CONTENTS
Wednesday 10 June 1992
Agency review
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
*Chair / Président: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)
*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
*Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
*Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)
*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
*Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L)
Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West/-Ouest PC)
*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)
*Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants:
*Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND) for Mr Marchese
*In attendance / présents
Clerk / Greffier: Arnott, Douglas
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1007 in room 228.
AGENCY REVIEW
Consideration of the operations of certain agencies, boards and commissions.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Allan McLean): I see a quorum; let's start the meeting. We will ask our researcher to bring us up to date on some of the boards we are going to be dealing with.
Mr David Pond: What you should have in front of you is quite a large number of documents; I'll admit that right off the top.
Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): We were really happy to see this. I had nothing to read.
Mr Pond: It's indicative of the heavy workload of this committee, which incidentally is the heaviest workload of any committee of the Legislature, I think. The only new one is a short one called Progress Report on the Committee's Reviews of Agencies, Boards and Commissions, which I'll probably do last. That's the only new one you got this morning as you came in here.
If you like, why don't we go through the draft reports on separate agencies? It's probably the simplest thing to start with. To do the easiest one first: the draft final report on TVOntario. If you recall, the committee quite a while ago actually did approve recommendations, but you've never seen the complete, final, formal draft report. That's what this is. There's nothing new in it. It's just been formatted nicely and so on and so forth.
The Vice-Chair: Are there any questions on that report? It's in that package.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): How many openings are there on that board?
Mr Pond: Openings or positions?
Mr Cleary: I mean openings up for appointment.
Mr Pond: There's one vacancy, according to TVO, right now. There's one open spot, so to speak, but it doesn't preclude the board from meeting and conducting business. According to my information from the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, there's one position it would see the cabinet filling some time in the future.
Mr Wiseman: Normand Forest should be coming up at the end of this month.
Mr Pond: Quite a few of them are, actually.
Mr Wiseman: And David Galloway should be coming up vacant at the end of this month, and Rhéal Leroux.
Mr Cleary: I wanted to know about how many openings there were right now.
Mr Pond: I should add, though, that as you know, for a lot of these agencies their exact size is flexible. Their statute will simply say that the executive council can appoint up to a certain number, so it's really a flexible arrangement. According to the information they gave me over the phone, from their point of view there's one vacancy. But that doesn't necessarily mean the cabinet's going to fill it; it's just that they would be prepared to take on one more body.
Other than that, in this report on TVO the recommendations start on page 10 and it's all material you've seen before two or three times now.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): Do you know what will likely happen to the vice-chair when her term comes up?
Mr Pond: What will happen to her?
Ms Carter: Will she be in the running for being chair one day or could she have a new term?
Mr Pond: I don't have the slightest idea.
Ms Carter: She just happens to be a very prominent constituent of mine. That's why I'm interested in it.
The Vice-Chair: It would be up to the government. They'll probably appoint a chair when --
Mr Wiseman: The Chair is in till 1995.
Mr Pond: Yes, Mr Herrndorf is there for a while now.
Mr Wiseman: But there are four spaces coming open at the end of this month.
Mr Pond: They're going to have a turnover there. There's no doubt about that.
Mr Wiseman: Or reappointments. Since there are that many, do we know what the criteria and the process for the appointments to the board are? Do they do their own selection and then send their candidates, or can that be applied for through the agencies, boards and commissions book?
Mr Pond: Absolutely. They're all listed in here.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): It's a little different now, Jim, with the new process, but in the past I can recall that people were asked to provide the Cabinet Office with a CV. That's the way they were appointed.
Mr Wiseman: The Ontario Trillium Foundation creates its own appointment and then sends it to the government for ratification.
Mr Pond: Do they really?
Mr Wiseman: That's why I called Trillium. I have some difficulty with the government giving money to bodies and then the bodies creating their own board of directors and sending it here just to be ratified. My view on that is that if the government is giving them the money, then they should go through a selection process, actually put people in place in relation to the amount of money being spent. That's one of the difficulties I have with the conservation authorities as well. I think we get maybe two or three appointments to a 12-person panel, but the province puts up something like 80% of the money. I just wonder whether at some point we should talk about this philosophically, whether we think that's an appropriate way to do it.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): If I could speak to that, I have a similar concern. There's one specific instance relating to Scarborough. The Scarborough board of health has two provincial appointees. I've noticed in the minutes of the board that the members have had discussion or solicited input about who they should nominate for these provincial positions. I find that --
Mr Wiseman: Bizarre.
Mr Frankford: Well, strange in some ways. Also, it seems to be contrary to the idea that anyone can apply and that one can encourage a broader range of people to get involved.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Chair, maybe I can shed a little light. I'm not trying to be partisan, but we're witnessing this every time we meet. "How did you find out about this opening?" "I received a phone call from the ministry." "I received a phone call from Joe Blow who is well connected with the ministry." We're seeing it every Wednesday, so don't be surprised.
Mr Wiseman: We have seen a lot more people who said they applied for the job. I think one or two from last week said they had seen ads in the paper and applied for it.
Mr Grandmaître: That's one out of a thousand.
Mr Frankford: I don't think we have any figures on that, Mr Grandmaître, with respect. We might well want to get into some consistency, whether things should be routinely advertised and where they should be advertised. Take the Scarborough board of health. I've told people about it, and I believe there have been applications, but the board still seems to act as though it should be the prime body that recommends people.
Mr Wiseman: I think we're facing two situations. One is that, where the province appoints people to the housing authorities, to the district health councils and to the boards of health and so on, where they have authority to do that, there seems to be more advertising now than in the past.
Mr Grandmaître: More openness.
Mr Wiseman: It's more open. What I want to discuss, perhaps at some future time, is that if the province is putting up 80% of the funds and has only 10% of the people on the board, is this a good thing, is it a bad thing? Is there something we should be looking at? Who is accountable to whom and how do we approach that?
The Vice-Chair: We have this report in front of us. There are some recommendations within it, two or three or four. Let's deal with those recommendations and find out if they're acceptable. If they are, we will pass the report on. If not, we will change them.
On page 11 there are, I believe --
Mr Pond: Yes. The recommendations with regard to making TVOntario subject to the freedom of information act, which we discussed a couple of times earlier this year and late last year.
The Vice-Chair: Is that agreeable to everyone?
Mr Wiseman: That was unanimous.
The Vice-Chair: Okay. Next recommendation.
Mr Pond: The formal recommendation is on page 13, recommending that Management Board look at whether TVO should be subject to Management Board of Cabinet directive 1, which puts restrictions on how ministries -- currently just ministries -- can move money around within lines in their budget without getting approval from somebody higher up in the system. The idea on the committee's part was that Management Board should consider whether TVO should be subject to the same directive.
Mr Wiseman: I think this one flowed out of the discussion around the increase in the amount of money being spent on administration and that it was being directly taken out of programming. The question arose about whether that much administration was necessary and how it reflected on programming.
The Vice-Chair: Two paragraphs previous to that recommendation explains pretty much what it is. Are there any changes required to that, or is that acceptable as it's worded? That's acceptable?
Mr Wiseman: Fine.
The Vice-Chair: Okay. That pretty well concludes that report. We'll leave it up to the opposition whether they want to provide a report of dissatisfaction with anything within it.
Mr Grandmaître: No, we can live with the recommendations.
The Vice-Chair: Maybe Runciman does.
Mr Grandmaître: Oh, I'm sorry. You were talking about the other opposition.
The Vice-Chair: Next one.
Mr Pond: I have in front of me the Ontario Municipal Board. If you like, we can do that one.
The Vice-Chair: Okay.
Mr Pond: You haven't seen this before. This is the first draft of a draft report, so to speak. As is usual, the first 12 pages are simply the narrative on how the OMB works, based on the briefing paper I prepared for you last year when we had the OMB in front of the committee. The recommendations start on page 13. Again, this derives from the discussions the committee has had from time to time about the OMB.
The first item addressed was the backlog problem. We all know the OMB has had, and does have, a serious backlog problem. The prose on page 13 and the top of page 14 simply outlines what Mr Kruger said, what some of the other witnesses said about the backlog problem and so on, and some of the initiatives the OMB and the ministry are introducing to deal with the backlog problem.
The recommendation in the middle of page 14 -- which should be in bold, but it isn't, unfortunately -- I hope sums up the committee's feeling the last time the committee looked at this, namely (1) that the Attorney General should consider removing assessment and minor variance appeals from the jurisdiction of the OMB and (2) the responsibility for approving municipal debentures should be taken away from the OMB and assigned to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
Mr Frankford: The situation has changed, has it not, since the agency is under the Ministry of Municipal Affairs?
Mr Pond: Pardon me?
Mr Frankford: The board is now under the ministry.
Mr Pond: Is it? Have they moved it?
Mr Frankford: Yes.
Mr Pond: Okay, then I'll have to rewrite this.
Mr Wiseman: I thought we had heard from the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society that it was really quite adamant --
Mr Pond: Yes, you're right.
Mr Wiseman: -- that the board should be much more conversant with the Ontario Food Land Guidelines and that it should take that into consideration when making its decisions. I would like to put that in as a recommendation.
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Mr Pond: Just to jump ahead a bit, I don't directly have that in, but on page 17 under the heading, "The Conduct of Hearings," in the first paragraph it says, in regard to the way different members of the OMB conducted hearings, that a lot of the witnesses, including PALS, found some OMB members were more courteous, more sympathetic, more conversant with ministry policy such as the Food Land Guidelines than other members were. Beneath that I have Mr Kruger's response and on top of page 18 we have the draft recommendation. It doesn't say anything specifically about the Food Land Guidelines.
Mr Wiseman: I'll throw out these recommendations. One of the recommendations I would like to see is that the OMB be trained in the application of the Ontario Food Land Guidelines. I've got a number of them. Another recommendation is that the makeup of the board begin to reflect the need for ecosystems planning approaches, as we're beginning to see more and more come forward with Crombie and Sewell, and that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs be directed to amend section 3 of the Planning Act to make the zonings within the official plans much stronger.
What I mean is that if you have something zoned O for open space or green space, it should be carved in stone. That should be more difficult to change than just going to the Ontario Municipal Board. There should be a procedure or some kind of system whereby you almost have to do a whole new official plan to change the zoning. I can give you a lot of examples in my own riding where they changed the official plan from high density to low density here but right next door they left high density, and then it makes the whole community look unplanned and organized.
Mr Pond: I know what you mean.
Mr Wiseman: So I would like to see some recommendation that Municipal Affairs change section 3 so that the Ontario Municipal Board will have more power to say: "That doesn't conform with the official plan. You'll have to go back and do your official plan over again."
Mr Frankford: Somewhat going on from this, for a start I think I am correct that the responsible ministry now is the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. I think this makes quite a difference to the report we have here in any case, but I think this is also quite an opportunity for revisiting this document, because I'm sure things are going to be changing.
As Jim said, we've got the Crombie commission and the Sewell commission. I think that particularly the Sewell commission is going to take a very new approach that is going to get away from the traditional planning approaches of zoning and take more of an urban planning and an ecosystem approach.
Since we've got this draft and we haven't finished, I wonder whether we shouldn't continue with the OMB and perhaps get people from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the Sewell commission to come to this committee and share their thoughts about what they think they will be doing around planning in the future.
Mr Grandmaître: I think now that the Minister of Municipal Affairs has made the announcement that the OMB will be under his wing or wings, I haven't seen any kind of report from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs saying, "Now we've taken over the responsibility of the OMB, here are a number of changes that will take place." The only thing the minister told us is that "from now on the OMB will be under my responsibility, period."
The process you were referring to, Jim, section 3 of the Planning Act, is part of the existing mechanism. It's the responsibility of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, before anything goes to the OMB, to consult every ministry that's involved in the changing of zoning or whatever. That's the job of the Minister of Municipal Affairs.
This is why I'm doubly concerned. The Minister of Municipal Affairs had those responsibilities beforehand, but now that the ministry's responsible for the total actions of the OMB, I think the minister or the deputy minister should come before this committee and tell us exactly what the future of the OMB is.
The minister has told me the OMB will definitely be changing in the future, and I'd like to know from the minister, or somebody from his ministry, what those changes will be.
Mr Wiseman: Could I help out here a little? I think maybe what we ought to do is table this for the time being and open the hearings on the Ontario Municipal Board again and request the presence of the minister to make deputations to this committee, and perhaps bring in some other groups such as Sewell, maybe Crombie. I'm just throwing these out as suggestions. If you don't like them, that's fine, but I'm trying to be accommodating at the same time.
Mr Grandmaître: No, that's good, but I think it should be the minister, Mr Chair, or the deputy minister.
Mr Wiseman: I'm saying as well as the minister; not instead of, as well as.
Mr Grandmaître: Well, the minister is still the boss and I think we should be talking to the boss and not John Sewell.
Mr Wiseman: I don't have any problems with asking the minister to come in. I'm also trying to be accommodating and suggest that other people should perhaps come in and make comments as well.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I agree with that, Mr Chair. Let's put this aside and if that's what they want to do, I agree with that.
The Chair (Robert W. Runciman): Mr Waters, do you want to say something?
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): I agree that we should not only have the minister in, but I know that I just went through some municipal hearings in my riding last weekend and I think it would be interesting also to have John Sewell in. I think we should get a well-rounded view of exactly where this thing is going. If the minister has some intentions and they're hooked directly to Mr Sewell, Mr Sewell could also give us some ideas as to what his report is going to be, some advance ideas, and I think they should both be asked to appear before us.
The Chair: Why don't we throw this back in the lap of the subcommittee to arrange an appropriate time for this and also an appropriate schedule of witnesses.
Mr Wiseman: Okay.
Ms Carter: I'd certainly go along with that. Do we have any idea, if we get an environmental bill of rights, which I believe is on the books, would that have an impact on the OMB?
Mr Wiseman: I would have to think so.
Ms Carter: You see, we got rid of the Sunday shopping thing. They're not going to be burdened with that.
The Chair: Have you checked with Peter Kormos lately?
Ms Carter: To me that's the one good thing that comes out of it.
Mr Pond: I hadn't thought of it. I --
Ms Carter: Pardon?
Mr Pond: You're right, I hadn't thought of that.
Ms Carter: Because that could have been a very large burden that piled up.
Mr Pond: Yes, because when Mr Kruger was here last time he did say Sunday shopping at that time would --
Ms Carter: I wonder if anybody's looked back at what the impact will be on the load and, conversely, what an environmental bill of rights would do.
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Mr Wiseman: I think we've pretty much agreed on that one. It's nice to be working as a team here today.
The Chair: What's the next one?
Mr Pond: We have two more draft reports, one on the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario and the other one on the community advisory board of Brockville Psychiatric Hospital.
The older agency in terms of our reviews is the LLBO. Again, this is the first draft I've done, if you like. The recommendations start on page 10.
The first matter listed here is with regard to appointments to the board. When Ms Karakatsanis was before the committee -- she's the chair of the board -- members indicated that all the members of the board, present members and historically, were lawyers and that there's some feeling that perhaps the board and the government should be making more of an effort to attract a wider diversity of individuals with different backgrounds and so on.
She said that would be a good idea but she had no control over that. Since then, as you know, two new members have been appointed to the LLBO. One is a lawyer, one isn't. The woman who is not a lawyer is a chemist, as well as being active in community groups, multilingual etc. She appeared before the committee last November. I note that.
At the top of page 11, the draft recommendation is, "The government should strive to ensure that appointees to the liquor licence board" -- actually that doesn't say LLBO, it just says LLB; I'll have to fix that -- "reflect a diversity of personal and professional backgrounds."
Interjection.
Mr Pond: Yes. I believe actually the appointee to the committee review did have some health experience or background; I can't recall exactly what. Hearing no comments, should I move on?
The Chair: I'm just wondering, do members have any comments, changes, recommendations they want to make?
Mr Pond: The next matter came up on a number of occasions. As we know, in Ontario the LCBO and the LLBO are separate entities. Some of the other provinces have combined the two functions. The witnesses, when they were here, were asked about whether that should be done here, and they said if it was up to them -- and it's not up to them, as they'd be the first to point out -- they would prefer to keep the two functions separate, for a number of reasons, I guess, primarily the business of an appearance of a conflict of interest.
I have a paragraph in here in the middle of page 11, however: While "the committee appreciates Ms Karakatsanis's position on this issue," it's "not aware of any allegations or actual cases of conflict of interest arising in the provinces where one board is responsible for both licensing and sales."
That's as a result of my research at your direction. So the recommendation on page 11 is, "The government should study the possibility of combining the liquor licensing board and the liquor control board as a cost-saving and efficiency measure."
The Chair: No comments on that?
Mr Pond: The next issue was the whole issue of advertising. As everybody knows, the current government has plans afoot to tighten up the rules regarding liquor advertising to eliminate sexism. According to the current minister, we're likely to see new regulations before the close of the year. That's my information, and if you recall, the committee thought that was a good idea, that this should be proceeded with.
The board indicated that it would be the cabinet and not the board which would be responsible for developing a new policy on that issue. The recommendation is as follows -- what the minister's already announced -- at the top of page 12: "The government should strive to develop new rules and standards which would eliminate sexism in liquor advertising."
Ms Carter: Can you tell me whether eliminating sexism gets rid of those lifestyle ads where everything is wonderful because you've got your beer, whether that's an issue or not?
The Chair: I want to go on the record as disassociating myself from this recommendation. I'm not going to put in a dissenting opinion on it; I simply want to be on the record that I don't endorse all this politically correct baloney and I simply am not supportive of that kind of recommendation. I want that to be on the record.
Mr Pond: Would you like me to put in something about lifestyle advertising as well, because I suspect that's a larger issue than just --
Ms Carter: It's pretty insidious, I think.
The Chair: Should we describe it as "insidious lifestyle advertising"?
Ms Carter: Yes, the idea that you can't enjoy yourself without a beer.
Mr Pond: I'll make that a separate recommendation.
The Chair: So we understand what that recommendation is now? Perhaps David could read it in its redrafted form.
Mr Pond: I haven't redrafted it yet.
The Chair: All right. Mrs Carter, I gather supported by a majority of the committee, wants some reference to lifestyle advertising, concerns about lifestyle advertising. Okay?
Mr Pond: Okay. I'll move on. The rest of the recommendations speak to the comments and recommendations made by the client groups that appeared.
If you recall, John Bates of PRIDE, People to Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, made a number of recommendations. The committee agreed with some and didn't agree with others, I guess it's fair to say. So I have a paragraph here outlining what he said; which the committee agreed with and doesn't agree with.
For example, it doesn't agree that all liquor advertising should be banned, for example, "but it does accept that drunk driving is a serious social problem and liquor advertising should not encourage young people to associate drinking and driving." That was the gist of Mr Bates's message on this point. So the recommendation at the bottom of page 12 in bold is, "The government should consider introducing stringent guidelines for liquor advertising which would regulate the promotion of liquor in connection with automobiles and driving."
Mr Wiseman: I think lately I've been seeing commercials on TV that are actually promoting that.
Mr Pond: Yes, the industry is getting more sensitive to the issue. I can put in a line about that if you like.
Mr Wiseman: I think it would be appropriate to acknowledge that they are moving in this direction and that this committee applauds that and encourages that this public safety advertising continues as part of the advertising content. I don't know how anybody else feels, but I believe that when people do things right you applaud them and give them encouragement to continue.
Mr Pond: I can put that right next to the recommendation, if you like.
Mr Waters: I have a problem with why we're picking on the Molson Indy.
Mr Wiseman: I'll explain that, because it was me who picked on them. Prior to the cabinet change of the rules, it was ruled in Ontario that liquor advertising or beer advertising could not be directly related to an automobile event. What happened was that in order for the Indy to come here, or one of the stipulations for the Indy to come here, that was changed by cabinet.
Mr Waters: We needed money. Molson's is a company that has money it can afford to put into it.
Mr Wiseman: But within the context -- and this is what PRIDE has been saying for a long time -- of the message you're sending, they're really quite perturbed by the fact that cabinet would waive this in order to change it for the Indy. They have some real serious difficulties with it. It really goes counter to the rule that was there prior to that, that is, that liquor should not be associated with cars in any way.
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Mr Waters: So if PRIDE had its way, there wouldn't be an Indy race here in Toronto.
Mr Wiseman: There'd be an Indy race, but it wouldn't be the Molson Indy.
Mr Waters: Well, no one else can afford it. That's where I have my problem. Indeed they can promote responsible drinking, but at the same time they do have the profits and the ability to bring things to Ontario that no one else seems to be willing to do. Other companies have the profits, but they are not willing to invest those into bringing events into the province. If Molson's wishes to do that, I really don't see why they should be named and punished.
Mr Wiseman: I think this engages in the debate now on to what extent you go in terms of allowing commercialism if the results have negative and unhealthy or unacceptable consequences. I think that's the debate here.
Mr Waters: I wouldn't say the Indy necessarily does that. That's why I have a problem.
Mr Wiseman: It's part of the lifestyle commercials. I think this is not the place for this debate unless we really want to enjoin it here, but I would argue that if we're going to put warnings on cigarette packages, maybe we should also think about, what are the other messages that are being sent to young people?
I guess I'm a little personal about this, given that as a teacher I buried a number of students who died because of the consequences of alcohol and driving. For me, it's a personal issue.
The Chair: We have a division of opinion on this. Perhaps we can have a motion and resolve it through a vote.
Mr Waters: I would actually like to see that we take out citing one particular. There are so many things on lifestyle advertising. I just find it difficult that we'd pick on one particular event with one particular sponsor and we don't say anything about all the other things, the lifestyle advertising by this sponsor's competitors. If you think the Indy is bad, then they're equally as bad. Every year we have a number of people who die or are maimed in our lakes in central Ontario. I would like to see the reference to the Molson Indy struck out of it. As you have had students, we have a number of our summer residents we end up trucking away to hospital from lifestyle advertising, and I don't see you citing that.
Mr Wiseman: I would have no problem with including what you're saying in the report and to expand the recommendation, because clearly I would agree with what you have to say.
Ms Carter: Boating is driving, right?
Mr Wiseman: This one says automobiles and driving, but we might be able to find some compromise wording.
Mr Waters: No problem with that. "The example he cited was the Molson Indy." I just don't know whether I want that in the report.
The Chair: So you're just suggesting that that one sentence be removed.
Mr Waters: That's right.
Mr Wiseman: I don't think that does what you want.
The Chair: As long as it makes Mr Waters happy.
Mr Waters: Can I take you up on that in the House today?
Mr Wiseman: I would like to change the recommendation in light of what you said and include, "The government should consider introducing stringent guidelines for liquor advertising which would regulate the promotion of liquor in connection with automobiles and driving and water sports events and the use of boats."
Mr Waters: Where do you stop? When you start doing that, then the next one is downhill skiing and snowmobiling and cycling.
Ms Carter: The head injuries people will tell you. People dive into a place where there's shallow water and rocks and so on because they're not in their right minds.
Mr Waters: I would just ask that "The example he cited was the Molson Indy" be struck out, and leave the rest the same.
The Chair: Let's have a motion. Mr Waters, do you want to move that?
Mr Waters: Yes.
The Chair: Mr Waters moves that the reference to Molson Indy be removed from the report. Discussion? All in favour of Mr Waters's motion? Opposed? It looks like a tie vote to me. I think some people abstained.
Mr Wiseman: Al abstained.
The Chair: We'll try that again. Mr Waters's motion is to remove the reference to Molson Indy in the report. All in favour of Mr Waters's motion? Mr Waters, Mr McLean. Opposed? Do I get a vote? It's all right if I cast a vote? I'm voting for Mr Waters.
Mr Waters: Thank you.
Mr Frankford: If I may, I'll make the suggestion that we change it in connection to hazardous activities such as driving, water sports, skydiving.
Mr Wiseman: I wonder if we could word it "where liquor and impairment leads to the diminished responses that can result in injuries" -- that takes into account snowmobiles, Ski-Dooing, Sea-Dooing, boating and driving -- and maybe list some of the examples.
The Chair: I don't know. Do we have agreement on that? No? We don't have agreement on that. We'll have to have a motion.
Mr Wiseman: I move that we amend the recommendation to include a line that indicates that advertising and the promotion of liquor, where the consumption of alcohol leads to diminished response times and diminished physical abilities that can result in injury and death, be regulated. Does that do it? Did that work?
Mr Pond: Then list examples?
Mr Wiseman: And then list examples.
The Chair: Any discussion on that motion?
Ms Carter: Maybe it's unfair to have the Molson Indy by itself. We should put other things with it.
Mr Wiseman: The Molson Indy's gone. We lost that one.
The Chair: All in favour of the motion? Opposed? Carried.
Mr Pond: The next business: As you recall, Mr Bates argued there should be mandatory labelling for all liquor products. The labels would have a statement about the dangers of drinking and list the ingredients of the product. I may be wrong about this, but I think he drew a parallel with cigarette packaging. I don't smoke; I don't know. The committee agreed with that, and the recommendation is on the top of page 13:
"The government should introduce legislation which would provide for the mandatory labelling of all liquor products. This legislation should require that such labels include a warning about the dangers of drinking and list the product's ingredients."
Mr Frankford: There is some advertising about pregnancy going on right now, I believe, in some jurisdictions. I'm not sure about the United States, but certainly in some parts of the United States there are warnings about alcohol and pregnancy, so I think this would fit in here. If one is going to go along with any warning labels, I think it would be entirely consistent to flag pregnancy. I'm not sure who's doing that. I think it might be federal, which presumably would have the well-known risk of federal campaigns that they're there for a while and then they go on to something else.
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Mr Pond: I'll check who does it.
Mr Wiseman: Are we all happy with that?
The Chair: Any comments?
Mr Pond: The last item deals with campus pubs. You'll recall we had testimony from representatives of Bacchus Canada, which I gather represents campus pubs. They had a number of complaints about the administration of the Liquor Licence Act as it affected them. If memory serves me correctly, the one the committee noted as the most significant is described in this paragraph in the middle of the page, that the board's inspectors are allegedly not interpreting the regulations consistently from pub to pub, so to speak.
I hope the following language reflects what the committee decided, namely: "The committee feels it is not qualified to either endorse or reject Bacchus Canada's recommendations. However, the committee does feel that the witnesses' testimony raises issues which should be addressed."
So the recommendation is:
"The committee therefore recommends that:
"The Liquor Licence Board should investigate complaints raised by Bacchus Canada and campus pub managers regarding the board's administration of the Liquor Licence Act."
The Chair: All in agreement? Okay. The next one is the psychiatric hospital.
Mr Wiseman: Before we go on, did we do anything on the Liquor Control Board?
Mr Pond: We haven't reviewed it as an agency, no.
Mr Wiseman: I would like, at some time in the near future, to put that on the list to review.
The Chair: We'll see if we get a time allocation from the House leaders for the summer.
Mr Wiseman: We'll be here all summer; don't worry.
The Chair: You may be. You need the votes; we don't.
The next one is the Community Advisory Board of the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital.
Mr Pond: Yes. Once again, this is a first draft you're seeing. The board appeared before the committee in late January. The recommendations begin on page 10. The first item and probably the most important: If you recall, the committee had some concerns about the exact role of this board, to whom it is accountable, to whom it reports, the work it was doing or allegedly not doing, its status, both with relation to the hospital and to the ministry. I go on at length about that, all of page 10 and the top of page 11.
The resulting recommendation is at the middle of page 11, namely, "The Ministry of Health should include in its ongoing review of the Public Hospitals Act a complete examination of the role, mandate and accountability of community advisory boards."
The Chair: Any comments on that particular recommendation? Next step.
Mr Pond: A lot of the members pointed out to the board that their jurisdiction overlapped with that of three district health councils, all of which were engaging to one degree or another in mental health planning -- that's part of the DHCs' mandate -- and the feeling was that, given the fact that the board has no research capability, the DHCs were probably the people in that area who had the expertise to do mental health care planning and assessment of needs. The committee also noted that there already were cross-appointments or cross-exchanges between board members and DHC membership. The idea was that DHC volunteers or representatives should be sitting on the board so as to provide the board with that kind of expertise and analysis that it can't generate on its own.
The recommendation, in the middle of page 12, is, "The community advisory board should consider inviting representatives from the three local district health councils to sit on a committee of the board."
Mr Wiseman: I wasn't here for this; I'll say that up front. How many people are on the board now?
The Chair Very few. There is a list here, but there have been significant changes since we met. I think close to half or better than half the board resigned.
Mr Pond: I'll have to check that. That's from page 2.
The Chair: The vice-chair issued a press release and a letter to the Minister of Health indicating that the community did not support the budget submitted by the hospital. It turned out that he had not consulted other members of the board, let alone the community, before taking that position, so quite a significant number of the members resigned as a result of this letter and then he ultimately resigned as well because of the public criticism.
Mr Wiseman: The reason I asked the question is that if you go through the recommendations on pages 12 and 13, you're looking at, in my estimation -- three; if you have two from former residents, that's five; and maybe a couple more doctors -- maybe seven or eight people. I was just concerned that in this group you'd be able to accommodate that mix. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the mix, I'm just wondering how in fact you make it work. I think the recommendations are good, but I'm just wondering how you make it work.
Mr Frankford: I'm just wondering more broadly about the boards of psychiatric hospitals. I think we have a similar situation with the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. Jim and I and several other members had a meeting with them a few weeks ago and there are very many similarities, I would say. One of them is the fact that the hospital covers the catchment area of several DHCs, and I'm sure the other questions about former residents and physician input are definitely there. I'm just wondering whether we should be making some recommendation that is more generic, besides the case of Brockville alone.
Mr Wiseman: Maybe you could help us out here. Does the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital have a community advisory board?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Wiseman: That's what this is supposed to be? Sorry, I'm just trying to catch up here.
The Chair: I think we could make a comment in reference to community advisory boards province-wide, but this review was specifically for the Brockville advisory board, although I'm sure most of the recommendations would have an application to all other boards.
Mr McLean: Runciman went to Thunder Bay last weekend for a bit of a party.
Mr Wiseman: I heard something about that.
The Chair: Certainly the first recommendation is looking at the bigger picture.
Mr Frankford: If I can pick up on that comment about whatever the reward of Thunder Bay was, I think this brings in the question about remuneration on boards and the question of who you're going to attract on boards if you don't provide remuneration.
The Chair: There is no remuneration.
Ms Carter: I'm remembering the times when we've had people down and grilled them and then said, "These people are doing this for love and they're getting nothing out of it."
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Mr Wiseman: That's always the difficulty with volunteers. They give so much and sometimes what they get back is a lot of abuse and criticism, and I'm not sure that in a lot of cases it's fair or warranted. They do the best they can. This is a conundrum: How do you make sure that people who volunteer have some of the skills that are necessary to make the carrying out of their functions work? Should there be something from the Ministry of Health in here about helping them?
The Chair: I think there is, the recommendation for bringing people who are involved with the various DHCs and someone who -- I assume a psychiatrist; if you're going to talk about recruiting physicians, I assume you mean a psychiatrist.
Mr Frankford: Not necessarily.
The Chair: Not necessarily, but certainly -- we're talking about mental health. Although we're not being specific -- you're right -- we're trying to, through these recommendations, provide that sort of assistance to the board and boards in the future so that they don't have to rely solely on the staff and the administration of the hospital for views and opinions.
One thing we didn't make reference to here is whether we want any representation from employee groups on this board, with general application across the province.
Mr Wiseman: They have it at Whitby.
The Chair: They don't have voting power, though, I don't believe. They're there as observers.
Interjection.
The Chair: If you talk to OPSEU representatives you'll get a different opinion on that. They very strongly would like to be full participating members. Whether we want to recommend that or not, I don't know.
Mr Wiseman: The recommendation could be that they be full voting members on issues that do not relate to salary negotiations. For example, I know that on the Whitby board they're involved with the planning of the new hospital, they're involved with the discussions that relate to care and administration, but not the negotiations around voting on salaries and stuff. Could we put in a recommendation? Would that be a helpful way to go?
Mr Frankford: I think you can make a good argument that they are extremely involved in day-to-day running and the long-term plans for institutions, and if they don't have a strong voice there, one runs the risk of misplanning.
Mr Wiseman: It seems to me that what's happening in North American business is that there's more and more horizontal integration and more inclusion of workers in the decision-making process about how institutions and businesses should function. It makes it more profitable and you get more bang for the bucks. So it would seem reasonable that the people who are on the ground would know where to put the emphasis and where not to put the emphasis -- maybe in the allocation of funds and resources. I would concur that maybe another recommendation should be to include workers.
Mr Frankford: I think this gets back to discussions about the Public Hospitals Act, because I think some decisions will have to be made very broadly on that.
Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Can I ask a question of the researcher? How many of these advisory boards are actually in place?
Mr Pond: All psychiatric hospitals are supposed to have them, and they probably formally do, so to speak. But the degree to which each one is active is --
Mr Bisson: -- is a good question.
Mr Pond: Is a very good question, yes.
Mr Bisson: With regard to membership on the board decided within the board structure itself, are there appointments or is it strictly through election? I'm just trying to figure out the process here.
Mr Pond: All members including the chair are appointed by the Minister of Health. Then each board is supposed to draw up its own bylaws which reflect ministry policy and the memorandum of understanding the ministry has for the hospitals and for the boards. So there's a broad framework. For example, in regard to appointments, who and who's not allowed to be a member is determined by the ministry, but within that broad framework they have a lot of leeway. For example, they're supposed to go out and have a board which is as diverse and representative of the community as possible, but it's up to each board to decide how to do that.
Mr Bisson: I'm just looking at the overall membership of the board and where most of these people come from. There are obviously some good people here, but I'm looking for some consumers.
Ms Carter: Well, we've got an ex-patient. She came before this board not too long ago: Duclos.
Mr Bisson: Yes, you've got one; I saw that. But the question is that there are no criteria saying that on these community advisory boards there will be an equity format with regard to the appointments, that there shall be two people from the consumer groups --
Mr Pond: It's not mandatory to that degree.
Mr Bisson: There's nothing like that.
Mr Pond: No, not to that specific degree, no.
Mr Bisson: I didn't actually see any recommendation here. I was just wondering.
Mr Pond: The idea is that that's the intent.
Mr Bisson: Well, what's intended and what's done are always two different things.
The Chair: But you're dealing with, as we said earlier, volunteers. These people are not compensated for that financially and it's difficult to maintain --
Mr Bisson: It brings us back to what some of the other colleagues were talking about in regard to the whole idea of how these boards are set up and how we go and recruit them. Should we be remunerating them? What we end up doing is attacking them. I've got a situation in my riding where they're attacking a bunch of board members because they got a ring for five years of service on the board and everybody's raking them over the coals. Why would I want to sit on a board if all I do, quite frankly, is get pissed on every now and then? It brings us back to the question.
The only thing I was asking is that there are no criteria saying we're going to make sure when we appoint these boards that there is some sort of format, that we make sure we have some people from the institution, the consumer groups --
Mr Pond: No, not that specific.
Mr Bisson: There's nothing like that. It's unfortunate.
Mr Pond: To be fair, there is this general intent that boards should abide by and so on, but --
Mr Bisson: It's not within the mandate of this committee to be able to recommend anything like that, obviously.
Ms Carter: I think the important one here is the last one we're just coming to, that they're in fact financially dependent on the hospital that they're criticizing.
Mr Bisson: But, just as a last part of my question, it is not the mandate of this committee to talk about the structure. We're just here basically to talk about what's being recommended here. I've never sat on this committee; that's why I was asking.
Mr Pond: The next two or three recommendations deal with the composition of the board.
Mr Bisson: I don't know if I'd want to do it in the form of a motion, but I'd be interested in hearing from other members, that when looking at how these boards are appointed or elected or whatever, there be some kind of criteria out there that say, "When we're going out to get board members, let's make sure we try to truly represent the community we serve."
I don't know how other members feel about that, but I know it's a problem in some communities in regard to the board, that you get a group of one profession or another that tends to dominate the board and sometimes the board is not in tune with the service that's being delivered. I'd just like to hear the views of other members. Am I off base here?
The Chair: I don't see anything wrong with a recommendation that we, for example, ask the minister to review the feasibility of compensating appointees to the boards and the impact it may have.
Mr Bisson: I'm looking for some direction from other members.
Mr Frankford: I think there is a risk with volunteer boards, particularly if you have too many ex officio people who would be in a position to do it because they're on staff somewhere else. I think you can turn it into a bureaucratic meeting or a meeting of various established interests, and this gets away from the idea of real public community representation.
Mr Bisson: Is the community really represented in a format like that? That's the question I'd ask.
Mr Wiseman: I think that may be what these recommendations are trying to get at.
Mr Bisson: I take it that nobody would support my position.
Mr Wiseman: If we wanted to spell it out in the way you're suggesting, I I would have no difficulty in supporting that.
Mr Bisson: I looked at the recommendations. Some of the things it's talking about are okay. It's just something that concerns me greatly when I deal with some boards. Sometimes you truly don't have the representation you need to be able to deal with the mandate of that institution. You end up with a group of either lawyers or teachers or workers or whatever, and you don't have a good cross-section of your community.
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Mr Wiseman: The second recommendation says that former residents of the psychiatric hospital should be recruited to the board -- I think that's important -- and some physicians; I think that's important for balance. On this board already, from the list earlier, there is a homemaker, a lawyer, a nurse, a teacher, a pharmacist --
Ms Carter: It sounds pretty good to me.
Mr Wiseman: It sounds like that was a pretty reflective board. I don't know who's left on that board after what happened.
Mr Bisson: I didn't see, for example, representation from somebody who actually works in that institution, unless I don't read the list right.
Mr Wiseman: I think we've already agreed that that would be one of the recommendations that we would add, that representation from the workers be on this board.
Mr Bisson: That's the problem coming in as a sub in these committees. You walk in in the middle and --
Mr Wiseman: You and I are in the same boat on this one.
Mr Bisson: Okay.
Mr Wiseman: Should we accept this, or is there any more discussion?
Mr Bisson: I would like to have a note that that's something to be looked at: establishing some sort of criteria that ensure that you try as much as possible to reflect the community you're serving on the board. The kinds of things I am talking about, for example, is if we have a former patient of the institution, it's fairly difficult if you're the only one. Sometimes you just sit on your own and are isolated. Maybe we should look at having at least two former patients, and possibly somebody who works at the institution -- not at a management level, but somebody who is actually a service provider, maybe one or two of those. There are other things here that I thought were good -- you have people from the educational field, lawyers, pharmacists; that sounds good -- but those are the two key ones I was a little concerned about when looking at the list.
Ms Carter: I notice that the recommendation for physicians seems to be open-ended. I don't think we want an unlimited number of physicians, do we?
Mr Wiseman: Well, that recommendation is the same as the former residents. That's pretty open-ended too. I would hate to be too restrictive either, because in a volunteer way, you take --
Mr Bisson: You take what you can get sometimes.
Mr Wiseman: Sometimes that's the sad truth. Not enough people come forward to offer their time.
Mr Bisson: I guess putting it in the form of a motion is what I have to do and ask for the support of other people. When I talk about service providers within the institutions, I'd be talking about RNs or RNAs, people who are actually working with the patients on a daily basis, because sometimes they, more than anybody else, understand what some of the problems are.
Mr Cleary: Mr Chairman, I think I do know a little bit about that board. I've been involved with that facility for a number of years, and I think there's something else we've got to look at. We need to spread those appointments right from the Quebec border west as far as -- you can't just do everything you want to do. In my opinion it's families who have used the facilities who have been interested. There are lots of good people out there who will volunteer their time, so we've got to be careful too. Some of the names here I'm very familiar with; I was involved with that. I guess we wanted to make sure, speaking for myself, that every area had representation.
Mr Wiseman: Do you have some recommendation you'd like to put forward?
Mr Cleary: The only thing I would be interested in is that we represent -- you have the united counties here, and then as we come up along Ottawa and Brockville, that there be representation from each of those areas.
The Chair: If you read the preamble in this report, it says that under the bylaws of the board, membership "is intended to reflect the diverse nature of the communities which make up the catchment area." It seems to me that that covers essentially all of your concerns.
Mr Bisson: I don't mean to be a stickler, but I don't really believe that covers it, because often we have very good intentions in setting out the criteria by which we do things, but sometimes if you don't spell it out, you don't end up getting what you want in the end. I understand what the member for Cornwall was saying in regard to the composition; it's a huge geographical area and you want to make sure you have people representative, who live in the various parts that cover, by the looks of it, some three or maybe four ridings. I notice that Leeds-Grenville is represented by five people. I take it that's from five different communities within Leeds-Grenville?
Mr Cleary: In the past I was a member of county council, which covered a large area. This goes back a lot of years, but the 36 councillors had a bit of input there of a representative on there. That always went to them, as well as the city. We tried to get everyone involved and picking a good person to represent it, and I'm sure it's the same in the Brockville area and the Leeds-Grenville council and Prescott and Russell. I'm sure it's the same in them all.
The Chair: Mr Bisson, just to get this thing off the ground, because we're stalled here, do you want to make a specific motion?
Mr Bisson: That's what I was saying; I was making a specific motion. I don't know if we would ask them to take that into consideration when coming back to us -- you can't change it now; this is what they've got in place now -- that they look at trying to cover off some of the consumers who would be utilizing the service, at least to get two of them on the board so you're not feeling isolated. It would also be a good idea to have one or two people from within the institution who are actually service providers to the clientele, because they, at the end, those four people, know best what goes on within that institution from both perspectives. That was the motion, and that'll be the end of my discussion.
The Chair: Does anyone have any disagreement or difficulty with that? Okay.
Mr Pond: Okay. At the bottom of page 12 and the top of page 13: Physicians. I don't know if you want to change the wording. That was Dr Frankford's baby. He felt that physicians were the hands-on experts about the mental health care needs of the residents.
Ms Carter: I have a concern that we might be overloading this board with what you might call "involved professionals" rather than the general public.
Mr Pond: So no physicians.
Ms Carter: If it's big enough to accommodate everybody, fine, but I do have a worry.
The Chair: We have 15 members of the board, so I think there's lots of room.
Mr Pond: The next recommendation is along the same lines. There was a feeling, I guess, among the members that there wasn't a close enough relationship or an ongoing relationship between the mental health facilities branch of the ministry, the experts, the ones who actually develop policy, and the board. Also, the notion was that the board should be kept up to date about what was going on within the ministry.
So the idea was -- I'll quote the recommendation: "The bylaws of the...board should be amended to provide for the appointment of a Ministry of Health official as an ex officio member of the board."
The Chair: I don't know how practical that is, to be quite honest. It might be more practical to recommend that the ministry officials meet quarterly with the board to discuss matters of mutual interest. I'm not sure about mental health branch staff in that part of the province. I really don't know what the numbers are or where they're housed. It may not be practical, that's all I'm thinking.
Mr Wiseman: Along the line you're saying, could it be that we recommend that Ministry of Health officials attend at least X number of meetings of the board, to participate?
Mr Cleary: Do they not do that now?
The Chair: I don't believe they do.
Mr Bisson: I would take it the intent of what they're doing there is to get some sort of consistency as to who's attending -- not consistency, but the same person attending so that person is aware of what the board is doing. I take it that's why they did it this way, not to have a different ministry person come every two or three months to meet with the board and have to reinvent the wheel every time and remeet everybody.
Ms Carter: Maybe the answer would be to have a particular liaison person within the ministry who doesn't necessarily attend meetings but is the person they could contact.
Mr Bisson: Would that satisfy your concerns, Mr Chair? Just that it be the same person.
The Chair: I know there have been some frustrations on the part of that board in getting the information or responses from the ministry. What I was suggesting would be, as I said, that we request the Ministry of Health officials of the mental health branch to meet with the board at least twice a year to discuss matters of mutual interest.
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Mr Wiseman: I don't have any problem with that. Does anybody have any problem with that?
Mr Bisson: No. I take it that's not what they're trying to get at, as far as the recommendations are concerned, but you guys know the area.
Ms Carter: Who's "they"? This is us.
Mr Wiseman: These are our recommendations from this committee.
Mr Bisson: I'm sorry. I thought it came from the other end. I'm learning the process; give me a break.
Mr Wiseman: Is that okay?
The Chair: Okay.
Mr Pond: Okay, the last one. As you know, the board is not independent of the hospital formally. Everything is set up for them by the hospital: whatever refreshments they have, the meeting rooms -- everything else is set up and arranged for them by the hospital. Their advice about how the hospital is run is provided by the hospital staff, so the last recommendation is, "The Ministry of Health should consider providing the board with its own budget and support staff independent of the hospital."
Mr Bisson: How big is the budget we're talking about?
Mr Pond: The last time I checked -- I shouldn't say this off the top of my head -- it was around $20,000.
Mr Bisson: Which would mean to say that all of them would be treated the same way eventually.
Mr Wiseman: How many boards are there in --
Ms Carter: There are 10 psychiatric hospitals.
Mr Pond: Yes. There's one for each hospital.
I should add that this was a bit controversial among some of the members here. If you turn to page 9, the board finances at the top of page 9, its budget has gone up very considerably from 1989-90, which was $4,000, to 1990-91, and then again 1991-92 when it was $20,000. To be fair to the witnesses, their argument was that the board had become activist again in 1990-91. New people had come on board. They had planned and executed a wider range of activities than in previous years and that was why they needed the extra funds.
Mr Bisson: When we're talking about support staff, it's got to be more than $20,000.
Mr Pond: I should add -- let me just finish this -- they also told us that for future years the hospital had indicated that because of its own budget restrictions, they could not expect to get any more money from the hospital.
Mr Bisson: Is that a fire going on over there or what? A puff of black smoke for the past five minutes. Sorry. I have a way of getting people's attention off the issue.
Mr Pond: It's the University of Toronto. You have nothing to worry about.
Mr Bisson: I thought it might be people burning their Toronto Star or something.
Ms Carter: Do we know anything about what "using the hospital staff" implies? I mean, how much time it takes up, whether extra people are on that staff because of these responsibilities or whatever?
Mr Pond: No. Just that the director and the chief of psychiatry attend the meetings.
Mr Frankford: It seems to me that the support staff could be anything from just somebody who distributes the minutes and calls people up for the next meeting to someone who is there full-time and does all sorts of research and planning.
Mr Bisson: What are they asking for as a budget? They're asking for $20,000, you say?
Mr Pond: Yes, but they told us, because they've been told this by the hospital, that in future years it would be difficult to maintain this level of expenditure. It would be very difficult for the hospital to guarantee to the board that they could maintain this level of expenditure.
Mr Bisson: So they can be in a jeopardy situation for years.
Mr Pond: I think that's quite possible.
Mr Bisson: Okay. I guess I'll be fiscally conservative in the sense that if you open up a budget on a yearly basis, you know that every year it'll be back for more and more.
Mr Wiseman: Budgets have a tendency to become black holes.
Mr Bisson: But I understand their problem. If the hospital is saying, "We've got less money in our operating budget. We can't give you money for travel and different things; we're going to cut you back," then the board quite possibly can't operate to a certain extent. You're sort of in a catch-22.
Ms Carter: What mandate does the hospital have to supply funds for this board? Can they hold this over the head of the board if they don't like what it's doing or not?
Mr Pond: They're required to finance the board, but they're not required to give the board everything the board asks for, that's for sure.
Mr Bisson: So if they got the $20,000 per year now, it would go towards the travel for various conferences, refreshments, buying letterhead and stamps.
Mr Pond: I think the witnesses argued that a large part of the increase went towards reaching out to the community. Mr Runciman said the membership has changed, but the membership in 1991 was very active in outreach meetings, going around the catchment area, holding public meetings. They held a couple of events at the hospital for members of the public. They were planning more of those types of events.
Mr Bisson: Which costs a bit of money.
Mr Pond: Yes. I think that is what the thrust was for this particular board: community outreach, listening to the community, that sort of thing.
Mr Wiseman: Who makes up the shortfall? The budget in 1989-90 was $4,000 and they spent $12,000. In 1990-91 they actually came in under budget, and then in 1991-92 they are projecting to spend almost $4,000 more than their budget allows.
Mr Pond: As I say in the paragraph beneath that table, if you read between the lines -- I can read it out loud if you like, but I think you can read between the lines.
Mr Bisson: So this money, you're saying, would go towards outreach. It wouldn't actually be for support services. This is not for support services, this budget they're asking for?
Mr Pond: It is for everything, but I think their argument is that the increase is primarily due to their heightened level of activity within the community. I put it to you that way.
Mr Wiseman: I have a little difficulty. First you set a budget and then they're 25 per cent over budget and somebody comes in and says: "Hey, we're 25 per cent over budget. Give us the money." I have some real difficulties with that. That's what we're seeing with some of the other institutions, like the art gallery; I really have some difficulties with that one. I have always believed that you set a budget and that's it. You've got to work within your budget and you've got to be creative within your budget. If you want to spend more money, then before you spend that money, you'd better find out who's going to give it to you and where it's going to come from and not come back and hold this deficit over the head of somebody who --
Ms Carter: But surely in this case what we're looking at is not so much the size of the budget as where it comes from. If it came directly under the Ministry of Health, it could say, "Hey, you're overspending," and limit that budget just as well as a hospital can. My worry is that the hospital may have a vested interest in restraining the activities of this board. That's the issue, I think. Who knows? It works both ways.
Mr Bisson: This is also in your riding, eh, Mr Chair? Yes. So you guys know this, probably more so. What are your feelings, both of you, on the budget question? You've been dealing with these people.
The Chair: I don't have any strong feelings, but I know that general hospitals, for example, I suppose in all our ridings, have boards that are funded from hospital budgets and it doesn't seem to create any real difficulties in terms of independence. That's what we're raising here, that they need to be institutionally independent of the hospital in order to analyse the performance objectively. Do we agree with that or disagree? If we agree with that, I guess we should be asking the minister to look at the way in which the board is funded.
Mr Bisson: So you would be recommending that we approve the idea of the budget?
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The Chair: I'm saying that we could simply say that based on our concerns, the Ministry of Health should be reviewing the way in which boards are funded.
Mr Cleary: Speaking for myself, I'm not familiar with the outreach they've done. I'm not saying they didn't do it, but I'm not familiar with it if they've done it in the past.
Mr Bisson: Would you recommend that they institutionalize their budget? What's your feeling?
Mr Cleary: Everyone is looking at budgets now, and I guess we've got to keep them as tight as we can at present. I would think there should be some caution there.
Mr Bisson: So we've got one for and one against. Let's break the deadlock.
Listen, the concept is great, because it gives them a certain amount of autonomy. That I support, because that's what the purpose of this board is. The only difficulty I have is that if you set a budget and say, "Okay, we'll give you a yearly budget of $20,000," next year we want to get a support staff, the year after that we want to buy a computer, we want a bigger office. That might be very well and very good, but you could end up with 10 of these boards with budgets of $100,000 to $200,000 within five or six years. Do we want to go that route? That's what I'm asking.
The other thing I'm thinking at the same time is the whole question of what's going to happen in redirection of long-term care over the long term. I don't know quite how it's going to come into play on the whole concept of what this board is all about, because quite possibly under the long-term care model there might be some sort of advisory review committee, or whatever you want to call it, for the overall services provided to the community. That's why I'm a little bit reluctant to say, "Yes, let's give them a budget," until we really know what comes out of all of that. I would say no.
Mr Wiseman: Well, this is pretty open-ended. It says "should consider." They can consider it and they can reject it. I'm not sure how people feel about this, but this isn't saying they should. It just says they should consider it.
Ms Carter: I think it should be looked at; of course all the things Gilles is saying would then be part of what they were looking at.
Mr Wiseman: If we're trying to move more of the care out of the institutionalized situation, then maybe the community advisory boards and what they're going to be doing is cost-efficient in the sense that there are cost savings in other areas, or the escalation of costs is not going to accelerate in the same way it has in the past. Maybe we should just leave this the way it is and pass this as is and leave it up to the Ministry of Health.
Mr Bisson: Okay, with the cautions that we've raised.
Ms Carter: They're going to be worried about money.
Mr Wiseman: They're going to be worried about that.
Mr Bisson: I would raise the caution just for the record. My main thing is the question of, how will this board fit in in the long term in regard to the whole redirection of long-term care? The other question is, if you give a budget, do you stipulate at the very beginning that it's not the intention of the ministry in giving this budget that we end up building "another bureaucracy" etc?
The Chair: I'm not sure that's fair.
Mr Bisson: I know it's not fair; I'm generalizing the term. But the other point for me is that it would probably be easier to come at it from the other way, to say the hospital "shall provide" from its operational budget support services and what's needed up to X amount of dollars for that particular board in the meantime.
The Chair: I don't know if anyone's clear on that. I'm sure not. I'm going to ask you to make that a motion. If you want something that elaborate, you're going to have to make a motion.
Mr Bisson: My motion would be such that we leave it to the discretion of the ministry but with the following points for its consideration: Would a possible solution be to fund the advisory board from the existing hospital budget? In other words, they must provide certain services to this board and would have to legally do that.
The other thing is that the ministry -- if you've caught up to me -- takes a look at the long term on this particular question, how the redirection of long-term care will fit into the mandate of this board, and before actually going ahead and giving them a budget, if it decides to do that, that it look at that question.
The Chair: Does everyone appreciate the intent of the motion?
Mr Wiseman: Yes.
The Chair: Does the researcher --
Mr Bisson: Understand what I'm saying?
Mr Pond: It's all in Hansard.
The Chair: Any discussion? All in favour?
Motion agreed to.
Mr Wiseman: It's nice to be writing some of this stuff off.
Mr Pond: We haven't quite written it off. That's it for draft reports. The next big item is, if you recall, last summer the committee decided to write to all the agencies that had been reviewed by the committee since 1988 and asked them to submit a response as to how they have responded to the committee's recommendations. I was then asked to summarize their responses.
You should have that in front of you. It's called Responses by Agencies, Boards and Commissions to Committee Recommendations dated April 16, 1992. This is quite lengthy because, after all, the committee has reviewed quite a lot of agencies and there have been quite a lot of recommendations.
I'm in your hands as to how you want to proceed. If you would like a generalization, most agencies have prepared highly detailed responses. There are only really two or three agencies that have indicated varying degrees of strong disagreement with the committee's recommendations.
Mr Wiseman: Like the Ontario Food Terminal Board?
Mr Pond: That's one of them, yes. I think their problems were partly legal problems; that was their argument, I think. Two or three of these agencies have been dissolved, so it's not relevant.
There's one problem, though, that I think we should bring to your attention. On page 15, with regard to the review board for psychiatric facilities, apparently one of the recommendations of the committee was that the board prepare annual reports. It didn't when the board was before the committee. Apparently, judging from their response and from the research I've been able to do, they have not released or published or tabled in the House an annual report, but it seems, from the documentation the ministry provided, that they have prepared one and they're operating under the assumption it's been released. According to the library, the board has not released an annual report. According to the information I've been able to gather from the documents released by the board and from the ministry, as far as they're concerned, they have released an annual report.
So there seems to be a breakdown in communication between the ministry and this committee about whether or not the ministry has released an annual report for the Psychiatric Review Board. I was wondering whether perhaps we should write a letter to the ministry saying: "Look, as far as we know, the board has not published an annual report, although it seems to be your position that it has or it should be. Could you clear this up?" There seems to be a real breakdown in communication there.
The reason I bring it up is, if you look at the responses of the Psychiatric Review Board to the committee's recommendations, most of what they say is in effect: "Just see our first annual report. That answers your questions." As far as I know, as I say, and as far as the library has been able to determine, no annual report has been published. It may have been prepared internally, but it has not been published. That's my information as of yesterday.
Mr Wiseman: I guess you would need a motion to request this information from the Ministry of Health.
Mr Pond: We just write them a letter. I could phone them up as well.
The Chair: Just if we have agreement on the formal motion.
Mr Pond: To be fair to the board, it has prepared a response. It's just that they didn't send it to us because they said, "Just see our annual report."
Mr Wiseman: I think I'd like to see it, since the recommendation was addressed in the 1990 annual report.
Mr Pond: Yes, they didn't send it to us and, as far as I know, it doesn't exist.
Mr Wiseman: Then the next one is, "A timetable for implementing this recommendation is under review." They say that for a number of them. So how do the rest of you feel?
Mr Pond: If you'd like me to flag the other ones that have --
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Pond: You mentioned the Ontario Food Terminal Board; that's one of them. On page 19, the College Relations Commission, the issue there is, as you know, the commission steps in when there's a strike in the community colleges, either among faculty or support staff. The role of the commission is to make what's known as a jeopardy advisement to the minister, which means that the commission is supposed to make an evaluation about when a strike is threatening to make the students lose their year.
The commission has to balance the teachers' right to strike -- the support staff have a statutory right to strike -- against the students' right to finish their year. The role of the commission is, when it feels that point has been reached and the balance is tipped, so to speak, it is supposed to warn the minister. Then the minister has the discretion to step in or not step in, as the case may be.
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The argument when the commission was here was that as it currently stands it makes that judgement -- and it's a question of its best judgement about when it should make a jeopardy advisement -- but that there were not any statutory criteria to guide it in any great detail about when it should make that advisement. Some of the members felt that in the 1989 strike the commission had waited too long before making the advisement to the minister.
The committee was surprised to learn that at that time the commission did not collect statistics on the dropout rates in community colleges compared to the length of previous strikes. The committee argued that the commission should examine whether there was a quantifiable correlation between the length of a strike and students dropping out. The commission replied, "We don't do that kind of research."
As you can tell from the reply of the commission, it is collecting data now, because it has received the money from the ministry to collect the data, but it doesn't agree with the notion that there should be written statutory criteria guiding when it makes jeopardy advisement. The relevant paragraph, I guess, is at the bottom of page 19. That sums up their argument with the committee.
The Chair: Any comments? What do you think should be done in this instance?
Mr Pond: I was afraid you were going to ask me that. That raises the question of what the committee would like to do with any of these responses which, in your judgement, aren't up to speed. For example, on the next page the committee recommended that, "The Custody Review Board should be abolished." The Minister of Community and Social Services says no, in effect. That raises the question about what kind of follow-up you want to do for these recommendations generally.
Mr Wiseman: Without knowing a lot more --
Mr Pond: That's it exactly. That's the problem.
Ms Carter: I'd respect the minister's opinion in the absence of any other information.
Mr Pond: One thing you could do -- Doug and I have talked about this informally -- is just publish this in the next report on agencies with a covering proviso about: "This is a new step the committee is undertaking. It is the first time the committee has done this kind of follow-up. Because of time constraints or whatever, the committee doesn't want to pursue these follow-ups at the present time, but we're publishing it as a way of sending a signal to agencies that they should be expected to respond to committee recommendations." We could do that.
The Chair: Personally, I think that's a good idea. On the other area, when we are making decisions in respect to reviews this summer or later on, we may feel it's appropriate to recall some of these agencies. In fact, it doesn't have to be done during a break period. We're going to be setting time aside for review of agencies during our regular sittings, so we could take a look at two or three agencies, for example, whose responses, in our view and the researcher's, have been inadequate and recall them to appear before the committee and justify why they haven't responded in a positive way to the recommendations of the committee.
So those are the two courses of action I see, certainly of making reference in our report and also, if we feel it's important enough -- and this is something again that the subcommittee can throw around -- look at calling perhaps the most glaring of the commissions not responding positively to reappear before the committee. Are we agreed with that? Okay.
Mr Pond: Finally, the last document I have for you today is a brief summary of where the committee is at with regard to all of its -- as you know, we've reviewed 11 or 12 agencies since 1990. There are only one or two things I'd like to flag for your attention at this point, starting at page 3. These are the reviews which are still up in the air, so to speak.
Interjection.
Mr Pond: No. I'm sorry. This is a separate document called --
Mr Bisson: Draft final report? What's it called?
Mr Pond: Progress Report on the Committee's Review of Agencies, Boards and Commissions, dated June 10. It's about four pages long.
On page 3, these are the current reviews outstanding, if you like, and I've put the relevant questions in italics.
Regarding district health councils, in 1991 the committee reviewed two DHCs. In January of this year the committee reviewed another one. At the end of the hearing on the third DHC, Ottawa-Carleton, there was some feeling that, as you've mentioned already, given the new directions in the ministry, the new long-term planning directions being considered, perhaps the committee should ask the minister or the deputy minister to appear to discuss how these will affect DHCs since, after all, DHCs are supposed to be in the business of planning right now.
My own suggestion is that if you don't want to do that, we have enough material to prepare a draft report because we've done a lot of DHCs, we've done a lot of order-in-council appointments to DHCs. There's enough material around right now to prepare a draft report but there's one question remaining, namely: Do you want to bring in the minister or the deputy minister to talk about the relationship of DHCs to the long-term initiatives?
Mr Wiseman: Could I make a suggestion that you prepare the report and then when we've got the report we call in the deputy minister or the minister so that we can read the report and then we can ask our questions specifically related to that report? Is that a wise approach to this? Does everybody agree?
Mr Bisson: We support you all the way.
Mr Wiseman: Yes, I know, but I'm the one out on the edge of that gangplank.
Mr Bisson: We all did it together.
Mr Pond: Okay. The Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, if you recall, we heard from it in February and the issue then -- the situation may have changed -- was, does the committee want to hear from or invite --
Mr Bisson: Is that the ONTC?
Mr Pond: Yes. This is the issue. At that time, if you recall, as I understand it, several private sector bus companies were interested in hearing, and I don't know if they still are. That's the thing. Time has passed. Maybe the ministry has resolved that issue, for all I know. So the question is: Do you want to hear from client groups of the ONTC?
The other issue, I guess, would be the railway unions. They might want to be invited to appear. That will be the issue, I think, with the ONTC.
Mr Wiseman: Can we talk about that?
Mr Pond: All right, no problem.
Mr Bisson: I would have to get back to you.
Mr Pond: Okay. The Ontario Board of Parole, members raised a whole range of questions about the justice system in Ontario, and I'm still working on that one so we'll skip that.
The Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. Now, if you recall, that hearing was truncated. It was shorter than usual because there was a scheduling mixup -- not all the members were here for the hearing. I think there were about four members here. There were all kinds of questions raised about the police services board but, as I say here, the committee never sat down and worked out possible recommendations.
Mr Wiseman: I'm freelancing here, but in the Lewis report, is this something that we would want to do?
Mr Pond: As I was just about to say, there are all kinds of issues that have come up since January.
The Chair: This was a selection of one of the parties, and I don't think it's appropriate, with Mr McLean not here, to shoot this down, because this committee has always operated on the basis of each party selecting an ABC or two for review. I don't think this would be a precedent to cut this off, if that's what you're suggesting, without the approval --
Mr Wiseman: No, we were suggesting we have it back.
The Chair: Okay, fine. I don't know what Mr McLean's view would be on it, but I felt you were going in the other direction --
Mr Wiseman: We are really accommodating today, Mr Chair.
Mr Pond: So we're going to hold that one over until --
Mr Wiseman: We'll have to wait for Mr McLean to make a decision on that.
Mr Pond: I may have misheard you. Regarding the ONTC, are the members going to come up with the --
Mr Bisson: I think it would be totally appropriate to have some of the client groups come before the committee in order to deal with the question of what's happening with the ONTC, but I also would like to see some of the major unions that are represented in the ONTC here as well.
Mr Pond: Do you want us to look up possible groups that might want to appear?
Mr Bisson: Yes.
Mr Wiseman: I think we'd want to -- this is the Ontario Northlands Transportation Commission? I'd like to caucus with my colleagues on that before we go further.
Mr Pond: Finally, the Grand River Conservation Authority. If you recall, the issue there primarily was the authority's response to the audits that had been done in the early 1990s by the ministry as a result of controversies in the local media about how the authority was spending its budget. Almost all of the questions to the witnesses were directed at how well they had responded to the audit.
I think it's probably safe to say that members didn't draw any firm conclusions one way or another. I was directed to get a hold of the ministry audits. I haven't been able to do that yet; we're still trying to do that. I just may not have gotten the right official the last time I tried. If you like, I can continue to plug along at that.
Other than that, it's really hard to pin down how well they're managing their funds. In a one-and-a-half-hour open session with the witnesses it was very hard to do that. They had responses, but whether they were satisfactory or not, the members didn't decide at the time.
Mr Bisson: Through what ministry are they funded?
Mr Pond: The Ministry of Natural Resources. They also receive funds, as you know, from the municipalities within their catchment area.
Mr Bisson: I'm not sure what the controversy is. Was the point that there was some alleged inappropriateness in regard to how the funds were spent?
Mr Pond: Yes, that they were being spent on things it wasn't necessary to spend money on.
Mr Bisson: Such as?
Mr Pond: Do you want to give examples?
Mr Wiseman: I'm just trying to remember. I know they were there.
Mr Bisson: So there was an audit that was carried out because of this?
Mr Pond: Yes, there were a couple of audits.
Mr Bisson: And we've never seen the audit?
Mr Pond: No, I haven't seen it personally because they wouldn't give it to me.
Mr Bisson: Who wouldn't give it to you?
Mr Pond: The authority didn't bring it, to start with. Since then I've been trying to get it out of the ministry -- and I don't want to cast aspersions on the ministry, maybe I just didn't get the right official. So far I've found it a bit difficult to get a copy of that audit from the ministry, but maybe I just got the wrong person. Maybe tomorrow they will give it to me. But that won't resolve the question of what you want to do with it. The audit was done in 1990; the allegations were in 1990. I guess the question --
Mr Wiseman: I think there are a lot of questions to be asking these conservation authorities.
Mr Pond: That leads me to the next one: Do you want to invite another one?
Mr Wiseman: Absolutely. This one has got to come in. They're planning subdivisions, okaying building permits on floodplains and trying to sell land. Yes, I think this one would be a good one to have.
Ms Carter: How many conservation authorities do you want, because I would be interested in my own.
Mr Wiseman: One of the things I think we might want to do with the conservation authorities in the recommendations we'll be making is to consider, first, whether they should be restructured, how to make them more accountable, what the relationship should be to the local councils and the Ministry of Natural Resources, how they're being funded and the approaches we might want to recommend in terms of that, their mandate and how they should be structured in order to achieve that mandate. I think there are a lot of questions here.
Mr Pond: Yes. My point was that when the Grand River Conservation Authority was here those issues didn't arise. That was my point about the first one. So we could invite the second one to come in, the way we did with DHCs. We had more than one DHC because the committee felt it wasn't representative of the system just to have one. Perhaps we should invite a second one and take it from there, if you like.
Interjections.
Mr Wiseman: Yes, I would agree with that. I think that would be appropriate. Would you agree with that?
Mr Cleary: Talking about conservation authorities, a lot of them are very upset right now; underfunding.
Mr Pond: I think all of them are upset.
Mr Cleary: We might just as well listen to them.
Ms Carter: It's a question of how we spend --
Mr Wiseman: I think this would give us an opportunity to discuss this.
The Chair: I think we're all in agreement.
Mr Bisson: I think it was a recommendation to have somebody from MNR --
Mr Waters: Who is responsible or very knowledgeable about conservation authorities from MNR's perspective and the relationship with them.
The Chair: I guess that concludes the meeting, unless there is any other business. We've got a meeting of the subcommittee.
The committee adjourned at 1155.