INTENDED APPOINTMENTS MARY ANNE MCKELLAR
CONTENTS
Thursday 16 March 1995
Intended appointments
Mary Anne McKellar, Employment Equity Tribunal
Cheryl Craig, Halton District Health Council
Cosmo Mannella, Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology
Jessica Carswell, Council of the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario
Dr Alan Bernstein, Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation
Jack Diamond, Ontario Place Corp
Subcommittee report
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
*Chair / Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
*Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
Crozier, Bruce (Essex South/-Sud L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
Gigantes, Evelyn, (Ottawa Centre ND)
*Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)
Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND) for Ms Gigantes
Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC) for Mrs Witmer
Sullivan, Barbara (Halton Centre L) for Mr Crozier
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1001 in room 151.
The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): Good morning. We continue the review of government appointments.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): On a point of privilege, Madam Chair: Yesterday the TV screen had indicated that the replay of yesterday's proceedings would take place at 6 o'clock last night. I had informed some people who were interested in what was taking place here yesterday about that very issue. However, I waited for the program to come on at 6 o'clock. It did not come on at 6 o'clock. What I saw was about a minute and a half of the first person that we had before us, at the very tail end of that interview.
I'm wondering if somebody could check to find out why the programming at Queen's Park -- when it's on the television that it is being replayed and it is not being replayed, then there's something wrong with the system.
The Chair: Certainly we will ask the broadcast people to give us a report about why it wasn't on and what the programming schedule should have been. We'll get those answers for you.
Mr McLean: It was important for those people that I had notified, and they weren't very pleased this morning when they didn't see what I said would be on, and it was on the screen that it would be played.
The Chair: No, and we understand that. It is a service to the public that actually we're proud of being able to offer, so we will check into that and report back to you.
INTENDED APPOINTMENTS MARY ANNE MCKELLAR
Review of intended appointment, selected by third party: Mary Anne McKellar, intended appointee as member and vice-chair, Employment Equity Tribunal.
The Chair: I would like to welcome to the committee this morning Ms Mary Anne McKellar. We will start with Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee this morning. I would like to start off by asking you what your understanding of the Employment Equity Act is all about.
Ms Mary Anne McKellar: I think the preamble to the act sets out what it's all about. I have the act in front of me. I can read that into the record if you want.
Mr McLean: I just want your overview of what you thought the act was set out to do. Was it set out to hire certain minorities people to make sure that they're in the workforce, or just what is your understanding?
Ms McKellar: I think, as the preamble sets out, it's premised on the recognition that certain groups experience structural difficulties to gaining employment and promotion and it's designed to alleviate that. But the drafters spent considerable time coming up with the preamble. I don't really think I can improve upon it.
Mr McLean: I'd like to make a couple of comments. It says:
"Under the act, employers are not required to hire job applicants or promote employees simply because they belong to one of the four groups. All applicants and employees must be qualified for the positions they seek. If job applicants and employees seeking promotions who belong to the designated groups are not qualified for the positions they seek, employers continue to be free not to hire or promote them and instead hire or promote white males who are qualified for the available positions."
What do you think of that statement?
Ms McKellar: Actually, where's that statement taken from? Is that yours?
Mr McLean: Our research individual has put that statement in our briefing notes, and I was just curious what your comments are with regard to promoting and hiring anybody. They've got to be qualified, I guess, is what I'm talking about. If they're not qualified, do you have to hire one of the four groups?
Ms McKellar: I find it really difficult to comment on a hypothetical situation like that. There have been no cases that have come up. At such time as a case comes up, I'll decide it.
Mr McLean: Do you support the --
Ms McKellar: I guess I thought the purpose of this inquiry was not an inquiry into the bona fides of the legislation, which you've all had an opportunity to debate in the House, which is where your question seems to be going, but into my fitness to perform the job.
Mr McLean: I think I am entitled to find out what knowledge you have of the legislation and what surrounds the legislation. That's what I'm really looking for, how familiar you are with it. In this position you're going to be on the Employment Equity Tribunal and you will be then dealing with cases that come before that tribunal. I'm looking for your familiarity with that legislation.
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I think, Ms McKellar, from our party in any event, I'm sure you're well qualified, having had a quick look at your résumé and your background. I guess our primary concern, and I think it's shared by a great many Ontarians, is the legislation itself.
There was an article in the news yesterday where many, many employers are having great difficulty with this legislation and feel it's placing a burden on them that doesn't exist in the jurisdictions they have to compete with. Our committee is committed to revisiting this issue and making the legislation more workable.
We're not being negative about employment equity, but we share the Canadian manufacturers' view that the act is inherently racist and sexist. I guess from your perspective you have no difficulty with the fact that the act uses racial and gender classifications to determine eligibility to the government program.
Ms McKellar: Whether I had any difficulty with that or not personally would be irrelevant. The legislation is what it is. That's what I have to interpret and in a sense I suppose implement to the extent that disputes come to the tribunal for resolution.
Mr Runciman: I would see it as not being irrelevant in the sense that if you're going to be performing a job -- and I would have assumed that you've gone through an interview process and you've talked about the kinds of things you're going to be doing. It's not irrelevant in the sense that anyone who's doing a job like this, which has very significant implications for the province, would want to appoint people who shared their ideology, their approach to dealing with these kinds of issues. But you're saying you're neutral as far as that goes. You don't have a position pro or con.
Ms McKellar: I think you've now restated your comment different from the question. I am supportive of the legislation, the principle of employment equity, you're right. I couldn't do this job if I weren't.
Mr Runciman: Okay. How did you get the job?
Ms McKellar: I'm a cross-appointee. I've been a vice-chair at the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal since September 1992. You can see that on my résumé. I've also been involved in a pilot cross-appointment project with the office of adjudication doing employment standards cases.
Mr Runciman: We have a very limited time. I wonder if you could be very brief. Who approached you about doing this and who talked to you about it?
Ms McKellar: I was cross-appointed as a member of the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal, which has merged --
Mr Runciman: How's it cross-appointed? Who makes the cross-appointment? Someone must say, "Would you like to do this?"
Ms McKellar: Sure, the chairs of the tribunals.
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Mr Runciman: Approached you?
Ms McKellar: Yes.
Mr Runciman: Your original job was in 1992 that you came to the provincial government?
Ms McKellar: That's right. No, I came to the provincial government in January 1990 as solicitor to the pay equity tribunal.
Mr Runciman: To the pay equity tribunal. Do you have a history of affiliation with any political party?
Ms McKellar: No, I don't.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): Welcome to the committee. You did just touch on how you come to have been brought forward for this position and, as you said, you are a cross-appointment, so you're not somebody who's sort of coming in from outside. Could you tell us a little bit more about what skills and experience you do bring to this tribunal?
Ms McKellar: Okay. I went through this about three years ago when I was originally appointed to the pay equity tribunal. I articled and then worked for four and a half years with a downtown law firm. I have a law degree. I worked with them. It was a firm that has a significant area of practice in employment law and administrative law and I eventually became their director of research, wrote a number of opinions, fact and various things like that, some of them touching on the area of pay equity.
Then in 1990 I became solicitor to the pay equity tribunal and performed all the functions of that office until September 1995. That included consulting with and preparing educationals for members. Then in 1992 I became a vice-chair and have conducted hearings there since in a tripartite forum, as well as pre-hearings, which generally occur before the hearing in an attempt to allow parties to resolve matters short of adjudication.
For about a year now I have been involved in a pilot cross-appointment project with the office of adjudication, hearing employment standards cases, which differ a bit from pay equity cases, because I sit alone as an adjudicator or referee and not in a tripartite group.
I have significant hearing experience as well as mediation experience, and I hesitate to use the words "academic grounding," but I think a significant amount of research into not only the Pay Equity Act, the Employment Equity Act, but employment regulations and statutes generally in the province.
Ms Carter: You have a strong labour law background. This is obviously very relevant here. You're also bilingual, I understand?
Ms McKellar: Yes. Not that I've ever had occasion to use that, but --
Ms Carter: It could come in handy.
The Conservative members here have raised the issue of employment equity as such, and obviously this is a very live issue and one that gets discussed in the media and so on. I would just like to put to you what to me is the nub of this and have you comment on it.
There is an assumption that somehow the designated groups are going to be less qualified, less fitted for jobs than white males are, and that therefore if we hire them in proportion to their representation in the population, we are going to be hiring inferior people. As I say, I think that's at the base of a lot of the comments we've been hearing. I'd just like to have you comment on that.
Ms McKellar: I guess I don't really know what kind of a -- other than comment, is there a particular question you have?
Ms Carter: Well, as I say, it seems to me that this is the unspoken assumption in a lot of the opposition to this legislation that we brought in, that somehow we are going to be employing people who are less fit for the job, whereas I believe what the act requires is that the best person for the job be appointed regardless of who he or she is. One would hope that eventually this would result in a fair representation of the population.
Ms McKellar: Yes. I agree with that and I would state that in the preamble, which I referred to earlier and which is quite lengthy, there is a paragraph that says -- I have it in front of me and I can read it:
"The people of Ontario recognize that this lack of employment equity exists in both the public and private sectors.... It is caused in part by systemic and intentional discrimination in employment. People of merit are too often overlooked or denied opportunities because of this discrimination. The people of Ontario recognize that when objective standards govern employment opportunities, Ontario will have a workforce that is truly representative of its society."
I guess the criticism is that the act throws the concept of merit out. Well, I think that's obviously not the case.
Ms Carter: Obviously, it doesn't, and yet in spite of the words you've just read out, this is the penny that doesn't seem to have dropped. It seems to me to be the problem that we're facing.
Just one other quick question: We're looking here at the three groups, the Employment Equity Tribunal, the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal and the board of inquiry of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, coming together, which seems to be a very sensible idea and hopefully one that will save the taxpayers money and lead to greater efficiency. I was just wondering how you see the three tribunals working together.
Ms McKellar: I don't have any administrative role in their merger, so I can only comment on what has occurred from my perspective as an employee, if you will. Things seem to be working well so far. For example, instead of three registrars for three tribunals, we have one registrar. There are shared hearing rooms; there are shared library facilities. Certainly from that operational point of view it seems to be working well.
In terms of coordinating the adjudication, that hasn't really occurred yet, in a sense because we have had no employment equity cases, but certainly I understand that everyone's working together to ensure that there'll be a shared case management system and various things of that kind. So far it seems to be working well.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Thank you very much for coming. I think you've made a good point there about how the three tribunals working together hopefully will have some efficiencies and will be effective for the people of Ontario.
I just wanted to briefly ask you, what do you see as the greatest challenge for this tribunal over the next short while? Being a vice-chair, what do you see as the challenge that you face?
Ms McKellar: We've certainly had no cases in the Employment Equity Tribunal. There have been no cases filed, and that's pretty much when a tribunal obviously becomes involved in the process. I think the experience from pay equity is that pay equity plans are a huge thing and if you have to adjudicate an entire pay equity plan, then there's a considerable amount of time that has to be invested in legal costs.
I think it's true of any kind of litigation that the solution that parties come to themselves is often one they're more sold on than an adjudicated resolution. So I think one of the challenges is going to be to try and use as much effort as possible to resolve matters short of hearings or to confine hearings, if they occur, to specific issues. I think that would be a great service, and to that end there's a level of mediation and a level of pre-hearing set up for employment equity.
Ms Harrington: I wish you well in your job ahead.
Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): Thank you for your time and for coming here. I was wondering if you could comment about people with disabilities. They experience discrimination in the workplace related to promotion, and also other people have different experiences of discrimination happening in the workplace. So how do you look at those two things, individual discrimination and systemic discrimination? How do you see that we can improve the system in the future?
Ms McKellar: Currently, I guess there are two avenues. We have the Human Rights Code, which deals with individual complaints which can be based on discrimination in the workplace based on disability, and then there is the more systemic solution found in the Employment Equity Act. I think the employment equity model which is based on a proactive solution would ultimately be a better solution, but until it's sort of a perfect world, there is obviously going to be room for, and resort to, the Human Rights Code, and again because a particular individual only benefits indirectly from an employment equity plan and not as a specific complainant. I don't know if that answers the question.
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Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Thank you for giving me this opportunity to interview you, Ms McKellar. Maybe I should start off by saying that how I understand this process to work is like we are the employer and you're seeking an employment within this huge bureaucracy and my job is to find out if you're suitable for this job, although, peculiarly enough, at the end of the day I have no influence over deciding that. Those over there have been given orders to vote in the manner which they will do consistently, whether the person is qualified or not.
Could you then tell me, what is the earliest time you feel that a case would be anticipated to be tried before the tribunal?
Ms McKellar: I have no idea.
Mr Curling: Give me an idea in the sense of when you feel, taking into consideration that employers would have to put their plan in place and all possible time, when you think a first case could possibly come before them, the minimum time.
Ms McKellar: The minimum time? You know, I really can't comment because I can't --
Mr Curling: Could I make a suggestion, then?
Ms McKellar: Okay.
Mr Curling: Could we say about three years' or four years' time? It takes about three years to put the plan in place, those who are asked, two- and three-year plans, to put it in place before a company gets its plan in place, and then we have the employment equity cops going out and looking around and seeing that, "Have you got your plan in place?" And then if there are any violations at all, then we move into the next stage.
Ms McKellar: That presupposes that there would be no complaints or issues relating to the process of putting the plan in place that would somehow find their way to us. That's why I can't comment. I think some pay equity cases came earlier than they were anticipated as well.
Mr Curling: So it's not immediate in itself?
Let me go back to some of the things I see my colleagues raise about the huge bureaucracy, about trying to get equity in our system.
Equity is a very expensive thing for government. We have the Ombudsman, we have the human rights, we have pay equity, employment equity, we have the courts and all these places.
Do you see a duplication in any way of bureaucracy -- not of the problem -- that we have an employment equity here but within the human rights we also have an employment equity section? And do you see that a confusion is then built in where the individual who may be discriminated in the workplace, not having any labels on it whether or not they have been discriminated because of equity of access or systemic reasons -- it could be endemic reasons -- then find themselves in the line, that long line of human rights, to find out it is not really a human rights case, it's an employment equity case?
Do you see a problem with that? By that time, you who would be serving on the tribunal have not even heard of that case yet, by which time that person would have exercised himself or herself over three or four years, because that's the waiting period in human rights anyhow. Coming to the tribunal after the person had been bankrupt, do you see that the processes would be effective to the individual who had been discriminated against?
Ms McKellar: Obviously, I guess, in the example you've given, if that occurred then it would not be, but I think it's an unlikely scenario. I want to distinguish. I don't think there's a duplication of bureaucracy. There are a number of pieces of legislation that focus on aspects of discrimination and equity, but the whole idea behind the merger we're involved in is to avoid the duplication of bureaucracy to deal with that. But the individual example that you've given, I would hope that that person, when they first approach the Human Rights Commission, would be advised of the availability of other remedies and other agencies and other avenues of relief that might be applicable.
Mr Curling: But they would not know. They have a case with the Human Rights. They put it before the Human Rights. The Human Rights takes three years to even hear the case properly, because that's the waiting in the backlog that is there. When they do find out that they're in the wrong line, they are maybe then asked to joined the employment equity line, because that's where it is at.
I'm concerned that seeking justice, seeking equity, is a long process, is a process that delays justice, so therefore justice is denied. So I'm just saying, do you see that?
As a matter of fact, I'll just make this comment too. You say that employment equity is a proactive legislation more so than a human rights?
Ms McKellar: That's right, not complaint-based.
Mr Curling: I thought human rights was also a proactive one.
Ms McKellar: Yes, there are aspects.
Mr Curling: Therefore there are duplications then.
Ms McKellar: No, I don't think they are duplicating. The Human Rights Code doesn't require you to come up with something like an employment equity plan, no.
Mr Curling: That's true. Let me ask you another --
Ms McKellar: Your worker that you've put to me, I guess the solution for that is that there are more information services available.
There are offices of the worker adviser that deal with workers' compensation and various things. There's the pay equity legal services clinic that's been set up and represents employees who come before us -- for the most part employees, but parties before us. Those kinds of information services would go a long way to alleviating that kind of problem.
Mr Curling: But you made my point: It doesn't. All these equity places and all these places where people go to redress their concerns are waiting three or four years, so therefore the system is just not working efficiently.
Let me go back to the point of the white male fiasco that came about the last time. I see employment equity as bringing equity to the workplace regardless of colour, class, creed, religion or handicap or disability; in other words, fairness to all, whether one is white male, black male, woman or so on. We hear about the level playing field itself.
Do you feel that the government emphasis, really, as a tribunal and an individual with great experience, should be much more in the legislative part of the sector of human rights and employment equity, getting proper legislation to be dealing with all people, making sure that we have the people obeying these laws, more than be into the process of forcing employers themselves to do things that sometimes seem discriminatory, to say that we must select because if one is black that is a preference, or one should be disabled, and not emphasizing merit?
Regardless of what is said, it is not emphasized here that merit is the key issue here, because the individuals outside are saying to me: "We are qualified. We just need you to move those barriers and then we can participate." That's what I'm hearing out there. Do you feel it is more in that area that we should be emphasizing our equity legislation?
Ms McKellar: I'm not a legislator.
Mr Curling: But you're a lawyer.
Ms McKellar: I am a lawyer. I think the debate comes down to -- I mean, I take from your comments you think this legislation is discriminatory, or has an invidious discriminatory impact for white males.
Mr Curling: It is.
Ms McKellar: But what it says is, "I'm designed to redress systemic discrimination."
Mr Runciman: From an NDP perspective.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): The Tories will fix that.
Mr Runciman: You better believe it.
Mr Curling: I want to be very clear too, with my colleagues and their views, about ideology. My party and I don't feel to scrap this employment equity legislation. I think the government is moving in the right direction of getting equity, but I think somehow by moving in that right direction, they have caused more quarrels in that system. I believe in a society that is open for all, and I think that this does not allow it.
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Now my last question: Can this legislation stand alone? Let me explain a little bit. It wants equity in the workplace and the emphasis is placed on employers. In the meantime, while we are trying to get those who have been systematically, which we know of, discriminated against in the workplace, the other areas of the education system and the institutions and the professional organizations which continue to make those selections as to who should be lawyers, who should be doctors, who should be engineers restrict people from coming into the workforce.
Do you feel that employment equity as it stands could stand alone unless we address those other issues as forcefully as possible, like even the unions do that have cut a deal with this government about seniority and how people are promoted? Do you feel those issues have got to be addressed before we get into the workplace and be as tough as we are now?
Ms McKellar: I think those issues are addressed and remedied by complaints under the Human Rights Code.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms McKellar, for your appearance before the committee this morning.
Our clerk, Ms Mellor, has an answer to Mr McLean's question about the television broadcast of the hearings.
Clerk of the Committee (Ms Lynn Mellor): I checked with the broadcasting branch. They were monitoring last night when the program was being transmitted out for the rerun, and there wasn't a break in the transmission. There are a couple of things that may have happened. With the expansion of the cable services, some of the cable companies do not have enough capacity and are cutting off the parliamentary channel at 6 o'clock and putting something on in its place. In the other situation, the local cable company may have been having difficulty or perhaps some of the equipment the people were using was having problems.
Mr McLean: Would that cause the television within the confines of this complex --
Clerk of the Committee: If there's something wrong with the equipment, perhaps, yes.
The Chair: Thank you for that explanation.
CHERYL CRAIG
Review of intended appointment, selected by official opposition party: Cheryl Craig, intended appointee as chair, Halton District Health Council.
The Chair: Our next intended appointment is Ms Cheryl Craig. Ms Craig, welcome to the committee. This is a selection by the Liberal Party. Ms Sullivan.
Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): Welcome to the committee. At this point you have been elected by the district health council to the position of chair. Could you tell the committee when that occurred?
Ms Cheryl Craig: Yes, I'd be happy to. First of all, thank you very much for inviting me to participate in the hearings. I was elected as interim chair last December, December 1994, after being originally appointed in February 1993 as a council member but elected in June 1993 on to the executive committee. I was vice-chair prior to becoming interim chair.
Mrs Sullivan: When your election was made by the council, which was some time ago, that appointment was forwarded to the government for confirmation, and the Halton District Health Council has had difficulties with respect to timely appointments. At one point, as I recall, they virtually couldn't call a meeting until appointments were made at the very last minute and very late in the process. Would you like to comment on the timeliness of appointments to the DHC?
Ms Craig: While it has been an issue in the past, we've been working with the ministry and with the government and we're finding that they're coming through a little more rapidly now. We're now in the position of waiting, and I understand it's imminent: The people who were elected in last fall's municipal election who will be serving on health council, I understand that their appointments are just about through.
Mrs Sullivan: You were successful in the municipal elections, elected to the school board.
Ms Craig: That's correct.
Mrs Sullivan: How do you see that working with your time commitment to the DHC, and running the business that you run?
Ms Craig: In all three cases, we have excellent staff. I see myself in these roles as a facilitator and trying to take the broad overview of where we're going. From a business standpoint, I am not involved as much in the day to day that I used to be as I do have staff who are very effective and efficient and doing very well. I've managed over the years to handle a number of duties, I think successfully. I have a high energy level and I thoroughly enjoy it.
Mrs Sullivan: Just recently, in the last session, the government passed Bill 173, and buried in that bill is reference to the district health councils in Ontario, including a firmer mandate with respect to their activity. One of the issues -- although you understand that because it was buried in the long-term-care bill, there was not much public attention provided to that -- that was brought to our attention by the Ontario district health council organization was that there was inadequate opportunity for the DHCs to be accountable to the local population. Their accountability was solely to the minister.
One of the problems we have seen in DHC operation over a lengthy period is indeed that frequently they're either mistrusted or unknown by local populations. Had the government included accountability-to-the-community provisions, perhaps that difference in the mandate might have made a difference in the way DHCs are seen to operate and indeed do operate. Would you comment on that?
Ms Craig: Having the accountability to the ministry I think is obviously very important, but I think we do have an accountability to the community in view of the fact that we have a number of councillors who sit on the council. In fact those appointments we're just waiting to hear back on now. Also, the makeup from the communities I think at this time is very good in terms of the representation.
On your point about the community not necessarily understanding what we do and maybe as a result of that there's some perceived mistrust, I think it's more a communication issue. By having a high profile or a higher profile than we have, communicating what we do to the public and inviting their participation by having our meetings open and so on, which they are except for certain areas where we deal with issues of a confidential nature, I don't see that as a problem.
It's interesting you should ask that question because when I was first approached to participate on council, I really didn't know what it was, and as a past president of the chamber of commerce and working at the Ontario chamber as a director and having a business in the community, I was a little embarrassed. That's one of the thrusts of my chairmanship, to make us more known throughout Halton generally.
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Mrs Sullivan: One of the very important mandates which the minister has turned over to district health councils is the planning of long-term-care reform. You will know not only from activity in our own community but throughout the province that there's enormous controversy with respect to the development of the multiservice agencies. There is a commitment from both of the opposition parties that subsequent to the next election that legislation will be changed to ensure that communities are able to design the model that best suits the local communities. Could you from a personal point of view, apart from being chair, comment on the kinds of changed approaches that might be viable in our community, for one, to ensure that long-term-care reform will in fact be up and running and workable rather than being confined by an inflexible template?
Ms Craig: That's several questions. Maybe I could break it down a little bit. My concern as a council member, when we were working through the long-term-care committee process, was that there were no costings as to the impact of the reform, which is, by the way, desperately needed. There was also a concern that we were structurally changing some existing agencies that are up and running, that are working very well, and I had to step back to another time when, if you take something and you tear it apart and then you rebuild it, in some cases that works very well. Through the health council we have had very good collaboration with the existing agencies to get on with long-term care. In fact, I think our community is somewhat advanced compared to other communities.
But I think we could do some things differently, and over the next four to five years, as it evolves, I'm sure there will be changes in certain structures, how the structure finally evolves. But the council did endorse the committee's recommendation and we were directed by the ministry with certain criteria, to come back with those responses which we, being a creature of the ministry, did quite successfully. I hope to have a positive impact as chair in bringing that along and possibly, as life evolves, we can see the final structure in more of a renovated form rather than a totally restructured form.
Mrs Sullivan: That's frankly heartening. I think one of the issues we are deeply concerned about, and you've talked about it, is the local agencies which will in fact be put out of business as a result of long-term-care reform. You've also mentioned the costing and no impact as a result of the change in the proposals. We are extremely concerned, deeply worried about the costing and particularly many of the provisions of Bill 173 which would require severance payments to people who are thrown out of work from existing agencies, pension entitlements which exist for many of those workers and the difficulties in transferring those pensions --
The Chair: You are out of time.
Mrs Sullivan: Am I out of time?
The Chair: Just about.
Mrs Sullivan: Okay. Perhaps I can just finish this point, Madam Chair. As well, there is the preference in hiring which is given to union over non-union workers from existing agencies if they're taken on by the new MSA. We see a lot of money wasted by jumbling the services and not putting that money where it should be, into service. I guess with that the Chair is going to cut me off, so I'll have to leave it.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee this morning. For district health councils, I guess the bottom line was to make recommendations, within their community of jurisdiction, to the Minister of Health, of what they felt are their priorities. Do you feel that the process has worked well in Halton?
Ms Craig: From what I've seen in my tenure on council I think it has worked well, but we're working to make it work even better. As chair I've undertaken a few initiatives with council and staff and they are proceeding. Yes, we are a planning body; yes, we are there to advise the minister, and that's where I'm trying to bring my background into play.
Mr McLean: Has your organization made any recommendations with regard to where a dialysis unit should be in a specific hospital setting or have you made some of those recommendations?
Ms Craig: At this point in time I don't believe we've been that specific on that issue. I know that in the community health care service, one of the agencies at the community level is very expert at performing this in a home care setting.
Mr McLean: Has your group had any input into the multiservice agencies that are being set up in Bill 173? Were you asked for your comments or input into that?
Ms Craig: Yes. We all had an opportunity prior to our council making the decision on what the committee presented to us, and that is a matter of record.
Mr McLean: Do you think multiservice agencies are going to work?
Ms Craig: Yes, I think it can work. The final form may not be exactly the way it appears now, but I think as you're going through any kind of reorganization and restructuring, what you lay out on the page at the front end of the process and what you find at the end of the process often can be very different, and I think we have to be amenable to those community needs.
Mr McLean: The Ministry of Health is now implementing many of the recommendations from the joint task force. Are you familiar with the joint task force report?
Ms Craig: Could you be a little more specific on that?
Mr McLean: The paper outlines major health policy initiatives which entail significant responsibilities for the district health councils. That's the reason I asked the question. I was wondering if you were familiar with that report.
Ms Craig: Yes, I'm familiar with the thrust of having the health councils have more of an impact, more power, if you will. I'm undecided myself at this time.
Mr McLean: Has your district health council made any recommendations with regard to the home care program, extending it, making it broader to keep people in their homes longer? Has your council done anything in that line?
Ms Craig: That really ties in, to some extent, with the long-term care. Okay?
Mr McLean: That's right.
Ms Craig: However, on that issue, if I could elaborate on some initiatives that we're undertaking, one of the things I observed that ties in with your question is that from the first council meeting I attended, I wasn't quite sure of what we did as a community and I started asking, "Where's our inventory of services? What do we do here? How do we do it?" and so on.
It seemed that we were being petitioned to endorse various projects of agencies, and I was a little uncomfortable with some of those situations, being a new member at the time, not knowing what was already in place and concerned about duplication and related costing and so on.
Now, within the last six months, staff are undertaking initially to do a broad-brush approach to determine what agencies are in place, what they're doing, how they're funded and to see if we can align them a little bit better to do two things: to ensure that the service gaps are no longer service gaps and also to perform in a cost-efficient manner.
Mr Runciman: One of the challenges facing anyone in your position, as well as legislators across the country, is cost control, and one of the few areas where I can congratulate the current government is the fact that they've been able to bring health care costs somewhat under control with respect to the profligate spending of the former Liberal government. There was a March 9 column in the Globe and Mail by national correspondent Jeffrey Simpson outlining why Ontario is in such bad financial shape, and he laid it all at the doorstep of the drunken sailor spending by the former Liberal government. That's why Ontario is in such significant difficulty now, according to a neutral observer, Mr Simpson.
I'm intrigued by the fact that one of the roles you've played, in the summary of your qualifications, is as a member of the quality assurance committee of the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital. I'm not sure how widespread this sort of thing is. I'd like to hear a bit about how that committee functions.
My brother has worked in the United States for a number of years as a quality control officer. He's a registered nurse, went to the United States. He's worked in a number of hospitals where this is a major function of private hospitals in terms of keeping a very tight watch on costs and the effective use of the facility, making sure that beds are not being utilized for the wrong purpose, that perhaps some patients should be in a chronic care facility, that the operating room is being used to maximum efficiency and utility. I'm wondering if that's the sort of thing you did as a member of the quality assurance committee and if this sort of thing is happening across the area of your responsibilities.
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Hospitals in my area may have someone in the staff responsible for this sort of thing, but they don't have one individual whose sole responsibility is quality assurance and the effective and efficient operation of the hospital, and that's the sort of thing, I guess -- I'd like to bring my brother back to Canada, but I'd like to see more of those kinds of opportunities. I think it makes an awful lot of sense, given the constraints we're facing now and will continue to face. Can you talk about that a bit?
Ms Craig: Yes, I'd be happy to. I had been invited to join that committee and was pleased to see that they did have those structures in place and that they were building on them. I'm very proud of my home hospital, being a consumer rep from Burlington. The Joe Brant is our community hospital and I think it's a model in this province for what they've done with the fiscal restraints. They're kind of out there in the far end of Burlington and maybe you folks down here may not be aware of that. As a result of that level of quality of service and cost-efficiencies, we in the community --
Mr Runciman: Can you give us some specifics, rather than general statements?
Ms Craig: It was a few years back and the structure of their TQM, total quality management, was just coming into place. They did have a patient quality control system in place that every 10th patient would receive correspondence and they would be invited to respond and, interestingly enough, we had very few come back that were negative.
Mr Runciman: This isn't what I was talking about, though.
Ms Craig: Oh, I'm sorry.
Mr Runciman: With quality assurance, I guess what you're doing is sort of checking with patients or former patients. I'm talking about really monitoring hospital operations to ensure that they're meeting the needs of the patients, but also doing it in the most effective and efficient manner so that we're getting the best bang for the tax buck as possible.
Ms Craig: Right. That fell under, I believe, another committee and the name escapes me at the moment. It was a committee of the combination medical staff, administrative staff and members of the public as well.
Mr Runciman: So there's no one on staff at the Joseph Brant whose sole responsibility is to do this sort of thing.
Ms Craig: There is, but they're doing a number of other jobs, as most people are in business and the public sector today.
Mr Runciman: I suspect to the detriment of the hospital and to the detriment of cost control, and I'm only saying this based on my brother's experience in how effective -- and I know there's going to be some criticism of private hospitals as they operate in the United States, but for most of them the bottom line is a factor and they have to make a profit to continue operation -- some would argue, to the detriment of their patients. But I'm sure there's a balance there that can be achieved. I think they run very effective operations, many of them, and I think we can draw on them, to some extent anyway. That's my concern and his observation of what's happening in Ontario, that there just isn't that kind of control there.
Ms Craig: I guess one area that is of concern in our community, not just in the Joe Brant, is the demands on the community acute care hospitals and the fact that we're underbedded in the chronic care area.
Mr Runciman: Yes.
Ms Craig: That's going to be an issue -- well, it is an issue and it's going to be more of an obvious issue as we go on.
Mr Runciman: I hope in your role as chair you'll take a look at this sort of thing and the way that the Americans deal with it.
Ms Craig: It could be one of the things we look at.
Interjection.
The Chair: Thank you. It's now the turn of the government members, you'll be pleased to know, Mr Marchese. Dr Frankford and Miss Harrington.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): Welcome. It's very interesting that you're on the board already so we can get some insights on how councils function. Did I gather that you're an elected member of the school board?
Ms Craig: Yes. I didn't get an opportunity initially to update my résumé, but I was successful in ward 6 in Burlington in last fall's election to the Halton public school board.
Mr Frankford: The suggestion has been made that district health councils should have a rather different role as managers of the total funding for health for a region. Since you're in education, let me flesh out the possibility, the comparison with education. Education was recently locally tax-funded, but now it's a combination of local plus provincial tax funding, and it's administered by elected representatives like yourself, with accountability through the ballot box. The ministry, the central authority, sets overall guidelines. Now, it seems to me that one could take that model and apply it to health. Would you like to comment on that?
Ms Craig: Certainly. I'd be happy to comment on it. I believe the structure presently, which allows for appointments through this type of a process, is very effective. I think you can go out and select people who can bring a specific skill set to the position, and you can then have your breakdown of consumer provider and then municipal representatives. Taking a look around our table mentally, we have excellent people with excellent skill sets that marry well with one another.
Sitting on the school board, while the property tax assessment basically pays the lion's share of it, much to our dismay at times, and you're dealing with a different type of structure, I would not personally like to see us go to elected representatives on the health council. I would also think it would be beneficial to the community to have them remain in voluntary roles.
Mr Frankford: Well, that's one position. But I think the alternative is worth consideration. I would point out that there is a considerable section of health care which is essentially unaccountable, and this is the area I know extremely well, which is the primary-care-physician sector, which I don't believe really comes within your ambit at all, although it's a significant part of the real health care that's being received out there.
Ms Craig: That's correct.
Mr Frankford: On that topic, in Burlington you have a pioneering, alternative-funded centre, the Caroline Medical Group. Do you have any familiarity with them? Have they come into your discussions at all?
Ms Craig: At this time, they have not come into our discussions. I am familiar with them because they're essentially in my neighbourhood, but I don't know a lot about them at this time in terms of my role on the health council.
Mr Frankford: I would suggest that you might profitably look at it. Because this is admittedly somewhat limited, it can only be a small proportion of the population, but it does have a registered population, with population demographics. I think that as you get more and more into planning, particularly at the primary care level, you'll find that this has a lot of the work already done for you. I think, because they have --
Interjection.
Mr Frankford: Sorry, I don't really have time, but since they have a registered population and are paid on a per capita basis, they have beautiful demographics, which is a sampling, admittedly, of that particular medical group, which I have not been in contact with for some time, but I believe they have some thousands of individuals enrolled. I think that out of that there is the potential for the planning information that district health councils really need, and I don't believe that you have sufficient tools at the present time. I'm speaking generically, not knowing anything about your particular DHC.
Ms Craig: Would you like me to comment on that?
Mr Frankford: Please.
Ms Craig: Thank you. While we don't deal in the primary care area, I think we are probably well ahead of many of our counterparts, because we do have some good planners on staff and we do have considerable computer databases that we are drawing from to establish this inventory of services that I mentioned before.
We also have the opportunity to work with surrounding health councils -- and realizing that Caroline Medical Group is in Burlington specifically, and it might be helpful to have access to that if it's appropriate -- but we have to look at the whole Halton region and we're quite a mix of urban and rural residents. So while the south tends to be more urban, we have our northern areas that are quite rural and we are growing. So it's helpful to know that information is there. I appreciate that.
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Ms Harrington: I want to commend you for taking on this role. I think it's very important. People are beginning to know, at least in my area of Niagara, how important the DHCs are. You mentioned that you felt part of what you want to do is get a higher profile for the DHC, and I believe that's very important. I'm not sure how you're going to do it but I'm sure you will, with your level of enthusiasm within your community, and I hope you'll pass that idea along to the other DHCs across the province, and seeing as Niagara is very close to where you are I hope you'll communicate with them.
Minister Ruth Grier was in St Catharines yesterday speaking to about 400 or maybe 500 retirees at the CAW hall about long-term-care Bill 171. I was quite surprised; she got a standing ovation after speaking with them. We were making some very interesting announcements which were actually a result of the recommendations of our local district health council about, for the first time ever, funding from the Ministry of Housing as well as the Ministry of Health coming together so that you could put up a housing facility for people and have some services attached to it.
I know in our community it was a group called St Andrew's United Church, and they have been wanting this for years and years -- it goes back almost 10 years -- and finally the announcement came of getting these two ministries to work together. So I see that as a result of long-term care and the district health council and the community saying this is what the need is and being innovative. We can't just do it always the way it was.
The question I was trying to get to is what I see as probably the most difficult thing, and I want to know if it's your priority: How do we restructure the health care services across a whole region such as Halton or Niagara? Are we going to see some hospitals either specialize or close down, or how are we going to make it efficient? Are you going to face these kinds of questions?
Ms Craig: First of all, thank you very much for the support. As far as taking your hospitals in our region, we basically have four hospitals -- Burlington has Joseph Brant; Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial is in Oakville; Georgetown serves the Georgetown-Acton area; and Milton -- and they're all quite a distance from one another. We find that these community hospitals provide quite a good service in their respective communities. We find that when our hospitals need additional services, the patient populations tend to gravitate east and west as opposed to north and south. So we have our patient populations, for instance, in Georgetown maybe accessing the Peel hospital and we have the people in Acton and Milton often going to Guelph or McMaster or the Hamilton hospitals.
At the present time, from what we're seeing, and we're in the process right now of reviewing our hospital operating plans for this year, they do tend to remain being acute care facilities in their respective communities. Also, we get patients coming from the Stoney Creek-Grimsby area into our Burlington hospital. So we have some transition back and forth.
To say that we can take one of those hospitals and that it's going to specialize in X and the other will specialize in Y, I don't know if that's a practical issue because of the populations they serve and the way we're structured. In fact, Halton really is underbedded in terms of we have acute care facilities but our chronic care beds are very low. I'm concerned about that in terms of how we are going to provide for these people who are presently occupying acute care beds. We can move them into chronic care facilities in our community. That's an issue that we'll be addressing in the next few years, hopefully sooner.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Craig, for your appearance before the committee this morning.
COSMO MANNELLA
Review of intended appointment, selected by the third party: Cosmo Mannella, intended appointee as member, Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.
The Chair: I'd like to welcome to the committee now our next interview, a selection by the Conservative Party.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee this morning. Is this a new appointment that's being made, or has somebody been filling this before? You're responsible for the collective bargaining on behalf of colleges of applied arts. That's going to be the position that you're going to be in. Are you working full-time now with the colleges, or what do you do?
Mr Cosmo Mannella: No. I work full-time in the labour movement. I'm director of training for the Carpenters union international.
Mr McLean: You're going to sit on this board and according to your résumé -- the responsibilities of the position are with regard to collective bargaining on behalf of the colleges.
Mr Mannella: I may end up on the council's human resources committee, which is responsible for collective bargaining, but that hasn't been determined as yet.
Mr McLean: Yes, the council has established a human resources management steering committee. Has that just recently been established, to your knowledge?
Mr Mannella: I believe it has been a long-standing committee of the Council of Regents. This is my first appointment. I'm up for the very first time for the Council of Regents, so I don't have all the history, but my understanding is that there has been a long-standing human resources steering committee and it is the committee that takes responsibility for the collective bargaining process.
Mr McLean: Who has done it before? Has there been anybody, to your knowledge?
Mr Mannella: From my understanding, the Council of Regents is responsible for collective bargaining as a council, but the steering group is the group that actually goes to the bargaining table physically.
Mr McLean: But it appears to me that you're going to be kind of designated as the individual who would deal with that.
Mr Mannella: I'm not certain that's the case. I've had a conversation with Mr Johnston and he's indicated that there are two possibilities: that I would be on that committee or the governance committee.
Mr McLean: I see now you're enrolled in an industrial relations degree program at the Center for Labour Studies in Washington. What type of course is that you're taking?
Mr Mannella: It's predominantly industrial relations and labour studies from the perspective of labour. It's sponsored by the AFL-CIO through Antioch University.
Mr McLean: And there's no place in Ontario that you can get that course from, I'll bet you.
Mr Mannella: I don't believe so.
Mr McLean: None of our colleges gives it.
Mr Mannella: No, sir.
Mr McLean: Anyhow, so you're not really familiar with the operation of the Council of Regents structure.
Mr Mannella: I have some familiarity with the structure. As I say, this is my first appointment. I haven't sat on the council before, but I have sat on a board of one of the colleges here in Toronto, George Brown College.
Mr McLean: Just reading the briefing stuff, I was interested to note that the council is composed of as many members as the Lieutenant Governor in Council, the cabinet, chooses to appoint. How many are on the board now? Do you know?
Mr Mannella: I believe there are 20 members.
Mr McLean: There's only one full-time who receives a salary and the others get a part-time per diem. Why did you apply for this, or were you asked to serve?
Mr Mannella: Actually, I was asked to serve because of my involvement with George Brown College and my involvement with labour. When the last labour appointee's term was expiring, I was asked if I would be interested in sitting on the Council of Regents.
Mr McLean: What changes do you think you can make, or is there anything specific that you're hoping to accomplish as a member of the board of the Council of Regents?
Mr Mannella: I certainly don't purport to go in and revamp the college system singlehandedly, but I think there are certain discussions and debates that have to take place around the whole issue of whether the colleges are indeed preparing the workforce and engaged in the lifelong learning process that the workforce requires. I think there are some colleges that do that very well, and then there are some colleges that are not performing as well.
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Perhaps we could begin the debate with my involvement in perhaps creating some standardization and even specialization and ensuring that there isn't a duplication of courses throughout the system, which I think is somewhat of a problem. I don't know that it's a crisis, but there certainly appears to be some duplication in the system, and I don't think it's unreasonable, certainly with the cutbacks that we're looking at in the college system, to think that perhaps some of the colleges may have a specialty that they would want to involve themselves in particularly.
That discussion, the whole issue about whether or not the colleges are indeed fulfilling the role as community colleges, I hope to participate in those kinds of debates.
Mr McLean: I'm glad to hear that, because I often feel that the 22 or 23 colleges we have, when that program was put into place, were supposed to be for training people for the labour market, to teach them skills development and get them educated for the labour force, and I'm not so sure that we have filled our mandate in doing that. I'm glad to see that you're very positive on trying to make sure that it is broadened and that those types of things happen, because that, in my estimation, is what those colleges were all about. I wish you well.
Mr Mannella: Thank you.
Mr Malkowski: Thank you on your nomination to this appointment. I know that right now the reality is going to be that with the Liberal federal transfer cuts, the budget that was announced that also showed cuts in training programs, transfer payments are going to be affected, that's certainly going to have an impact on the colleges. How do you see the system responding to those cuts?
Mr Mannella: I wish I had an immediate answer for that, but the cuts, certainly from what we are hearing -- and I don't have the exact numbers on these. As a matter of fact, the college president of the college board that I sit on indicates that the projections are that the cutbacks will almost total the total operating budget for all the colleges in the system, which I believe is around $700 million. That's a considerable amount of money to take out of the system.
If I can just make an editorial comment, I think it really is a paradox to where the Liberal government wants to go in terms of labour market development and human resource development. They're talking about retraining the workforce, retooling for the coming technologies, and yet at the same time they're cutting back in the very system that probably could provide the basis for that retraining. So I think it's a bit of a paradox in their policy.
How it actually plays out and how it's going to affect the collective bargaining process, how it's going to affect the issue that I mentioned earlier about certain colleges providing specialization, maybe the whole system has to be relooked at to determine that indeed there isn't duplication. It may well come to the point where individual learners and students cannot expect to go for a particular course in their own community. They may have to travel to a college.
These are broader questions that may have to be looked at and determined. We don't want to see the college system fall apart, but certainly with a $700-million -- if indeed that is the number -- cutback, we are going to have to look at reorganizing the system.
Mr Malkowski: Thank you and thanks for sharing your concerns, which I think are the reality of the cutbacks from this Liberal budget that we have seen. It is certainly something that is a situation that is going to have major impacts, and I hope my friends across the table are listening to this concern as well, because it's something that within the province we have to make sure that we fight for what is best for Ontario. Thank you for raising those concerns.
Ms Carter: Welcome to the committee. Now, you have a labour background. Why do you think it is important that the Council of Regents should have at least one member with experience in the labour movement?
Mr Mannella: I think labour is a very big part of the whole labour market equation, certainly in the province of Ontario. Despite some setbacks, we're still very prominent, we represent quite a large number of workers, and I think labour has a role to play in terms of determining the future technologies. I know in my own union we're actively involved in some of the engineering schools in searching out new products and new technologies in order that we can implement the training within our own training centres across the country to prepare workers for the changing industry. So I think that's one of the roles we have to play.
The other of course is that we are involved in the collective bargaining process. Changing technologies, lifelong training, are all issues that will probably come to the bargaining table. Certainly labour has always been an excellent conduit of support for the community college system in that regard. Where would we refer our workers for training if it isn't in the college system?
Ms Carter: In the past the colleges and universities have been pretty well separate, in rigid compartments of their own, and students have not been able to switch easily between the two. I think people are finding more and more that the ideal education is a combination of what universities have to offer plus maybe some of the more practical courses they can get from colleges. I guess the government has been working on trying to create stronger links and more interchange between colleges and universities. Do you feel this is a good idea?
Mr Mannella: Yes, I do. I think one of the important systems of any system of education and training is the bridges for people who perhaps have reached a certain point in their career, in a technical trade for instance, and would like perhaps to continue as an engineering technologist or pursue an engineering degree. I think how well we bridge those two careers and those two occupations is a mark of how well the system works.
Certainly in the economy today, where people cannot expect to walk into a workplace and remain there for 35 years, where they will have four, five or six or maybe even 10 different employers, I think that's something that has to be made available in terms of workers being allowed to make those kinds of transitions. So the bridging system is essential, and prior learning assessments, giving people credit for their work experience so they can obtain credentials, is essential.
Ms Carter: I understand from what you said before that you have a vision of a province-wide system where different things are offered in different places so that students can have the maximum choice with the best possible value for money from the point of view of expenditure on our facilities.
Mr Mannella: That would be an ideal system. I don't think it's unreasonable, given the economic climate today and the reality that government just does not have the money, to expect that students may have to travel a little bit to get to the particular course they want. Again, I'm not suggesting that's the immediate solution, but certainly if there is a reorganization, I don't think we can afford to duplicate services and programs.
Ms Carter: Of course, on the other hand, this means we have to fund students properly, because I understand with the spectre of higher tuition fees and the worry about paying back loans, students are less willing to travel away from home because this increases their costs. So I guess that's something we have to take into account.
Mr Mannella: It's a very serious problem, a multidimensional problem, both from the individual learners and participants, from the college system and from government, which has an interest in developing the labour force.
Ms Harrington: Thank you very much for coming to see us today. The colleges we all understand are very important to our future. I'd like to make you aware of Niagara College down our way. Because we've had such high unemployment, the enrolment is very high and our government has announced $32 million for a new campus.
Mr Mannella: I hope it's built union.
Ms Harrington: Yes. What really concerns me is the future under the Liberal budget, the cuts that are coming down. They've announced the cuts now, but it's our government that's going to have to look at where these cuts are made and it's going to be extremely difficult. One figure that I've heard is raising of tuition fees for both universities and colleges. The tuition figure was roughly from $2,400 to $6,100 and something of the same scale for the college tuition increase: say, two to three times. Could you comment on that? Do you think that would work, or what are we facing?
Mr Mannella: There is a certain reality that most of the people who are trying to access training, or retraining now, are people who are unemployed or who have been either unemployed for a very long time or social assistance recipients who are trying to break into the workforce for the very first time. That creates a very, very difficult burden for that particular group.
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This is where I mentioned earlier about the paradox. We're trying to get people off the treadmill of social assistance, we're trying to get some relief from the unemployment rolls because of the UI system, and to cut back in the college system or to cut back in the supports or increase tuition really creates a paradox, because you're going to have people who actually need the system more than others who will not be able to access it for that very reason. So I think it's going to be important to try and maintain in this climate -- and it's a very difficult question to answer here -- affordability and accessibility. How we do that may be by looking at the college system itself to determine if indeed there can be ways of cutting back in the system without jeopardizing the quality of education. That's a mouthful. That's very difficult, but we are facing difficult times in education, definitely, and training.
Ms Harrington: I wish you well in finding how to do that.
Mr Mannella: Thank you.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): Welcome to the committee, sir. How long is your appointment for?
Mr Mannella: I believe it's a three-year appointment.
Mr Cleary: How many did you say were on the committee?
Mr Mannella: There are 20 on the Council of Regents, I believe.
Mr Cleary: How many of that committee would have to meet? How many would you have to have for a meeting?
Mr Mannella: I'm not sure what quorum is, to be honest with you. I haven't gotten into the details of what quorum is, but I know that it's fairly well attended. In speaking to Mr Johnston, the chair, he indicated that it is very well attended. There have not been too many meetings cancelled that I know of.
Mr Cleary: The meetings are all held in Toronto here?
Mr Mannella: Generally, the meetings are held on Bay Street at the council offices.
Mr Cleary: One thing that has been mentioned two or three times here -- and your remarks about duplication. Would you like to go beyond what you said on where you think there could be savings?
Mr Mannella: I don't want to generalize and indicate that there's massive duplication throughout the system, but I am aware of incidents of duplication, where there are programs that are successful in one college and have done very well and have a good reputation and are well attended and turn out employable participants and another college throughout the system will try and put on that course and it may not be as successful, but they will be vying for the same pool of participants.
I think if we take something like carpentry, for instance, there are a number of colleges that offer carpentry within a radius of between, say, Oshawa and Oakville. It's not unreasonable in today's day and age to expect that people would travel, say, from Oshawa to Toronto for a course, and yet, Durham offers carpentry and I know they're having difficulty filling the seats. George Brown offers carpentry. We have an industry training centre that offers carpentry. Mohawk College in Hamilton offers carpentry courses and Humber offers some, from what I understand. So I'm wondering if that's the best way.
I'm certain that the needs of the community are there, but when we have a situation where the seats are not being filled, then perhaps we really ought to look at that. That's one example. There may be others, but that's one that I'm familiar with.
Mr Cleary: How many meetings did you say you would have a month?
Mr Mannella: The Council of Regents meets once a month and then I believe there are committee meetings also, so it would be an involvement of about four or five days a month.
Mr Cleary: It's my understanding that you don't get compensated for this.
Mr Mannella: To be honest with you, I haven't even looked into that. If I would be there as a representative of labour, my organization would continue to pick up my salary, and if there were incidental expenses, like for parking or something like that, that would be the only consideration.
Mr Cleary: I know it's a very important role in our part of eastern Ontario that the colleges play and I wish you good luck. I know my colleague's got a few questions.
Mrs Sullivan: Welcome to the committee. I wanted to go back to the Gandz report, which you'd be familiar with, having served on the George Brown College board. I have Sheridan College in my constituency, the main campus of Sheridan, and we're very proud of it. Shortly after that report was released, suggesting that the entire method of collective bargaining ought to be changed and a new committee formed, there was legislation introduced by the current government. That is still not passed. I wonder if you'd comment on your impressions and judgement about that report and about the legislation that's sitting on the table now.
Mr Mannella: I don't want to discuss the whole report because it's been a while, but certainly on the issue of collective bargaining I think everyone who knows anything about the college system understands that the collective bargaining process can be quite cumbersome and difficult. I think we also understand that communities throughout Ontario have different needs, and the colleges serve different types of communities.
I'm not sure what the immediate response should be in terms of dealing with that issue, but certainly I think the collective bargaining system, particularly in light of the cutbacks that are coming, and the number of collective agreements, the number of bargaining units at the different colleges, is something that probably should be examined.
I'm not suggesting that the existing system is not a good system, but I think it should be re-examined to determine if indeed it is and if there are problems within it, because it certainly has created problems. I think a situation where the whole college system could be on strike is not something that I think is good for where we're going in this economy. It's something that has to be examined.
I don't know where the legislation sits right now. I'm not familiar at what stage it's at.
Mrs Sullivan: Just sitting. What it proposes is that the Council of Regents no longer have responsibility for collective bargaining and that that work be taken over by a committee of employers.
Mr Mannella: Well, I wouldn't want to comment on that, because I haven't been involved in the collective bargaining process through the Council of Regents and I really don't -- at my own college we just basically got collective bargaining reports. I wasn't involved in the actual --
Mrs Sullivan: Right; okay. The College Standards and Accreditation Council is expected to have significant impact on outcomes measurement and on determining the standards that are maintained through the college system. I wonder if you would comment on the Vision 2000 report, from which many of their most recent activities have sprung, and the pretty high criticism of many of the outcomes from many of our colleges.
Mr Mannella: If can just concentrate on one of the areas which I'm most familiar with in the Vision 2000, which is a while ago, the area of apprenticeship, I think apprenticeship is probably an excellent model for training the workforce, and I would like to see an expansion of apprenticeship. I think we should work on standards.
First of all, we should create more apprenticeable trades, but then of course, because the apprenticeship model is dependent upon having a workplace, we have to have a functioning economy that provides jobs.
One of the problems with apprenticeship as it is unfolding now in the college system is that there is too much upfront, front-end-loaded training in the college. People who choose apprenticeship as a career path generally don't learn very well in that environment. They tend to learn better when they're doing. So the value of apprenticeship for those people is very clear.
I think we have to have standards, but not just province-wide standards; I think we need national standards, because if the workforce is in transition and the expectation is that the workforce will need portable skills, I think we have to work through the college system nationally to develop those standards for apprenticeable trades, and it's important to expand apprenticeship and the role of the employers and the labour movement in apprenticeship.
The area where apprenticeship works very well is in the construction industry, where our model is second to none, including the major European models, Germany and Sweden. That was all done voluntarily because the employers and the unions understood that they had to make an investment because they needed a workforce if the industry was going to survive.
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I think that's the kind of tripartite partnership we need. We need the employers to participate, and we're doing that with these skills councils now. There are some major skills councils that have been developed: I know cars, the electronics and electrical industry. The construction industry is developing our own skills council.
Those are the areas that I would like to see the colleges concentrate on and expand apprenticeship in other areas, and the combination bridging question so that people have options, that if they do complete an apprenticeship, there is a bridging mechanism so that they can go back into the academic stream if they choose to advance their education and go for a professional accreditation.
Mrs Sullivan: That's a very thoughtful answer.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mrs Sullivan: Am I done? Gosh, I had another question.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Mannella, for your appearance before the committee this morning.
JESSICA CARSWELL
Review of intended appointment, selected by government party: Jessica Carswell, intended appointee as member, Council of the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario.
The Chair: We are now at our last interview for this morning's session and this is Ms Jessica Carswell. Welcome to the committee, Ms Carswell. Have a seat and make yourself comfortable.
Mr Frankford: Welcome. I think it's an interesting position because we are just in the process of setting up colleges. You're going to be a public member of a new college. Do you have any great familiarity or any concerns or anything that brings you to occupational therapy per se?
Ms Jessica Carswell: I actually had applied to participate in a district health council, and I was contacted by the office of public appointments to see if I would be interested in one of the regulated health professions. I was actually quite interested, given that I'm involved in quality in health care, and I understand that the Regulated Health Professions Act is to protect the public interest. In my current position and past positions and as a family member and a consumer, I feel that this is a very high priority within our health care system.
The College of Occupational Therapists is a newly formed college and, given that, I do have administrative skills that I would like to bring to the college, to be involved with the establishment of committees and the various structures that are required. I believe at this stage the College of Occupational Therapists is in the process of putting those committees and the structures and mechanisms in place. So given the establishment of the organization, I feel that the priority now is to put the mechanisms in place.
Mr Frankford: Yes, I'm sure it's going to be very interesting to flesh it out. I have a certain interest because my late sister was actually an occupational therapist. It's hard to think what the real problem areas might be in this particular profession, although one is always prepared to be surprised.
One thing that occurs to me is perhaps the scope of the practice and how one defines it. One of the questions which I'm sure comes up in relation to professions is where their turf ends and where the next one starts. I can see that occupational therapy can easily come up to a boundary with, say, physiotherapists and maybe psychologists and social workers and a number of other professions. Again, have you had any experience or given any thought to how those jurisdictional problems might come up?
Ms Carswell: As a public member, I'm actually not fully involved with the profession. However, having worked in the health care area, I believe that there will be processes that will have to be put in place to resolve those jurisdictional issues and that the high standards of all the therapists and all the health professions will continuously be set and evolve based on research and the jurisdictions that the actual professions work out together.
Mr Frankford: Another area which I think will come up is the qualifications and what training is recognized. I imagine you will get the question of the recognition of foreign qualifications. I wonder if you've given any thought to that.
Ms Carswell: In terms of qualifications, I believe the therapists who are involved in the professions will have the kind of professional information regarding the best practices, and if they feel that externally there are decisions that can be made around quality based on whether people who are applying from other training from other countries actually have training that matches the best practice, as well as the consumer input to what the needs of the consumer are as well, the combination of best practice and responding to consumer need hopefully would be involved in the decision. But I personally am not aware of the level of training and the other factors involved in the profession externally to Canada.
Mr Frankford: Well, judging from my knowledge of other professions, you probably will get questions about internships and showing equivalency of foreign qualifications and what should be done to make people familiar with practice here in Ontario.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): Good morning, and thank you for coming in. I'm the person who asked for you to come in, so if you had trouble getting here, blame me. It was out of curiosity, because it is a new regulatory body, and you being a public appointment to that body -- just to explain how it works, we get a list of names, we don't get a background, and I very much wanted to see what your background would be. I am more than pleasantly surprised at you as a public member, because when I look through your CV, "standards and quality assurance," "quality coordinator," it goes back all the way back through, and memberships in different things, the quality and standards association, so you have a background in that. At this very important time, it's my feeling that would be very good for the college, because you're in a position, as Dr Frankford said, that you are starting something up.
What do you see as unique qualities in the legislation that would help enhance the public accountability, or do you actually see that there are within the legislation things that will indeed make it accountable to the public?
Ms Carswell: Public representation is one very important component that, for professions that have been regulated in the past, was not there to the same extent. From what I understand, there is flexibility to improve the legislation. I'm not exactly familiar with the terms, but there's the main act and there are additional acts that tie in so that the legislation itself can continue to be improved.
I see a number of committees that every regulated health profession has to have in place, and accountabilities built into things such as the quality assurance programs, the fitness-to-practice programs and a number of other programs that will be put into place -- a discipline committee -- whereby the public will have the opportunity to follow due process if they have any concern with anyone within the profession or with the whole process of the profession itself, the standards and the educational standards.
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Mr Waters: It's probably an unfair question, but have you had any discussions with other members who have been appointed, or with the chair?
Ms Carswell: Of the council of the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario?
Mr Waters: Yes.
Ms Carswell: I have attended an educational session. I actually asked ahead of time to receive additional information because I am very interested in seeing the directions in which this particular council is going, so I have had some discussions and understand which committees are under way at this time and which ones require continued development.
Mr Waters: In the same vein then, where do you see yourself fitting in? Seeing you've had a bit of an overview, is there anything in particular you would like to be doing?
Ms Carswell: I'm interested in the process through which, for example, the quality assurance programs are put into place. I'm also interested in how the committee structures will pull together and how they'll communicate to the public when their input is required in the various processes of the various committees. In addition to being a public representative myself, I'm interested in how the standards of practice are going to be set, how research is going to be tied into it.
Mrs Sullivan: Welcome to the committee. We have gone through close to 15, almost 20, years of work around this place with the various professions in finally reaching the passage of the Regulated Health Professions Act, and then finally of course having seen the regulations associated with that act, and then the setup of the council, of various councils.
Much of the discussion through that period of time, through all three political party-led governments in Ontario, has not been controversial but has been tense, to ensure that the scopes of practice are written appropriately. I see you have quite a background in health care. Are you familiar with some of the questions that arose regarding the various scopes of practice for the individual colleges?
Ms Carswell: No, I'm not, with the specific questions.
Mrs Sullivan: You mentioned your interest in quality assurance and you're working in that field with the municipality of Durham. One of the issues of major concern latterly, subsequent to the passage of the Regulated Health Professions Act, was the very question of quality. The matter was included in a bill that was not the RHPA and came as a surprise to virtually all the health care organizations that had been participating in discussions regarding the RHPA and discovered that the quality assurance issue was injected into a bill on sexual assault by health care professionals. Indeed there had not been discussion with them with respect to the scopes of practice and how the practitioners could be assured that they were treated fairly when called by colleges for retraining or for upgrading and so on. Have you had any of those discussions in your education day that's taken place so far?
Ms Carswell: Not with respect to the actual issues around the legislation as the sections were put in.
Mrs Sullivan: You might want to follow up on that, because it certainly is a concern among the providers and professionals: how the colleges are indeed going to make requirements for upgrading or retraining, reskilling, if there are complaints -- sorry, not complaints, but if a call is made that is not an official complaint about the work of the individual.
The other concern that particularly affected occupational therapists was in relationship to the bill on sexual assault by health care professionals. Their concern is that because this is a hands-on health care field, there could well be misinterpretation with respect to the use of hands and that this might be interpreted as a sexual overture or advance or assault. Was that brought up in your education day?
Ms Carswell: No. The actual discussions related to the act have not been involved with my --
Mrs Sullivan: It's not only the RHPA and your own act that affect the profession, because the sexual assault issue is a matter of discipline that the college will be dealing with. That's another one you should raise with them as you're going through it. I think of all the professions the occupational therapists were one of the most concerned about the openness of interpretation of the words in that bill. That's something to look for.
The people who work in this discipline are located at many sites: Many of them are in primary care practices, many of them are in hospital situations, in long-term-care facilities. How do you see a viable quality assurance program or quality assurance responsibility coming out of the college for professionals who are working in so many different sites and so many different circumstances? In fact, isn't it a better place, really, for the quality assurance to come out of the practice sites themselves rather than from the college?
Ms Carswell: From my understanding, the onus on an organization to have a quality assurance program or a quality management program would not be relieved by having a professional quality assurance program, that organizations still would have an onus to help ensure the quality of practice within their organization.
However, professional knowledge and peer information would be available more through the actual college for occupational therapists; there may be information that's available through the profession that the organization itself may not have access to or be as current on. From my understanding, the combination of the two hopefully wouldn't duplicate but may complement each other.
Mrs Sullivan: I suppose the difficulty is that the role of the college in the quality of care provided by the professional tends to come forward through disciplinary hearings rather than through proactive direction, which is part of the concern of some of the professionals too and was certainly a concern when that particular legislation was going through the House.
What was your reaction when you received the call saying, "No DHC, but how about the college?"
Ms Carswell: I was very interested because I felt that, given my background, I had skills I could offer, and the College of Occupational Therapists being a new college, it sounded as if I could use those skills to help put in place the mechanisms that weren't there, and occupational therapists have the potential to contribute to quality of life. Given those issues, I was very pleased.
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Mrs Sullivan: Were you surprised?
Ms Carswell: I was surprised, yes, very surprised.
Mrs Sullivan: I think I would have been, if a call had come out of the blue to say, "How'd you like to sit on the board of the council of the College of Occupational Therapists?" It's a very unusual call to receive.
Are you familiar with the HPRAC, the Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council?
Ms Carswell: I know a bit about them. I know they're making decisions around which professions should continue to be regulated and new professions that wish to be regulated.
Mrs Sullivan: And when there should be changes in scopes of practice, the matters are supposed to be referred to HPRAC for consideration in a multidisciplinary way. Unfortunately, the current minister has decided not to refer several issues which have created great concern. As a public member of a college, is it your opinion that the minister should refer all of those issues which the legislation requires her to?
Ms Carswell: I don't feel I'm familiar enough with the particular issues involved to comment. I believe there's a process in place, but I'm not sure of the details related to what has not been referred.
Mrs Sullivan: Nurse practitioners and midwives.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee this morning, Ms Carswell. You're employed at the regional municipality of Durham in seniors' services?
Ms Carswell: That's correct.
Mr McLean: What do you do there?
Ms Carswell: I'm a quality coordinator. There are three facilities I assist with putting the process in place to help improve the quality of care in the three facilities.
Mr McLean: Does the region have any homes for the aged under its jurisdiction?
Ms Carswell: They are three homes for the aged that I work primarily with.
Mr McLean: So you visit the homes, do you?
Ms Carswell: Yes, I do.
Mr McLean: And you help people in the home with therapy, or do you direct who does that?
Ms Carswell: I'm not a therapist myself. I'm a quality coordinator, so my position is to help the management and staff put processes in place to improve the quality of care. That's how I'm involved.
Mr McLean: In your résumé you say you initiated and revised a Canada-wide quality assurance program, home health care services. What did that entail doing? Were you working for the company in Kitchener at that time, by the name of Comcare?
Ms Carswell: I was working for the company out of Kitchener, but the main office is actually in Toronto. I had to work to help put together the standards document, devise a large number of surveys for the consumers of the service. I was involved with detailing of policies and procedures and actually conducting onsite audits.
Mr McLean: Did you do a printed booklet on it for other health care providers to use, or did you go that far?
Ms Carswell: We did have a printed booklet that was used within the organization.
Mr McLean: And the details in part of that would be for health care providers, directed mainly at what?
Ms Carswell: Directed mainly at the staff of the various offices who were involved in providing service.
Mr McLean: It hasn't been that long that the physiotherapists have been regulated. How long ago was it that they were allowed to charge OHIP for services they provide? Do you remember?
Ms Carswell: I'm not a physiotherapist myself, so I --
Mr McLean: I understand that, but you're going to be on that board that will be dealing with them.
Ms Carswell: That would be information I would definitely be interested in finding out.
Mr McLean: Great. I see you have a long, extended career in health care in what you've done. I commend you for that and I wish you well in your appointment.
The Chair: That completes the three-caucus involvement with your interview, Ms Carswell. Thank you for your appearance before the committee this morning.
Now, committee members, we're going to move into a subcommittee meeting, so the rest of the members, we will see you back at 2 o'clock this afternoon.
The committee recessed from 1156 to 1403.
ALAN BERNSTEIN
Review of intended appointment, selected by government party: Alan Bernstein, intended appointee as member, Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Allan K. McLean): We'll continue our review of the appointments. Mr Bernstein, you can either make an opening statement or we can proceed right into questions.
Dr Alan Bernstein: I'm at your pleasure.
Ms Carter: Welcome to the government agencies committee. Could you please tell us why you're interested in being a member of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation?
Dr Bernstein: I guess the answer I'd give is I'm very interested in cancer. My professional life is centred around cancer research quite largely. I think I bring some insights and some experience into that area from all my other activities. I think I can do some good and help out, so that's why I'm interested.
Ms Carter: What particular skills or strengths from your background do you have that would make you an effective member?
Interjection.
Dr Bernstein: Yes. As we say in genetics, I hope I have a commonsense gene. I think that's the major skill. I contribute and I participate internationally in cancer research. I've served on, and still do serve on, boards of directors; for example, the National Cancer Institute of Canada. So I have some insights and perspectives on cancer research nationally and internationally which I can bring to the table, I think.
Ms Carter: I think we all have an interest in cancer because it's so common and we all hope that it won't strike us or it won't strike our nearest and dearest. There are two things that I wonder about particularly. I have heard that for every cancer patient who is treated the health system spends something like $1 million. Of course, on the other hand, I think we all wonder whether the incidence of cancer has actually increased or whether it is just a function of the aging of the population. I tend to think that it's a bit of both, but you're the expert. Obviously, prevention is part of the government's strategy. But I wonder what you feel about the proportion of our attention that is devoted to prevention. I have heard that as many as 80% of cases may be preventable, and obviously that's an arguable figure too.
Dr Bernstein: Yes.
Ms Carter: Given the expense on the one hand, the fact obviously that nobody wants to get it or have anything to do with it, and on the other hand the fact that maybe a lot more prevention is possible, what do you believe should be the main focus of the board?
Dr Bernstein: I think prevention has to be one of the main foci of any broad cancer strategy. You know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and cures, as you said, are expensive. But they're more than expensive; many of them are ineffective. So it's clear that we need to do a lot more research and work on prevention. We know that certain kinds of cancers are clearly preventable. Lung cancer is the one, of course, that jumps out. If you look at the curves of incidence, the incidence of lung cancer is still skyrocketing in both sexes. In fact, the incidence of lung cancer is now greater than the incidence of breast cancer in women. So yes, it's clear we need to do a lot more research on prevention, and I'm very supportive of that.
Ms Carter: We certainly seem to have, as it were, singled out tobacco, and that, I think now, is something that's generally accepted, that it is a cause and that it should be combatted. But what about the workplace? Obviously, a lot of us have workplaces that would be very unlikely to carry any kind of a risk, but I think there are certain occupations where you couldn't say that. I wonder whether that's something that we need to be looking at.
Dr Bernstein: I'm now speaking outside of my direct areas of scientific expertise. But clearly if there are workplace areas where there's an increased cancer risk, we need to (1) identify that, be confident of that identification, and (2) do something about it to clean it up. I think this is essential. These are difficult areas to do work in and to unambiguously show that a given workplace is predisposing to cancer. If you think back to the 1950s or 1960s and how clear the evidence was that smoking causes lung cancer, we still have a large number of influential people in our society who argue that those data are not true. These are difficult things to prove unambiguously, but we need to work at it.
Ms Carter: In general, do you think that sufficient funds are being spent on cancer research?
Dr Bernstein: No, I do not. I think that there are a lot of good people and good ideas and areas that are not being approached. Money doesn't solve every problem, but I think that money could still be spent very wisely that just isn't available at the moment.
Ms Carter: Okay, I'll defer to my colleagues.
Mr Frankford: Welcome. We're obviously very struck by the extent of your résumé. Could you perhaps briefly outline what you feel the strengths of cancer treatment and research in Ontario are and what you would like to emphasize when you're on the board.
Dr Bernstein: On the first part of your question, I think we should all perhaps be proud of the cancer treatment and research network and facility that's in place in this province. I think it's outstanding. I believe it's recognized worldwide for its quality and its excellence, both at a technical level and also at a humane level.
In terms of my own areas I would emphasize, I'm not sure yet. I think I need to get more familiar with what OCTRF is really about. I have my own interests and my own areas that I think are important in general in terms of OCTRF and I'm familiar with a lot of the cancer research going on in the province, obviously, but I'd like to go to a few meetings before I express a strong view in that regard.
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Mr Frankford: One of my interests that comes up quite frequently is palliative care. Is that something that will be within your mandate, do you know?
Dr Bernstein: I think somebody said at the outset that we've all had personal experiences with cancer, and so have I. I think palliative care is an important area of any cancer initiative, both treatment and research, and it's a relatively new area that could deal -- the fact is, for many cancers we can't do much and we have to therefore "resort," if I can use that in quotes, to palliative care. I don't mean to denigrate it, but it's an important part of what goes on in dealing with a dying cancer patient.
Mr Waters: I came out of industry, and getting back to something that Ms Carter was talking about, I have grave concern about what's going to happen in industry probably in the next 10 to 20 years because of the latency period of cancers and that type of thing. I'll give you an example. As a child I used to help at my local township to spray a chemical called Brush-Bane, which we know is a carcinogen. We used to spray it to defoliate plants. We should have known there was something wrong with it when something that was green was, within an hour, shrivelled up and brown.
Dr Bernstein: Good clue.
Mr Waters: Good clue, but in the latter part of my career, working with my last employer, for one, looking at that particular one we dealt with a lot of exotic chemicals, plastics and those types of things. What I discovered in doing that was that indeed we really don't know. When you combine four or five plastics and catalysts and things like that and heat them up to the boiling point and you mark the product that if it should be involved in a fire it is a carcinogen, when you bring it to that point and you mix four or five together, what have you got?
I'm wondering, is there anybody out there looking at any of this? Otherwise I think we're going to have a horror story in the next 10 or 20 years.
Dr Bernstein: You've raised a very important and interesting point. I think yes, people are looking at it. We have had these sorts of chemicals in our environment for a long time now, and I don't mean to imply that these chemicals are not going to cause cancer. But so far, most of the data would suggest that if you look at the curves over this century of cancer incidence, a few have gone up, most notably lung cancer, but most have either stayed flat or gone down quite dramatically, like stomach cancer, for whatever reason. No one really has a good explanation for that.
There are clearly some high-risk groups in industry that may be exposed to very high levels of these compounds and we need to identify that and do something about it, but in the population as a whole there's no good evidence yet that these new chemicals we are making and introducing into our environment are actually impacting on cancer statistics in a major way, at least. That doesn't mean it won't 10 years from now; I can't predict the future. But these are difficult things to research because they're just difficult questions to get at. I guess we need to err on the side of caution.
Mr Waters: I guess that would be my feeling. When you go to an employer and the employer says, "We know it's an irritant" -- when your eyes break open, around your eyes, and they bleed after every day and the blood comes out of your nose and out of the corners of your mouth, that's an irritant in most of industry. I guess if you breathe that in long enough, it's going to become somewhat more.
But that would be all I'd have to ask of you. I think you're a wonderful candidate for this. I don't know where you're going to find the time, but I know people like you always do.
Dr Bernstein: I hope I can find the time.
Mrs Sullivan: Welcome to the committee. I'm sure, Dr Bernstein, that people who are working at and with the OCTRF will more than welcome your joining of that board, because you bring such enormous strength, both academic and stature, that's international. I think it's a tribute to the OCTRF that you've put yourself forward to work with them, but it's also a tribute to Ontario that you're willing to take that time, and I think that we all appreciate that.
You've put a large part of your working life into the research functions, and Mrs Carter earlier spoke a bit about some of the research issues. Our party has recommended that in Ontario there ought to be a strategic plan for health research in general and that a health research and development council should be set up. That is not unique to our party, either. I should suggest that many people who are involved in medical research and other health care research, including systems research, have put forward a similar recommendation.
I wonder if you could just speak about the way you might see a body of that nature operating in terms of prioritization of research and involving the kind of additional dollars that may be able to be levered in a strategically directed research environment.
Dr Bernstein: First of all, that's an open-ended question, of course. I could talk a long time on that. I think it would be very valuable for the province and for the provincial government to initiate a strategic planning exercise out of which would come a strategic plan of what it expects from its dollars that it spends on research in the province and how best to leverage it from other sources -- from industry, from the federal government etc. I think that's an excellent idea.
Yes, I think we could use more dollars. You asked me for an actual amount. I don't have a number in my head, because I don't really know how much the province currently spends, and it might be hard because some of the money the government puts into higher education, for example, really goes towards research in one way or the other in terms of infrastructure, for example.
It's clear that these are tough times financially, at all ends of the spectrum, but certainly at the user end there is a great need for more money for research. What that dollar amount is, I have no idea at the moment at the provincial level. I think to justify more money for research you clearly need to have a strategic plan: what you want to accomplish, what you expect from it, etc.
In terms of priority areas, that's a very big question. I'm a strong believer in excellence. I think excellence in research really should be, if not number one, very close to the top, because in my experience excellent research almost always is relevant and has economic value in the long run.
Mrs Sullivan: One of our other proposals is for a cancer care agency which would again be involved in the strategic planning for province-wide cancer care that would integrate thrusts in both the formal and informal cancer system. The OCTRF has been very favourably disposed to that approach and particularly, I think, in the area of value that people at the OCTRF see in ensuring that the protocols and guidelines are consistent, that service delivery is consistent and that there can also be an element of patient involvement in strategic and other planning.
I wonder if you'd comment on that. I have to say that one of the few things I give credit to the current government for is the Provincial Cancer Network -- bringing Les Levin in from London I think was a very positive move -- and I understand that its work will be presented to the minister very soon, or the initial round of its work. My own hope is that this will lead to a continued emphasis on more of a coordinated process through an agency, but I wonder if you'd just comment on that.
Dr Bernstein: I think my only comment can be that I can't comment at the moment about the relative merits of a foundation versus an agency. I don't want to duck it, but I'm just not familiar enough with the clinical side, which is where I think the greatest impact would be. Not being a clinician myself, I'd need to sit on the foundation for a while and get a sense of that.
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Mrs Sullivan: Okay. That's fair.
Your research has been in the genetic field, where I understand there are fairly recent new emphases being placed, and indeed today I noted in the Globe or the Star that there's some new news from the New England Journal of Medicine with respect to smoking, tobacco-related gene links. The question that I want to have some comment on is, given your specialist research area, would you just talk to the committee about the current emphasis in that area in terms of cancer research and where you see improvements being made or required.
Dr Bernstein: Again, this is something very close to my heart. Genetics of cancer is a very hot area, a very exciting area. The progress in this has really been tremendous over the last five or 10 years. When I first started in cancer research people used to argue, "Are genes involved in cancer or not?" We've gotten to a point where at Mount Sinai just down the street, for somebody with a familial history of colon cancer, we take some of their DNA and tell them whether they have a mutation in the colon cancer gene or not in a few days. So, you know, that's pretty remarkable progress in a 20-year time period.
I think the impact on treatment, on prevention and on diagnosis is going to continue to be tremendous. I can't really overestimate how important the genetic aspect will be on cancer. I think the basic fact is that cancer is a disease of cells. Cells go amok. They start growing uncontrollably when they normally would not, and the reason they do that, we now know, is because of mutations in some of the genes that control whether a cell grows or not. So getting a handle on that is really, I think, the first step in understanding the disease and therefore hopefully preventing it and treating it and certainly diagnosing it. Again, the impact on diagnosis is immediate.
That's a very short answer and I can elaborate on any of those points, but I think the impact is going to be quite tremendous.
Mrs Sullivan: Thank you. Just as a matter of interest, I think that -- she hasn't called my time yet so --
The Chair: No, "she" hasn't, but you've got two minutes.
Mrs Sullivan: Okay. Thank you. As a matter of interest, most of the hospitals on University Avenue are involved in cancer treatment and diagnosis, some of them, and care. The work that you are doing closely approximates, I guess, some of the work that's being done at Princess Margaret Hospital in stem cell research. How do you work together?
Dr Bernstein: I should say first that I worked at Princess Margaret for 10 years and in fact got my first training there, so I'm very familiar with the people and the work they're doing. It's hard to describe to laypeople, but we know what we're all doing.
I think the critical mass of researchers in Toronto, on University Avenue in particular, is critical to the success of the enterprise. We certainly don't compete with each other, or we try not to. It's of benefit having people around you who are working in similar areas that you can collaborate with. If you look in my publications -- I gather you have -- there are lots of people on there from Princess Margaret, from Sick Kids, from the Toronto Hospital. That reflects, I think, the value of having other people nearby. Science is very much a multidisciplinary, multitechnique-oriented business these days. So I know what's going on and so do they.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee, sir. I'd like to pick up on some of the last questions that were asked with regard to the cancer research that you're doing. Have you done any research with regard to the food that people eat, the conflict that can be there with regard to causes of cancer?
Dr Bernstein: I personally have not. There certainly is some epidemiological research that has been done on that whole area, but I personally am not involved with it.
Mr McLean: Do you know of anybody who is doing research in that area?
Dr Bernstein: In the province?
Mr McLean: Yes.
Dr Bernstein: I'm trying to think offhand whether Tony Miller and his group here at the University of Toronto are or not. I can't think of a study at the moment. Sorry.
Mr McLean: Do you think we're short of researchers in the foundation now?
Dr Bernstein: Again, I don't want to duck the question. I think I need to get a better sense. I know individuals as scientists and collaborate with them or talk to them about their work, but I don't have a sense from the foundation perspective of all the people at the various clinics who are doing research and what they're doing.
Mr McLean: Do you think we're really winning the battle? You know, when I look at some of the statistics and what I see, the increase in the amount of cases every year, the amount of hospitals that are being designated with cancer treatment wards, I'm just concerned. I hear more of it all the time and I'm wondering, because I have some concerns with regard to what people eat and where it's grown and what it's grown in.
Dr Bernstein: Yes. Do I think we're winning the battle? Well, I think we're not going to win the battle tomorrow. I think there have been some successes: childhood cancers in general, leukaemias in particular, Hodgkin's lymphoma. You know, we take it for granted now, but the actual realization that smoking causes lung cancer is a victory. We haven't eliminated lung cancer, it's still growing, but we have identified the cause, and that's entirely a preventable disease now. It's now out of the hands of the scientists into the hands of policymakers and the public and our society to do something about it, but that's a major success story, if you will.
I think our understanding of cancer, as I said, has increased tremendously over the last 10 years, and I anticipate that -- I don't think we're going to have a cure tomorrow. I don't think that's what this is about. But I think we will be much better off in terms of statistics, actually being able to treat people or prevent the disease over the next 10 or 20 years. It's not going to be a short haul.
Mr McLean: I dare say there isn't one person who's sitting around here today who doesn't donate to the cancer society. I think we all do.
Dr Bernstein: That's good.
Mr McLean: We know the amount of people who go out there and volunteer their time. But what I would like to find out, and it's really not in your jurisdiction, is the amount of money that we're raising, the percentage that is going in to actual people such as you for research. Some people tell me it could be 10 cents out of the dollar. I mean, is there something wrong here with our method of getting the money to the foundation to be able to give it to the people to do the research that needs to be done?
Dr Bernstein: Are you asking whether we could put more money into cancer research?
Mr McLean: That's right, yes. I know earlier you said that there wasn't enough, but the point I guess I'm really making is that we're probably putting too much into administration to collect it and there's not enough going into research.
Dr Bernstein: Well, in terms of the cancer society, which is of course a private charity, I am familiar with the Canadian Cancer Society, and there are costs to fund-raising. You have to spend a dollar to raise some money. Their costs, as I understand it, are quite low relative to other charities and fund-raising efforts, because so many people are willing to give. I think it'd be naïve to think it'll be 0% and what the right number should be I don't know, but I think they try to keep their costs down pretty low.
Mr McLean: There are people designated for looking at and doing in-depth studies into certain types of cancer. I've a niece who does research into skin cancer, and there are others who would probably do research into lung cancer and so on. Are there specific fields laid out with a team that does look into specific parts of the anatomy in terms of what they may see as --
Dr Bernstein: Yes, I think we're talking about spectrum. There are cancer researchers who are doing very basic cancer research and aren't interested in a particular disease but the basic scientific question of what makes a cell divide or not, to people who are interested in skin cancer or lung cancer or breast cancer and have multidisciplinary teams focus on those. In the province, you see all of that spectrum.
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Mr Runciman: I just have one or two quick questions. I certainly agree with what you've been saying with respect to the success in the past 20 years or so in terms of treatment for a variety of cancers and the improved stats in survival rates. I don't think you touched on the incidence of cancers in respect to I guess Ontario or Canada.
If you see what's happening in terms of population growth, water quality, the erosion of the ozone and all of these terrible things we keep reading and hearing about, what's your prediction for the future in terms of rates of incidence of people developing all sorts of cancers because of a deteriorating environment?
Dr Bernstein: I actually think the major impact on cancer incidence statistics is going to be age. Cancer is very much an age-related disease because it's the accumulation of genetic mutations, and we are an aging population because of people like me, the baby boom. So that's where in terms of absolute numbers we're going to see the major impact, that we're an aging population.
As I said to an earlier question, I think the impact of all these other environmental things is not so evident yet in statistics, although there is an increase in skin cancer, which presumably is related to increased exposure to ultraviolet light, perhaps because of the ozone layer disappearing.
Mr Runciman: I live along the St Lawrence River. That's my primary residence. Some of the statistics I've seen of higher incidences of a variety of different cancers for people who live in the St Lawrence River valley, if you will, the suspicion, although it's never been confirmed, I guess, the one constant along there, is of course drawing your drinking water from the St Lawrence River. Do you look at those kinds of issues as well?
Dr Bernstein: I'm not an epidemiologist, so no, I do not personally look at that. I think somebody should be looking at that. It's not my area of expertise.
Mr Runciman: Another area which doesn't touch on yours at all, but it's sort of been an interest of mine for many, many years, is the use of heroin as a painkiller for the terminally ill. I know that the federal government made changes a number of years ago to allow heroin once again to be imported for use by medical doctors.
As I understand it, and I've just recently been contacted by constituents of mine who've had their loved ones pass away in great pain, not being able to deal with the pain with the drugs that are being utilized by the medical community, apparently heroin is legally there if a practitioner wishes to draw upon it. The medical community, by and large, is still refusing to do so and hospitals are refusing to put it in their pharmacies and so on. I wonder if you have any view or observation on that.
Dr Bernstein: I'm not a clinician. Going back to the question about palliative care, I think it really highlights the importance of having guidelines for cancer research and for palliative care and what those guidelines should be. I can't comment, but if heroin is an acceptable drug to be used in palliative care, then that should be discussed and then formalized as a guideline so we don't have these situations where some people have access to it and some people don't, depending on who their doctor happens to be.
The Chair: Thank you. Dr Bernstein, I just would like to say that it isn't very often that we have someone like you in our presence whom we are in a position to say thank you to. Based on some of the questions that were being asked, I think it's important, since we're about to launch into April, which is Cancer Month in terms of fund-raising. I'm sitting here as a mother who lost a daughter to a form of cancer which fortunately today our three brand-new granddaughters will never be at risk with.
I think that those advances have only been made because of the work and the fund-raising that goes into a month like April annually and, more importantly, into the commitment and dedication of individuals like you. We are all very blessed to be the recipients of your commitment to your particular area in your profession. I just would like to publicly thank you for what you've been able to do and thank you for being here today.
Dr Bernstein: Thank you for those very kind words.
JACK DIAMOND
Review of intended appointment, selected by official opposition party: Jack Diamond, intended appointee as member, Ontario Place Corp board of directors.
The Chair: Welcome, Mr Diamond.
Mr Cleary: Welcome to the board. How many members are on the board at the present time?
Mr Jack Diamond: I'm not sure. When Max Beck called me, I think there was something like a dozen, 10 or 12 members of the board. I'm not sure. I have had nothing to do with them so far. I've not met with them.
Mr Cleary: You're not on the board at the present time?
Mr Diamond: No. As I understand, I had been notified that there was an order in council appointing me, but I haven't taken up because this committee would like to meet with me.
Mr Runciman: They're keeping a seat warm for Patti Starr.
Mr Cleary: Please excuse us, because sometimes when they come before us, they already have been tuned in.
Mr Diamond: No. You're talking to someone of not relative but absolute ignorance.
Mr Cleary: Okay. Now that you've said what you did, I'll ask you another question. What do you feel your particular role will be on the board?
Mr Diamond: I've been on one or two boards before, and I think that obviously the role of the board members ought to be questions of long-term policy as well as seeing to it that current operations are being done effectively. Most boards, I think, need to really concentrate on those two factors. So I suspect that in this case, and I'm aware to some degree of the kind of problems and prospects that Ontario Place faces, it'll be dealing with those issues.
Mr Cleary: Okay. You partially answered it, but what issues do you feel will be most important to you and the other board members during the time of your appointment?
Mr Diamond: The little knowledge I have tells me that Exhibition Place, the Canadian National Exhibition, and Ontario Place are declining in the number of visitors that attend. Obviously, that's an issue and a problem.
I think there are a lot of reasons for that. Some of them are cyclical but some of them are more structural, and I think the problem Ontario Place has always had to deal with is its location. While it's attractive because it's on the water, and it's a dramatic piece of architecture and so forth, I think there's a real problem about accessibility.
Part of it is that I don't think it's very clear how you get there. Certainly there's no good public transportation to it, so you have to go by automobile, and you have a vast parking lot to accommodate that. Not everybody has an automobile and, in any event, even if you have an automobile, I'm not sure it's very clear how you get there. Its relationship to Exhibition Place, I think, is an ambiguous one. Is it part of Exhibition Place? Is it a separate thing? I think that's very unclear.
To answer your question, I think the perceptions about it are not clear enough. I think people don't understand how to get to it easily and I think the real problem is public transportation. It's an island, it's cut off, and that's a problem that I think needs to be addressed.
I have some ideas about how to do that. I don't know whether they're feasible yet because I've not discussed them with the board and I don't know enough about the operation. But standing from the outside, and when I was appointed to this, or when I heard that the order in council had been made, I sort of cast around to people I know and said: "Tell me what you think about Ontario Place. How would you go there?"
My secretary said: "I wouldn't go there because I don't know how to get there, and when I get there I've got to take my child around in a stroller and there's nothing for my child to do. And where do you sit down? There are no distractions." There are a whole bunch of issues which, from the common person's point of view, the person in the street, I think are some real obstacles to overcome.
Mr Cleary: My next question you've partially answered, I guess: declining visitors. What would your views be on how you could attract more visitors?
Mr Diamond: Out of interest, I have another project in which I've become engaged, in the question of exhibition and public building design. The ways in which projects such as the Science Centre, although it has its problems too, or the Exploratorium in San Francisco and other places of this kind succeed is when there's participation, when you get engaged in the exhibition. The mandate, as I understand it, of Ontario Place is to be a showcase for Ontario, and not only in general, but I think the mission statement says specifically something about being a showcase for Ontario artists as well as being a showcase in general.
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My sense is that after people have visited Ontario Place they ought to come out with a sense of greater pride and interest in the province. I'm not sure that's being achieved, so that's another issue.
But there are wonderful modern techniques in which people become engaged in the process, whatever it is, whether it's a mechanism you trigger, whether, as you do in the Science Centre, the kids stand and their hair gets pulled by magnets or whatever it is -- the appropriate device to become engaged so that you participate. I think there are good techniques to be used to make it an exciting, interesting place.
Mr Cleary: Do you feel there's any opportunity for the private sector to get involved under your mandate?
Mr Diamond: That's an interesting question. I think the mandate's a pretty good mandate the way it stands. It's a public building. If one had one's druthers, one would make it free. Obviously, it has to pay its way, and therefore some means of leveraging money out of the public to keep it going is the right thing to do, I suppose. But I'm not sure that it ought to be a place where the private sector can make money for itself. There's a time and place for the private sector to make money, but there's also a public mandate here of a public institution, so I'm not sure that the priority ought to be to make money. I think the priority ought to be to improve the image, perception and engagement and pride about Ontario.
Mr Cleary: Thank you and good luck.
Mrs Sullivan: I know the board of Ontario Place will welcome the kind of dynamism you bring to so many other projects and the thoughtful approach that you have to "people" use of places, which I think is very important.
Mr Diamond: Thank you.
Mrs Sullivan: As a matter of curiosity, I have to know what you think about the destruction of the Forum.
Mr Diamond: I think it's a really unfortunate process, first of all, and it's part of this problem of having to try and make a lot of money. Obviously, if you wanted to run hard rock concerts every night, you'd make a ton of money and you'd fill the place. That's not the objective of the exercise. To start with, I think there are many good things about the design which have been compromised by this project, but I think the process was the problem. I think it created a lot of resentment, and my sense would be, as in many projects, people are annoyed when they're presented with a fait accompli. I don't have to tell people in this room -- politicians have to deal with constituents all the time -- that you have to take people into account and you have to consult with them.
I would have thought that process would have been less rancorous had it been one that took the public into its confidence and discussed the issues with it. Perhaps the outcome might have been different but better. So I'm not wild about the way in which it was done, nor the results.
Mrs Sullivan: So you're unhappy with the results as well.
Mr Diamond: To be also perfectly honest about it, I haven't really looked at the final result. Perhaps it was inevitable, and I reserve judgement on that. But from what I gather, it's not as sympathetic and sensitive as it might have been.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee, sir. Do you think if there's more freedom there with regard to the board of directors, to allow a more commercial strategy, a better marketing strategy put in place, it would help pay its way?
Mr Diamond: I see two parts to your question. One is a marketing strategy, which I take in the largest sense, not necessarily one to make money but how to improve custom, so to speak, visitors. The other one is the question of whether there ought to be more commercial avenues.
In terms of the second one, I read the annual report and I did see from the annual report that a good chunk of money is spent on advertising. So I don't know whether it's simply a question of more money or better directed money, but I know that I'm not terribly aware -- and I think I read as many papers as most people -- of what's going on. So I suspect that one of the things I'll be interested in doing is really looking at how the activities and interest of that place are conveyed to the public. That's an important question that I'd like the answer to as much as you.
In so far as the commercial aspects are concerned, I partly gave that answer to Barbara Sullivan, I think, or was it to Mr Cleary? I don't think the mandate here is to make money. I think the question of simply providing a public avenue for private sectors to make a lot of money is not right. If the private sector could help make it a more attractive place, I think it should be considered, but only if it's seen as a better vehicle or a better means.
If you take Canada's Wonderland and places which are purely commercial, they do their job, and there's a place for that. This is not that place. I see this clearly as being a place to imbue a sense of pride and interest in Ontario. If commercialism can do it, that's fine, but I think that should be a last resort.
Mr McLean: Do you not, though, believe there's a place to balance the books?
Mr Diamond: Of course there needs to be a responsible fiscal attitude. Obviously, that has to be, and if it does not pay for it, it won't exist, and I want it to exist. But I think one, in the interests of balancing the books, can foul the mandate, and I think that would be wrong. I'd be extreme and go so far as to say that if you can't really fulfil the mission, then it shouldn't exist.
Mr McLean: Will you be looking at the mandate with regard to the way revenues are now brought in?
Mr Diamond: Obviously. One has to look at the revenue question, there's no doubt about that; the revenue question has to be reviewed. But I don't see this as a vehicle for the private sector making money.
Mr Runciman: Maybe I'm too cynical, but the many times I visited Ontario Place in the years before I became a member of the Legislature, I've never walked away from the place with a renewed sense of pride and interest in Ontario. I'm not sure how you're going to achieve that; as I said, perhaps I'm a little too cynical. But obviously you're enthused about the task ahead, and it's good to see that.
We're talking about the private sector. You've had a couple of questions, but another approach perhaps worthy of consideration is the idea of a management contract through the private sector whereby the government puts the place up for tenders. I think we've seen this in some instances in other areas. The casino in Windsor is an example, I guess, where you have a variety of major casino operations bidding to operate the casino. Then the government sets down the guidelines as to how this place will operate and then, in the instance of the casino, reaps the financial rewards.
I'm just wondering if that's not the sort of thing that could be looked at in terms of Ontario Place, where you have people come in who do this as a full-time occupation. They know how to run these kinds of places, the bottom line, and attract crowds, but at the same time achieve the kinds of goals you're talking about in perhaps a much more effective way, rather than having a variety, in many instances, of amateurs, and this is no implication with respect to your abilities or your interest. But this is a board that changes bodies on a fairly regular basis. People come in with expertise in their own particular areas. But if you look at a private sector management contract, these are people whose sole business, if you will, is this kind of industry. I would hope that's the sort of thing you wouldn't rule out taking a look at when you become a member of the board.
Mr Diamond: I certainly wouldn't rule it out. While you were mentioning something of that kind, recently -- well, not that recently, but I would guess in the last year -- I saw this whole issue, not in Canada but in the United States, about how to deal with the school problem they have, the education problem. There's a company in the United States that said, "Our business is how to make these things work" and so forth, and they were taken on. A private sector business was taken on to run local schools because they were supposed to be efficient. I'm sceptical about whether they got any better educational results. They may have in fact cut down the salaries and made some mechanical and management options.
I suspect this is an option which ought to be looked at. But if it were me, and I would be one tiny voice, and a new boy on the block at that, on the board, I would approach it with a lot of scepticism. Because once you state your mission, if you state your mission with sufficient clarity about a public interest mission, the private sector in its negotiation, I suspect -- and this is pure speculation -- would want to modify that in order to make a buck. If that could be done and have the mandate on it, then obviously, why not? But there are always these problems about how the private sector would run its staff and how the mandate of the board would conflict with that.
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Mr Runciman: The other view is that we can't, in my view, continue to subsidize this kind of operation at significant cost to the taxpayers. That's the voice of the regions, if you will, that look upon Toronto with a degree of resentment. In my part of eastern Ontario we've seen the St Lawrence Parks Commission closing down parks and limiting the access of the public in that area to those resources simply because of budgetary restraints. But at the same time we see the government with its largess for a facility in Metropolitan Toronto, which is not achieving its goal, as you admit. So those kinds of questions have to be addressed, and I think there's an end to the patience of Ontario taxpayers in respect to these kinds of questions as well.
Mr Diamond: If I might respond to your comment on that, my suspicion is that if it was really doing a superb job and it was really fascinating and interesting Ontarians and it gave them a pride about the province, and that when visitors came to this province they said, "I want to take you somewhere" to show off their place, it wouldn't be called a subsidy, even if it was costing a lot.
Mr Runciman: Well, rots o' ruck.
Mr Marchese: Mr Diamond, you mention that it's not the mandate for Ontario Place to make money, but I suspect many would argue that it's not its mandate to lose money, necessarily, which is the opposite argument. On the other hand, other people will argue that if it's a public institution it's there to serve the people, and in this regard, if it loses some money, that's part of it.
Mr Diamond: It's the cost of, not doing business, but the cost of doing public business.
Mr Marchese: That's right. I suppose you would want to go on this board as a way of promoting that, but surely as a way of suggesting some ideas that would bring more dollars to Ontario Place so it can continue to develop and invest in other areas.
Mr Diamond: What's happened, as I've begun to find out, is that a little while back the whole admissions policy, the question of charging entry, was abandoned --
Mr Marchese: Yes, in 1991.
Mr Diamond: -- in order to make it accessible and then on a kind of user-fee basis for the components. That seems to be succeeding, and that's a device which has already been put in place. I suspect that has its problems too, because you then exclude people from some of the things you want them to go to if the prices are too high. So there's a whole pricing question here of how you make it accessible, and accessibility is the key to the people of Ontario.
But I quite agree with you, it's not a mandate to lose money and I'm not about to try. As I've said already, if it can't pay its way or at least have subsidies which are sustainable or support which is sustainable, call it what you want, it then will fail altogether. So clearly it must be made to work -- clearly. One way or the other: Either it's so popular that people don't mind paying the shot, or it's not popular enough and you generate moneys to make up. It's somewhere in that balance.
Mr Marchese: Yes, I agree. There's a fine balance here with this kind of institution, of course. Places like Wonderland don't have to worry about restrictions imposed by the government. They simply say: "We're going to do this. It'll cost a couple of million dollars, $10 million or $5 million or $20 million," and they will raise it because it will be an attraction that will bring more people. Part of what Ontario Place has as a problem is that it's difficult to plan in the long term because they really don't know, in an age of declining resources, whether they're going to get the support from government. So it's a fine balance. How does one like you approach a problem like that?
Mr Diamond: If indeed the problem is a question of long-term strategic planning, or the lack of that, that's got to be pointed out. If that's exactly the problem they're confronting, that they're doing it on a hand-to-mouth basis and therefore cannot indulge in long-term strategic plans which would mean their ultimate success, that should be pointed out to the province. It's precisely what should be identified.
Mr Marchese: I think it's probably being raised with the province --
Mr Diamond: I hope so.
Mr Marchese: -- possibly on a regular basis. I'm not sure how we're sorting that out, but I agree with you.
Mr Frankford: When you spoke with Mr Beck about being on the board, did you raise any concerns about the process with the Forum?
Mr Diamond: No, I didn't. We didn't talk about that.
Mr Frankford: I was interested in your comments about transportation as a critical factor. It seems to me that right now we have two alternatives, neither of which are really economically viable. There's the private car or there's conventional public transportation. It seems to me there is a middle route which we should be exploring, not just here, which I would call jitneys or minivans or fixed-route taxis.
Mr Diamond: I agree. That's certainly a thought I had. It was interesting that when the Queen's Quay terminal was first built, that had the same problems, although not as severe, of how you get people down to the shops. They ran a very clearly identified jitney from downtown to Queen's Quay to see to it that people got down there. I suspect that if the private sector sees the necessity to do that, there's no reason the public sector shouldn't either. I agree with you.
Mr Frankford: And of course in your country of birth, I believe these are commonplace, as in many southern areas. It's the mode of transportation, isn't it?
Mr Diamond: It is, with all of its problems, yes.
Mr Waters: As a person who has looked at Ontario Place for the last four or five years, I remember my first visit officially after being elected and being part of the ministry, going down and seeing what I thought was a very tired-appearing attraction that needed a face-lift. There weren't the public dollars, necessarily, to do what we wanted to do, and right or wrong we went with the Forum and some of those things to try to do exactly that. When the ceilings were falling in and pods were closed, this place needed something, and needed it immediately.
I agree that one of the biggest things is that it's an island out there. I don't think the CNE grounds are used anywhere near the maximum they could be. The old football field or stadium there doesn't seem to be used much at all. The common, which I think is what it's called, in between, is slated for redevelopment. When it all comes together, if we can keep Ontario Place going, maybe it will eventually fit the mandate it was intended to have.
The problem is, over the next five to 10 years, how do you bring people back? How do you use it as something to sell things? The Cinesphere was probably the first permanent --
Mr Diamond: The Imax theatre, yes.
Mr Waters: The Imax. Do we want to sell Imax or bungee jumping as being an integral part of Ontario life or showing off the province?
Mr Diamond: I don't know how much you're aware of the Waterfront Regeneration Trust's long-range plans for Exhibition Place. My suspicion is that Ontario Place may very well ride on the coattails of a significant regeneration of the whole of Exhibition Place. I think Exhibition Place needs more of a rejuvenation than Ontario Place. I think the two do have a symbiotic relationship. As I pointed out, it seems to me it's an ambivalent one and it's unclear in the public's mind about what you go to, where, and when.
But the general increase in custom and transportation to Exhibition Place will inevitably benefit Ontario Place. There are explicit plans for public transit, the extension of the LRT and so forth, and a potential GO station stop on the branch line to Orangeville outside of Exhibition Place -- I don't know if you're aware; these are some long-range plans -- as well as the question of developing Exhibition Place for movie-making and a bunch of other things, as well as a trade centre and so forth.
I don't know how far those very ambitious plans have got, but I know that David Crombie is fairly well engaged in that process of rejuvenating what is called Garrison Common, and this is part and parcel of that.
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I think that the plans Ontario Place ought to have to improve itself should follow two tracks. One is an internal one regardless of its context, simply the improvements that are talked about here on the management side that Bob Runciman raised or on the question of attractiveness in terms of the kinds of offerings it makes that have been raised; but the other one is obviously to coordinate its long-term strength and development as a part of Garrison Common. Those are long-range planning, though.
Mr Waters: Have I still got time?
The Vice-Chair: You have a minute and a half.
Mr Waters: Then very quickly, I guess we all recognize that transportation is the problem, getting the numbers of people out to Ontario Place. How do we do that in the short term while all of these long-term plans are --
Mr Diamond: Bob Frankford mentioned one. But I ought to tell you too that in my experience, if something is sufficiently attractive, people will overcome the most extraordinary difficulties to get there. It's for those that are not that attractive and are in competition with others that you have to indeed make it that convenient.
So again it's this two-track thrust. One is to internally make it attractive enough so people really want to go there, that there's a buzz about it, that kids want to go there, that adults want to go there and so forth because there's something really that compels them to go there. The other one is obviously a larger strategic long-range plan of making it more accessible.
Mr Waters: Thank you very much. I wish you well.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for appearing before the committee today.
Mr Marchese: I move concurrence, Mr Chair, on all the appointments.
The Vice-Chair: You move all the appointments?
Mr Marchese: Correct.
Mr Runciman: On a point of order.
The Vice-Chair: A point of order, Mr Runciman.
Mr Marchese: Okay, move all the rest except the one that he's about to name and then we can move to that.
Mr Runciman: I make it clear which one I would like to see a division on, Mr Chairman: a recorded vote on the appointment to the Employment Equity Tribunal of Mary Anne McKellar.
Mr Marchese: She was good.
The Vice-Chair: Okay. Are there any others who want a separate vote on any others? If not, we'll have a motion to accept all the others.
Mr Marchese: So moved, Mr Chair.
The Vice-Chair: All in favour of that motion? Opposed, if any? Carried.
We will now vote on number one, Mary Anne McKellar.
Mr Marchese: The very fine, capable lawyer who came before us this morning.
The Vice-Chair: We wanted a recorded vote on that. Is there any discussion on the motion?
Mr Runciman: I simply want to indicate that we're going to be opposing the appointment, not because of any real concerns about Ms McKellar. I'm sure she's a capable individual and will serve with the tribunal well. Our concern essentially is with the act itself. We do not support the act. We feel that it's an unfortunate piece of legislation which is doing and will continue to do significant damage to the business community in this province. As a result, we cannot support any appointment regardless of the qualities of the intended appointee.
We support the view of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a whole range of employment lawyers and many economists in the labour market who find that the use of racial and gender classifications to determine eligibility is inherently racist and sexist. The researcher in his comments mentions that there's a view that it will generate a backlash, and I want to say as an elected official I'm already hearing that backlash as I go door to door.
We saw articles in the media and we're seeing increasing numbers of articles in the media about growing concern about the implications of this legislation and what it means to white males in this province and what in fact it is doing to limit the job opportunities of, as the researcher has indicated, contemporary and future white male job applicants because of discriminatory hiring practices.
Ms Harrington: Madam Chair, on a point of order: I believe this is out of order.
The Chair: What is your point of order?
Ms Harrington: I believe that comments of a political speech nature at this point in our agenda are out of order.
Mr Runciman: This is a political forum.
The Chair: They're not out of order, because there is a motion on the floor and members may speak to that motion. I understand this is what the member is doing.
Ms Harrington: I'm appealing to your judgement, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Well, I'm not going to control debate on any side of this table. If the debate is in order and a motion is on the floor, which is the case at this point, I'm not going to --
Mr Marchese: Madam Chair, can we ask the clerk whether that is the --
The Chair: Just a moment, Mr Marchese, I'm addressing Ms Harrington's point of order and I am saying that it isn't a point of order in the way that you're asking.
Ms Harrington: So I may go ahead and debate the whole question of employment equity with Mr Runciman?
Mr Runciman: Only if you want to.
Mr Marchese: With respect to the clerk, Madam Chair, he's debating the Employment Equity Act and whether that's good or bad as opposed to the appointment, and he's not opposing the appointment of this person but rather he's debating the bill and the correctness or incorrectness --
Ms Harrington: Our motion refers to the appointment --
Mr Runciman: Madam Chair, I'm outlining my reasons for not supporting this appointee. It's as simple as that and I'm not going to take too long. If Ms Harrington has an appointment I can assure she'll be able to meet it.
Mr Marchese: But, Madam Chair, could I have it coming from the clerk?
The Chair: Excuse me just a second. I'm ruling that Ms Harrington doesn't have a point of order. Are you now, Mr Marchese, raising a second point of order?
Mr Marchese: I did. Through the question that I'm raising is the point of order; yes. He was debating the bill versus debating whether we should be appointing this person or not and the merits of this person's --
The Chair: I'm sorry, that is not a point of order.
Mr McLean: I agree with the Chair.
The Chair: Mr Runciman has the floor.
Mr Runciman: I'll try to be brief. I know the NDP members have really busy schedules and don't want to listen to my views in respect of why we're opposing this particular appointee.
We cannot support any appointments to the tribunal, based on the tribunal's impact on business in this province, based on its impact on white male job applicants, the discriminatory nature of the act and also the fact that in our view the numerical goals prescribed by the act are indeed quotas. They're mandatory for employers and they're going to be monitored and enforced -- I think that's a very critical factor -- by the government of the day and their henchmen and ladies.
Again, I don't want this to be any reflection on the candidate who appeared before us, Ms McKellar. As I said, I'm sure she is a fine individual, but we simply cannot support any appointees to this tribunal and, in fact, as a party we're committed to effectively reviewing this act and removing the offensive elements of the act and certainly doing away with quotas.
Mr Marchese: For the record, Madam Chair, to make the opposing argument:
"The act is needed to ensure fairness to job applicants belonging to the four designated groups.... The act and the regulations set out a process which will enable employers to achieve employment equity.
"Under the act, employers are not required to hire job applicants or promote employees simply because they belong to one of the four groups. All applicants and employees must be qualified for the positions they seek." Mr Runciman knows that but he chooses to say differently. "If job applicants and employees seeking promotions who belong to the designated groups are not qualified for the positions they seek, employers continue to be free not to hire or promote them and instead hire or promote white males who are qualified for the available positions.
"The act does not impose hiring quotas on employers," as Mr Runciman and many others in the past have said. "Quotas are fixed, numerical goals imposed on employers by an external authority. Instead, the act requires employers to consult their employees in order to devise practical numerical goals which reflect the nature of the workplace and the availability of skilled personnel belonging to the designated groups.
"Employment equity is good business. It enables employers to draw on the full range of talents and skills available in the labour force. Also -- "
Mr Runciman: A point of personal privilege, Madam Chair: I simply want to point out that Mr Marchese on at least two occasions has impugned motive. He suggested that I have misled this committee and the public viewing this by saying things that I didn't believe. I did not, on one occasion, make any reference to an individual NDP member in anything they said, and he has very clearly suggested that I said something I knew was not true. I believe everything I said, I support everything I said, and I would ask Mr Marchese to withdraw that remark.
Mr Marchese: I'm not sure what I said that I need to withdraw.
Mr Runciman: Mr Marchese, you indicated clearly that there were facts that I knew of and declined to comment on and, in fact, said quite the opposite.
Mr Marchese: I don't know what Mr -- I didn't say that, Madam Chair. May I continue?
The Chair: I'm not clear --
Mr Runciman: He made reference to me in two separate comments.
Mr Marchese: I didn't say what he's suggesting, so there's nothing to withdraw.
The Chair: I think it would be simpler, Mr Marchese, if you would like to say, "I withdraw any offending comments," and then you may continue. It would probably --
Mr Marchese: I withdraw any comment that he thinks has offended him.
The Chair: Or impugned his motives.
Mr Marchese: I don't think I said --
Mr Runciman: You're frequently wrong in terms of your interpretation. That's been proven by Hansard yesterday in the comments you made in respect to Mr McLean. You have a very short memory.
Mr Marchese: Madam Chair, again --
The Chair: Mr Marchese has the floor.
Mr Runciman: I'll accept your apology.
Mr Marchese: "Employment equity is good business. It enables employers to draw on the full range of talents and skills available in the labour force. Also, firms whose workforces mirror the ethnic and gender characteristics of the general population will be more sensitive to the needs of their customers, and better positioned to devise strategies designed to attract new business."
Finally, "The act does not impose unreasonable requirements on employers. For example, the achievement of employment equity is to be phased in over an extended period; the act does not apply to very small businesses in the private sector, who may not be able to afford to comply with the legislation; the act respects existing seniority clauses in collective agreements; and the numerical hiring targets employers must meet are to be devised by the employers themselves."
I think the arguments I have put forward speak to the soundness of employment equity. I think it's good for everybody in society, including white males.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Marchese. Ms Harrington and then Mr Cleary.
Ms Harrington: Mr Runciman has said why he would not be supporting this appointment. I would like to say that I will be supporting this appointment, because we -- I believe I speak for several people on this side of the table besides myself -- believe very strongly in employment equity, that it is long overdue in this province, that it is a big step forward for many, many people across this province and that it will in fact help business across this province and we're very proud of it. That's why I'm supporting this appointment.
Mr Cleary: I have some difficulties with some of the legislation too, but I just wanted to get your ruling on this. Are we voting on the legislation or are we voting on the appointment?
The Chair: The motion is to approve the appointment of Ms Mary Anne McKellar as a member and vice-chair of the Employment Equity Tribunal, which was established by the legislation.
Mr Runciman: Which the Liberals support.
Mr Cleary: So we're voting on the appointment.
The Chair: I've just read what the motion is.
Mr Runciman: The Liberals support quotas. That's --
The Chair: If there is no further discussion, then we will move the motion as I have just read. Is this recorded? A recorded vote. All in favour of the appointment of Ms Mary Anne McKellar?
Ayes
Carter, Cleary, Frankford, Harrington, Malkowski, Waters.
The Chair: Opposed?
Nays
Runciman.
Mr Runciman: Let the record note the Liberals supported the NDP in the enforcement of quotas.
The Chair: That motion is carried.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair: We have one final piece of business, and that is the approval of the report of the subcommittee, which I believe you've all received a copy of, which met at noon to make the selections for the month of April. Would someone like to move the report of the subcommittee?
Mr Waters: So moved.
The Chair: Thank you. Any discussion? All in favour of the subcommittee report? That motion is carried.
Is there any further business? All right, then I thank the members for their attendance today and the committee is adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1514.