CONTENTS
Wednesday 17 April 1991
Appointments review process
Appointments review
Greg Burns
Massey Lombardi
Laura Rowe
Odoardo Di Santo
Brian King
Patrick Lawlor
Adjournment
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Vice-Chair: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East PC)
Bradley, James J. (St. Catharines L)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East NDP)
Grandmaître, Berna;d (Ottawa East L)
Haslam, Karen (Perth NDP)
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent NDP)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)
Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt NDP)
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West PC)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay NDP)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West NDP)
Substitutions:
Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC) for Mr McLean
Christopherson, David (Hamilton Centre NDP) for Mr Silipo
Clerk: Arnott, Douglas
Staff: Pond, David, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 0935 in room 228.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW PROCESS
Resuming consideration of the appointments review process.
The Chair: The first item on the agenda this morning is the report of the business of the subcommittee, that was circulated to all members. There was one matter left off which I would like to bring to the attention of members of the committee since Mr Stockwell is not here. He wanted to indicate item 3, that, "We as a subcommittee waive the right to review the following intended appointments." From time to time we are going to see that occur, when simply because of the pressures of time or other reasons, members of the subcommittee decide they simply do not want to review intended appointments such as the ones listed under 3. Mr Stockwell wanted it to be clearly on the record that that in no way indicates his support of those intended appointments. In fact, he is opposed to each and every appointment coming forward under this process and he wanted that to be clearly put on the record. Since he is not here at this time, I am doing it for him.
Mr Silipo: He will undoubtedly do that from time to time.
The Chair: He will remind us, I am sure.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW
Resuming consideration of intended appointments.
GREG BURNS
The Chair: The governing party has selected the first nominee for review, Greg Burns.
Mr Burns, would you like to come forward please. Welcome to the committee. Would you like to say anything before we begin the question and answer part of the interview?
Mr Burns: I do not think so, not at this time.
The Chair: All right. This is a government party selection and we will begin the questioning with the government party.
Mr Silipo: Mr Burns, I do not know if you have had a chance to take a look at the recent regulations with respect to employment equity or follow any of the information around those. It is clearly going to be an area in which the various police forces, as well as presumably the police services commissions, will be involved. Could you comment on the employment equity provisions in general or any particular way that you wish to?
Mr Burns: Certainly. I guess my overall comment be that I would fully support it. Having been in the public service myself for 18 1/2 years in municipal life, I think any public service, and particularly a police force, should reflect both the cultural and racial diversity in any community. I have had an opportunity to review very briefly that particular report and I think it is a good report. I think it is good legislation. I think it is time that this kind of thing came into vogue.
Mr Silipo: That is all.
The Chair: Anything further from the members of the governing party?
Mr Wiseman: I have got a couple of questions. You are to be appointed to the police services board. From looking at your résumé, most of your experience is outside the policing area. Is that correct?
Mr Burns: That is correct.
Mr Wiseman: Have you looked at any of the duties that you might be having in your new capacity?
Mr Burns: Yes, I have. I think one of the reasons why I applied for this particular position -- and I think you may be able to see it from the kinds of work that I have done in my community -- is I have a very strong background in committee work, locally, provincially and internationally. I have excellent negotiation skills. I have been involved with various contracts at the municipal level from a management point of view. As a negotiator and problem solver within the teams that I have had the opportunity to work with, I think I have skills in that particular area. I am a good listener and I think the fact that I do not carry with me any specific or special interest group allows me to come to this particular board with no pre-set bias or axe to grind.
The reason I applied for this particular position was I like to be involved with my community. I love my community. My wife and I have both made contributions to that community and I now have time in my new role as a faculty member at Conestoga College that I can get involved with different kinds of work like that.
Mr Wiseman: We seem to be going into an interesting time for policing. The makeup of our society is changing and community needs are changing. Have you had any chance to look at what might be the problems that your skills could help ameliorate in your area?
Mr Burns: I am very familiar with the community. I think I have a fairly good idea of some of the problems, or should I say some of the social issues, such as vandalism and that kind of thing, particularly in relation to my former position. I think as well I am fairly well known in the community, so people could use me as a sounding board for any concerns or issues related to the operation of the police force.
I think one of the specific issues, which has been dealt with most recently with the new legislation on employment equity, is the whole relationship that the police force has with a given community, that it should more reflect who lives in that community. I think in terms of the community that I live in, Cambridge. We have 16,000 Portuguese who live in that community, and a number of those people do not speak English. I think we should be reaching out to people like that, so that they can see that their police force, in essence, reflects their particular community as well. I think that is one of the major issues that any public service, but particularly a police force, has to deal with.
Mr Wiseman: As a person who has been involved with a lot of recreational activities, it would seem -- I am just going to speculate for a moment -- that when you are involved with young people on a continuous basis, there are a lot of service groups that you participate in and the police force is one of those groups that takes an active role in these service groups.
Mr Burns: Certainly.
Mr Wiseman: Have you had a lot of contact with police on the beat or at other levels in your other capacity?
Mr Burns: Yes. In my position of director of recreation I had a fair amount of contact with the local police department. Myself and staff members within our department worked with them and met with them on a monthly basis to look at issues as far-ranging as vandalism to patrolling, looking at some of the major concerns that we have relative to some of the high points of vandalism within our particular community. So I think I have a fairly good idea of how they operate, particularly in, let's say, the enforcement side of it.
Mr Wiseman: I just want to pursue that. It is interesting because you indicated that you have actually worked with them in attempting to put programs together. Is that true?
Mr Burns: Not necessarily programs, but basically working with other agencies, whether it be the board of education or, in my case, the city of Cambridge, or issues related to our parks and facilities. We would meet with them on a monthly basis just to review some of the high-incidence areas that we were dealing with. Certainly we have been supportive in the past related to any kind of programs that they have wanted to reach out to the community. We have made our community facilities -- arenas, pools, any of those facilities, community centres, senior citizen drop-in centres -- available for posters, community awareness types of programs.
Mr Wiseman: Do you see this new position as allowing you to expand on that? Is that one of the reasons that you really wanted this?
Mr Burns: Well, there are a number of reasons why I was interested in this. I will relate directly to the recreation area because it has facilities in community centres that are available for this kind of thing. I know all of the people within the Waterloo region. I think that if we were to encourage, as I think I would want to, community policing, it would be reaching out to the community through those particular facilities. They are a marvellous way of reaching a lot of young people particularly because it is the young kids who come into those facilities.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Burns, going back to employment equity -- and I believe in employment equity -- what would be the breakdown of the population in Waterloo as far as ethnic groups or minorities?
Mr Burns: Percentage-wise, or are you just talking in general terms?
Mr Grandmaître: Percentage-wise.
Mr Burns: I could not tell you percentage-wise. There are large segments of Portuguese and German people in particular. Those would be two that stand out as far as ethnic groups are concerned.
Mr Grandmaître: At the present time, does the Waterloo force reflect or represent the diversity of Waterloo?
Mr Burns: In my personal opinion, no, I do not think so at this point in time.
Mr Grandmaître: Would you know if the police chief or the existing board has made any attempt to rectify the situation?
Mr Burns: I am not sure if they have made any direct attempt. I know that has been discussed and is an ongoing concern of theirs. I know that with the new employment equity legislation there is a time line on that and it is one of the reasons why I am looking forward to that particular challenge, working with the chief and the other members of the board to ensure that that particular plan comes into place on time.
Mr Grandmaître: Knowing your community as well as you do, do you think it will be difficult for them to meet the famous hiring quotas that everybody is talking about? Do you think it will be difficult for your region to meet that requirement?
Mr Burns: It will probably be difficult for a lot of the forces. I think there are some people who have deeply entrenched feelings about what a police force should be, but I do not think it is something that is insurmountable by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is something that can be worked on. I think it is going to be difficult but I think that it is very possible.
Mr Grandmaître: I know there is no deadline to meet the requirement of the employment equity policy. It would mean that possibly they would have to go outside your region to meet the criteria.
Mr Burns: That is a strong possibility.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you believe that at least 50% of your force should be female?
Mr Burns: I am not sure if it should be 50%. First of all, I think everything has to be on merit and, second, I think that if in fact, and I think it is fairly close, 49% or 50% of the people living within the community are female, that is a goal the board should shoot for. Certainly, police forces are fairly entrenched and male-dominated and I think that is one of the issues the present board is going to have to deal with. This board like many other boards is going to have to deal with it. But again, I do not think that is insurmountable.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you think that by eliminating some of the hiring barriers the quality of police officers will diminish in this province?
Mr Burns: No, I do not believe so. I think there are good training programs for police officers. Personally I have the strongest regard for men and women who serve for our particular region as well as across the province. If those who are presently within the force are given upgrading opportunities, I do not think that the level of policing will diminish by any means.
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Mr Grandmaître: Not that I do not believe in female policing, but I am just concerned about the types of crimes that are being committed across this province, not only in your region. I am not saying that we need 6'4" or 6'5" policemen or policewomen. I am not saying this, but do you not think we will be putting some of these people at risk?
Mr Burns: I do not believe there is any difference between the job that a man or a woman can do whatever that job happens to be, whether it is a police officer, whether it happens to be a director of recreation or whether it happens to be a politician. I think everyone has capabilities. I would fear for anyone who puts his or her life on the line as every police officer does on a day-to-day basis. But I look at the fact that we have men and women serving this country, who have served this country most recently in the Gulf, and put their lives on the line every day. I am concerned for them but I am not concerned that we are putting people -- I do not have a concern that women would be any less diligent or any less capable of doing that job than any man.
Mr Grandmaître: As a former police commissioner for eight years, we have always had a terrible time to meet our quota. We wanted to hire more female police officers and we had a terrible time. How will you convince females to join your police force?
Mr Burns: I guess the first thing I would comment on is that there has always been a stigma, from a woman's point of view, about being a police officer. I think the legislation that has just gone through is making a very strong statement to women in general but specifically to those who would want to become police cadets and police officers, that they have the support of their government.
At this point in time I think what we have to do as police services boards is to augment that particular position and encourage women through a public awareness program. Again, maybe because I happen to work at a community college -- we have a law and security program -- I think there is a very strong statement that has been made in the last couple of months related to women on police forces. I think they have needed that kind of encouragement and I think it is very, very positive.
Mr Grandmaître: Good.
Mr McGuinty: Mr Burns, I wonder if I might begin by asking you something about the process which led to your appearing before us here today. Did you submit a name at some point, or how did you end up applying?
Mr Burns: Sorry, submit my name?
Mr McGuinty: Yes, applying for this position.
Mr Burns: I read both the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and the Cambridge Reporter from cover to cover every day. There was an article related to Mr Bell's resignation, which said they were looking for a replacement. I saw what they were looking for, basically, in the newspaper, called the police department and asked for a better idea of what it was all about. I looked at the skills that were being requested. I thought I had those skills and submitted my application through the process outlined to me by the secretary at the Waterloo Region Police Force.
Mr McGuinty: One of the problems that I believe the Toronto police are facing, and I think it is identical to the one faced by police in my area, Ottawa, is retaining ethnic representation. How would you address that?
Mr Burns: Again, I would go back to the statement that has been made from the top, if you will. The recent legislation has come out and said, "This is where we stand and it's a very, very important issue to us as a government of Ontario." I think that is the kind of thing that will encourage many people who have sat back and wondered whether in fact it was a career to pursue. Another thing that needs to be done is a strong public awareness campaign to the community colleges that have law and security administration types of programs as we do at our particular college. I know it has been well received at our college, because a number of the female students in that program have now looked at this as an option. Maybe they would have gone into Pinkerton's security system but now they are looking at a career in policing, from a public point of view.
The recent legislation has made a very strong statement that has been really well received by people I have talked to.
Mr Carr: I was interested in your statement that you are not a member of any special interest group.
Mr Burns: That is correct.
Mr Carr: I take it that you have no political background or affiliation, whatever?
Mr Burns: No.
Mr Carr: You do not know the Solicitor General at all, then.
Mr Burns: I know the Solicitor General because Mr Farnan was a member of our council in Cambridge when I was director of recreation.
Mr Carr: So you would have known him through that and had dealings with him then. But you just applied on your own?
Mr Burns: I applied solely on my own.
Mr Carr: What do you see as the objectives over the next little while? Where are your priorities going to be?
Mr Burns: For policing in general, or for --
Mr Carr: For your position. What are you going to do? As soon as you get in, what is going to be your first priority?
Mr Burns: I guess the first priority would be the entire issue of the employee equity plan, because that is something that is going to be on the plate for the next year or two, to ensure that is followed and meets the requirements of the province. I would suggest that probably is the biggest ticket item I would have to deal with, along with my colleagues on that board.
The other thing is the whole issue of community policing. I think there is a large percentage of the population who do have a lot of respect for our particular regional police force, but that is one of the roles I would like to play. It is a two-pronged thing, both from gaining the trust and confidence of the community at large for our particular police force, but also to indicate very visibly to the police officers and the police staff themselves that we support them. Maybe it is because I have been in that role before, working as a staff member in a municipality -- it is nice to have a pat on the back once in a while from the people who are responsible for overseeing the operation.
Mr Carr: As a politician, I know it would be nice to get a pat on the back maybe once in a while. So the priorities, then, are really going to be set by the province with this quota. That is where you see yourself.
Mr Burns: I believe so, for at least the next little while; no question.
Mr Carr: I do not know if you are familiar with this, maybe as a result of some of the recreation work you are doing, but a very high percentage of our crime is related to the drug situation; the statistics say 80% of break-ins and so on. Have you thought how you, as somebody who could really make a dent in this particular problem, would tackle that issue? Have you given any thought to what you --
Mr Burns: Yes, I have. Number one, getting back to community policing, there presently is a strong emphasis on drug education, and our police officers and department are doing a fine job on that. I would like to see more support for that, and not just coming from our own police force but also in partnership with the other agencies in town.
Again, I will reflect back to our municipal operation. A tremendous amount can be done through our various programs, our various community centres, youth drop-in centres, the various neighbourhood associations throughout Waterloo region that the police department can work very closely with, in partnership, to resolve some of those problems. No question; it is something I am concerned about. I have an 18-year-old son, I have a 14-year-old daughter who constantly talk about how easy it is, if they were interested, to get drugs in their local school, as well as most schools in the region. It is a concern of my wife and me every day as to what is happening at that school. I do not have any concern about my own kids, other than some of the pressures they have to deal with. Working with the boards of education, getting right into the classrooms, working with the community college, that kind of process I think would work.
Mr Carr: Education certainly has helped, and I know the police in my area help them do a lot of work. What about enforcement? There are really three prongs to tackling the drug problem. One is education, which hopefully we are going to do more of through our schools. There is a treatment which was also part of enforcement, and to really tackle it we are going to have to be tougher in terms of enforcement. Have you thought how we are going to be able to crack down on the drug dealers, for example, in the school? How are the police going to ensure that the flow of drugs is stopped? Is there anything you can see us doing in that area?
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Mr Burns: I have not developed any particular strategy. One of my personal priorities, if I were successful, would be to meet with the chief and those particular individuals to determine what they are presently doing, because I am not really totally aware of exactly what they are doing behind the scenes. I know what they are doing out front relative to their awareness program, but I would like to find out more about what they are actually doing behind the scenes. I do not come here with any particular strategy, other than the fact of a very strong support for it and a very sincere concern about it.
Mr Carr: So that might be pushed to the top in the priority list.
Mr Burns: That would be a personal priority. The priorities I listed earlier were priorities I would see the police services board working on together as a team.
Mr Carr: After that, what are some of the other personal priorities?
Mr Burns: Having had a brother who was on the Metro force years ago as a constable, and recognizing morale problems -- and I think there are going to be morale problems for the first little while, while this employment equity program kicks in and officers who have been around for a long time struggle with that and where they fit in related to promotions and so on. The police services board has to be aware of that and take a positive role with that particular issue. Again, that would be a personal approach, but I think it is something that, as a team, we are going to have to be very cognizant of.
Mr Carr: Have you given any thought to how you are going to use the resources more effectively? Even if you are Treasurer you are trying to balance how you can meet the demands versus the revenue. In policing it is no different; it is a big percentage of the budget and, as you know, taxpayers in the municipalities, seniors, cannot afford any more property taxes. Have you thought how you can take an overall approach and really take a look at the resources and make sure they are being used effectively, and set priorities and so on? You must have had to do that in your own recreation department. Have you formulated in your mind how you are going to do that?
Mr Burns: The first priority is to meet with the chief and get a much more in-depth idea of exactly what they do on a day-to-day basis, where they see their particular priorities. I would also like to talk to my colleagues on the police services board to see what, in fact, their particular visions are for the future.
My emphasis, coming from the background I come from, as well as the volunteer work I have done in the community, is on the whole issue of partnerships; for example, block parents. I am proud to say my wife got a citation from the chief four or five years ago, because four or five houses down from us a group of kids were breaking in and were caught red-handed as a result of her telephone call. We had some fun and saluting her in the morning when that happened.
The community is part and parcel of the partnership with the police force; they themselves have a responsibility for their community. It is not just a matter of calling the police but helping the police in every respect. I see that as a lower priority at this particular moment, but it certainly will be a higher priority once I get into this: the whole issue of partnerships and getting people to realize that they are, in fact, part of the policing community.
Mr Carr: As critic for the Solicitor General I spent some time out riding with some of the police, both in Halton, which would probably be more similar to your area, and also in Metro, where it is completely different. One of the things the police tell me is exactly what you said, the tips that come in and so on are really the most effective. Quite frankly, in some areas that is the only way criminals are caught, that somebody tips them off.
Mr Burns: Absolutely.
Mr Carr: That is the fastest way. Is there any way, in light of the fact that your wife is part of that -- and I think that is terrific -- that you see expanding some of the Crime Stoppers and the TIPS programs so that we can really get more community involvement? I know we put advertising campaigns together, but is there anything you can really do?
Mr Burns: The promotional campaign is number one. Number two is to make sure that after promotion, these things are happening at the lowest levels; I am talking about public school, so that it becomes natural for kids to recognize that the officer who is wearing the uniform and the hat is not someone to be afraid of but someone to be respected and someone they can go to and speak to, whether it is, "I see something happening here in my school," and tipping the police or just a greater respect for the law.
I have heard in my position as director of recreation that many people who come to Canada see not only those of us who work in municipalities but particularly the police force as the army, as something to be very much feared. We have to spend a lot of time educating the youngest ones at the lowest levels that that is not true of Canada.
Mr Carr: Good luck.
Mr Burns: Thank you.
The Chair: The NDP generously left two minutes for the Chair to ask a question. You are a very strong supporter of the equity provisions that were just announced. I would like to ask you a question about the makeup of the police services board. How reflective of the community is the board currently?
Mr Burns: The existing board?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Burns: In Waterloo region, you are talking about?
The Chair: That is right, the one you are going to sit on.
Mr Burns: We have a five-person board: two members who represent the elected bodies within the region and three members who are appointed at large. Mrs Donovan represents Joe Q. Public, as I would see myself. Judge Kirkpatrick is an individual who is very highly respected --
The Chair: I am talking about the handicapped, visible minorities. I find it strange that you are appearing here, a very strong supporter of the quota system -- another white male, if you will, being appointed. I am just wondering what kind of message that sends. You are being so strongly supportive of these changes to the force, but you are also supporting, obviously, your own appointment, which does not recognize the concerns you have expressed and the government of the day has expressed.
Mr Burns: I fully recognize that, but I am speaking on my own behalf and I know where I stand on those particular issues; I know what my hiring practice has been in the past, related to the people I have employed, related to the groups I have supported, and I know I can speak very generously on their behalf
The Chair: Thanks, Mr Burns. We appreciate your appearing here today.
Mr Burns: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
MASSEY LOMBARDI
The Chair: The next intended appointee has been selected by the official opposition, Rev Massey Lombardi. Welcome to the committee, Rev Lombardi. Again, this is a half-hour review, and we will begin with the official opposition.
Mr McGuinty: Reverend, you are, I am sure, quite familiar with the employment equity legislation. Tell us generally of your feelings about that, please.
Father Lombardi: I am supportive of equity in the workplace. Specifically, the target groups the police force has been requested to look at have traditionally been at a disadvantage. It is not just one person saying that but a number: native people, women, the disabled. I sit on the government committee for the disabled; it is my second year. The disabled are very able people who, because of varying degrees of disability, have not had an equal opportunity to apply for a series of things that have happened for the disabled, and I think that is really important.
It seems to me that equity is an attempt to remedy that so that people who have traditionally been at a disadvantage in terms of jobs will be able to utilize their resources. They are rich resources which until now have not been fully used. I think that is very important, so I am supportive of that.
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Mr McGuinty: Let me ask you a question regarding women in policing. I want you to think now of the task a police officer would be called upon to play during the course of his or her shift. Is there any limitation you feel a woman might have in comparison to a man in terms of police work?
Father Lombardi: I can think of a lot of limitations men would have in police work. With respect to my own experience, I think there are very few limitations. I think a woman who is properly trained can operate just as effectively as a man in that position. That question, I am sure, was asked of many women on the force. When you are talking about policing, the contribution women have made traditionally right across the board, on all levels of policing, whether it is RCMP, undercover work, spy work, all those things, women have done, I would suggest, very well, and I have not heard to the contrary.
Any limitations a woman would have would not be because she is a woman but because she does not have the talent, just as a man would not have the talent to do that. But if they are capable, I do not think there are any limitations at all.
Mr McGuinty: What if things get physical? You do not see any physical limitations? It is a scientific fact that men are, on the average, stronger than women. I think I would also have you recognize that there are some circumstances in the line of police work which call for things to get physical.
Father Lombardi: I would suggest also that the same is true of men, that police officers who are men have been beaten too. The question of physical prowess need not necessarily be the bottom line. I could suggest that there are situations where a woman, because of the very fact that she is a woman, probably could resolve a situation and not be physical in that sense. I think it depends on the circumstances. I think the same concern could be levelled at men. Male police officers get beaten up pretty good. If women are properly trained and have talent and utilize police procedures in a number of issues, I am really at a loss to figure in what circumstances they are not as good as men in any particular situation, if they have karate skills, if they have martial arts skills, if they have communications skills, all of those things that are needed for proper police work in those critical situations you are alluding to. Ask a woman who is in the force, and ask her if she cannot do the job. My guess is that she says she can or she would not be there.
Mr McGuinty: With respect to ethnic representation, maybe you could address the question I asked of the earlier witness; that is, the difficulty some police forces encounter in maintaining that representation. Particularly, would you go outside the community if you felt it was necessary in order to attract or obtain ethnic representation?
Father Lombardi: By virtue of the fact that those vacancies are open to all the public, I do not know what you mean by outside the community. Are we talking of outside Canada?
Mr McGuinty: Outside greater Toronto, for instance.
Father Lombardi: Well, if the person is living outside greater Toronto and submits an application for the police force, I would presume that all have the right to apply and to be interviewed and go through the process as laid out according to the Police Act and also the hiring practices of Metro police. I do not have any difficulty with that. You asked another question.
Mr McGuinty: How do you maintain the ethnic representation?
Father Lombardi: I do not know if the ethnic representation is significantly different than any other representation. If you see that a lot of the police officers who are not ethnic are going to other forces, I do not know exactly the reasons for it, but probably there are as many reasons as there are officers in the force.
With respect to ethnic representation, I think their concerns and sensitivity to their culture, the sensitivity in the workplace, the stresses on the workplace, what you would call a healthy workplace, a place where they can feel comfortable working, all of those things are part of the quality of life in the workplace both inside and outside the community. In my estimation, police have to be supported. They have to have the co-operation of the community and vice versa, because I do not think it is a question of policing.
If I could just expand your question, because you are asking a deeper question in terms of a specific city. The whole question of policing cannot take place in a vacuum. It has to be viewed in the milieu of the ethnic, multicultural, economic and political realities of the community. I think that how the community functions, its needs, its priorities and the needs and priorities of the police department, work together as a unit. I do not see them separate and apart if we are going to look at the question of prevention and law enforcement. It is a community trust and I think all those things have to be in place; when people in the community feel they are being accepted and they are trusted and there is mutual respect, I think it will go a long way for policing in general.
I think in the Metro area and Canada in general -- I spent 10 years in the States, I worked the streets in the ghettos and it is a whole different milieu there -- there is a whole respect for authority that I think we do not want in any way to devalue. The gentleman before me talked about the attitudes of the young. I think policing as a viable, important profession should be promoted and I think it is important from all ethnic perspectives, and that again starts with --
Mr McGuinty: I would like to conclude with one final question, then. What do you see as a reasonable schedule for implementation of employment equity in the Toronto police?
Father Lombardi: I do not know what you mean by reasonable schedule. I can only say that Metro, as I understand it, have already got a schedule in place and they have been working very diligently as far as I know around this whole question of hiring and fulfilling those target groups. I would want to look at that schedule with respect to how fast they are growing and what kind of projections they have. I think it is a question of the board working with the police department and trying to facilitate it as quickly as possible.
Mr Carr: I have a question for you regarding how you found out about the position. I know you have done a lot of work in your community. Is this something that you searched out yourself or were you contacted by anybody to consider the position?
Father Lombardi: My first phone call was from the Premier's office telling me that my name had been submitted and would I consider letting my name stand. I said yes.
Mr Carr: So you were drafted, in other words.
Father Lombardi: I was surprised and a little trepidatious, you know. People were saying they did not know whether they should congratulate me, but I thought about it and I said, well, I have been involved in the area for a long time. A lot of people were surprised that it has been 17 years, roughly, in these areas and my résumé will indicate that. It is just that I felt, as a responsible person, that I could not keep saying, "I shouldn't take it because it is difficult or there are some aggravations involved." That whole question, "Why didn't somebody do something," is always pushed on everybody's else's shoulders. So I said, I will try as best I can, use the resources that I have available and my experience for the safety of the community. So I said yes.
Mr Carr: You have said you are going to support Susan Eng as the chair, and I was wondering how the discussion went with the Premier. Did he say you could have the job as long as you support her? Maybe you could fill us in as to how that discussion went and how you remember it.
Father Lombardi: I guess I am in a kind of different position. I know everybody on the commission: Dennis Flynn, Alan Tonks, Lloyd Williams, over the years. When you are in the area of race relations and you are working in community development, those people constantly interact. So the question of who is on the committee and my respect for the commissioners -- I have worked with all of them. As for the question of Susan Eng chairing, from my experience with her over the years, I do not see any problem with that.
Mr Carr: So the Premier did not say, "This is the condition."
Father Lombardi: That was never brought up.
Mr Carr: But you are going to support her? Have you made that decision already?
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Father Lombardi: Yes. I think whatever misgivings other people have, that has not been my experience. I can only go from my experience, not somebody else's. All chairs get their strengths and their weaknesses from the people around them. All of you have known chairs of boards --
Mr Carr: We have got a great chair here, sir.
Father Lombardi: -- and your chair is as strong as the support you get from your directors. And unlike a corporation the chairman is supposed to reflect the decisions made at the board level. So I think that being a chairperson she is one of seven. I guess that is the positive side of it.
Mr Carr: One of the things Susan Eng had done in the past is rate the chief in the press on a scorecard. Do you plan on doing anything like that?
Father Lombardi: As I understand the act, that is one of the obligations and responsibilities of the commission, to evaluate the performance of the chief --
Interjection: In the Toronto Star?
Mr Carr: In the Toronto Star?
Father Lombardi: I would not have done that, I would have gone through the proper procedures, but you will have to ask her that. That is something I would not have done but --
Mr Carr: Do you think you are going to get a chance to ask her before you make a decision to support her as the chair or is that decision already made?
Father Lombardi: Excuse me?
Mr Carr: Will you get a chance to ask her about some of the concerns like that before you vote for her as the chair, or is that --
Father Lombardi: I do not know what the process is when you get into the committee room. I do not know when somebody submits their name, what questions are asked. I would think that there would be some questions asked around the table, some of us assume that. I really do not know the answer to your question because I do not know if there is a tradition in the commission, how those things are done. But I would think that we would be given an opportunity to discuss concerns, and if anybody has concerns, then that would be discussed.
Mr Carr: In light of that and if in fact it is an open process, that any of the people there can become chair, you are quite willing to look at maybe selecting somebody else and having a process where you do discuss it, not go into it and say, "Well, the Premier said" --
Father Lombardi: I am sorry, I cannot hear you.
Mr Carr: Okay, I will yell out --
Father Lombardi: If you could just speak a little louder, okay?
Mr Carr: So you are in favour of a process where you do not go in with preconceived ideas and say, "The Premier wants Susan Eng as chair so she is going to be." You would like to see a process where you actually discuss it -- and pick the best possible person?
Father Lombardi: I presumed that was what the process was. The fact that I am here is no guarantee that I am going to be selected. I mean, is it?
Interjection: Yes.
Interjections.
Mr Carr: I think he looks worried, though.
Father Lombardi: No, but I am talking about the fact that it is not official, that it is a suggestion, and also the question of the chair.
Mr Carr: How much time do we have?
The Chair: You have two and a half minutes.
Mr Stockwell: I have a question, political affiliation, card-carrying worker, donated, any party?
Father Lombardi: No. Somebody asked me that question. I said, "Ask any political party that sees me on the steps of the Legislature picketing against the present government -- it has been all three for the last 17 years.
Mr Stockwell: That really does not answer my question, though.
Father Lombardi: No.
Mr Stockwell: No membership, no donations, no working in anyone's campaign?
Father Lombardi: No.
Mr Stockwell: Okay. The next question is with respect to the Premier. You are telling me that no one in the Premier's office or the Premier himself told you you should be voting for Susan Eng.
Father Lombardi: No.
Mr Stockwell: They never mentioned that as part of the criteria?
Father Lombardi: No, they did not mention that because the discussion did not arise. When we began the discussion, I said I would not have any problems about Susan Eng at all so --
Mr Stockwell: Pardon?
Father Lombardi: I do not have any problem with Susan Eng at all.
Mr Stockwell: When you say you do not have any problem with Susan Eng as chairman, would you not think that means you are going to vote for Susan Eng?
Father Lombardi: I hope not.
Interjection.
Mr Stockwell: Excuse me?
Mrs Haslam: I do not have any problem with you. I would not vote for you, Chris.
Mr Stockwell: Thank God. Now let's be honest here --
Father Lombardi: I am.
Mr Stockwell: You are talking about her to the Premier and you say, "I do not have any problem with Susan Eng as chairman." Would you not think that they would assume that you are going to vote for Susan Eng as chairman?
Father Lombardi: They can assume all they want, that is not my assumption.
Mr Stockwell: That is not your assumption.
Father Lombardi: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: So if there is in fact opposition to Susan Eng as chair of the police board you would give full consideration to vote for the other person running against her?
Father Lombardi: I hope so, yes.
Mr Stockwell: So it is not a done deal.
Father Lombardi: In my estimation it is not a done deal. But the question is, I think, everybody has biases. When it comes to my experience with Susan Eng I do not have problems with it. If my opinion changes, then I think I have a right to change it.
Mr Stockwell: Maybe so, but the Premier has given us the distinct impression that it is a done deal. In fact, I think he was quoted in the paper, giving that impression, that it is a done deal. Now, I can only assume he knows it is a done deal because the appointments he is making are committed to vote for Susan Eng.
Father Lombardi: But I have already said in public that I would vote for Susan Eng, unless I know otherwise.
Mr Stockwell: Unless you know otherwise? Well, the only person that could know that is you.
Father Lombardi: Well, I will find out when we have the meetings with the board.
The Chair: Members of the government party? Mr Wiseman?
Mr Wiseman: I would like to start by pointing out that you have received a fair amount of support from other people on the board, including the past chair, who has written a letter saying:
"On behalf of the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Commissioners of Police, I extend my sincere thanks for assisting, over the past 12 months, in compiling the board's race relations policy.
"Your voluntary contribution of time and expertise has resulted in the publication of a policy document which will make a significant contribution towards this board's commitment to provide appropriate and effective police services which respect the diverse population of Metro Toronto.
"I understand that we are the first major North American police force to develop and adopt such a comprehensive, community-oriented and publicly accessible policy. I am deeply grateful that you elected to participate in this effort."
I would like you to expand upon the effort that you put into helping to create that document, and then perhaps you could explain how you see this document helping to reduce the tensions and some of the problems in the community as they exist today.
Father Lombardi: If I could step back about 10 years, looking at the issue of race relations, discrimination and the kinds of issues that any policy or any community would have, I made the clear decision that I was not going to spend a lot of time in church basements telling people about racism. I felt that the question of effective race relations policies was best dealt with at the highest levels in all the community, including school boards.
So I and other people began to assist school boards to develop race relations policies with respect to hiring, education and a number of things. Now, I will admit, policy is not the be-all and end-all; but it sets the framework for how one behaves and how one should react in particular institutions. And the police force is no different. They had standing order 24, and coming out of mediations that took place in North York with police in the community, although they had standing order 24 and bits and pieces of a race relations policy, it was not unified in one package, and we felt that the best thing would be to do that.
So I suggested to June Rowlands that that be developed, and she agreed. We had a number of meetings set up, and then we had community consultation, the same process as with the school boards which was very effective. The question of policies to ensure the kinds of quality relationships within the force itself also has its implications and ripple effect both in the community and in everything you do. So I think policies are very important. Again, they set the parameters, and then they are to be developed.
Mr Wiseman: Since the former chair of the police commission has a high regard for you, I am a little curious. You must have spent a lot of time dealing with the rank-and-file policemen in the work that you have done.
Father Lombardi: Yes.
Mr Wiseman: How would you characterize your relationship with the rank-and-file policemen? How do you think they view you and how do you view them?
Father Lombardi: I think there is mutual respect. They have got a very difficult job and sometimes they are not necessarily getting credit for it, but their heart is in the right place. I think they want to do their job. They are dedicated individuals and professionals, and I think all of us need to support that initiative.
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Mr Wiseman: One last question for me, because I will get cut off again.
Mr Bradley: You know the problem on this committee.
Mr Wiseman: He stole my two minutes.
Mr Bradley: This committee does not have enough time to deal with these matters, that is why.
Mr Wiseman: Obviously you have discussed issues with the rank-and-file policemen. What have they told you about changes they would like to see being made in the police force?
Father Lombardi: They have not told me the kinds of changes, specifically, but I think one of the things they have felt over the years is that they are not being appreciated enough for the kinds of work they do, the many hours of volunteer work they do, the kinds of initiatives outside their own responsibility and the kinds of things they do as police officers. Their volunteer work in a number of sectors is not adequately known and there is probably a real problem with the whole public relations issues around that. So I think those are some of their concerns. I have never heard them say they shy away from criticism, but at the same time they feel sometimes it is too one-sided and they say, "What about all the good stuff that I do?" So those are the kinds of things, especially, that happen.
Mr Wiseman: Do you see your role on the police commission also as an advocate in that regard, then?
Father Lombardi: Absolutely, and also the question of trying to bridge communities, different ethnic communities together with the police; and looking at strategies around that, how the community comes together. Even though they have differences, they come together with the whole question of security, enforcement and safety in the community of property and people.
The Chair: Is there anyone else from the government party?
Mr Frankford: Two of the things linked with much of the crime now are guns and drugs. Do you have any views on changes in legislation or societal approaches that would help?
Father Lombardi: I chair two task forces on drugs. One is the Multifaith Task Force on Substance Abuse for the province of Ontario and there are 30 faith groups. We have been operating for about a year and there is recognition that the faith groups have an important role to play in the whole question of safety and, specifically, substance abuse. I also chair part of Caritas Project, which is a substance-abuse treatment program. Then the third one I am on is the archdiocesan task force trying to develop a model for parish home and school to look effectively at the question of substance abuse.
While the question of enforcement came up last meeting, there are other considerations about prevention and that substance abuse is really not necessarily the problem as much as it is the result of a number of problems. You will find that successful programs in substance abuse -- you go to Alcoholics Anonymous and they will tell you that they have been able to rehabilitate themselves because they realize there is a spiritual dimension in their lives. They say that, that is not me saying it, although I agree with them. But the point is, there is a spiritual dimension there.
So, why people take drugs, or how you prevent them from taking drugs, the kinds of programs in the community that would help the community address the problem -- I have interviewed a lot of people, especially women and children, and the anxiety, the fear they have is real, and I think we really need to look at community projects to reduce that fear and help communities work together to resolve some of the issues around substance abuse. There are a variety of initiatives that need to be taken and I would like to take a look at that, not the least of which is the youth.
Mr Frankford: Am I hearing you say that the policing aspect should be somewhat downplayed, or be less of a priority?
Father Lombardi: No. I think it becomes a question of looking at the realities and saying, "In some cases, in some areas, the policing aspect may not need to be the main community thrust in terms of education." I think it depends on what the community's needs are, but enforcement has to be there, prevention has to be there, education and all the rest of the things that go with it, not the least of which, again, is government policy.
Sometimes government policy creates problems in a community and I will give you an example. When I was chaplain of the Don Jail, there were too many psychiatric patients in the jail; that is public knowledge, and the reason why is because the deinstitutionalization process that happened a number of years ago resulted in these people coming into the community without the necessary support structures and, therefore, causing the police to arrest them because they were creating a disturbance, and having to put them in jails where they did not belong. I would venture to say that is probably still the case if you go to the detention centres. I do not know what they are doing about it now.
With respect to substance abuse, you are talking about treatment in the United States and the whole question of drug treatment in Ontario; where do they go? The millions of dollars that are going to another country, the government is aware of that; let's see what they do with it.
There are a number of things happening that put pressure at the bottom end that the police officers have to deal with, and it obviously changes the structure and how policing is done. In that sense it is good, and then it requires the police college and those responsible for police training, as well as advice from people like ourselves. But policing procedures, the way policing was done years ago is changing now because of the needs of the community. And I think that is good.
Mr Silipo: Father Lombardi, I certainly know of some of your work within the community, particularly the Italian Canadian community, and the respect that you have within that community.
If you were to be able to look back at the end of your term if you were appointed to the police board, what are one or two things that you would like to ensure will have happened by the time you leave the board?
Father Lombardi: I never thought of it. I would think it would be the whole race relations issue with respect to the communities working together, respecting their differences but also seeing common ground where they can effectively use their resources and their talents, whatever those resources are, whether it is intellectual, whether it is personal talents or financial, that they would come together to define some common goals to make the community a better place to live.
I do not know if you are aware of the peace garden at city hall. It was that kind of concern I had with the community. We live in a community and people say I am prejudiced with regard to the Toronto metropolitan area. It is a unique place to live. I have lived in other places and you come home and you appreciate the diversity. There is no place like it anywhere. Here people come from various backgrounds, various cultures, to live in peace. There was no visible expression of Toronto people's desire for both community peace and world peace. So I suggested that the peace garden be built and I went to Japan and brought the flame back.
The reality is that we need to praise people for that. We need to give them credit that they are law-abiding and peace-loving; they have to be applauded for that because without that kind of format and that kind of vision we would have a difficult time in our communities. I think the community has to be given credit for being law-abiding and working closely with the police department. I think it is an important thing to state. It is not just Metro; I think it is all of Ontario. I can only speak of Metro because I have been most of my life in the Metro area.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Father Lombardi. Thirty seconds or less, if you could make an observation, if you have one to offer, with respect to the change of oath which has had a lot of attention today. Do you have any comments you would like to make on that?
Father Lombardi: On what?
The Chair: The change of oath with respect to not taking an oath to the Queen.
Father Lombardi: That is a difficult one. That is a tradition, feelings run deep, I have not really given it much thought. I know there is real sensitivity around that and I think it depends on who you talk to as to how sensitive it becomes. When you get to my age you start wondering after a while, but people have grown up with the tradition and other people may not have that same kind of background. It is a very, very difficult issue, and I really do not know how to respond to it.
I just think being sensitive to the sensitivities all around, not the least of which is the feeling that it is disrespect for the Queen, or that we are not for Canada, we are not for each other, it is a very difficult thing. Just appreciate the sensitivities.
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The Chair: Thanks very much. We appreciate you appearing here today.
LAURA ROWE
The Chair: Ms Rowe, welcome to the committee. You have been selected for review by the official opposition and we will open up the questioning with Mr Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: Good morning, Ms Rowe. You were chosen among, what, nine million people in this province to become a commissioner. How would you describe yourself? What makes you the ideal commissioner?
Ms Rowe: I think I am the ideal commissioner because I have had 13 years' experience in Toronto doing community organizing work. I have had a great deal of personal history with issues around poverty, having raised children of my own and having lived on family benefits to get an education. I have worked within the women's movement, particularly on victim assistance issues, so I have worked very directly in police liaison work. I have been active in anti-racism work. I have developed employment equity policies in the agencies that I have worked in. I have developed personnel policy. I have acted as liaison between management and staff groups. I have negotiated with the Ministry of Health for the employees at the agency I work for. I have covered a wide range of issues in my work. I also run a mediation and facilitation business, so I am, I think, experienced at building complex compromises in very polarized situations. Is that the kind of answer you were looking for?
Mr Grandmaître: It is your answer. I know it is my question, but --
Ms Rowe: Well, I wondered if you needed a more complete answer.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you hope to replace Susan Eng as chairperson one day? Are you next on the list?
Ms Rowe: Actually, I am so nervous about being here today and so anxious to hear your evaluation of my credentials that that is beyond anything I could imagine. To tell you the truth, it is sort of like dropping Dorothy in Oz.
Mr Grandmaître: Can you briefly give us your thoughts on the employment equity program or the quotas that you will be asked to respect in the next three or four years, as far as ethnic representation on the Metro police force? Can you give me your thoughts on that policy?
Ms Rowe: Yes. I was lucky enough to attend the public part of the commission recently and saw some of the figures in terms of percentage increase in equity employment and I was glad they exceeded the target numbers that had been named by the board in the past. I am very interested in seeing equity employment become part of the agenda of the police services board, if I am a part of that board. I think it is essential that the police force in Toronto represent the community and that the community appreciate the police force that it has. That is going to happen through some kind of osmosis taking place, where we do some trade-offs and get some representative work and education happening both ways. I think some of that is going to happen to equity employment.
Mr Grandmaître: One last question then and we will go on to Mr McGuinty. One last question, Ms Rowe. We know that you were told to vote for Susan Eng. Would you have voted for Susan even if you were not told?
Ms Rowe: Actually, it did not quite happen that way. I was told that I was the appointed designate. I had to come before the standing committee but I was the appointed designate and I was asked if I would vote for Susan Eng and I said yes. In part, why I said yes is because, although I am not in agreement with all the things that Susan represents, I do think I am in agreement fundamentally with many of the things that she says. So yes, I will be voting for her. I can answer that quite categorically.
Mr McGuinty: Ms Rowe, I have just reviewed your CV here and I do not see any indication that you have had experience related to policing or, for that matter, related to the criminal justice system. Is there anything there that I am missing?
Ms Rowe: I can tell you first of all that I spent five years at the rape crisis centre setting up a program that was basically a liaison program between the community relations officers in the five districts. That involved everything from phone conversations to informal wine and cheese parties and things like that so that we could set up a program of public speaking on the issues surrounding rape and sexual assault with uniformed police officers in each of the divisions. I went on Sunday mornings and did what were referred to as bull sessions -- I always hoped they were more session and less bull -- and spoke to about 40 police officers each Sunday over a two- or three-year period on issues surrounding rape, sexual assault, wife-battering and victim assistance. The new forensic kit had just come out then and been released by the Solicitor General's office at great cost and so I talked about collection of forensic evidence at that point.
I also wrote a handbook on the use of that forensic kit, rape trauma syndrome, the way to get the best kind of evidence from a woman who is traumatized, etc. That book was written for the Metro Toronto police. Five thousand copies of it were published and distributed to the CROs, and future publishings were the responsibility of the Metro Toronto police force. I do not know whether it has been published again, but certainly we blanketed the city with that booklet and I wrote it.
In terms of my current work since I left the centre, I have probably come into more constant contact with uniformed police officers than a lot of people because I work in a group home with people who have psychiatric disabilities and often are either a danger to themselves or to others and who are often very vulnerable to assault. I am currently working as an advocate for one of those women with Officer Tinkler and Detective Ferguson out of 52 Division, who have been incredibly sensitive --
The Chair: I am going to have to tell you that we are on very tough time lines here and we have now exceeded the official opposition time limit. We will have to move on to Mr Carr. I am sorry.
Ms Rowe: I am sorry I just had to say so much.
The Chair: You may have a chance in another response.
Mr Carr: I was interested in the process of how you were chosen. Mr Lombardi came in and said that he was actually called and he was, if you want, drafted. What was the process and how did you get chosen?
Ms Rowe: I was encouraged by friends, none of whom I could name that you would know, but friends I have worked with in the community through the rape crisis centre and the other kinds of victim advocacy work I have done, to apply for the Ontario Human Rights Commission. I sent in an application, and this résumé that you have in front of you, for the human rights commission.
When Carol Phillips reviewed my application, she called me in for an interview and suggested to me at that point that I might want to consider the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board, despite the fact that it would be a more difficult task in some ways, but that my mediation skills might serve me well there as well as my antipoverty work and my work within the community and basically my front-line work with people who do not usually have access to political power.
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Mr Carr: You were drafted by Mr Lombardi as well as the Premier's office, if you will, on this particular --
Ms Rowe: Nobody phoned me to ask me, nobody knew me.
Mr Carr: Did Carol Phillips call?
Ms Rowe: Carol Phillips did not know me before she got my application and she called me in.
Mr Carr: No, I meant, she called you afterwards.
Ms Rowe: Yes.
Mr Carr: I was interested in a quote from Art Lymer that talked about some of his concerns with yourself and he says, "My concern with Rowe is her intelligence and understanding of what the police work is all about," you may have read this, "and the difficulties of policing and her interest in the men and women who make up the force." I was wondering what you would say to Mr Lymer which would alleviate some of those concerns that he might have. How are you going to handle that and bridge what would seem to me to be a tremendous gap? How are you going to handle that?
Ms Rowe: In terms of my intelligence, I hope that would become obvious to Mr Lymer after speaking to me for a few minutes. I do not feel that this is in question.
The issue of how police officers are going to feel about me depends on how much access, I think, commissioners get to police officers. Right now, there seems to me to be a very clear buffer between the brass and the uniformed police officers. I would really like to see some of that break down a bit and have more access and more casual contact. I have two cousins who are OPP officers, one of whom had to leave the OPP when he felt his job became too dangerous because they put him on single patrol at night. I want to hear those kinds of concerns.
Mr Carr: That is good because I spent some time up on 31 with the police division; that is the Jane and Finch area and there is only one commissioner who has ever spent the time to go out there in the middle of the night when the real crimes -- they say to me that they are making decisions on the front line and nobody has ever been there to see, other than Commissioner Gardner, I guess.
I am interested in your work regarding some of the rape crisis centres. I read where sexual attacks on women are up 32.8%, police say. I think what the public is looking for from you are some real concrete solutions to the problem, and to make our streets safe again. I think that should be the first priority: to make our streets safe. That is what is concerning people now. What would be the priorities and how are you going to do that, to try and make our streets safe, not only from the sexual attacks that are out there, but the murders that are on the rise, the break-and-enters that are on the rise? How are you going to do that? How are you going to tackle it?
Ms Rowe: I think I have a lot to learn and will use Ted Price and the chief to inform myself. I know there are solutions to issues around assaults on women and some of those solutions are laying charges. That, many times, does not happen. So I would like to see that happen more often.
I really am a strong proponent of education. I do not know if any of you saw the CITY TV report last night; one of the police officers showed an empty office saying, "This is our sexual assault squad office and there's nobody in it because they're all out on calls." That really concerned me, and I thought that clearly part of how this is addressed is in terms of how we look at the budget line by line and where we decide to spend money.
Mr Stockwell: Party affiliation: Do you have any?
Ms Rowe: I do not. I am not a member of a party. You are not asking me about how I vote. You are asking me if I have ever held a card or anything.
Mr Stockwell: No. If you worked last election? Made donations?
Ms Rowe: No.
Mr Stockwell: Quota systems: a lot of talk about quota systems. What is your opinion?
Ms Rowe: I think affirmative action is very important and I think equity hiring is very important, but I think it is essential that anybody coming into the police force feels they are welcome. And I think it is essential that the police force have access to the communities that you are targeting for equity hiring. So trust has to be built up and I would like to see more of that happening.
Mr Stockwell: But you do not necessarily believe in quotas.
Ms Rowe: I could listen to argument on it. I have not formed a solid opinion. I am not sure that they work, but I am certainly a strong proponent of equity hiring.
Mr Stockwell: Equity hiring. For instance, I see you are a spokesman for the gay and lesbian community -- would there be an equity hiring program for that community?
Ms Rowe: That is a former group that I was a part of. It is listed under my former affiliations.
Mr Stockwell: Oh, I am sorry, yes.
Ms Rowe: That is okay.
Mr Stockwell: Should we include that component of society as part of our equity hiring on the police force?
Ms Rowe: My guess is that there are probably quite a few gay and lesbian police officers and --
Mr Stockwell: I would probably agree with you, but I am asking you, should that be --
Ms Rowe: Right now my focus is equity hiring in terms of visible minorities --
Mr Stockwell: Visible minorities, disabled, women?
Ms Rowe: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: So that would be on the back burner. You said you want to get more involved in the policing --
Ms Rowe: I just want to stop you there. I presume that the police force is held accountable to the Ontario Human Rights Code and that gay and lesbian police officers have access to that and --
Mr Stockwell: Yes, just like everyone else.
Ms Rowe: Yes, I would hope so.
Mr Stockwell: Of course, yes. Policing -- you are a commissioner. How much more involved do you want to get? I think that is very dangerous, frankly, to get too involved in the policing aspect. You are setting policy. You are making statements on the policy and the avenues that you want to see policing take in Metropolitan Toronto. Now I do not see you out policing or in fact directing police. You did not mean getting involved with respect to taking complaints from policemen about their work, along those lines?
Ms Rowe: No. If I happen to be at Knob Hill Farms where I shop and the police officer on duty could take a coffee break, I would love to hear what it is like to spend a Saturday working that job.
Mr Stockwell: The Knob Hill Farms beat?
Ms Rowe: Yes, and it is a tough one. Actually he often helps me with my five-year-old who goes into the washroom by himself. I worry about him and the police officer is often the one who goes in to get him. So I would like to have those kinds of informal chats, but I am not asking to have any direct power over uniformed police officers.
Mr Stockwell: Do you know all the members of the police board personally?
Ms Rowe: No, I do not know many of them personally.
Mr Stockwell: How do you know you would vote for Susan Eng then?
Ms Rowe: I have met Susan.
Mr Stockwell: But you have not met the other ones.
Ms Rowe: I have met Massey and I have met Susan and I sat in on the public part of a board meeting recently. But I do read the paper and I am well informed.
Mr Stockwell: You just mentioned Art Lymer commenting he should maybe talk with you for a few minutes to form an opinion. Do you think maybe you should talk to members of the police commission before forming an opinion on whom you would vote for for chairman?
Ms Rowe: As I said, I have read --
Mr Stockwell: You have read the paper.
Ms Rowe: I have read the paper. I understand the positions that are being put forth, and I have spoken to Susan Eng and I have sat in public parts of the commission meeting and heard Norm Gardner and Alan Tonks and the chief and Ted Price and June Rowlands and everybody speak, yes.
Mr Stockwell: And also, considering you have given an undertaking to the government to support Susan Eng, that has something to do with it, I would assume.
Ms Rowe: As I said, I was told I was appointed before I was asked for that.
Mrs Haslam: I am interested in the issue of policing in general because I think that is something that we are looking at: not just all the ins and outs of the uniformed police but policing in general. What are some of the problems you see in policing today?
Ms Rowe: I see a great lack of community confidence and I see a great demoralization of the officers on the force because of that lack of community confidence and I would like to see those things changed. I would like to see our community feel as though the police force is responsive and caring and truly there to protect and serve, and I would like to see our police force feel appreciated, believed in and supported for the work that they do. I think that can only happen with some exchange of ideas, some very clear messages that the police are subject to and bound by the same rules and regulations as we are.
I am a little concerned, for example, that, during investigations of police misconduct, information that comes out of those investigations can be used, in my understanding, in the courtroom if the police officer is charged. So therefore that police officer does not have the same legal rights as any other defendant in a criminal case, because he is not given the warnings about his right to a lawyer to protect himself. I want to see that working both ways: I want to see police protecting the rights of individuals, I want to see them responsible for their actions, but I also want to see them treated fairly under the law when their actions are not legal.
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Mrs Haslam: I was looking at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre. Violence against women, I think, is something that we all have to be concerned about. Do you think your experiences there will help in some way on the board, and could you maybe tell me how you feel your mediation experience and your work in the rape crisis centre could help you on the board?
Ms Rowe: In a number of ways. I would be happy to do any work that I can with the sexual assault squad. I think there are probably public education programs that could be set up that I can aid in and certainly support in terms of finding the moneys. I would like the focus, in terms of sexual assault, to be on policing rather than education, because often the implication of educating women about sexual assault is that, "If you had done this or if you had not done that or if you followed our rules, it would not have happened to you." I do not think that is true. I would like to see more charges laid, because very often a charge does not even get on the books; it is just considered unfounded. All kinds of factors affect that, and it is one of the things that I think we can be talking about and dealing with.
Mrs Haslam: If you are successful in this appointment, you will be one of two women on the board, is that correct?
Ms Rowe: Yes.
Mrs Haslam: As one woman on this committee, I wish you well.
Ms Rowe: Thank you.
Mr Silipo: It seems to me that there certainly are some deep divisions on the police services board, which have probably crystallized around the issue of Susan Eng's possible selection as the chair of the board. How deep do you think those divisions are, and more important, what do you think the board is going to have to do to try to overcome some of those divisions?
Ms Rowe: Again, my experience is so limited, because I was only allowed to be a part of the public part of the meeting. What I saw there were intelligent, active, complex people, and I presume that intelligent, active, complex people can build intelligent, active, complex compromises, and I think that is what is going to happen. I think that is what is going to have to happen from Susan's end, I think it is going to have to come from me, and I think it is going to have to come from Mr Tonks and Mr Gardner. Mr Flynn was actually amazing in this meeting, and I think he will be a great asset to building those kinds of compromises.
I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Ted Price, who, as you know, works very closely with the chief, and does seem to have a great capacity for compromise and for taking small steps if he cannot take the big ones. So that is what I see happening.
The Chair: Ms Rowe, you made some revelations about your personal life last week. I am just curious: When you decided to do that, were you advised or encouraged by anyone associated with the government or a member of the government, or was that a completely personal decision?
Ms Rowe: Certainly Carol Phillips, because as I said, originally my application was for the human rights commission, so in my covering letter I talked about the fact that I am a lesbian, that I have a child of African Canadian descent, all the things that I think makes me sensitive to human rights issues. That was information that I gave both her and Bob Rae's office permission to release. I found out later that there is some problem with releasing information like that, that the press is not allowed to print that unless they ask me.
Mr Grandmaître: Since when?
Ms Rowe: Well, this is what they told me.
Mr Stockwell: Do not buy into that.
Ms Rowe: Do not buy that? Okay, thank you. I will remember that.
I was being interviewed on a fairly consistent basis with the assumption that because I had small children I had a male partner. I became very uncomfortable with the lie by omission, and I felt for a long time that it is very important that public officials, and even potential public officials, tell the truth. I want to hear the truth and I want to try and tell it as I know it.
The Chair: So you believe your sexual orientation -- you indicated that clearly in your application to the government -- was a factor in terms of the government making a decision to select you to serve on the police board.
Ms Rowe: No, actually I was not asked. The times I was interviewed, I do not think my sexual orientation was one of the issues considered a plus for the police board. I was asked primarily about my work in victim assistance, my work in police liaison training, and my work in mediation. Those are the areas that were focused on. I think also my anti-poverty work and my time living in a housing project and on family benefits, given that the connection between poverty and crime is so often made in the press and other places, those are the issues that they were focusing on.
The Chair: Well, thank you very much. I wish you well.
Ms Rowe: Am I done?
The Chair: This is it, yes.
Ms Rowe: Thank you.
The Chair: Could I encourage those members who want to carry on conversations to do so in the hall? We still have a number of intended appointees to consider this morning.
ODOARDO DI SANTO
The Chair: The next intended appointee is Odoardo Di Santo. Mr Di Santo, would you like to come forward, please? Welcome back to a reasonably familiar room to you. Before we begin, I will afford you an opportunity for a few brief comments, if you wish, before we get into questioning.
Mr Di Santo: No, that is okay.
The Chair: You were selected by the official opposition for review, and they will begin the questioning. Mr Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: What are the most pressing issues or problems with the Worker's Compensation Board at the present time?
Mr Di Santo: At this moment I think the Worker's Compensation Board is faced with many problems. One of the problems is financial, due to falling revenues caused mostly by the recession. It is affecting the government and all the other public institutions. Apart from that, the Workers' Compensation Board at this time has problems that are related to the way the board operates and basically the way the board delivers its services to its clients: the accident victims and the employers.
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In the last five years the board underwent a number of changes and reorganizations. Because of that, and also I think because of some inherent problems that went with the reorganization, morale problems were created within the board. The service delivery at this point leaves a lot to be desired. There are problems with the adjudication system, with the length of time that it takes to make a decision. There is, of course, a problem with employers having access to the revenue department and the way they are assessed.
Just yesterday an employer called me because he could not get through to anyone, he had an assessment and they were going to issue a writ and he wanted this assessment rescheduled. Because of the innovations introduced in the board, it is extremely difficult for the injured workers and for employers to have the kind of service that is acceptable. I am not there yet, so we have to assess the situation when I get to the board. One of the reasons is the high volume of claims that the adjudicators have.
I am told the adjudicators have to deal with 400 claims. That is, in my opinion, excessive. If that is the case, of course you can imagine how long the people who need service have to wait. As director of the office of the worker adviser, we ran a number of seminars and that was the universal complaint we received from members' assistants: that they were unable to access the board and have fast and possibly equitable decisions for their constituents. This is the first problem that we have to deal with and we have to deal with very soon because, as you understand, justice delayed is justice denied.
We have cases of workers who have been waiting months and months and months without a decision and in many cases workers' compensation is the only income for those people, so it becomes really a very sad situation. From the human point of view it is intolerable. I think if the board is to achieve its mandate it has to be able to deliver its services in an acceptable time.
We see a number of problems with the board that directly affect the injured workers, because the injured workers are the recipients of the benefits and those who are affected directly and personally, and also affect the employers. In fact, I think the only unanimity that exists between the workers and the employers is in the way they see the board: as an organization which is not responsive, which is faceless. I think we have to humanize that organization and make sure that a worker who needs service is able to relate to a person at the board in human terms and be understood and be able to express his or her concern, and the same for the employers.
I had an example of some employers who came to my office. That may seem ironic to you because the office of the worker adviser is mandated to represent injured workers. But the employers, like the injured workers, go everywhere possible if they cannot have access to the board. I had this particular employer who until last year was a big employer in the construction industry with 225 workers; now he is scaling down because of the crisis in the industry. He could not get his assessment rescheduled. He was risking bankruptcy because the board would not release clearance on all seven accounts and he could not pay all seven accounts. The only logical thing we could think of is that he set each account at the same time, and as soon as he paid an account he would deal with the other one and in the meantime he could survive.
So there is unanimity between the workers and the employers in the way they see the board. From the point of view of the workers, there are some policies that must be changed and we will attempt to change them.
There have been many reports. One report on rehabilitation was done for the last government by Minna and Majesky. It is essential that workers who get injured on the job and need to go back to the labour market be rehabilitated. As it is today, and, I must say, as a result of Bill 162, rehabilitation is not only not mandatory but has been downgraded to the point where it is non-existent. In fact, the requirement of Bill 162 is only for an assessment for rehabilitation purposes, which of course is totally inadequate, especially in a changing labour market and with the requirements of training and retraining required by the changes in our economy. Rehabilitation is one of the aspects. Benefits are another aspect.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Di Santo, I do not like interrupt you but I would like to go on to --
The Chair: That answer took up about 80% of the opposition's time. You have one more question, and I would encourage Mr Di Santo to give a brief response.
Mr Di Santo: Mr Chairman, I apologize.
Mr Grandmaître: I think you have the same problem as our Speaker, Mr Chairman. You let people go on too long.
Mr Di Santo, you have mentioned the financial problem the board is faced with, and also delays in dealing with different cases. Does that mean we can expect an increase in worker's compensation fees to business people and also workers? Does that mean we need to increase those fees?
Mr Di Santo: I think that question must be put in context. If you are asking me if I made up my mind that I want to increase assessments because of the problems, then the answer is no. But of course there would be some increases that will go with inflation, because the costs of the board are not decreasing, and I would be less than honest if I said that three years from now we will bring the financial situation of the board under control and we will reduce all the outstanding liabilities. That is not possible, it is not reality; it has been attempted in the past to retire the unfunded liability in a number of years. But what I make a commitment to do and what I will attempt to do is that we will introduce programs that in the long range will be beneficial to the board financially.
Mr Carr: I think all members are concerned about the amount of time our offices take dealing with the issue of the WCB. As all members know, it could be about 50% of the day on that one issue alone. What recommendations as a former member would you make on how to deal with this big issue that literally is taking about half the offices' time? What would you suggest we do to help the workers and the process?
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Mr Di Santo: Mr Chairman, I will try not to take too much time, but I have been involved in workers' compensation since 1967 when I tried to help former member Fred Young, who was the member for Yorkview in the west end of Toronto, and he had the same problem. On top of it, he had another problem, because most of the injured workers were Italians and he could not speak Italian and they could not speak English; it took a long time.
As the board is now, it is very difficult to reduce the time-consuming commitment you have to make to your constituents, because the organization is cumbersome. If we do not come to a situation where decisions are made speedily, you will spend a lot of time, because your constituents will come to you and you have to assist them. If they want to appeal, you have to make the appeal and the appeal takes a number of months.
The other important aspect that I think is crucial -- this is my personal idea; I have not discussed it with anyone -- is that we have to change the philosophy of the board. Since 1915 until Bill 162, the board operated practically as a priority insurance. The workers went to the board, they had some services, then they were left on their own. And when they are left on their own, they are without income. But they need to eat, so they come to the MPP because they want to get something more; it is human nature; they have no other source of income. So we have to change the public philosophy and the approach. We have to make sure that a worker who is injured on the job, and becomes disabled, has some guarantee from our society that he can get back to employment. Until now all the public institutions in our society -- government, the board itself, municipalities, school boards -- do not make any effort to rehire injured workers.
Mr Carr: On that point, do you see an increase in the amount of staffing? Because the big problem is that they cannot get through and the phone calls back up and then they get frustrated and they phone your office. Just from your experience, how many new people do you think you are going to need in the WCB to get rid of this backlog?
Mr Di Santo: I think, quite frankly, it is not a question of numbers, because if you look at the statistics, the number of claims dealt with by the Workers' Compensation Board in the last 10 years does not vary too much: 430,000, 420,000, 410,000. I think it is the way they are dealt with that has become a problem. I remember that until a few years ago there were counselling specialists who dealt with some groups. Some people said that was an élitist approach because the MPPs have access and other people do not, but I think that was one of the ways to speed up the work and to make decisions very quickly. We have to try to think of some devices, but certainly I do not think the answer is an inordinate increase in staffing.
Mr Carr: How about when the decision came for you to take this? How did that process work? Were you in direct contact with the Premier's office? Being a former member, did you know Mr MacKenzie and he called up and said this is coming up? How did that work?
Mr Di Santo: I was called by Carol Phillips, whom I did not know. In fact, the first time I saw her was this morning. We never met before.
Mr Carr: She has been a busy lady, contacting everybody.
Mr Di Santo: She told me I was the intended nominee, and I thanked her very much.
Mr Carr: Was there any type of interview with the Premier or Mr MacKenzie or anybody, or was it just basically --
Mr Di Santo: No. In all fairness, having been a member of the Legislature and having been at the office of the worker adviser, I thought those were sufficient credentials for the Office of the Premier to --
Mr Carr: It is normal practice, because even though you are a member of the same party there could be differences. You did not have any "This is the direction we would like to go. Do you agree with this?" and so on. You really do not know if you are even going to be compatible with --
Mr Di Santo: Actually, I must tell you I know very little about the appointment. I have not seen the order in council. I do not even know when it comes. Miss Phillips has not told me.
Mr Grandmaître: We do not know either.
Mr Di Santo: You do not know either, so we are all in the same boat.
Mr Carr: So you have not been able to say, "This is going to be my number one priority and number two," and make sure it meshes with the government's.
Mr Di Santo: No, I have not, but as I said before, they know exactly where I stand, because in the last number of years I have been involved not only in running the office --
Mr Carr: But that was when you were in opposition. Now you are in government, and it makes a difference.
Mr Di Santo: I must tell you that I was chosen by the previous Liberal government. I do not want to say that I am a man for all seasons, but it must have something to do with my background.
Mr Carr: I am just wondering how it is going to mesh. The problem in that area is so urgent it is my feeling that you should step in and have priorities right away. One of the criticisms about the government is that it is going to take a long time for somebody to get in and decide what it is. Meanwhile, we have a tremendous backlog and I guess I was hoping that the workers who are in the system now could have some assurance that by such and such a date -- that the government has worked out its directions, knows its priorities, has set some deadlines, but I guess what you are telling me today is that really has not happened.
Mr Di Santo: We have not discussed that, but I think it is broadly understood because of my background and because of the position we have been expressing all along.
Mr Carr: But when you get this position, you have to be a lot more detailed. Of course, politicians in election campaigns put out one line for something, but now we are talking about a publicly detailed business plan that has to get right down to it. When you are talking about eliminating a problem like this I would suspect it is probably the most difficult position out there.
That is why I was hoping we would be able to say to the workers that the government has a plan: "We have this person in, we already know what fits, these are the priorities, this is the date we are going to do it." But coming out of this today, I do not think there is anything positive we can say to the workers, because basically you are going to have to get in there, look at it and understand what the situation is before we see any concrete priorities set up.
Mr Di Santo: Of course, I could not work out any work plan before appearing before the committee, and that is our first priority. But what we can say is that we want to reorganize the board, we want to make the service efficient, we want to have an open board, with consultation; and we want to work with the staff within the board, we want to work co-operatively because otherwise it does not work.
Mr Carr: Of course, as you know, that statement has been made by every government since it has been formed. That is a very broad statement.
Do you have any deadlines in your own mind? Because you know what is going to happen in your position: They are going to say that this is the situation as it was when you came in, including the unfunded liability portion and backlogs, and whenever your term is up people are going to say we are better off or we are worse off. Do you have any time frames, would you be able to say: "Boy, by a year from now we're going to have this thing under control, we're going to have a dent in it, and I'd like to have the number of cases reduced"? What is the time line you are looking at?
The Chair: You have one minute or less, Mr Di Santo.
Mr Di Santo: Very briefly, I cannot make any such commitment because I am not there yet. For instance, you know there are problems with overpayments. I do not know how the workers' benefits service works because I am not there. The system of paying out cheques must be changed. I know it must be changed because you end up paying $2 million, but I do not know why it happens. We have to be physically there. With the first annual report, I may be able to make the commitment you are asking me to make now.
Mr Carr: Thank you and good luck.
Mr Di Santo: Thank you.
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Mr Hayes: Mr Di Santo, I know a lot of changes have been made in the automotive industry, with its new technology. At one time they used to make different components or different engines; a worker would do different parts and not continually have the repetitive motion which in fact has created a lot of strains and sprains for the workers. I know this is part of the problem. Of course, at the same time that workers are complaining about more injuries happening in some of these industries, on the other hand you have the corporations saying, "our workers' comp premiums are just getting out of hand."
While there are people who may say, "Well, maybe it's the dumb worker, the worker didn't do the job the right way," I know from my own experience that there are areas where you can make changes, through ergonomics, for example, where you adapt the job to the person instead of trying to adapt the person to the job. If we continue this trend, I cannot see a whole lot being done without proper changing of jobs to fit the worker. I would like to know what involvement the board would have in trying to implement or at least make suggestions to the corporations, and unions for that matter, about proper training and retraining for workers to reduce some of the strains and sprains in the workplace.
Mr Di Santo: That has to be a major goal of the government in terms of public policy, because if you do not make the link between health and safety and accidents, then you will end up dealing with the symptoms, and that will never stop because you will have accidents for ever. I think the primary goal of any government must be the reduction of accidents, because every accident becomes a tragedy for the people who are involved and, of course, becomes a cost for society.
We have to be able to work together with the government, and the board must spearhead prevention as much as possible. With Bill 208, the first step has been made and I think the public policymaking process is directed now to accept the link between occupational health and accidents. Also, if we are going towards a comprehensive accident plan the Workers' Compensation Board must become part of that plan as well, but the ultimate goal must be reduction of the accidents and I think the board can do a lot in that field. There have been a number of programs and, as you know, there are a number of associations, such as the Construction Safety Association of Ontario, which deal particularly with prevention.
I do not know how effective that has been until now, basically because I think there has not been legislation directed, in a very tough way, at preventing accidents. So I think you have to educate the workers, you have to educate the employers, but also you have to make accidents very costly so that you discourage the accident from happening.
Mr Hayes: Of course, one of the problems also is that we seem to produce a lot more now with a lot less people.
Mr Di Santo: That is right. Productivity is another issue. In the last few years there have been a number of disabilities that have been recognized, like stress, disabilities resulting from ergonomics, and of course that is something we have been supporting in the last few years with the office of the worker adviser and our input in any consultation the board had, and at the board we would make sure it will contain it.
Mr Wiseman: I have a couple of constituent assistants who would be greatly appreciative of whatever you can do to expedite the claims at the Workers' Compensation Board. They spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with those and would very much like to see some changes made. Perhaps, if you need further input, some of these people who are dealing with it on a daily basis throughout the province might have some helpful hints.
I am interested in a couple of things Mr Hayes was saying. Do you know of any statistical breakdown or analysis of the types of accidents that most frequently happen?
Mr Di Santo: Basically, most of the accidents happen in heavy industries: construction, mining, lumber. But I do not have a breakdown of the accidents industry by industry; those are the industries, though, where there are more incidents. In fact, 49% of all the claims are generated in a relatively small geographic area, in the west end of Toronto and Mississauga, which is also the area where most of the construction workers are located.
Mr Wiseman: I guess if we had a breakdown of the types of accidents that occur, we might be able to develop some kind of strategy to reduce the number and the frequency.
Mr Di Santo: I think there is a breakdown. I do not have it.
Mr Wiseman: I was just curious as to what kind of direction you would see the board going in playing a role in that area because, as we have already heard, the costs are very high and, as you said, everybody would like to see those costs reduced.
Mr Di Santo: That is right. As I said before to Mr Hayes, I think the route to take is prevention, because the more you prevent accidents, the more the costs go down.
Mr Waters: How would you propose dealing with the unfunded liability of the Workers' Compensation Board at a time when business cannot afford any higher premiums?
Mr Di Santo: Well, the unfunded liability is not a present commitment. It is a commitment of the board towards future payments that it will have to make. I do not think there will ever be a situation where the whole liability of the board will be completely funded, because there are some unforeseen circumstances that will require some funds that are not present at that time. But I think right now the unfunded liability is in the range of $8 billion for all pensions and other benefits that the board will pay. I know there has been a plan to retire the liability. Initially the plan was set at the year 2014 and recently it has been brought to 2007. If that happens, and I cannot tell you right now because I have not seen the budget of the WCB, I think that is the direction to go.
Mr Waters: Another question I have is industrial disease.
The Chair: Make this quick because we are really out of time.
Mr Waters: Do you see the board dealing with industrial diseases in any other way than taking them into consideration in, shall we say, a more expeditious way?
Mr Di Santo: The board has been overtaken by circumstances because there are a number of diseases that are the result of technological changes and the introduction of chemicals and other hazardous matters in various industries. But I think we have to make an effort so that the board quickly recognizes new diseases. If you remember a few years ago with Johns Manville, a number of workers contracted cancer and when it was recognized most of them were dead. I do not think that should happen.
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The Chair: Thanks very much, Mr Di Santo. We wish you well.
BRIAN KING
The Chair: Next intended appointment has been selected by the third party, Mr Brian King.
Welcome to the committee, Mr King.
Mr King: Good morning.
The Chair: We are going to go right into questioning and we will begin with Mr Carr.
Mr Carr: I was interested in your background as a chairperson in Saskatchewan. One of the things you said was you "successfully introduced the first major design change in the 75-year history of workers' compensation in Canada," and "developed the financial integrity of the system." I was wondering if you could lay out what the plan was and if you see it working here and how you would implement it and why you think it was so successful.
Mr King: To simplify a good deal, on 1 January 1980 Saskatchewan introduced a wage-loss type of workers' compensation somewhat similar to what Ontario is entering right now. It had been untested and untried anywhere else in North America that we were aware of. Little was known of how to contemplate the future costs of a wage-loss plan because there was no model to look at. I was appointed in June 1979 and we introduced the plan, fully functional, on 1 January 1980, six months later. That meant that we had to develop all of the policies, all of the procedures to put in place, and as well work very closely with consulting actuaries in determining a funding model for the wage-loss compensation plan.
I guess the success of the program is that it has been reviewed every four to five years since then by a tripartite committee composed of employers and workers and a neutral chair. They continue to commend the plan. They recommend modest changes to it but there is no critique of the actual plan itself or how it is running.
Second, the Saskatchewan board, the last time I looked, is in a fully funded position.
Mr Carr: Is that where it was when you left? When you came in, was it the same way or --
Mr King: It had been fully funded when I came in but we had introduced this major change in the workers' compensation system.
Mr Carr: So at the end when you left it was still --
Mr King: It was still fully funded.
Mr Carr: What about Manitoba? Was it --
Mr King: Manitoba, when I went there, there was around $80 million to $90 million of unfunded liability. We had not made a significant dent in that in the roughly two years that I was chair.
Mr Carr: Was it higher or lower after you left?
Mr King: I would suggest it was $5 to $7 million lower.
Mr Carr: So when you talk about "developed the financial integrity of the system," you really did not because not much changed in Saskatchewan. You went in okay, you came out okay. And in Manitoba you were pretty much the same, you made some changes but --
Mr King: I beg to differ. The board introduced a totally new concept in compensating injured workers. All of the existing actuarial assumptions had to be reviewed and remodelled, and it would have been very easy for the board either to overfund or underfund this new program. We worked very diligently to make sure we had sufficient money to look after the future needs of the injured workers without unduly burdening the employers, so it was very hard work to develop that funding model in Saskatchewan.
Mr Carr: How did you learn about this particular position? Were you solicited by Carol Phillips like some of the others here or did you apply?
Mr King: I was actually approached by an employment consulting firm -- I do not, quite frankly, remember the name of it -- from Toronto asking if I would be interested in taking this position. I was interviewed on the telephone for roughly an hour.
Mr Carr: By whom?
Mr King: Someone from this consulting firm. I do not know whether I even kept the name because the only contact I had with the consulting firm was that hour on the telephone. Based on that, I got a request to come down for an interview for the position.
Mr Carr: Who interviewed you?
Mr King: I went before Dr Elgie, the chairman of the board; George Thomson, the Deputy Minister of Labour; Carol Phillips was there and one other person who was with the Minister of Labour's office: Bill Reno, I believe it was.
Mr Carr: And did you talk about the direction you would like to take it or did they suggest, "This is where we would like to go; do you agree?" Were there any policy decisions, options thrown out there?
Mr King: This was a job interview. As such, they did not give me any directions. They asked me questions. I told them my impression of the needs of the Ontario Workers' Compensation Board from my experience, which was service-oriented, the need to get the credibility of the system vastly improved.
Mr Carr: Your background. Are you a supporter of any party at all?
Mr King: No.
Mr Carr: Under the Saskatchewan plan, the government of the day was what party?
Mr King: The government of the day, when I started, was NDP. The government of the day when I left was Progressive Conservative. About half my term was under the NDP and about half under the Conservative Party.
Mr Carr: The same in Manitoba?
Mr King: That is correct.
Mr Carr: Came in under the NDP and went out under the Conservatives.
Mr King: That is correct.
Mr Carr: Good, let's hope it keeps up.
Mr Stockwell: How do you measure success? Your unfunded liability you suggest was a few millions down. What is your success measurement?
Mr King: I can tell you it was with some interest that I listened to some of the questions this morning of the preceding interviewee regarding the MPPs' and officers' time spent dealing with workers' compensation complaints. I can tell you that one of the lowest priorities of the MLAs in Saskatchewan was workers' compensation cases. They simply did not have problems.
Mr Stockwell: What is your success rate? How do you measure it? Is it reduction in unfunded liability? Where do I measure success for you?
Mr King: I suppose you will have to define that. I have to define myself what --
Mr Stockwell: Well, that is why you are here.
Mr King: How would I define success?
Mr Stockwell: I am asking you, yes.
Mr King: In my position, whether I am able to undertake the direction of the board vis-à-vis policy implementation and administration of the board.
Mr Stockwell: How about personally? Do you think the unfunded liability portion of the workers' compensation is a benchmark? Is that something you would like to see reduced? You do not consider it that important?
Mr King: It is so large that it sometimes is a staggering figure to me; of course I think it should be reduced, but I think it is a policy decision as to how far it should be reduced.
Mr Stockwell: Personally, I think it is so screwed up, I do not think anyone is going to fix it, but assuming someone can, maybe you are the person who should. When you report back to this committee or to the government, what would be your number one priority? If you report to the government, "This is what has to be done and I beg you to do this," what is it?
Mr King: My own theories of workers' compensation fit right into this. I believe that unless a compensation system can meet the needs of its clientele quickly and responsively, the boards are going to have a problem. Therefore I think the major need of the Ontario Workers' Compensation Board is, to use a metaphor, to answer the phones immediately, to get the decisions made immediately on workers' cases, to help the employers get their clearances and to know their assessment rates, because every time you alienate an employer and a worker and an MPP, you add another problem for the compensation board. If I report back here and you see a reduction in the number of complaints coming to your office, if you see increased speed in decision-making, I think you are going to see the improvement in workers' compensation you are looking for.
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Mr Stockwell: I would be happy with the reduction in the unfunded liability, frankly.
Mr King: One will lead to the other, in my view.
The Chair: Anyone from the government party? Mr Waters?
Mr Waters: I am going to ask one of the same questions I asked the last time, because it seems that it is quite important with our changing times. You are dealing with people with disease. I can tell you of one plant that closed down four or five years ago. It employed about 100 people. There are now 20 people that have contracted major disease, nine of whom are dead, and that is just one, so there is a lot of disease problems that do not seem to be handled by WCB very well. I was wondering if you could give us any insight as to how you would change those things.
Mr King: To some extent that may be the problem of the administration of the compensation board. Are they equipped to make decisions quickly on whether certain industrial processes lead to diseases? On the other hand, part of that may be a legislative problem. Some of the boards in Canada have schedules which make presumptions. If you work in a certain type of industry and you contract a certain type of disease, it is presumed that you contracted that disease in that industry. It is very simple for the Workers' Compensation Board to administer those claims. I believe a good deal of work is being done in Ontario right now in the area of occupational disease research and recommendations to the board. As the administrator of the Workers' Compensation Board, however, I would see my job as following the policies of the board of governors and the Legislature in the act, making sure that there are no holdups through the administration.
Mr Waters: How would you respond to the claim that you would tend to favour the injured worker over the employer?
Mr King: I do not know why I would tend to favour that. You would have to expand on your question, please.
Mr Waters: It is just that there was a perception, I guess from your background, being appointed by two NDP governments, that you would --
Mr King: My whole career has been spent as a third party. My initial work in government, I guess, began with the office of the worker advocate in Saskatchewan. I started that office, but just like any attorney, I do the job that is required of me. I set that office up in roughly one year and moved on to become a disinterested third party, if you will. Had I been favouring one party or the other, I do not think you would have seen such unanimity in the report as we did in Manitoba. A three-member committee did a report. We had 178 recommendations. Industry signed 176 of them and labour signed 176 of them. There were two minorities each. I work within the confines and the direction given to me, and if I am working in a tripartite organization, I understand the need for consensus between industry and labour.
Mr Waters: If you can relieve some of the load going into my office, you are the man for the job. Thank you.
The Chair: Anyone else? The official opposition?
Mr McGuinty: Mr King, when I review the paper record, your curriculum vitae and Mr Di Santo's, I think the question that comes to my mind is, why is it that you are not applying for the position of chair?
Mr King: I did not know the position was open, quite frankly
Mr McGuinty: Have you had an opportunity to meet with Mr Di Santo?
Mr King: I met him this morning at breakfast.
Mr McGuinty: It is probably unfair of me to ask you then whether you feel that you can work with, or for, Mr Di Santo. You do not know him that well?
Mr King: I talked to him once, possibly twice, on the telephone to offer congratulations and to set up a meeting, and I met him over breakfast this morning. I see no difficulty myself. Under the act, the vice-chair works under the general direction of the chairman, but the vice-chair works as well for the board of governors. It is the policies of the board of governors that the vice-chairman has to implement.
Mr McGuinty: With respect to the unfunded liability, you have indicated that was a major concern. Would you consider increasing premiums in order to address that?
Mr King: I do not see that as my option as the vice-chair of administration. My position would be to give advice, certainly, to the board of governors on the financial status of the board, and if I felt it necessary it would be my recommendation that the rates be raised, but ultimately it would be up to the board of directors as to whether they raised rates.
Mr McGuinty: I understand that, Mr King, but as a man of your experience, I think you would be called upon, quite rightly, to give advice, and in considering the kind of advice you would be giving, is that within the realm of the possible that you would recommend that premiums be increased?
Mr King: If one of the priorities of the Workers' Compensation Board was to reduce the unfunded liability, there are only two or three ways to do that: You reduce the accidents that occur, the frequency; you reduce the severity of the injuries, or how long people are on benefit; you cut the benefits to the injured workers; or you increase the revenues. Those are the only four ways to go about solving a financial problem, or I suppose there is a fifth way, if you expand the industrial base and are able to tax more, which means a growth in the economy.
If one of the priorities of the Workers' Compensation Board is to reduce that unfunded liability, I personally do not believe you should do so by cutting benefits. I do believe you can do so through reduced injuries, and that is one area I would like to see priority put upon. Second, I believe you can reduce costs by reducing the severity, through better rehabilitation and medical treatment, and quite frankly, service to injured workers, because if you get someone angry at you early on in the picture, he is going to stay angry at you in the more expensive claim. Finally, if those two do not work and the priority of the board is to reduce the unfunded liability, I would have to recommend an increase in rates.
Mr McGuinty: I am looking at a copy of an article here in the Winnipeg Free Press, Wednesday 3 August 1988. The title was, "Time for a WCB Strategy." It says in here:
"When Brian King was an inquiry commissioner examining the WCB, he wanted to increase the revenue by forcing coverage upon white-collar workers and others who would produce plenty of premium income and few claims."
I guess I should ask you in fairness, first of all, is this an accurate reflection of the views you held at the time, and second, do you still espouse that view today?
Mr King: I believe that was probably an editorial rather than a news article. That is first. Second, Manitoba is almost unique in Canadian workers' compensation in that none of the white-collar are covered under workers' compensation.
I did not put it down in the report as a recommendation as a way to increase revenues, I put it down as a recommendation, agreed to by my colleagues from industry and from labour, as a means of equity, of providing equal treatment to the employers and workers of the province within the Canadian workers' compensation milieu. Some people in the white-collar industries felt an encroachment upon their turf and presumably were influential enough to get an editorial in the Winnipeg paper saying that it was a money grab. I deny that, as would my colleagues on the review of workers' compensation.
Do I believe that white-collar workers should be covered? Of course they should be covered. Do I believe that white-collar should be taxed higher? It depends on the assessment system of the Workers' Compensation Board. There are many different kinds of assessment systems, starting with the unemployment insurance model where every employer pays the same amount, to some workers' compensation systems which have hundreds of categories of employers, all of which pay a different rate. I favour a somewhat middle model, which is a reduction in rates but some flattening out of the rates. In fact, we recommended a minimum rate so that you do not have your $20 accounts to make it worth your papers.
Mr McGuinty: I am wondering as well, with respect to your appearance before us today, did you have any discussions regarding your attendance before this committee relating to the kinds of questions we would be asking or the potential outcome of this --
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Mr King: Well, I phoned the clerk to ask what appearing before a legislative committee was and he said I would be asked perhaps -- it had not been decided at that time -- to appear and answer any questions about my views, but that is all I have been involved in concerning my appearance this morning.
Mr McGuinty: Those are my questions, thank you.
The Chair: Anything else? Mr Bradley, you have got about three minutes.
Mr Bradley: How many, three minutes? Do you consider that you have this job now?
Mr King: No, as a matter of fact I would await the deliberations of the committee before I undertook any role with the Workers' Compensation Board.
Mr Bradley: Are you aware that the committee has no power to reject your appointment by the government?
Mr King: No, I was not particularly aware of that, although I did read -- I suppose it was impossible to miss some of the discussion that has been taking place in the media regarding certain appointments and whether or not they would go through, whether the committee approved them or not but I was not aware that a rejection by this committee would mean a rejection of me for the job. I do not know whether I would take the job if I was rejected by the committee.
Mr Stockwell: Don't worry about it.
Mr Bradley: You come to the committee then with the recommendation, I take it, of both the executive council, as they call it -- cabinet, as we call it -- and the Minister of Labour specifically, do you?
Mr King: I appeared before four people in the job interview and at the end of that time I received a call from I believe it was Carol Phillips, saying that the decision of the committee was to ask me to become the vice-chairman. That is all I know about the process of selection.
Mr Bradley: You may not be aware of the answer to this and I would understand if you were not. Were you the only applicant for this job who was considered by the government?
Mr King: No, I was not. I do know the answer to that, having run into one of the other applicants by chance in the hallway.
The Chair: Thanks very much, Mr King, for appearing here today and we wish you well.
PATRICK LAWLOR
The Chair: The next intended appointee, selected by the government party, Patrick Lawlor. Welcome to the committee, Mr Lawlor. It is good to see you back in the building.
Interjections.
The Chair: You have been selected for review by the government party, and I am just going to keep talking over all of this -- you are used to this sort of thing -- and ask, are there any members of the government party who would like to begin the questioning?
Mr Lawlor: May I have a brief statement, Mr Chairman, before you begin?
The Chair: All right, but it is difficult. I am going to have to reduce the time. I am trying to stick to this fairly rigidly and religiously. But if it is very brief indeed, go ahead.
Mr Lawlor: It will be very brief. Yes, I come again into the Legislative Building, a little strangely, to be quite frank. I have been away for 10 years. I think Jim Bradley is the only one who was a colleague at that time, and we got along splendidly, did we not, Jim?
Mr Bradley: I enjoyed your poetry.
Mr Lawlor: In any event, I was here for 14 years at the time. My work was largely in the field of legal matters. We only had two lawyers in the caucus at the time, Jim Renwick and myself, so it was heavily burdened, let me tell you. And then on occasion I did a reprise, a respite from that, and would become the critic of the Treasury and Economics portfolio and Charlie MacNaughton and people like that. I will not say any more at the moment.
Mr Waters: How would you see yourself as being capable of representing the larger community outside the university system? After 14 years as a legislator in public service, do you feel that would assist you in your new job -- I guess is the way to put it, or prospective new job?
Mr Lawlor: I considered it, by the way, as a part-time job, not full-time as I understand it. In any event, yes, of course with one's exposure over a period of time as a politician, you identify with whatever. If you run a constituency office -- and you all do, I am sure -- again, you are constantly meeting people, listening to complaints, doing the best you can under the circumstances. That would be my answer.
Mr Waters: I was just wondering, because you are not a member of the university committee, how that would work for giving advice to the minister.
Mr Lawlor: No. That is true. This is direct advice, of course, this committee we are speaking of, the university affairs, in any event.
I just want to mention I have kept very close touch with the university community in the past, since I have left the House. I have taken innumerable courses at the university, let's put it that way, in theory of law mostly and in theology schools too, and just finished a course in macroeconomics theory over at Ryerson over the wintertime. There are half a dozen others, but I will not go into them.
Mr Waters: Just to save Chris the exercise, because Chris will ask anyway, you might as well state whether or not you have ever been active in any political party.
Mr Lawlor: Yes, I have.
Mr Wiseman: The amount of money that goes into the university system is quite large. However, we, especially those of us on the standing committee on finance and economic affairs, have been approached by both the students and the faculty of the universities saying that this is not enough, that there is an unfair burden being placed on students, that class sizes are too big, that by the year 2000 we will lose a tremendous number of our professors with PhDs who are already in the system. Do you have any comments on any of that? Do you see any kind of a role for you in alleviating that scenario?
Mr Lawlor: I think we face a fairly, not just restrictive, but I would even say almost appalling prospect in that particular regard. A lot of people stick, in nuclear physics and in other fields where they could derive far better benefits by going south or by going elsewhere but nevertheless remain in Ontario out of a kind of loyalty. Northrop Frye could have taken over in another university, probably in Germany somewhere, because of his encyclopaedic knowledge and all that sort of thing, but he stopped. We have quite a number of people like that -- a sense of loyalty.
As you say, every government, it goes without saying almost, requires more funds, and the university faculties certainly do require considerably more. The demands get greater every year. At one point $8 billion, I think, was going out in operating grants, quite apart from any capital expenditures. But capital expenditures have been severely cut back.
The university system, with this committee, has made the decision -- it was made back in John Robarts's day -- that there would be 15 Ontario universities and that is it. If there were going to be any more, or any more colleges of technology or whatever, they would not be able to establish independently. They would have to affiliate, is the term, with an existing university. There are all kinds of problems in that. Universities do not like to affiliate. Sometimes they cut fairly deeply into their funds.
But your question is directed to funding, and I think last year it was 4.8% or something like that against the previous year. But the demands, I say, even from the reading I have been able to do -- and I went in to see Dr Nelles a week ago. He is the chairman of the committee. I did not know the gentleman, but he gave me a huge stack of material, which I have not been able to penetrate. I have got some distance with it, and I am terribly frustrated by the demands: new programs, new graduate studies, the role of the student grants.
And by the way, they operate according -- and I have just learned this -- to an almost mystical scale, the acronyms that are operative in the university sector, and elsewhere too, I quite agree, but I think they proliferate there. There are all these various initials, all supposed to be pronounceable in one way or another, that keep cropping up. For instance OCUA, the one that we are talking about today, has a large advisory committee of just professors. It is called AAC, and if you went on with this, you would make some strange noises, let me tell you.
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The Chair: Mr Wiseman, I would like to advise you that Mr Frankford also wished to ask a question. You have got about two and a half minutes.
Mr Wiseman: You ask yours. If I get another shot at it, I will come back.
Mr Frankford: I guess one of the questions would be that the aim of this is to improve accessibility to higher education and I can see that we are going to have tensions between an overall system and the ideas, often coming out of the University of Toronto, of world-class centres of excellence. I wonder if you would like to comment on dealing with that.
Mr Lawlor: Toronto, for instance, which is I suppose the major university, has status in the world, a very high status. Its funding, though, in terms of benefits, in terms of trust funds, etc, is somewhere about the 50th in the world. It does not have large sums of money on its own hook that have been left by estates and things like that. Harvard, for instance, has $400-and-some-odd billion that is available to it, and just last year it went out to seek funds of another $1 billion simply because it was running short and needed to expand some of the faculties.
I think that with our Canadian attitude towards education, that is, not spreading it all over the horizon, not having schools where you teach cosmetics, something called cosmetology, etc, where you teach beekeeping at university level with a graduate course, any number of frippery departments -- Ontario does not do that. I think I would be of some assistance in trying to restrict the spread of different departments and small departments within the university community, because there is always pressure for supposed new knowledge. I saw two years ago that 21 different new applications were made. That was for added funding for things that have not been taught before. That has to be scrutinized with the greatest care.
I do not think the Ontario universities rank, really, any one of them, at a high world level. I mean, the University of Berlin, the University of Louvain, Paris, these are the famous ones, although I think the education given at Toronto, if I may say so, from what I can discover, is probably better on the whole than the University of Oxford or even Cambridge. Oxford's literary emphasis and Cambridge with its scientific emphasis rank extremely high. But there is a kind of seminar system that operates there and if you are a very bright student and you enter into it avariciously almost, you come out with great aplomb and considerable education. But here the kind of concentrated study that we do and are required to do in seminars and in papers, over against the United States -- and I do not want to be unnecessarily invidious, but a little invidious, thank you -- over against the United States on the whole, our education system stacks very high in my opinion.
The Chair: We are going to move on. We are a couple of minutes over, actually. Does anyone in the official opposition have any questions? Mr Bradley.
Mr Bradley: My first question relates to the role of smaller universities in the province of Ontario. In the university community, there is a divergence of views on the role, for instance, that the University of Toronto or other major universities should play as opposed to the role of smaller universities such as Trent or Brock or Lakehead. Rather than be too specific in the question, would you have any thoughts on the role of the smaller university in the province?
Mr Lawlor: I am glad you asked that question. I was studying up last night.
The major paper done is 50 pages long; an analysis of the role of the smaller college-like, if you will, university, something like Trent or Brock or what not. It restricts, perhaps, the science portfolio -- science is enormously complicated. You people here know that there is a ranking system inside, how they allocate the funds. This goes back quite a few years and is called BIUs, basic income units.
For instance, in a school of nuclear physics, in the engineering and the upper parts, a rating of seven would be given. The base rating for a full-time, five-course student on the arts side is given as one. It is this way that the university feeds in their figures, etc, as to the number of BIUs. BIU represents, what, $3,500 or something like that. This is the way they allocate the funds. Very often the BIUs that come in, of course, far exceed the amount of money available to them and some sort of allocation has to be made.
There is a place for the small, independent university, but as I say, the number we have already and about -- what, three or four of our universities -- York and Toronto are big ones, of course and there is McMaster and Queen's -- and Queen's is quite a bit down, the enrolments in each one of them. And when you get to Laurentian, Algoma College, for instance, last year had a special allocation of funds, $775,000 over and above anything else, in order not to have to close its doors. So you have to be very careful about the smaller universities. They may be more intimate, there may be a better rapport among the students, but basic facilities that a modern university has to supply are enormously costly.
I do not like the multi-university, either, the huge spreading thing. Toronto is too big, as far as I am concerned. There is no rapport. There is no conversation there. There are professors there who have never met one another, even perhaps professors in the same faculty who have never been introduced. I used to take courses over here and I know that the interrelationship between most in my field in philosophy, people over here at St Michael's College in philosophy, are not in very close correspondence with the people along the street a little further.
So on one side there is the collegiality aspect of this to be respected and retained, and that is why we do have to support the smaller ones, but I don't want to see any more come into being.
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Mr Bradley: The second question I would have relates to tuition fees and there is a bit of reference to the financing of education and so on. The universities almost consistently have requested that they be allowed to increase tuition fees, and governments, always mindful of the voting population, have been reluctant to do so. I guess the other motivation, which is a better motivation, is that they have wanted to maintain accessibility. I think the government just announced an 8% increase in tuition fees this year. How do you view the financing of education as it relates to tuition fees, and how would you view requests by universities to increase those tuition fees to, as they say, better reflect the reality that they face financially?
Mr Lawlor: May I approach this -- I will not take too much time -- from a distance just to get the picture?
The group that I am asked to sit on is a buffer group. It is a buffer group between government which has certain allocations of funds which are substantial, and particularly in restrictive times like this the funds are simply not available, and the universities which are private, all of them, autonomous, self-determining bodies which rely overwhelmingly -- I mean the money they get from the private sector is peanuts -- on public funds. So there has to be accountability while respecting the independence -- a little like the law courts, and the judges -- we treat them almost at arm's length you know; nevertheless they are wholly dependent upon the public purse to sustain them.
This body I am sitting on was invented to reach that type of allocation, and so they are interested in the whole spectrum. So they don't dictate, they can't dictate. They hold colloquies all the time with the presidents of the universities, and call special committees. The group that I am sitting on is not an expert bunch; they call experts in when they need them to advise, including advice on student fees. But I think the universities, being dependent on one side and yet autonomous on the other, ought not to be given a free hand to raise student fees to whatever level they feel necessary to serve their own purposes. They must live within guidelines too, and guidelines all along the line. You cannot escape guidelines by imposing an undue burden on a certain sector of the population. I do not think the universities are responsible in this regard. They are so crunched that they insist upon it.
Fees are going up. My daughter goes to the Ontario College of Art, and her fees -- I know this because I have to pay them -- went up about 8% or 9% last year. When you are getting fees of $1,200 to start with, it begins to be a weight.
The central doctrine of our whole educational system is accessibility, you are not excluded because you are poor or have not the wherewithal. You are not excluded from the Legislature, you are not excluded from the court, you are not excluded from education to make you competent in whatever it may be. Increasing fees can be, and very often is, an exclusionary measure, so I am very hesitant, reticent, about raising fees.
The Chair: Mr Lawlor, thank you for appearing here today and we wish --
Mr Wiseman: More questions.
The Chair: You have exceeded your time, I am sorry, by two minutes. You can ask them afterwards, though. We wish you well with your new responsibilities. Thanks again.
Mr Lawlor: Thank you, Bob.
The Chair: Before we adjourn, I want to remind all three caucuses that we would like to have the position papers, if you will, on the permanent standing order in to the clerk as quickly as possible for circulation to all members of the committee; we are under some time lines with respect to when we have to make our report to the Legislature. So I guess Mr Waters and Mr McGuinty and Mr Stockwell, we can try to get that back to the clerk as quickly as possible.
The committee adjourned at 1226.