Committee Transcript 1997-Apr-10 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Local Control of Public Libraries Act, 1997, Bill 109, Ms Mushinski / Loi de 1997 sur le contrôle local des bibliothèques publiques, projet de loi 109, M^me Mushinski

Northern Ontario Library Service

Mr Michael Corbett

Mr Alan Pepper

Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 1803 and Local 3120

Ms Leslie Piekarz

Ms Sylvia Renaud

Ms Angela Meady

Lakehead Women Teachers' Association

Ms Sharlene Smith

Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation, Thunder Bay District

Mr Jim Green

Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 2855

Mr Andrew Preston

United Steelworkers of America

Mr Moses Sheppard

Thunder Bay Public Library

Ms Carole Aitken

Ms Margaret MacLean

Canadian Library Association

Ms Karen Harrison

Red Rock Public Library

Ms Laurie Wright

Friends of the Red Rock Public Library

Ms Delaine Todesco

Friends of the Thunder Bay Public Library

Ms Janine Chiasson

Atikokan Public Library

Ms Marlene Davidson

Ignace Public Library

Ms Elizabeth Russell

Mr Michael Sobota

Beardmore Public Library

Mrs Jackie Boughner

Dryden Public Library

Mr Bryan Buffett

Geraldton Public Library

Ms Carol Cooke

Michipicoten Township Public Library

Ms Sandra Weitzel

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT

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

Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente: Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York PC)

Mr MikeColle (Oakwood L)

Mr HarryDanford (Hastings-Peterborough PC)

Mr JimFlaherty (Durham Centre / -Centre PC)

Mr MichaelGravelle (Port Arthur L)

Mr ErnieHardeman (Oxford PC)

Mr RosarioMarchese (Fort York ND)

Mr BartMaves (Niagara Falls PC)

Mrs JuliaMunro (Durham-York PC)

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)

Substitutions present /Membres remplaçants présents:

Mr TonyMartin (Sault Ste Marie ND)

Mrs LynMcLeod (Fort William L)

Mr DerwynShea (High Park-Swansea PC)

Clerk Pro Tem /

Greffière par intérim: Ms Donna Bryce

Staff / Personnel: Ms Elaine Campbell, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 0905 in the Prince Arthur Hotel, Thunder Bay.

LOCAL CONTROL OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES ACT, 1997 / LOI DE 1997 SUR LE CONTRÔLE LOCAL DES BIBLIOTHÈQUES PUBLIQUES

Consideration of Bill 109, An Act to amend the Public Libraries Act to put authority, responsibility and accountability for providing and effectively managing local library services at the local level / Projet de loi 109, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les bibliothèques publiques de façon à situer à l'échelon local les pouvoirs, la responsabilité et l'obligation de rendre compte concernant la fourniture et la gestion efficace des services locaux de bibliothèque.

The Chair (Mr Bart Maves): Good morning, committee members. Welcome to Thunder Bay, Mr Gravelle's home. We were treated with great hospitality last night. Today I'd like to welcome all of the members of the audience to the committee.

NORTHERN ONTARIO LIBRARY SERVICE

The Chair: Our first presentation this morning comes from the Northern Ontario Library Service board. Good morning, gentlemen. You have 15 minutes today to make a presentation. If there's some time left at the end of your presentation, I'll try to divide it among the three caucuses equally so that they might ask questions. If there's only one or two minutes left, I'll have one caucus ask questions.

Mr Michael Corbett: Thank you. The Northern Ontario Library Service board is pleased to have this opportunity of addressing the committee. The board's mandate is to deliver programs and services by increasing cooperation and coordination among public library boards and assisting public library boards by providing them with services and programs that reflect their needs, including consultation, training and development services.

The Chair: Excuse me. Just before you go any further, for the benefit of Hansard and the committee members, could you both introduce yourselves.

Mr Corbett: Michael Corbett from Bruce Mines. I'm chair of the Northern Ontario Library Service board.

Mr Alan Pepper: Alan Pepper. I am the chief executive officer of the Northern Ontario Library Service board.

Mr Corbett: We are making this presentation to reflect the concerns expressed to us by small libraries in northern Ontario, most of which are unable to make individual presentations owing to the time and expense involved in crossing northern Ontario's great distances.

It would be hypocritical for the board not to applaud the fact that those aspects of the Public Libraries Act which support the Ontario Library Service are to remain in place. Together with the cultural partnerships branch of the ministry, the board and its southern partner, the Southern Ontario Library Service, provide a backbone of services which support the provincial interest in public libraries. The INFO system, which provides an automated interlibrary lending system, quality support in the areas of training and education, and the administration of material cooperatives which enable public libraries to work together without losing their local autonomy are all supplied in the north by OLS-North.

Current priorities of the board are the extension of Internet access by public libraries, taking proactive steps to ensure that information needed by library users is available on the Internet and the development of a quicker, more responsive, Internet-based interlibrary provincial lending system.

We are pleased at the retention of the principle of free access and the validation of 150 years of public library work in Ontario that this implies. However, we suggest that free borrowing continue to be defined as the borrowing of all materials, no matter what the format. To restrict free borrowing to traditional print materials only would seem to imply that the principle of free and universal access is somehow an outmoded concept whose importance diminishes as new technology takes on a larger role.

Charges for non-library-specific activities and value-added services are acceptable. In addition, in a service whose financing is from the local tax base, charges for non-residents are clearly fair. However, a province-wide scattering of libraries between which strong financial barriers to cooperation exist is antithetical to the idea of a provincial library service and would not represent good use of Ontario's taxpayers' money. Cooperation must remain one of Ontario's goals.

Naturally, we are happy that library boards are to continue. However, if councils are completely free to define a board, to the point where any semblance of what is normally thought of as a board ceases, then the intent of the legislation is successfully circumvented. If, for example, a council determined that its board should consist solely of the town clerk reporting to the council once a year, in reality no board would exist. If the case for a separate library board has been made sufficiently powerfully for it to be enshrined in a radical overhauling of a public library legislation, then measures to ensure that the board remains a corporate reality, rather than a legal fiction, are imperative.

Three aspects of this question need to be addressed.

The retention of citizen membership on library boards is important. Citizen boards have served Ontario well. There is no reason to consider that they will do less well in the future. A corollary to this question is whether council employees can act in an objective fashion if appointed to a library board. This board's contention is that they cannot and that they should not sit on public library boards. In order to ensure that the citizens are aware of vacancies on the library board, public notice of vacancies should be given.

By definition, a board consists of more than one person. A minimum size of board should be included in the legislation. This could be as low as three, but five is preferable. If no minimum is included, then the requirement for a board separate from the municipal council might as well be abandoned altogether.

Similarly, for a board to be effective, it must meet. Whether monthly meetings are necessary or whether a different schedule would serve could very properly be left to the individual council. However, for a board not to meet at all, or just to meet once a year, strikes once more at the very requirement to have a board. A minimum of meetings, say every two months, is needed. These meetings should be open to the public.

The cessation of direct annual operating grants to public libraries, which had been heralded by successive 20% reductions in the last two years, comes as no surprise. The board, while deploring any reduction in the province's support for public libraries, can understand that a non-accountable library operating grant was unlikely to survive in the current provincial climate. We would, however, like to make a few observations.

First, in order to provide for continued library support during the transition period where municipalities will be struggling to reconcile the financial equation caused by the changed funding of many services, the removal of the per-household library operating grant should be on a progressive basis. Grants are already only 60% of the 1995 level. The board suggests that this 60% level should remain in 1998, be reduced by 20% in successive years, and cease altogether only in 2001. By this time, the new board structure, as well as rationalizations in local government, can be expected to have become part of new methods of operation.

Second, in the case of first nations libraries, operating grants should immediately revert to the 1995 level in the current year and should remain at that level pending an independent study of first nations library funding. After many years of being well behind mainstream Ontario, public libraries in first nations communities are finally beginning to develop to the point where they are becoming a functional part of the provincial library service. They are providing a focus for the cultural identity of first nations within their own communities and also for interpreting that cultural identity to the rest of Ontario. Starving first nations libraries of funding at this critical point of their history would seem shortsighted.

Third, the question of public library service to the unorganized population, which is substantial in northern Ontario, should be addressed. With the proposed amalgamation of municipalities, many unorganized townships will probably be subsumed into other municipalities. However, retention of the unorganized township grant program currently being operated on behalf of the ministry by OLS-North would assist a smooth transition and prevent the abrupt termination of library service to the residents of unorganized areas.

Finally, as has been the case in other sectors, the board trusts that as non-targeted operating grants from the province to public libraries are withdrawn, new, specifically focused provincial funding, services and programs aimed at helping public libraries work together in a cooperative fashion will be instituted. Many of these would be in the area of technology and communications, thus strengthening and making more uniform the provincial library network.

However, if this network is to function effectively when the primary funding is supplied at the municipal level, consideration must be given to the plight of net lenders, those libraries which lend more material through the interlibrary lending system than they borrow. Events over the past few years show that without some form of compensation for this activity, such libraries cease lending materials to other libraries or start levying prohibitive charges. In northern Ontario, this board has always maintained a policy of compensating these net lenders. We feel that this should become a provincial policy and that funding at a realistic level should be made available for this compensation.

Though developments in information technology are important, supplying library materials in traditional and newer formats will continue to be a part of the public library function for many years. This has always been a burden upon libraries serving very small populations, where the costs of buildings and staff use a disproportionate segment of the library dollar. Consideration should be given to directing a proportion of targeted provincial support to help libraries serving populations of less than 2,000 maintain their supply of library materials. A good way of doing this would be to help them take part in self-funded materials pools, thus making them partners in the process of self-help.

Finally, overarching those problems which are common to all public libraries comes the recognition that northern communities are less capable of funding services and that a government mitigation strategy is required. To support a given level of library service in the north generally involves levying a higher municipal mill rate than it does in the south. In addition, the geographic dispersal of the north makes self-development for library staff and board members through meeting and sharing with colleagues difficult and expensive. We recognize that these problems should not be tackled piecemeal but should be part of an overall government strategy, and the OLS-North board offers its services in helping to make this strategy work for the public libraries of northern Ontario.

The board would like to thank the committee for its time and assure the members that the 17 volunteer members of the Northern Ontario Library Service board, together with the board's dedicated staff, will continue to work strenuously on behalf of quality library service in northern Ontario, as they and their predecessors have done since 1953, when the Thunder Bay District Library Cooperative, the precursor of the present-day Ontario Library Service, was conceived in this very city.

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): Thank you very much, Mr Corbett. I bring greetings from your member, Bud Wildman, who I'm told was in touch with you about this early on. He couldn't be here today for obvious reasons. He's our House leader and there's some serious negotiation going on as we speak.

You raise some really important issues and I think there are some issues particular to the north that need to be made. One of them, of course, is the issue of first nations. Another is the issue of unorganized townships; I don't think there is such an animal in southern Ontario. Of course, the other is the issue of how it is more difficult for us in the north to raise money for things like libraries through the raising of taxes, because you don't have as much room to spread it over.

I'd just like to ask you to focus a bit on one of those, and that's the first nations challenge, where they are at this particular point in time, and maybe expand a bit further on how this piece of legislation will affect them and what you suggest could be done to improve that.

Mr Corbett: First nations libraries have taken a long, tedious path into being a very viable part of their communities. We have been helping them extensively, but any cutbacks that they receive right now will throw them back considerably, injure the growth they are experiencing. We've had a lot of problems with first nations libraries in the transition and the changes in libraries, but we have been working extensively with them and we have been making sure they are becoming much more viable. Any cutbacks, as I've said, will take away the progress we have made in the last few years.

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): I appreciated your presentation. You'll be interested to know that certainly the first nations issue and the one of the unorganized townships are not technically part of this bill; they are yet to be reviewed. I appreciate your comments in that regard and that will bring you some measure of relief.

I want to get to the point of governance because the time is so limited. I'm intrigued with your comments about governing. It particularly caught my attention when I saw your comments, the question of whether council employees can act in an objective fashion if appointed to a library board. The contention is that they cannot. I'd be interested in your feedback on that. Would that also apply to members of council?

Mr Corbett: No. Members of council have a directly elected duty to represent their constituents.

Mr Shea: So your sense is then that the employees would be too directly related to the councillors to be able to make any objective comments on behalf of library services?

Mr Corbett: The history of libraries in Ontario is that libraries are incorporated under the library act and this was enshrined a long time ago. It was the only board in a municipality that had that control and had that presence. What this does is ensure that there's no censorship and that free access of information continues to be given to the community, no matter what the political agenda, no matter what is happening within a municipal council.

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Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): Good morning and thank you for your presentation. Certainly you have echoed a lot of the concerns that have been expressed across the province, but as Mr Martin pointed out, the whole issue of first nations has not come up yet and I think that's an important one, as is the unorganized township one.

There are so many questions, but the one I'm interested in too is the whole question of the interlibrary loan program, which has come up in a number of places but probably needs to be talked about a bit more. The fact is, those of us who are concerned about the legislation and have talked about the patchwork that will develop, this is part of it, at least a large part of it, so I wonder if you can explain to the committee members what may happen. As you say, the whole program may fall apart unless there is some financial assistance available, because it costs money to be part of the interlibrary loan program.

Mr Pepper: What has happened in the last few years in the case of these large lenders, people who lend a lot more material than they borrow -- and specific cases can be instanced, such as Hamilton and Windsor, which have put quite heavy charges on interlibrary lending, thus cutting down the free interchange of information. No library can be completely independent. Even Hamilton and Windsor borrow from other libraries, but they lend more than they borrow. We are concerned that with all funding being put to the municipal level, this pattern would develop more strongly and some means of ensuring that free interchange of information throughout the province would continue.

The Chair: Thank you, gentlemen, for coming forward this morning and making your presentation to the committee.

CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 1803 AND LOCAL 3120

The Chair: Would representatives from CUPE, Locals 1803 and 3120, please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Ms Leslie Piekarz: My name is Leslie Piekarz. I'm the president of CUPE, Local 1803.

Ms Sylvia Renaud: I'm Sylvia Renaud. I'm the vice-president of CUPE, Local 1803.

Ms Angela Meady: My name is Angela Meady and I'm a librarian with the Thunder Bay Public Library, secretary of 1803. I'm here speaking with you this morning on behalf of my fellow union employees, CUPE 1803 and 3120, of the Thunder Bay Public Library. We wish to take this opportunity to address our concerns with the act to amend the Public Libraries Act, and I thank you for that opportunity.

We find that we support the purposes of the act as outlined in section 2: that public libraries continue to successfully provide for Ontarians their information needs. However, we worry that this act's amendments will bring consequences which are contrary to the achievement of these purposes. The consequence of turning the funding of public libraries over to municipalities solely we fear will result in an unequal provincial system in which some localities will have to fight to maintain minimal standards while others will not be able to meet the information needs of their residents.

Libraries have already felt the deep sting of cost cutting. Even prior to the reduction of the provincial grant in 1996, we were dealing with losses in revenue and cutbacks. For example, we closed many more hours. I'm speaking of Thunder Bay Public Library here. It's been much worse in some of the other libraries in northwestern Ontario but I'm just speaking for Thunder Bay Public. We closed evenings. We didn't replace staff when they retired or left. We've suffered a huge loss to our materials budget. We've cut programming. We have reorganized, re-engineered and restructured with no sense that what has been lost could be regained.

Since Ontario reduced its grant in 1996, the erosion has continued and the library now preoccupies itself with educating users in diminishing expectations, such as using self-help machinery in the absence of professional assistance, such as waiting in line for 20 minutes to ask a question or to sign out materials, or facing a service desk with a closed sign or a sign which directs them to the remaining service desk, that one upstairs that has a 20-minute lineup.

In Thunder Bay, this has meant fewer hours of operation, fewer new materials, fewer programs for children and fewer service personnel. Library funding has in effect been cut to the bone, and further cuts will result in amputations. Should the library lose the remaining portion of the grant, such reductions are probable.

Municipalities are being asked to assume sole responsibility for the funding of public libraries. Large, relatively wealthy southern Ontario centres may or may not adjust to this change and at least maintain their current level of funding. But the residents of Thunder Bay and remote northern communities with a small tax base will undoubtedly see their libraries increasingly underfunded and their services eroded as the library competes for a share of the ever-shrinking pie of public funding.

This act, which is directed to all Ontarians, will disadvantage some Ontarians compared to their neighbours. In Thunder Bay there has been downward pressure on public spending. The city's position that it is cash-strapped is a real one and it has brought us to the verge of strike action by CUPE right at the current time. There appears to be little more commitment to maintaining library services on the municipal level than there is on the provincial.

In this atmosphere, for which we see no real signs of relief, we may anticipate that the municipality would further cut the library's funding, which would result in a greater reduction to library services and a downsizing of staff and a downgrading of the level of professionals required to administer these services. Large monetary losses would mean branch closures and drastic cuts to the hours of operation; the loss of services to special-needs groups such as shut-ins and the illiterate; the impoverishment of the collection, particularly in targeted areas such as books in Braille, large-print materials and talking books for the blind; a decrease in materials budgets overall; to children's literacy programs; a delay in the implementation of new technologies and so on.

The incorporation of technology into basic library services, such as our anticipated public Internet access this spring, our digitization of local history materials, multimedia stations for children and adults which are currently in place, all of these things make it quite an exciting time to be working in a library, a period of great potential for increased access to information. What is not obvious is the tremendous expense attendant upon these kinds of initiatives, not simply for the hardware but for the software, for the maintenance, for the staff and public training, for the upgrades, and in fact the reality that we are still required to offer multiple formats since for many of the public the electronic media care neither the desired nor the needed nor even the appropriate format. For instance, I very much doubt that the critical experience of sharing a child's picture book with a parent could be replaced with a shiny new CD-ROM or that the same senior citizens who need our assistance to photocopy a paper are suddenly going to find themselves wired in the near future. So these innovations cost and the cost is extra; it is not instead of costs we're already struggling to keep up with.

To finance library operations we feel it is a certainty that fees will be imposed for services which had hitherto been free to all patrons, thus creating a multi-tiered system of access to information. Patrons unable to afford library fees will become information-deprived in an era in which we are told that information is the key to social mobility. Ontarians will not only be disadvantaged from community to community, but also within a community.

There is no doubt the residents of Thunder Bay appreciate and value library services. In the city of Thunder Bay an average of 50,000 persons per month use the public library. During 1996, 1.6 million library uses were recorded. Library uses would include the borrowing of books and other media, reference questions being answered, children's program attendance and in-house use of materials. This figure represents approximately 14 annual library uses for every citizen of Thunder Bay. That's more than one use per month per person.

The library has traditionally worked in tandem with the school system. Public libraries have played an important role in equalizing the educational playing field by providing resources for students of all ages, indeed students for life, you may say, supporting their lifelong learning initiatives. As library funding gravitates to mere subsistence level, the library will not be able to maintain the level of service and materials its users require. Downgrading of professional staff would hamper the library's ability to work in partnership with schools. The staff required to keep up with evolving technology will simply not be there for students. This situation becomes more critical at a time when schools are facing shrinking budgets and exhibit an uncertain commitment to the operation of their own resource centres.

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The lack of access to information is an obvious impediment to educational and social success. Children and adults without educational opportunities would never realize their full potential as citizens. These same children and adults without access to the recreational reading material provided by public libraries never fully realize the outer limits of their creative potential, nor do they find the means to uncover worlds larger than their own limited horizons. Persons require information for their development, and the library remains the essential social agency for providing access to information.

The library, with its highly trained and dedicated staff, enjoys a good reputation and strong public support, as is shown by our user statistics and community goodwill. To pick up the slack left by previous cuts we have been fortunate to receive the support of local charitable organizations, but this support is not likely to increase and is in no way guaranteed for the future. Without the stability of provincial funding, the fate of the library will be left to the vagaries of local politics and beneficence.

It is particularly important that residents of isolated, remote northern Ontario communities be able to tie into provincial or other networks in order to extend the limited number of resources available to them. Without the financial support of the government, it is not likely that provincial networks would survive. Citizens and governments of Ontario may not agree on government spending priorities. However, all Ontarians must agree that access to information is an essential right of all citizens.

The support which the province has provided in the past has allowed Ontario to become a Canadian leader in the development of provincial networks that permit equal access to information regardless of geographic or financial inequalities. The changes proposed in the Public Libraries Act threaten to roll back this progress. The transference of library funding to the municipality would result in more cuts, which will hurt the ability of individuals province-wide to access current and future information technologies. While the act wants Ontarians to "benefit from access to local, provincial and global information," we fear its remedies knock out the very foundation from this ambition of an integrated provincial network and promise only a fractured system in which a few libraries thrive while the others flounder in parochialism.

The financial support of the Ontario government is valued and essential to the future health and growth of our public libraries. As the new horizons of the information age open up, this would be a tragic time to cut your citizens' libraries adrift. Thank you very much for your time.

The Chair: Thank you. We have just a little better than a minute per caucus for questions. I would encourage everyone to keep their preamble short so we might be able to get longer answers from the witness.

Mr Jim Flaherty (Durham Centre): In terms of labour relations, the proposed Bill 109 I suggest doesn't make significant changes. There's still the requirement of the board being appointed, and in section 11 of the proposed bill, "A board may appoint and remove such employees" and so on. There are the provisions with respect to retirement allowances, pensions, sick leave credits and those things in section 13 of the bill, which I thought was what you might talk about, being from CUPE, but you didn't. You talked about the organization and the difference, perhaps, in funding that might happen.

Looking at the statistics, what I see for the Thunder Bay library is that the funding from the provincial government currently is 8.39%, so that about 91% of the funding for the Thunder Bay library is coming from the property tax base, from the ratepayers in Thunder Bay. A community of comparable size, for example Oshawa, part of which is in my riding in southern Ontario, is at 9.85%, so about 90% of the funding is municipal there. In Windsor, obviously in southern Ontario, about 92% of the funding is from the municipal ratepayers.

I'm looking at communities of comparable size. In terms of the financial support they're receiving now from the provincial government, it appears comparable to me. Therefore, it doesn't follow to me, and perhaps you can help me with this, why it would be said that there would be a greater burden on municipal ratepayers in the north than there would be on the people in Oshawa or Windsor, given that their levels of funding are about the same.

Ms Piekarz: Even though the levels of funding are the same when you're talking about the provincial grant, our levels of funding from the city have not gone up and our costs have gone up. When you are being asked to introduce new technologies and your budget has flat-lined, how are you going to offer these technologies and other services? When we have been experiencing that already in our level of services of the citizens of Thunder Bay, we are therefore looking at a possible cut from the province and understand how difficult it would then be for us to provide those services.

Mr Gravelle: The fact is that the government members consistently bring this up and they talk about the 6% to 10% contribution from the province as if it's no big deal. I think in Thunder Bay's case it's about $300,000. This bill in essence is not about better library service, it's about downloading. That's really what it's all about.

What's the big deal about losing that kind of funding? The fact is that when you look at all the downloading that's gone on, Thunder Bay has estimated about a $15.2-million loss in terms of funding and about a 20% property tax hike if they have to meet those services. Do you think it's realistic to ask the municipal council of Thunder Bay to not only meet what they're doing but to make up that difference, based on all the other downloading that's going on?

Ms Piekarz: Also, what is the budget of the Oshawa Public Library? Is it comparable to the Thunder Bay Public Library? Maybe I don't want to go there.

Mr Flaherty: Yes, $6,000 apart; $288,000 in Oshawa, $294,000 in Thunder Bay, provincial grants.

Mr Gravelle: But in terms of Thunder Bay, is it realistic to ask the municipalities that are already being affected by so many other cuts -- certainly they're paying for ambulance services, long-term care. That's the deal here. This is about downloading; it's not about better library service. The minister makes a statement of purpose, but it's just not realistic.

Ms Meady: Thank you for your point, Mr Gravelle. What you raised about your expectation of what we would be saying here this morning on behalf of the unions, I think it is maybe notable to see that we are here really in support of our library service in concordance with management, just to say in essence: We feel that we are cut to the bone. We want to bring this to your attention to say we cannot suffer any more cuts and still adequately provide for our citizens. In fact, we are just barely managing that at this time.

Mr Martin: That's actually what I wanted to highlight too, that this bill is not about enhancing library service; this bill is about money. The provincial contribution is significant, even if it is only $300,000. But when you put that together with the downloading that's coming and the impact on communities by, for example, the revelation the other day of the Minister of Finance that he is not going to allow municipalities to collect this business occupancy tax any more, it's an even bigger hit. In a place like Thunder Bay, where the economy is struggling, it's actually unfair to compare it to the economy of a place like Oshawa, where it's actually doing quite well at the moment, comparing apples with oranges.

Actually, what I wanted to ask you is, what kind of training does it take for you, as a librarian, to arrive at a place where you can do the work that you do?

Ms Meady: Speaking for myself, I am a librarian, which means that the minimum requirement for me would have been a master's degree in library science, preceded by a BA, and for both my colleagues as well.

We have a core of nine librarians. A couple of them who were formerly full-time librarians now work on contract in this current position. The rest of the staff, the support staff, would have either a library technician diploma or, if they're in the clerical nature, grade 13 and that sort of thing. There's a variety of different people working, but a librarian is an MLS.

The Chair: Thank you, ladies, for coming forward and making a presentation to the committee.

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LAKEHEAD WOMEN TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION

The Chair: Would Sharlene Smith please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Ms Sharlene Smith: Good morning. I'm Sharlene Smith, the president of the Lakehead Women Teachers' Association. Once again, thank you for the opportunity to address another bill that the government has put forward to us.

I represent over 500 women teachers teaching in the public elementary system within the city of Thunder Bay. Our members can see the effects that this government's cuts and other measures are having on this province. We know that the direction this government is taking will not be good for children, for education, for our communities, for the economy or for the democracy of this province.

We know it does not make good sense to make these unrealistic changes without fully understanding the impact these changes will have on the people of our province. For the past two and a half months, we've been trying to fully understand the impact of your government's proposed downloading of new financial responsibilities to Thunder Bay. Unless this government changes its agenda, citizens of this province will experience a huge increase in their property taxes or a severe reduction in major services that all of us need or have a right to expect.

Bill 109 is also a part of this government's downloading plan which will have a major impact on access to our public libraries. Changes to the Ontario public libraries proposed in Bill 109 will further hinder children's opportunities to learn. This loss of funding to our public libraries will threaten the viability of Ontario's world-class library system.

We live in a society based on information and knowledge. Therefore, libraries are the main centres in all communities to access this needed information. Even though computers are becoming a part of our daily life, not all citizens have home computers or the training to use them effectively.

For more than 100 years, our public libraries have made books and other learning materials equally accessible to everyone in Ontario, regardless of their income or geographical location. Over the last two decades, library use in Canada virtually has doubled, clearly attesting to the ability of the libraries to remain current in our ever-changing world.

Marilyn Mushinski, Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, in addressing the Ontario Library Association 1997 Superconference on February 7, stated, "There is no doubt that our library system is one of Ontario's greatest cultural and economic assets." However, rather than improve the library system as she maintains, Bill 109, the Local Control of Public Libraries Act, will take literacy and learning out of the reach of many of those who need it the most. LWTA has three major areas of concern with Bill 109 that we will now address.

This government maintains that literacy is important to an individual's success and to the province's success. Mushinski stated at the Superconference that the province recognizes the great value of libraries to the economic health of the province through their role in creating a well-educated and literate workforce. Learning has been accepted as a lifelong process and it's clear that our libraries have a central role to play in this pursuit.

Our libraries cannot play a central role in this pursuit, however, if they are poorly funded and have user fees for certain aspects of their resources and services. Literacy does not merely happen because someone wishes it to. It requires a commitment that goes beyond teaching someone to read in the early years.

Literacy requires a commitment that includes adequate funding of resources such as the schools and libraries of this province and it requires that access be freely given to these resources. Bill 109 will slow down our pursuit of literacy in the following ways:

It allows libraries to impose user fees for everything except access to the library and borrowing print material.

By eliminating provincial funding, smaller community libraries will find it difficult to keep current and to provide the services to their communities that are more accessible in larger urban libraries.

User fees may impact on literacy. In our era, more and more materials are being made available in forms other than print. Imposing user fees on access to electronic information available through the libraries means that access will be limited. This will create a two-tier system where those with the financial means will be able to become more literate and more computer-literate. There is already a class division regarding computer literacy and access to information only available through the Internet. We fear that this bill will increase this division.

Some remote communities do not have the financial ability to maintain extensive collections. In order to provide access to the citizens of these communities to more material, and often the more current material, a system of interlibrary loans has been established. Bill 109 will enable libraries to charge user fees for accessing this service.

This will mean that those who live in communities that do not have a large library system will be financially penalized and will not be able to access the range of materials available to those who live in large urban centres.

Since coming into power, this government has reduced the funding to libraries quite significantly, by 20% in the last two years. Now they've decided that libraries will be completely funded by the municipalities, with no funding by this province. This is part of the whole disentanglement exercise. The government maintains that this whole exercise is about a means of better providing the various services to the people of Ontario. However, it appears that it is more about providing the means to cut funding for various programs in order to pay for your tax cut. The tax cut will only benefit those who are already well off in our province. The services cut are affecting those who are less fortunate, and they will suffer.

We support the position that the local communities are in the best position of determining the needs of the citizens, but in order to be able to act on this knowledge they must have financial capacity.

In the Thunder Bay library system, cuts of $144,000 in the last two years and now $250,000 proposed for 1998 mean extensive changes for the users of our public libraries. For the public who count on free public services, cuts have had a profound impact. Our libraries have already downsized their staff, which means loss of library usage for the citizens of Thunder Bay. Today, our libraries are not opened on Thursday evenings and have reduced hours on the other days.

In the Thunder Bay library system there are over 50,000 users per month at our two main reference libraries and the two branch libraries. Statistically in our community, there are over 1.6 million library uses per year. This means that every citizen of Thunder Bay accesses the library for 10 different library uses per year. Further loss of funding could mean the closure of branch libraries and the loss of more staff, which equates to more reduced hours of public access to our libraries.

Budget decisions focus on the greatest number of materials which can be acquired. As a result of this, items such as large books, which cost one third more than regular novels, are less likely to be purchased. With the cost of books and supplies escalating, the reduced library budget purchases even fewer resources. While Bill 109 maintains that print materials should be accessed for free, it allows libraries to charge user fees for technology, film, books on tape, CDs, cassettes, programs such as guest authors, lectures, children's entertainers and movies or slide presentations.

Mushinski states that the new library framework will contribute certain cost-saving efficiencies because municipal governments will be making responsible decisions for their libraries. This sleight-of-hand financing means that libraries need to convince municipalities to pick up the $7.52 per household which was granted by the province until 1995.

With communities now responsible for funding welfare, child care, public housing, ambulance services, public health and long-term care, where do you think libraries will be placed on that long list of new responsibilities? While municipalities have always paid the greater costs of maintaining our public libraries, this abandonment by this government, coupled with your massive downloading of responsibilities, will effectively limit Thunder Bay's ability to sustain our current levels of library service.

While the minister recognizes the great value of libraries to the economic health of this province through their role in creating a well-educated and literate workforce, she talks about services that libraries might be able to provide, such as network access and electronic document delivery. The reality is that of the 1,200 provincial libraries, only 100 currently have Internet capabilities. When budgeting, should funds be used to buy one media workstation or 166 books? In conclusion, you cannot improve a system by cutting its funding, especially resource-dependent systems like libraries and the education system.

Decisions about library services are made by boards. Under Bill 109, it will no longer be necessary to have public and separate school representation on your library boards. As teacher-librarians come under attack through the outsourcing provisions of Bill 104 and through educational budget cuts, the communication links between schools and public libraries become frayed. There is no longer a seamless delivery service for literacy. The connection between the schools and the libraries is now very vital.

Two-way communication is logical between the library board and the school boards. Both systems are involved in learning. A formal connection through the library board ensures that this communication will occur. Without this guarantee, something could easily get lost in the shuffle of our busy and downsized systems. Coordination is not possible, and the focus is not maintained on the clients being served.

In conclusion, libraries are safe, quiet havens. For many children, younger adults, seniors and others living in poverty or in abusive environments, public libraries provide an educational safety net and an anchor in an otherwise stormy life.

The Deputy Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation stated that libraries have an important future and that the future of libraries is linked to the future of lifelong learning and the access to the world of information. In reality, downloading of the provincial share of library costs to municipalities makes a mockery of public access. When joined with cuts to school libraries due to the education funding cuts and cuts to literacy programs which use public library facilities, the knowledge-based economy shrinks as a two-class system is created in our province.

While larger cities may be able to find the funds to keep some of their libraries open, the picture is quite gloomy for many of our northern Ontario communities. Northern and rural libraries have always relied more heavily on provincial transfer payments. The elimination of this support will threaten the continuation of library services in some of our smaller communities in northern Ontario. Northern and rural libraries have always relied more heavily on provincial transfer payments. The elimination of this support will threaten the continuation of library services in some of our smaller communities in northern Ontario. The fact is that Bill 109 will mean the potential closure of library branches, elimination of professional staff positions, reduced material and book purchasing and even the loss of neighbourhood literacy and library programs for children.

Our libraries are vital to the economic and social wellbeing of this province. Our library helps to ensure and maintain a literate population. Lifelong learning cannot happen in a vacuum. Literacy is too important to be downloaded. The minds of children and all our citizens are too important to be wasted. We urge this committee to recommend to the government that this bill be scrapped in the name of literacy.

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Mr Gravelle: Thanks very much. You hit a lot of important points which were certainly, I think, accurate in your presentation. I want to just ask you quickly -- it seems strange to me that you've got a government that says they're going to take education and they'll fund it provincially, but they're going to throw libraries to the municipalities, yet the minister talks about them both being education networks -- don't you think that's odd? Any comments on the fact that libraries and the education system are obviously connected.

Ms Smith: Both of them are integral parts of the learning of the citizens of this province and they're destroying the two systems that are our future for the children and anyone else who wants to have that access.

Mr Gravelle: We'd be funded at the same level.

Ms Smith: They should be funded at the same level.

Mr Martin: You mentioned in your brief on two or three different occasions the issue of the stratification, creating classes of citizens. It's already been mentioned, actually, before this morning. Could you maybe expand on that a little bit and how this bill will contribute to that?

Ms Smith: The situation is that those who have the money or the means to get it will be able to access the library. Those children or young adults in the community who need to get further education are not going to be able to access it because there's no money for them to access it. Not every child at school owns a computer in their homes, so the schools are now trying to get computers. But with the cuts to educational funding, we don't even have the computers in our schools that we were promised, that we're supposed to have. Where are these children supposed to access this? Again it's the haves who have, and the have-nots will continue not to have, and that's not fair. Everyone has to be responsible for educating the minds of this province, and we have to start doing it that way.

Mr Martin: Equal access.

Ms Smith: Equal access.

Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York): Thank you very much for bringing your ideas forward to us today. Because of the pressure of time, obviously, I really want to just pinpoint one particular comment that you made and that I'd ask you to respond to.

When you talk on page 5 about supporting the position at the local communities, this is certainly consistent with the Crombie report, which says that municipalities should have full control over the library function. I wondered if you were aware of the fact that the province is conducting negotiations to make sure that communities don't suffer in any way from the exchange of the education tax coming off property tax and the assumption of those responsibilities that you mentioned.

It seems to me that is the place where the role and the importance of the library need to take place, so that the moneys that have been set aside to allow for restructuring to take place in a way that is revenue-neutral are designed to deal with the kind of issues you've raised. I just wondered if you were aware of that opportunity.

Ms Smith: My only concern is that you're downloading so much to our communities, we have to prioritize. Again, where are libraries going to go on the massive priority list that you've put to our communities? That scares me when you've taken away all the money. These citizens of Ontario are responsible for the minds of the citizens of this province and you can't keep downloading everything. There you go again; we're going to increase our taxes.

Mrs Munro: This is designed to be revenue-neutral?

The Chair: I want to thank you very much for coming forward and making a presentation to the committee this morning.

ONTARIO PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS' FEDERATION, THUNDER BAY DISTRICT

The Chair: Would Jim Green please come forward. Good morning, Mr Green. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Jim Green: I'm Jim Green. I'm district president of the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation. I represent 513 elementary teachers and occasional teachers. I'm going to take a little broader swipe at this than libraries. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present.

I want to make it very clear that I am not a taxpayer, and I'm annoyed that this government is characterizing me as one. I am a citizen. That's my main designation as far as this government should be concerned. Sure, as part of my duty as a citizen I pay taxes. As part of my rights as a citizen I expect the government to provide certain services.

In Canada we expect governments to institute policies which provide for the needs of all our citizens. Our country is concerned with the needs of people, not with grubbing money. Those who place money ahead of people hopefully have all moved to the United States. Canadians believe that it is our duty to help those who are less fortunate while Americans view the less fortunate as another opportunity to make money. This government is taking us in the American direction.

Governments in other countries have used the big lie to implement undemocratic reforms. If a government tells the big lie loudly enough, long enough and often enough, people accept the lie as the truth. The Conservative government in Ontario is using the deficit as the basis for the big lie. The government has used this technique to convince citizens they are simply taxpayers who want the deficit reduced. On this basis, the government has proclaimed that medical, social and educational services are broken and that drastic changes are required to fix the problems.

The government has said it so loud and long that not only do the people believe, now the government believes its own lies. The reality is that this government is reallocating Ontario's wealth and concentrating it in the hands of corporations and the wealthy. The government is removing services from the majority of the citizens of Ontario in order to give tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest among us.

A quick study of our neighbours to the south reveals that where money rules and people are not valued, chaos prevails. When the youth of the nation cannot afford a quality education, hopelessness arises. The youth rapidly become disillusioned and hostile to the establishment. Since society obviously does not value them, they value neither themselves nor society. That crime and violence are rampant in inner-city settings is not surprising.

By establishing a two-tiered education system and thus making needed education services and opportunities available only to those with money, we are condemning ourselves to a more violent, less productive society. Although business may save tax dollars now, the lack of educated, flexible workers will impair their future competitiveness. This fixation upon the tax dollar at the expense of people is dooming our youth to despair and our country to mediocrity.

In the obsession to save the corporations a buck, this government has forgotten its main constituents, the citizens. This government is systematically destroying the services we want, need and are willing to pay for. This government has put far too much emphasis on conveying wealth to corporations and far too little on retaining the Canadian way of life.

The introduction of Bill 109, ostensibly as another improvement to public services by putting authority, responsibility and accountability for providing and effectively managing local library services at the local level, is questionable. The Thunder Bay district of OPSTF questions the basis for the government's stated rationale for proposing such a drastic change in the delivery of library services and representation on library boards. We believe that this legislation is designed to transfer the entire responsibility for libraries to local communities and to shift the cost to those least able to pay.

Free access to public libraries is a major force in any democracy. Unfettered access to information is vital for all our citizens if we wish to remain educated and informed. Since librarians will disappear in Thunder Bay elementary schools this fall because of government cuts to education funding, free access to public libraries will be more important than ever.

Contrary to popular opinion, not all questions can be answered by accessing the Internet, and access to the Internet is not free. Many members of the public have no access to the Internet other than that provided by libraries.

Traditionally, nominees from the Lakehead Board of Education, the Lakehead District Roman Catholic Separate School Board and the public at large have made up the majority of the Thunder Bay library board. This legislation makes library boards absolutely responsible to municipal councils. Municipal councils, notorious for reacting to lobbying groups, are not the body to decide whether or not the library can circulate books that interest groups may wish removed for reasons not necessarily in the public interest.

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There is every expectation that traditionally myopic councillors will force libraries to impose every possible fee for the use of library resources. Although no fee can be charged to enter the library building or to use print materials, everything else will be a cost to the user. Since more and more materials are being presented only in forms other than print, users will pay access fees or be denied access to needed information. This will inhibit or prevent those who need the service most -- school children -- from accessing it.

This restructuring of library boards is not intended to improve access to information, but again is part of a scheme to transfer tax dollars to the rich. In combination with other legislation, more duties are being given to municipalities. Financial responsibilities in excess of their current ability to pay are being transferred to the municipalities. This will inevitably require huge local tax increases to maintain the services or, as the government seems to favour, eliminating or privatizing the services. The ability to allow private enterprise to make money from library users is ensconced in this legislation. The net saving to the provincial coffers will again be part of the wealth transferred to those who need it least.

Bill 109 fails to make adequate provision for employees of current library boards. The ruminations of a council-appointed board, which may consist solely of the chief administrative officer for the municipality, will decide the fate of employees and their collective agreements. This is not democratic. This is not acceptable.

There are no successor provisions for collective agreements negotiated with the current library boards contained within the legislation. There are no specific provisions for transferring employees from the current library boards to the new ones. There is no obligation in this legislation for the new library boards to accept the current collective agreements negotiated by the current boards and their employees. The legislation states quite clearly that the new board "may appoint and remove such employees as it considers necessary, and determine the terms of their employment, their remuneration and their duties." There is every opportunity for current employees to be treated in an arbitrary and capricious manner by the new boards. The legislation must be amended to include clauses creating a reasonable and just process for transferring employees and their collective agreements to the new boards.

I made four recommendations, and I've ignored the money: (1) that the current method of appointing a majority of library board members from the public at large and school board nominees be continued; (2) that Bill 109 be amended by the deletion of the clauses which allow fees to be charged for access to information and services; (3) that Bill 109 be amended to address human resources issues, including job protection for all employees of existing library boards, recognition of the legal status of current collective agreements, full recognition of accrued seniority, protection for existing employees from transfers beyond the boundaries of their current library boards and successor rights for current unions; (4) that Bill 109 be amended to remove all references to using outside services or personnel to operate the library or deliver library services. Thank you.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much, and well put. You make some really valuable and important points in your presentation. I was intrigued, because we haven't had this approach taken before, with your reference to the difference between a citizen and a taxpayer. Perhaps you could expand a little bit on that and help us understand more what you mean.

Mr Green: We've characterized the people of Ontario as taxpayers who want to get their taxes reduced. I believe I'm a citizen, not a taxpayer. I'm a citizen and I want services from my government, and I want to be demeaned by being referred to solely as a taxpayer. Sure, I don't like paying taxes any more than any other person. However, it's more efficient for government to provide many of the services. I want the services; I'll pay for them. It's far cheaper for me to pay taxes and get the services than to buy them from private industry.

Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): I just want to tell you, sir, that everything we're doing as a government is to try and create more employment and have more responsible, accountable government. From the teachers I've talked to since taking the job, in the hundreds now, one of the major problems they have with children in the classroom is when there are problems at home, and one of the most common is unemployment. Everything we're trying to do is to create more jobs.

But we had the lady who was speaking before about literacy. Under this bill anyone can get books at a library, guaranteed no service charge. As well, they can use information in any format on the premises. It's guaranteed without fees. As well, disabled persons can take any formatted information home without fees. On the other hand, libraries may wish to charge for music or videotapes, which have nothing to do with literacy. Where is the problem with literacy?

Mr Green: I guess I didn't read the act the same way you did because it said you could use collections. "Collections" generally refers to print materials.

Mr Young: No, no. You're wrong, sir. The bill guarantees the use of materials on the premises for anybody without fees. Some of the comments you made, like a "more violent, less productive society," I think are a little far-fetched.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much, Mr Green. I just wish you were more forthright. I want to actually take advantage of your professional position as well and ask you almost what I asked Ms Smith too in terms of the fact that we're talking about the libraries and the minister saying certain things in the bill which, if you read them, would say we're going to have better library service out of this, the connection between the libraries in our community and the education system. Clearly this bill is going to be offering less access. You talk about school librarians. Any comments in terms of that and the education system and libraries?

Mr Green: We're going to have libraries in schools with no one trained to run them, so obviously the access is going to be limited. When we run this new bill through, we're going to have less access to the public libraries, contrary to the previous speaker. The whole reduction, the whole package is to take the money out. It's going to end up, whatever you want to go at it, with fewer libraries, fewer buildings, so there will be less access. Students will suffer. Down the road it's literacy. It's quite clear that when people don't get a quality education, when they can't access information, they become a much more violent group.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Green, for coming forward and making your presentation today.

CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 2855

The Chair: Would Andrew Preston please come forward. Good morning. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Andrew Preston: Good morning. I'm Andrew Preston, the recording secretary of Local 2855. On behalf of our membership, I'd like to thank the committee for providing us with this opportunity to express our views and concerns on Bill 109.

Local 2855 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees represents all the non-management employees of the Thunder Bay office of the Northern Ontario Library Service. Under the Ontario Public Libraries Act, 1984, the mandate of the Northern Ontario Library Service is to deliver programs and services on behalf of the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation. One of its roles is to assist public library boards in northern Ontario by providing them with services and programs which reflect their needs. These include consultation, training and development services. Another key role is to work towards increasing cooperation and coordination among public library boards in order to promote the effective delivery of library services to the public of northern Ontario.

By the nature of our work we, the members of Local 2855, are in close contact with the public libraries of northern Ontario. We therefore have a very clear idea of the acute problems they currently face, especially the smaller libraries serving populations between several hundred and 5,000 people. The restructuring of municipal services currently under way will only intensify an already serious and deteriorating situation due to major funding cuts in the provincial base grant to public libraries. All public libraries, regardless of size, are suffering as a result of these cuts. While it is true that some small northern Ontario libraries are exceptionally well supported by their local community, in general the libraries in small communities rely more heavily on the provincial grant than do those in the major population centres of Ontario; consequently they're more seriously affected by these cuts.

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Our presentation will therefore focus mainly on the effects of Bill 109 on the smaller public libraries served by our organization. The thrust of our recommendations will be on changes to the bill which will concretely help the smaller libraries and help them to continue to provide effective library service to their communities.

This presentation will address the areas of funding to libraries, governance of library boards and access to library facilities and collections, in that order.

At this point I would like to accentuate the positive. There's good stuff in this bill and what we are particularly happy to see is that the legislation provides for the retention of library boards. We consider that very important. Secondly, it recognizes the importance of free access to information. Those are very important. I'll be speaking to those a bit later.

At this point, I'm going to jump ahead in my presentation. I'm going to take you to the very last page and I'm going to read out the recommendations. This presentation's pretty long so I thought I'd get to those right now and then speak to them afterwards.

It's our opinion -- I'm speaking for CUPE Local 2855 -- that Bill 109 can be improved by incorporating the following recommendations into the existing legislation:

First, the province, through the cultural partnerships branch of the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, should institute a grant specifically targeted for the acquisition of new materials for small public libraries serving a population of under 5,000. I consider that one of our most important recommendations.

Second, there should be specific provisions in the legislation requiring that the day-to-day operation of public libraries be carried out by paid and trained staff as a condition of receiving funding and support from the province and its agencies.

Third, the provisions defining the composition, size, rules of operation and qualifications for membership for library boards, as stipulated in the Public libraries Act, should be incorporated as they stand into the Local Control of Public Libraries Act.

Finally, all circulating library materials, regardless of format, should be available for borrowing free of charge by local residents in order to ensure free access to information and collections.

I'd like to talk about funding. Through the period of 1995-97 every public library in Ontario suffered an overall reduction of 40% in the amount of funding received through the provincial grant. Furthermore, the remaining 60% is to be phased out by 1998.

Under Bill 109 the province is withdrawing completely from funding to public libraries. Municipalities are to assume 100% of all library funding. Because of the additional financial responsibilities municipal councils will be assuming as a result of the restructuring of services, it is highly unlikely they will have the means to make up the resulting shortfall in funding. Indeed, they'll be hard-pressed to maintain the current level of their own share of funding to their local library, let alone increase it.

A more likely scenario is a further decrease in a library budget that has already suffered sharp cutbacks. Municipalities cannot be expected to increase their funding to libraries when they are unlikely to have enough financial resources to meet all the new demands placed upon them through the transfer of services formerly funded by the province, services for which they must now provide 100% of the funding from local revenues.

This loss of provincial funding to public libraries has serious implications in at least two areas: library staff and acquisition of new materials. Many libraries have already had to cut back considerably on their hours of operation and programs and have had to let staff go. This can only get worse as the province completely withdraws its funding to libraries and municipal councils reduce municipal funding at the same time.

In some of the smaller libraries we may well see good, trained staff laid off because there's no money available to pay their salaries. A return to a volunteer-run library might well be one result of this. This would be a major step backwards, setting public library development back some 25 to 30 years. We're also likely to see a much greater unevenness in the provision of library service from one community to another than at present.

In libraries, one of the first areas to be negatively affected by a budget cut is the acquisition of new materials. A major reduction in funding results in few or no new books, tapes, compact discs, videos and other materials being bought. Regular addition of new materials is essential to renewing and revitalizing the library's collection.

Therefore, we recommend that the province, through the cultural partnerships branch of the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, institute a grant specifically targeted for the acquisition of new materials for small public libraries serving a population of under 5,000. This would go a long way towards enabling the small libraries to provide newer materials to the populations served by them. Most of the budget of these libraries now goes toward operating costs for staff and buildings.

We also recommend that the legislation require that the day-to-day operation of public libraries be carried out by paid and trained staff as a condition of receiving funding and support from the province and its agencies. Now that even small libraries are moving into automated operations and the information highway, it's all the more crucial that they be run by trained, knowledgeable staff. The cultural partnerships branch should make available to libraries a grant specifically targeted towards ongoing library staff training in order to facilitate this.

This measure would also help ensure at least a minimum standard in the provision of library service throughout the province. Generally speaking, paid and properly trained library staff ensure a consistency and regularity of service which volunteers are not usually able to provide because they lack the requisite skills in running a library.

By the way, I'm not knocking volunteers. I'm one myself for about three different organizations. That's why I know the difference.

I'm going to try and cut this a little short, if I can.

Library boards: We were happy to see that the legislation provided for the retention of library boards. What dismayed us most is that there is no definition in the legislation of what constitutes a library board. This allows municipal councils a complete free hand in determining the composition, size and rules of operation for library boards and the qualifications for board membership. There's absolutely no requirement that citizens form a majority of members on the board.

We feel that the legislation is seriously flawed for that reason and that there needs to be a common province-wide model for a library board. There must be some definition, there must be some minimum size for board membership and a minimum number of board meetings per year and the legislation should and must emphasize the requirement for majority citizen membership on library boards, as is the case under the present Public Libraries Act.

We recommend therefore that the provisions defining the composition, size, rules of operation and qualifications for membership for library boards, as stipulated in the Public libraries Act, 1984, be incorporated as they stand into the Local Control of Public Libraries Act, 1997.

There's a very strong case to be made for a citizen library board. Its focus is the public library and its main interest -- I'd even say its raison d'être, if you want -- is in providing effective library service to its community. Municipal councils don't have the same focus. Their role consists of providing the full range of municipal government services to their community, and library service is only one of many such services competing for slender resources.

With the extra responsibilities that municipal councils now have to take on because of transfers from the provincial level, they're even less able now than before to give proper attention to the local public library. An effective, autonomous citizen library board helps relieve council of the burden of governance of the library.

It should be noted, by the way, that under the Public Libraries Act municipal councils already have the necessary tools to effectively manage local library services, this through the appointment of board members and line-by-line approval of library budgets.

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I think you'll find that our section on access to library facilities and collections reflects a great deal of what's already been said. I'll just read our recommendation once more. We recommend that all circulating library materials, regardless of format -- and that's the key right there, regardless of format -- be available for borrowing free of charge by local residents in order to ensure free access to information and collections. I would also throw in free access to reference and information services.

We're opposed to user fees for the borrowing of materials in any format for the following reasons. User fees are a barrier. They're a barrier to access to library materials by less well-off library users and those on fixed incomes, especially seniors. In fact, they act as a deterrent to the use of the library. Also, user fees generate very little revenue for the library, and they can't even hope to make up for the shortfall in revenue due to budget cuts and the loss of funding. They can't even begin to do that.

That, essentially, is it. I would like at this point to thank you once again for providing our local with the opportunity to express our concerns and outline our views on the proposed legislation.

The Chair: There is only about a minute remaining for questions, so that will have to go to Mr Gravelle.

Mr Gravelle: Thanks a lot, Mr Preston. There were obviously a lot of areas you touched on. The one thing that I think needs to be noted is that it's become very, very clear, no matter where we are, whether it's Thunder Bay, London, Toronto or Ottawa, in small municipalities, libraries below 5,000, there is clearly a need, and I hope the government members have been listening to these --

Mr Young: Of course.

Mr Gravelle: Indeed they have, and I'm hoping they'll be sensitive in terms of amendments down the line, because it's very clear that unless there is some recognition made of the needs of the small libraries, they're going to close. We're going to have closures of branches and closures of libraries in small communities, and I take it you would agree that unless that help is forthcoming, that's what will happen.

Mr Preston: Yes. That special grant for materials to small libraries under 5,000 is key to maintaining the viability of some of these libraries.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Preston, for coming in this morning to make your presentation.

UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA

The Chair: Would Moses Sheppard please come forward. Good morning, Mr Sheppard. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Moses Sheppard: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Moses Sheppard. I'm a staff representative with the Steelworkers. We represent members, as is indicated on the cover, in Red Lake, Schreiber, Thunder Bay, Marathon, Shebandowan and Manitouwadge. Many of those areas, as you see, are very small areas. They have small municipalities with not a lot of tax base.

I know very little about libraries and their functions. I know very little about the library act. I know very little about Bill 109. But I do know something about oppression when I see it coming at me, and it is from that perspective that I've come to talk to you.

I'm old enough to remember that when libraries were simply places where you went to borrow a book, and that's what was there, books. They had nice rows and rows of shelves. As I understand it, and I've been in libraries recently, they've changed a good deal since I was a boy. They now contain a lot more than books. There's a variety of information services, although the Thunder Bay library staff tell me that essentially libraries are predominantly books. The single largest element that they deal with is books.

Let me just be a little silly for a moment, because I have a sense that this is a waste of my time anyway. I have a sense that this is a waste of all of our goddamn time. But you see, I'm old enough and silly enough to believe, as a boy, when I read a book, that I could be at the top of the mountain with the explorer. I could be in the ocean with Cousteau. I could be present at the great events, the great discoveries of our time. That's what books did for me.

I'm told that your bill will rip, snatch away from the Thunder Bay library system about a quarter of a million dollars. That will result in a diminution of jobs and services, and it is the service that I've come to focus on, because the professional librarians and the people in the professional service will talk to you about their jobs and their collective agreements, and clearly as an industrial union we would want to maintain those and enhance them where it's possible.

But my understanding of your bill is it's designed to do three things: It will change the method of governing of public libraries; it will cause funding for libraries to become the responsibility of the municipality; and provincial grants to libraries will be phased out. Those three things, we think, will result in user fees becoming part of everyday life. We think these measures are regressive.

We live in an information age. We live in the information age. We are told that the currency of the future is information. If that's the case, why would you now want to restrict information access? Surely the children of this province, if indeed they are to compete on what you people think is the level playing field, ought to have access to the information of the present. Your proposals will deny them that.

User fees will ensure that a number of library users will be restricted in what they can access. The working poor, the unemployed, welfare recipients, those who are ill, those who are diseased will be hard-pressed to find extra dollars for user fees.

Many of them are already having trouble finding enough to eat, thanks to your policies. We are told in the city of Thunder Bay that a good number of children are going to school hungry. It has been my observation over the years, and if any of you are familiar with history, in particular Eastern Europe, you will know, that you cannot teach a hungry person anything. You're wasting your time. If we have hungry children in school, you might as well shut them down. You might as well burn them. Nothing is happening there.

Your proposals with respect to governance and your withdrawal of provincial funds will lead to a fractured, fragmented and ineffective library service. We will wind up with a czar of books, and I don't use the word "czar" frivolously. Or maybe a number of mini-czars of books across the province. We have gone through some of that in the life of this province.

The ability and the kind of library you will have will depend upon where you live. It will depend upon the number of rich people or the number of rich companies. The ability of the local community to raise funds will determine what level of library service is to be available.

Imagine a municipal government, any municipal government, sitting down, and there's a debate about potholes versus Proust, dog-catching competing with Dostoyevsky, sewers competing with Shakespeare. Who the hell do you think's going to win that debate at the local level? And if you drive around the city of Thunder Bay these days and look at potholes, I hope to hell they do a better jobs with libraries than they do with fixing those.

If you don't pay money into the system, you don't get to make the rules. The old axiom still prevails, "He who pays the piper gets to name the tune." You can sit in Toronto and you can pass all kinds of regulations; the guy who's paying the bill will tell you to get lost.

I spoke a little earlier about the whimsical part of the library. I know that some of you don't believe in whimsy. You ought to. You ought to believe that it's okay when you're a little person to have imaginary friends and to visit imaginary places. It's okay to have the imagination of a little person stimulated. Don't deprive the children of the sick, of the welfare recipients, of that treat.

I know that the Tories are big on saving money. You're big on delivering services at less cost. In my house, I remember my children on rainy afternoons and sunny afternoons lying on the floor with a book, completely impervious to anything else in, on or around them. You could almost hear the great sucking sound of information as it passed from the book to these children. Don't take that away from children, the ability to access all books, all information.

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A book can be carried around fairly easily. You don't need any auxiliary equipment. They're designed to last. You can read it anywhere, under any condition, and in the reading of it and the ingesting of the information, it doesn't disturb other people. That's something you might want to think about as well.

Books and the library information systems are essential food for intellectual development.

Scientific and technical developments are taking place rapidly in this society. No one individual can afford to be on top of all of that if they have to buy those books, and we believe it is the duty of the state to make those things available and to make them available without cost.

Just briefly, I want to talk to you about things that are injurious to books, things that harm books. There are book lice, there are scorpions, there are book worms, quite apart from people who read books. In my lifetime, there have been a number of enemies of books. Some of you will remember Peterborough about 10, 12 years ago. They wanted to ban the books of Margaret Laurence because they were obscene. Can you imagine? Margaret Laurence obscene? Salman Rushdie at the moment is wandering around the world, trying to escape the Muslim fundamentalists. And of course we had our old friend Adolf Hitler, the grandaddy of book burning.

We'd like now to amend that list. We'd like to put on that list Mike Harris Tories, Ontario, 1997.

We should also remember that Canada, in terms of literacy in the industrial world, doesn't perform very well. Making information services less available, more difficult to access, isn't going to do very much for literacy rates.

Finally, my industrial union has a recommended reading list for Mike Harris Tories. It's kind of like Dave Letterman's top 10 list: (10) How to Listen; (9) How to Win Friends and Influence People; (8) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; (7) To Kill a Mockingbird; (6) Inherit the Wind; (5) Foxfire -- I understand some of you want to ban Foxfire; shades of Peterborough. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

(4) Fiscal Crisis of the State; (3) Fair Taxation in a Changing World; (2) The Moral Basis of a Backward -- or a bankrupt -- Society; and finally, Robin Hood, and we've combined Robin Hood with the King James version of the Bible because in many ways they say the same things. They talk about taking from the rich and giving to the poor. The Bible supports that. And while some of you may not have heard of Robin Hood, we thought you might have at least heard of the Holy Bible. Thank you, Mr Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you very much. We have about a minute per caucus for questions.

Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): Thank you for your presentation. You make reference to the Holy Bible, sir. I would suggest that your language when you appear before hearings should be changed a wee bit.

Mr Sheppard: Is that a question or an editorial?

Mr Stewart: You can take it any way you want. I just feel that this is no place to be using the Lord's name in vain.

I guess my concern is that you make reference to people not having access to libraries any more. If you look at the Who Does What panel, which made some major proposals, it's suggesting that the dollars the taxpayer pays will be left in the municipality for them to deliver the services in the best and most efficient way possible.

The difference in downloading -- and needless to say we are doing that from the federal government to the provincial government to the municipalities -- is we're leaving the money with the municipalities to spend on the services we feel they can deliver best and most efficiently. Do you not have confidence in your local representatives, whom I assume you elected, to carry out this process of delivering the services locally?

Mr Sheppard: I've issued an invitation to you. When you finish your hearings today, drive around the city of Thunder Bay. Count the number of potholes that you fall into, and in competition for libraries versus filling up holes, what do you think will win? I was on a municipal government; I know who will win.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I don't, in a minute's time, have an opportunity to debate the statement that was just made, that the services being downloaded to the municipalities are ones they can best provide, nor the fact that dollars are being left in the municipalities when there's at least $1 billion at this point in extra costs being downloaded to municipalities.

What I'd like to ask you comes to the downloading. You made a couple of statements. One is the tradeoff between potholes and Proust, and the other is the fact that the state has a responsibility to ensure some equality of opportunity for its citizens, in this case specifically the opportunity to read and to access information. Would you feel the same thing is true as the government looks to download not only responsibility for libraries to the municipalities but also responsibility for long-term care, for social housing, for child care, for public health, for ambulance services? These are the kinds of choices that are going to face municipalities, not just the potholes versus Proust, but the choices between libraries and all of these other services. Do you think these are all areas in which the state is setting aside responsibility for equality of its citizens?

Mr Sheppard: Indeed, but I find something really perverse when we deal with little people, because libraries are essentially, as I understand them and as I view them and my usage of them, for little people. They go there to work on projects. It's our future we're tampering with. Maintenance and sustenance of old people is important, the age is important, all those issues are very important, but you're playing with your future.

This group here talks about a future that's technologically correct. They talk about doing it correctly. I don't know of anything that's more efficient in providing that service than a library. They're sucking and blowing at the same time. My friend will be annoyed, I know, but I think the Bible would approve of terms like "sucking and blowing." Of course, these items are important.

Mr Martin: Moses, you've done it again in your own inimitable and real way: made the connections. Sometimes in the business of doing government you've just got to call a spade a spade, and you've never been, in my experience, afraid to do that, so what you present here this morning I know comes from your very real experience of what's happening out there.

I just want to connect your presentation to one that happened earlier this morning on the issue of librarians, who work very hard to be the best that they can be in their profession. They study for a long time. They upgrade themselves in their profession. You represent workers. Here we have another class of workers. They are going to, a number of them, lose their jobs. Where do you think they'll be able to find other places to use that tremendous resource they have invested in over a number of years when the libraries disappear?

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Mr Sheppard: I'm not so sure they will be able to. If the province takes the view that these things aren't important, then I'm assuming it wouldn't be unreasonable for me to assume that industry will think they're not very important and that nobody else thinks they're very important. People look to their government to establish some rules. They look to their government for fairness and for decency and for equality, and when the government abandons those things, I fear those people will not find jobs. I don't know where they will use those skills they've acquired.

It is our view that all workers, and it doesn't much matter what they do, earn their living. They do good stuff. The key for any government is to determine where we want to be in the long term, what we want Ontarians to do, to know. Ontarian kids, where do we want them? How do we want them to fit into the universal scheme of things?

This government takes the view that it isn't very important, "To hell with it. Let's get some money into the hands of the big banks. That's important," and eventually we'll all be trickled on and maybe the librarian can get a job picking up paper wrappers. With Tories, that will be the association.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Sheppard, for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.

Mr Young: On a point of personal privilege, Mr Chairman: For the record, I think Mr Sheppard should know, and I'd like the audience to know today -- because I've been accused of this -- I do not and have never advocated banning books, and neither has any member of this government.

The Chair: Mr Young, there isn't a point of privilege there. I understand it's a point you want to make, but it's not a point of privilege and it's not to be made in committee.

THUNDER BAY PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Would Margaret MacLean please come forward. Good morning, Ms McLean. Welcome to the committee. I'd appreciate it if you'd both introduce yourselves at the beginning for the benefit of Hansard and committee members.

Ms Carole Aitken: I'm Carole Aitken, with the Thunder Bay Public Library.

Ms Margaret MacLean: Good morning. My name is Margaret MacLean. I am the chair of the Thunder Bay Public Library Board. I also represent Thunder Bay on the board of Ontario Library Service-North. I am the chair of the department of library and information studies, which is responsible for the library technician diploma course at Lakehead University.

First, I would like to express my appreciation and that of the board to this general government committee for your coming to Thunder Bay to consult with people from northwestern Ontario about Bill 109.

I'd like to give you some background. The Thunder Bay Public Library came into existence in 1970 with the amalgamation of the former cities of Port Arthur and Fort William. The first public libraries were established in Port Arthur and Fort William around 1910. We are fortunate enough to have a still active Carnegie library as our Brodie Resource Library, on the south side of Thunder Bay.

The province has seen many changes in the over-100-year history of Ontario's public libraries. Like all communities in Ontario, the Thunder Bay Public Library offers free access to information and leisure resources, delivers programs and services to the citizens of Thunder Bay, and cooperates in the province-wide public library network, in order to support lifelong learning, research and leisure activities. We are currently pursuing a strategic plan which will see our library evolve as an electronic gateway to a wealth of electronic information resources. This presentation will focus on three issues: fees, funding and governance.

Fees: The Thunder Bay Public Library board is currently struggling with the difficult task of policy analysis on the issue of charging fees for library services. In fact, on April 14, the board is holding an open meeting to discuss the issue of fees. The views in this section reflect my own personal point of view and not those of all members of the Thunder Bay Public Library board, as the board is still awaiting more public input to our decision.

The current Public Libraries Act protects free access to libraries, the materials they hold and the services they offer. Bill 109, if passed without amendment, could change all of that. Libraries would now be able to charge fees of any kind except for access to the building itself, the borrowing of print materials only and the borrowing of materials specifically for people with disabilities. The problem with this is that we presently live in an information age. For many people, the public library is the only source of information in electronic form. All Ontarians must have free and equitable access to the effective and efficient information infrastructure that is offered though our public libraries, where materials in all formats should be available at no charge.

Charging fees is an expensive, labour-intensive undertaking, especially when one considers fees which must be collected for a huge variety of transactions. The potential of revenue generation and the cost of collecting that potential revenue needs to be very seriously considered in the context of any fee structure. I believe what the government has suggested is seriously flawed and will not serve the public library community well. If we charge for the borrowing of non-print materials on a per-transaction basis, the creators of those materials would have every right to request that we share the revenue with them. This copyright issue has been ignored completely in this legislation and could prove detrimental to public libraries trying to implement it.

The face of the public library is ever-changing as we respond to new information technologies. New electronic resources and service possibilities are now available and will affect library service in a positive way. In fact, government information is increasingly only available through the Internet. It does not make sense for the government to allow libraries to charge for electronic information that used to be freely available in print form and is now electronic in order to save governments the costs of printing and disseminating this information.

Libraries are viewed by the community as the natural access point to electronic government information and a huge amount of information that is only available on or through the Internet. Will an urgent need to diversify our sources of revenue now force us to charge the public fees for access to the documents of their own federal and provincial governments on line because they are no longer available in print format?

The public library must be allowed to offer these services free to the whole community. Bill 109 must be amended to guarantee the preservation of free library services to all. The province must reaffirm its commitment to the principle of free access to public libraries for all materials, regardless of format. Libraries must remain a publicly supported institution. The possibility of charging fees does not present libraries with a new gold rush of revenue to replace what is being lost from government support. What will happen to those library users least able to pay for these fees? Should not their rights be guaranteed?

Funding: The Thunder Bay Public Library used to receive almost $400,000 in revenue from the province as a public library grant. In 1995-97, we lost 40%, and the rest will be phased out by 1998. User fees cannot begin to make up this shortfall. Given declining revenues, how do libraries continue to provide a high quality of public library service and meet the demands of new electronic and communication technologies without cuts to staff and hours of operation, both of which cut at the heart of public access to library resources?

The loss of the provincial per-household grant results in disproportionate damage to all public libraries and their communities. Three townships have transferred the provincial library grant to the Thunder Bay Public Library, which in turn provided library services to their residents. Effective 1998, legislation will abolish this grant entirely, thus threatening the existing partnership with these communities unless the province offers an alternative way of financing such cooperative services.

The withdrawal of provincial funding is a financial blow to all libraries, but especially to the small libraries in northwestern Ontario, which will most certainly be unable to continue their role in literacy, reading, information services and cultural enhancement. The isolation of all northwestern communities, including Thunder Bay, where information is not as readily accessible as in the Golden Horseshoe area, makes the loss of the public library grant even more serious. This leads to an inequitable service in the north as opposed to what is available in southern Ontario. Public libraries must remain a provincial priority.

Governance: Public library boards comprised of citizen volunteers with municipal representation have been an effective form of governance for public libraries in Ontario for many years. They have provided skilled management of our public libraries and dealt with complex issues like intellectual freedom and censorship in the best interests of the community. The participation of these volunteers -- and I stress that they are volunteers -- who possess multiple skills, enriches both the library and the community. The criteria in the Public Libraries Act, 1984, combined with a wise board recruitment program, has resulted in success for the Thunder Bay Public Library in bringing skilled library trustees to the table. When looking at the accomplishments of our board, one starts to get a sense of the deep level of commitment and involvement that each and every one gives to the work of the board.

Bill 109 will allow the municipality the responsibility for the governance of libraries where in the past municipal control was through three streams: appointment of the board, appointment of municipal councillors to the board and controls on the library budget. Autonomous library board governance must remain in order to give the users of public libraries some influence over their governance. Public library boards should be composed of a majority of citizen volunteers who are responsible for public library services.

Small public libraries in northwestern Ontario are certain that their facilities will cease to exist if the Public Libraries Act is withdrawn and governance rests with local municipalities, which would not be as supportive of the library community. Public library boards in their present form must be continued, as they are both cost-effective and save the time of city councillors who are already overburdened with other municipal concerns and issues.

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The legislation must address composition of the board, citizen majority and minimum number of members, qualification of board members, frequency of meetings, advertisement of vacancies, and the requirement that meetings be open to the public.

In conclusion, we believe in the stated intention of Bill 109, which is to protect a basic public library service. We offer our concerns as suggestions for amendments to Bill 109. The potential loss of public library boards, the possibility of user fees, and the cuts in funding contained in Bill 109 represent a loss to the individual citizen of the opportunity to participate in community life and of direct access to information.

The consequences of Bill 109 threaten the very principle of democracy based on an informed electorate. Libraries play an integral role in educating the public in a presently knowledge-based society where core services are rapidly becoming not print-based but electronic-based.

It is essential that the provincial government not separate itself from current public library legislation, regulation and funding. The provincial government must provide the leadership necessary to facilitate and encourage the improvement of free access to all forms of information and resource-sharing networks; the reduction of local and regional inequities by continuing the public library grants legislation that specifies citizen majority representation on library boards and minimum number of members, qualification of board members, frequency of meetings, advertisement of vacancies and requirement that meetings be open to the public; and the building of a provincial information infrastructure.

The Thunder Bay Public Library slogan is "Connecting People to Information." Let's not break the connection of people to libraries and of libraries to libraries.

The Thunder Bay Public Library board would like to once again thank the committee for the opportunity to present our views on the impending library legislation.

The Chair: Unfortunately, there's only about a minute remaining, so I'm going to have to go to a single caucus and that will be Mr Martin.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much for presenting this morning. I think it's important for you to know that we consider this piece of work really important, that we consider what's being proposed here as having some very significant consequences for you.

We've been on the road for four days now and the number of people who have showed up in support has been overwhelming. For presentations today in Thunder Bay we have a standing-room-only crowd. It was the same in Toronto on Monday and yesterday in Ottawa, all day long.

Ms MacLean: People are concerned about the libraries.

Mr Martin: You may note that this morning we even had, in the north particularly, people who have driven here from as far away as Bruce Mines because of their concern regarding this. You made the same points this morning, in a very eloquent and focused fashion, that we heard consistently over the last four days.

Ms MacLean: Thank you.

Mr Martin: The issue of governance is a problem; the issue of fees is a problem; the issue of the provincial presence is a problem to a lot of people with regard to this bill. In Thunder Bay particularly, and I'd like to maybe focus on that for a minute because there was some talk about it earlier --

The Chair: Mr Martin, I apologize for interrupting, but you only really had about a minute remaining and to focus on something for another minute would be impossible.

Mr Martin: Could I ask a quick question, then?

The Chair: Yes, really quickly, please, because we're already beyond the time.

Mr Martin: The tax base in Thunder Bay and the ability of the municipality to pick up the slack.

Ms MacLean: I don't believe revenue-neutral actually fits the bill because we will not be receiving the same funding we have received in the past, given that we will no longer be receiving the provincial public library grants. The funding will be different and we will have less money, revenue-neutral or not.

The Chair: Thank you for coming forward and making your presentation.

CANADIAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

The Chair: Would Karen Harrison please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Ms Karen Harrison: Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. Let me take this opportunity to welcome you to one of Thunder Bay's downtown areas. I'm Karen Harrison. I'm president of the Canadian Library Association and I'm also chief librarian of the Thunder Bay Public Library.

The Canadian Library Association, founded in 1946, is a national association dedicated to the provision of leadership in library and information services in Canada for the benefit of association members, the profession and Canadian society. Our membership comprises personal and institutional members from public, university, college, business and government libraries, as well as commercial members from the information industry. We number about 4,000 and we are not funded for our operations by any government agency except for government libraries that are members.

Canadian Library Association members are committed to open access to information for all Canadians and recognize the important role played by Ontario public libraries in the economic and educational life of this province. I personally appreciate that the committee has come to Thunder Bay to give me, as president of the Canadian Library Association, the opportunity to affirm two values which we hold in regard to fees and to governance of public libraries.

After discussion of the major legislative changes proposed in Ontario, the association's executive council examined its current position statement on public library boards and voted to reaffirm it:

"The Canadian Library Association, as a national body with two divisions (the Canadian Association of Public Libraries and the Canadian Library Trustees Association) devoted to the promotion of library service, maintains an advocacy position in affirming the role played by existing public library boards (municipal, regional and provincial) in developing effective public library service in Canada."

Council members noted that Ontario was a leader in developing library services in Canada and that the earliest model for free public library service has included governance by a citizen board. This practice was emulated by other Canadian provinces.

I would like to draw the committee's attention to this report, Sustaining a Civic Society: Voluntary Action in Ontario, received in my office from Premier Harris in early March of this year. The value which this report promotes and which the government's program promises to strengthen is "that the voluntary sector is essential to healthy communities as are the public and private sectors."

The presence of a citizen majority on public library boards enables public libraries to be seen by library users as independent from municipal government at the same time as they are being funded by municipal government. We are trusted to be able to collect and present information to the community in an unbiased way, focusing on both sides of municipal issues.

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In Thunder Bay, we had a major intellectual freedom issue in 1992-93. Thunder Bay city council trusted the Thunder Bay Public Library board to re-examine the title in question and its materials selection policy, and explicitly chose not to enter into the discussion of what materials were appropriate for public access in the library and what materials were not. Intellectual freedom is best protected when it is at arm's length from direct political pressure. It is for this very reason that the province itself has such bodies as the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Film Review Board.

Under the proposed changes to the act, library boards as we know them could be disbanded and a committee of council or any municipal administrator could act as the public library board. With no criteria for appointment or frequency of meetings, pro forma boards become possible. Currently, the municipal council has enormous influence over the makeup of the public library board with complete control over the appointment of citizen volunteers and the potential for one less than a majority being members of council.

Public library boards represent the community interest, that is, the users of public library services in the management of the library, and as such actually give the public more control over the library operation and a higher degree of responsiveness to public needs than if extremely busy members of council constituted a majority of the board. Public library trustees are library advocates. The voluntary action report recognizes, "Voluntary action includes advocacy as an essential part of democracy." The advocacy of public library trustees has been important in convincing municipal councillors and indeed the provincial government of the importance of public libraries in the economic, cultural and recreational health of our communities.

Because the Canadian Library Association has a long history of commitment to universal access to information, the executive council also voted to continue to support free public library service: "CLA opposes user fees for library services as a detriment to universal and equitable access to information."

The role of the public library as information safety net for both traditional library materials and now for access to a wealth of electronic information, including the Internet, is jeopardized by user fees. Many Canadians have no other source for print and non-print items. The province is actively involved in encouraging and in enabling our public libraries to move into a digital environment. Five years from now, our libraries will very likely present a substantially different menu of services to our users, as our knowledge society rapidly moves from a print-based one to an electronic-based one. To establish a fee structure which could restrict public access to information available in electronic format, including government information which is not available elsewhere, is undemocratic.

I would like to further comment that there is no direction in the legislation that if fees were charged, those who could not afford to pay these fees would be guaranteed access to library services and not just access to the building and the collection.

With the huge loss of the provincial operating grant and encouragement from municipalities which cannot make up the shortfall, the pressure, both internal and external, to diversify our incomes through fees, sponsorships, fund-raising and other entrepreneurial undertakings is enormous. However, the government's proposal to end its operating grants to libraries, even though making it possible to diversify income sources, could very well lead to the closure of some libraries in smaller communities where they have already made substantial cuts to their operating budgets and where the ability to earn income through fees, fund-raising and sponsorships is minimal.

The Who Does What panel has acknowledged that Ontario's public libraries are "among the best in the world." In her speech to the Ontario Library Association in February of this year, the Honourable Marilyn Mushinski said, "There is no doubt that our library system is one of Ontario's greatest cultural and economic assets."

Through initiatives like Network 2000, the government has indicated ongoing support for the development of complex library networks appropriate to the future development of our knowledge-based society. The library community certainly appreciates this recognition and the ongoing support, especially for network development.

I urge the government of Ontario to preserve the role of the public library board with a citizen volunteer majority, as we know it, and also to guarantee equity of access to our networks and information resources for all Ontario citizens.

I would like to thank the government and the general government committee for coming to Thunder Bay and giving me and others in northern Ontario the opportunity of addressing you in person on these issues which are so important to all our communities and our library users.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much, Ms Harrison, for a terrific brief. You're wearing two hats, so I'm going to ask you a question based on your Thunder Bay library hat.

The point has been made by the government that the reason they're changing the citizen majority board is that there's a need for flexibility, a need to allow municipalities more control. We've heard from a variety of groups who have told us great administrative savings have been achieved under the government's present model and that the relationship works well. It might be useful to have you tell us how the budget is controlled and whether there can be administrative savings working with council and the library boards. How do they work together? What guarantees are there that the libraries won't go over budget? -- things like that.

Ms Harrison: What happens in Thunder Bay is pretty typical of what happens in medium and large municipalities throughout the province, and that is that in the spring of the year usually, towards the end of May or the end of June, we're given budget guidelines by the city managers and we start to use these guidelines in the creation of our budget. If the library wants to exceed the budget guidelines, they need to go before council and argue their position.

The library board has no authority to borrow money. If boards want to borrow money for capital construction they'd have to, through the municipal process, debenture or get capital money. We have no authority to run a deficit budget. Certainly for Thunder Bay, if the library were to go into a deficit situation I don't think the Royal Bank would support us for very long.

We participate in the municipal audit. The municipality chooses our auditor, although we pay the auditor, and we're subject to the same kinds of audit guidelines that the municipality is. In addition, the municipality can require us to conform to municipal policies. In the case of Thunder Bay, the municipal purchasing policy is a requirement for the way we go about purchasing our goods and services in the community.

In addition, the board receives quarterly financial reports and a monthly financial statement of library operation which they examine at their board meeting. This is one of the reasons 10 board meetings a year is important, so the board is meeting regularly to eyeball the financial situation of the library. That's another control on library administration.

Mr Martin: It's interesting to get a Canadian perspective on this -- you represent, as you say here, the Canadian Library Association -- to hear you repeat some of the main items that have been highlighted for the last four days across the province: the issues of governance, of provincial funding, of fees.

You make a very valuable point in juxtaposing the position of this government on volunteers and voluntary action and the paper that was put out versus what they're going to do now re the question of how we run and look after and control our libraries. There is the perception being put out in many ways, not the least by questioning from the government members on this committee, that library boards are not responsible and accountable. Across the country, have there been a lot of cases where library boards have not been responsible or accountable? Is that an epidemic of some sort? Is there a problem there we're addressing here?

Ms Harrison: I've been a librarian for a very long time, and I have a long memory. My only experience with this was that in the very late 1970s the Niagara regional library system board went bankrupt. In fact, the board made the decision that it would pay off its debts, so the system reduced its library service to an absolute minimum for about a three-year period while it got itself out of the debt situation and paid off its creditors, and then amalgamated with what ultimately has become Southern Ontario Library Service.

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Mr Flaherty: Thank you, Ms Harrison, for being here this morning. I know you've thought a lot and written a lot about library issues. I've read some of the articles you've written over the years, and they've been helpful to me in understanding or trying to understand some of the issues.

When Bill 26 was in the formative stages, the concern in the library community, as I understand it from reading the material, was that (a) Crombie had recommended abolishing mandatory library boards in the province and (b) some people were recommending abolition of free circulation of books. This bill does neither of those. It maintains the library board structure and it maintains the free circulation of books.

Then today I hear comments about small libraries in northern Ontario somehow being in a worse position than small libraries elsewhere in the province, so I look at the statistics and say, "I guess I'll see that local support for small libraries in northern Ontario is low." The provincial average, we know, is 15% funding from the provincial government, so 85% funding from local communities on average. But when I look at northern Ontario, I see Atikokan at 93% local support, in Dorion township 89%, Cobalt and Timiskaming 90%, Ignace 93%, Geraldton 93%, Manitouwadge 90%, Marathon 92% -- these are all small communities under 5,000 -- Rainy River 91%, Red Lake 93% and so on. Then I see in Thunder Bay 91%.

Is there not strong local support for the libraries here that you would expect to continue through local pressure by the people who pay the rates, supported by their local councils? If the councils don't continue to support what the people want, won't you throw them out?

Ms Harrison: Actually, I agree with you. There is excellent support for public libraries throughout the larger communities in northern Ontario. There is serious concern for some of those municipalities of a population of less than, say, 2,000 or 3,000, where the distance is so great that you can't just pop into town where there is a library. It's not like southern Ontario where there's another community five or 10 miles down the road where there's a good library.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs Julia Munro): Thank you very much, Ms Harrison. We've run out of time. We appreciate your coming here today and bringing your ideas forward to the committee.

Ms Harrison: I'd like to invite members of the committee, if they're interested, during their noon break; we have two libraries in our downtown, either of which the committee might be interested in seeing, one of which is within walking distance. The other one, on the other side of town, is a rather lovely Carnegie library. If any members of the committee are interested in having a library field trip in Thunder Bay, I'd be able to arrange it. Even though we are hard-pressed financially, we could probably scrape up a sandwich and a bottle of pop for members of the committee if they chose to do this.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate your invitation.

RED ROCK PUBLIC LIBRARY
FRIENDS OF THE RED ROCK PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Vice-Chair: I call on Laurie Wright from the Red Rock Public Library. Good morning, Ms Wright, and welcome to the standing committee.

Ms Laurie Wright: I'm Laurie Wright, Ontario Library Trustees Association councillor for northwestern Ontario, and today I am speaking as the trustee with the Red Rock Public Library board.

Ms Delaine Todesco: I'm Delaine Todesco. Laurie has offered to share her time slot, since we have very short presentations compared to what a lot have been. I'm with Friends of the Red Rock Public Library. I'm also very nervous.

Ms Wright: On behalf of the Red Rock Public Library board, I would like to express our appreciation for this opportunity to outline our concerns about the proposed changes to the Public Libraries Act. We do indeed have several concerns about Bill 109.

We are grateful that library boards have been retained in Bill 109. They are one of the few areas of government where average citizens can have direct input and influence. Continuing this type of governance allows trustees to concentrate on providing the best service possible to the residents of their communities, service that is responsive to the needs and wishes of the patrons.

We're greatly concerned, however, that Bill 109 has no requirement that citizens must constitute a majority of the members on the library board. Removal of this requirement allows municipal councils to appoint members of council or municipal employees to the library board to the exclusion of the average citizen.

The provincial government states that because the municipality provides most of the funding for libraries, it should also have sole responsibility for them. I contend, however, that it is the citizens of the community who, through their taxes, provide the money to operate libraries and that they should be guaranteed a majority number of members on the library boards. Council still has control of the budget and board appointments, but municipal councillors and/or employees should only be allowed one member less than the majority. Library board members have helped to create an excellent provincial library system. We urge the provincial government to further acknowledge this contribution by including majority citizen representation on library boards in Bill 109.

Another area of great concern is funding. Libraries are already trying to cope with financial stress brought about by the reduction of the operating grant and the loss of special project grants. The withdrawal of provincial funding will continue to have detrimental effects on public libraries. Our small-town public library, for example, is not able to comply with the threefold purpose as stated in Bill 109. It is increasingly difficult to successfully provide for our patrons' information needs. We cannot afford to be open the number of hours requested by the patrons and funds are not available to maintain a complete, up-to-date collection of materials.

The lack of special grants on the provincial level and of capital funding on the municipal level makes it almost impossible to provide "access to local, provincial and global information through a province-wide library network." The municipality, also a victim of provincial cutbacks, is not able to divert additional funds to the library's budget.

Municipal councils are concerned about dollars and cents, balances and bottom lines. They need to know that they have enough funding available to keep their community functioning smoothly and efficiently. In many cases, the public library is deemed a non-essential service, with funding being made available for its operation only after other important areas of the municipality have received adequate finances.

The proposed legislation does not prohibit public libraries from charging user fees. Members of the Red Rock Public Library board are concerned about several aspects of this issue. We see no positive consequences connected with user fees, only negative ones.

Patrons will be denied access to library resources if they cannot afford to pay the user fee. It is not always possible to sit in the library until one has found all the information one is seeking. The introduction of fees will result in a drop in library usage. This has been proven numerous times in other jurisdictions where user fees have been introduced. The amount of revenue generated by user fees will not provide sufficient funds to allow the library to function at its current level. The lack of provincial guidelines for user fees will result in inequalities throughout the provincial library system. If libraries are to be allowed to charge user fees, standardized guidelines for rates should be developed and included in Bill 109 prior to its passing.

With negative consequences such as these, our library stands to lose far more than it would gain from the introduction of user fees.

As I've already mentioned, the Ontario public library system offers excellent service to the residents of the province. Well-trained librarians and hardworking volunteer library board members have dedicated countless hours to the development and enhancement of the policies and services offered in our libraries. We depend on each other, and we endeavour to offer the same service and access to information, regardless of where we are located in the province. In this respect, we are similar to schools. We encourage the government to recognize the province-wide nature of the library system by establishing basic standards of library service and incorporating them into Bill 109 before it becomes law.

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Such standards should include basic requirements for trained library staff. Since librarians' jobs are much more complex than just lending out books, each library should be required to employ a specified minimum number of trained librarians. By "trained librarians," I mean those who have been educated in the library field, whether it's through university programs or through the Excel program that is administered by the Ontario Library Service.

In smaller communities, it is not always possible for us to hire assistants who have been trained in the library field. In such cases, a requirement would be that a new employee would undergo the training in the Excel courses. Volunteers can form an integral part of a library's staff, but Bill 109 should require that a trained librarian be on duty each time the library is opened.

In conclusion, we recommend that the following five changes be made to Bill 109 prior to its passing:

That a majority citizen representation on library boards be included;

That the basic standards of library service be established and incorporated into the act;

That libraries be required to employ a minimum number of trained librarians; and

That provincial operating grants not be withdrawn and that standardized guidelines for user fee rates be included.

We thank you again for listening to our concerns about Bill 109 and for taking our recommendations into consideration.

Ms Todesco: As a Friend of the Red Rock Public Library, I am a member of a community-based support group independent of the library board and library staff. Our group promotes and supports improved library service to ensure that the library is able to meet research, informational and recreational needs, and aids in providing extra funds for special projects outside the regular operating budget.

Our library's mission is to provide equitable access to information, library services and other resources to all members of our community.

Having read the fact sheet, Local Control of Public Libraries Act, 1997, issued by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, it would seem that equitable access will have to be removed from our mission statement if Bill 109 is passed.

By limiting free access to print material only, the government is encouraging a two-tiered library service. The free borrowing of all circulating library holdings as the present Public Libraries Act legislates is the tradition that should be preserved and safeguarded. Rates and fees for other services are being adequately determined at a local level according to local priorities at present.

In addressing the funding issue, it's my understanding that Ontarians support libraries with their tax dollars at both the provincial and municipal levels. With the provincial withdrawal of operating grants, funding responsibilities for libraries will be devolved to our local government. Presumably this won't be a problem since funding of education is to be removed from municipalities, thus giving local authorities greater financial flexibility to fund our libraries.

I would like to know how this is going to happen since many of us are wondering how municipalities are going to meet their monetary responsibilities outlined in the Minister of Community and Social Services' announcement: welfare funding to be shared 50-50 between province and municipality; management and funding of social housing to be transferred to the municipality; full funding of public health programs to the municipality; financing of land ambulance services to the municipality; and I would be remiss in not mentioning the 50% funding provision by the municipality for long-term-care services.

What's going to happen to our public libraries? Bill 109 states there will be no requirement that citizens must constitute a majority of the members of library boards. Take away majority citizen representation and you take away the community autonomy of the library. Let the people who really care, at no cost to the taxpayer, continue to oversee the operation of our libraries. Libraries are part of a healthy, supportive community environment. They are easily accessible to our children, our youth, our middle-aged and our elderly.

Libraries are not made; they grow. Free access to all information should be preserved and safeguarded. If user fees are to be imposed, standardized guidelines should definitely be developed.

Governments have a responsibility to ensure that library services are not threatened because of a lack of financial support. The diversity and specialization of library interests today commands majority citizen representation on its boards to best respond to the needs and wishes of the patrons. Libraries must remain a centre for lifelong learning.

Respectfully submitted.

Before you ask if there are any questions, could I make a comment?

The Chair: Sure. It's your time.

Ms Todesco: When you're talking about the percentage of funding from the municipality for libraries right now, one of the things that I think gets missed is, if our library is funded 90% by our municipality, that means the other 10% is provincial funding through the grants. If you take that away from some of the libraries, that obviously represents loss of jobs, cutback in hours. Our library has already suffered cutbacks. That 10% from the province might be a drop in the bucket to you, but to us it has a big meaning and I get the sense that's something that's being missed here. That 10% that you're funding is important to us. That's all.

The Chair: We only have about two minutes remaining, so in that rotation it's the government caucus.

Mr Young: I do want to point out that this exercise of Who Does What is meant to be -- and it's still in mid-process -- a revenue-neutral process; that is, we take back $5.4 billion in education funding and we give the municipalities the same amount. That's what we're struggling with. It's not an easy process, but that's what it's about. So the assumption that your funding will be cut I think is an inaccurate one.

We heard yesterday at a library in Ottawa that the former government, the NDP, had been cutting library programs for years, back from 1990 and on. So they made some difficult decisions as well.

We've heard some exciting things about innovations. For instance, in Halton where I live, they have the Halinet network, which is a network for business. Business pays for it, it's tax-deductible for them, and they get information. The opportunity exists to take that revenue and buy more books, to put more books into children's hands. The issue isn't, can children get materials at the library? There's no change in the bill to this; we guarantee it. The issue is, what can children take home?

In some of the other places, for instance in Cambridge, they've combined with a school and they're putting a public library in a school. In Windsor they have a woodcarvers' museum which brings in revenue, they have an Internet café which brings in revenue, and they partner with the police service and board of ed. So if you can get revenues from other sources with partnerships, you might actually be able to put more books in children's hands, or more materials, more information for them to take home. Can you see that possibility?

Ms Todesco: Yes, I can, but you also have to see that coming from a small community of about 1,200 people, where the sole industry has been quite strapped, there are only so many pockets that you can reach out to. Every organization is doing that.

Mr Young: But you see, this legislation would free you to partner with other libraries, with other organizations on a much broader base and find your own solutions.

Ms Todesco: And if other libraries are feeling the same problems?

Ms Wright: We've been doing this for years, if you'll excuse my interruption. We have been sharing with people in the northwest, we have been sharing provincially, and we are at the point where we have nothing left that we can share because we are being cut back.

We have a paper mill industry town. Two weeks ago the paper mill was in such bad straits the whole thing was shut down. We cannot partner with them. They cannot function themselves, they're having trouble. We cannot expect our municipality to give us the percentage, the $3,000 we're going to lose next year that we get in our provincial grant, because our municipality is getting $140,000 or something less from the province as it is.

The Chair: Thank you, ladies, for coming forward and making a presentation to the committee.

Is Michael Ballantyne here yet? I don't think he is.

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FRIENDS OF THE THUNDER BAY PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Would Janine Chiasson please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Ms Janine Chiasson: My name is Janine Chiasson. I'm here representing the Friends of the Thunder Bay Public Library. The Friends of the Thunder Bay Public Library is pleased to have this opportunity to speak before the standing committee regarding the proposed changes in Bill 109.

By now, you're probably familiar with the role of Friends groups, but I'll tell you what we do particularly and then I'll explain our particular concerns with the proposed legislative changes that will affect our library here in Thunder Bay.

The Friends of the Thunder Bay Public Library is a non-profit association of public-service-minded volunteers dedicated to promoting and supporting library service in Thunder Bay. The stated goals of the Friends are to: promote knowledge of and interest in the functions, services and needs of the library; foster public support for the library and its development; help raise funds to purchase equipment and materials not available through the regular library budget; provide volunteer assistance at special program and community events; take part in lobbying and advocacy activities, as demonstrated by my appearance; and deliver materials to housebound library patrons.

In practice, these goals have seen the Friends take part in advocacy campaigns during municipal elections to ensure that prospective councillors are supportive of library goals and objectives. Most recently we did this in conjunction with the library's plan to open a new branch in an underserviced area of the city.

The successful opening of the new branch in our County Park neighbourhood was in large part due to a significant fund-raising effort on the part of the Friends, who raised $125,000 in their Bucks for Books campaign. This campaign saw the Friends doing things: conducting fashion shows, hosting bridge parties and country dances. We worked bingos. We sold raffle tickets, mugs, calendars and book bags. We canvassed door to door and we did dozens of other fund-raising activities that were often paired with the goal of raising public awareness about the forthcoming branch and the Thunder Bay library in general.

In short, the Friends were an integral part of a huge undertaking by the library, particularly in light of current fiscal restraints. It is an accomplishment that the Friends are particularly proud of and one that we are not certain could have been conducted in the new climate that proposed legislation has the possibility of creating.

Because the Friends are an association of citizens, I believe that we have an affinity with the library board as it currently exists, that is, made up largely of public-service-minded volunteers, such as ourselves. This citizen majority ensures that the board represents the true owners of the library: the taxpaying citizens of Thunder Bay. I realize that most of our council is taxpaying, but they're also elected, that being the difference.

Bill 109 could change what the Friends perceive as a good working arrangement for all concerned, that is, the library, the city, the board and of course in our case the Friends. By removing the necessity of a citizen majority, by removing the need for a certain number of board members and by removing the requirements for a specific number of meetings per year, the proposed legislation will, we believe, remove the library board's connection to its seat of authority.

If the board were comprised of a few members of council, or even of city employees, then where does accountability lie? In a worst-case scenario, the library could become run as merely another department of the city, and with the huge new responsibilities that are being downloaded upon municipalities, who will have the expertise or the time to concern themselves with the everyday workings of the library? Certainly not a council faced with the onerous task of incorporating dozens more services into its realm of responsibility.

What about issues of intellectual freedom? How will elected representatives deal with the tricky issue of censorship? Will our library become subject to the ethical or moral stance of a council afraid to offend, afraid to uphold our citizens' right to intellectual freedom, even if it means deciding against a vocal and angry group?

With the current legislation in place, the board is able to operate at arm's length from council and hence inspires a certain trust on the part of Friends. As a group, we value our relationship with a citizens' board that we believe responds and reacts to our proposals and plans with interest and with flexibility. We are greatly concerned that whatever might replace the existing board will fall far short of the amenable relationship we currently have.

We are also of the belief that many persons who currently donate their time and efforts to the Friends group will not be willing to do so if they perceive the library to be just one more department of the city, competing with sewers, policing and playgrounds for both funds and attention. Currently, the library enjoys a degree of autonomy and a sense of a separate entity which, considering its specialized and very important role, we think is appropriate.

Friends is also gravely concerned with the abolition of provincial funding to public libraries. The library has already, over the past two years, received a 40% reduction in the money it receives from the province, which has not been made up by the municipality.

The removal of the remaining funds will deal a severe blow to a library already struggling to maintain quality and service. To suggest that the municipality will make up the difference in funding does not take into account their increasingly difficult fiscal picture, which is certain to become more strained as the province begins to devolve many more services into the hands of municipalities. Even if the city wanted to match the disappearing provincial funding, they are sure to have difficulty doing so.

Then there is the question of user fees and those who claim that these will be the magic money pot that will somehow balance the equation. This is simply not the case. For every introduction of fees there will be a proportionate number of library users who will simply cease to borrow or make use of certain library services. Despite this, there will he some revenue generated by user fees, but it can scarcely be hoped it will make up for the over $250,000 that remains to be lost to the library budget from cuts to provincial funding.

Which brings us to the thorny issue of whether user fees should exist at all. The Friends are currently in the position of being an advocacy and fund-raising group that works to augment a library budget that provides services free to all. With this proposed legislation this will no longer be the case. Will we be fund-raising to improve services merely for those who can afford them? Perhaps certain services and materials will no longer be within the fiscal reach of all the Friends members. Will they want to remain Friends of a library to which they donate their time but which they feel excluded from because their donation is not hard currency?

While not affecting the Friends directly, it is of great concern that libraries across the province will become uneven in the level of service they are able to provide. Many small libraries will, without provincial funding, be forced to close. As concerned citizens, the Friends argue strenuously against any legislation that we feel certain will create pockets in this province where library service will be greatly diminished or even non-existent. It should be the right of all citizens in this province to have access to library service, regardless of where they live.

We must not forget that in northwestern Ontario the struggle to maintain library service in small communities is even more arduous than in commensurate communities in southern Ontario. It costs more for basic overhead, for travel, for interlibrary loans, for shipping, for telephone. You name it, it costs more. It seems that the province's decision to abrogate funding to libraries will disproportionately affect the citizens of northwestern Ontario, and the Friends believe this is wrong.

In conclusion, let me reiterate the position of the Friends in the form of a few recommendations.

First, we see no need to change the existing Public Libraries Act with respect to the composition, qualifications, duties, size and reporting procedures of the board and recommend that the legislation of 1984 remain the same.

Second, we strongly believe that the end to provincial operating grants from the province will lead to a severe reduction in funding of libraries, which have already absorbed cuts from the province of 40% and cuts in municipal funding as well. The Friends recommend that the province continue to fund libraries to maintain an effective network of libraries in the province where users can have full access to library materials for information, for research, for lifelong learning and for leisure activities.

The Thunder Bay Public Library serves an important role in the community. It is not simply a place where people come to borrow books. People come to the library to read newspapers and magazines, to visit the reference desk, to attend seminars, to participate in children's activities, to use the Internet, to study, to read, to borrow audiovisual materials and simply to pass an hour or two in a welcoming, stimulating and blessedly free environment. Where else in the city can a citizen go to achieve any or all of these goals? Nowhere; the library is it.

The Friends love libraries, but libraries cannot survive on love. The Friends hope their concerns will not fall upon deaf ears and that the province will reconsider some of the proposed changes to the Public Libraries Act.

Once again, I would like to thank you on behalf of the Friends for this opportunity to speak to the standing committee.

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The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr Martin had to go out, so that leaves us about two minutes per caucus for questions, starting with the government caucus.

Mr Stewart: You have been very involved, I assume, with Friends for a long time.

Ms Chiasson: Yes.

Mr Stewart: I must commend you for the money you've raised and so on and so forth. But I don't understand -- are you as a volunteer going to quit if this legislation goes through?

Ms Chiasson: Personally, I will not quit, but I feel strongly that there are members of our Friends group who might quit.

Mr Stewart: Why? Are you suggesting that some of them aren't totally committed?

Ms Chiasson: No, but --

Mr Stewart: Why would they do that, then?

Ms Chiasson: I think they would do that because, as I've explained in my presentation, the Friends currently enjoy a certain relationship with the board and with the library, and if the library became just another department of the city, like parks and recreation or transportation, people would lose that connection they feel that the library somehow is a special place. That's why it has a Friends group. I don't know of a Friends group that raises money to fix potholes, do you?

Mr Stewart: No, but there are all kinds of groups, whether in long-term care, senior citizen homes, that are still part of it even though they may be part of the municipality. That really concerns me, that all of a sudden everybody's thinking that if this goes through, all the volunteers who have been associated are going to be gone.

I want to make one comment. When you talked about user fees -- I'm going to just read something. "In April 1995, the Thunder Bay Public Library unveiled a free-base customized information retrieval research service called `Bizfacts.' Bizfacts is used for the resources of the library, including an electronic resource" etc. It appears from this article that it has been very successful.

Ms Chiasson: No. It folded a year ago.

Mr Stewart: Okay. That was my concern. Why did it fold?

Ms Chiasson: Because there wasn't enough interest in using it, obviously. It was well advertised.

Mr Stewart: Are those businesses that might have been using it still using your service during this time? What I'm saying is that user fees were introduced before we came to power; there were new, innovative ways, and I compliment you for that.

Ms Chiasson: I agree with you. As far as the notion of user fees goes, speaking on behalf of Friends, there's probably some division with regard to that. I think the open house the library's going to host on April 14 will be a proper forum for citizens to come forward and say, "Yes, we do," or, "No, we don't," or, "This is how we want to see user fees implemented."

As a general rule, I think it would be fair to say that some of our Friends are on fixed incomes. I think it now costs 50 cents to take out a movie, and that's probably to cover the cost of having to rewind it, or who knows what. If they had to be charged a fee for that or a fee for a CD, they wouldn't take them out.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was terrific. We have heard from several other Friends groups in other cities. This is the last day of our hearings; we're hearing from a lot of groups and there are some clear things that need to get out there. This is ultimately about the fact that the province is going to take away the provincial funding, which is going to have a profound effect on a lot of small communities. The message coming out very loud and clear is, "Yes, Thunder Bay will be able to survive, but some communities may not be able to survive without that transfer payment." There's a tendency to trivialize that percentage --

Ms Chiasson: There is, and I think there's a tendency even to trivialize it in Thunder Bay. We're going to lose $250,000 more on top of whatever has been lost.

Mr Gravelle: Precisely. It's a lot of money.

Ms Chiasson: I've been sitting in the back, listening to Jim Flaherty, Derwyn Shea, Terence Young and Mr Stewart say things like, "But the municipality is going to have greater financial flexibility." They've had that flexibility, and did they make up the money that was already lost? No, they did not. Are they going to make up this money that's lost? No, they're not.

Mr Young: That's not what it's about.

Ms Chiasson: Yes, that is what it is. That's exactly what you're saying.

Interjections.

Ms Chiasson: Say it again, then, so I understand you better.

The Chair: Mr Young, come to order. Mr Gravelle, you still have about 45 seconds.

Mr Gravelle: I want to leave it to you to finish anyway you want. We have 40 seconds left in this segment. Whatever you want to say to them, go ahead and say it.

Ms Chiasson: I'd like to say that in Thunder Bay, in this municipality, the council -- and we lobby them to make sure that the people we vote for and that our friends vote for are supportive of libraries, but when they're faced with the kinds of decisions they're going to be faced with, they're not going to give us another quarter of a million dollars. You argue they're going to have more money. Well, I don't think so. They're going to have the flexibility to strip the library or parks and recreation or whoever of money that they have to funnel into these other services that they didn't have responsibility for. I don't see how you can say with certainty -- with certainty -- that it's going to be a better position for the library and for this city.

The Chair: Thank you very much for coming forward and making a presentation today.

ATIKOKAN PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Would Doris Brown please come forward. Good morning, Ms Brown. Welcome to the committee.

I would encourage the members to come to order. I know there's a motion at the table which is causing conversations, but we are here to listen to the witnesses. Please pay attention.

Ms Marlene Davidson: I taught school for 36 years. In the last 15 minutes of the morning anything I had to say always fell on dead ears, so I hope everybody's alive this morning.

My name is Marlene Davidson. I'm the chair of the Atikokan Public Library board. I represent smaller libraries in northwestern Ontario on the OLS North board and I'm also chair of the services committee on that board.

The Atikokan Public Library board appreciates the opportunity to present our views and concerns regarding Bill 109.

The Atikokan Public Library is situated in a small, isolated, rural northwestern Ontario community of 4,000 people, 210 kilometres west of Thunder Bay and 129 kilometres east of Fort Frances. The Atikokan Public Library has its beginnings in the early 1950s. Its history is similar to that of many public libraries in rural Ontario. The Atikokan Public Library was the result of numerous hours, donations and lobbying by the citizens of the community, and as the community grew, so did the public library. It soon became an integral part of all aspects of life in Atikokan, business as well as social.

From a one-room library lending primarily books, the Atikokan Public Library has grown into a community information centre, providing access through the Internet to the World Wide Web. In addition to this, the Atikokan Public Library board provides literacy training through the Reading Plus program.

We have become partners with the Atikokan Economic Development Corp, Lakehead University and Industry Canada.

Our achievements would not have been possible without the help of the cultural partner branch of the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture, and Recreation and in consultation with the Ontario Library Service North board.

We have many challenges facing us today as we enter into the information era. Communities are faced with shrinking dollars, low tax bases in single-industry towns and technological changes. All forms of government must accept the challenges of a changing world, because accessing information in all formats is more important than ever to the citizens of Atikokan, Ontario and Canada. How information is gathered, listed and accessed is of utmost importance.

Twelve years ago, when Atikokan lost its two iron mines, our major industry, the board began to reposition the library into the whole fabric of the community, because it could foresee change.

The freedom to read is essential in our democracy and it is continuously under attack. We stand before this committee to voice our concerns that Bill 109 may impede the progress that has been made in libraries to date.

Regarding the governance of public libraries, it is important to retain citizen membership on library boards. This should be protected by the legislation.

The volunteer trustees on the Atikokan Public Library board helped the library survive and grow during the downsizing of this community. History reveals that the mine closure increased the demands made upon our library services. New and unexpected needs arose; literacy became a real issue in our community. The appointed board found ways to meet these needs and, as they became evident, ways that may not have been possible under the governance of elected officials or municipal bureaucrats.

The Atikokan Public Library board feels that library boards must remain separate and apart from the political system and process. Municipal councils are subject to political pressures, priorities and processes. Volunteer library boards are not so pressured and cannot be allowed to be part of the political process if they are to fulfil their public function and trust. The separation of the public library boards from the political process ensures that the library requirements of the community are reflected without political pressure or biases.

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It is imperative that the legislation decree the minimum size of library boards and the minimum times these boards must meet. The legislating of the existence of library boards indicates that the government sees real value in these bodies. By not including regulations regarding size, composition and meeting times, the existence of meaningful library boards is called into question. It is conceivable that a library board might consist of the clerk or one councillor. While meeting with the requirements of the act, this would not meet with the intent of the act. It is imperative that this aspect of the legislation be expanded.

It is the view of the Atikokan Public Library board that the autonomy of library boards be retained to ensure representation from the broad spectrum of citizens in the community and allow libraries to operate freely from political pressures imposed by a minority. We feel that the library board must consist of at least five members meeting at least once a month. The current system works very well. Why change it?

Giving free rein to municipal councils causes us grave concern, not only for our own existence, but for access to information for all our citizens. Being completely under the jurisdiction of a municipality leaves access to information at the mercy of narrow provincialism.

In times of fiscal restraints, people, especially councillors, are not often willing to share and support the needs of citizens in other communities. This leaves the important and enviable interlibrary loan services in grave jeopardy. It is important that access to information be promoted, defended and increased for the good of both individuals and society.

The Atikokan Public Library board feels that it is important to maintain a public library infrastructure that is uniform and strong throughout the province.

Operating grants: It came as no surprise that direct operating grants for libraries from the provincial government were part and parcel of the downloading of services to the municipal level.

In Atikokan, the municipal government allocates 90% of the funding with 10% coming from direct operating grants. Although the ratio of funding isn't substantial, the 10% indicates firm commitment for library services in Ontario from the provincial level.

The economic picture of the government of Ontario reveals that less then 2% of funds are used to support libraries, and yet over 72% of the population of Ontario uses libraries. In Atikokan, with a municipal budget of $6 million, the Atikokan Public Library is allocated $120,000 and serves 68% of the population. The township of Atikokan council reduced the library's budget by 10% and, interestingly enough, the operating grant from the province was reduced by approximately the same amount. It should be noted that in the implementation of the pay equity plan, staff at the library were included by the municipal government; however, the library budget was not increased to include the difference in salary costs.

The direct operating grant is viewed as a commitment by the government of Ontario to build upon and improve the current Ontario-wide public library infrastructure which connects individual libraries and enhances local service.

The Atikokan Public Library board feels that to fuel the economic, social and cultural growth of Ontario, an integrated, province-wide public library information network is essential. This objective can only be met with firm commitments by the government of Ontario and the municipalities of Ontario.

Eliminating direct operating grants for libraries indicates that the provincial government does not support the above objective. The Atikokan Public Library board is very concerned that this library will no longer be able to be part of the whole networking system and unable to partake in the sharing of resources. It is interesting to note that the Atikokan Public Library presently lends more materials than it borrows.

Free access: The Atikokan Public Library board appreciates the fact that the Ontario government continues to guarantee free access to libraries. However, we question why only information in certain formats can be borrowed without cost. Free, universal access to libraries is a fundamental principle of the library system in Ontario and has been enshrined in legislation for over 150 years.

The Atikokan Public Library board is attempting to remove barriers that prevent people's access and freedom to information. To distinguish how information can be accessed and in what format builds in barriers.

The Atikokan Public Library board believes, "Every Ontarian will have access to the resources and services of all public libraries without barriers or charges" -- from One Place to Look -- and is striving to remove barriers to ensure effective, accessible and equitable library services for all Atikokanites.

Our board agrees wholeheartedly with the Ontario Library Trustees Association when they say, "The suggestion that libraries should charge for information service such as Internet access belies a lack of understanding of the importance and prevalence of electronic sources of information utilized in public libraries and the central role that access to information plays in the development and maintenance of a democratic society."

To summarize, the Atikokan Public Library board questions the direction the government of Ontario is taking and the effects this will have on small public libraries such as Atikokan. The board has many challenges facing it as we enter into the information era. We are faced with shrinking dollars, low tax bases found in small, single-industry towns like Atikokan and the technological changes to access information. In order to bring Atikokanites to the world and the world to Atikokan, the Atikokan Public Library board is committed to removing all barriers to equitable access to all information.

In conclusion, we ask the government of Ontario to reconsider the following:

That the present structure of library governance be retained and legislated so that it cannot be manipulated to fit the political process.

Ensure that free access to information move beyond the present definition of printed materials.

Consider the serious consequences that the lack of provincial funding through direct operating grants will have on the Ontario public library system. The idea of sharing resources may be left in the hands of municipal governments. It is hard to touch or see the services libraries provide in a community. In Atikokan, the township council has deemed library services non-essential.

Recognize that libraries in northern Ontario, and especially those in northwestern Ontario are affected by barriers such as distance, low tax base, shrinking resources and high infrastructure costs. Municipal governments may have the will, but funding is at a premium. Therefore, they are left with very little choice. Libraries do not fair well because in most cases they are considered fringe benefits and are the first to be affected.

The Atikokan Public Library wishes to once again thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you in regards to public library services in Atikokan and in Ontario. We recognize the difficulties the government of Ontario is faced with and that deficits must be erased so that our children and grandchildren do not inherit our serious financial problems. However, we feel that any interference, however slight, with library services could have grave consequences on the whole of society. The principles of intellectual freedom is a prerequisite for an informed, democratic society.

Mrs Munro: I appreciate you bringing your ideas to us today and certainly the recognition of the more complicated situations in smaller communities. I just wanted to ask if you were aware of the opportunity that currently exists in terms of the negotiation to ensure that the exchange of taxing responsibilities is revenue-neutral. The mayor of Thunder Bay is on that committee. I just wondered if it was part of your plan and your strategy to ensure that those issues you raise in terms of the commitment of the community, that is, the municipalities, to recognize the importance of libraries, to make sure you're at that table.

Ms Davidson: I know there's a lot of negotiating with regard to funding. However, I do know that our budget has been cut this year. We've been closed three weeks due to pay equity and we'll be closing a further eight weeks this year, which means almost three months.

Mrs Munro: I'd just like to encourage you to make sure you --

Ms Davidson: There is just not the money.

Mrs McLeod: I happen to believe that your presentation is particularly important for us to hear because I think Atikokan is a unique community in that with all of the challenges you've faced, as you've outlined, in the last 12 years, Atikokan has chosen to maintain as much culture as possible as a defence against demoralization, unemployment and isolation. I don't think anybody could question the commitment of the citizens of Atikokan to maintaining that culture in spite of all the challenges you've faced.

Given that, given how hard you've struggled and how important it has been for your citizens, what do you think will happen to the Atikokan library services if you should lose the 6% of your operating cost that comes in grants, and particularly if you were also to lose the interlibrary loan services because other communities are stressed?

Ms Davidson: Apart from losing the money, the fact that we no longer have control over our own library, that a clerk-treasurer can come to us and say -- and they're saying it now -- "You're losing your control, you have no control" -- it really frightens me that they can come to us and say those things.

We can raise money. We're trying to raise money right now to keep our library open. We raised $140,000 in grants last year to help operate our library. We have a terrific librarian and she, along with the rest of us, has been really diligent in searching out all areas for extra funding, and will continue to do so. But everyone has to know that because of funding right now we are closing for a further eight weeks, and that's a real hardship on our community.

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Mr Martin: It sounds pretty dire to me. It's certainly an issue of funding, but in many senses, as you fight to maintain what you have even now, it will become more and more a question of ownership. Obviously the volunteers who work with you to raise the extra dollars you need to provide the limited services you now have will not feel the same sense of commitment if the library is turned over to the municipality to do with it what it will. Would you comment a bit on that sense of ownership and how that's going to be affected by this legislation?

Ms Davidson: That's true. Right now people are phoning and saying, "What can we do?" because they feel really a part of this library service right now.

If I could just comment, when this bill first came out I thought, "I think we should try to find something positive here." For a while, you know, things did look pretty good. Doris was invited to the department head meetings; she was considered a department head finally. She was invited to the budget meetings until it came to the last budget meeting and then she wasn't even invited to the last budget meeting where they made the cuts. They've got that power to include or exclude us at their will. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't feel we should have that.

The Chair: That you very much for coming in today to make your presentation.

Mr Shea: On a point of order, Mr Chair: Since the comment was made, and appropriately, by Marlene about Doris Brown, I think it would be appropriate to extend the minister's very best wishes on the Library of the Year award. I'd like to associate myself with that congratulations as well.

The Chair: It's not a point of order, Mr Shea, although I'm sure that the entire committee would entertain that interjection.

Mrs McLeod: We'll allow it with unanimous consent.

Mr Shea: I think we might have unanimous consent to do that, if you want force this to the wall. There we go.

Ms Davidson: I'll tell you, it was kind of bittersweet, because the month before she got the award and then we had to close the library for whole summer. Actually that was only one our options, but the reporter chose to say that's what we were doing even though --

The Chair: Thank you very much for coming forward.

Is Michael Ballantyne here yet by any chance? We're going to have to use Mr Ballantyne's time to entertain a motion which I know Mr Gravelle would like to move. Mr Gravelle, it's the bottom part which is the motion?

Mr Gravelle: Yes. I'd like to move a motion that members of the standing committee on general government recognize the importance of library services in all communities across Ontario and recommend to the minister that amendments to the legislation should be encouraged; amendments that will guarantee the continuation of library services in rural and northern Ontario and recognize that some provincial funding should be maintained in order to meet that goal.

I think we have a real opportunity here as we are on the last day of our public hearings and there has been a real interesting consistency of presentations from municipalities and small library boards today. Also, in other parts of Ontario as well it's become very clear that in order for them to meet the stated purpose -- section 2 of Bill 109 has a very clear purpose and I'll read it quickly:

"1. To ensure public libraries continue to successfully provide for Ontarians' information needs.

"2. To support Ontarians' requirements for access to educational, research and recreational materials in a knowledge-based society.

"3. To allow Ontarians to benefit from access to local, provincial and global information through a province-wide public library network."

It's been made very clear to us, simply on a factual basis, that unless there is some maintenance of the provincial transfer, libraries will be closing in a variety of communities. They've made very clear that they will not be able to maintain it. I know that the government members have been listening the last three and a half days. I think this gives us an opportunity to actually let the minister know that this is one of the messages we've been receiving; I think it gives everyone an opportunity to do so. I don't think it's asking too much. I don't think it's political in that sense. It really is simply recognizing the message that we've been receiving from those particular municipalities and small library boards.

There are certainly other amendments that are crucial, and I will be fighting for many other ones in terms of the larger communities as well, but this is one I believe we can all agree on, because we've all heard it. Therefore, I don't think there's any strong controversy. I would hope and expect that all the government members as well as all of us on this side would agree to this motion and then pass it on to the minister.

Mr Martin: I will be supporting, wholeheartedly and without reservation, this amendment. However, I want to say that I don't think it goes nearly far enough because what we've heard over the last three or four days indicates to us that if we go ahead with Bill 109, the whole library system as we know it is in jeopardy. We need to be doing all we can to protect it and make sure not only that it is protected but that it is encouraged to grow and continue to be the real asset it is to communities and to people as we grapple with the challenges we face today in so many ways.

We as a caucus will be bringing forth very specific amendments at the end of this, and they will be in keeping, very clearly, with the intention of this amendment that's being proposed here this morning. I would encourage and hope that all members would be, in the spirit of the consultation, willing to entertain amendments that would head us in the direction that's referenced here in this motion in front of us now.

Mr Shea: I must say that I am puzzled by a number of things that are flowing out of the hearings. I'm going back in some of my research. I discover that there are distinguished members of the provincial Parliament who are quoted as having said that ultimate responsibility for library policy is to be found at the local government level. That was Mr Sean Conway.

I'm puzzled, on the other hand, when I hear concerns about the 1984 Public Libraries Act now being of great merit and there being very little to deal with. Indeed, it was Mr Laughren who indicated quite clearly that neither he nor his party would find that acceptable; certainly even giving local government a useful role, played in terms of doing line-by-line consideration of budgets. We now find some sense of handholding to say, "Maybe things are fine now."

I do think the legislation requires some considered review. The government has always been of that opinion. That's why we have public hearings, so we can get out and listen to the community and reflect upon that.

It would be ill-timed I think today to deal with any such amendments. In fact, I will move deferral of this motion of Mr Gravelle's to the clause-by-clause consideration and that at that time we deal with it in the appropriate fashion, along with the other amendments that come before us. Because I think, whatever Mr Gravelle's or his party's intention would be, we would want to have them all at the table so we can ensure that whatever recommendations we put before the minister are comprehensive and we feel very comforted that what's going forward for her consideration, and for the government's final imprimatur, is appropriately considered by the committee.

The deferral motion, on my understanding, Chairman, takes precedence and I'd prefer to have that voted on please.

The Chair: It does. I do have one speaker on the list who indicated, before you made it, that they wanted to speak to it. I'd appreciate if you'd allow me to let that other person speak.

Mr Shea: Chairman, under my understanding of the rules then they would speak to the deferral.

The Chair: The deferral motion is not debatable. I am bound by the rules to put a deferral motion to the committee, so I have to put that question and it's not debatable. I'll put the question: All those in favour of deferring this motion, please say "aye." Opposed, say "nay."

I believe the ayes have it, so we'll defer the motion until a further opportunity when we can discuss it.

We're now recessed until 1:30 this afternoon.

The committee recessed from 1210 to 1338.

The Chair: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the afternoon session of the standing committee on general government's consideration of Bill 109.

Mr Gravelle: Chair, as you know, a couple of days ago I had a written request for some information related to section 28 on confidentiality being removed and some question regarding the Corporations Act. I'm just wondering if the parliamentary assistant has that response available yet.

Mr Shea: I'm delighted to respond to the question. I think it's just a matter of waiting for the photocopier to finish and it will be tabled almost momentarily.

Mr Gravelle: That's great. Thank you.

IGNACE PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Our first deputant this afternoon is Catherine Penney. Welcome to the committee today. You have 15 minutes to make a presentation. If there's some time left at the end I'll divide it up among the three caucuses for questions.

Ms Elizabeth Russell: Thank you. First of all, I am not Catherine. She's our librarian. She's home holding the fort. My name is Elizabeth Russell. I am chairperson of the library board in our small town, Ignace, located a three-hour drive to the west on the Trans-Canada Highway.

We have heard a number of times from various government sources that the role of volunteers must become more and more vital as we all try to maintain the services which are important to our communities. I am a volunteer and it is as a volunteer that I would like to speak to you today. I feel I am typical of volunteers in small towns. I have a sense of civic responsibility that I share with my counterparts in countless other organizations. I have a full-time job, family responsibilities and other interests. My time is valuable, so every minute I spend in volunteer work must count.

As a library board volunteer, I am involved in planning and overseeing the operations of the public library, ensuring the safety and security of our staff and patrons, making sure that the services our library offers meet the needs of the public and that our funding is used wisely. Besides these regular once-a-month duties as a board member, I am also involved in fund-raising to supplement the moneys which we receive from the municipality and the government. For several years, fund-raising has been an increasingly larger part of our job, as the grant moneys in municipal budgets have declined.

Each year we are willing to work even harder in order to maintain quality service because, as an autonomous board, everything we do counts. The decisions we make, the recommendations we give, the hours we spend in planning and carrying out fund-raising count. I walk into our library and see the people from the community browsing through the books, using the Internet, working at the public computer, doing research or homework at the study tables, and I have a sense that my time and efforts are worthwhile. I know what I do counts.

If the way in which library boards function is changed, the time I spend working as a volunteer will not count. Unless library boards are allowed to remain autonomous, the work we do can easily be overruled by municipal council. If all the time and effort I put in can be so easily cast aside at the whim of council, why should I bother? I will quickly become frustrated and soon will turn my energies to another cause, one where I will be able to get the sense of satisfaction and pride in a job well done. Instead of encouraging voluntarism, this bill, as it is proposed, will discourage it.

I compare for you the recreation committee in our town and the library board. The recreation committee was a group of people with no real authority. They met regularly, made decisions about recreation in our community and took their recommendations to council. However, because they had no power, very often council would ignore their efforts and recommendations. Consequently, committee members would give up in frustration. Seldom did anyone stay on the committee for any longer than one year. On the other hand, library board members see the results of their work on a regular basis. Most board members serve at least a three-year term, and some many more than that. For example, the previous chairperson of our Ignace board served for 10 years. This long-term commitment means better planning, better fund-raising and better service to the public. It also encourages public trust in the board and its operations.

At present, library boards are composed with a majority of members appointed from the taxpayers of the community. They choose to be on the board. Councils have representation on the board and have control over the budget. This gives them a say, but library service and public interest are protected by a group of people who have library interests at heart, not council members who are already too busy with other concerns or who do not place a priority on access to information, freedom of expression or literacy. These people, some of whom do not use or support libraries, would not be willing to spend time on fund-raising, planning or helping to deliver services or programs as we on boards of small libraries do.

Please do not think that libraries will be treated fairly in the downloading of costs to municipal councils. In our community, we know what our council will try to do if Bill 109 is passed as it has been proposed. We've already had to fight to keep our library services. Recently, without notifying or consulting the library board or the public, the reeve and council took the first steps in a plan to move our library out of the modern library building which we have occupied for less than five years. The reeve's intention was to move the town offices into the library building. This was to happen by the end of the summer, because council anticipated that they would have control over the library as soon as Bill 109 was passed. They ignored a 676-name petition from taxpayers who said they didn't want the library moved. As well, the reeve has said there will be no library board in our community after the end of this year. Can you imagine what chance we stand of having our recommended bylaws passed by this council?

Yes, there is a municipal election coming in the fall, but this council will be the one to put into place the new bylaws under which the library board will operate next year. As a library board volunteer, I do not want to have to use my time and energies in fighting an unsupportive council to enact by-laws that will maintain an effective board.

I want to devote my time and energies to finding ways, in spite of cutbacks and downloading of costs, to offer the library services that the residents of my town tell me they want. The uncertainty created by having the library board and its operations vulnerable to the changing opinions of council will make it difficult for me to raise funds. The government can help me be a better volunteer by making amendments to Bill 109 which would retain the composition and autonomous nature of library boards as they are in the present Public Libraries Act.

Councils do not have the best interests of libraries at heart. They are driven by money and time constraints and the prospects of being re-elected. This makes them extremely susceptible to special interest groups which may try to influence the policies of libraries or to limit freedom of expression or access to certain types of information. To have a library board which is independent of council and composed in such a way that the majority of members come from the residents of the community ensures the integrity of library services.

I would remind you of my comparison of the effectiveness of the library board and the recreation committee in my town. In our small town of 1,600 residents we had over 14,500 visits to our library last year and over 18,000 materials circulated. We have had a steady increase in library use despite the fact that our population has declined since the closing of the local mines. We must be doing something right.

The rules under which library boards presently operate are good rules, enacted after a great deal of study and consideration. They encourage volunteers like myself, with a sense of pride, a sense of service, a sense of accomplishment. My hours count.

I urge you today to relay to the minister my request on behalf of the volunteers serving on the Ignace Public Library board to keep in legislation the composition and autonomous nature of library boards as they presently stand, legislation which enables and empowers volunteers.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Two minutes per caucus. Mr Shea.

Mr Shea: Perhaps I can begin by giving at least some measure of response to a couple of points raised, but as I do that I'd like to thank you very much for being here and for making a very helpful presentation.

Ms Russell: Thank you. I am here at my own expense. Our library doesn't have money for it.

Mr Shea: That should be acknowledged and I must say I really to appreciate that.

The issue of what we might call the building controversy is one that has come to my attention. I know, for example, that the building was constructed with at least 282,000 provincial dollars. You should know that the minister is at this moment looking at the terms of the contracts and terms of the grants, and hopefully we may have some other information forthcoming.

Ms Russell: Good, because the people in town are very attached to their library.

Mr Shea: Let me also bring some measure of comfort to you in terms of the bylaws. You refer to that on page 2, down at the bottom, in terms of the bylaws. You will also I think be comforted to know that the legislation does not take effect until the new council takes place.

Ms Russell: Yes, I am aware of that.

Mr Shea: So this current council could not in fact encumber the next council.

Ms Russell: Are you saying then that this council does not enact the bylaws?

Mr Shea: This legislation does not place anything in effect until the new council takes place, so it gives you some measure of comfort there.

What I'd like to do is go a little further. Most library boards and councils that appeared before us have expressed at least some sense of relationships that have some working basis to them. There are tensions. Your presentation leaves me with less than an image of one where there seems to be a cooperative spirit or even a spirit of trust. I don't know if you meant that to come through that way or if I misunderstand it.

Ms Russell: We thought we had a good working relationship with our council until we were informed that the reeve and council had put these plans into effect. Indeed by the time we found out about it, they had been doing this for at least a couple of months. When I talked to the reeve about it, one of the first things he said and one of his major concerns was that this was all supposed to remain confidential.

Mr Shea: Are there members of council on your board?

Ms Russell: There is one representative from council.

Mr Shea: And you were not advised by that member?

Ms Russell: No.

Mr Shea: I wonder if part of the circumstance that creates some difficulties may indeed be the way that the council relationship is viewed by the board as well as perhaps how the council may view the board. When I see, for example, "unless library boards are allowed to remain autonomous," I wonder if that word may be a little strong and if you want to reflect on that.

The Vice-Chair: I'm sorry, Mr Shea, we've gone well past time. I must ask that we move on to Mr Gravelle.

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Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much, Ms Russell, for being here and for doing this, because you very much obviously believe in what you're doing. I'm certainly encouraged to some degree by what Mr Shea is saying in terms of some response, and I hope it's a positive response that we'll get from the minister.

The problem here is that ultimately what you're doing is showing an example of what is going to happen as a result of the legislation as it's put forward. The fact is the minister has set it up so that municipalities are being forced to take a great deal of pressure on downloading in a number of areas: long-term care, housing, health care, the whole works. Now they've downloaded libraries as well and it's putting pressure.

This legislation is simply part of that downloading process. Whatever relationship you had with the council, in many ways many councils are being forced to make some decisions they don't want to make, and if the minister is sincere about believing there should be citizen involvement on the board, she will make these amendments that allow the citizen majorities to remain involved.

Ms Russell: Yes. I find myself in a very funny position here, where I am a volunteer who's very willing and who has worked hard; I believe this is my eighth year on the board. It appears that if this legislation goes through without amendments, I am going to be a volunteer who is begging for a job, which goes contrary to what I've heard from this side this morning, and from the government itself, which says that volunteers are so important.

Mr Gravelle: That's right. It absolutely flies in the face -- there is sort of an element of trust. We trust that municipalities will maintain the boards as they are and perhaps some municipalities will, but every municipality has different pressures.

Ms Russell: Yes, and that's what we're afraid of.

Mr Gravelle: This door is open.

Ms Russell: Definitely. When the reeve sits in council and says there won't be a library board in Ignace next year -- that's what he said in a council meeting when we were there.

Mr Gravelle: We've certainly heard that in other places as well.

Mr Martin: I've raised this issue, your particular instance, probably two or three times a day since we started the hearings because it speaks to me of the downside in a very clear and unequivocal way, of what can happen when the balance of power is shifted so radically to one side as opposed to another. It seems to me, you've mentioned the term, that your time, your effort, your interest, your concern, has to count.

Ms Russell: It certainly does. I have a busy life.

Mr Martin: Yes, and that ownership of the library to the volunteers who work the board and do the fundraising is really important.

Ms Russell: Yes, it is.

Mr Martin: That relationship has to be one that's healthy and both sides have to feel that if there's a funding partner and there's an operating partner, they have a stake in this.

Ms Russell: Yes.

Mr Martin: We had somebody before us, I think it was yesterday, who suggested, "We pay, so we should have say," or, "We want to bring the library operation under our umbrella so they can more clearly understand the vision of the community we have." I said it would be a little like me going home to my wife who has chosen to stay home and look after our four kids and saying to her, "I'm making the money here, so I'll make the decisions and I'm in charge." That would last about one half-hour. If I came home and said, "I have a vision of where we're going as a family and I just want you to buy in, that's all," that would probably last about five minutes.

I guess what we're talking about here is relationship and ownership and feeling that what we're doing is counting. What you're saying is this legislation is not going to lend itself to that.

Ms Russell: That's correct. The way this legislation is, if council does not allow the volunteers to count, if we end up just another committee of council, like the recreation committee and like the economic development committee have been in our town, what's the point of doing it? You spend your time and your energies and all the rest. People will go to other committees. They'll go to other organisations, or they'll just turn sour.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate your coming here today and making a presentation.

MICHAEL SOBOTA

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to call on Michael Sobota, please. Good afternoon and welcome to the standing committee.

Mr Martin: On a brief point of order, Chair: I forgot to say to my honourable colleague across the way that I really appreciate the effort you're making to look into the Ignace situation. That's wonderful.

Mr Shea: It disturbs me, but in the nicest way. Thank you for the kind words.

The Vice-Chair: Order.

Mr Michael Sobota: Good afternoon. I hope that doesn't count on my 15 minutes.

The Vice-Chair: No, it certainly does not; absolutely.

Mr Sobota: Thank you for the opportunity to present to you. I am pleased that you are able to take some time from your lengthy hours at Queen's Park to journey to Thunder Bay and hear us.

Why are we talking about libraries? What are libraries? When was the last time you were in your library? I was in mine yesterday. How do libraries fit? Where is their fit in the bigger picture of your lives?

In a general discussion about what made life in northern Ontario worthwhile, what makes it interesting and nurturing, what would we consider critical for us to stay here, a number of obvious choices surfaced. One of my friends cited our excellent symphony orchestra, another talked about our creative and thriving live theatre companies. Prominently mentioned were green space and that we have an excellent system of parks for seasonal recreation. A critical component of our lives that received universal murmuring of agreement was one that was not so obvious and not readily thought of, and that was our library system.

I'm going to give you a quote now: "If we lost our library, if for some reason it had to close, I would leave Thunder Bay. I would go somewhere else civilized enough to support such a valuable asset, probably the States." This remark came from an elderly woman, someone who had lived here all her life, raised her children here, who had owned and operated a local business. She was well aware of finances and changing economic environments and very versed in changing governments. She would leave here if we lost our library.

Let me be very clear at the beginning of my presentation that I believe the Local Control of Public Libraries Act, 1997, will result in the loss of libraries. It is a blueprint with provincial sanction to close libraries. Should this legislation pass in its present form, I invite this panel to return to northern Ontario in three years, April 2000, and explain how this wasn't what you intended, that this isn't your fault, that it shouldn't have happened.

Let me also be clear that I don't believe the magnificent Thunder Bay library system will close or be lost. It is well managed, well-run, efficient and, most importantly, large, so it can adjust to the worst elements in this legislation and struggle on. I do not believe this is the case for our sister institutions in smaller and more isolated centres.

My remaining time will comment on three broad aspects of Bill 109: its potential impact on intellectual freedom, its commercialization of library services and its naïveté about offloaded funding responsibilities. My analysis and comments come from a background of having worked in a small Ontario library -- I was employed at the Fort Frances Public Library for a number of years -- a regional library in Nova Scotia -- the Eastern Counties Regional Library system in Mulgrave, Nova Scotia -- and from being a user of library collections and services for more than 45 years. And I actually read the proposed Bill 109 and, interestingly, a fact sheet on the legislation prepared by the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation.

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My first point focuses on freedom to read and censorship. There are enormous strengths in the existing governance provisions of the Public Libraries Act that over a broad course of time have demonstrated libraries will uphold principles of intellectual freedom. In practice, the existing legislation has provided a record of governance that has resisted sporadic, insular or uninformed efforts at censoring what other Ontarians might read or access through their libraries.

The proposed legislation, while seemingly understanding the value of citizen-run library boards, eliminates the safeguards within the current legislation for how local library boards are constituted. While I don't anticipate radical changes in the makeup or structure of our local Thunder Bay library board, the government is inviting a dictatorial governance structure to be considered by municipal councils. The only reason I'm hopeful about the maintenance of our own citizen-majority-run board in Thunder Bay is because some of our members of municipal council have gone on record to say so. You've heard the opposite in other constituencies.

None the less, the new legislation's governance structure throws open the doors to political and emotional lobbying around flashpoint issues, about the constitution of a library board or whether there will even be independent boards at all.

My concluding point on this issue is that the existing legislation works. It has demonstrated effectiveness, and there are no rational arguments put forward for the change.

Commercialization of library services: Bill 109 opens the door for libraries to charge fees for loaning their materials beyond print and special, formatted disability materials. It means I could go to my library in the future and rent a video or a CD for a fee. This in a very real way puts libraries in competition with the private sector, hustling their collections to generate more income in the same way that Blockbuster or Bandito Video does. To make up revenue through rental charges -- your euphemism is user fees -- puts our libraries and their staff on a very different road of marketing and hustling so that customers will rent materials as opposed to accessing them because they genuinely need to.

Opening the door to rental charges, membership fees and other possible charges breaks the 100-year-old tradition of consistency, accessibility and uniformity in our province-wide library system. It probably will be easier to get the materials if (a) you are in a large and more wealthy municipality, and (b) you are more wealthy yourself.

The whole area of revenue generation through fees is complex. It has not had good analysis done in the rush to impose this legislation. The pressure to sort out this complexity in a thoughtful and user-friendly way has been directly caused by the government in your previous decisions to cut library funding by 20% in 1995, a further 20% in 1996 and to withdraw the rest of the funding by the end of this fiscal year. So much of this ideologically driven legislation is done with a rush to judgement, without good analysis and implementation impact in place.

I'm going to give you an example about the idea of allowing fees, for example, for the rent or loan of materials that aren't print materials. Do you know what the costs are of allocations in libraries? Do you know what the most expensive costs are? Books, not CDs, not videos. You're ensuring that libraries have to buy and purchase the most costly things and have them available free, and they can put charges on some of the least costly things. This does not make sense. This is not good analysis. It's an example that the whole fee issue is very complex and needs more sorting out

Offloading of funding responsibilities: The government's fact sheet that accompanied Bill 109 suggests that municipal councils can handle 100% removal of provincial support for local libraries because, and I'm quoting from the ministry's own fact sheet: "The responsibility for funding education will be removed from municipalities. This will give local authorities greater financial flexibility to fund other services, including libraries."

This is a truly misleading rationale. It sounds as though the province's paying for education is some sort of equal financial tradeoff or even a net benefit to municipalities. It lies by omission. It nowhere mentions the increased, competing financial costs that municipalities will have to address in the areas of social assistance, transportation, public housing, long-term-care and public health council budgets not to mention other costs. It also does not admit the mistakes that were made by the government in its initial cost estimates of what the offloading tradeoffs would actually total.

Let's look back at the mega-week announcements. Following the mega-week announcements, we were treated to the government's own admissions that certain figures were not included in the initial calculations and that these admissions were the literal equivalents of "oops" Over the past months, the "oops" have grown to total billions of dollars of expenses that were not included in the costs municipalities would be required to take over. These are your own figures; you have said this. There have been no adjustments to the figures for what the government would be responsible for.

The bottom line is that local libraries will be competing for funding with local housing, local roads, public health concerns, long-term care for our elderly and a whole plethora of motherhood type of issues that are going to make the life of a city councillor one hell of a nightmare. Bill 109, in its silly fact sheet, refuses to see that bigger picture; it actually denies it. Our libraries will have to survive in the big world.

In conclusion, because of the broad offloading of funding responsibilities from the province to our municipality, libraries need the strong assurance of an independent governance structure to work effectively at securing adequate finances for their survival, to effectively uphold standards of freedom to read and intellectual freedoms, and to sort out the complexity of local service fees and charges. Bill 109 should be amended to account for these and the other numerous arguments you have been presented with through these public hearings.

Further, in the broader process of rushing to impose many legislative initiatives across the province, you are fostering an atmosphere of great tension and uncertainty and you're fostering resistance to bad planning and analysis. If you are going to force your will on our libraries and their structures, more time should be given for careful consideration of how to implement effective change.

The Chair: Thank you very much. We only have a minute per caucus for questions, starting with Mr Gravelle.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much, Mr Sobota. I'll be quick. I agree with you completely. I think it is a blueprint, essentially a provincial sanction, to close libraries. We're near the end of our hearings. The members here probably continually need to be convinced that certainly small libraries are in great peril as a result of a number of things you've mentioned. What else can you say to them? I trust they really are listening to us and they want to do the right thing. The minister says this will be better service. What can you say to help us with this?

Mr Sobota: The first thing I would urge you to do is to go visit your local library, if you haven't recently. Get back in touch with it. Really go see it, go in it, go see the people, go see how much they're used.

I have to believe the minister is speaking in good faith and with goodwill. I have to believe that she does not wish libraries to close. The legislation as it stands is going to close libraries. That's a fact. If you believe libraries will not close, I've got a bridge over the Kaministikwia I'd like to interest you in buying.

Mr Martin: That's a very well-done and interesting presentation; lots of food for thought. You've touched in your own way again on some of the points that are continually being made by groups who have an interest in, who have an empathy for, who work directly with and love libraries. There's the issue of governance and all that falls under there, the issue of fees and how complicated that is, and it's the issue of the province continuing to play a role in interesting ways. Of those, which in your mind would be of utmost importance?

Mr Sobota: The governance issue is critical. The legislation that was passed in 1984 put in effect a system that seems to work. It's in balance. It's not perfect, but it's one that seems to work, both to show that libraries are well managed financially -- and they are -- and also to ensure our access to intellectual materials and to resist censorship. I think the governance issue is the most critical one.

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Mr Flaherty: Ideological might be abolishing library boards, it might be abolishing the free circulation of books. That's not what happens here. Ideological is easy because you don't have to listen to the other side. We're listening to the other side, all right?

Mr Sobota: I appreciate that.

Mr Flaherty: When was the last time I was in a library? Yesterday in Ottawa, the Rideau branch, and about a week ago in the Whitby Public Library.

Mr Sobota: Good for you.

Mr Flaherty: My children love the library. Mr Young was with me. It's not a question of liking libraries and being familiar with libraries. We have the legislative library at Queen's Park; it's one of the finest libraries in Canada. We work with those librarians all the time and have great respect for them.

Having said that, I really don't understand the allegation you make that this legislation will cause the closing of libraries in Ontario. The rationale seems to be this: That councils will be faced with competing items -- fire services, emergency services and so on. They are now. Ninety-one per cent of the funding for the city of Thunder Bay library does not come from the provincial government. More than that, the tradition of public libraries in this province, from the first act in 1882 to the present, and even before then with the mechanics' institutes and so on, was local control of libraries, local governance of libraries. And for good reasons, as we've heard at these hearings, because they serve local needs and they need to be localized.

We heard from the city of Ottawa that when they polled their people in Ottawa, the only service that ranked ahead of library service in terms of priority was fire service. We heard from the city of Nepean that the only service for which people are willing to pay more money in taxes in the city of Nepean is library service.

The Chair: I have to stop you there. If you need any kind of response at all to that, Mr Flaherty --

Mr Flaherty: My point is that if we're going to lose libraries in Ontario, we would have lost them by now because municipalities are the budget controllers of libraries today in the province and have been for years.

Mr Sobota: With respect, you heard the previous presenter before me say that her reeve and council have gone on the record that there will be no library board next year. She said that.

Mr Flaherty: That is the only one we have heard in the whole week.

Mr Sobota: But you heard that, you literally heard that.

Mr Flaherty: One.

Mr Sobota: The issue of percentages of budgets is a red herring. Thunder Bay receives a quarter of a million dollars from the province. That ain't gonna be made up by fund-raising. That's not going to be made up by selling candy apples. It's the real dollars, not the percentage, that we're talking about here and that's scary.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Sobota, for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.

BEARDMORE PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Would Jackie Boughner please come forward. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee.

Mrs Jackie Boughner: My name is Jackie Boughner. I'm chairman of the board of the Beardmore Public Library. I'm also a board member of OLS North. The Beardmore Public Library is a very small library situated in a town of 390 population of whom 200-plus are members of our library. Our budget is approximately $18,000 a year. This year it will be less, due to cutbacks. Our area also takes in the unorganized territories of Jellicoe, 20 miles to the east, and MacDiarmid, 15 miles to the west. We are, by the way, 50 miles from the nearest town.

We as a board fear what will happen when and if the municipal council takes over the running of the library. We fear libraries will become a soft service and thus will become expendable. Also, with the government wanting towns to amalgamate or restructure, libraries will be closed and everything moved to the larger centres. The patrons would then have to travel to larger centres, in our case 50 miles. Children would be the losers as parents as a whole would not travel that far just so their kids would be able to use our services.

As well, if the government were to decree that council members made up the majority of a library board, the public would not have a say in the running of a library.

Our board is made up of five enthusiastic volunteers as well as one council member who is also very enthusiastic. We are a very active group. We have taken time on Sundays to paint the library and have done a great deal of work to spruce up an old building. One board member didn't like the plain old duct work running through the whole place. She suggested painting the duct work and putting kids' handprints on it. As a result, almost all of Beardmore kids' handprints and names are on the duct work. The kids ranged in age from babies to those in grades 7 and 8. The board deserves a lot of credit for the work they have done in the past year.

Council gives us the majority of our funding. With what we receive there is no extra money for capital expenditures such as shelving etc. A large portion of our budget is used for wages. By the time wages, heat, phone and utilities are paid, there is not much left for the more important items -- books -- let alone capital projects. If you don't believe me, I was on council for nine years, and in that time we applied for a grant for $800 to put new shelving in. Our shelving people were getting cut on the corners of it. I asked the council, as the municipal rep for the library, for $200 so that we could get our grant. They refused me. They had no funding available. We do not have the economic base, such as factories or lumber mills, that larger municipalities have.

We also have a lot of unemployment. Thus we need extra help from the government, such as grants for capital projects and even book collections. Books are expensive, even pocket novels or paperbacks. We did receive a grant to establish our town's community access site for the Internet. I don't know much about the Internet, or even computers, but I know there is a lot of interest in the town. Many people keep asking when we will be hooked up. Through the years this will take extra funding to maintain.

On the other hand we are glad to see that the part of the old act that states fees cannot be charged for borrowing books, magazines or videos is still in place. If a fee schedule were in place, a lot of people -- those on welfare, unemployment or disability, etc -- would not be able to afford to use the library. Thank you for that at least.

I would like to thank the committee for letting me speak about our concerns on behalf of our little-in-size but big-in-heart library. I have also included a resolution supporting OLTA's position.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much. As I said to a presenter yesterday, it's always good to have somebody from the small community libraries come and speak to us, because your story is different from the larger centres in many significant ways and probably helps us zero in more readily on the issue that's at stake here, which is really, in my mind, an issue of money. If you don't have the money, you can't do the job.

Mrs Boughner: That's right.

Mr Martin: Even if it's only $200. In most of the communities we represent $200 is petty cash. For you, it's the difference between having new shelves or not having new shelves. It becomes a huge issue.

We had a fellow from Killaloe before us yesterday who told us pretty much the same story. He wasn't looking for the stars, the moon and the sun; he was just looking for a commitment to a basic library in his community with some books in it so that the kids particularly, who go to school outside of the community, will have some place to go to do research when they come home at night or on weekends.

The question I have for you is: Is that your story? What is it that we could do with this act that would guarantee, absolutely guarantee for you the existence of your library?

Mrs Boughner: One of the things is to leave the municipalities out of it. Last October we had an open house and we also had dinner for invited guests, including all members of council. We had two members of council show up: one was the municipal rep, and the other, his wife was the CEO of the library. The reeve never showed up -- he had meetings in Thunder Bay -- and the other two councillors never showed up. That's how much interest there is in the council for the libraries.

I'm just afraid that if municipalities take over -- and we are in the middle of restructuring in our community with Longlac, Geraldton, Beardmore and Nakina -- they'd say, "Shut the small libraries down. Go to Geraldton," which is 50 miles. There's no way. We have at least 10, 15, 20 people in our library every night that we're open. We're only open 12 hours a week, but last month the number of people who were in the library was around 150. That was in our librarian's report.

I was on council for nine years and I know recreation is more important to a small community than libraries. Libraries are at the bottom, as they are in a lot of small communities.

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Mrs Munro: Thank you very much for being here with us today and bringing to this discussion another example of the smaller community and the kinds of issues that are unique to that smaller community. I was going to ask you a question in terms of the relationship with your council because obviously -- and you've addressed that -- that seems to me to be the critical issue you're dealing with. But I'm also wondering whether or not -- you mentioned that you were dealing as well with restructuring going on within a number of communities -- you've had any opportunity to get a sense of a difference in opinion among those community leaders in those other communities towards libraries?

Mrs Boughner: No, I haven't because we had one public meeting for Beardmore residents only, and Geraldton's 50 miles, Nakina is 100 miles, Longlac is 70 miles --

Mrs Munro: There were obviously no representatives from there to discuss that with you.

Mrs Boughner: No.

Mrs Munro: You talked about the numbers of people who come in and use the library and clearly take advantage of this as a community resource. Do the municipal leaders recognize this, recognize the important role that you provide within your community?

Mrs Boughner: They must know because they get a library report every month at their council meeting. I can't guarantee they read it because a lot of the council members, when I was on council, didn't bother reading it. I'll give you an example. When the announcement came out that we were getting a grant for the Internet, I wasn't interviewed as the chairman of the board; the reeve was interviewed. The council had nothing to do with it; we did the work to get the Internet going, to get the money for the grant. Council didn't even know about it until it was reported to them at a council meeting that we had applied for money for the Internet. But the reeve is the one who made the announcement on the radio and in the papers. I wasn't even asked.

Mr Gravelle: Thanks very much. I think it's important to let everyone know that indeed you drove down from Beardmore, that this is a long drive. I think it's important for all the government members particularly today to recognize this, that people have driven in from all over the place trying to make these very strong points. As it is towards the end of the day -- and maybe I'll do this at every presentation -- it's sort of our last chance to try and get across to the government members some very strong impressions that this really is frightening.

Unless there are some changes, there's a pretty good chance that a lot of libraries in small communities are going to be gone. If the minister is serious about what she says and if the members are serious that they want to actually improve library service by this bill, because it was sold as such, they've got to understand that there are some real problems.

I don't want to go on because I want to give you a chance. I don't believe it's so much a question of municipal leaders not caring about their libraries or being committed to their libraries; it's being put in a position where they've got so many other pressures because of the downloading. This is where the pressure's going to come from. If you've got to choose between fixing a pothole and supporting your library, that's where I think the pressures are on.

I don't want to speak to what your relationship is with your council, but it's almost like this bill is setting up battles between the board and the council right now, which is certainly not the way it should be. I just want to give you the opportunity to make even a last plea to the government members. Is there anything you can say that will hopefully -- and I believe that the members are listening and trying to understand. I'm not sure they're getting the point, because I keep hearing the same sorts of responses back. Anything you could finish with, Jackie, would be great.

Mrs Boughner: If it's not broken, don't fix it. I have a granddaughter in Sick Kids in Toronto, and I thought this meeting was so important that I left Toronto to come here today.

The Chair: Thank you very much for making the effort to come in.

DRYDEN PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Would Bryan Buffett please come forward. Good afternoon. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Bryan Buffett: Background: Thank you for coming up to Thunder Bay to listen to us. I know it may be boring because what you're hearing is basically the same thing over and over again. I hate to tell you, but I'm also an echo of everybody else.

The first item of concern for us is governance. You've heard that volunteer boards are the cornerstone of public library development and have led libraries into the position they're in now, which is among the best in the world. But why have they been so effective? It's because they care. I cannot foresee a board the majority of which would be council that would really care about serving their library. They care about their political future and they care about the municipal budget, but the majority of them do not care about books and library programs; it's a secondary item on their agenda.

We feel, much as the lady from Beardmore already said, that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Keep the present board system: a majority citizen membership, specified qualifications for membership on the board, a minimum number of board members. In my report, I list five for a town of Dryden's size; I'm sure Thunder Bay, to get adequate representation for its population, would need slightly more. Guarantee the meeting is open to the public -- it's not stated in Bill 109 that this should happen -- and also a minimum number of meetings. The worst-case scenario that everybody is talking about is a committee of one person meeting once a year. That is a worst-case scenario, and we don't see it happening too often, but it could happen and it may well happen, because Bill 109 is basically enabling legislation just for that to occur.

At a personal level, I finished up this report last night after my board meeting. During that board meeting, I was thinking about this report and I looked around at them. If I lost that board structure, if I lost the majority of those volunteer members, I'd lose my support structure too, I'd lose my policymaking body. I would have to do a lot more work in the future if I didn't have that kind of board structure behind me.

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Charging fees for what Bill 109 apparently calls frills, ie, non-book materials: Our stand is that information is information. If I've got a book on -- in my report here, I say spousal abuse; it just came to mind because we just got a donation of materials on spousal abuse. Is a book any better than a videotape, any better than a talking book, any better than information downloaded off the Web? Not really. Some people would find the video or the talking book more effective in its presentation. Some people, because of their difficulty with reading and comprehending, digesting the written word, would definitely find the non-book material more suited. Why should these people have to pay for using non-book material? I'd like to support the gentleman from Thunder Bay: Videos and talking books tend to be cheaper than books, and the Internet is free, in Dryden anyway.

At present, we charge for some services. These tend to be services that are not directly library oriented: faxing, photocopying, room rentals, equipment rentals. The public understands and accepts that, just as they accept paying fines for overdue materials.

The money generated at the Dryden Public Library for these special services is a very small part of our budget. If we have to charge, by municipal decree, for items like videotapes and talking books, the money we would recover from that would in no way make up for the approximately $50,000 we're going to lose from the province in the future. It's just not a cost-recovery basis here.

Funding: Direct grants are being phased out. It's the government's contention that municipalities will fund the difference, what's left over after they no longer have to pay for education, but there is no requirement for them to do so, and we don't see them doing so. Over the last five years, municipalities have been in a cost reduction mode, and we don't foresee that changing.

My concern is for myself, but it's also for the smaller libraries, many libraries in northwestern Ontario. Dryden is considered a major library. We've got a municipal population of 6,500. We're a major library outside of Thunder Bay. I'm barely scraping by. The municipal funding through provincial grant this year is $30,000. That's my entire materials budget this year. The rest of the money goes for wages, rent and utilities, items that I have literally no control over. Once I lose that, then it's cutting staff and cutting hours.

If that's the situation I'm in, then I'm worried about Ear Falls, Red Lake, Balmertown, Sioux Lookout, Beardmore, Nakina, Geraldton. I feel sorry for them, and I can see some of our small libraries closing if the provincial grant is gone. I would really like to see the retention of some sort of safety net funding to keep these small libraries going, a preferred library grant for small libraries.

If it is the government's decision to totally end funding, as has been stated, then I would like to see it phased out over a little bit longer than presently planned; just maintain the 20% cut per year until we're down to 0%. Especially now, when municipalities are reeling from the perceived effects of all the downloading the province is doing, we need some kind of infusion from the province just to keep us going until we can see some kind of sky, whether it be blue or grey, at the end of the tunnel.

There are a couple of items that aren't in my report, and I'll touch on only one. With all the downloading that's been going on, the library has been cut year after year at the municipal level and lately by the province. I was talking to other colleagues lately, and our mutual feeling is that now is the time to retire, now is the time to get out, before we see the end of public libraries as we know them. It's a common feeling. When your senior management group in the library field is thinking this way, then there's something wrong.

In conclusion, as I've already mentioned, we recommend: retention of citizen majority representation on boards; the retention of qualification for board members; the establishing of minimum standards for frequency of board meetings; establishing of minimum standards for board size; the retention of the principle of free access of information regardless of format; the retention of the public library grant for those libraries in northwestern Ontario that would cease to operate without this safety net funding; continued gradual reduction in public library grants rather than a complete cessation in 1998; and the retention of the requirement that board meetings be open to the public.

I look forward to your questions.

Mr Shea: I begin by reflecting on your point and the point raised by the deputant before you. You say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The assumption is that things are working just fine right now, and it's intriguing to hear that when the Association of Municipalities of Ontario totally disagrees with that. I'm pleased you at least spoke about the downloading that is going on from the federal government to the province. At least that's a fair recognition.

It is not a downloading that's now taking place between the province and municipalities. It is a financial disentanglement where we are saying for the first time in the history of this province that we want to ensure we know who we hold accountable for what's being done, who does has responsibility for what services, who we hold accountable if we don't like the way those services are performed or provided.

The Who Does What panel, for example, led by David Crombie -- I think in some cases the minister and other ministers have done some modifications -- in an attempt to try to sort out who's doing what and where and why and so forth indicated that education comes off the property tax and other things go back on, so we try to ensure that, along with special transition funds that will be made available, there is at most a very modest impact upon municipalities.

The panel went on to say, "Abolish library boards." The minister was not prepared to accept that. The minister was very firm in suggesting that's simply not good enough, but what we have to do is recognize this disentanglement, even politically, and begin to say the municipalities are the ones that are responsible for most of the funding of libraries right now. I think even you would agree with that; 90% in the case of your library is a case in point.

It would seem appropriate to suggest that if they are accountable, if they are responsible, surely they're the ones who have to stand before the electorate of their community and justify their actions, whether it's the actions we see in one municipality that has been presented today that seems certainly out of character with all the other municipalities we've heard from, or if it's one of different variations of cooperation.

The library boards are not directly elected. The library boards are not the ones that have to raise the rates. Do you find that a difficult issue to wrestle with?

Mr Buffett: No, I don't, because library boards are accountable to their council 365 days a year. Councillors are accountable to their constituency once every three years.

Mr Shea: Let me just pick up --

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Shea. Sorry, you had a long preamble there.

Mr Shea: What a pity, because that's not true -- sorry, that's not quite accurate.

Mr Gravelle: I don't want to argue with Mr Shea because we've got along very well in the last three or four days. I know you are listening to these submissions seriously, but in terms of AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, they weren't saying, "It's broke, therefore fix it." They were saying, "If you're going to download this on us, then we think this is not going far enough." That's what AMO is truly saying. They really are saying that.

It seems to me that this whole issue, even if we get into the issue of disentanglement, maybe comes down to the government saying ultimately, "We don't think we should be involved in libraries." In other words, that's the disentanglement. That's one of the arguments we've heard in the last three or four days. We talk about the education system being important and they are saying, "We'll take responsibility," yet they're going to say, "We shouldn't have any responsibility for libraries," which are part of the education system, as far as we're concerned. I wouldn't mind having you comment on that. It just seems very strange to me that they would be abandoning the library system.

Mr Buffett: I found it extremely funny, and I have a great deal of respect for the government for playing such a beautiful sting on AMO, because AMO has been striving for this type of legislation for years and the government turned around with that beautiful little shell game and gave them what they wanted, but an empty shell; no funding. I thought it was perfect.

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Mr Gravelle: I stepped out for about a minute or so of your presentation. I am curious about the situation in Dryden in terms of council and whether you've had any discussions with them or have any idea publicly what they are planning to do.

Mr Buffett: We have had discussions with our mayor, and informally with some members of council. They are very supportive of the public library and the board structure. However, they refuse to make any commitment whatsoever towards the future relationship between the board and council. They feel that is entirely up to the new council and they wish to play no part in it at this point in time.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Buffett, for coming forward and making your presentation today.

Mr Shea: On a point of order, Chair: Earlier this week Mr Gravelle asked several questions of me concerning section 28, questions on the Public Libraries Act specifically. I'm prepared to read my answers to him into the record now, or if he wishes to dispense, I'll have them tabled with the committee for his information and assistance.

Mr Gravelle: If you could just table them with the committee, we'll look at them.

Mr Shea: If that's agreeable with the Chair, if we dispense with the reading, I'll make sure it's tabled for the record and it'll be there for you.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you.

Mr Shea: Not at all.

Mr Gravelle: Could I have a quick pont of order too, Chair?

The Chair: Certainly.

Mr Gravelle: I just want to put into the record two written briefs from people who were not able to make the schedule: one by Bev Rizzi, representing Mothers for Education, and one by Susanne Marquardt, also with Mothers for Education. They would love to have appeared but were not able to get on the schedule.

GERALDTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: I understand that Craig Nuttal is not with us yet, but Carol Cooke is, so I'd like to move to Carol's presentation. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee.

Ms Carol Cooke: I'm sure you are all aware of the various analogies used to describe the relationship between Queen's Park in Toronto and the people in communities of the north like Geraldton. My particular favourite is that if Ontario is a pond and a pebble is dropped into the middle of the pond -- and we all know where the middle is -- by the time the ripples reach Geraldton, they have formed a tidal wave.

I would like to thank the ladies and gentlemen of this panel for giving me the opportunity to surface and share with you the concerns of our community and our library board about Bill 109.

I will begin by telling you about Geraldton and the important role the library plays in our community. Next, I will specify the parts of Bill 109 that concern us. Finally, I would like to make some suggestions to ensure the future of a strong library network in northern Ontario.

Geraldton is located 270 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. It has a population of approximately 2,500 people of Ojibway, French and English backgrounds, and the library collection reflects the multicultural makeup of our community. Seventy per cent of the people who live in Geraldton belong to the library. This high percentage of patronage should guarantee the continued existence of the library in Geraldton.

Many of us, however, fear that this is not the case and that the library's very existence is tenuous at best. Let me explain our concerns. Our budget is now 40% less than it was in 1995. Moreover, we could be facing another budget cut of $5,000 next year. Occurring concomitantly with our drastic decrease in finances, we have been automating our library services and attempting to update the computer technology offered within our library.

I am sure you know these types of projects are expensive. To an isolated community like Geraldton, however, it is imperative that we offer our student patrons access to the technology that is taken for granted in many more populated parts of Ontario. Our local municipal council has justified the library budget cuts by saying that no municipal department is sacrosanct and every department has been cut to some degree. I must add here that we enjoy a good relationship with our municipal council and that we have some very strong advocates on our municipal council. Yet not one member of our municipal council is a regular library user. One must ponder here how it is possible to value an institution one does not use.

I have been told our library will continue to exist as long as our high patronage continues. In other words, as long as our usage remains high we will receive some type of funding. When our department is forced to compete for money with the many other departments of the municipality that offer such essential services as hospital administration and road maintenance, I fear the continuation of a current and informative library service will be in jeopardy.

At the present time, our library is open for a total of 30 hours a week and is staffed by three part-time librarians. One of our librarians can provide services in French, while another is computer-literate. Our third librarian is the chief librarian and has the duties commensurate with her position. Apart from their regular duties in the library, these women conduct a bilingual children's story hour and they deliver books to senior citizens, shut-ins and people in hospital. Our librarians are three very busy women. Given their various areas of expertise, Geraldton cannot afford to lose even one of them. Cutting staff, unfortunately, is the next step in dealing with our dwindling financial resources.

In books and brochures that discuss the history of Geraldton, our library has been touted as one of Geraldton's greatest assets. Indeed, the library has been a vital part of our community since its inception in 1946. It would be a sad spectacle to see our library die the death of a thousand cuts.

I have just described the historical and the present status of the library in Geraldton. Certain sections of Bill 109 greatly increase my concern for the future viability of this important institution within our community. Specifically, I refer to the legislation that allows the municipality the power to determine the composition of the library board and the restriction of a patron's right to free access to all the library's resources.

Presently, our board consists of four townspeople, one member from council, the head librarian and a secretary. Four people from our town have applied to the municipality and been approved to serve as library trustees in a voluntary capacity. We share a love of books, a dedication to literacy and a recognition of the importance of the library to our community.

These shared values are reflected in the mission statement the library board drafted in 1996: "The mission of the Geraldton Centennial Public Library is to provide selected reading/listening resource material in an innovative lifelong learning environment designed to contribute to individual literacy and to the quality of life of the residents of Geraldton." The bottom line here is that the library trustees care about our library and we care about the continued success of the library in our community.

For example, in the past year, in an effort to cope with our reduced funding, the library board has attempted to fund-raise through joint ventures with our local service groups. Moreover, we have established a charitable number for donations from local citizens and we have developed a plan to solicit corporate funding. While we cannot hope to raise enough money to make up for our budget shortfall, board members are committed to exploring alternative avenues to generate the necessary funding to make our library work well.

The Geraldton library board has not limited its efforts to developing new ways of fund-raising. Recently, the library board has developed and introduced an innovative program targeted at young adults aged 10 to 13. A cooperative education student from the high school is working with students from both the public and the separate schools on using the library Internet access computer for research purposes. The cooperative education student is a first nations individual, and he is working with French, French immersion, and English students. I ask you, how many successful programs such as this one can be run in a community like ours? I suggest to you that the fact that this program has been developed and sponsored through a non-threatening institution like the library is a large part of the reason for its success.

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Now members of our library board are working on developing an adult literacy program. We will again use the non-threatening persona of the library to recruit literacy tutors and to encourage the adults in Geraldton who need to improve their reading skills to come forward and receive free instruction. Furthermore, the board is working on the formation of a Friends-of-the-Library group to increase public advocacy for the library in Geraldton. Innovative, inclusive programs such as these are possible because of dedicated citizen board members. I fear that if the library board is not made up of a majority of citizen volunteers whose sole concern is the promotion of the library, library service and indeed the library itself, if it survives, will become subject to the short-term political agenda of the municipal council.

My next major concern with Bill 109 is the limitation of the materials to which our patrons have free access. As I have mentioned, Geraldton is an isolated community. It is absolutely vital for us to keep in touch with the rest of northern Ontario, southern Ontario and other Canadian provinces. The possibility of paying fees for interlibrary loans, books on tape or computer usage could be the death knell for our small library.

Our budget, as I have already mentioned, has been slashed. As a result, we can no longer afford to maintain our membership in the Canadian Library Association, nor can we afford to subscribe to a newspaper such as the Globe and Mail or to a children's magazine like the Child's World Book. Without free access to a pool of resources which can be shared by a number of libraries in the north, we will not be able to offer the people of our community important and timely information. The window on the world that our library should offer our community could effectively be closed. I urge you, therefore, to rethink these two parts of Bill 109 and to enact legislation that does not further marginalize the citizens of Ontario's northern communities.

My suggestion? The library's future as an important social and cultural institution depends on the recommendations this panel will make to the government. A series of programs and grants that inspire the innovative use of library facilities would go far to encourage library boards to suggest, develop and implement programs that positively affect the lifelong learning that each citizen of Ontario should have a right to pursue.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much for coming from Geraldton. We've been trying to make the point that everybody's travelling long distances, which sends a message, and I'm sure it's appreciated by everybody who's done so.

Can you be specific on what it would mean in terms of the the provincial moneys you get? I'm not sure what the totals are. Let's say that's gone tomorrow afternoon. What does that mean?

Ms Cooke: What's happened in the past is that when the provincial grants have been cut back it has not been made up by our municipal council. That's why our budget is 40% less this day than it was two years ago. It just hasn't been made up. Our book budget has been affected, whether we can buy computers has been affected; as I mentioned, our subscription to magazines. We no longer can communicate with the rest of Ontario.

Mr Gravelle: Is it reasonable to think it will be made up in the future with council? Shouldn't we be making the point that there are all these other things going on in terms of municipal downloading? Is it realistic?

Ms Cooke: I don't believe it is. The problem with what we're doing here is that the library is essentially a cultural organization, and the effects of using the library, library usership in the community, are not short-term, they're long-term; you'll see them in the long run. Our municipal council -- it's a business and I can understand that, but quite frankly the library board is regarded as the dumb blonde on the block; nobody takes us seriously.

Mr Martin: You've listed a number of things that are of concern to you and you won't be surprised, and I think you referenced it yourself, that these are consistent with what we're hearing from other library groups or friends of libraries or people who have a tremendous interest in libraries. Also, from listening to you I can't help but be impressed with the effort being made by library boards and volunteers to deal with the challenges coming down that are in many ways beyond anybody's control in some senses.

I'm wondering, in the mix of all this as it goes forward and the various things that could be changed and might be changed and may not be changed, which in your mind would be the most important piece if there was a choice to be made re your future as a library?

Ms Cooke: To me the issue of governance, of the majority of citizen volunteers on the board, is absolutely crucial because for these people their sole concern is the promotion of the library in the community. If it becomes a committee of council or if the council has more representatives on the board, their concern is not for literacy; it is not for promoting the library. They have a political agenda. It is not a cultural agenda.

Mr Stewart: Thank you for your presentation. Over the last many years under a lot of different governments, downloading has consisted of the federal to the provincial level; the provincial people still paid them the money. Now the provincial level downloads to the municipality and the municipality still pays the province money. What is happening under Who Does What is that the downloading still happens but the municipality still will retain the property tax and they take the education tax.

If I look at the education cost to Beardmore, Longlac and Geraldton, it represents $3,274,048, give or take. Your downloading or the amount of money you have to make up in those four municipalities has to be $15,000. For the life of me I cannot figure out why they wouldn't do it. The difference now is that they will have the money they normally paid to the province for education. It's going to stay there for them to offset some of that.

That's one of the things they don't understand about the Who Does What: The money stays with the municipality to offset, yes, some health care, long-term care, but it also stays there to offset that. I know your mayor up there pretty well. Again for the life of me I could not see why they would not support and could not find $15,000 out of savings of over $3 million.

Ms Cooke: Michael Power is a great mayor and we have a wonderful relationship. Quite frankly, as I had mentioned in my presentation, he does support the library. Unfortunately, he has an awful lot on his plate right now --

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that.

Ms Cooke: -- and the library is not his biggest concern. His biggest concern is dealing with amalgamation, for one thing, finding some kind of deal, and working on a new district heating plant and the airport.

The problem is that we're comparing apples and oranges here. We're comparing businesses, or facilities that should be run as a business, because I can appreciate that's where the money will be saved, versus a cultural institution like the library. They just cannot be put in the same basket and work effectively.

Mr Stewart: It's still a small amount of money, though.

Ms Cooke: I absolutely agree.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Cooke, for coming forward and making your presentation today. We appreciate it.

1500

MICHIPICOTEN TOWNSHIP PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Chair: Would Sandra Weitzel please come forward. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee.

Ms Sandra Weitzel: I'm head librarian at the Michipicoten Township Public Library in Wawa, a community of 4,200 situated on the northeastern shore of Lake Superior. While my board didn't request me to come today, they are in complete support of my statements today.

The Michipicoten library is widely used by the residents of Wawa and the two surrounding villages that contract library services. In 1997 we expect a circulation of 60,000. Our membership rate is over 75%. We recently added a new section to the library with the assistance of the provincial, federal and municipal infrastructure program, almost doubling the size of our facility.

People in Wawa, Hawk Junction and Michipicoten First Nation value their library. It is a place where they can get information, for example, from the value of their 1995 Ford vehicle to the main industry of Belize, to the best restaurants in Britain. They can read the top 10 best sellers in the fiction or non-fiction categories according to the Globe and Mail. Their children can get the best picture books and adventure stories. Their teens can do research, work on school projects and find magazines and books they want to read for fun. Soon they will be able to surf the net and get on board the information highway right in their local library.

Michipicoten library takes pride in providing an excellent source of print material to its patrons, which include those people who are just passing through and wish to read or do research for the day. I believe this is the foundation of library service: providing print material of the best quality and selection to the community free of charge.

While technology is hugely important and the information highway is the equalizer of all libraries no matter what their geography in terms of access to information, the printed word is valued and cherished by many. Bill 109 ensures that the use of print material will remain free of charge, as will in-library use of any material and special-format items for those with disabilities. Bill 109 takes into account, I believe, that print material is essential and as such shall remain free of charge.

Some critics argue that print will some day vanish from libraries and the book will be replaced with computers. I and many patrons disagree. They have told me that the book will survive as long as people have imagination and others have the desire to experience that imagination. Our patrons state emphatically that it is impossible to curl up at night with a computer or take a computer into a tub of bubbles. It's true.

Ask any avid reader and they will tell you the future of the printed word on pages of paper bound together into a book is very safe. Bill 109 recognizes this and as such ensures that we will all continue, as is the tradition, to provide free access to print items in our public libraries.

When Bill 109 comes into effect, libraries will have the option of charging user fees for all non-print items with the exception of items such as books on cassette used by those with disabilities. Our library will charge a fee. The decision to charge a small but real fee came about after careful consideration. Many of our patrons and non-resident visitors have asked us repeatedly why we do not charge for the lending of music or videocassettes. The reason once stated to them still did not make sense and they felt that the library should charge anyway.

Videos and music collections, while very important to the success of any library, are seen by the community as extras in terms of library service, therefore they are quite willing to pay a small amount to borrow these items. These are comments my patrons and everyone in the community has made repeatedly.

The attitude would be dramatically different if libraries proposed charging a fee for the borrowing of print items, and so it should be. People view books and information technology as essential while other items, although vastly popular, are viewed as secondary and worthy of an extra charge to maintain as long as the charge is within reason.

Michipicoten library will likely be levying a fee of $10 per year for a video and music membership and a fee of 85 cents per item checked out. Books on cassette will remain free of charge to not only the visually impaired but all patrons.

Provincial funding, when phased out, will allow municipalities to assume more responsibility for their libraries. I believe municipalities will do just that and will begin to consider libraries a completely local entity instead of one just outside of their reach that requires 75% of their operating budget from that same municipality.

I believe that by charging a small fee -- patrons are already willing to pay for non-print items -- Michipicoten library will more than recover the amount of the lost provincial funding that will likely occur in 1998. This does not mean, in my opinion, there will be an extra burden on taxpayers by charging them a fee for borrowing non-print items. It is actually a way for those who enjoy the extra service to fund it for the most part.

The amount collected from each taxpayer to support libraries should actually decrease as libraries have an opportunity for the first time to generate revenue. This does not mean, in my opinion, that mass charging for all items at inflated prices is what is in store for public libraries in the future. What Bill 109 means is that for certain items, libraries will be able to recover the cost of providing these items and others by charging a fee, to be determined at the local level, with local input, to suit local needs.

The amendment affecting the composition of library boards is, in my opinion, an improvement over the present act. While my community is small, some might say tiny, the library board regularly has seven to nine members, while municipal council has a total of four councillors and one reeve. Why would a library possibly require more people to sit as board members than an entire community needs as councillors? A board of nine people, which the library has had in the past, is difficult to assemble and manage, a board of seven is slightly easier, but a board of three or four is ideal.

Council themselves may even serve as the library board, which I believe will result in council as a whole understanding and appreciating the operations of libraries to a greater degree. Since many issues, ranging from funding to building maintenance in Michipicoten's particular situation, are concerns shared by council and municipal staff, working more closely with our municipality will prove to be beneficial, not detrimental.

In closing I wish to make it clear that in a perfect world where money it plentiful, traditional ways of doing business are successful and governments can afford to offer unlimited grants and taxpayers can afford to pay for them, no one, my board, my staff or I, would recommend charging fees at public libraries for anything. However, times have changed, fortunes have changed, ways of doing business have changed, and the proposed amendments seem to make the library system more fair in terms of funding and more accountable in terms of governance to the communities that support and use them.

Mr Martin: Your brief is rather interesting in that it stands out, because you're probably the only library board that has come and said that.

Ms Weitzel: I got that feeling, yes. From the very beginning my board has been of the opinion that this is a good thing if it has to be. We have undertaken other measures. We have decided to do business a different way: We have looked at fund-raising; we are working with service clubs. You just never know where any funding is, where it's going to end, so we decided last year that we really have to look at a different way of doing business.

Mr Martin: You may not be aware that Wawa was my home town.

Ms Weitzel: Yes. I know your sister.

Mr Martin: When I lived there as a youngster, the oldest of seven kids, we appreciated the fact that the library was free because we didn't have much money around the house. For the library to have charged us for anything at that time would have meant we wouldn't get it. I just wonder if there are still people in Wawa today who might find the imposition of a fee a bit of a burden.

Ms Weitzel: I really doubt at the level of my board and council -- we've been talking to council about this. They seem to think this is a fee, for those particular items, that is affordable.

Mr Martin: Will fees make up for the loss in provincial revenue?

Ms Weitzel: Yes.

Mrs Munro: I want to thank you for appearing before us here today and giving us, obviously, a different picture than we've seen.

Ms Weitzel: I'm leaving right away. I'm running out.

Mrs Munro: The purpose of hearings is precisely that: to be able to get a sense of what the issues are and also to hear some experiences people have that demonstrate the opportunities that are there to be taken and the ways to deal with the kinds of challenges that come along. I feel very strongly that in having you, in the context of what you've heard this afternoon, it's very important. Certainly throughout the days we have travelled we have heard not only those people who feel they're in crisis but also people who have been able to seize the opportunity and work something out.

What I would ask you then is, given the presentations you have been witness to here today, I'm wondering if there is one area of particular advice you would offer, where you see the pivotal point on what has allowed you to see this as an opportunity and what for others is a great obstacle.

Ms Weitzel: I think I'd find that hard to comment on. I got here at about a quarter to 3, so I only heard part of the Geraldton one. I don't really know. It's the basic thinking in Wawa by everyone, not just the library board and not just council. I think everyone realizes there has to be a new way of doing things and that's all there is to it. You can't just keep going along the same road. I think once everyone got used to that -- change is good.

Change is not a bad thing. You can make things work. That's really all I can say.

Mr Gravelle: Thank you very much, Ms Weitzel. It really is an interesting way to end the day, none of us will deny that, because we certainly have heard from other library boards and people who work in the libraries directly who obviously have greater fears. Clearly you're an optimist, I guess, is another way of putting it.

If I've got it right, $12,000 is the provincial funds you receive. I'm looking perhaps at old figures.

Ms Weitzel: Yes, they're old figures. Ours used to be $15,000.

Mr Gravelle: And it is now --

Ms Weitzel: This year it will be $8,800.

Mr Gravelle: Certainly the evidence we've had is that it really is very unlikely that you'll raise the money through user fees. Maybe 8% or 10% or even 6% is what you can raise from user fees. You're saying that's wrong.

Ms Weitzel: In our particular situation we expect that from videos and music, those items that will be subject to a user fee, if the circulation drops by 50%, we will still recover the amount of provincial funding we have this year. We'll recover that complete amount next year. It's being very pessimistic that it will drop by 50%. We don't expect that to happen.

I guess the whole thing too is that maybe this is just Wawa, I don't know, but we have had patrons weekly, daily, since January, saying, "Charge here." We get a lot of donations, because we say: "We can't charge you. We cannot do that right now." "Well, here's some money then."

Mr Gravelle: But don't you agree with the concept of absolutely equal accessibility?

Ms Weitzel: Of course I do.

Mr Gravelle: No matter what you say, there are going to be some people who will not access it. You may say they can afford it; they may say they cannot afford it. That's the concern. I think you're getting into an area where you really are denying equal accessibility, and we're going to be made to do it.

Ms Weitzel: My board and I have struggled with it. What we believe to be the foundation of a public library in this day and age, when things have to change, is what we're doing a very, very good job at providing right now, and that is an excellent print source. We have an excellent interlibrary loan system. We have an excellent reference system.

Mr Gravelle: Won't that be threatened, though, with other libraries --

The Chair: Mr Gravelle, we're out of time.

Mr Gravelle: Could we get a written copy of your brief?

Ms Weitzel: Can I mail you one?

The Chair: Yes. You can leave it with the clerk and we'll copy it for Mr Gravelle.

Thank you very much for coming in today and making a presentation. You've actually got a very nice group of people behind you. Don't worry, you don't have to rush to leave.

Thank you very much, committee members, and thank you to the folks of Thunder Bay for their hospitality.

We're adjourned until the call of the Chair.

The committee adjourned at 1515.