspection; everything to do with the Young Offenders Act and Victims' Bill of Rights; everything to do with citizenship and immigration -- Ontario gets over half of the immigrants that come to Canada and clearly that impacts us; native educational programs and all the issues under native affairs, as we've heard numerous times today, obviously would be a big factor of life in this riding, both the existing one and the new one; all the income security programs, Canada pension plan, employment insurance, and on and on and on. Would you agree with me that those sorts of issues do in fact touch every community across Ontario?
Mrs Helash: And certainly in the immigration field and the native education field, it really impacts on boards of education.
Mr Gilchrist: Yes, I'm sure it does. I, for one, am not out to vilify MPs, and I'm not suggesting the other side is either. I think they have a full day's work on their plate. While I may not agree with all their decisions at the end of each day, I have not met any that I think are not giving value to the taxpayer.
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I want to talk about something else very briefly. Mr Hampton raised the issue of going out and consulting on redistribution. I really would like your comment on this, as I prefaced my earlier comments, as somebody who is just as much a part of the democratic process as any of we elected officials. I'm wrestling here with perhaps the greatest philosophical problem when we're dealing with this bill. In May 1994, before the federal government had even completed -- in fact, literally the same week; they had just start their consultation process on boundary reform -- we said, as part of our election campaign, as part of a promise we were making, that we would adopt federal boundaries. There was no doubt. The federal boundaries at the time in the north were 11 seats. Yes, they've changed to 10 but it would have absolutely gone from 15 to 11. We made that a promise.
Over a year later, 13 months later, the voters in this province had a chance, having read the Common Sense Revolution, to cast their vote, and I'd like to believe the average voter does pay attention to what all three parties have to say. So having considered all of those things, they cast their vote.
Now as the government, my problem is that there's a suggestion, obviously, from those who would say not to do this, that we break that promise. I would be the first to agree that it affects different parts of the province in different ways. The workload for a Metro Toronto member is very different. I may have more people; they have more driving up in the north. I accept that. But that was a promise we made, and people had the ability to weigh all those factors and at the end of the day they cast their vote and we formed the government.
Do you believe it would be appropriate, having promised the electorate, having won the 82 seats we won, that we would now break that promise and not deliver on the reduction of MPPs and show the leadership at the same time that we're going to municipal councils and saying, "You've got to share in the belt tightening," somehow exempting ourselves from the belt tightening and the requirement that we're going to have to work harder and work smarter?
Mrs Helash: You promised not to cut classroom spending.
Mr Gilchrist: That's an excellent point, and your budgets were reduced 1.78%. We haven't cut any class sizes. I think you would agree with me on that. We have made no decision that affected a single school anywhere in this province. The school boards did that. Balancing all the competing factors, we didn't cut a class.
In deference to Mr Stewart, I pass it on.
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): I'm interested and really intrigued by your last comment suggesting that it's a tiny fraction of the cost. That's $11 million a year. I think that's not necessarily a tiny fraction. But the one that intrigues me more says "to pay a tiny bit more in taxes." If you pay more in taxes I believe you're taking money out of the north as well. I guess what we've said all along is that the people of Ontario have been taxed enough. I think one of the problems is that past governments, boards, associations, whatever, tended to try and solve their problem by raising taxes, and I don't believe the people of Ontario are ready for that at the moment. It was just more of an intriguing comment that you made. Any comment about tax increases?
Mr Dean Carrie: Just a couple of quick comments: There may be a tax increase if we have to keep the same number of MPPs, but I think the role of those MPPs is to look out and look after the bureaucracy and make sure we can deliver government services as efficiently as possible. Our concern is, if you reduce the number of MPPs, you reduce the effectiveness of that watchdog role over the bureaucracy.
Mr Stewart: But why would that raise taxes? You said that if you have fewer MPPs we may have to raise taxes. Why would that be when we're looking at the cost factor of MPPs going down?
Mr Carrie: I don't know what's been used to come up with the estimates of the cost saving associated with the reduction in the number of MPPs. I think a lot of costs are not going to go down even though you reduce the number of MPPs. A comment was made earlier: What's going to happen to the number of inquiries that come into constituent offices? That volume I don't think is going to change regardless of the number of MPPs. With bigger ridings in the north and fewer MPPs, all those constituent offices in all the little communities I think may have to be maintained.
Mr Stewart: As I understand it, up here in the north country some of the MPPs now just have representatives in some of these small towns who eventually phone the MPP's office. They're doing that now. They don't have offices in other areas, so why would they have to have them in the future? They're operating in a different way: Have a representative in such-and-such a town or village or whatever it might be who'll talk to the locals, phone the MPP's office and get back the information. Why wouldn't that be able to continue?
Mr Carrie: I think it will continue, and for that reason there will be no cost savings.
Mr Stewart: But that is not a cost factor, as I understand, and I stand to be corrected. I understand some of the MPPs up this way and in other parts of northern Ontario are doing that now and it's not a cost factor.
Mr Carrie: It will be when they have to start making long distance phone calls.
Mr Stewart: But they're doing that now.
Mr Carrie: Not in every case.
Mr Miclash: Dean and Marion, thank you for travelling down from Kenora to be with us here today. Mr Chair, I should declare a conflict. I am presently on leave from this board, so I just want to make that clear.
Mr Gravelle: It's okay.
Mr Miclash: It's okay? Marion, you make an excellent point in terms of government being close to the people. We've heard a good number of times this morning, in terms of federal representation, provincial representation and board representation such as yourself. A lot of people are concerned that the reduction in representation from MPPs in general will lead to the increase of paid lobby groups, people who have the ability to pay, getting the ear of government. Could you maybe comment on that?
Mrs Helash: I could understand how that could happen. Basically, any time you want to talk to us or we want to talk to you, your office is available and we just make arrangements. It would be very difficult for a great deal of us, should it not swing your way and go down to Mr Hampton's area, for us to get down, so therefore we would have to organize lobby groups that are closer to him and we'd have to organize lobby groups that were closer to the government itself, whoever the governing body.
Mr Miclash: So you would see an increase in your need for expenses. An example was brought to my attention earlier today by a councillor here in Dryden that these members don't understand the expenses involved when they have to come down as town councillors to lobby government. I think you would agree with that, that there would be additional costs to the board?
Mrs Helash: Yes, there would have to be an additional cost in order for us to make our voices heard.
Mr Miclash: You touched a little on taking the idea of the boundary changes to the people. As we know now, the federal government has a federal boundaries commission. I'd like your comments on what you would see a provincial boundaries commission looking like and how they would report back to the government.
Mrs Helash: Definitely the people from the area are going to have to be represented on it, the MPPs from the areas that are being so adversely affected, especially here in northern Ontario.
Mr Carrie: I think the important thing is to try to depoliticize the process as much as is possible. Other than that, I really have no other comment.
Mr Miclash: I'd like to follow up on something mentioned by Mr Gilchrist. I think your response about Mr Harris not keeping his commitment to classroom education is a good one, but we will remember that during the campaign, in what Mr Harris called A Voice for the North, he very clearly indicated that representation in the north should be respected, should be looked at very carefully to ensure that southern solutions were not placed on unique northern problems. Do you see this redistribution in any way working towards that commitment he made to the people of the north?
Mrs Helash: No.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mrs Helash and Mr Carrie for coming down and making your views known. Safe drive back.
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ONTARIO SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' FEDERATION, DRYDEN-SIOUX LOOKOUT-IGNACE DIVISION
The Acting Chair: Now the representatives from the OSSTF, Mr Follis, the political action committee.
Mr Jim Follis: My name is Jim Follis and I'm a teacher here in Dryden at Dryden High School, and my colleague is Brian Kenny, also a teacher here in Dryden High School. Brian and I have had the good fortune to live in this community for a long time. I've lived here for 26 1/2 years, and Brian a little longer, I think. Both of us have been involved provincially with our teacher federation for many years and have done a lot of travelling to southern Ontario to attend meetings and councils within our organization. We understand the risks of travel in the area and we also understand the political process you are all going through.
I provided you with a brief in written form. Do you all have it in front of you? I'd like to start off and then Brian has some comments he'd like to make too.
I'd like to thank the members of the committee for taking time to come to Dryden and listen to our concerns. The members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation in this region are very concerned about governance structures and that they be fair and reasonable.
The proposed Bill 81 legislation would allow only one MPP to represent the people who inhabit one third of Ontario's territory, while another 101 would represent the residents of the other two thirds of Ontario. In addition, the problem is compounded by the fact that we live in the region most distant from the seat of government in Queen's Park.
I brought some overheads along, like any good teacher would, to punctuate some of my comments, but obviously we don't have an overhead projector available and I didn't know I would have to ask for it. I also didn't know that I would be making the presentation today until Tuesday of this week and I didn't know how long the presentation I would be able to make would be either, so I was shooting in the dark with writing up these comments.
Winter arrives here early, as you can already tell. It comes in early November and the lakes are frozen until mid-May. Highway 17 was closed just a few days ago because of serious weather conditions and accidents, and it often is this time of the year. You will probably remember hearing of the Air Ontario crash in March here a few years ago. These are indications that the weather plays a major role in movement of the peoples of the area, not only of the MPPs but on all the rest of the things that go on in trying to be politically aware in this region. I understand Mr Hampton had some difficulties in travelling here today. I don't know what those were, but it's just another indication of the point we're making.
My work with OSSTF has given me many opportunities to meet with secondary teachers from all over Ontario. They ask me, "What do you do in the summer in Dryden?" I usually reply that if it falls on a Sunday, we go for a picnic.
The point, of course, is that we believe that the weather and distance would be considered before changing governance structures. Is it the government's intention to send the message to the people of our region to the effect that a 50% reduction of our voice in the Legislature in Ontario is what we really deserve?
As more and more change occurs in basic services across Ontario, problems will most certainly arise. Who will speak for us when local services in education, health services, natural resources, transportation, social services and others become threatened? Do you really expect that one member of Parliament can visit the same number of communities, consult with their councils, their schools, their doctors, their nurses and so on, as two members currently do?
What message is the government sending to the more than 50 far-flung first nations communities here? Hasn't there already been much unrest among the first nations people demonstrated in many parts of this province? Isn't there a danger that native people might view this as another indication that government is being further distanced from the first nations people and their concerns?
We hear that the reason for considering the reduction in the numbers of MPPs is simply to save money. Will there be real savings here? Won't the increased travel costs, communications costs, staff salaries necessary, negate the savings? Don't the potential consequences of this legislation really outweigh the few dollars that may or may not be saved in the final analysis?
The other major reason given for Bill 81 legislation by government is the rationale that since one federal MP serves the same region, why would one provincial MPP not be able to do the same job adequately? The simple answer is that the services provided by the two levels of governments are significantly different. People have commented on that today, as a matter of fact. Attached as an appendix is a photocopy of the blue pages of the Dryden telephone directory. I hope you'll notice that the services provided by the provincial jurisdiction are twice as a long a list as those provided by the federal one.
What kind of increased risk will the new supermember who sits in this region be facing? Won't it be difficult to find a qualified, committed person who wouldn't burn out in four years?
The Progressive Conservative Party holds only one seat in northern Ontario, yet this region is the most affected. If Bill 81 is enacted as planned, will the people of the north view the change as the worst kind of political abuse of power, that is, reducing the number of opposition members through legislation?
In summary, the Ontario secondary school teachers in this region believe that the changes proposed in Bill 81 would adversely affect the population of this region of Ontario. We believe that the meagre savings which might be realized are far outweighed by the real cost which would be borne by the residents of northwestern Ontario. Please hear our plea. We have asked a number of questions, but in reality it boils down to just one question: Does the government really care about the people of this region?
Mr Kenny, would you like to add anything?
Mr Brian Kenny: I want to start by saying thank you to all the members of provincial Parliament who travelled up here. I really, sincerely hope that in spite of the focus of the present government in fulfilling its mandate promised by Mr Harris, you really are open to what people have been telling you today.
I'm going to apologize, Chairperson. I know you've been beaten to death with the size of our riding, but may I clobber you just a little bit more? I want to say a couple of things. Having travelled to a number of Third World countries to teach as a voluntary person in the summertime, I became aware of the size of our area as compared to the countries I went to. The statistics I read -- I know you've had them already, but I want to put them in perhaps a new perspective, and I apologize if it's not new. According to the stats, this riding that we will now have is going to be larger than 45% of the countries in the world and larger than 50% of the states in the United States.
Having travelled around our area for five years as a curriculum planner, I want to set another perspective for you. When I drive from Toronto to Sudbury, and I've done it many times, I always go by time, not distance; it takes me three and a half hours to go from Toronto to Sudbury. If you travel from the north end of Red Lake to the south end of Rainy River it takes you two hours longer to go that distance. It takes five and a half hours to go from Red Lake to Rainy River, if the roads are good. In the wintertime you could add a couple of hours to that.
That doesn't include the fact that the riding still goes another 50% farther, perhaps longer -- I'm sure Frank could tell us better on that -- but there are no roads in the north. Now, it could be arguable that, yes, the population is very small. However, I propose to you that I think it's important to you as politicians to understand that even the smallest needs in the remotest areas are important to us as a society in Ontario.
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We cannot ignore the needs of, let's say, our native people, no matter how small those communities are. It is physically and humanly impossible to serve the needs of every one of those communities in the same way that you can serve the needs in a small geographical location with a high population density. You could walk around a Toronto riding in a matter of hours or maybe minutes, but you can't fly around this district in a matter of hours.
There's one other thing I want to leave with you. I took the map of Ontario and I took our new proposed riding and I superimposed it on southern Ontario. I want you to do the same when you get back home. Here's what I found: If you superimpose our new riding on southern Ontario you would cover all the ridings from Windsor all the way through to Ottawa and our riding would then go past Montreal for another 100 kilometres. If you stretch it up a little to the north it would go 200 kilometres past Timmins, if you sort of bent it northward instead of eastward. The riding, as it was sitting there, would also cover part of the states of Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. It is an enormous size. Again, I propose to you that we are small in population; however, you have to consider that it is just humanly impossible to service the people properly in the way you can in a densely populated situation. We really, sincerely hope that the government reconsiders this legislation.
The Acting Chair: Thank you. We have eight minutes for questions, starting with the government.
Mr Young: I'd like to ask you a question about school boards and money etc. Your presentation was excellent and I appreciate it, and I hope you'll take the opportunity to give me as thoughtful an answer as in your presentation and avoid the partisanship that the chair of the Kenora board took.
One of the things the school boards compete for is the MPP's time and attention. That was brought up by the chair of the Kenora board. If we had fewer school boards and if the MPP could meet with a school board which represented a larger number of schools, couldn't they get more done by addressing issues in one meeting rather than meeting with a number of different school boards in a number of different areas? Can you see anything productive that could come from a system based on that? It's no secret that we're looking at reducing the number of school boards.
Mr Kenny: I must apologize that I'm rather partisan and it would be very hard for me to give you an unbiased answer on that. Was it the Kenora board that just presented?
Mr Young: Yes.
Mr Kenny: I'll give you an honest answer about them. They are far more politically astute than the Dryden board. The Dryden board is not nearly as proficient at being political as the Kenora board is, and I say that as a compliment to the Kenora board.
I would very much fear for local autonomy and a local grasp of our own educational system if we reduced the number of school boards. You know I am a school teacher -- I have a certain bias -- but I also speak from a local taxpayers' base, and I really do fear the loss of a local grasp of our own needs if we reduce the number of school boards. I understand where you're coming from and I understand the need you perceive, but in rural areas I am really scared pitless of what will happen if the centre of my board is situated 300 kilometres from where I am now.
Mr Young: I'm just thinking of money. We are estimating about $11 million in savings with this Fewer Politicians Act. I'm just wondering how much benefit the northern portion of that money could be if put into the classroom, and the same savings that could come from reducing the number of school boards put into the classroom, which is our goal.
Mr Kenny: Well, as Voltaire's Candide said, in the best of all possible worlds that might happen, but I've become very cynical. It doesn't always get back to the classroom, and what you might create is another massive bureaucracy in which the classroom again is ignored. I just don't think you can understand, unless you've walked in the shoes of a northern isolated community, what the unique needs are and how important it is for us to have some local control over our destiny.
I'll tell you something else, and I'm speaking from the heart: If you asked the average teacher in Dryden what they thought of their board, they would probably go ballistic. We've had so many labour problems in the last five or six years. But if you asked us whether we wanted to get rid of the board, we'd say, "No, we don't, because it's really necessary for us to have local autonomy."
Mr Miclash: Jim and Brian, thank you for your presentation. I like your use of the blue pages in the phone book. It's an example I used in the House as well, in addressing this bill. Mr Angus was presenting earlier this afternoon and he gave a unique presentation. He was able to speak from both the angle of a former federal member as well as a former provincial member, and I thought he stated the case, as you have, very well.
Something I've been asking a good number of groups as they've come forth is the need for a boundaries commission. You mentioned the first nations communities. You mentioned the remoteness to the north of us, north of the 51st, where there are no roads. I'm wondering if you could give us some comments on how you see possibly a provincial boundaries commission addressing that problem and addressing some of the problems you brought up in your presentation.
Mr Follis: I'd like to answer that and a previous question at the same time. It seems to me that if we go to large boards, the people in each community will then have to travel to some remote location to have one of these meetings in the north and the cost of travel would be greatly increased. In the same way, correct me if I'm wrong, but in 1992 didn't the Progressive Conservative Party agree that there should be a lower threshold of some 15 seats in northern Ontario, and now the boundaries commission has reversed that and we want to go to 10?
The boundaries commission, it would seem to me, should be made up of all parties, the majority being folks who live in the region, or at least have the majority have input into the decision in a real way.
I resent an earlier comment you made, Mr Young, that a lot of rhetoric is being thrown around here. I think the people speaking here today, not just us but everyone else, are really concerned that we're losing our ownership of our area and our voice in the Legislature of Ontario. We are the people and we really deserve a voice. There must be some sort of lower threshold that we cannot go below in terms of representation. I don't know if I answered your question, Frank.
Mr Gravelle: Mr Follis and Mr Kenny, thank you very much. Let me follow up on that. The truth is, if these hearings have real value and if the government members in particular want to listen to the reasons the people up here do not think there should be only one riding rather than two, and the same thing with the Port Arthur and the Lake Nipigon thing -- I think it's been made abundantly clear today and I would hope they've been listening to that. The problem, in my estimation, comes down to the fact that on the one hand they say they're going to save money, but you've discussed some of the larger costs that may be incurred down the line, which I don't think they've thought about, that may be incurred in terms of the whole board issue and everything else. I think that's important. They also tend to use the federal MP issue as a regular one as well, and I don't think any of the arguments are legitimately fair.
What is comes down to is whether you think in a democracy there should be fair representation, and if you do, whether it's simply on the basis of precise numbers. It might look okay in a book, but it's a question of whether people are being fairly represented. I think you made a really good case for that, as have most of the presenters.
I guess what it comes down to is, are these public hearings legitimate? Are they really going to listen and make some -- are they going to be convinced that indeed people deserve to be represented and people deserve to have an opportunity to have this relationship with their member of Parliament?
I think you've made the case. I think the savings is a false argument, because there will be more expenses down the road. Comparing to the federal members just isn't fair. And you don't want to compare the federal and provincial members; that really isn't the point or the issue, but if they're going to do it, it's not fair. I certainly think you've made the case extremely well, as have many of the other groups. I simply hope, and I'm sure you do as well, that they are actually listening to us today.
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Mr Hampton: I have a couple of questions that in part flow from some of the points the government was trying to make. I think we all concede that democracy costs money. I'd even make the statement that one of the things we learned in the last war, 50 years ago, is that democracy can cost even more than money and that democracy can be quite worthwhile. I think that's been demonstrated over and over again.
The government, and not just in terms of this riding distribution issue but also in terms of its approach to school boards and municipalities, seems to take the view, though, that having large bureaucracies -- and that large bureaucracy can be a very large school board or it can be one large urban municipality, the so-called new city of Toronto, with four million people, and I would argue it equally applies to what the government is doing provincially, that is, pulling decision-making and pulling government offices out of communities like Dryden or Fort Frances or Kenora, even Thunder Bay, pulling government offices out of places like that and centralizing everything in Toronto -- the government seems to take the view that that's somehow going to provide better government. Then on the other hand they seem to be taking the view that you don't need as many watchdogs. In my view, that's really what an MPP is, and I suspect a lot of the government members will learn this over time, that they're not there to salute the Premier's office but are there to give representation to their constituents and to ensure that the bureaucracy, the centralized bureaucracy, actually pays attention to people outside of Toronto.
Does it worry you that with the centralization that's happening on the one hand and losing the number of watchdogs on the other, we're going to see more alienation in northern Ontario, more people saying, "They don't listen to us at any time anyway, so why do we bother being a part of this?" Does that worry you?
Mr Kenny: It certainly worries me. Referring to the previous speaker, definitely, equal is not necessarily fairer and cheaper is not necessarily better. I believe we are the most expensive democracy in the world, aren't we? Because of our federalism, it's a matter of reality. I really do fear a growing cynicism if we were to be cut back.
Forgive me for being political, but if I were a member of the Conservative Party provincially -- and I tell you I'm not -- I would say to us, "Don't do this, because it tells the people of the north that the Conservative Party doesn't give a damn about the north." I think it's a very bad message, to cut us down from 10 seats to five. I know you do care, but no one will ever convince us that you care if you cut these boundaries by five. Our perception will always be cynical. I say that to you maybe to help you out.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Kenny and Mr Follis, for making your views known to us.
DARLENE GUINN
The Acting Chair: The next deputant on the list is Mr Weare, from the Dryden and District Labour Council. Is he here? In that case, we'll move to Mrs Darlene Guinn, a federal returning officer.
Mrs Darlene Guinn: I passed out some copies of what I loosely expect to say. I would like to congratulate the government on its initiative in trying to harmonize the federal and provincial boundaries. I think that there has been voter confusion out there, because I've administered. Some of the voters come to me and say: "I vote at such and such a church. I vote there all the time and I can't understand why you made me vote at another place." If they were harmonized, that would certainly save a little bit of voter confusion.
However, to me, there's only been one seat lost. Everybody keeps talking about five seats, but I was a federal returning officer so I've administered a larger territory. Mostly I guess I'm here on behalf of administrative things. The government has to weigh the cost saving that they perceive they will make with this harmonization against voter disfranchisement in the north. At least, voters feel that way.
Mostly it's not so much on the decision to change the boundaries that I want to appear; it's that the boundaries were changed by the federal commission. The federal commission had a small number of hearings, at which point the Prime Minister suspended the hearings. A lot of people didn't appear before the federal boundaries commission because they thought there would be more hearings later on when the suspension was lifted. When the suspension was lifted, there were no further hearings; it just went through as it was. I had intended to appear before that committee but didn't because I thought that there would still be time.
At the back of my paper I did a map and I showed you as much as I could fit of Thunder Bay-Nipigon on this page. The red part will show you where the federal riding was prior to this commission's changing it. They've pretty much doubled the geographic territory. They've gained 2,000 voters by doubling the geographic territory. They took away some of the urban voters that I had in Thunder Bay, gave me a huge geographical territory, and I have 2,000 more voters. As you can see, at the last election, we had 55,532 voters. The new riding estimates that I got from Elections Canada were 57,135.5 voters. That must be the dog I had on my list the first time I did the election.
I really feel that this new riding boundary that you see on the map is going to be an administrative nightmare for someone. I know it's not going to be me. I will not be appointed the new federal returning officer. I know who is going to be appointed; I've already been informed of the person's name. He's a very nice person, but he's going to have a devil's own time trying to administrate this. For one thing, people from Thunder Bay, some of us do have contacts in the outlying regions like Geraldton, Marathon, Terrace Bay and Schreiber; some of us don't.
They're going to shorten the time frame from 49 days to 36 days, to do double the territory. We already have some inaccessible polling stations. On the map you're going to see the town of Armstrong flanked by Mud River and Ferland. Whoever your new returning officer is -- or if you reappoint Bill for Thunder Bay, which I think is fine, I'll help him all I can -- but I want you to know that Mud River and Ferland are both accessible by train only every second day. You have to send your material to Armstrong. It has to then be repackaged and put on the train. It goes east one day and then it goes west the next day.
Mr Hampton: If the trains are on time.
Mrs Guinn: If the trains are on time. I understand that when you take the job of returning officer, it is your job to put people in place who are going to do the job that they're trained to do, if you have time to train them. It is your job to get the enumeration done properly. With automated lists, that should be a little bit easier, but I'm going to suggest that maybe it's not going to be as easy as they think. It's your job to get the ballots to the polling stations and it's your job to make sure that you get those ballots back in your hands in a reasonable length of time. That is what I'm concerned about with this doubling of the territory.
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Now I know this territory was looked after by someone else, and I'm not saying that it can't be done. It can be done. However, it's going to be a whole lot more difficult maybe than you've even taken into account because you're going to have double the geographic size and one returning officer. Sure, you're going to give extra assistants, but those assistants are going to be hundreds of miles away from you and you're not going to be able to control everything they do, and that is your responsibility. When you're a returning officer, you're responsible for what people do underneath you, and I'm telling you, it is going to be more difficult to be able to feel certain that a good job is being done in the far-flung parts of the riding if you're not satisfied that the people you have are going to do the job.
Part of the returning officer's job is that you must hire people who are supplied by the lists by the different parties, the one who won the election last time, the one who came second and so on. You are to use these people; you don't have a choice. Part of the returning officer's job is to find a way to work within that framework and we all do what we have to do. Sometimes you're not too happy with the choices that you have to make, but if you're going to have to administer a territory that's as large as Thunder Bay-Nipigon is now, according to the federal boundaries, your job is not going to be easy.
I thought about: "Well, what would I do if I were in your place? I would like to harmonize the boundaries with the feds. I'd like to save some money, if I can." My first recommendation to you is, please, make no commitment to do this until after the feds have run a federal election, because they're running on these new boundaries. Some of these ridings are going to have a great deal of difficulty. I feel sorry for Kenora-Rainy River. I know they've had a great deal of difficulty in the past, because I've spoken with Joan Goss at different meetings with returning officers, and I know what kind of difficulty she has up here in the riding as it exists now, without the territory they've added to it.
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it's going to be very difficult to be able to run an impartial election, which is the returning officer's job. It's going to be very, very difficult.
What I would like to say is, when the feds hold the election, I think it would be prudent to put in an observer in each of these northern ridings, especially when the territories have been made so large and diverse. When you put in that observer, though, I suggest that it be someone who has -- I hesitate to say political experience, but someone who has been involved in helping out in elections, who knows a little bit about the way the process works. Don't send someone in there as a political favour, somebody who needs a job in the riding kind of thing. Don't do that. Send somebody in there with some kind of knowledge who can report back to you accurately what's happening, so that when it becomes your turn to run that riding, you will have found the pitfalls ahead of time and you will not make the same mistakes -- and there will be some. It's too large a riding for there not to be mistakes. It's not going to be easy to work.
I hate to say this, because I know most of you are from southern Ontario. This is northern Ontario, but I know some of you are from southern Ontario, and I think the rationalization between federal and provincial ridings in southern Ontario won't be nearly as difficult, and you're not going to get the flak that you're going to get here. Even the old riding boundaries would have been a considerable improvement over what they've come up with this time.
I hear you say there would a loss of five seats, and I assume that's five provincial seats. There is a loss of one federal seat. The ridings, I thought, were a decent size. They weren't difficult to administer. People could get in and out of their voting places and they were in touch with their voting offices. They didn't have that much difficulty. But now they've lost another one. They've lost another whole rural one, which changes the riding to the point where I think it's very difficult for a person who lives in Thunder Bay to be able to administer all of the outlying districts without difficulty.
If you have any questions, please feel free. I have a question, though. Can you tell me, is this written in stone already?
The Acting Chair: Mrs Guinn, we have some questions for you.
Mrs Guinn: That's what I hear from back there.
The Acting Chair: Maybe a response will come out in the answers here.
Mrs Guinn: Okay.
The Acting Chair: We have eight minutes. We start with the Liberals.
Mr Michael Brown: Thank you for appearing. I think you're bringing a view here that is most important. I think all of us are concerned with the way that elections occur and we are very concerned, obviously, that they be fair and democratic and that they're administered in a proper fashion. One of the concerns we have with this bill in general, besides the boundary issue, is that the rules for the federal Elections Act are not identical to the provincial ones.
Mrs Guinn: No, they're not.
Mr Michael Brown: It would seem logical to someone that if federal boundaries are the same, provincial and federal rules would be the same. If that were to happen, and the government over there talks about saving dollars, the intelligent thing to do for Elections Ontario would be just to subcontract this operation to Elections Canada. That way, we would the same people run each election, we would have more confidence in the election. You talked about observers, but these wouldn't be observers; they could actually operate election after election.
I wonder what you would think of that suggestion. It's one that's been bandied about. It would seem to me that if it were truly the government's intention to do that, that would be the way to do it, just use the federal bureaucracy for elections for provincial elections. Or I suppose it could be vice versa.
Mrs Guinn: Or vice versa. There are different rules. There are different ways of doing things. For instance, provincially each returning office gets a budget for office; federally they don't get a budget for office. Federally everything's paid through Elections Canada. You're given petty cash, which has to be returned at the end of the period. There are lots of little things, which can be gotten over. That's not a problem. We had to learn how to do our jobs and your provincial ones had to learn how to do their jobs, and they do a good job, either one. If the provincial government wants to use the federal returning officers, that's fine, but they'd still have to train them. It would still cost them money to train them and it may be better to go with the ones they have.
Mr Michael Brown: That may be, but all I'm saying is that the one bureaucracy would in the same period have two elections rather than one, a provincial and a federal one --
Mrs Guinn: It still wouldn't be one bureaucracy, though. They're so different.
Mr Michael Brown: I'm saying you would have to harmonize the rules in order to do that.
Mrs Guinn: In order to have the same person, yes.
Mr Michael Brown: If the government over here is looking to save money and ensure fairness, and they believe the federal boundaries are good enough for Ontarians and federal democracy is good enough for Ontarians, why wouldn't they believe all the other rules are good enough for Ontarians? I couldn't find the logic not to believe that.
Mrs Guinn: That's a question I can't answer.
Mr Michael Brown: No, I was just wondering, doesn't that make sense?
Mrs Guinn: Not to me.
Mr Michael Brown: Not to you?
Mrs Guinn: No.
Mr Michael Brown: Why?
Mrs Guinn: Because they have to be trained, whether it's federal or provincial. You have to spend the money one way or another, whether it's federal or provincial. I don't think the rules can be the same for federal and provincial. For instance, provincially I believe you have a six-month residency requirement for people before they can vote. Federally, you can move into the riding the day before and vote in your new riding. There is no residency requirement. There are a lot of differences that I don't think you can rationalize overnight.
Mr Michael Brown: That's interesting, because the government argues we could just use the same enumeration list, which couldn't be.
Mrs Guinn: You can, you certainly can, with revision.
Mr Michael Brown: Yes, with revision.
Mrs Guinn: And revision takes place federally and provincially.
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Mr Hampton: You brought up some interesting points. I just want to go through them with you because you probably know more of the details of this than we do. It is my understanding, and you made the point in your brief, that the Prime Minister suspended the federal commission.
Mrs Guinn: Yes, he did.
Mr Hampton: In effect, when the Prime Minister suspended the federal commission there was no further opportunity for public debate or public discussion or community consideration of the new federal boundaries.
Mrs Guinn: Not here in the north, that I'm aware of.
Mr Hampton: It was my understanding that there were other places in the country where there was no opportunity for that as well.
Mrs Guinn: I wouldn't doubt it.
Mr Hampton: In effect the federal commission really didn't have the run of its course to consider exactly where it was going and to get public input and public response.
Mrs Guinn: Yes. I didn't think there was enough, but that's a personal opinion. I also made the point that in the federal boundaries act there's a provision right in the legislation that gives you a 25%, plus or minus, use of the population for geographical differences. When I looked at this, when I saw this come out I thought the boundaries commission really didn't take that into consideration. They couldn't have if they're going to double the size of the federal riding the way it sits now, and the way it sits now it's not difficult to administer. Most of the geographical places on the map feed naturally into Thunder Bay, the way the riding remains until January 8. But once January 8 passes and these riding boundaries become law, an awful lot of the small towns in there do not naturally feed into the Thunder Bay area.
Mr Hampton: You express concern and you make the recommendation here, "Make no firm commitment to harmonize the boundaries until after a federal event has been held."
I take it from your presentation that you're concerned about the problem of administering and getting ballot boxes out and getting them in and having people there to supervise the election.
Mrs Guinn: That's correct.
Mr Hampton: Given your position, it's natural that you would be concerned about that. My concern would be that we're really dealing with one of the fundamentals of democracy here. One of the fundamentals of democracy is that people should have an opportunity to vote and it should be more than just a bare opportunity to vote. People, no matter what their income class, geographical location, urbanness or remoteness ought to have an opportunity to vote in a meaningful way.
I think I hear you saying that even considering this from the federal perspective, discounting for a moment that northern Ontario is going to lose five seats, that this new provincial seat is going to be larger than 45% of the countries in the world, there are some problems in just assuring that people will be able to vote, that people will be able to exercise their democratic right.
Mrs Guinn: I have some concerns about administration, but the job of the returning officer is to ensure that everyone gets a vote. That's their job. It's going to be made more difficult, but it's going to have to be done, and it will be done. People will get their ballot boxes and they'll get their votes. It's not going to be as easy. It's going to be difficult, but that's the returning officer's job, and I'm sure they will do it, but there are going to be really difficult areas. I would like them to wait until after the event is held so they can see what the difficulties are going to be and whether or not they really way to go down that road.
I think they can do it in southern Ontario, but make some exceptions in the north because of geographical distances and small population pockets.
Mr Hardeman: Thank you for your presentation, with a slightly different perspective from some of the others that we've had today.
First a question on the 25%, plus or minus: Is it your contention that the 57,000 votes that are going to be in the new riding, for which you were the returning officer, are less than a 25% variance to the larger-population ridings in the south?
Mrs Guinn: I understand that under federal law there can only be so many seats in Ontario, that the number of seats in Ontario is fixed. To accommodate the larger population growth in southern ridings -- because North York has grown by leaps and bounds, they had well over 100,000 electors, double the number of electors, the boundaries had to be changed. There were too many electors. I believe they tried to keep to an average of between 70,000 and 80,000 voters per riding. So they have taken into account geographical differences, because we only have 57,000 in this huge territory.
Mr Hardeman: That was my point.
Mrs Guinn: They have taken it into account but I'm saying it's not enough.
Mr Hardeman: My calculations on the geographic considerations that were given for the boundaries are beyond the 25%. Under law they're supposed to stay within 25% between the densely populated and the sparsely populated areas. In fact, they have gone beyond that to accommodate some geographic problems.
If I could go to your suggestion that the present federal boundaries --
Mrs Guinn: That they will be changed in the year 2002.
Mr Hardeman: Yes, the ones that are there now, but prior to the change the ones that you represented, you felt comfortable with the fact that they could and should be harmonized provincially and that under your structure you as a returning officer could handle that quite well --
Mrs Guinn: Without a problem.
Mr Hardeman: -- as a provincial jurisdiction. Do you feel it also would carry through that the representative would have the same ability to handle the differences from the present system?
Mrs Guinn: Your present returning -- yes.
Mr Hardeman: Yes, recognizing that you can handle it as an election and not see a major problem between provincial and federal, do you think that also holds true for the member representing that same area?
Mrs Guinn: Well, Mr Comuzzi represents our area and seems to get around okay.
When I was appointed as a returning officer I had to relinquish all political affiliation and I did so. I really haven't been involved at all in politics since I took the appointment as the returning officer. I've excused myself from political discussions because I didn't want to become involved. Whether or not the representation is going to be the same or feasible I can't tell you because I really don't know. I haven't stayed involved.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mrs Guinn, for coming in and giving us your practical and pragmatic considerations on the administrative intricacies of these changes.
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LYNN BEYAK
The Acting Chair: Could we now have Lynn Beyak come to the table, if she's around, and make her submission.
Mrs Lynn Beyak: Thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation today. My name is Lynn Beyak. I'm the PC candidate of record for the Rainy River riding.
I expected this issue to generate more controversy than it has within the riding. While some disagree, the vast majority of people I speak to on the street are proud of our government for being the first one in recent memory to do exactly what it said it would do, of a government that is leading by example and has determined through extensive public consultation that government at every level has become too big, too cumbersome, too costly and too unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of the people who pay for it: the taxpayers of Ontario.
Constituents support our efforts to get the debt and deficit under control so that dollars now spent on interest payments can go towards valuable social programs instead. Most are willing to give the Fewer Politicians Act a chance and feel that if the federal MP can do it, then the provincial MPP can too.
I thought long and hard on this issue before seeking the nomination in 1995. I had some misgivings because of the sheer geography of the riding but realized that if I truly believed in smaller, more effective government, then saving had to start at the top. Along with our constituents I am pleased to see that our government has scrapped MPPs' gold-plated pension plans and tax-free allowances and reduced their own pay by 5%. In addition they appointed the smallest cabinet in 30 years and reduced government administrative costs by $200 million so far.
During the campaign I pledged to protect our voice and our identity and ensure that we were represented in a cost-effective and proactive way. I feel strongly that if the Liberal and NDP incumbents aren't up to the task, there is a good Conservative sitting right here who certainly is.
As I listened to Howard Hampton and Frank Miclash and their negative attitudes in the Legislature, I am struck by their abysmal record in government and their lack of constructive alternatives now. They don't even attend the northern caucus meetings and attempt to justify their inaction with rhetoric. There is no excuse for lack of cooperation with the government, especially when the wellbeing of your constituents is at stake.
We have had better representation in the past 16 months from Premier Mike Harris, Finance Minister Ernie Eves and Minister of Northern Development and Mines Chris Hodgson than we have had over the past 10 years. They have listened well and ably presented our needs to the rest of the caucus. We have been visited by over a dozen MPPs and have seen unprecedented progress on our roads, telecommunications, health care and infrastructure.
Under the Liberals and the NDP our health care system was rapidly deteriorating. Beds were closed and the empty buildings were left standing. Many of our emergency rooms were in jeopardy and doctor recruitment had become a next-to-impossible task because of our outdated equipment and lack of hope for any improvement in the foreseeable future. Our concerns have been addressed by this government and solutions are already in place in many communities.
Past governments threw money at make-work and Jobs Ontario projects that usually were not relevant to our needs. When the subsidy ran out, the jobs disappeared because they weren't real private sector jobs to begin with. A cycle of dependency was created, sadly, and low self-esteem was the result for many. This government treats us like the decent, hardworking people we are. On the northern tour and in A Voice for the North, clear recognition was given to our ability to manage capably our own destiny.
The NDP removed $60 million from the northern Ontario heritage fund and spent fishing licence revenue that was supposed to be placed in a dedicated fund. The Mike Harris government put it all back, with interest, and a further commitment of $30 million annually. This money is greatly appreciated, by the way, as is the attitude of all the Conservative MPPs who recognize that when our infrastructure here in the north is on an equal footing with the more populated areas of the province, we can do our part to contribute a fair share of revenues. What a refreshing change from our own MPPs who portray northerners as a whining bunch of have-nots totally out of touch with the fiscal realities left by 10 years of Liberal and NDP mismanagement.
After watching Howard and Frank in the Legislature for the past 16 months, often contradicting one another, I am convinced that quality is far more important than quantity and that a united voice from the new riding will be more beneficial to all.
Competent staff will still be in place in offices throughout the riding as well as the northern development offices. As our government works more directly with hospitals, municipalities and boards I see a smaller and more focused role for the provincial representative.
I have outlined some of the unique needs of the north but I also recognize that technology is bringing us closer together every day. The old boundaries between north, south, east and west within our province are rapidly disappearing, and with them the need for so many politicians, bureaucrats and levels of government.
We are hardworking and dedicated people. Give us decent roads and good communications, get the regulations out of our way, lower our taxes and watch us grow. We have a strong and indomitable northern spirit and contribute greatly to the wellbeing of the province through our tourism and natural resources. We are proud partners in a province that is quickly becoming the economic engine of Canada once again and we want to do our part in the north in getting Ontario's fiscal house in order. The Fewer Politicians Act is one more step on the road to hope, opportunity and prosperity for all Ontarians and I proudly support it today, as I did in the campaign.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mrs Beyak. We have approximately 12 minutes for questions, so we'll divide it by four and start with Mr Hampton.
Interjection.
The Acting Chair: It's the northern air -- by three.
Mr Hampton: Thank you, Chair. Lynn, this is quite a piece you put together here.
Mrs Beyak: I thought so.
Mr Hampton: I had hoped it would be about some of the issues concerning redistribution, but let me get you clearly on the record. You don't believe that it is detrimental to northern Ontario to lose five of their 15 MPPs? You don't think that's detrimental to northern Ontario people, losing five representatives?
Mrs Beyak: Not if the quality is not there, Howard. No, I don't.
Mr Hampton: Okay. So let me ask you this. You believe that even though northern Ontario will go from 15 seats to 10 seats in the provincial Legislature, that will have no detrimental effect in terms of northern Ontario's capacity to speak out for the interests of northern Ontario people, will have no detrimental effect upon our unique communities and our unique geographical areas to have adequate representation?
Mrs Beyak: We are downsizing government and bureaucracy, and the north will still have 20% more representation than the south, so when you downsize government and you keep that fairness towards the north, I think we're very fortunate.
Mr Hampton: Okay. I was struck by just a couple of things you said in your brief. On page 2 you said: "The jobs disappeared because they weren't real private sector jobs to begin with." I'm not sure what you mean by that, "real private sector jobs."
Mrs Beyak: Whenever there was money handed out from Toronto in the past, they never considered the relevancy of the needs of the riding. It was usually a conditional grant and it was given forth on: "This is the money. This is what you have to do." Like the Premier said during the campaign: "Here's some money. Build another garage for snow removal." We said, "We don't need a garage for snow removal." "Well, build it anyway because that's what the money is for."
There was never any money and any autonomy given to us to do with as we pleased and as we needed, and this government is doing that through Bill 26. In allocating more power to the municipalities and the local level of government, we can do what we need to do with the money. We can make it more attractive for businesses to come. We can buy hospital equipment through the northern Ontario heritage fund. The criteria there give us a chance to improve our infrastructure so that businesses will be attracted here. Government money just recycles the same old money. We need new money into the economy.
Mr Hampton: But I'm struck by your comment about "real private sector jobs," that they weren't real private sector jobs to begin with.
Mrs Beyak: No, they weren't. They would just come into the area, do the job and leave. And then when the project was over, we didn't need it. It sat there like a white elephant and the people were gone and the jobs were gone.
Mr Hampton: Does that mean that, for example, the job that a nurse does, because it's not a private sector job, isn't a real job?
Mrs Beyak: No, not at all. We want to create new jobs, though. Nurses and doctors will always be necessary in the whole province but those are government jobs that are essential. We need new money, new private sector jobs, to help the north grow, to help Ontario grow.
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Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): Thank you for your presentation. There are some comments that we've heard throughout the hearings, and certainly what is happening is that the federal representation in terms of ridings and the provincial representation in terms of ridings are going to be mirrored. That is pointed out in your paper here in terms of what a federal MP can do and what a provincial MP can do. But one thing that's somewhat different is that the federal MPs don't have the support mechanisms that a provincial member does in terms of through school boards, through municipalities, through district health councils etc to work through the province in terms of providing that representation.
In terms of a focused role, do you believe that because there will be less MPPs in the Legislature, they will in fact have a greater voice and provide better representation to deal with the issues that affect their region?
Mrs Beyak: Yes, I do believe that now; I wasn't so sure when I ran for the nomination. As I said, the sheer geography worried me. I watched the federal MP do it and figured that a provincial one could too. But as I've watched our government over the last 16 months devolve more power to the local level, I think it's important that the MPP's role is more focused and that more government is handled by the boards and the municipalities.
Mr Tascona: To comment on that, in terms of doing one's job, and you talk about quality, isn't it important that a member prioritize their activities in terms of focusing on what is necessary for the broader community rather than, say, attending birthday parties and events of a social nature, in terms of what is in fact real representation? Would you share those views?
Mrs Beyak: I sure do. That's an interesting comment. Not only that, but I find that our MPPs currently waste an inordinate amount of time on negativity. When you're constantly looking for the negative in everything, you could be spending that time so much more productively. One example that comes to mind is this tax break for the rich that we hear about day after day in the Legislature. In fact, 1.4% of income earners make in excess of $100,000; 10% of the population make in excess of $50,000. Our tax break is for all the hardworking lower- and middle-class Ontarians.
Mr Hampton: You don't believe that?
Mrs Beyak: You don't have to believe it; the statistics are there.
Mr Hampton: The president of the Bank of Montreal thanks you.
Mrs Beyak: Simple math shows it to be true. The time wasted could be better spent, absolutely.
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): Mrs Beyak, thank you very much for your presentation. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. You just touched briefly on the northern development offices. Actually, this shows sometimes our lack of knowledge about some of the things that happen in the north. One of the things I was impressed with was the fact that the Ministry of Natural Resources and the minister, Chris Hodgson, have maintained 28 northern development offices while at the same time he's reduced the administration in his own ministry so that he could make sure those were kept open. Would you say those were an important part of the northern community and an important office for people in the north?
Mrs Beyak: They're excellent, Lillian. They're a focus in the community, the heartbeat of many of the far northern communities. The staff, for the most part, are very knowledgeable. I don't know them all personally. But that's where people go when they need information on any government issue, and they get help. They're excellent, and there are so many of them across the north. They don't have them in southern Ontario, and it is a focus of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines.
Mrs Ross: That's right. Thank you. Also, I wanted to commend you. First of all, you are a very proud northern Ontarian. I know that. It comes through very loud and clear, and it's very nice to hear that.
Many of us look at the boundaries and, to be totally honest, we worry, despite what the opposition might say, about whether there is fair representation there. When I look at the numbers and I look at the geography, I understand it's a huge geographical area. But we have allowed for, in some instances, more than 20% for the population base and that sort of thing. But if we provide more resources, do you think that would also help MPPs to represent their constituents, along with the northern development offices as well?
Mrs Beyak: I think the northern Ontario heritage fund being returned to the north was one of the best things this government did. It has a northern board of directors. It is ours to do with as we see fit. For infrastructure, just the criteria alone allow us to even perhaps purchase a CAT scanner and MRI. I can't believe that finally we might have that kind of equipment in northwestern Ontario. It's difficult to attract doctors when your equipment is so out of date and is not first class.
Mr Miclash: Lynn, I must agree with Howie: Your presentation kind of blows me away as well. I can't remember any time where we've contradicted each other in the Legislature. I wish you had come up with some --
Mrs Beyak: VLTs.
Mr Miclash: Well, according to your president, I'm in the same group, but we'll leave that for another day.
Mr Bill Murdoch is the parliamentary assistant to the northern development minister, Chris Hodgson. You mentioned what a great job Chris is doing in the north, and I'm sure we'll have differing views on that as well. But Mr Murdoch is also a coauthor of a document that you used during the campaign, A Voice for the North. He's already indicated publicly that he will not support this legislation because of what it does to northern Ontario, after issuing that document, A Voice for the North. How is it that you can contradict his view?
Mrs Beyak: I'm sorry, Frank, but I couldn't speak for Mr Murdoch. I would have to talk to him about it and find out why he feels that way.
Mr Miclash: Okay. Let's go to your views, then. During the campaign, and I'll quote directly from an article here, the Fort Frances Times:
"PC candidate Lynn Beyak certainly pooh-poohed that scenario in the final days of the campaign," and we're referring to the amalgamation of the ridings, of course, "claiming any talk of the ultimate demise of the Rainy River riding was fearmongering by desperate politicians. In fact, Lynn told voters at an all-candidates meeting here that she'd fight such a suggestion tooth and nail."
Lynn, that's what I expected in this document: for you to come in here and do what you told the voters of the Rainy River riding you would do if you were elected. Now you've completely turned around. Explain how you could have had this great change of mind. When you were asking for the vote, you were going to fight this tooth and nail; you must remember that. Now today you think it's a wonderful idea. I don't understand.
Mrs Beyak: With all due respect, Frank, and I've noticed this in the Legislature as well, you often misrepresent the facts or are factually inaccurate on many occasions.
Mr Miclash: Is she calling me a liar?
Mrs Beyak: That article is not a quote from me, nor is it an interview from me; it's an editorial from a very left-wing editor in this riding.
Mr Miclash: So what you're telling me is that you did not say you would fight this tooth and nail. There is no record of that?
Mrs Beyak: My actual quote was that I would protect the identity of the riding, which is the Kenora-Rainy River riding, and that I would ensure we had a strong, proactive voice at the Legislature. I wasn't elected, so I couldn't fight too hard anyway; you fellas could have.
Mr Miclash: Lynn, you went on, and again maybe you would dispute this, and you indicated in some way to the voters of the Rainy River area that new boundaries in the province would have to be discussed in direct partnership with all Ontarians. I'm just wondering what you meant by that comment.
Mrs Beyak: It's 16 months since this now has come to the table. I had hoped that after the election you and Howard might get together -- had I been elected, I would have -- to discuss a far northern boundary, north of the Albany River, as one riding, one far northern riding. I wasn't elected, as I said, so I wasn't able to do that. I had hoped it would be brought forth by you.
Mr Miclash: So, as the federals have a boundaries commission, you would support the idea that maybe these members here should go back and recommend a provincial boundaries commission so that those people could be contacted north of 51st, as a lot of our previous presenters have suggested, in order to look at this in a non-partisan way to allow those people -- and we haven't seen anybody; the furthest north we've seen from here is Sioux Lookout.
Mrs Beyak: No, as I said in my presentation, Frank, I thought a year and a half ago that might not be a bad idea. The presentation's very clear. After watching for the last year and a half, I think quality is important. I think we waste a lot of time on negativity. I think our government is focusing more at the local level and that that's the route to go for the future. MPPs will have more time to be proactive. Local government, closest to the people, will make the decisions.
Mr Miclash: Lynn, how is it that none of the mayors who have presented to us agree with you? None of them today who presented agree.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Miclash, and thank you, Mrs Beyak, for I guess what you'd call a stimulating presentation.
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NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO WOMEN'S DECADE COUNCIL
The Chair: Our next presenter is Chris Mather. You have 20 minutes. You know how to go, so the second time at the ball game.
Ms Chris Mather: Yes, thank you. First of all, I have to bring the apologies of Dr Leni Untinen, who actually prepared this brief and who is the coordinator of the Northwestern Ontario Women's Decade Council. I am a member of the executive of the Northwestern Ontario Women's Decade Council and when Leni couldn't come today, she asked me if I would do it for her.
The Northwestern Ontario Women's Decade Council is a non-partisan, volunteer-based organization, composed of representatives of district women's groups as well as individuals. Its main goal is to improve the quality of the lives of women in northwestern Ontario in all spheres: economic, social and political. Decade Council originated in 1976 and has remained accountable to the women of northwestern Ontario. Women participating on Decade Council come from the communities of Kenora, Keewatin, Jaffray Melick, Sioux Lookout, Hudson, Dryden, Red Lake, Atikokan, Marathon, Manitouwadge, Nipigon, Terrace Bay, Thunder Bay and surrounding townships, Longbow Lake, Geraldton, Fort Hope and Big Trout Lake.
Northwestern Ontario has a population of approximately 236,000 people, living in a total of 161 communities across 1,200 miles of highway, with many communities accessible only by rail or air. The immensity of northwestern Ontario contributes to regional disparity, inadequacies in transportation, communication and telecommunication and isolation of communities and individuals. As well, many personal complications are attributed in part to the geographic reality. These include unsafe, unhealthy and frustrating situations due to a lack of police, health, mental health, social and recreational services and a higher incidence of alcoholism, violence and crime.
Northwestern Ontario's resource extraction economic base has dwindled severely in the past decade, with a resulting loss in jobs and community stability. Small, unorganized communities with minimal taxation sources cannot support needed services. I think that in part might help to clear up some of the confusion around why a smaller number of people would need more representation. If they have fewer services within their community and less access to the places where the decisions are made around specific services, that's why they need more MPPs.
Party lines, potholes, ice roads -- an ice road is a road that's only available in the winter; it's not a road that's slippery -- forest fires with necessary evacuations, air medivac, high energy consumption and minimal television and radio options are a part of life in northwestern Ontario.
Many of the above issues and realities have made up the work of the Northwestern Ontario Women's Decade Council for the past two decades. Regional women come together, identify and discuss the issues from their communities, and the council presents them to appropriate private and public sector decision-makers. Women have traditionally shouldered the human element of development in regional communities and, as such, are the experts on the quality of life.
Decade Council knows the necessity of accessible, approachable, elected political representation. Our interest is not partisan. It is in seeing that our representative, whatever the party, carries women's issues and concerns from the north to Toronto. Women are 52% of the voting population. They are not a special interest group. Their experience in the home, the workplace and the community is valuable to planning for the future of our province.
All regional citizens live and work many hundreds of miles from the seats of power that dictate the quality of their lives: the provincial and federal governments. Many residents live hundreds of miles from their elected representatives to those institutions. The current provincial electoral boundaries present many systemic barriers for northwestern Ontario residents. The broader federal electoral boundaries present even more.
Northwestern Ontario citizens have few options for access to government. Only 16 of the more than 150 organized and unorganized northwestern Ontario communities have northern development offices. Fewer have any other ministry offices. For the rest of the population, the only access point is through their elected representative. Regional MPPs are the human link between government and the people. If changes are to be made, northwestern Ontario deserves more, not less, representation. This region has given its resources freely and without limitation to our province. We will not now be forced to "press 1 for general information; press 2 for the most commonly asked questions" etc.
Dr Untinen goes on, if you are following along in the written presentation, to provide a list of the various services which, in her work with Decade Council, she has experienced an MPP being called on to look into. It's a long list and I won't go into it, because I think many people have been touching on that.
These tasks are in addition to the northern politicians' duties as they pertain to representing their constituency in the Legislature, representing government at the constituency level, committee work, caucus tasks and other prescribed duties. Demands for the participation of a northern MPP does not mean they have to cross several city blocks between appearances as it may in downtown Toronto. It often means travelling many hazardous miles on the area's highways or jumping on an airplane to cover the longer distances.
We in northwestern Ontario have seen our government services downsized and removed from our area at an alarming rate by the present government. Area management for community and social services are, and soon the crown attorney management offices will be, hundreds of miles away from all northwestern Ontario communities. Those are two services which at Decade Council we have found are vital to the wellbeing of women up here, because of the issue of the feminization of poverty and also because of the issue of violence towards women. We are devastated that those offices have been taken away from us.
We have seen change for the sake of change. Family support offices have left the region, with devastating results for many families. That a women and her children should have to use a food bank because the father will not pay is outrageous. For them to have to use that same food bank because of her government's bureaucratic bungling is scandalous.
The Ontario government is neglecting the infrastructure of northwestern Ontario, removing local services and protection from area communities, privatizing basic health and safety services such as the MTO, tearing apart the social fabric of the region, forcing amalgamation of regional communities without local decision-making and now, through Bill 81, the government is determined to silence our voice.
Northwestern Ontario is presently represented by five provincial representatives from the ridings of Kenora, Rainy River, Fort William, Port Arthur and Lake Nipigon. There are only four federal representatives from the ridings of Kenora-Rainy River, Thunder Bay-Atikokan, Thunder Bay-Nipigon and Cochrane-Superior.
Supporters of Bill 81 would pose the question, if four representatives are sent to the federal government, why not at the provincial level? While the federal government is responsible for developing national policies and developing some national programs, the provincial government is directly responsible for issues and many services that affect citizens' lives and are delivered community by community. Therefore, there are far more demands and heightened emotional responses to provincial issues. Several people today have been making the point that we take our politics seriously in the north. That is because we have fewer services and we're far away from the decision-making and our lives are impacted, especially in the case of women, I believe, by our lack of access to service. Input into education, health and social services cannot be removed from the people.
Taxation with representation is a right for all Ontarians. Reducing northern representation by one third for an area which constitutes 87% of the provincial land mass threatens this basic right. We heard the previous speaker talking about the communities along the northern CN rail line, such as Aroland and Collins and those places. As social workers and also through involvement with Decade Council, we've had occasion to try to get to those communities. It really is a question of a train goes one way one day and then back the other day. Increasing the amount of communities that an MPP has to represent is truly taking away service and representation from some of the people who live in communities with the least services, with the highest level of sexual abuse of children, with high levels of violence against women. These are communities with profound, serious social problems.
The merging of the Kenora and Rainy River ridings to a single riding covering one third of Ontario places an oppressive workload on any elected official who is committed to providing adequate representation for his constituency. Travel requirements would be exhaustive and expensive and would defeat the purpose of the plan to reduce costs.
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An expansion of the Port Arthur riding will see the constituency embrace nine additional communities as well as many more first nation reserves. This elected representative will be expected to respond to the needs of urban citizens from the city of Thunder Bay, rural suburb concerns from areas such as the municipality of Shuniah, issues from small towns such as those located along the Trans-Canada Highway, concerns from more isolated villages, for example, Nakina, and the issues of first nation people living throughout the region on and off reserves, urban, rural and semi-isolated.
Expanding Fort William riding will only serve to distribute a heavier workload to the representative and absorbing much of the Rainy River riding gives the present government the added pleasure of slighting both opposition leaders by inference that they could and should have been serving many additional constituents.
Abolishing the Lake Nipigon riding shows disregard for the citizens of that constituency and ignores the geography and distance involved. These special circumstances probably contributed to the original establishment of the riding.
In conclusion, redistribution and the drawing of provincial electoral boundaries based on population alone and ignoring the immense geographical area and the distance to be travelled to cover the ridings in northwestern Ontario is one more made-in-Toronto solution imposed on the north.
Unfortunately, the result of the last election demonstrated that the present provincial government had nothing to offer to the north. Northwestern Ontario had and will continue to have the least representation in the Ontario Legislature. Further, decreasing our representation shows a continued lack of awareness for area needs and realities, an apathy regarding our unique circumstances and disrespect for our citizens and their voice in the governance of our province.
As I noted, Dr Untinen actually wrote this and I only saw it yesterday, but I will do my best to answer questions.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Ms Mather. We have some questions. We'll divide it into 10 minutes, starting with the government.
Mrs Ross: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, I'd like to talk about where you talk about women and children and deadbeat parents and that sort of thing. I think our government is the first government to introduce tough enforcement measures against deadbeat fathers, and I'm very proud of the efforts we're taking in that area with respect to taking away drivers' licences, tapping into 50% of their bank accounts, tapping into commissions, draws and that sort of thing. I think we're doing a lot to help women and children of this province. I just want to make that clear, that that bill is doing exactly what we said we would do and crack down on deadbeat parents.
But I want to talk about this bill. I mentioned to the last presenter that in fact northern Ontario does have greater representation. If you believe that all Ontarians deserve fair and equal representation, then you'd have to believe in representation by population. If you believe in that, what we've done and what the federal government has done with its boundaries is allow for the geographic areas by increasing that representation, so that in some ridings the population is 20% less than it would be in some southern Ontario ridings or even more than that in some cases.
The other thing is that in northern Ontario there are 41 Ministry of Northern Development and Mines offices. There are 29 northern development offices each at an average cost of $117,000. So there are lots of other support mechanisms for people in the north. Do you not feel that just those two offices alone, 41 ministry offices and 29 northern development, are helpful supports for people of the north?
Ms Mather: Dr Untinen's presentation is concerned with northwestern Ontario, and I think perhaps some of the figures that you're quoting are for the north as a whole. I'm glad that you're proud of the efforts that your government is making to help women. Unfortunately, they don't pan out in the real world.
Mrs Ross: Well, you'll see they will.
Ms Mather: I think fair and equal representation based solely on population is an impossibility. I need from my government a more sophisticated analysis. I need an analysis based on the level of services provided within the community and the degree of difficulty that the elected representative is going to have in getting from community to community.
Mrs Ross: Let me ask you something then. Let me just look at these figures here.
Ms Mather: Oh, I didn't answer your question, did I? You had one more point. It was three questions in one, wasn't it?
Mrs Ross: That's okay.
Ms Mather: I beg your pardon. The third question that you asked me was, did I find that the offices were helpful? Certainly they're helpful, but they're not enough.
Mrs Ross: Okay. Let me ask you, if, for example, let's do Kenora-Rainy River: 20.65%. If that's not enough difference, what is enough for northern Ontario? How much more representation do you need with respect to more than what they have in the south?
Ms Mather: That is the question. That's a question that is not going to be answered by reliance on a federal process of determining boundaries. That's a question that's not going to be answered by three days worth of hearings. It's a question that I can't answer. That's a question that needs to be looked at by all three parties -- you guys too. I'm not saying, "Let's not talk to the Conservatives." I'm not saying, "Let's only talk to the northern members." I'm saying, "Let's have a truly intensive process." I can't answer that, and the reason I can't is because I'm not enough to answer it and neither is the process used by the federal government.
Mr Gravelle: Thank you, Chris. Certainly you've conveyed for Dr Untinen -- it's really a well-researched, detailed brief with some more information too, and I think the responsibilities of a provincial member are well outlined, and the list just keeps on growing.
We got back to the bottom line again with Mrs Ross in terms of what's going to be enough. I must admit that in terms of this specific bill, I would maintain that the answer is they should maintain the level of provincial ridings that we have now.
Setting up a provincial commission would seem to make sense, and I think that's what you were in essence talking about. Have you got any thoughts on how it could be set up? It's not too late, is it? If there was a genuine desire to especially have the hearings today have an effect -- because I don't know what else we can say. Do you, Chris?
Ms Mather: No.
Mr Gravelle: We've been listening all day and the point has been made as strongly as possible, so it seems to me that a commission might be the answer.
Ms Mather: I've been here twice today, once as an advocate for low-income people and once as an advocate for women. Please, stop this process and hold real hearings into the real issues. We get told a lot that the government members are dominated by Mr Harris and his coterie. Mr Hardeman is shaking his head that this is not true. If it's not true, Mr Hardeman, you must be able to see from the presentations today that we don't agree with you. If in fact you do have the nerve to go up against Mr Harris, then do it, Mr Hardeman. We can't be any clearer that we don't want this, that we don't think it will work. We can't be any clearer.
Mr Len Wood: Take up the challenge, Ernie.
Mr Young: Did you hear the previous speakers?
Ms Mather: Yes. I've been here since 9 o'clock.
Mr Miclash: Mr Chair.
Mr Gravelle: Speaking of the previous speaker, Chris, I know that you were sitting back there rather aghast listening to the previous speaker as well.
Ms Mather: I think she's running.
Mr Gravelle: The one question I would have asked her if I'd had the chance was that she talked about extensive public consultation. This is a really good example of this government's vision or description of consultation. They put forward a bill and say, "This is the way it's going to be and then we'll talk to you afterwards," and that's if they talk to you afterwards. We did have to fight like blazes to get hearings. It's obviously the only chance we had. But this is not consultation in any legitimate sense, because it's also been made very clear that nothing's going to change. There will be no boundary changes. Sorry, Chris.
Ms Mather: I guess we're talking about the process of today, and what's really concerned me is that somebody like the previous lady got up to speak, and I don't know her but it sure sounded like party line rhetoric to me, yet what we've heard from the government members today when anybody presents something that doesn't agree with Bill 81, it's called rhetoric. That's been thrown at me a couple of times. It's not. It's issue-based, not rhetoric.
The Acting Chair: Mr Hampton. Would you make your remarks through the Chair too, Ms Mather.
Ms Mather: I didn't know we were to be that formal. Sorry.
Mr Hampton: Chris, in the brief, you outline some services that have already been reduced. You point to the fact that there's no longer going to be a director of crown attorneys office in northwestern Ontario any more. That's being taken out. The family support plan regional office was closed. Correct me if I'm wrong. The Ministry of Environment labs have been closed, the Ministry of Transportation offices are being closed, the Comsoc area office in Thunder Bay has been closed, and I believe the Ministry of Education regional office in Thunder Bay is also being closed.
Part of what the government believes is that you can make these decisions in Toronto. I want to ask you, if all of these decisions are simply made in Toronto, if what the government creates is a large, centralized bureaucracy in Toronto, how do you think those decisions will affect northwestern Ontario and how do you think people in northwestern Ontario will react to those decisions?
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Ms Mather: Through you, Mr Chair, to the leader of the New Democratic Party, I think it's going to be disastrous for us, because we are different. In my work, I have occasion to travel to Toronto probably once every six weeks. I'm in touch with a lot of different social agencies and organizations, educational groups and health groups there. I'm usually the token northerner. It's a completely different reality. Decisions about education can't be made in Toronto; decisions about health in the north can't be made in Toronto. I won't bother listing all the ministries we've lost.
I want to give you a personal story. I had a daughter murdered two and a half years ago in Thunder Bay. Obviously it was a very, very tragic situation. Our family got tremendous support from the head crown attorney located in Thunder Bay: immediate access to information that we needed, the ability to advocate for information to be provided to us. I wouldn't want to go through the court process that I went through around the trial for the murder of my daughter with the head office being -- is it Sudbury they've moved it to? I think it's Sudbury, isn't it?
Mr Hampton: It will either be Sudbury or Toronto.
Ms Mather: I wouldn't want to do that, and I want to introduce that as a personal thing. I can't afford to travel for personal reasons like that to talk to somebody.
Mr Hampton: The other element that the government keeps coming back to is it seems to confuse MPPs, elected representatives, with government. The fact of the matter is that the government is the cabinet and the bureaucracy that cabinet creates under it. That's becoming a centralized bureaucracy in Toronto.
The real role of members of the Legislature is to hold the bureaucracy and to hold the Premier and his cabinet ministers accountable, to ensure that decisions that are made by that government and made by that bureaucracy respond to the needs of people. When you see the government creating this large, centralized, nameless, faceless bureaucracy in Toronto and at the same time reducing the number of watchers, the number of people who can hold that bureaucracy accountable, what does that leave you with as somebody who has to deal with real people's problems? What's your sense of that? How do you feel about that? How do you think it's going to work?
Ms Mather: Through you, Mr Chair, to the leader of the New Democratic Party, I feel two things about it. I feel dismay about it because it's going to make my job harder and it's going to make Decade Council's job harder. I also don't understand it, because this is a government which talks a lot about being accountable and making sure that efficiencies happen and so on. It seems to me kind of contradictory to take away -- I think somebody earlier referred to MPPs as watchdogs of the bureaucracy. To me, it doesn't make sense to take away the number of watchdogs if you campaigned on a platform of making sure that efficiencies took place.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Mather, for coming and doing a very good job the second time.
Mr Stewart: Mr Chair, on a point of privilege: We've heard a lot about made-in-Toronto solutions and hidden agendas and the urban part of this province directing all of the decision-making. I would like the record to say that there are four government members on this panel from rural Ontario.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Stewart.
UDO STASCHIK
The Acting Chair: Our next deputant is Mr Udo Staschik. I hope I have pronounced your name correctly, sir.
Mr Udo Staschik: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to this committee. For 10 years I've been a resident in the community of Keewatin, located in the present provincial riding of Kenora. I'm working in the field of community-oriented housing, community and infrastructure development. Over the last few years I was involved in more than 50 projects in dozens of communities located in the Kenora, Rainy River, Lake Nipigon and part of the Thunder Bay ridings. Drawing from these personal experiences, I'm expressing my opinions regarding the provincial riding boundary changes.
I believe the standing committee should take the following aspects into consideration. I know I'm going to repeat some of the issues that were addressed before.
Decreasing the representation of northern ridings will increase the alienation of northern communities. Ontario is not only Metro Toronto and the greater Toronto area.
The anticipated cost saving will not be realized, but merely downloaded to the residents of the new extended ridings.
Thirdly, the new demographic composition generated by the amalgamation of the Kenora and Rainy River ridings has the potential to create an imbalance in representing first nation communities and non-native communities.
The possible amalgamation of the present Kenora and Rainy River ridings is only one more small part in a much bigger development affecting northern Ontario. Due to the provincial cost-cutting and streamlining of government operations, more and more services are withdrawn from northern communities. The constituency offices of the elected members of provincial Parliament increasingly have to serve as community-based resource centres linking northern residents with a decision-making process in the south. Fortunately, the constituency offices of the present MPPs are meeting this new challenge and the staff of the constituency office are able to provide referral services and access to information.
By merging northern ridings, local MPPs will not be able to provide the required services to the population at large. The new riding of Kenora-Rainy River will encompass more than 50 first nation communities and more than 25 municipal councils and local service boards. Representation of specific northern Ontario issues at Queen's Park will be drastically diminished and area residents will have less access to their elected representatives.
Since the Conservative government took power in Ontario, communities in northern Ontario experience an increasing feeling of alienation. Solutions based on urban areas or on Toronto experiences do not work in our northern part of the province. Not surprisingly, many conversations related to the issue of Toronto dominating political decisions for all residents in Ontario end with the following conclusion: Maybe residents of northern Ontario have to define their own political future. The term "creating an independent northern Ontario" was expressed in various conversations, and even local politicians and news media are aware and supportive of this tendency.
I do think the proposed riding amalgamation and the diminished representation at Queen's Park will foster this feeling of unease with the existing political structure. After all, the term "democracy" in its original Greek context means "government for people," not government against people.
The Conservative government was elected with a clear mandate of cutting the cost of operating government in Ontario. The amalgamation of the ridings of Kenora and Rainy River is supposed to save the taxpayer approximately $100,000 per year. In my opinion, the term "saving" is incorrect and should be replaced with the term "downloading of expenses." The elected member has to service a vast area. Travel costs will skyrocket and each community in the new amalgamated riding will experience a lack of access to the elected MPP.
Consequently, concerned citizens, elected municipal officials and representatives of interest groups will have to travel to meet local MPPs at central locations. This is the best explanation for the concept of downloading. Instead of the government guaranteeing equal access for all residents across the riding, it will be the responsibility and cost of each resident to bring his or her opinion or concern to the elected member of provincial Parliament. Groups or persons with the most financial resources will have the best access and possibilities to meet and discuss issues with the MPP. Excluded are residents in remote communities or residents not having the time or financial means to spend money on travel.
These limitations to access, the resources of the local MPP and his or her constituency office staff are contradictory to the principle of democracy and fair and equal treatment of all residents in Ontario.
The demographic makeup of a new, amalgamated Kenora-Rainy River riding is extremely unique. The farming community in Rainy River, the mining community in Red Lake and the remote fly-in first nations community have the right to be represented in a fair and balanced way. I believe any restructuring of provincial riding boundaries has to take this diversity into consideration and not merely adjust the sizes of ridings according to the number of residents or eligible voters.
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An estimated 30% of the 52,000 eligible voters in the new amalgamated riding will be residing in first nations communities or be of native ancestry. Taking the future growth of the eligible voter population into account, this percentage will increase at a dramatic rate. In my experience these communities have a very different social, economic and political agenda, and demographics are different: age structure, employment levels, average household composition, income average, poverty levels, as well as general community and infrastructure development.
In my opinion it is the responsibility of the provincial government to take the specific conditions of the Kenora-Rainy River riding into consideration before realigning the riding boundaries. Having only one elected member in the Ontario provincial Parliament to represent the diverse interests of approximately 50 first nations communities as well as 25 municipal councils and local service boards seems unrealistic, and in my opinion will not give any fitting representation to the diverse nature of northern Ontario communities, the social fabric and individual residents.
Mr Miclash: Thank you for your presentation. You may have to explain to some of the members here where Keewatin is. I'm sure a lot of them don't know. As was discussed on the airplane on the way up, certain members didn't know whether Dryden was before Kenora, so you may have to explain to them where that is. It happens to be a little community on the other side of Kenora.
I think you bring up a good point in terms of imbalance in the representation of the first nations communities, particulary those north of the 51st parallel. I mentioned a good number of times today the fact that when it comes to the federal boundaries, we know there was a federal boundaries commission that took a close look at that. Could you maybe give the committee some comments as to how you would see a provincial boundaries commission taking a look at the aspect we as a committee are looking at today; not only that, but maybe some of the guidelines or some involvement that other people may have?
Mr Staschik: One of the main points in terms of a boundary commission in northern Ontario simply would be a meeting between people living here in this area. It is very important that southern Ontario is represented, but the majority of people have to be from the north and they have to be out of the groups I mentioned before: from the farming community, the mining community, somebody from remote fly-in first nations communities and the more urban centres. People in southern Ontario might not realize it, but Dryden and Kenora are the urban centres here.
In the case of people who don't know Keewatin, it's quite interesting. I think Keewatin and Kenora are two of the few places in Ontario from where I'm can do my major shopping in Winnipeg and I cannot access any government offices that would provide services to me. If you live, as an example, in Peterborough and go shopping in Metro Toronto you could always go to some office there and apply for your driver's licence or for whatever you want to do. For me, living in Kenora or Keewatin, it is 200 kilometres to go shopping in Winnipeg but I can't do anything. If I want to have any provincial services which are not provided in Kenora I have to go 500 kilometres in the other direction to Thunder Bay.
I think some areas in the existing Rainy River riding, with Fort Frances and the town of Rainy River, going to the United States for some of their business might have the same problem.
Mr Miclash: It's a good point you bring up, and I've heard a number of times that constituents in the rural ridings we've talked about before, and northern ridings, certainly have to depend on their constituency offices a lot more. That point has come out many times today. I just hope the government members are listening to that fact and will see fit for changes in this bill.
Mr Staschik: I just want to mention that yesterday the only place where I was able to find a map of Ontario that has the proposed boundaries and actual electoral districts was in Mr Miclash's office. There was nothing in any other offices representing the province, like The Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. Even the library didn't have anything. I had to use his office as the resource centre that was available to me at that time.
Mr Miclash: I reinforce the fact that we're used to doing that because, as you stated, the other offices aren't down the street for you to make use of. We've certainly gone in that direction, as I'm sure Mr Hampton's office has as well.
Mr Hampton: Udo, I want to come back to some comments you made and that I now hear often as well. We're beginning to see in newspapers, in some of the literature we read in northern Ontario, comments like, "It is time for a separate province of northern Ontario," or comments like, "It's time that we think about not being part of Ontario because Ontario doesn't seem to want us." How often are you hearing that and why do you think you're hearing that?
Mr Staschik: Over the last year and a half I hear it quite a bit in very informal conversations. I read it six or eight weeks ago in the Kenora newspaper. That was the first time it was brought up in public. I read it in the Winnipeg Free Press. I saw it on TV with Mr Benoit Serré, I think, out of the Temagami-Timiskaming area, and this reflects in personal conversations I have with my friends, with people I'm dealing with, and I'm very surprised about that. I think the example, and I don't want to get political here, of Quebec should give us enough of a scare in Canada that people are not happy with the existing political situation.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't want to say that the boundary changes of ridings in northern Ontario are similar to the Quebec issue. But I think at the present time the feeling of being fed up with decisions coming from outside the regions is very strong and that the existing Conservative government in Ontario might get a rude awakening not necessarily meant against the existing government. It could be a process that started 20 or 30 years ago that is just getting to the point where it's unbearable at the present time.
I cannot talk on behalf of first nations communities, I'm not living in any of the first nations communities, but I do most of my work in these communities and I get the impression that native communities feel even more alienated than we feel at the present time.
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Mr Hampton: Let me ask you this, Udo: Part of what the government is doing is going to increase the distance between citizens and their elected representatives and it's going to increase the distance between citizens and the government in Queen's Park. What do you think could be the effect of increasing that distance? What do you think the effect of that can or might be, given the kinds of things you're already reading in the press, given the kinds of conversations that people are already having about, "We don't feel welcome here; we don't feel a part of what's happening"?
Mr Staschik: It will be a selected group of people, the ones with money, who have access to government services. I'll give you an example. In Kenora I'm working in the field of housing, in particular. There were cuts in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, and one of the cuts affected the Kenora housing centre. That centre was dealing with people who could not find any proper accommodation, people who had problems with the Landlord and Tenant Act who were being evicted and not able to get any proper solution.
This office in Kenora was closed. The only other existing office is in Toronto, but people who are about to be evicted or who have problems with the Landlord and Tenant Act are not persistent enough to talk with a 1-800 voice mail and actually get an answer. These will be the problems of distance in ridings.
Mr Young: You mentioned that the word "democracy" means government by the people. A very important part of that formula is that one person should get one vote. I support this current formula although it gives northerners -- your weighting of your vote is greater. The things we heard about today, the weather and the distances, are the concerns they raised. But I grew up in the city and I have to tell you there are problems in the cities too.
We've heard a lot today about 50 first nations. There are ridings in Toronto where there are 50 languages spoken and there are unique problems related to assimilation of new immigrants. Crime is higher, there are housing shortages, there are transportation concerns, and I could go on.
Some of those people, would say, "We need greater representation to deal with those problems." We came in at about 10 o'clock last night, and I took a walk along the highway and I began to get -- it's my eighth time up here in the north -- a better understanding of why people live here. The environment, it's so quiet; it's beautiful. I know people live here because there are sports, and the lifestyle, the quality of life is greater, there are fewer traffic problems and you don't have to deal with crowds.
I was shocked to find, the first time I came up here, that people don't even lock their doors. Throughout my whole life you couldn't go anywhere without locking a door. So there are great advantages to living in the north too.
How can I answer people who are saying they want an absolutely equal vote? They don't want you to have a 20% greater weighting on your vote. How do you answer those people? We have to answer to them as well.
Mr Staschik: I realize that. I think you underestimate the microcosm that is happening in northern Ontario. There is by no means the violence, nor are there the problems you see in certain Toronto or southern Ontario neighbourhoods, but when you go on a per-capita level I think you might reach the same. Keewatin has 1,800 inhabitants, and I think there were one or two murders last year. If you take that in the entire proportion and extrapolate it to the Toronto area there might not be that much of a difference. We have a population in the tri-municipal area of approximately 10,000 or 15,000 people, but there are about 200 people of ethnic background who immigrated to Canada and came to Kenora within the last four or five years.
Mr Young: So you're saying it's no different from the cities --
Mr Staschik: Yes, it is different in terms of numbers, but in terms --
Mr Young: It's more difficult?
Mr Staschik: What I want to say is if you look at the percentage base, I dare to say it's not that much different.
Mr Hardeman: Thank you very much for your presentation. On the same line of questioning, you mentioned in your presentation that the government was elected to reduce the bureaucracy in government. I just want to add to that that I think they were also elected to reduce the size of government from the top down, including the elected officials.
Having assumed that to be the fact, and of course recognizing, as we've heard all day today, that there's a relationship to elected representatives and geography, if we are to accept that the present representation in the north is appropriate -- I don't know whether you would agree to go that far, but let's assume we agree it is appropriate -- and that we also have to reduce the number of elected officials and the size of government, would you support increasing the difference for the voice of the individual by increasing the population per representative in southern Ontario in order to accommodate keeping the north the way it is?
Mr Staschik: Basically, in my mind this would be a better idea. I know you're going to say in terms of cost-cutting it wouldn't work, but with our representation here I think we are at the bare minimum politically. Maybe there is a reason nobody with the Conservative Party got elected in northern Ontario, because we are aware that we could not handle a further reduction in the ridings. Maybe that's why only one person got elected in the north, because we had to trust Mr Miclash, Mr Wood and Mr Hampton more than Lynn Beyak, who was talking here half an hour ago. Maybe we were concerned about that.
Mr Hardeman: So you're suggesting, from what I hear, that financially it wouldn't work. In my opinion, financially it would work if you reduced 27 members all in the Metro area. The cost savings would be the same. I have a question about how you would deem that to be fair and appropriate to those people who would be losing the representation, who are already underrepresented by population to the extreme, and that we would put the other 10% on those.
Mr Staschik: I think I misunderstood you. My suggestion was keeping our representation in northern Ontario and increasing the amount of ridings in southern Ontario to make it fit to the existing population growth. I'm increasing the amount of MPPs.
Mr Hardeman: But how do we get back to your statement that you agreed that the government was elected to reduce government?
Mr Staschik: This was a statement. It was just a statement.
Mr Hardeman: If that's what they were elected to do, how would that scenario, to increase the size of government, do that?
Mr Staschik: Maybe that's why you didn't get elected in the north, because of exactly this statement.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Staschik, for a very intriguing and balanced treatment.
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO SMALL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
The Acting Chair: Our next deputant is Mr Guinn, from the Northwestern Ontario Small Business Association.
Mr Douglas Guinn: Many of the areas I was going to talk about have already been spoken on here today, so there's no sense in going over them again. I'm sure everybody's taken them into consideration.
Frankly speaking, the Northwestern Ontario Small Business Association is very happy with the Conservative government. Any of our concerns they have addressed quite readily for us. We're really happy with your taking 1,000 rules off of small business -- or you're going to -- getting out of our way and letting us operate. We think that will create jobs and give us prosperity in northwestern Ontario. However, we do have concerns about the riding boundaries and the number of members.
The federal boundaries were drawn up by the Liberals. Will they really save $1.3 million? That's what we want to know. Let us not forget gun controls and Mr Allan Rock's promise that it would cost $85 million; the cost will be $750 million to $1.4 billion. So what the Liberals tell us, I think we'd better watch out.
The loss of seats is a concern to all northwestern Ontario people, because no matter who controls the seats they are important. Our MPPs, whether they're opposition or government members, I've always found approachable and willing to work with you. I think that's a good thing for northwestern Ontario. But the public has lost faith in politicians. In my job, I travel I guess more than anybody in this room into northwestern Ontario, different areas, up into Kenora, Manitouwadge, Geraldton, Nakina. Whenever I'm talking to people, they all say: "What's the difference? A politician, they're worried about these seats. What's the difference if we have them or not? The politicians don't do anything for us. When they get elected, they're there to represent themselves. They won't vote against their own government because they're afraid they won't get promoted to cabinet." I think there are many things in government we have to change, and that's one of them, especially in northwestern Ontario. We've seen that in the Liberal gun bill up here. They certainly didn't support the voters who supported them, or our will.
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Our concerns will be to have enough members to represent us. We feel that these members do speak for northwestern Ontario. What we are concerned about in northwestern Ontario -- our economy is based on lumber and mining, mainly, and that is just about our entire economy. But where are we going to go in the future when all these resources run out? What's going to happen to northwestern Ontario? Are we going to become another Elliot Lake or Bancroft? I'm afraid that's what's going to happen. We see Thunder Bay already has 800 houses for sale in it right now. The population's beginning to leave northwestern Ontario. How are we going to work to hold this population here? That's a big quest for us, to try to come up with some answers about how to hold this population here. I think we need lots of representation to solve these problems up here.
I have talked to people in Nipigon and they are concerned that they are losing their vote, that Thunder Bay will control the vote and they will lose out on the vote, and they're very disappointed with it. I can well see our riding has expanded up into the Albany River area. I hunt up in the Albany area and Ogoki Lake and Ogoki west every year. To get to these areas, it's 167 miles to Geraldton, 60 miles from there to Nakina, 45 miles by air to Ogoki Lake or 100 miles to the Albany River. It is quite a big riding and quite hard to handle.
I do talk to the native people up there when I'm up there and to the residents, and they too say, "What the hell's the sense in voting?" That's what the people are beginning to say.
I am concerned and I think we all should be concerned about the independence rights movement starting to move again in northwestern Ontario: one more time a new province. I haven't heard that mentioned here today and I'm very surprised that nobody brought it up, but I am concerned about this. It looks like they're after Mike Power from Geraldton to head it up and start the movement again. I think we should all be concerned about this, because the people are dissatisfied and it's beginning to show again. We had better get our house in order up here and come forward with something for the people of northwestern Ontario so they feel they belong to Ontario.
I was born in Scarborough, but I came up here 30 years ago because it is a beautiful country and a beautiful area and the people are really nice up here. It is a special way of living up here. It is remoteness, everything. We have to do something to keep the people here so we can continue on with this great portion of northwestern Ontario in the Ontario government.
As I say, we are happy with the Conservative government, no doubt about it. They are going to create jobs, they are going to get this province moving again. But we do look forward to more support in northwestern Ontario, and I'm sure it's going to come.
That's about it. That's all I've got to say.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Guinn. We have five minutes for each caucus, starting with Mr Hampton.
Mr Hampton: I'm interested in your comment that there are about 800 houses for sale already in Thunder Bay. Why do you feel that is? What's happening that so many people are putting their homes on the real estate market?
Mr Guinn: As you know, if you're 25 and under in northwestern Ontario, you can't find a job. It's very difficult for the young. I think the people are just deciding they're going to move to a more prosperous area and try to keep the families together. Instead of splitting up their families, maybe their parents will move out too. I know one family that's doing that from Nipigon. He sold his house in Nipigon and he owns a house in Thunder Bay -- he's living there now -- and he is presently going to move out west because two sons and a daughter have moved out there and the family wants to be together. I think that would be one reason we're losing population.
Mr Hampton: Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that the Ministry of Environment lab has been closed? I understand about 60 people are affected by that. The Ministry of Natural Resources regional office has been downsized; I believe there are about 40 people affected by that. The family support plan office has been closed, and I believe 20 people were affected by that. The regional Ministry of Education office has been closed, and I believe 20 people were affected by that. I understand that Confederation College has laid off 60-some staff and that Lakehead University has either laid off or early retired some 100 people. Do you think it has something to do with those things?
Mr Guinn: I don't know, but I think all those jobs are a false economy. Those jobs are all created -- government creates jobs. I recall Mr Wilson saying that there were 270 people working in the hospital billing department when they took over. Those people weren't required because the doctors bill electronically, so 270 people were laid off. That was the reason. They weren't required and it was just a matter of making jobs. When government money goes into jobs, that's my money, my tax dollars that went there. Our association members are taxfighters too, and that's why we are taxfighters, because we're paying too much. Small business is having a hard job to survive; 62,000 small businesses went under this year in Canada. What's happening to us?
Mr Hampton: I understand the bankruptcy rate is actually going up. It's up by 20% over last year.
Mr Guinn: Yes.
Mr Hampton: Part of the reason I think people in northern Ontario are starting to feel a bit upset is that when the Ministry of Transportation office goes, the Ministry of Environment laboratory goes, the MNR offices go, the family support plan office goes, the director of crown attorneys job goes, the regional Ministry of Education office goes, people realize that means decisions won't be made here any more, decisions won't be made in northwestern Ontario, because the people who used to make those decisions and who would have the legal authority to make those decisions are gone.
Mr Guinn: That could be, but I must remind you of Cliff McIntosh's article in the paper that Thunder Bay in 2020 would be 80,000 people. Did you ever read that one?
Mr Hampton: I read Mr McIntosh's comments from time to time. I remember him predicting 10 years ago that the forest industry would be shut down by now. I do read his articles.
Mr Guinn: In 2020 we'll be out of virgin forest in Canada.
Mr Hampton: We may be.
Mr Guinn: It's a fact.
Mr Hampton: We may be. We may in fact be cutting our second forest. My point is, do you think people are right to be concerned about all these decision-making bodies, all these decision-making offices leaving our region? If they're leaving our region, where do you think the decisions are now going to be made?
Mr Guinn: The decisions used to be made in Toronto before. When I first came up to Thunder Bay they were made in Toronto, before jobs were moved from Toronto up to the outlying areas. When the first big shopping mall was built in Thunder Bay, I was opposed to that. Claude Bennett was the housing minister at the time, and I told him at a meeting, "All you've done for us, Claude" -- I liked Thunder Bay the way it was -- "is up our taxes and the costs of articles sold in the stores. That's all you've done for us."
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The Acting Chair: Thank you. We have questioners now: Mr Young, Mr Stewart, Mr Tascona and Mrs Ross. You've got five minutes, so you guys and gals act accordingly.
Mr Young: I'll be quick. There are a number of things, as you know, that we've done to make it easier to do business so those jobs are created, freezing hydro rates and red tape. You mentioned one of them. Another is taking $4 million that government spent and putting it back into consumers' hands. But I think the potential is already starting to show with the increase in prospecting in the north for mining and resources and tourism.
One of the things we did for tourism -- the bill was just passed this week -- was Bill 75. I was up here on committee and in Thunder Bay the people in the restaurants and the hotels pleaded with the committee -- they've got four buses a day that go to a casino in Minnesota -- and they said, "We want to keep those people here." The member couldn't make it to vote for the bill and never said anything positive about the bill in the House. Now, there's the kind of representation you've had in the north.
As well, we were in Kenora and they pleaded, same thing, they said, "We really need an edge to build tourism and get visitors from the States etc." Do you have any comments on that?
Mr Guinn: On tourism, when we were hunting this year the four Americans who were in camp before us said they weren't coming back. Then when we were flying out, a man, about 74 years old I'd say, from Lindsay and his son, and the other son was flying in later on on the airplane to take our place in the camp, they didn't bring a chainsaw. So we were looking at their stuff and saying, "How come you haven't got a chainsaw?" "What do we need a chainsaw for?" "To cut wood. You're going to freeze here tonight." They didn't bring an axe. Nobody told them to bring an axe.
The airplane was taking off with our saw and that, but when it came back we asked the pilot -- it was Dave Kyro flying -- "You've got to bring back our chainsaw and our axe for these people, and our file." He said, "Why?" I said, "They need wood for tonight." He says, "I got 22 people more to bring out, I can't get back yet." I said, "Well, you've got to." Then we spread out our map and we began to show them all the areas where to hunt. If they want to avoid danger, go this side of the rapids and things like that.
When we got in the airplane, Dave says to us, "Tell me, why would you people be willing to show them all the hunting spots and loan them your equipment when you don't even know them?" We said, "Because that's our future, that's tourism, that's what we're going to have to build this economy on." And he said, "Then you should go out and tell the rest of northwestern Ontario that because they want to hog all the moose and all the fish for themselves." That's what he said.
Mr Stewart: Thank you. You made reference, and a presenter earlier did, about the big fear with changing of ridings was that the new members might only be from the populated areas and it wouldn't be fair for the outlying areas, and I just want to make one comment. In the riding of Victoria-Haliburton, which is the main city of Lindsay, the man elected is from Haliburton. In Orillia, he's elected from Oro. In Oshawa-Durham East, he's elected from Clarington. In my own riding, Peterborough being the biggest one, I'm from Otonabee township. Picton, a chap from just in the rural area. I have difficulty believing that type of rationale. Could you make an additional comment on that?
Mr Guinn: It's entirely different up here. We were in for seven days on the airplane flight. We were supposed to go in on Saturday, we wanted to be home for Thanksgiving, but we couldn't get out for two days. The sun was shining and everything. We thought the airplane was coming for us, but there was so much turbulence, whenever they would take off from Geraldton in the air, he said he came out one day and he had about 15 minutes in the air and he had to come back to Geraldton base. That's the difference. At one time the federal government was going to set up four weather stations around here in the different areas, because different areas like Marathon will have different weather than Geraldton will have and so on.
Mr Stewart: But what I'm saying is the MPP who might be elected, there seems to be concern if this boundary changes they will only be elected from the major centres. We heard this before. Thunder Bay will be the only people that will ever be able to elect an MPP because of concentration of population.
Mr Guinn: Yes, right.
Mr Stewart: But it's proven, certainly in southern Ontario, that there are 43 rural MPPs, most of whom are not elected in the main towns or cities in their ridings.
Mr Guinn: Well, that could be, but you've got a bigger population, haven't you?
Mr Stewart: Yes, I know but --
Mr Guinn: We've only got 55,000 voters, and taking in this riding there'll be 2,000 more voters, so that would give all told 57,000. In that entire distance there'll only be 2,000 more voters.
Mr Stewart: Yes, I know, but --
The Acting Chair: Mr Tascona.
Mr Tascona: I'd just like to ask you a question on the role of the members. Certainly the private sector has downsized, the provincial government is downsizing in terms of doing better for less. Certainly, leading by example, the MPPs should be doing something in that direction also, and that's what this bill is about. You made your comments about politicians thinking about themselves. Do you feel we will get better representation by having fewer politicians in terms of getting away from the squabbles we have and trying to do a better job with less?
Mr Guinn: No. Personally, I don't really know, but I think we need representation. I think this area is a lot different than everybody says because of the travelling. Like us travelling from Thunder Bay to here is 250 miles. So we've got to spend a whole day travelling back and forth. It's a big difference than being in Toronto where you've got your mass of population all in apartments buildings and that. It's easier to control --
Mr Tascona: But the thing is in Toronto at the federal level they have the same number that we will have provincially, but a federal member does not have the support system, the other levels of government like school boards, municipalities, district councils. I could go on and on in terms of the other levels to which an individual has input through their provincial member. As one member says here, the MPP should be the watchdog dealing with bureaucracy. The federal members have the same thing too, but a provincial member has greater mechanisms to deal with the input. That's what we're getting at here in terms of the provincial member's role in a provincial setting.
Mr Guinn: Yes, but if we lose five seats, how would we have more input?
Mr Tascona: When you have less members to compete with in terms of resources you'd have greater input. You'd have less members from Toronto and other areas. You'd have 22 less members from the other areas, so you would have greater input proportionally.
Mr Miclash: Doug, thank you very much for your contribution to the hearings here this afternoon. Just to sum it up, can I assume that you're suggesting that these members, to all of us actually, we should go back and, just looking at what this entire bill is doing to northern Ontario, vote against this legislation? Am I reading that correctly?
Mr Guinn: What I'm trying to sum up and say is before they go into this to really look at it, I would like them to address our future in northwestern Ontario. Once our resources are gone, where do we go from here? Do we finally wind up with four members in northwestern Ontario once everybody starts running away from here? Is that what our future's going to be? I don't know, but I'm sure that's what you guys are going to figure out.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Guinn, for making your views known.
TOWN OF FORT FRANCES
The Acting Chair: Our next and final deputation, unless Mark Weare from the Dryden and District Labour Council appeared, is the mayor of Fort Frances and his two councillors and the CAO. Would you like to come to the table and make your views known. Welcome Mayor Witherspoon, Councillor Tibbs and Mr Naturkach. Have I got that correct?
Mr Glenn Witherspoon: No, he's not here.
The Acting Chair: Okay. Councillor Cunningham. You have 20 minutes and you can use it as you wish. If you don't take up the 20, there'll be some questions for you.
Mr Witherspoon: It's true that you always save the best for last and we've squared the room here, so here we are.
Good afternoon. I'm Glenn Witherspoon, mayor of Fort Frances. Between the three of us here we represent almost 40 years in municipal politics, and we've seen the Tories, the Liberals, the NDP, and now the Tories again among us. So we're prepared for anything. With me today are Deane Cunningham, deputy mayor, and Councillor Sharon Tibbs.
For Frances is the largest municipality in the Rainy River district and, although we are duly elected representatives of Fort Frances, we come today to talk about the community of the Rainy River district and our concerns in the changes being proposed to the electoral boundaries of our ridings and the representation of the north.
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Initially, Deputy Mayor Cunningham brought to our council table for discussion the proposal of the combination of the Kenora and Rainy River ridings and we concurred unanimously that this change would not be in the best interests of the Rainy River riding or, for that matter, in the interests of the Kenora riding. We expressed our feelings to our Rainy River District Municipal Association as well as our NOMA group. We felt strongly that beyond that we must speak, as the centre of our district, to question the reality of the creation of such a riding.
Councillor Tibbs today will make our main presentation and we will definitely field any questions you might have from all sides.
Mrs Sharon Tibbs: Thank you, first of all, for the opportunity to provide a public view into Bill 81. In discussion with the mayor and deputy mayor, it became apparent that our thoughts were twofold: first, our concern regarding the change to our own riding, the Rainy River district and, second, the change in the number of MPPs in the north.
First I will address our area. Where it is true that federally we are part of the Kenora-Rainy River district riding, let it be clear that this is the way it has always been. People in this area have been accepting of the fact, but who's to say it's correct? I don't believe that anyone thought change was possible. Only now, when we are headed to be represented with the same boundaries provincially, are people speaking out.
Our federal riding represents a land area that is the largest in Canada. It only has one counterpart of similar area in the entire of Canada, that being a riding in northern BC. This riding would represent in this province an area equal to one third of the land mass of Ontario. You are asking that one person in this province represent a third of the geographic area of this province. This may be called an amalgamation. We call it a loss.
In conversation with our current MP it has been said that it is virtually impossible to cover the massive geographic area. From our recollections, it is a comment that has been made by previous federal representatives.
The credibility of northern MPPs comes from their ability to personally identify with their constituents. While the current number of MPPs, 15, representing the north lacks numbers in a Legislative Assembly of 130 seats, these representatives make up for it in their efforts to communicate with their constituents. For many northern and northwestern Ontarians their MPP is the only face they ever see in the provincial government.
It has been suggested in this province that representation should be based on population alone. We question the merit of such a consideration. Both geographically and democratically this type of representation is not reasonable for here.
Let's combine the Kenora-Rainy River ridings with the rest of the north that is represented currently by 15 MPPs. We are now looking at two thirds of the land in this province being represented by 15 MPPs in an assembly of 130. Is this reduction a reasonable thing to be considering?
What does the northern part of this province bring to Ontario besides land? Resources. A case in point: A northern community working to amalgamate with an outlying area. The area had a mine and was contemplating developing a town site. The established community felt that they would benefit from the $1-million tax base they could generate by amalgamating, as the mine currently relied on their infrastructure and community as a base. What was brought to light was the fact that this mine generated $1 million a week into the provincial revenues.
The north represents resources, for example, minerals and forests, that deserve the maintaining of 15 MPPs. Millions of dollars from northern resources help offset the financial obligations of the total province. These dollars by far exceed the expenses of representatives from the north. We are not going for more. What we are asking for is to be reasonable, and we think that our current numbers are just that.
A reduction in the number of representatives in the north will dilute the ability of northern Ontarians to participate and interact with their MPPs and their provincial government. This reduction is not reasonable or democratic.
We support the government of the day in its efforts to put the financial house in order. However, we believe that the current number of northern MPPs is not impacting negatively on the financial situation and respectfully request the government to withdraw Bill 81 as it is currently authored. You will have saved minimal dollars and will have deadened a collective voice that needs to be heard.
If I might add a personal comment, not in our written submission, but it's something as I listened to previous presentations that I thought I'd like to share with you. In the late 1970s I had an opportunity to be in Sarnia and was presented as part of a field staff on a stage in an arena, I remember it being. There were probably about 1,200 people there. It was a provincial recognition.
When I was introduced on stage the introduction went this way: "Sharon has travelled 1,200 miles to come to PRD," and I heard a room breathe because it was like: "Where in Ontario could possibly be 1,200 miles from Sarnia?" I spent the next four days answering that question and as close as I could get Ontarians to say is: "Do you know where Thunder Bay is? Do you know where Winnipeg is? I'm halfway in between." By the end of the four days I was known as the person from the other part of Ontario, and I am extremely disappointed to think that this is just a further continuation of that kind of thinking by some Ontarians.
Mr Deane Cunningham: If I can just add, we have also included a map with our presentation. I apologize. It's not the greatest map in the world. It's a photocopy. It's the best one we could come up with, but it does show you the size of the Kenora-Rainy River riding in proportion to the --
Interjection.
Mr Cunningham: I'm sure I don't have to give you a geography lesson. I think you've probably been getting one all day.
I would also just like to say in closing, and I heard it said earlier about representation by population, we in our group here feel that representation by population cannot be the only criterion for drawing electoral boundaries. Some consideration has to be given for the size of the area. Thank you. We are open for questions.
The Acting Chair: We have some questions for you. We have five minutes for each caucus starting with the government.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you very much for that. I appreciate your alerting us to this, but I would draw your attention to the fact that that is not in fact the map of the final shape of the riding. You have a considerable portion -- this I think was the original proposal. You show this going all the way over to the Albany River north of what would have been a much smaller Algoma-James Bay riding. That has changed completely. The riding right now is a straight line that just goes slightly east of Lake Nipigon and draws a line straight north-south over the Albany River, and that's the real shape. I've got a map here and I'd be pleased to share it with you. It's a considerably smaller riding than what you show there.
You said, "Save the best for the last," and I had hoped at some point during the hearings here today we'd have someone explain to us -- there's no doubt, there's probably been extraordinary service in the riding of Rainy River. Yet right now, Mr Hampton represents an infinitely smaller geographical area than Mr Miclash, and I will give Mr Miclash his due. He has a far, far, far larger geographical area, but he's also has 60% more constituents. Mr Hampton earlier today said he was in favour of redistribution, but unfortunately neither of the other two parties has said anything other than, "What's on the table is wrong." We haven't seen anybody say it should go to 40,000 or 30,000 --
Mr Hampton: Chair, that's just not correct.
Mr Gilchrist: Mr Miclash had 32,000 voters and Mr Hampton had 19,000. Mr Miclash -- I would give full credit -- has a far harder task representing both the geography and the number of people.
What would be a fair number that could be arrived at? I don't think anyone, certainly no one I've spoken to anywhere in this province, can defend the fact that Mr Hampton has fewer than one sixth the number of voters of Mr Palladini. He has 129,000 voters that he's responsible for. Certainly I don't think anyone is suggesting that while Rainy River might be relatively long, it's not very high north to south. I don't think, as the eighth-largest riding in the province right now, that it can claim to need fewer people than the other seven.
1650
What would you say would be a fair population in the rural northern ridings, given that Mr Hampton himself has said that he does agree that redistribution is a good thing every 10 years?
Mr Witherspoon: I'll speak on that first. First of all, there are 23,000 people in the Rainy River district and 52,000 in the Kenora district.
Mr Gilchrist: No, it's the voters. Sorry, registered voters in the last provincial -- I've got the exact number here if you'd like to see it.
Mr Witherspoon: Very good. A fair number should never be brought into the equation when it comes to representation because it would be impossible ever to get a fair number -- and you know that -- throughout the province, so that, I think, is an unfair question. Right now we vote by districts and by areas, and that's the way it has to remain, because you'd be forever trying to figure out what's a fair way to vote. The people in your riding would be upset because -- you talked about Mr Palladini; maybe there are 500 people more in your riding than his, I don't know. But that is definitely an unfair way of garnering a vote.
Mr Gilchrist: Forgive me; maybe I didn't phrase the question well. If Mr Miclash has the greater geography -- and we've heard all day today that that's the consideration we're supposed to be balancing off against population -- how can he have greater population and greater geography? Surely to goodness one's a tradeoff to the other. So if you're telling me that 32,000 are ably represented in an infinitely larger territory, how can we defend 19,000? Surely that number has to go up to something higher than Mr Miclash to offset the smaller territory.
Mr Witherspoon: I think, sir, the way it's set up it is impossible to do it, the way the boundaries or the districts are. If you want to change the boundary or the district, I'm sure people in Kenora will be upset, and vice-versa. That's the way it is. As both my colleagues say, our whole geographic area is built because of the vastness. Fort Frances is 9,000. We see our MP, Mr Nault, quite often because he makes presentations to council and we're dealing with his office on a regular basis. But if you put our MPPs in that source, and we deal a great deal more with provincial governments than we do federally -- and you know that's true because that's the next level of government -- it's too big a distance for us to garner what we need. Even though our member may be sitting in the House opposite you, some day the person in Rainy River district might be sitting beside you. You don't know. So think of it on both sides.
Mr Hampton: Just a point of privilege, Chair: I take offence at something Mr Gilchrist said. When the government introduced this legislation, I was clearly on the record and other members were clearly on the record that we were not opposed to looking at a redistribution of ridings. We've said very clearly that there is an established process in this process. It is a non-partisan process. It is a process that goes back to the 1950s where people across the province are consulted and where there is actually an electoral commission put together, and you look at issues like geography, you look at issues like remoteness, you look at issues like community of interest. You don't simply put an adding machine on the table and then divide by a certain number. That's been the case throughout. No one is opposed to redistribution, but we believe there has to be a redistribution system where people are actually and honestly consulted and where things like that are looked at.
Mr Gilchrist: Chair, since he asked, I am allowed to make a point.
Mr Miclash: No, I don't think he is. On my time?
Mr Gilchrist: He asked about that commission. I think it was a fair question to ask these presenters what their views would be in just that very same context.
Mr Miclash: So why didn't you do that?
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. Could we get on with the questions to our guests. Mr Miclash.
Mr Miclash: Well, I will direct the question to the presenters. We've talked here about the federal boundaries commission and Mr Hampton has just referred to a possible commission to take a look at what we are doing here in Ontario, not to go by what the federal government has done, where they have made allotment in other areas of the country; we've heard about the east coast, we've heard about the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, where there have been allowances. I think what we're all getting at here is that maybe this bill should be put on hold and maybe the whole concept should be referred to a provincial commission. What are your views on that?
Mr Cunningham: I've sat through the proceedings here for an hour and a half, and I certainly think that would probably be a fairer way of doing it than what I am seeing here today. I didn't know what to expect when I came up here, and I guess I'm looking at the government fighting with the opposition. I can watch that on TV any day of the week.
Mrs Tibbs: And do.
Mr Cunningham: There's got to be a more non-partisan way of deciding this issue than what I'm seeing here today.
Mr Miclash: So you would say that we would be treating you fairly if we as a committee returned to Queen's Park and -- I know we'll have Bill Murdoch's help on this -- get across to the Premier that northern Ontario is not happy with this and that we would like to refer the whole issue, the whole issue that would consult with those people north of the 51st whom we haven't heard from today; we haven't heard from anyone, and I hope they will be presenting the next two days. But beyond three days of northern Ontario hearings, maybe we should be reaching out to more of the population. Is that the message you think we as a committee should be taking back?
Mr Witherspoon: I agree with that statement that there should be more input taken into consideration before something drastic is done in regard to eliminating ridings. One of the previous speakers, Lynn Beyak, who ran for the Conservative Party -- she ran an excellent campaign against Howard Hampton and he squeaked past her by just a little bit -- made statements that the government had in its book that they were going to reduce government and reduce costs. The way to reduce costs in government possibly is not eliminating seats. There are so many layers of bureaucracy. I've been involved with municipal politics for many, many years; we have not had a tax increase in our town for going on seven years and we've eliminated and we have cut next to nothing in services. There are much better ways of reducing costs and bureaucracy and levels of government than reducing MPPs. They're not your problem. People want representation.
Mr Miclash: I think she would have agreed with you before the election, and I indicated that to her today, that she did make comments in that vein before the election, but today we were kind of blown away by her presentation indicating a totally different view. Again, I agree with you. I was quite surprised as well.
Mr Michael Brown: One of the things that I think is interesting here is that the government believes that the federal government drew these boundaries right. Now, anybody who has followed the federal process would have some concerns about that. As you know, it started under the former Conservative government. It was then taken over by a new Liberal government. The Liberal government's original position, which had changed from the Conservative government's, was blocked in the Senate. There were a lot of very interesting things going on, to say the least. The idea that this result that has come out is perfect would not be shared by anybody who looked at the process whatever.
What we have been suggesting is that a standard electoral boundaries commission be established to redraw the riding boundaries, taking into account population, geography, communities of interest and those other things that need to be taken into account for Ontario boundaries, which have always been taken into account.
Our frustration on this side is that we do not believe the government will move from this position, no matter what's happening here today. I'm finding that a difficult position to be in, to be up here pretending that we're really listening to you when we know their mind is made up. I guess it really wasn't a question.
Mrs Tibbs: I'd like to comment on that, if I might. Therein lies the concern, and we've heard the same thing, "You're wasting your time." Any time I get to talk to any MPPs in my province, I don't think that's a waste of time. However, we do have concern that if this indeed is what happens we are going to see our provincial offices and services throughout the Rainy River district be redirected to Kenora and into that riding because it is a larger centre. There is a concern. We have seen it happen. It would be nice to have some assurances that those things were going to be reasonable, that if 60% of the population is here and 40% is there, because 60% is here not all the offices are going to be there to represent the whole bunch. There have to be some assurances. These are the things we feel and live, and have lived for quite some time.
Mr Len Wood: To refer to the final page in your presentation, you're saying the MPPs are "not impacting negatively on the financial situation and respectfully request the government to withdraw Bill 81." Just to follow up on what Mike Brown has said, the federal redistribution system was flawed. It was started under Brian Mulroney, and then when Jean Chrétien became the Prime Minister he said: "That's no good. I'm going to kill it and we're going to redo it." We find out that as a result we end up with four more members in Ontario federally, which is contrary to what the Harris government is doing -- he said he's going to make 27 less -- but there are four more federally than before. It went from 99 to 103, and they just arbitrarily took one out of the middle of northeastern Ontario and gave that to southern Ontario.
It's quite obvious that the group that made the presentation feels strongly that Bill 81 should be withdrawn and there should be another process used instead of just arbitrarily ramming a bill like this through the House. We've heard comments that were made outside of this room -- it was carried on CBC -- that there's no use in making too many presentations, no use in travelling too much through northern Ontario, because Mike Harris and his group are not going to allow any amendments whatsoever to Bill 81; that it's as presented, and that's the way it's going to come back for third reading and it's going to be passed into law before December 12. What reaction do you think will happen in northeastern and northwestern Ontario if this is the case?
Mr Witherspoon: We've gone through the exercise of sitting down as a council with our administration people and talked about Bill 81 and we've talked at the municipal level with the whole district and got the feeling that Bill 81 -- we felt we were coming here and we didn't realize it would be a "we/they" thing. We thought we'd be talking to the panel, who would take the information back. It's good to listen to it with your own ears, so you're not getting it secondhand. I agree with you there. But I think you have to come and listen. Whether you come here or whether you go to Peterborough or whether you go to Sault Ste Marie -- wherever you go -- you've got to go with an open mind.
We're coming here with an honest and sincere presentation of what we believe we need in the north and then you say what you need in your riding and it will all have to weigh out. But we're here sincerely speaking to you that we want representation to sit, whatever side of the House he sits on. Our people, percentage-wise, elected them and we'd like to have them there.
Mr Len Wood: As we're just about to wrap up, no doubt there is a lot of anger and frustration on a lot of things that have happened where the north just feels they're not being listened to by Queen's Park, even though we hear that a lot of cabinet ministers might have come into Thunder Bay and might have gone into Sault Ste Marie and might have gone into some of the areas. But they haven't been into some of the other areas, because offices are closing and the population is shrinking as a result of cutbacks where other means could have been used to balance the budget deficit and debt. There's no doubt about that.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mayor Witherspoon and councillors Tibbs and Cunningham, for coming here today and making a sincere, vigorous representation.
Mr Witherspoon: We hope you enjoy the north and that you have a safe trip home. Thank you for the time.
The Acting Chair: The same to you. I'd like to say thanks to all the members of the public for attending today.
Mr Len Wood: Mr Chair, if I could briefly, and I've talked to some people, I had a request come through for financial assistance to one of our presenters today and I would hope that the subcommittee would look at it. I know the request is supposed to come through before the person makes their presentation here, but it's been considered in some cases. I would put on the record that Florence Buffington did a lot of travelling here and would look for financial assistance.
The Acting Chair: She must submit it to the clerk in writing and the subcommittee will examine it.
Mr Len Wood: I wanted to put it on the record. Thank you, Chair.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. That adjourns this session.
The committee adjourned at 1705.