CONTENTS
Wednesday 17 February 1993
Subcommittee report
Appointments review
Patrick Ryan
Rebecca F. Jamieson
Doris M. Schwar
Debbe Day Crandall
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 ND)
*Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND) for Ms Carter
Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC) for Mr Stockwell
Fletcher, Derek (Guelph ND) for Mr Ferguson
Rizzo, Tony (Oakwood ND) for Mr Waters
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1005 in committee room 2.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair (Mr Robert W. Runciman): I'm going to see a quorum and call the meeting to order. Everyone has a copy of the subcommittee meeting minutes. We can thank the clerk for that. Are there any questions or comments with respect to the minutes of the subcommittee? I'll draw to the attention of members -- they'll get reminders to this effect, in any event -- that we're scheduled to meet again on March 9 and 10 to review the selections made by the subcommittee. If there are no questions or comments, we'll just move on to the next order of business.
Clerk of the Committee (Ms Lynn Mellor): It's carried?
The Chair: You can assume it's carried.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW
Consideration of intended appointments.
PATRICK RYAN
The Chair: Our first witness this morning is Patrick Ryan. Mr Ryan, would you like to come forward and take a seat, please. Good morning. Mr Ryan is an intended appointee as the labour director of the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. Would you like to make any brief comment before we get into questions?
Mr Patrick Ryan: Yes. First off, I'd like to apologize for being hoarse. I've got the flu, so bear with me. I believe the clerk has a copy of a a participants' manual that we've developed at the agency on muscular/skeletal injuries. I'd like to just say at the outset that there were 400,000 injuries last year in Ontario alone, and 50% of them were muscular/skeletal injuries. This participants' manual is an extremely important joint venture we've embarked upon at the agency. We're looking forward to some improvements in those figures over the coming years.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): Welcome this morning to the committee. Are you on the executive of OPSEU?
Mr Ryan: I'm not with OPSEU.
Mr McLean: Who are you with?
Mr Ryan: I'm with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and I'm the president.
Mr McLean: Why would you be interested in this appointment? Are you not busy enough with what you do?
Mr Ryan: I'll tell you, nobody can be too busy when health and safety are concerned. I guess one of the first things I looked at when I became interested in the agency was the mission statement of the agency itself. If I could just have 30 seconds to read it into the record, I think it's extremely important that we understand what the mission statement of the agency really is.
"The Workplace Health and Safety Agency, a bipartite organization of labour and management, is committed to promoting and enhancing the highest degree of physical, mental and social wellbeing of workers. This will involve empowering the workplace parties to direct their destinies, so that the incidence and consequence of accidents, illnesses and diseases arising out of events and exposures in the workplace can be reduced. The agency will strive to achieve these objectives through joint labour-management leadership and cooperation under the letter and spirit of the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario and will include:
" -- the generation of knowledge on health and safety hazards;
" -- the development, delivery and administration of education and training programs for the workplace parties;
" -- the promotion of occupational health and safety;
" -- the development and publication of standards of performance for health and safety;
" -- the direction and supervision of funding, and;
" -- the encouragement of the bipartite approach for continuous improvement throughout the health and safety network."
Having read that mission statement, clearly I've always had an interest in health and safety, but I have a greater desire to participate in this process because I'm extremely interested in the bipartite process and I sincerely believe it will lead to a dramatic reduction in the injuries in Ontario.
Mr McLean: Have you found Bill 208 to be an asset with regard to occupational health and safety?
Mr Ryan: To be fair to the process, I don't really think Bill 208 has had an opportunity yet to work its way through the system. As you well know, we spent the past two years working at the agency to develop the programs which we believe are going to lead us into a reduction of accidents, deaths and illnesses in the workplace. To answer your question, there's no doubt in my mind that Bill 208 is going to improve the occupational health and safety standards within this province, thereby leading to a massive reduction in injuries in the workplace.
Mr McLean: In your position as head of CUPE, do you not accept the $275-per-day per diem? Are you aware of it?
Mr Ryan: Am I aware of it? Yes, I am.
Mr McLean: And you'll be accepting it?
Mr Ryan: Of course I'll be accepting it.
Mr McLean: And you think it's right, at the salary you're making, to get an appointment for $275 a day when there are people out there who are probably qualified to do the job who are on unemployment and welfare?
Mr Ryan: I thought we were here to talk about occupational health and safety and the agency. I assume you receive a per diem, and I bet you receive your per diem and don't turn it in to the government. I don't really think we're any different in labour than our management counterparts on the same committees. If you really want to talk about the agency --
Mr McLean: Mr Upshaw was here yesterday, and he indicated that he does not accept per diems. That's why I asked you the same question, to find out whether you did or whether you didn't. And I've got my answer.
I observe that the number of assignments in the workplace and the accidents that have been there over the last 10 years have been drastically decreased. Do you think that this board will further decrease accidents and help advance safety in the workplace?
Mr Ryan: I'm not aware of what stats you're looking at, because the ones we looked at show they are on the increase and not on the decrease. Obviously, one of the reasons I decided to participate on the board would be to help drive down the rate of accidents in the workplace. But as I say, I'm really interested in these figures you've got that show they are declining, when we all know they are increasing.
Mr McLean: The Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Manufacturers' Association have complained that the compromise has been pushed through with indecent haste. The compromise I'm talking about are some of the changes that were made in Bill 208. Are you aware of those complaints?
Mr Ryan: Yes, I'm aware. Do you want me to comment?
Mr McLean: Are our health and safety representatives adequately trained, do you think, or do they need more training? Are the representatives we have in factories and industry adequately trained, do you think, or do you think they need far more training?
Mr Ryan: I think the reason we passed Bill 208 to begin with was because we clearly needed more training in the workplace. So to answer your question, no, I don't believe at this present moment that the committees we've got operating now in the province are adequately trained. No, I do not.
Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): I have a couple of questions. As you may be aware, the agency has had some problems regarding working properly. Not to put any blame, there has been some criticism. What do you think you can do to bring together the players and try and get it to work? What skills do you think you can bring, and how we are going to do this to try and make this thing work?
Mr Ryan: I've got a solid commitment to the bipartite process. Prior to becoming the president of CUPE, I spent 17 years in Ontario Hydro. During the last five years with Ontario Hydro, we spent a great deal of time working on the bipartite process, long before Bill 208 was ever passed. We had, in effect, put in place through our collective agreement a process identical to the Workplace Health and Safety Agency process. I worked in the nuclear industry, and in terms of the accident rate, we had probably the foremost record in the province in terms of accidents per man-hour, and we've never had a fatality in the nuclear industry. I believe it was directly attributable to the bipartite process.
What would I bring to the board? I would bring a commitment to work with the bipartite process. Hopefully, we can get some people we can work with, because clearly we had people in from the CFIB, which was just mentioned a second ago -- here we have people who, by the way, agreed to this mission statement I just read out. Over the past two years, we've made something like 200 decisions at the Workplace Health and Safety Agency, and only one of those decisions -- that was around the core certification, the training hours -- resulted from a vote. Everything else was done by consensus. Here we have a group of people who could not live with the process. One simple vote and they decided to take their ball and go home.
So what I would bring is to say I would certainly not engage in that type of despicable partisan politicking that went on at the board. I would try to bring the two sides together and say, "We agree upon the process. Let's work within the process." I recognize that inside of that process I'm going to be on the losing end of some of the votes, but I certainly won't be taking my ball and going home if I lose.
Where would we be in the Legislature today if you decided that if you lost the vote, which you do on a regular basis now that you're the third party -- you cannot afford to take your ball and go home, and that's precisely what these people have done.
Mr Carr: Why do you think we've had this situation? Quite frankly, you just hit the nail on the head of where we're at. How did this happen? You haven't been on the board, but --
Mr Ryan: It was quite simple how it happened. Bill 40 was working its way through the House and we had the CFIB, which is the small business. They were enraged at what was taking place with Bill 40, and they tried bringing in partisan politicking from another issue, a separate issue from health and safety, and imported those problems into the Workplace Health and Safety Agency.
Mr Carr: What is your understanding of how the agency is working, then? Do you see it working well?
Mr Ryan: As I say, if you take a look, there are 200 decisions all made by consensus, and on one decision we had to go to a voting mechanism. I'd say that's an excellent record, and I can see it working well in the future; I think it bodes well for the future. It shows that the bipartite process can work and will work.
Mr Carr: What would you like to see happen? Any changes made? How would you like to see them?
Mr Ryan: The only change I would like to see is to give us some people we can work with on the management side, people who are willing to make a commitment to the process and who will abide by the mission statement and work towards the improvement of health and safety in the province and forget about the partisan politicking. Let's focus on the workers, the people we're there to represent. Let's look at the public service we're there to provide.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): Welcome. I wonder if I could try a very different type of question. Maybe, not being on the agency yet, you're not in a position to answer. I'm a medical doctor. Do you have any comments on the relationship with physicians, who surely are important in reporting accidents, in making recommendations about aspects of improving health and safety?
Mr Ryan: To be quite honest, my own personal feeling on it is that physicians could play a better role in terms of filling out the form 7s. When the employer refuses to fill out the form 7, I think we could have an expedited process whereby the medical doctors could get themselves involved and start that process of filling them out, thereby helping to reduce accidents in the workplace. I don't really have a lot of opinions on where the medical doctors fit into accidents in the workplace, though.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Mr Ryan, just as a question, what kinds of accidents are you aware of as a CUPE person? Given that kind of experience, what do you think you can bring in terms of that knowledge to this particular board?
Mr Ryan: I guess I've had a checkered career in terms of witnessing accidents. When I arrived in Canada here -- I'm originally from Ireland; I arrived here 18 years ago -- I worked in a factory in the east end of Toronto. Within four days of being on the job, I witnessed a man being pulled into a mill and losing his arm right up to the elbow, primarily because the employer had removed the safety trip-wire because he wanted to load more material into the mill; by taking the trip-wire off, it allowed him to do that. Of course, when you remove the trip-wire, there's no safety device in place, so the man lost his arm. So I see what's happening on the industrial side.
I've worked in nuclear power plants, which is a heavily industrialized environment, so I've got a lot of experience dealing with radiation, for example. I've sat on various committees that have dealt with various levels of government on radiation protection.
From a CUPE perspective, because I've been on the executive of CUPE for a number of years, most of their workplaces, schools and hospitals, for example, have serious problems with asbestos, so I've got extensive knowledge in terms of how to deal with asbestos. I've also been the president of CUPE Ontario. I deal with an executive board, so I'm very familiar with dealing with boards, agencies and so on. I think I've got a variety of skills that I bring to the board.
Mr Marchese: What kind of objectives do you have or what aspirations do you bring to this particular agency?
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Mr Ryan: I look at those figures, as I said, 400,000 lost-time injuries last year alone, which equates to about 3.4 accidents per minute. I'd have to be honest and say I want to reduce that; I want to see that come down. Ideally, I want to see that come down to zero, but I'm pragmatic enough to realize it's not going to happen over the next year or two. But we have to work towards a goal of zero. That's primarily my interest.
Mr Marchese: For the record, Mr Ryan, I just wanted to give my opinion on the per diem. We have not often asked people whether they will accept a per diem or not. I find it very interesting that we're asking that question as of yesterday and today to two particular candidates. As a general rule, we haven't asked.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Fred Upshaw volunteered that, didn't he?
Mr Marchese: No, he didn't volunteer it. He was asked whether he would take the per diem. But we haven't asked that as a general rule. I just thought for your information and for the record, I should state this.
The Chair: Any additional questions from government members?
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): Are you still active in the Durham NDP association?
Mr Ryan: No, I'm not.
Mr Grandmaître: When did you retire?
Mr Ryan: I retired when I became the president of CUPE Ontario.
Mr Grandmaître: This was recently?
Mr Ryan: Last night.
Mr Grandmaître: Tell us about your additional studies in partnership between labour and management. What got you interested in additional studies?
Mr Ryan: As you probably well know, Ontario Hydro is going through severe problems right now, primarily relating to the nuclear end of the industry. Their capacity factor has dropped from around 80%, 81%, which was the design feature of the reactors, down to approximately 60%.
Three or four years ago, Ontario Hydro approached CUPE 1000 -- I was on their executive at the time -- wanting to know whether we'd like to get involved in a bipartite process. Essentially it's TQM, total quality management, or continuous quality improvement; there's a host of names it goes by. We had a set of rules and guidelines we had to put in place before we would participate in it. Primarily, that would have to be focused on the employees and the people, with the belief that if you improve the working conditions and the environment that people work in, the spinoff will be an increase in productivity and an increase in quality improvement.
It was an interesting concept and we got into it with Ontario Hydro. I guess we were one of the first in the province to do so. We spent a lot of time travelling the United States and Canada looking at various quality improvement programs. Finally, we're turning that process around in the nuclear industry. The capacity factors are on their way back up again, and I believe it's directly attributable to the closer relationship between management and the union.
Mr Grandmaître: How much time did you spend with the nuclear training centre?
Mr Ryan: That was up in Rolphton. Actually, I spent about 11 months training in that facility, but the nuclear training program is a continuous training program. I've spent 17 years in nuclear, and I was essentially in training for the full 17 years. You never really get out of training in the nuclear industry.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Upshaw was telling us that what's missing right now is the development of programs to better inform people about health and safety. How can we improve these programs? I'm talking about training programs, training people.
Mr Ryan: I think yesterday you were given a copy of the core certification training program, which is the principal training program we have right now.
Mr Grandmaître: But Mr Upshaw told us yesterday that this was one of his biggest problems, that these programs were taking too long to develop on the training of people. I asked him if it was lack of money. He said: "No, it's not a lack of money. It's putting these programs together."
Since Bill 208, one of your responsibilities -- I shouldn't say your responsibility. What Bill 208 did was to give people an opportunity to be trained to prevent accidents in the workplace. Tell us about the development of these programs.
Mr Ryan: As you know, I wasn't there during its development; I'm just coming on to the board of the agency. But my knowledge of it to date is that we're looking at three levels of core certification training, based on the hazard level within your workplace. If you work in a fairly benign health and safety environment, such as a shoe store, for example, it's envisioned that you'll receive 40 hours of basic health and safety training, which essentially would help you to identify hazards within your own workplace. In a shoe store, I guess you would be interested in the quality of air. Perhaps you might be interested in whether there's any asbestos fibres in the ceiling tiles. You might be interested in tripping hazards and so on. So it's fairly broad-based health and safety training.
If you work in an environment such as hospitals or the mining industry, where the hazards are a lot more complicated, we've designed a training program that's 120 hours, plus some specific training for the workplace, keeping in mind that we can't ask them up for a training program that's going to encompass all of the workplaces. So you look at the mining industry and say: "You're going to get 120 hours of intensive training, because you've got rotating equipment, for example. You go underground where there are hazards with gases and so on." But in addition, there would be some hazards which are unique to the mining industry or unique to the nuclear industry, for example, so we'd have to come up with some workplace-specific training. I think what we're trying to do is customize the training to each individual workplace as best we possibly can.
Mr Grandmaître: What do you think of the partnership between management and labour in establishing these programs? Is management uptight about this or are they doing it willingly?
Mr Ryan: From my experience of it, no, they're not uptight about it. As a matter of fact, I think they're relishing the thought of being able to get in and sit down and work in a partnership with labour. We talk a lot about partnerships these days, but I truly believe that health and safety is one area where we can get into a partnership without the adversarial roles that we normally bring to the collective bargaining tables. Health and safety really should be devoid of partisan politicking and I think it should be devoid of this adversarial relationship we've built up. I think it's a prime area where we can build good partnerships and use it as an example for the rest of the province.
Mr Bradley: As my colleague has mentioned, you were the president of the NDP Durham Centre riding association from 1989 to 1992, and this leads to the other work that you've been involved in, the nuclear industry. I was reading a story this morning by someone who could never be accused of being pro-nuclear, Martin Mittelstaedt of the Globe and Mail, who talks about some problems in the industry. Do you believe, having been a member of the New Democratic Party, whose policy it was not to have nuclear generating stations, that those generating stations should now be closed?
Mr Ryan: Well, for starters, I think you're misreading the policy of the NDP on nuclear stations.
Mr Bradley: Well, it's changed, I know.
Mr Ryan: It hasn't changed. But let me tell you something about the NDP and nuclear power. In 1992, we were the only union in the province to take to our membership, 20,000 members across the province -- we brought to each individual member the opportunity to vote on whether or not they'd like to affiliate with the NDP, and that's even with the NDP's supposed policy of closing down nuclear power plants, and they voted in favour of affiliating with the NDP.
So I have no problem whatsoever reconciling the fact that I was the president of the NDP riding association and that I worked in a nuclear power plant for 17 years. Nor do the members, by the way, who I represent have any problems with it. I don't know if that answers your question or not, but that's a fact of life.
Mr Bradley: The question was, do you believe that the nuclear generating stations should be closed in Ontario?
Mr Ryan: Do I believe it? Absolutely not. No. I think it's the cheapest, most benign way of generating electricity in this province.
Mr Bradley: Do you foresee having to deal on this board with matters related to safety at these plants, in light of the continuing discussions -- let's put it that way -- public discussions of safety at the various nuclear plants and the calls for the closing of those plants as a result?
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Mr Ryan: Wait a second. I think you're misrepresenting the reasons for calling for the closing of the plants. It's got nothing to do with the safety environment in the plants; it's got everything to do with the generating capacity factors. There is no question about the safety of our nuclear power industry, none whatsoever.
Mr Bradley: Except that the lead of the story this morning says, "Canada's nuclear regulatory agency and Ontario Hydro have discovered potentially serious design flaws that could affect the majority of the province's atomic reactors, including the nearly completed $14-billion Darlington generating station," and it talks about flaws that exist there. If those flaws indeed do exist, would you support the closing of the plants?
Mr Ryan: But, Jim, wait a second. You're reading something there that -- first off, you prefaced your statements by saying that this individual you're reading from is not a supporter of nuclear energy to begin with.
Mr Bradley: He's an independent reporter, though.
Mr Ryan: The second thing, if there's a design flaw, it does not indicate by any stretch of the imagination that the design flaw is going to lead to a health and safety problem. It's talking about the design flaw as regards the reactors, perhaps, and the inability of the reactors to stay on line. It is not suggesting for one second that there's a safety problem there.
Mr Bradley: If there were any hint that there could be a problem existing, that these problems could in some way affect the health and safety of the employees, would you support the closing of the nuclear generating stations in Ontario?
Mr Ryan: I would support the fixing of the problem. Every time you've got a health and safety problem, it doesn't mean you close down the factory. Would you support shutting down General Motors if we found we had a problem on the production line?
The Chair: Mr Ryan, thanks. That concludes your appearance here this morning. I appreciate your coming in.
REBECCA F. JAMIESON
The Chair: Our next witness is Rebecca Jamieson. Good morning. Just take a seat. Ms Jamieson is an intended appointee as a member of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Would you like to say something briefly before we get into questions, or move right into questions?
Ms Rebecca F. Jamieson: Right into questions.
The Chair: Okay. You were selected for review by the government party. Mr Marchese's going to lead off.
Mr Marchese: I have some questions about your appointment to the institute. I want to ask you some questions about native studies in particular, because it's the field that I think you worked in for quite some time. Can you tell us a bit about some of the work you have done in terms of curriculum writing or, before you get to curriculum writing, talk to us about what's lacking in the curriculum in Ontario at the moment in terms of how native students are reflected or not reflected? With your knowledge, I think you'd be able to tell us a few things about some of the problems you may have uncovered over the years.
Ms Jamieson: At all levels of education? Would you like me to go over that?
Mr Marchese: I suspect that the problems are at all levels of education.
Ms Jamieson: There is a basic theme, and there have been efforts made to make the curriculum more inclusionary and more reinforcing of the aboriginal students who attend, wherever they attend.
Just briefly, to give you a summary, there has been a move towards native-studies-specific courses certainly at the secondary level and in public school boards. I'm not familiar with separate school boards, exactly. Also, at the university and college levels there are aboriginal-specific programs. That's one effort that's being made, and now there's a lot of discussion going on about having the across-the-board curriculum being more inclusionary of looking at aboriginal peoples' contribution in certain areas such as science, in the area of biology, looking at traditional medicines, that sort of thing. Certainly, at one of the universities near my home the faculty of health sciences is looking at doing that.
That's what's happening as a general trend across the province; this seems to be happening. Linking that with my own personal experience, I've worked in my community in developing the education system all of my professional career. We do follow the program of study for the province of Ontario, but it has always been amended to reinforce and support the culture of the community.
In some instances, it hasn't been done as well as we would like, and we're working on that. In our community, we are now looking at moving from a federally run elementary education system to a community-controlled education system, which is part of an overall national trend in terms of aboriginal education. In that work, we work a lot with local boards and also universities, colleges and institutes like the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Mr Marchese: Rebecca, one of the problems that I know exists in the educational systems across Ontario is that we still have books that stereotype native people and haven't weeded that kind of stuff out. There are still students going to the libraries and taking books that have antiquated views of aboriginal people. Is that your experience? If that is the case, what are boards doing across Ontario to deal with it?
Ms Jamieson: It has been my experience that this occurs; not as much as it used to, thank goodness. I think a general awareness has started to rise, but now that we have things like the anti-racism policy, it's affecting the actions of boards, not just with respect to aboriginal peoples but all peoples, races and culture. Boards are much more aware now and they're reviewing their documents and that sort of thing. It hasn't filtered into the more proactive level of curriculum modification fully, but that's coming.
I must point out that the majority of aboriginal students in Ontario at the elementary and secondary levels attend provincial schools. That's a very important factor. There's the official position on anti-racism, which then filters into curriculum, which then filters into the kinds of materials you present students and how you present it, whether they're aboriginal or not.
Mr Marchese: As you work on curriculum development, do you work very closely with the Chiefs of Ontario?
Ms Jamieson: The Chiefs of Ontario doesn't do curriculum development, but through that office we have a network of aboriginal educators from all the aboriginal territorial organizations. We review the concepts of curriculum that we see as supportive for our territories. We share information that way. It's not a very formalized network yet. We're trying to get it up and working, but there certainly is a province-wide network now for doing that, because we're also getting a lot of requests from boards of education. Because they want to be able to make some changes, they're coming to us in our organizations and territories and asking: "Can you help us? Can you give us information?" We're trying to pool that information so we can do that.
Mr Marchese: There have been some cuts to the transfer payments to OISE.
Mr Bradley: In an NDP government? I don't believe it.
Mr Marchese: How do you manage that problem? Given that, what would you fight to keep? Do you have any priorities in terms of what you think should be maintained and what should be dropped from the curriculum?
Ms Jamieson: One of the institute's primary roles, from my personal perspective and my experience in education, is the research it does and the field sites it has. They are the only institute with graduate services, and it's looked to by all boards, to my knowledge, and communities like mine, aboriginal communities, as the place where you can go and get the most up-to-date information, the most up-to-date research, and where you can link up with experts if you're doing a new initiative in your community.
For example, in our community, when we initiated immersion in our languages, it was to OISE that we turned for assistance in evaluation of those programs. Those would be my priorities, in terms of my personal experience where I'm working from an education, particularly in this whole multicultural situation we're looking at, speaking personally from an aboriginal perspective and how it's affected me. But I'm sure that with the province as multicultural as it is, and certainly the city of Toronto, we're only just really, as I can see it, getting a handle with this type of research on how to even begin to deal with the situation we're in now.
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Mr Bradley: I'm glad that the question on funding has already been asked by the government member. It was a pre-emptive strike, because I was going to ask you that question. There's always been a concern about the funding of OISE. Let me ask you a question about the very existence of OISE. There have been individuals and perhaps even groups over the years who have questioned the very need for OISE to exist, and there have been some public battles where OISE has been able to gather influential public opinion and newspaper support for the position of the continuation of OISE. How do you answer those who say that we could get along without it? Because as I read today's news clippings, the Treasurer is going to be looking for many ways of trimming government expenditures because of the deficit situation, and there isn't a Treasurer in the province of Ontario of any political ilk who will not look at the existence of OISE. How do we counter that argument, those of us who may believe that OISE is worth saving?
Ms Jamieson: It goes back, as far as I'm concerned, to what OISE is. Do we look at it as a structure with a staff, like an institutional thing, or do we look at it as a service and programs? Certainly, in times of restraint it's hitting everyone, all institutions. We have to look at doing things differently, and that's what I would look at, trying to maintain the research function or perhaps doing it in different ways; for an example, doing more collaborative research with communities and boards, rather than having a massive structure of people who just do that, and then they become criticized in terms of being isolated and so forth. I think if we're going to look to rationalize services, like public service and public programs -- and we need research in the education area -- we have to do it from a collaborative approach, and then you have more partners involved in it.
That would be my initial response to people who feel that perhaps we should get away from it, because I don't really believe we can afford within the province of Ontario to have multiple institutions doing the same research and the duplication. It's unwise economically and it's unsound in terms of policy formation and all that sort of thing.
Mr Bradley: There are a couple of issues that arise that are fairly prominent in education. I'm not necessarily saying they're the most important issues, but they arise publicly. One is that of the dropout rate in the province, which is exceedingly high, although I think if people look at what it was a number of years ago and what the education system is today, as compared to what it was years ago, they might not be quite so alarmed at the figures. That is one. The second is participation in the international test of math and science. The government position, at least with the previous minister, was that the province of Ontario would not participate in the 1995 international test of math and science. Do you believe that indeed the province should have its students participate in that, or is that not necessary?
Ms Jamieson: I believe some standard of comparison is necessary in terms of the global picture of economic competitiveness and all that: Are we spending our moneys publicly on education and getting returns? I think that's important, but I also understand and I would also have the same caution of making sure that I participated and whoever is going to make the decision participated in looking at the actual tools that are going to be used, to make certain that the tools are not biased for the people who are being assessed. That's my understanding of the concern. I know we had that concern in the aboriginal community and we asked to participate in the review of those particular documents for that very reason.
Ontario in particular is so multicultural, whereas if you look at some other countries, they may not have the same considerations to take into account. It was a massive project, and that was our concern, that we do need some benchmarks, some way of getting some handle in terms of public accountability: Are we getting part of the results we say we want; that is, people with the skills to be able to be employed etc? But let's make sure we're assessing it with the appropriate tools and not misidentifying problems.
Mr Bradley: There is a bias, I think would most people would concede -- if you disagree, you'll certainly say so -- towards an academic education, if I can use that terminology. In Ontario, most people want their children to be something where they don't have to work with their hands. Unfortunately, the jobs where one has to work with his or her hands are considered, in the minds of many parents, to be lower-echelon jobs, unlike some other countries, where they're considered to be certainly significant. Do you have any ideas on how that might be turned around, so we can have parents who don't insist, when they go to the school, that their children, heaven forbid, are becoming lawyers or something of that nature but are prepared to be people working with their hands, even though that's changing in our society as well?
Ms Jamieson: Certainly, the economy is changing it for us in part, and people's attitudes are changing as a result of that. With more awareness at the broad community and broad public level of the change of job market, the move towards technology, I think that will help, and more effort, perhaps, in that area. I know even at the school board levels and in our community, which is not a provincial school board, we work on that and try to get away from what we view to be a class-oriented view of jobs; we feel that all people contribute. So it's going back to the collective joint responsibility, and we try to stress that.
Certainly things like the destreaming that's going to be implemented is a way of getting at that, although there's much resistance, as you are aware, to destreaming. I think the economy in itself is going to impact on changing people's attitudes. The economic reality is that not everyone can have a job where they don't get dirty.
Mr Bradley: Do I have time for a further question?
The Chair: Yes, you do.
Mr Bradley: There is an effort being made, and there has been for some time, to encourage and provide for individuals who in years gone by would have been at a disadvantage in gaining admittance to a post-secondary education in particular, and some universities have developed a policy where disabled individuals and native Canadians, for instance, and others would have an opportunity to gain admittance without necessarily achieving the highest marks of people coming into the stream.
People such as the member for St Catharines get telephone calls at our office that aren't very nice -- let me put it that way -- about that policy. Would you comment on that policy as to its advantages and disadvantages, or what your views might be on it? Help me to be able to answer my constituents when they phone.
Ms Jamieson: I certainly understand what you're saying, because I'm involved in initiatives in teacher training and teacher education. There are a number of faculties of education which have set targets for seats for aboriginal admissions, and I'm very well aware of non-aboriginal students feeling that they have been personally disadvantaged because of this. The only approach we have taken in terms of responding to situations like that is that if education is a public system, then it must reflect the people it's serving.
One of the ways that can be done is that you have to have role models present. We won't achieve proportionate for quite some time, but that's a fundamental way of driving the hidden curriculum in the school system. Although we don't like to have to do targets, this is a way of trying to change the system: get the role models there so students can see their role models. It's been clearly shown in education research that this has a dramatic impact. Out of that come the spinoffs on economics and so on, if you can maintain and retain aboriginal students in school. One of those strategies is to have aboriginal role models by having them as classroom teachers or a school principal or an education administrator.
This is something that has to be done in terms of getting the best results for the entire public system in the long term, not just education, but economically, socially, everything. To try to explain that to an irate mother when she calls in, that it takes some time -- but we get it even in my community.
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The Chair: We have to move on.
Mr Carr: Mr Bradley touched on some of the problems in education: the dropout rate and so on. I was at the opening of the Sheridan College Skills Training Centre with the parliamentary assistant; we went on a tour of the facility. We've pumped a lot of money in there. Sheridan College says, "One of the problems we've got is that the kids who come in here don't even have the basic math skills and reading and writing skills to work these machines, because they're so high-tech." We're spending all this money and even the new minister, Mr Cooke, on Focus Ontario -- I don't know if he used the word "crisis" or not, but he said we have some major problems in education. In your estimation, what's the problem with our education system in the province of Ontario?
Ms Jamieson: I believe that with the changes in society that have happened over the last 30 years, the role of education has changed dramatically. It has been expected to be the cure-all and the be-all and end-all for things that perhaps it wasn't 30 years ago. It's becoming very much a social support agency, and all of these things are having an impact on what you're saying: basic skills, reading and writing skills, thinking skills, problem-solving skills.
I believe there needs to be a lot more coordination between all of the types of public services we have -- education, social services and so forth -- so that we can better get the job done for these students. A lot of times, classroom teachers are not just trying to teach, they're also counselling, sometimes they're surrogate parents, all those sorts of things. It's unrealistic to expect that they can do the same academic job that was done 30 years ago when in fact they're being given five or six other jobs to do at the same time, when there are resources out there but they're not being linked. This is what's lacking, in my opinion.
Mr Carr: You don't have any political affiliations?
Ms Jamieson: No, I don't.
Mr Carr: And you're not related to the Ombudsman, are you, in any way?
Ms Jamieson: She's my sister-in-law.
Mr Carr: Okay. With regard to the situation right now in Ontario, I'm getting more and more calls from people wanting to put their kids in private schools; that's on the rise. We understand the problems, and I think you hit the problem right on the head, that we've tried to say to teachers, "You're going to solve all the problems." Any time there's a behavioural problem, we say, "The teacher will handle it." There's been a lot of abdication of responsibility by parents. Knowing that, we still seem to be lumping more and more programs on them that basically take away from teaching basic skills. How are we going to change it so that we give the kids the basic skills? Where do you see that the problem lies in the system? Is it because parents aren't pressuring politicians? Is it because of the teachers, the school boards? Where is the problem within the system, in your estimation? It's a million-dollar question. If you can solve that, we'll make you Minister of Education or something.
Ms Jamieson: If I could solve that, I'd be the Minister of Education. That's right.
I don't want to give the impression, first of all, that I'm saying everything should be disregarded for basic skills. That's unrealistic. Teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and the fourth one, respect, is perhaps where we can begin, but I don't believe it can be done until we can find some way to network all of the community support agencies together, first of all, as I mentioned earlier, then teachers and the whole education sector -- and I believe it's beginning to happen.
Education sort of goes through the swing of the pendulum in terms of how to do it and what we're supposed to be doing in education. If we have a clear sense as instructors and as curriculum planners of the academic skills we want to teach -- and we track those very, very well -- then, in spite of what else we're doing, if we have that very concise or very concrete system of tracking the development of skills with our children, we at least know where we are on that level. It's a multilevel activity, but at least we know where we are on that.
That used to be the primary activity we were there for, but a lot of times -- I'll give you an example. The latest major swing was when we went from the basics to the whole language approach and instruction of reading and language. Where we missed the boat in some cases was that we didn't keep information and tools with us on how to track student development, and thus came the problem with accountability to parents. Children were getting lovely report cards, but they couldn't read, that sort of thing. So we need to have very concise tools tied to what our responsibilities are. That helps, and those are being developed now. The Benchmarks thing is the best thing that's happened, as far as I'm concerned.
Mr Carr: There's another problem. I had a trustee come to see me -- I think even Derek was a school board trustee -- who was very frustrated. He'd been a trustee since the last election. He said: "I realize now that we really have very little control, and I got into it because I wanted to make an impact on education." I know there are some people saying we should get rid of school boards because of what happened in Scarborough, but there's some other feeling that we should be giving more power to local school boards, empowering them to make the decisions. Basically that's what this chap was saying: "The trustees just rubber-stamp budgets and we don't even control it."
What is your feeling in terms of education? Do you think we would be getting better results -- because we've identified the problem; I agree with you on the problems -- if, instead of the big bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education running a lot of it, we empowered the local communities and the local school boards with more power? Do you think we would get any better results than we're getting now? Derek says no.
Ms Jamieson: Well, I can give you my opinion from my experience and from the work I'm doing in my territory at Six Nations. We're looking at a very participatory model in terms of what you would call a school board structure, and then the staff involved in it. We anticipate that we will have parents involved in the curriculum development committees and so forth. I don't believe that a body like a school board can make decisions about curriculum unless they have the experience in area and they know what they're making a decision about. Otherwise, it becomes a decision based on dollars and cents, and then it just sets up a reaction system between the educators and the trustees.
Mr Carr: But that comes across as sort of an élitist attitude, that as a parent, I can't decide what my kids need in terms of education because there's somebody who's an educator who knows better. I know you don't mean it to come across that way, but you can see how parents are saying, "The decisions are being made by these bureaucrats" -- the terms they use for them -- "all these people who know a lot about education, but it's not working at the grass roots." Can you see where the problem is, the frustration of the parents? They are saying, "We'd like to be involved in curriculum," and I think somebody like -- let's take Derek as an example, as a parent who got on the school board for education and probably didn't have a degree in education, but can be a part of deciding what the curriculum is.
You're saying you don't think there should be centralized decisions on the curriculum, then.
Ms Jamieson: No. I'm saying quite the opposite. I was talking at the school board level, with the school board and education staff at the school-community level. What I was trying to get across is that there has to be joint information and joint decision-making and joint development of things.
Maybe where I missed your question was that -- I think you were getting at things like a ministry decision to implement junior kindergarten, and then it comes to the school board level, and a mandated time period as to when it's going to happen and all the economic impacts that has at the school board level.
I guess it goes back to your view of government and the role of government, trying to provide for the majority, the overall benefit and welfare of society. I think there has to be some flexibility. I would like to see perhaps a little bit more, certainly because of the way the structure of the financing goes right now and how it has changed. I strongly believe that parents need to be able to make informed decisions, but in effect, like with the JK issue, the decision was taken away.
I know that in our community, with the JK issue, we looked at it and said: "This is what is being said over here. Parents, the choice is yours." Out of the potentially 100 students, there will be 50, for various reasons, economic but also child development reasons and so on, who have made their choice that they don't want their children in school that young. So that's how we've dealt with it. Mind you, we don't have to follow provincial legislation, so we had that freedom.
The Chair: That concludes your appearance, Ms Jamieson. Thank you very much for attending. We wish you well.
Ms Jamieson: Thank you.
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DORIS M. SCHWAR
The Chair: The next witness on the agenda is Debbe Crandall. She has not yet arrived. But our witness scheduled for 11:30, Doris Schwar, has arrived a little early, and we appreciate that. Ms Schwar, would you like to come forward and have a seat? Good morning and welcome to the committee. Ms Schwar is an intended appointee as a member of the Ontario Land Corp. Would you like to make any brief remarks before we get into questions?
Ms Doris M. Schwar: No. I'm just delighted to be here. The snowstorm wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
The Chair: I'll ask Mr Grandmaître to begin the questions.
Mr Grandmaître: Tell us how familiar you are with the Ontario Land Corp.
Ms Schwar: I'm not very familiar with the Ontario Land Corp. I do know that Ontario has had a policy of land banking for at least 25 years, and that was in anticipation of the need for housing at a later stage during a period of rapid economic growth and population growth in the late 1960s. At the present time, the Ontario Land Corp has some fairly major land holdings, and I believe it's the intent to administer and possibly to sell some of those lands.
Mr Grandmaître: How familiar are you with the creation of a new corporation which is called the Ontario Realty Corp? How familiar are you with this new corporation?
Ms Schwar: I am not familiar with that new corporation.
Mr Grandmaître: So you can't tell me if it's duplication, if those two corporations are duplicating that work?
Ms Schwar: No, I'm sorry; I can't tell you. I don't know what the role is of the Ontario Realty Corp.
Mr Grandmaître: We'd like to know more about the Ontario Realty Corp; I thought you could fill us in. As far as I'm concerned, what we're continuing to do -- as you rightly pointed out, it was created back in 1974. It died in 1986 and now it's being revived, and the Premier has recently announced the creation of another corporation called the Ontario Realty Corp. I wanted you to tell us the real difference between these two corporations, and you can't tell me.
Ms Schwar: No. I'm sorry.
Mr Grandmaître: If you do know of anybody who knows the difference between the two, I'd like to meet with him or her, because I think it's duplication. I think the Ontario Land Corp did its job back in the 1970s and 1980s and could easily be replaced by the new Ontario Realty Corp. Those are my thoughts, anyway.
How familiar are you with the John Sewell commission?
Ms Schwar: I'm familiar with the work the John Sewell commission has been doing in northern Ontario. Specifically, they have been looking at rationalizing the planning system for unorganized areas. I believe they have made fairly substantial progress in that area and have achieved fairly substantial consensus from unorganized areas, which until now had really been left out of the formal planning process.
Mr Grandmaître: John Sewell appeared before this committee, and I was surprised to hear him say that he had not met with the Ontario Land Corp, because it does play, or will be playing, a major role not only in planning but in conservation and protecting. I was surprised that he had no meeting with your corporation.
Ms Schwar: I'm not a member of the corporation at this particular time. The corporation, as I'm aware, has only just been formed and has only just now planned its first meeting. So I believe there has not really been an opportunity to meet with the board.
Mr Grandmaître: Tell us why you were chosen to sit on that corporation.
Ms Schwar: I believe I was chosen because I have a fairly strong background in planning and development. I have worked in planning and development for the last six years, I have done studies on land use and planning in the Toronto area previous to that, and I have some formal academic training in the area as well.
Mr Grandmaître: But you are familiar with the Ontario Land Corporation Act, though.
Ms Schwar: I am somewhat familiar with the Ontario Land Corp, yes.
Mr Grandmaître: With this new mandate, do you think the Ontario Land Corp will be an asset to John Sewell or an asset to this government?
Ms Schwar: I believe that the Ontario Land Corp's major role will be one of streamlining government processes and perhaps taking a more businesslike approach to the whole question of development. Without being critical, I know it can take a very long time to build a government project. I have seen some that have taken as long as four years. That was the process when I was working in it. I think there are a number of areas in which there can be streamlining, in which the approach can be made more businesslike, and I believe that the Ontario Land Corp can bring that kind of attitude and approach to the handling of Ontario lands.
Mr Bradley: I have two issues I'd like to deal with. I always have a short time to do it. The establishment of a water and sewer corporation has been announced by the government of Ontario. When that was suggested by the previous Treasurer, my friends in the present government were horrified by it and thought it would simply be a pro-development tool on the part of government, but now that it's being done by this government, I guess it isn't.
The second issue is Project X. When I was Minister of the Environment, I stopped the Ministry of Treasury and Economics and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs from stealing certain powers and regulations from the Ministry of the Environment. Today that is being done. As a member of this board, will you be a bulwark against the people who would like to develop every last centimetre of the province of Ontario?
Ms Schwar: I don't know whether you've had the opportunity to look at my résumé.
Mr Bradley: Yes, I have.
Ms Schwar: I am concerned about three particular things: One is social housing, which is one of my very strong interests; another is the environment; finally, I do believe in development. I think any development that takes place has to take all of those three factors into consideration. I would certainly want to make sure that all of those factors are taken into the consideration of anything that is developed on public lands.
Mr Bradley: So you don't bring an anti-development bias to the board?
Ms Schwar: I do not have an anti-development bias. On the contrary, I have developed about 50 projects in northeastern Ontario. But I do believe that they have to be developed in a very responsible way and in an environmentally sensitive way.
Mr Bradley: There is growth taking place in and around Metropolitan Toronto. It's estimated that we will go to six million people in Metropolitan Toronto at some time. The crunch will come. We have someone from the Oak Ridges moraine; the save the Oak Ridges Moraine people will be in next. How do we prevent Toronto from simply moving out and out and out, which almost inevitably it will do? If we're talking six million people, it's going to be mighty difficult to put the six million people straight up.
Ms Schwar: I think that development processes can be rationalized. Over the past two decades, the type of housing that has been built in and around the city of Toronto has been extremely generous, 3,000 square feet and four bathrooms and this kind of thing, which is also terribly inefficient in terms of infrastructure development. In other words, it uses a lot of infrastructural resources, a lot of sewer line, a lot of water line and a lot of hydro in order to service those houses.
I think we can build more efficiently. I think we have built more efficiently in the past with, for instance, back lanes and access, longer lots and narrower streets basically. Those possibilities are things I think we're going to have to look at, but on the other hand I know there is no great rush to move to areas like Sudbury.
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Mr Bradley: How unfortunate for those of who were born there. We know how nice it is.
Ms Schwar: I think it's wonderful. I love living there, but the simple fact is that the development is likely to take place in and around Metropolitan Toronto, as it will all throughout North America. The development of the megalopolis is one of the real factors of life. I've driven through New Jersey and it's been three, four, five hours of solid subdivision. I think that's probably something that is going to be happening, but I think we have to take into consideration how little good farm land we have. I think we have to take into consideration how many environmentally sensitive areas we have and what kind of social environment we want to create for the six million people who will probably be living here.
The Chair: I'll stop you right there, Ms Schwar. We'll have to move on to Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: It was interesting to hear your comments with regard to housing. The Premier indicates that the Ontario Land Corp is valued at about $400 million. They want to apply the profits to pay down the provincial debt. Your interest, I believe, is probably in more housing, that if those lands are sold they're to be sold to build housing for people?
Ms Schwar: Certainly housing, as far as I'm concerned, is a prime issue. I realize at the same time that people need to work somewhere, that people need to have some way of making a living in order to pay for whatever housing they're paying for. I understand. Again, I strongly believe in balance.
Mr McLean: We have a strong co-op housing movement in Ontario. I find that the one- and two-bedrooms always are rented first and the three-bedrooms are left there sitting for months and perhaps years not being rented. I find it difficult to understand why we continue to build as many three-bedrooms as we do. I often thought that some day, instead of building housing, maybe we should subsidize the individual who's in need to be able to rent wherever he wants. What do you think of a proposal such as that?
Ms Schwar: I'm not very comfortable with that, because I think that really imposes no limits on the rents that can be charged and no actual limits on the extent to which we can inflate housing prices or feel we can afford to inflate housing prices. I think somewhere along the line we have to develop responsibly, and that is best done through this type of housing program.
I'm surprised that you mention empty three-bedroom units, because all units that are built through the co-op and non-profit housing sector have to prove need. In other words, they have to indicate that there is a need for three-bedroom units. On the other hand, I think the co-op sector and the non-profit sector have to realize that there is a great demographic shift towards smaller and smaller family units and there's probably going to be an increasing need for one-bedroom units and single individuals.
Mr McLean: We see that all the time. To follow up on that, if there's a great vacancy rate, that would stop the increase in rents you referred to. You said you didn't agree with the proposal of a person who's in need having the government subsidize him. Wouldn't the availability of accommodation dictate what the rents would be?
Ms Schwar: Oh, certainly. Yes, but a higher vacancy rate, somewhere around 5%, is far off in the future. I'm not really familiar with the latest statistics in Metropolitan Toronto, but I know in Sudbury it's 0.2%.
Mr McLean: By 1994, when the housing units that are on stream will be built, it's indicated that there will be $1 billion a year subsidizing the apartments in Ontario, almost $1,000 per unit per month.
Ms Schwar: I appreciate your concern about the high cost of subsidizing the units. It is a concern of mine, and I think that definitely there have to be other options explored as well.
In northern Ontario, for instance, one of the major housing difficulties, and perhaps to some extent here, is the aging condition of the housing. It's not so much the availability of the units. In other words, some kind of stimulus program to assist home owners to create rental units and to maintain rental units would probably be a very healthy approach as well. But I'm not suggesting one to the exclusion of the other.
Mr McLean: I guess the problem I have with some of it is the fact that not long ago I had a constituent who was driving a Porsche who came in and wanted to move his parents into subsidized housing. That bothers me a little.
Ms Schwar: All people who want to move into subsidized housing are subject to means tests. If we want to go so far as to say that we should be looking at giving means tests to their children as well, possibly that might be a route to go, but I don't know how acceptable that would be to the people in Ontario.
Mr McLean: How long have you lived in Sudbury now?
Ms Schwar: Going on almost six years.
Mr McLean: I see you were involved as the research coordinator for Save the Rouge Valley System some time ago.
Ms Schwar: Yes, I was.
Mr McLean: I would anticipate that you would be quite pleased with the announcement that was made not too long ago.
Ms Schwar: I'm extremely pleased.
Mr McLean: I think most Ontarians are, because years ago that was set aside for a park.
The other question I have is with regard to the corporation being empowered to borrow money. What limits would you think the corporation should have put on that it is allowed to borrow?
Ms Schwar: I would think the land would have to be valued by competent appraisers, and I am quite able, I think, to judge a competent appraisal, because I've looked at many of them. I would certainly say the equity should be in line with the land and not over and above that.
Mr McLean: Why did you want to be on this board?
Ms Schwar: Actually, I was asked. I hadn't thought about this board, but I'm pleased to serve when I'm asked to contribute.
Mr McLean: Who asked you to serve?
Ms Schwar: Someone in Northern Development.
Mr McLean: Shelley's office?
Ms Schwar: Yes.
Mr Carr: Which Shelley?
Ms Schwar: Shelley Martel.
Mr Carr: Oh, Martel.
I just have one quick question. With your background coming into this -- I appreciate you're not too familiar with the corporation and how it would operate and get going, but what do you see as being your greatest strengths to bring to the job?
Ms Schwar: My personal strengths? Primarily, I think my understanding of the development process and my understanding of how government approvals operate: from site plan approvals to building permits, zoning, rezoning, official plan amendments, the awarding of construction contracts, the different development options, from turnkey to public tender. All of those processes are things that I have worked with for the past six years.
Mr Carr: You're familiar that the auditor this year, to put it mildly, was very critical of the process. Basically, contrary to what you said, they rubber-stamp things. We are building non-profit housing in Kitchener where there is space. In other words, we're putting units out; we're not matching them up. Supposedly we're supposed to have a needs analysis done, but they aren't listening to them. The consultants are pushing things through.
Knowing that, how would you say the process -- this isn't me saying this; this is the auditor saying that. An independent audit was scathing on non-profit housing. If you read page 125 to 136 of the auditor's report, and if you can tell me after that we should be in non-profit housing, there's something wrong. What would you do to make some of the changes? I'm talking specifically in non-profit housing.
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Ms Schwar: Specifically with respect to non-profit housing, I assume that the auditor's reference was to southern Ontario. I'm familiar with what's happening in northeastern Ontario.
Mr Carr: The central region was the worst.
Ms Schwar: Northeastern Ontario, I believe, is run extremely efficiently, except that the process itself is longer than I believe is necessary. In other words, instead of four phases of submission, it could be two phases of submissions of proposals, for technical review and administrative review, in my opinion. That kind of thing would streamline the process and dramatically cut the cost of development, because with every year that a project is delayed, it rises in costs.
Mr Carr: A lot of the people pushing these through, the consultants, have made a tremendous amount of money. I don't want to talk about you, because that wouldn't be fair, but looking across the province, from what you know, are there a lot of people making money consulting, getting these non-profit housing units through?
Ms Schwar: I just want to state that I'm not developing non-profit housing at this time. I'm working for myself, but this is not a type of development I do.
Mr Carr: You obviously shouldn't be, if you're doing this. But people are making good money right now consulting.
Ms Schwar: I believe that has been very profitable for the past 10 years or so.
Mr Carr: Because you know what the developers are saying now. You look at the fees -- this is what the auditor said -- and we're rubber-stamping them. The architects are charging more. The lawyers are charging more. The auditor said the consultants were basing on the total cost rather than the time, and the amount the auditor threw out was just astronomical. Is there anything we can do to stop the abuse so more money, regardless of whether you believe in it, goes to the people and not the darn consultants?
The Chair: Sorry, you won't have time to respond to that. Mr Frankford.
Mr Frankford: I look at your list of publications with interest. Some of them certainly refer to my area in Scarborough; they're actually in the riding, so I would be very interested in seeing them, and I'll request them from the library.
Is it your understanding with Ontario housing projects that the land they're on will become transferred to the land corporation?
Ms Schwar: No, my understanding is that some of the lands which are now vacant and are part of the land portfolio of the Ontario Land Corp will be made available for development to private developers, to non-profit developers, basically for a mixed-use purpose.
Mr Frankford: An Ontario housing building, the land it's on --
Ms Schwar: It's not my understanding that that kind of thing will be taking place, but my understanding is limited. I understood that it was just the land banks which are in existence.
Mr David Pond: The idea, according to what the Premier said last Tuesday, is that whatever land the government now owns which is "surplus land" to the government's current needs -- the Premier said the current market value is about $400 million -- will be sold to this corporation by the Treasurer, essentially. The corporation will pay for it with borrowed money. The corporation will develop the lands, make sure they're serviced and sell them for a profit, subject to provincial policy -- provincial housing policies, for example. The profits they earn will, first of all, pay off their borrowing and then be turned back over to the Treasurer to pay down the deficit.
While I have the floor, I'll ruthlessly exploit it to respond to something Mr Grandmaître said. Next year, April 1994, according to the Premier, the land corporation will be rolled into the new realty corporation.
Interjections.
Mr Frankford: If I could continue with my example?
The Chair: Mr Frankford has the floor.
Mr Frankford: An Ontario housing project has no equity value right now, and this would have to be a policy decision to put it into some --
Mr Pond: That's not surplus, though. If it's a building that is in use, with people in it, it's not surplus land.
Mr Frankford: But one could say that the land around it has potential for development for something.
Mr Grandmaître: It's to camouflage the deficit.
Mr Marchese: Do you want to ask him? Is that it?
Mr Frankford: Perhaps the questions I might ask would not be relevant, so I'll defer to my colleagues.
Mr Marchese: Just a few questions, Doris. I was looking at membership and community activities that you're part of presently. I just wondered how you manage all that and how you will manage the additional responsibility.
Ms Schwar: At one point, I was involved full-time in a graduate course at York University, and at the same time I was serving on 23 boards or committees.
Mr Bradley: Not with Leo Panitch, I hope.
Ms Schwar: No.
Mr Marchese: He's too radical.
Ms Schwar: I thoroughly enjoy my commitments to that kind of organization.
Mr Marchese: I imagine you would. But you found the time to fit all this in?
Ms Schwar: Yes, I did. I used to teach eight grades in one school too.
Mr Marchese: You're adding to the list.
The corporation's activities are subject to the government's housing policy, as I understand, and must develop small sites for not-for-profit housing, and larger sites with 35% not-for-profit, 35% affordable and 30% market. You agree with that?
Ms Schwar: Yes. That's the policy on land development overall, and those same policies will apply. I agree with that, because I believe that gives a healthy community mix.
Mr Marchese: You were talking about the kind of social environment we want in terms of how housing should be constructed. Do you have an ideal of what a good social housing environment is like or could be like or would be like, or do we have any examples of good development that are found?
Ms Schwar: I think, ironically, some of the very good community developments for lower income individuals took place in areas such as Cabbagetown. They are now being appreciated again in the city of Toronto.
Where I live -- I live in the old part of Sudbury -- I have a back lane. It makes the whole front of the street much more accessible for people. It makes it more open for people to interact. It's very efficient in terms of land use. It's very efficient in terms of servicing infrastructure developments, sewer and water services, even snowplowing, and we have a lot of snow. So in all respects I think that kind of idea, some of the older ideas mixed in with some of the new ideas we have now, can very effectively serve both low-income and higher-income people.
Mr Marchese: I was going to ask you or at least make a comment about cooperative housing, because I lived in one for two years and found that the mix was essential in terms of a good social environment. Where you take the upper-middle-income person out of the picture, it creates a lot of other problems, because the combination of the mix of incomes and professionals allows different people to bring different knowledge and expertise, and if you take one component out you have problems with that. Would you agree with that? Is that your experience?
Ms Schwar: I would agree with that absolutely. I would also add that it does guarantee a very high standard of maintenance and repair, simply because if you want to continue to collect market rents from the upper-income folks, you have to maintain a very nice building. It makes acceptance within the surrounding community and the impact on property values negligible. Up where I am, they tend to be one of the nicest buildings in older neighbourhoods and they tend to bring up the whole neighbourhood.
Mr Marchese: Thanks, Doris. Good luck.
The Chair: Ms Schwar, thanks very much for your appearance here today and for travelling all that way.
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DEBBE DAY CRANDALL
The Chair: Our final witness is Debbe Day Crandall.
Ms Debbe Day Crandall: My apologies for being late.
The Chair: That's fine; we understand. Ms Crandall is an intended appointee as chair of the Oak Ridges Moraine Citizens' Advisory Committee. Do you have any brief comments before we get into questions? Don't feel obligated.
Ms Crandall: No.
The Chair: That's fine. I'll ask Mr McLean to begin the questioning.
Mr McLean: The questions are always easy here. You have a 20-acre farm?
Ms Crandall: That's correct.
Mr McLean: What do you grow?
Ms Crandall: It's a severance off my parents' original 100 acres. My father and mother put in a lot of trees, and that's what I'm emulating as well. I've got a few horses, but we're turning it into a tree farm, not necessarily for economic gain but just to grow some trees.
Mr McLean: I've a 200-acre farm, so I know what it's like.
Ms Crandall: We're just trying to produce a natural hardwood forest, to see if we can do it.
Mr McLean: What is the witness's understanding of the government's announcement about the long-term strategy? What do you feel this committee's major job is?
Ms Crandall: The citizens' advisory committee's? Right now, the technical working committee has been working in isolation with the 14 members, in the sense that they are selected stakeholders without any other input from the public, from any groups other than those around the table. The citizens' advisory committee is to provide forums, in my mind, for public input to see how they feel about the Oak Ridges moraine, how they feel about a long-term strategy, what kind of long-term strategy. It's a consultation process to gain information from the public.
Mr McLean: Do you think you'll have any input into the waste authority that's establishing the landfill sites?
Ms Crandall: Well, I know that in Peel we're off the moraine. There are still several locations on the short list on the moraine. We're looking at the end of November as far as the technical working committee is concerned, and I don't know when the short list is going to be pared down. I would say that the process of the Interim Waste Authority is far along. I know Mr Christie, the chair of the technical working committee, had contacted Herb McIntyre to give him some input on whether or not a landfill site on the moraine might be the best idea. I would say that process is already going through.
Mr McLean: You're going to go through that process?
Ms Crandall: No. The Interim Waste Authority process will already be well advanced and will have selected the sites prior to a long-term strategy.
Mr McLean: But your mandate runs out in March 1994, does it not?
Ms Crandall: I'm sorry. I'm talking about the technical working committee and its findings and its process. Will the citizens' advisory committee have input?
Mr McLean: Yes.
Ms Crandall: I think we will contact the Interim Waste Authority and garner information. I think the environmental groups have been doing a very good job now of voicing their opinions. I think there has been a lot of input gained on the Interim Waste Authority.
Mr McLean: That interests me, because there are a couple of sites close to Lake Simcoe. I fail to understand why they were even put on the list to start with.
Ms Crandall: My background is hydrogeology. One of the reasons they're saying that is that if you have a very distinct upward movement of groundwater, in fact it's moving it away from the groundwater regime and bringing it up to the surface. I know that one of the sites in Caledon is not on the moraine but is a standing gravel aquifer that provides water to Bolton. One of their reasons is that they say the groundwater regime is good for that, because it takes it up so they can then monitor and control any toxins that come up into the groundwater regime.
I'm on the Interim Waste Authority Peel regional consultation network, so I've had a chance to look at their literature. They've not left many stones unturned. The process, the technical knowledge, is sound, I think.
Mr McLean: But you're a citizens' advisory committee with regard to the Oak Ridges moraine, and that moraine goes into Lake Ontario, a lot of it. When we look at the aspects of the waste authority, the question I had originally asked was, are you going to have any input into that with regard to these sites?
The other question is, are the other members on your committee from a wide range of public participation in environmental issues?
Ms Crandall: I have not been informed as to the members of the CAC. I don't know who they are. That wasn't given to me.
Mr McLean: When do you think you'll have your first meeting?
Ms Crandall: I would say as soon as possible. If I am in fact accepted as the chair of this committee --
Mr Grandmaître: Your chances are good.
Mr McLean: There's never been one turned down yet, so your chance is 100%.
Ms Crandall: As we have our technical working committee tomorrow, I would like to have it as soon as possible, because the technical working committee has been looking at getting these studies together for a year and a half. It's been a long process, and there's a lot of catching up to be done for those who do not know what is going on with the technical working committee. I've been fortunate in the sense that I've been part of that process from day one, so I know what is going on, but I know it's very confusing.
Mr McLean: How many days a month do you anticipate you'll be putting in on this job?
Ms Crandall: I think it's important to keep in step with the technical working committee. They meet every two weeks, and I would say that on a regular basis every two weeks would suffice, probably a day before the technical working committee. I would say that members who don't know the process of the TWC would in fact attend some meetings. Maybe at the beginning we might have to meet more regularly to get people up to level.
Mr McLean: When do you think the next announcement's going to be with regard to the reduction of sites for the waste?
Ms Crandall: I was heavily involved when all of the sites in Peel were taken off the moraine; there was one that was very close. Because of my time commitments, I have not been part of this process as much as I would like, because they're not on the moraine. You have to maintain a focus; I've found that it's very easy to get involved in everything. In Peel, it is not a threat to the moraine so I'm afraid --
Mr McLean: So there are no sites around Palgrave?
Ms Crandall: No. Two that were very close were removed during the short list. There are other parts of the moraine, and we have other members within our environmental group who are in fact dealing with that.
Mr McLean: Could you give me your major concerns with regard to the enlargement of the Keele Valley site? There's been a lot of discussion on it with regard to the moraine.
Ms Crandall: When you look at the original placement of it, it's old technology; they didn't have access to the knowledge or maybe the awareness that the headwaters are important areas. It seems we've come into an area of resource constraints, and this is where these concerns and committees start forming.
The monitoring is in place in the Keele Valley. It is an operation that is in progress, and they're doing an awful lot of monitoring. If it is a choice between starting up a new 800-acre site in York versus expanding this for a period of time until, let's say, the diversion process goes through, because the monitoring is in place and the damage has been done to a degree, I would say continue with that until we get our 3Rs diversionary and we settle this problem with the garbage situation.
Mr McLean: That's probably what may happen.
Ms Crandall: Another megadump in York just doesn't, in my personal opinion, make any sense.
Mr McLean: Are you involved at all in the SOS for Lake Simcoe, Save Our Simcoe?
Ms Crandall: No. It's a concern with the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition, in the sense that all of the moraine has not been studied at this time, and part of the Lake Simcoe watershed starts in the greater Toronto area. STORM is a small group of people. I was giving a talk last week, actually, to East Gwillimbury, which is within the Black Creek flow. So we are outreaching to them, and they hopefully will become members and then we can address that problem. It's just that we have a very limited number of people. It's all on a volunteer basis, and it's very difficult.
Mr McLean: There was a study done 20 years ago on that, and it's never been acted on. I see they're reviving it again.
Ms Crandall: They have put out a general "Help us," haven't they?
Mr McLean: I figure I'm going to get cut off here, so I'll stop.
Mr Marchese: Just a few questions, Debbe. The role of the committee is to help develop a long-term strategy for the preservation of the moraine. What is that strategy?
Ms Crandall: Technically, determining that long-term strategy is the role of the technical working committee. We are to aid, in the sense of bringing in the public information.
Mr Marchese: What are you doing? What is that strategy?
Ms Crandall: That strategy has not been determined. That is something I was just talking to Mr Fred Johnson about, that up to this point they've been setting out about 12 background studies. Sitting around the table, there's so much on the table that we haven't sat down and started to say, "What form will the strategy take?" Because you can't do one and then hope to progress into the next one, I think that sitting around the technical working committee, we are going to start talking about what kind of forum. But at this point there is not anything concrete as to what that will be.
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Mr Marchese: What kind of community support do you bring? Is it your own individual interest that you bring to this advisory committee, or do you bring a long history of experiences of involvement with other community groups, wherever you're coming from?
Ms Crandall: Actually, it's been about two years now -- it's almost like layers. First I started off with concerns about my particular area, which is the Palgrave policy. It's called the Palgrave rural estate policy area, which is, on the Oak Ridges moraine, 8,500 acres assigned to rural estate development. From there, I then got involved in STORM, Save the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is looking at the whole Oak Ridges moraine. So we are all individuals who live in an area and are concerned about that area.
But getting away from the parochial aspect to the broader scale, this is one feature that is important, whether it's all made up of a bunch of little communities, all with the same problems -- different challenges, but basically the same concerns.
Mr Marchese: Do you have a sense of what kind of outreach you're going to do with the communities in order to interest them and involve them? It's a big challenge. I'm convinced that not everybody is excited about this, and thank God a handful of tenacious people are very interested and understand the implications of disrupting this whole thing. Do you have a sense of how you will outreach to the communities?
Ms Crandall: Just to go on with what you were saying, that's one of the things I was talking about: getting a more non-parochial overview, because the people I'm associated with are concerned more about the environment than, let's say, property rights.
So yes, the challenges are immense, because we are now bringing it to people's living rooms. The technical working committee in fact has set out a very strong strategy as to the approach to take. I would imagine that we're going to be doing an awful lot of setting up forums and actual workshops across the moraine in the various communities initially, because a lot of people still don't know what the moraine is.
Mr Marchese: Good grief.
Ms Crandall: I find that quite shocking, obviously, because I'm so immersed in it. But I would say that initially, workshops and newsletters, getting people slide shows, getting people to see what this thing is, and then having open houses. It's important to get all of those opinions of all of the groups -- the development industry, the aggregate industry, individual farmers, people who want two-acre lots. But I think it's a bit unformed, as a total strategy.
Mr Marchese: I wanted to give some credit to the Liberal Party for having thought of this a couple of years ago. It's important to acknowledge --
Mr Bradley: Where were you two years ago when we needed you?
Mr Marchese: I was a trustee with the Toronto board.
I think it's an exciting thing. I really am excited with this idea of the advisory committee and the technical working group doing a good ecosystem approach to this whole issue. Are you equally excited by this?
Ms Crandall: Very excited, yes; very excited. To be in on that planning aspect and that ground floor is quite exciting, quite challenging.
Mr Bradley: Perhaps you listened to a question of a previous witness, if you were here. It's regarding the growth of the greater Toronto area. It is anticipated by many -- despite my grave concerns, that don't seem to matter much to too many people -- that Metropolitan Toronto will have six million people in it in the not-too-distant future, whatever that means, and there's going to be pressure to grow outward. I drive to St Catharines and back, and I used to drive by lush orchards. I now drive by warehouses that in many cases employ about eight people. I have to look at warehouses instead of orchards.
What pressure are you going to be able to apply to the government to ensure that, in trying to meet this apparent need for housing and everything that supplies housing, you're going to be able to retain the Oak Ridges moraine as you would like?
Ms Crandall: Prior to getting involved in this process, I had my head stuck in the sand, saying, "Surely it can just be averted this way." Then I looked at an old 1955 map. You can see the actual houses. Bramalea does not exist. You can see individual houses in Brampton. It became very clear to me that this is a situation that is not going to go away.
I think the work currently undertaken by the office for the greater Toronto area, in the sense that it is looking at this area as a unit and trying to apply some strategic planning, is completely essential, that you get an overview of where you want to go. I think the concept of expanding the existing hamlets, the nodes, is a very workable idea. They give a lot of concern to agricultural land, to the green spaces in the moraine. Not all of the moraine is sensitive. A lot of the moraine is essential to the watersheds that flow south and north. We're hoping that the long-term strategy will in fact delineate those areas that should be preserved and try to get away from the sprawl. I think probably one of the worst things that's ever happened is the sprawl you see in Bramalea, in Richmond Hill.
Mr Sewell and the commission are setting up policy statements. I think there's a really good initiative going ahead with the province in the sense that it's recognizing that something's got to happen.
Mr Bradley: Is it possible that the only way to retain that in the Oak Ridges moraine which you and many others would like to retain would be to establish the Oak Ridges moraine commission, similar to the Niagara Escarpment Commission, with powers similar to those which have been given to the commission? Is that possibly the only way you're going to be able to retain it?
Ms Crandall: As seen in the Niagara Escarpment planning and development area, it's an effective way to do it, and that piece of legislation is there, the Ontario Planning and Development Act. It's a very powerful act. I'd say that is a very workable tool. The problem is that people say it's another level of government. It takes the municipalities out of the planning process. You've got to remember that it was 12, 15 years ago that the NEC and the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act were put together, and we are now X number of years down the road, hopefully learning some lessons. The thing is that it's a powerful little bit of legislation that I think can be utilized with more hands-on at the municipal level, because that is, to me, where a lot of the planning does take place, right onsite. But that is one strategy, certainly.
Mr Bradley: The streamlining of the process of development and of construction in the province is apparently one of the goals that the former Minister of Municipal Affairs, Mr Cooke, had announced. I used to call it project X. It was contended that there was a cell within the Ministry of Treasury and Economics that was attempting to -- I don't know if you're allowed to use this word today -- emasculate the Ministry of the Environment, and that a stop was put to that after there was some public revelation of it. That apparently is happening today.
This is a leading question, but you can answer anyway you want: Do you not see a danger when you speed up the process of development, when you streamline the process of development, when you streamline approvals, when you're anxious to get approvals on line by giving these powers to somebody other than the Ministry of the Environment; that in fact you are going to see the kind of development on the Oak Ridges moraine that many people don't want to see?
Ms Crandall: It may be a leading question, but I agree with you that there are aspects of the draft report of the commission on planning and development reform -- policy statements are a strong aspect. To me, it is very dangerous to allow the official plan approval and development approval out of the province, because it is just one step removed from the upper- and lower-tier municipalities. That's something the STORM coalition has repeatedly said should not happen; that you have to have a third overseeing body that actually does the approvals. We're quite concerned about it, very concerned about it.
Mr Bradley: One of the concerns I know your committee has, even though it doesn't all the time directly affect the people who may reside in a specific area but rather the people some distance away, is the impact on the watershed of development that does take place, whether industrial, commercial or residential. We have seen examples of everybody's favourite creek going through the city, including my own city, and you wouldn't exactly put a cup in and drink the water out of it because of the kind of development that takes place. What kind of activity do you think government has to undertake to ensure that at the end of the stream the water quality -- I can't, I guess, say it's going to be the same as at the beginning of the stream -- is of an acceptable quality?
1150
Ms Crandall: In my mind, you have a watershed basin, and the Oak Ridges moraine constitutes the upper reaches or the headwaters area. We feel there are more similarities along the length of the moraine than there are necessarily north and south. You have various aspects of the watershed.
I live on the Humber River, and if you look at the Humber River as it flows through Etobicoke, you see nothing but golf courses lining it. I don't know what you do about that. Golf courses are known to put in a lot of fertilizers and use an awful lot of water. All I would say is that regarding the lands we have available now within the watershed that directly impact -- it all impacts, but directly impact -- plan now. Save them now. Put areas of planning constraints around them.
Some of the setbacks I don't think are adequate. I think it's 30 metres currently from the floodplain line. Those areas that are known recharge areas, headwaters areas -- it's not just recharge, it's recharge and discharge. It's a whole working ecosystem. You have to put appropriate land uses on them, and if it means no land use, then so be it. We're hoping that that will become clear at the end of the process of the technical working committee and the planning study.
Mr Bradley: To whom is your committee directly accountable?
Ms Crandall: It's a technical working committee. I'm pretty sure --
Mr Bradley: Is it all accountable to the Minister of Natural Resources?
Ms Crandall: Yes.
Mr Bradley: If it is -- I don't want to get you into trouble. I'm way ahead of time, but I'll go ahead anyway. Do you believe it would be more advantageous for it to be accountable to the Ministry of the Environment rather than the Ministry of Natural Resources, which also has an interest in the exploitation of natural resources as well as the protection of natural resources?
Ms Crandall: I didn't realize this kind of candour would be here today. As a geologist, I don't understand why two ministries look after water. I don't know if that's going to answer your question. When it becomes drinking water, ie, in the ground, it suddenly is the Ministry of the Environment. When it's above surface, it's the Ministry of Natural Resources. It doesn't make any sense. Water does many things: It changes shape, it moves. Suffice it to say that I don't understand why that is, for one thing. You are going to get me into trouble.
The Chair: You don't have to say any more, anyway.
Mr Bradley: The Chair has saved you.
The Chair: We've run out of time. Thanks very much, Ms Crandall. Sorry about your problems finding a parking space within two miles.
Ms Crandall: So is that all?
The Chair: That's it. Thank very much for appearing today. We appreciate it.
Ms Crandall: Thank you very much.
The Chair: The final piece of business this morning is a motion. We require a motion or motions to concur.
Mr Marchese: I'm willing to move it. The Chair: As usual. Mr Marchese moves a motion of concurrence in respect to the intended appointees reviewed today. Any discussion on the motion? Questions?
All in favour of Mr Marchese's motion? Opposed? Motion carried.
The meeting is adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1155.