Committee Transcript 1991-Jun-05 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Chair: Come to order, please. We have our agendas in front of us and we can get under way right away the discussion of the review of the intended appointment of Marc Eliesen as the chair of the Ontario Hydro board of directors. As it has become the custom, I would like to have a motion on the floor in respect to Mr Eliesen's appointment, either concurring with the appointment or otherwise.

Mr Waters moves that the committee concur. Is there any discussion on the motion? No discussion? All in favour of the motion?

Mr Grandmaître: Are you looking for an argument?

The Chair: I thought there might be something said.

Mr Waters: I thought we had turned over a new leaf last week.

Motion agreed to.

ELMER MCVEY

The Chair: The next intended appointee I will require a motion for is Elmer McVey. Again, Mr McVey is being appointed to the Ontario Hydro board of directors. Mr Silipo moves the appointment of Elmer McVey to the Ontario Hydro board of directors.

Motion agreed to.

JERRY WOODS

The Chair: The next is Jerry Woods, who was selected by the third party and is the intended appointee.

Mr Hayes moves the appointment of Jerry Woods to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Motion agreed to.

ST CLAIR WHARTON

The Chair: Mr Waters moves the appointment of St Clair Wharton to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Motion agreed to.

FRAN REID ENDICOTT

The Chair: Mr Silipo moves the appointment of Fran Reid Endicott to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Motion agreed to.

CARMEN PAQUETTE

The Chair: Mr Silipo moves the appointment of Carmen Paquette to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Motion agreed to.

GAETANE PHARAND

The Chair: Mr Silipo moves the appointment of Gaëtane Pharand to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Motion agreed to.

KENNETH J. WEBER

The Chair: Mr Waters moves the appointment of Ken Weber, the intended appointee as the Chair of the Ontario Special Education (English) Tribunal.

Motion agreed to.

COLOMBE DAIGNEAULT

The Chair: Mr Wiseman moves the appointment of Colombe Daigneault, the intended appointee as Chair of the Ontario Special Education (French) Tribunal.

Motion agreed to.

The Chair: I want at this juncture to mention something that was discussed at the subcommittee meeting yesterday. In the future, when we are going through the reviews of intended appointees, following conclusion of our reviews I am going to just pose a brief question to the members of the committee with respect to how much time we feel should be allocated for decisions following our review, such as we have done today.

We are required to allocate a one-hour review, but practice is showing that rarely do we have any debate or lengthy discussion, and we certainly do not come close to using one hour. We do have a pretty full backlog of business that we are having difficulty dealing with, so I am going to suggest that we go with a 10-minute review, which is probably more than adequate, unless there is a request from a member or members of any party, or any member of the committee, for that matter, who feels that we require the hour. Then we will so do. Otherwise, we will simply slot in the 10 minutes, and that way we can get other business on our agenda as well and start to cut into that backlog. Is everyone in agreement with that? Good.

BUDGET

The Chair: The next matter of business on the agenda is the committee budget. I do not know whether anyone has had much of a chance to take a look at this. I am going to ask the clerk to take us through this and perhaps make some comments and then we can direct questions through the Chair to the clerk if need be.

Clerk of the Committee: The budget is for the fiscal year 1991-92, taking the committee up to 31 March 1992. It is essentially based on the last committee budget approved, with the exception that the subcommittee directed that a budget be prepared to provide for 12 weeks of meetings in view of the committee's expanded responsibility on an ongoing basis to review intended appointments and the expectation that it would take a fair amount of meeting time through both the summer adjournment period and the winter adjournment period.

The Chair: If you could go through each category, if you do not mind.

Clerk of the Committee: Sure. The meeting per diems, travel per diems and meal expenses are statutory items providing for full five-day weeks. Normally, so far the committee has been meeting only four days per week or three and a half. That can be adjusted if you wish, but I normally recommend that you leave in five days per week just in case you need the additional time.

Travel-transportation is an estimate based on a changing committee, when there are substitutions through the summer. It is hard to calculate exactly what expenses will be on a weekly basis, and so I estimate $1,000 per week for members travelling into and out of Queen's Park meetings.

The last budget provided for the possibility of advertising committee hearings on agency reviews or some matter and, again, $20,000 is provided.

Simultaneous interpretation services were not needed in the last assembly as we were able to use committee room 151 when required, but I have put in a provision for that in case it is needed.

Translation-transcription services were used to a limited extent in the translation of the committee's report. That was around $1,300. If the committee has more extensive reports, for example on agency reviews, I would expect that amount to be higher than just $1,300.

Witness fees and expenses were requested to be provided for in the last budget for witnesses who may be called in on the agency reviews, and in the last assembly we did use that provision for witnesses called in to discuss the general approach the committee would take to its review of intended appointments, that entire process.

The printing of committee reports, printing of committee exhibits, is a standard figure, and "books, maps and publications" I do not believe we used last time at all.

Meeting room rental would provide for rental of meeting facilities should the committee travel anywhere in Ontario for meetings on agency reviews.

Catering and hospitality is essentially for services here at the meetings at Queen's Park, and the rest of the items, except for equipment rental, are standard to each committee budget. Equipment rental would provide for either sound equipment brought into a meeting here, if the committee had to pay for it, if broadcast services were not paying for it; or if the committee is travelling into an area where simultaneous interpretation is required and facilities are not provided by the meeting place, we would have to rent those facilities.

So the total $187,548 compares to last year's approved budget of $110,340, of which the committee spent, by 31 March, $44,995, less than half.

Mr Grandmaître: Before we approve the budget, can I go back to the printing of reports? Now that we have received a binder on the appointments and so on and it is outdated -- it looks great, but it is outdated -- how will this committee or the members be informed of the additional appointments? How can we replenish our binder or keep it up to date? Have we planned this? How can we do this? Let's face it, it is a great binder but it is outdated; the day it is printed it is outdated. How can we update ourselves without having to print a complete binder every three or four or six months? I am sure that is quite expensive.

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The Chair: Can I have a little elaboration on what you are talking about in terms of outdated? Is this the book we looked at yesterday?

Mr Grandmaître: Yes.

The Chair: And that is outdated in what sense, in the fact that there are new boards being established?

Mr Grandmaître: That is right.

Mr Silipo: Unless Mr Grandmaître has a connection to something the committee should be doing with respect to the budget, I think that is really another item. It is not something that is published by the committee.

The Chair: It is an inquiry, though, that we can certainly make of the --

Mr Grandmaître: That would not be part of our budget?

Mr Silipo: No, it does not come out of our budget.

The Chair: It would not be part of our budget, but it is certainly an interesting point to raise. I will ask the clerk to pursue that with Carol Phillips to see how they intend to deal with that matter, and get back to you.

Mr Frankford: I liked the suggestion before that this should be in electronic form -- it could be on a computer disc -- which would address these problems entirely. One could really do very interesting things and do searches, expiry dates of appointments. I think this is an excellent opportunity of encouraging government to get into the electronic age.

The Chair: We will relay that as well to Ms Phillips. Are there any questions about the budget specifically? Mr Silipo.

Mr Silipo: No, I am just going to move concurrence with the budget.

Mrs Haslam: Could you review for me again? You said we had spent how much of this budget so far since --

The Chair: It is not this budget, it is the last one.

Mrs Haslam: Of the last one, we spent half? That was $134,000. The last budget that we passed was the 1990-91 budget and it was $134,716 in 1990-91. I got that from the back of my files. How much of that budget did we spend?

Clerk of the Committee: It was $44,995 as of 31 March, which is the last printout I have. It is possible there may be more expenditures that were brought in by year-end process in April or May. I have not received those.

Mrs Haslam: I have one more question. In the 1990-91 budget we grouped travel-accommodation and travel-transportation. We took that and decided to put it into witness travel, $6,024 for witness travel. I am a little confused as to exactly what happened in that area, because now it is at $12,000 for travel-transportation, meetings at Queen's Park. Is that for witnesses or for extra --

Clerk of the Committee: Travel-transportation is for members to be reimbursed for their expenses in travelling in to meetings at Queen's Park.

Mrs Haslam: During the summer?

Clerk of the Committee: Yes. Only when the House is not meeting does the Legislative Assembly Act provide that members must be reimbursed for travel expenses coming in to meetings.

Mrs Haslam: What does the travel per diem on the top of the budget cover, then?

Clerk of the Committee: That is a per diem not reimbursing for actual expenses, just a per diem, the same amount as for a meeting day for members who travel in the day before a meeting, travel out the day after a meeting. Members living outside of Metropolitan Toronto are entitled to claim that. Not all do, but they are entitled to.

Mrs Haslam: The "meetings at Queen's Park" covers other members or additional costs in that travel? Is that what it is?

Clerk of the Committee: Travel per diem does not deal with costs at all. It is a per diem.

Mrs Haslam: So on top of that, then -- I am sorry, but I would like to get this straight. It is $12,000 here, it is $22,000 up there and in the last budget it was -- we were trying to cut back, and I have a concern about this.

You live outside of the GTA. You travel by train. So what you are saying is the per diem is $78 and then the train fare of $20 comes out of the travel-transportation aspect.

Clerk of the Committee: That is correct.

Mr Grandmaître: You are on the right track.

The Chair: Anything else?

Mrs Haslam: Could I ask one more point of clarification?

Interjection.

Mrs Haslam: I hope she picked that up on Hansard, because that is going to look mighty interesting in this committee.

I have a question as to why the cost went up by approximately $50,000.

Clerk of the Committee: In total?

Mrs Haslam: Yes.

Clerk of the Committee: Because the number of weeks of meetings provided for has increased by 200%.

The Chair: Anything else? Mr Silipo's motion concurring with the proposed budget, all in favour?

Motion agreed to.

ORGANIZATION

The Chair: That completes our agenda, but I would like to spend a few minutes, if members do not object, in talking about what we are going to do, as we have dealt with the budget. We have proposed 12 weeks of sitting time. This was discussed at subcommittee. Members who serve on the subcommittee will want to comment on this, I am sure, but there seemed to be a consensus, among members of the subcommittee in any event, that there was not a lot of enthusiasm about sitting in July. I do not think any of the House leaders are going to agree to committee sittings in July, and the subcommittee members were supportive of looking at sittings in late August and September before the House comes back.

Also, we have a concern about the fact that all of our time is being devoted to appointment review and we are having no time allocated to agencies, boards and commissions, which obviously was the initial reason this committee was established. I would not mind spending a little time discussing what we want to do during the summer period and how much time we would like to allocate to appointment reviews and if indeed we want to look at perhaps one agency selected by each party, if we can fit that sort of thing into the time we are going to establish.

Mr Silipo: First, on the time to meet, as I indicated yesterday I do not have any trouble with meeting in that way if that is agreeable to the other members of the committee and to the House leaders, that is, to have the committee meet towards the end of the August.

I guess the only thing we would have to keep in mind is that there is a week in early September where the caucus retreats will likely happen. I think ours is scheduled for that week, and I presume the others are as well, so that will probably mean we will have to think about how far back we need to go into August to start meetings.

The Chair: How long is your retreat going to be, if you do not mind my asking?

Mr Silipo: I think it is two days.

The Chair: I think we are only looking at one day. I am speaking off the top, but we are probably going to be going on the same day the Liberals are -- I think 8 September -- because we did not want to do the Labour Day weekend like your party is doing. I think your House leaders may want to look at it if you think it is that one.

Mr Silipo: Either way, that would cause some problems with the scheduling.

The other thing is that I certainly would want us to do some work on the review of agencies, boards or commissions. Having missed some of the meetings when the committee was dealing with some of those reviews earlier on, I do not know the details, but of the three groups we had selected to review, I gather two of them are in progress and the third has not even been begun. I presume we would want to at least complete the two we had begun, so perhaps the subcommittee should look at scheduling those in terms of what outstanding work needs to be done on those.

I would suggest we try, at least during the summer sitting, to do a combination of days on which we do reviews of intended appointees and days on which we will at least complete the reviews of those agencies. My sense is that we may not in fact have time to select a new batch of agencies. Maybe we will. If we can, I would be delighted for us to do that.

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The Chair: I would like to throw this out for discussion. Again, we have the two we have begun reviews on, the Ontario Municipal Board and the LLBO, so we certainly want to complete those.

We did not get around to the selection by the government party. Dr Frankford actually had mentioned a couple of district health councils. Whether or not we will be able to fit it into the schedule in terms of planning, I suggest each of the three parties select one. You may want to go back to the health councils or you may want to look at something else -- the other two parties -- and we will try to fit those into the schedule; three selections plus the two we have to complete, which we have already begun and held hearings on.

That is my proposal. We may not be able to handle it, but I think we should give it a shot and see if we can fit them into the schedule. As we get closer to firming up the agenda, we will have a better idea of whether we can handle it. We may have to drop one or two. But at this juncture I would like to suggest that each caucus give this some thought and at the next subcommittee meeting advise its representative on the subcommittee as to one agency it would like to see reviewed in the upcoming break.

Mrs Haslam: I raised a question early in the committee meetings regarding previous reports on government agencies. The report comes out with certain suggestions for the agencies, boards or commissions we look at. Does anybody ever check back to see if those recommendations were carried out?

No information has come back whether we have that opportunity, that responsibility, whether we have that available so we can take a look at previous reports and actually say: "Here were our recommendations. Are they being carried out?" All we do is put them on paper. We do not seem to be checking back to see if they are following through on these recommendations. I would like some information on that, because I remember raising it early in the committee.

The Chair: You will have a formal answer within a week, I am advised, but my recollection -- Mr McLean may help me on this -- is that this process is not operating now.

In the Ombudsman committee, which I served on a number of years ago, you do have that ongoing, annual sort of review in terms of recommendations that have been made and whether they have been complied with, so you can see whether indeed the government ministry or agency is complying with the requests of the committee. It is probably a good thing that this committee consider adopting that kind of format so that on an ongoing basis we can see whether the agency is complying.

Mr Waters: One of the things I was concerned about, and I asked Mr Silipo somewhat discreetly about, is time lines. If we shut down at the end of June and do not come back -- you are referring to the end of August?

The Chair: Near the end of August, yes.

Mr Waters: What if there is some appointment forthcoming that you people -- well, any of us from the committee -- have some concern about?

The Chair: I am glad you raised that point. That was discussed by the subcommittee and we have the time lines and the temporary standing order with respect to consideration. I do not know what is going to happen about the debate on a permanent standing order, whether we are going to get to that or not in terms of the scheduling of the House, but if not, I gather we operate under the temporary standing order.

Once the appointments are dealt with by cabinet and the order in council is passed, then we have 30 days within which to have the subcommittee meet and make a decision with respect to the ones it wants to see reviewed. So at some point in July, the subcommittee is going to have to get together, as I see it, and then make some decisions. Then you have another 30 days following that, which would take you well into August.

Mr Waters: Yes. It was that 30 days. I just wanted to basically be assured that either we did that or that we had an all-party agreement that we would be somewhat flexible for that 30 days.

The Chair: I think there is an understanding that there will be flexibility. Say there is an urgent appointment, for example, that the government wants to have dealt with. The subcommittee will be able to make the decision whether it simply wants to pass it through, which it can do in any event, just simply let the OIC go through without a review by the committee, or if members of, perhaps, the opposition feel it is important enough that it merits a review, I think there is an understanding that we would call a special meeting, of the committee to deal with that review.

Mr Waters: I just wanted basically to see, because the time frame is more the opposition not having its right to review.

The Chair: I want Mr Silipo's ear on this, if I can have it. This is an important matter we are talking about. Because of the time element with respect to appointments, I have indicated, as I understand it, that there is concurrence within the subcommittee that if we have an important appointment, the subcommittee will either let it flow through -- say it has to be done within a certain period of time -- or we will call a special meeting of the committee to deal with the review of that appointment. Mr Bradley?

Mr Bradley: Certainly the concern I would have is that the government would be in a position to be stopped in its appointment-making process. Their problem is that they will have many people who will be coming up for reappointment or they will want to put new New Democrats in those positions as they make their appointments, and I do not think the government should be prevented from being able to do that.

Mr Wiseman: Or good Tories or Liberals, as the case has been in the past.

Mr Bradley: I know what happens is that these get backed up and then you might even have a situation where you do not have a quorum on some of these agencies, boards and commissions because there has not been concurrence, so I certainly think the necessity is there.

Second, you mention important appointments. From an opposition member's point of view, the minefield will not be Eliesen and people like that who know how to talk before a committee. The minefield will be the people they appoint locally, the local NDP candidate and so on. I am speaking as an opposition person now. That is the minefield for the opposition to get at.

The Chair: Police commissions and those sorts of things.

Mr Bradley: Yes, police commissions and things like that. That is where you will fall down in your appointments, because every government does. I am not saying just your government. The easy ones are your top people, because you are going to get really good people at the top -- that is, from your point of view -- who are capable. Whether I agree with them or not, they are capable people.

I would hate to see the government get away with appointing a pile of people, police commissions or something, in the summer, when we cannot get at those appointments. On the other hand, I also want the government to have the ability to continue to make appointments so that it will have quorums on its various agencies, boards and commissions, so we will certainly need to have flexibility.

That is my concern about leaving it to the end of August. I understand we are not an isolated committee, there are lots of other committees, and staffing them, particularly for the opposition parties and maybe even for the government party, is going to be difficult. I understand, Chairman, what you are saying, but I would just not want to see the opportunity go by to find the New Democrat I have been waiting to launch into.

The Chair: I do not think you will miss that opportunity because of the structure of the subcommittee.

Mrs Haslam: Just as Mr Bradley never misses an opportunity to say these things, right?

The Chair: Because of the structure of the subcommittee, the opposition has the ability to require a review, so I think if the feelings are strong enough with respect to an individual appointment or a group of appointments, we will simply move ahead with a special meeting. It may be a little difficult arranging that, but I am sure we can pull it off.

Mr McLean: I was just wondering whether there probably should be a motion near the end of the session by the House leader that this committee is authorized to sit at the call of the Chairman as the need may arise. In that way it would make it very flexible to call a meeting at any time. If we had a motion at the end of the session by the government House leader to allow that to happen, it would be very clear.

Mr Wiseman: That could be a very difficult thing to do. If the standing committee on finance and economic affairs starts to move in the direction that has been discussed, that would raise some problems for me, at any rate.

Mr Silipo: It is going to be the case for all of us.

The Chair: There are going to be substitutes flying around all over the place. That is the way it works around here.

Mr Waters: What Mr McLean was saying is fine, so long as it is done through the House leaders so that everyone is well aware. Mr Silipo may not even be able to get hold of us. I do not have any idea where Mr Silipo will be.

Mr Grandmaître: I am sure it will be done through the subcommittee.

The Chair: Oh yes, we have to do it through the subcommittee. We are required to do that.

Mr Waters: The other thing that I was concerned about, with the discussion of late August -- and it makes it awkward any earlier -- is that if we back up too many appointments, once again we will not get at the ABCs. We will have such a list of appointees to hear that we will not get at the other half of what our function is. I do not know exactly how we are going to work that out. I truly believe there are two halves to this and I think we have been neglecting one half.

The Chair: There is obviously an understanding here that we are probably looking at about five to six weeks of sittings. As we have said in the past, we have been sitting three and a half days; we may have to look at five days of sittings per week. We may have to do a number of other things. Again, the subcommittee has to review these things with an eye to what they really feel is important for review. We have been feeling our way through this process and I think in some instances -- this is again just my opinion -- that we have called people for review and in many instances I have wondered about the rationale behind it.

We can talk about the reviews we did last week when we had that marathon session. A 15-minute review of someone is ridiculous in my opinion. When we are making these kinds of selections we have to do it in perhaps a more appropriate way with respect to ensuring that perhaps we are seeing fewer people but it is more quality time in terms of the interview process. That is obviously a responsibility thrust upon the subcommittee. Hopefully we are going to approach that perhaps a little more -- I hate to use the word, but -- responsibly than maybe has been. I do not want to tar everybody with the same brush but I thought last week was not an appropriate situation.

Mr Waters: There have been times when -- and it was not only last week. We will have somebody sit in these chairs here and everybody will say from all three parties, "You're the proper choice." Why did we bring them in to review them?

The Chair: I agree.

Mr Waters: Why argue? To me that was a waste of time. I think the subcommittee -- it is growing pains and will rapidly work those things out.

The Chair: I am hopeful that we can do what we have to do with respect to appointment reviews plus get a look at a few agencies, because I think that is the important part of this committee's mandate and we are totally neglecting it now.

Mr McLean: I am not sure, Mr Chairman, but when we get into dealing with the agencies, we probably could work one day a week with regard to what we have been doing and have the other three days for the agency. Each week do one day of the appointments and the other three days on agencies. I think it could be worked out if it is scheduled properly.

The Chair: We can leave that with the subcommittee. Mr Silipo is not here but I want to just remind the members of the subcommittee for our next meeting to have one agency selected by your caucus that you would like to see reviewed. Anything further? I guess that is it, then. Meeting adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1043.