SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REVIEW BOARD
CONTENTS
Wednesday 7 February 1996
Social Assistance Review Board
Maureen Adams, chair
Mary-Louise Noble, general manager
Intended appointments
Arthur Fish, Ontario Mental Health Foundation
Peter Vice, Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton Police Services Board
Peter Libman, Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal
Subcommittee report
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair / Présidente: Laughren, Floyd (Nickel Belt ND)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Martin, Tony (Sault Ste Marie ND)
Bartolucci, Rick (Sudbury L)
*Crozier (Essex South / -Sud L)
Ford, Douglas B. (Etobicoke-Humber PC)
*Fox, Gary (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings / Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud PC)
*Gravelle, Michael (Port Arthur L)
*Johnson, Bert (Perth PC)
*Kormos, Peter (Welland-Thorold ND)
Laughren, Floyd (Nickel Belt ND)
*Leadston, Gary L. (Kitchener-Wilmot PC)
*Martin, Tony (Sault Ste Marie ND)
*Newman, Dan (Scarborough Centre / -Centre PC)
*Preston, Peter L. (Brant-Haldimand PC)
Ross, Lillian (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC)
*Wood, Bob (London South / -Sud PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Churley, Marilyn (Riverdale ND) for Mr Laughren
Sergio, Mario (Yorkview L) for Mr Bartolucci
Hastings, John (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC) for Mr Ford
Pettit, Trevor (Hamilton Mountain PC) for Mrs Ross
Also taking part / Autre participants et participantes:
Martel, Shelly (Sudbury East / -Est ND)
Clerk / Greffière: Manikel, Tannis
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1009 in room 228.
SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REVIEW BOARD
The Vice-Chair (Mr Tony Martin): We'll get the proceedings going here this morning and welcome the reps from the Social Assistance Review Board. Perhaps you could introduce yourself and the people at the table for Hansard and for our convenience and then just go ahead with your opening report.
Ms Maureen Adams: Thank you, Mr Martin. My name is Maureen Adams. I'm the chair of the Social Assistance Review Board. To my right is Mary-Louise Noble. She is the tribunal's general manager. To my left is Bill Tyler. He's the board's manager of finance and administration. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the committee for asking the board to appear today and to provide information and answer any questions that you might have about the board and its operations.
As you may know, I was first appointed to the board as a vice-chair in 1988, and in January 1995 I was appointed as chair of the board, so I've been the chair just over a year.
I would like to take the opportunity to outline briefly the board's role and mandate and to highlight the efficiency measures that the board has taken to address the significant growth it has experienced in its caseload in the past five years. As well, I would like to take the opportunity to address the issue of whether the tribunal's services are essential and should continue in time of government restructuring and downsizing.
I've provided tables for you at tab 5 of your materials that highlight the growth in appeals received by the board in the last five years. I'm just going to highlight some of the information in those tables for you. The most significant information is that appeals to the board increased by 170% between 1990 and 1995, and in the last three years the board has received 12,000 appeals annually.
In order to look at how the board could manage this growth in appeals, we undertook efficiency measures beginning in 1993. The most significant of those measures were reducing panels that heard appeals from three to one member. We did that so that we could hear more appeals. We introduced short decision formats so that members could spend their time holding hearings and write less lengthy reasons, we computerized our scheduling and decision-writing practices and we developed case management systems. By taking those measures, we were able to increase the number of hearings the board held by 189% and increase the number of decisions the board released by 180% in that same five-year period.
However, even with these changes, the board was unable to hear all the appeals it received and unacceptable scheduling delays developed. It took longer to have a hearing that was received by an appellant proceed to a hearing before the board.
In late 1994, new funding was approved and the board appointed new board members in 1995. In the last six months, the board has taken further measures to increase efficiencies and to enable the tribunal to hear more cases and eliminate the delay in scheduling hearings. In October 1995 the board began scheduling 50% more appeals. The decision-writing formats were again revised and 80% of decisions from the tribunal are now released on single-page decisions. We introduced teleconferencing hearings in the fall and are ready to incorporate them into the regular hearing schedule in the next month.
These measures resulted in further increases in the board's ability to hold hearings over 1994. We've now scheduled 57% more hearings, heard 50% more hearings, released 37% more decisions and reduced the delay in getting a hearing on and processing an appeal at the board. For the first time in five years we can now see an end to the delay in the scheduling backlog and predict that we will be current in scheduling within the next three months.
During this same period that the board was reviewing its efficiencies, the government also made financial and policy decisions regarding the tribunal sector, and as you know, the government appointed Bob Wood, a member of this committee, to review agencies, boards and commissions. In the throne speech and in the financial statement the government outlined some of the measures that they would be taking with regard to tribunals. The first thing that will be looked at is, should a tribunal or agency exist? Could an agency be merged with another? And if an agency remains, could it operate more effectively in times of declining resources?
Two other important developments regarding tribunals that I want to mention just briefly, and I'll be happy to answer questions, are the elimination of the Canada assistance plan -- I'm sure most of you know that happens on March 31 of this year -- and also that there is an ADM committee reviewing tribunals at the same time. That is an interministerial committee consisting of ADMs.
It is in that context of the review that I wanted to take a few minutes to highlight the tribunal's comments and observations with regard to whether this tribunal is essential. It is in that light that I'd like to make these following comments.
The first is that the provision of social assistance is a core government service. If social assistance is denied, there is no other income security program to which a person may turn, because social assistance is the safety net of last resort. All three social assistance statutes that the board adjudicates are complex, legally, and they are frequently amended.
Case workers carry heavy caseloads and are required to make speedy decisions regarding eligibility for people who apply for social assistance. In such conditions of volume and complexity, mistakes are inevitable. If there was no external review, people would be compelled to take their matter before a court in order to obtain a review of their case. Court applications, as you know, are more expensive and less expedient than a tribunal system, and the courts at the moment have a high caseload and could not accommodate the additional demands of some 12,000 social assistance appeals.
The other thing that the tribunal does as an independent board is that it provides an important social safety valve in hotly disputed appeals by providing individuals with a review that is impartial, neutral and removed from the very ministry that made the decision about their benefits.
The need for a separate appeal system from the ministry is also important because the ministry is a party in all social assistance appeals. If ministry staff perform the role of investigator, prosecutor and adjudicator in the same appeal, there could be a public perception of a conflict of interest or a reasonable apprehension of bias.
In considering the issue of whether a tribunal should exist in these challenging economic times, the board reviewed the current situation in another jurisdiction in an attempt to see what happened in any other country that went through a significant downsizing in government and budget reductions, so we looked to Great Britain; we've done a little bit of research on what happened in Great Britain with respect to the tribunal system, so we present this information, if it is in any way helpful. We have the background research to our review.
As you know, in the last decade Britain has significantly downsized and reduced the services provided by government, and in doing so a distinction was made in the research that we've looked at between the delivery of government services and the policy decision-making role of government. In Britain, the delivery side is the area where services were eliminated, downsized or privatized, but in the policy decision-making area, including adjudicative tribunals, it was determined that these were a core function of government and should stay within the existing government structures. Therefore, while tribunals in Britain, as tribunals will do here, underwent merges and decreased budget allocations, the right to an independent appeal of social assistance matters was considered to be a core service of government in that country.
Having said that, I would like to add that the existence of the tribunal does not alleviate the need for reform, and this tribunal has recommendations for improving the appeal system, some of which come from other jurisdictions in Canada and some that come from Great Britain, where we've done a little bit of research.
The most significant of the recommendations that we have -- and this arises, as I say, out of a review of similar tribunals in Canada -- is the development of a consistent, province-wide internal review system. There is solid evidence in Canada and in Britain that this reduces unnecessary appeals and resolves straightforward issues at the first level in a percentage of cases -- not all, but a significant percentage. Where appropriate, if board decisions were implemented locally, the board would not be faced with hearing the same issue over and over, as is the case at the moment.
If there were established procedures to allow for complete and early disclosure, settlement could be encouraged early and appeals could be withdrawn early. Often, social assistance recipients do not know the case they have to meet until they arrive for their hearing. If they had that disclosure earlier, municipalities and the ministry could settle more, and if an appellant felt he did not have an appealable case, he could withdraw his appeal far earlier in the process.
The last recommendation we have about improving the system is the representation of ministry staff at hearings. The tribunal can only decide an appeal based on the evidence that it has before it, and if the ministry does not attend or doesn't submit good factual and legal evidence, then the board is faced with making its decision based on the uncontested evidence of an appellant.
These are my opening comments. I want of course to give you the opportunity to ask for any further information on my comments and to ask any other questions you might have about the tribunal and its operations.
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The Vice-Chair: We'll rotate the questions this morning, perhaps not in huge, big chunks, but maybe in 20-minute segments. Would that be all right?
Mr Bob Wood (London South): As long as it's divided three ways, I'm not strong on how we divide it. If we reach a natural break point, why don't we go on to the next person, as long as you divide it three ways?
The Vice-Chair: We'll circulate in about 20-minute chunks. That way it gives everybody a chance to hear everybody else's questions. We'll start with the government side.
Mr Bob Wood: You very correctly raised the point of the existence of this board being at issue, and it is very much at issue. We're going to look at whether or not having this board is the most effective way of dealing with this problem.
However, I'd like to first take a look at how some of the decisions are arrived at. I wonder if you'd explain what happens after a hearing is held by a vice-chair of the board and a draft decision, I gather, is then prepared. What happens to that decision after the draft decision is prepared?
Ms Adams: It depends on the experience of the board member. The more experience the board member has, then their straightforward work can go to what we call quality control. It's an editorial control for typographical errors, grammatical errors and so on. That can go right out.
For a new member just coming on to the board, there's a little more review in the beginning. So what that means is that the member drafts their decision; it goes through the quality control process; it then goes to the legal department and the legal department looks at the decision and meets with the member and has a discussion, if there are any concerns about any legal errors or if the decision doesn't seem to be lengthy enough for the type of complex issue that came before the board. Then the decision goes back through the process and out.
The decision-maker is the decision-maker, so there's no interference in the decision by another vice-chair, by the legal department, by myself, if I become involved in a case, which is extremely rare, or by the quality control staff.
That's the process. The member hears the hearing. If there's more than a single-member panel, of course they work through the decision together. One member presides at the hearing and the member who presides writes the actual decision. Does that answer the question?
Mr Bob Wood: Do you ever personally review any of these decisions?
Ms Adams: I review some decisions. In the earlier days at the board, when the volume wasn't high, all the decisions came through the chair just so that the chair had a sense of what the board was hearing and deciding. I would say that I look at the decisions of members who are on the board under six months. After that, it just goes through the regular system.
Mr Bob Wood: I'm a little puzzled. Are there board members who can't use proper grammar and punctuation?
Ms Adams: With the volume of work that comes through the board and the volume of decisions people are producing, I don't think it's unusual that there would be typographical errors in a first draft.
Mr Bob Wood: You don't think the board members themselves would be capable of proofreading a draft?
Ms Adams: The board members do proofread drafts. If a draft comes to the quality control department -- and there's one staff member in that department who reviews all of the decisions -- if there's no error in a decision, it goes right out the door; it doesn't have to go anywhere else. But that's our goal. Our goal is to have members produce decisions that can go out quickly.
Mr Bob Wood: I guess what I'm asking is, are there members on the board who cannot produce a draft decision that's grammatically correct?
Ms Adams: The purpose of having a review is to ensure that happens, and it happens in most cases.
Mr Bob Wood: I don't think I got the answer to my question. Are the members on the board not able to produce a grammatically correct decision?
Ms Adams: The members of the board produce grammatically correct decisions, but we have a check in case there would be error. That's the answer to the question.
Mr Bob Wood: I'm amazed. If the members can do it, I don't know why you would have a quality control unit. If the members are capable of doing this, why do you have the quality control unit?
Ms Adams: It's a proofreading function that is normal, I think, in any organization that's producing this volume of written work -- here or anywhere else.
Mr Bob Wood: I wasn't aware that the courts did that.
Ms Adams: I don't know what the courts do.
Mr Bob Wood: They produce a much bigger volume of written work than you do.
Ms Adams: Mr Wood, I'm sorry, I don't know what the courts do. We have this to make sure that decisions go out that are clear and correct and so that we don't have to have another review of work. But as I say, we have one person who reviews the decisions that go through, and that's the purpose, to have correct decisions. Most of them are and don't require major review. It's a clerical function, that position.
Mr Bob Wood: Yes. I gather you lack confidence that the members of the board themselves can do that.
Ms Adams: The goal I think of any tribunal is to have the board members proofread their work and have it go through the system with minimal review. That's our goal and we meet it in most cases.
Mr Bob Wood: Yes, but apparently every one of these is proofread?
Ms Adams: Only in the early stages of new members on the board. The rest are not always proofread.
Mr Bob Wood: So the rest are sometimes proofread?
Ms Adams: It depends on the type of decision that's released. If it's a simple, straightforward decision, the members proofread it. They have a list to make sure that everything's covered off in the file and it can go directly out. The review is more extensive for new members for the first six months.
Mr Bob Wood: The review by the legal department -- I haven't quite grasped why it is the legal department has to do that. Do the members not understand the legal principles that they're required to apply at the hearing?
Ms Adams: Legal review is a regular part of the tribunal system, primarily I think because so many of the members on the board are lay members. They are trained, but they're dealing with complex legal issues. Again, I want to be clear about that review. The review depends on the length of time you've been on the board, the complexity of the issue and whether you're a new adjudicator.
Mr Bob Wood: Would there be any instance where a member would be hearing an issue before the board where they wouldn't understand the legal principles they had to apply?
Ms Adams: It depends on what the issue is. I think that if a person was conducting --
Mr Bob Wood: The answer, I gather, is yes, there are cases where the board member does not understand the legal issues that they have to apply?
Ms Adams: No. I'd like to answer the question. I think what --
Mr Bob Wood: I thought you just did. Are there instances or aren't there where they don't understand the legal principles they're supposed to apply?
Ms Adams: I'd like to answer the question. I'm trying to answer the question. May I answer?
Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): Can we get the answer, please?
Mr Bob Wood: I won't interrupt your questions if you don't interrupt mine.
Interjection.
Mr Bob Wood: I'll ask the questions the way I choose to ask the questions.
Mr Sergio: But I'm waiting for an answer.
Mr Bob Wood: Answer the question, please.
Interjections.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Wood, you have the floor.
Mr Bob Wood: Thank you.
Ms Adams: Because this follows through, if a member was in a hearing and some legal issue developed that they weren't familiar with -- because we can't train board members on every legal issue that could develop in a hearing in a five-week training program, because we have three statutes that are very complex -- in a hearing if a board member had a concern about something that was raised, they could call into the legal department for advice. We have a special line so they can call from all over the province to get that advice, and they use that line if they run into an issue that they're not sure how to handle procedurally or legally. That follows through in the writing of a decision.
Members, including myself, like legal review. I like to go to a lawyer and say: "This issue developed in a hearing. This is what one party argued, but this is what the other party argued. This is what my thinking is. Are there any court decisions on this? Are there any past board decisions that I could look at to help me in my determination?" So board members are actually pleased to have legal review and it provides an important function at the tribunal.
Mr Bob Wood: I take it the answer is yes, they have issues come before them where they don't understand the legalities of them.
Ms Adams: They have issues where a new legal issue or principle may arise and they may need legal advice. In our statute we have a section that allows for legal advice from an independent adviser to the parties for board members, because there is a recognition that we have largely lay members and the legislation is complex. So board members do use legal advice in the conduct of a hearing and in the drafting of their reasons.
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Mr Bob Wood: I guess what I don't understand is that when they arrive at an issue before them that they don't understand the legalities of, why they wouldn't refer that to the legal department immediately.
Ms Adams: Pardon me? A legal department meeting?
Mr Bob Wood: I'm sorry; immediately. When an issue arises that they don't understand the legalities of, why would they not immediately seek the counsel of the legal department? Why would they make a decision before they --
Ms Adams: That's what I'm saying they do. If something develops at a hearing, they call into the legal department for advice on how to proceed. Oh, did you mean does a review happen before or after a decision is made? Is that what you mean?
Mr Bob Wood: No, what I'm asking is, once they get the legal advice, why do you have to check it again? If they don't understand the issues, why would they write the decision?
Ms Adams: Usually if that happens, the member would request the legal assistance. The only reason there's review of the work generally is for the newer people on the complex issues. They would ask for advice in a variety of ways. For example, if there's a three-member panel dealing with a complex spousal case, they would conduct the hearing, they would meet together as a panel, they would decide what evidence they felt was clear, what evidence wasn't, what the law was on this issue, what the law on that issue was. They might talk to the lawyers. They might talk to the lawyers when the first draft is done. They might meet together as a panel after the first draft is done. So there's a whole consultative process in the drafting of reasons. It depends on the member and the complexity and the experience they bring to the board and the length of time they're on the board.
Mr Bob Wood: I guess what I don't understand is how they could render a decision and then you have to have somebody else review it. If they understood how to make the decision, why wouldn't that be the decision?
Ms Adams: The purpose of legal review is to make sure that the reasons of the board member address the complexity of the issue, that if there have been court decisions on the issue, they're in the decision -- I'm trying to think of what else -- that if there have been previous board decisions on this, that's recognized, and to make sure there's a natural flow to the decision.
New members can do two things, and it depends on the member and how they like to work. Some members like to take their files and meet with the lawyer in advance of drafting their decisions. Some members like to do a first draft and ask the lawyer for feedback on the first draft. So it depends on the member how they like to set up the working of their first draft. If the issue's straightforward, they don't meet with their lawyer, they don't get input on the draft. It just goes through the system. If it is complex or they are new, then it goes through a different kind of review.
Mr Bob Wood: How many decisions would you personally review a year?
Ms Adams: Me?
Mr Bob Wood: Yes.
Ms Adams: Fifty, tops. I've been the chair since January and I haven't seen more than 50 decisions, probably.
Mr Bob Wood: What do you do with these after reviewing them?
Ms Adams: Usually I send them out. I send them back in the system to go out. If I discover training issues arising out of a particular decision, I might have some work done in that area, but that's it.
Mr Bob Wood: I'm sorry. What kind of issues?
Ms Adams: I'm just trying to think. Sometimes in a particular legal issue there are two developing trains of thought in the board, so I would see that. The legal department would see it before me, but I would see that if I see cases coming on the same issue that are decided different ways. Then we might have some training and analysis of the two trends developing in the board. But that would be it.
Mr Bob Wood: What do you do? Do you send it back to the vice-chair for revision?
Ms Adams: I've never sent a decision back to the vice-chair. I'm just trying to think.
Mr Bob Wood: What do you do with them? You identify two trains of thought on the board. What do you do about that?
Ms Adams: If there are two trains of thought on the board on an issue, we would do some legal work in the legal department. We'd present a training session to the board members on the two developing issues to make sure that when they wrote a decision they considered both of them in their decision, because generally it's a legal issue where there's a possibility of two interpretations. So we want to make sure that board members cover them both off because those are the cases that usually end up on appeal.
Mr Bob Wood: Your review, I gather, does not result in any change in any of the decisions.
Ms Adams: Never.
Mr Bob Wood: So what you're really doing is just reading decisions that are made by other members.
Ms Adams: That's right. I don't review them in the way that the legal department reviews them.
Mr Bob Wood: Now, the procedure that you've described I gather is not mandated by the law. That's a procedure that's developed by the board itself.
Ms Adams: What procedure is that?
Mr Bob Wood: You've described how these decisions are dealt with after the initial hearing.
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Bob Wood: That procedure is not mandated by statute, I take it. That's a practice.
Ms Adams: No. There are two things mandated by statute: that the board can have independent legal advice from the parties and that the board must provide written reasons. The development of a legal department and review came largely out of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Divisional Court was critical about the board's conduct of hearings, written reasons and findings on credibility. The court regularly and routinely criticized the board in those areas. When the board was changed in 1988 -- and by that I mean a legal department was brought into the board at that time. Based on what the Divisional Court had said about the board, that led to the development of a legal department to provide advice and review for vice-chairs in their work.
Mr Bob Wood: Do you give any guidelines to the vice-chairs as to how they can examine or cross-examine the appellants and respondents at these hearings?
Ms Adams: We provide a five-week training program and, as you know, the board is bound by the rules and practices in the Statutory Powers Procedure Act. That's the basis of the training on that. It's legal training on how to conduct a legal adjudicative hearing, so we would be discussing cross-examination, we'd be discussing how evidence comes in, the role of the board in a hearing, that type of thing.
Mr Bob Wood: I gather they would follow the sorts of procedures you would in a courtroom, would they? What sort of guidelines do you give them?
Ms Adams: It's less formal than a courtroom, but it follows similar procedures, as would be outlined in the Statutory Powers Procedure Act.
Mr Bob Wood: So if they are of the opinion that a witness may not be telling the truth, they are entitled to cross-examine them?
Ms Adams: Not the board members.
Mr Bob Wood: The board member can't cross-examine them?
Ms Adams: No. The Divisional Court has been very clear that the board exceeded its boundary as a tribunal by cross-examining witnesses, that that was the role of the parties and that the role of the board was to hear the evidence and the cross-examination from the parties. Now, the difficulty, as you will appreciate, in a tribunal is that parties are not always represented. So when we train board members about what the adequate role for an adjudicator is in a hearing, it changes depending on who's in the hearing. If you only have an appellant and a board member, then the board member has to ask some questions, because otherwise, with the level of sophistication of people coming to the hearing, you might not have the evidence that you require to make a decision. In that situation, the board would have a different type of a role than it would if both parties or one party was represented. In a hearing that would have the director represented and the appellant represented, the cross-examination happens by counsel for both sides, or social workers or paralegals, or whoever is at the hearings.
But the Divisional Court has been very clear. They criticized the board for cross-examining. Witnesses have said that. That has also happened at the Immigration and Refugee Board, because the adjudicator is to hear the evidence presented and make a determination.
Mr Bob Wood: You don't interpret these decisions to suggest a vice-chair has less scope than a judge does?.
Ms Adams: Pardon me? Less what?
Mr Bob Wood: Do you interpret the court decisions to indicate that a vice-chair has less scope to examine a witness than a judge does?
Ms Adams: I regret that I can't answer that, but I'm not really familiar with the court system; I'm just familiar with the tribunal system and with the decisions that have come on point to our tribunal from a court on appeals of our decisions. Members ask questions in hearings, there's no question about that, but the role changes depending on who's in the hearing. If there's a legal rep in the hearing, then the legal rep should be asking the questions and the board should only be asking questions if they need a clarification. If both parties are represented, the board has the most minor role, because counsel for both parties should be doing the cross-examination.
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Mr Bob Wood: I gather that in your procedure you don't vet any appeal in advance to see whether or not it clearly lacks merit or is easily resolvable. Did I correctly understand what you said earlier, or do you do that?
Ms Adams: We try to do that, and that's one of the systemic problems with the system that I didn't address in my opening remarks but I'd be happy to address now. An appeal is initiated by an appellant filling in a form 1 to have an appeal before the board. In those form 1s we can have an appellant say, "My money was cut; I need an appeal." We don't know the basis of what happened until the director or the administrator -- the director is the province; the administrator is the municipality -- produces a written submission. The problem in our system is that those submissions are not produced early enough. We have no statutory authority to force them, although we now have new provisions in the SPPA to enforce disclosure earlier and we're looking at drafting rules in that regard. That means we don't really know what the issue is until we get a submission far later in the process.
That's been a problem that we've identified for a number of years, that the people who fill in the form 1s -- the way a welfare recipient in some places finds out that their assistance has been cancelled is that they go to the mailbox and it isn't there. So they file an appeal and don't have a sense of what it is that the appeal is about.
Mr Bob Wood: I don't think what I've quite picked up yet --
The Vice-Chair: Excuse me, Mr Wood. Your time is up. You'll have approximately 12 minutes the next time we go around, which is what will be left. We'll move on to the Liberal caucus. Mr Crozier is going to lead off.
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): Welcome to the committee meeting. I want to just have your comments with regard to why the board was established in the first place. It's my understanding, according to the information that was given us, that it was back in 1969. Perhaps there was a name change in 1974.
Ms Adams: Yes.
Mr Crozier: It's a requirement under the Canada assistance plan.
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Crozier: Mr Wood has referred earlier to -- I can't recall the comments exactly, but the board is essentially under review. Am I correct in that, at least according to the current regulations under CAP, the board must exist?
Ms Adams: I can tell you about that. In order to develop cost-sharing between the federal and provincial governments related to social assistance, the Canada assistance plan was enacted. That plan had a number of requirements that provinces had to meet if they wanted to have the federal government cost-share in social assistance. The first one was that the province had to establish a procedure where there would be an appeal of social assistance decisions by a tribunal. The second requirement was that there could be no residency requirement imposed. The third was that assistance would be provided on the basis of persons in need on a basic income or means-tested basis. That is how the Social Assistance Review Board came into existence in Ontario.
As I mentioned earlier, CAP ceases on March 31 and will be replaced by the Canada health and social transfer. The only requirement that was in CAP that has moved over with the Canada health and social transfer is the requirement that there not be a residency requirement. However, I understand that there are ministers meeting across Canada to look at standards. There was press about that this morning, but we've known that they've been meeting to look at what standards should continue in this plan once CAP ceases. So after March 31 there will be no requirement under CAP for the board to exist.
Mr Crozier: I just wanted that clarification.
Mr Sergio: Ms Adams, if the directions of the board should change, where do you think some changes should be made? In what area do you think it's most important?
Ms Adams: I think I outlined the areas that I thought would be helpful in having a more efficient appeal system.
Mr Sergio: You're referring to the material, I know, but I just got the information; sorry.
Ms Adams: Okay. I'd be happy to tell you the areas that we thought --
Mr Sergio: I guess my question is, more or less, what area do you think is the most important area where changes should be made?
Ms Adams: I think the most important area is the development of a consistent, province-wide, internal review system, because the evidence from other sectors in Canada and in Britain indicates that if there is good internal review, then you will not have as many appeals proceeding to the tribunal. That's the most significant one. The second one is early disclosure so that an appellant knows why their benefits are being terminated, refused, cancelled, at an earlier stage than just prior to arriving at a hearing.
Mr Sergio: In answer to one of Mr Wood's questions, you say that you perhaps get to see or review, at the most, some 50 cases a year.
Ms Adams: That's me.
Mr Sergio: That's you.
Ms Adams: Yes. They're reviewed in other areas of the board.
Mr Sergio: I see. I can see from some of the tables here that there are thousands of cases.
Ms Adams: I don't review. There's not very much of a reason for me to review cases, because the review happens between the lawyer and the -- I would like to review more if I had the time, because I'd like to have a better sense of what the decisions of the board are. I get the decisions after they've been signed in final form, so my review is not related in any way to the release of the decision. It's more an administrative review of the work at the board.
Mr Sergio: Your decision is not final?
Ms Adams: The board member's decision is final. I have nothing to do with their decision.
Mr Sergio: The board's decision is not final?
Ms Adams: Each adjudicator is an independent adjudicator who arrives at their own decision. I have no role in influencing or changing their decision.
Mr Sergio: Can you give us some ideas of numbers of appeals and the success rate of those appeals and stuff like that? I'm sorry; some of this information may already be in the document, but --
Ms Adams: That's okay. The information that we provided in the materials was in our annual report, the figures for last year. But I can give you the figures for the first three quarters of this year, projected, so you have a sense of what will be -- sorry, I'm just finding the material here.
Mr Sergio: Imagine me trying to find out that material in here.
Ms Adams: Yes. I think the most significant information for you on what's happening at the board now is that, as I mentioned, for the last three years we've been receiving approximately 12,000 appeals and in 1995-96 we're projecting a 7% increase. So that will take the board to 13,000 appeals this year. I just want to get the outcome, because that was your second question. In terms of the appeals received by the board, and this is for April 1 to December 31, 1995, the board granted 30% of the appeals received and denied 54%, and some were referred back to the director for more work.
Mr Sergio: Yes, that's very significant. Why do you feel that the caseload is going to increase from 12,000 to 13,000?
Ms Adams: That's just projected on what's happened in the first three quarters of the year.
Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): Good morning. Thank you very much for being here. I guess another way of reading it was that in terms of cases that went forward to your tribunal, what I read earlier in some of the material that I was able to read was that certainly if an appellant's not there, it's just dismissed.
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Gravelle: That's right. And of the cases that were actually dealt with, approximately 50% were granted. I saw a figure that said 49% of those --
Ms Adams: That's right. The people who don't appear for the hearing -- when we look at what decisions are released from the board, we have the three categories of what we grant, what we deny and a third category, what we call in absentia, where people don't arrive but we've scheduled a hearing, we're waiting for them and we have to release a decision. So if you take those in absentia decisions away, then you would have a grant rate of 46.3%. The annual report was 49%; that was the year before.
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Mr Gravelle: Okay. That's what I was reading, which I think obviously is a very significant figure, whether you use the 30% in terms of the total number that come forward. The fact that that many appeals are granted is significant and I think is worthy of some more exploration as to the value of the board itself. Obviously, you would argue that indeed it performs a more than important function in terms of people's right to appeal, and obviously a significant number of people are turned down, so a very high percentage, ultimately, are granted their appeal. I obviously don't want you to start pointing fingers necessarily, but what does that say to you in the sense of the importance of the board, that a very high percentage of people who come forward, who have been turned down obviously at another level, are granted the appeal? I can see some implications.
Ms Adams: I think I mentioned a couple of them briefly. The first is that workers are dealing with extremely high caseloads. So they're dealing with volume, and they have to make a decision quickly; so I think those two things in combination -- it's what the studies show in Britain as well -- produce an error rate.
The third thing is that -- and I think this is a significant factor -- the board can only decide the issue before it on the evidence it has before it. If the respondent is not appearing -- the respondent being the representative for the director/administrator -- if he doesn't appear at a hearing and file a written submission that's not factually or legally sufficient, then the board is faced with making a decision on the evidence that it has in the hearing, which is largely one appellant and a board member. I think that every new board member goes through this process of coming to hearings with only an appellant and a written submission that's not an adequate representation of the respondent's view, and that's a problem.
The other thing is, 1.8% of the caseload in the province ends up as an appeal to the board. So those 12,000 appeals we receive represent about 1.8%. Case workers, in addition to their caseload, don't have the time to be in hearings or to produce submissions. In areas where they have done a better job of that, where they've had to try an appeal unit and an informal review internally, they have actually done better submissions and had better results in the outcome when they come before the board.
Mr Gravelle: Can I move into the area of interim assistance?
Ms Adams: Yes.
Mr Gravelle: That is something that's obviously a serious concern, probably of the government as well as everybody else, in the fact that basically speaking, if I understand things correctly, approximately 80% of those people who come forward to your board request interim assistance. I think it's somewhere in the area of 80%; that's not inaccurate. Ultimately, again if I read this correctly, approximately somewhere in the area of 50% are granted interim assistance. That's sort of changed. The reasons are probably reasonably clear in that people who are needing assistance, generally speaking, do not have a great deal of means of their own. This is a controversial thing to some degree in terms of the cost, because if people's appeals are not granted, therefore they've received money that ultimately you've decided they shouldn't get. Is that a correct way or a fair way of putting it?
Ms Adams: I guess the correct way of putting it is that this has been a problem for every government that has been in power in Ontario and it's been a problem for the board because we're in the middle. We have a piece of legislation. It's in the act. It says that if a person applies for a hearing and they're in financial hardship, the board may grant them interim assistance to get them through the hearing process. So you have that on the one side, as you correctly identify: A person loses benefits, it's the last-resort social safety net and they don't have any source of income pending the board's review. So that's one side of the issue.
The other side is that a certain percentage of those appeals go forward and people lose on the merits. So we have municipalities particularly upset about that, that people lose on the merits and were granted interim assistance. The problem has always been there with interim assistance but it developed as we got delayed, because then people were on interim assistance for longer periods of time. There's no question we were meeting with municipalities; we were meeting with the province. We tried to look at ways of resolving this. The problem was, we couldn't get hearings on fast enough, so people were on interim assistance for longer periods of time.
However, under the legislation, we have to do what the act requires us to do. If persons make an application, we have to consider if they're in financial hardship and decide. People have asked this government and previous governments: Can it be recoverable? I think that's an issue that people have looked at and it requires a change to the act about whether, if persons lost on merits, the amount of interim they were paid pending their hearing could be recovered. But that's a policy decision of the government.
Mr Gravelle: I think it's very clearly from a humane point of view in terms of the reason why the board was legislated in the first place. Obviously, the important thing is to be sensitive and recognize that people who are in this situation are generally speaking in a state of distress. I think it's important to do that, and it would seem that some of the measures you're taking in terms of the backlogs are. I guess the teleconferencing is an interesting one too.
Ms Adams: I just want to add something on interim because I think it's important. When people talk about interim, I look at interim in terms of the total people who apply to board. You've mentioned that a certain percentage ask for interim, but if you look at the following figures, of the 12,000 appeals to the board, 6,000 asked for interim and 2,500 received it. So of the total appeals to the board, 24% receive interim and half of them lose their appeal, so 12% of the total appeals are situations where a person has been granted interim and loses on the merits. We can't determine the merits at the interim stage anyway.
Mr Gravelle: Thank you for the clarification. It's important, because the terrible thing about figures is that you can certainly read them in a variety of ways. I'm just trying to read them in the most clear way. It gets very difficult.
On the teleconferencing, do you think there will be a high volume of teleconferencing that you'll be able to do? In other words, we are talking, I presume, about someone sitting potentially in Toronto, someone sitting in my riding in Port Arthur, in Thunder Bay, and we're in one of the ministry rooms that's got those facilities and you're doing appeals. It that what we're talking about here?
Ms Adams: Yes. We piloted the project in November. I participated in the pilot because I wanted to know how it worked and if it was an effective way to do hearings, and it is. What we targeted for teleconferencing hearings were the very cases where we had a high no-show rate. We can get into the no-show rate if anyone has a question about that when it comes up. But the important thing about that is, if you can deal with that kind of appeal on the telephone, you don't have all the resources going out to a community to conduct a hearing. A case worker can conduct a hearing from their office phone and we conduct hearings at SARB in our office. We have a device attached to the phone, we call through to the Ontario telecommunications centre and they hook us up with the appellant and the case worker, if there is one, for the government and we conduct the hearing that way.
It will save us on travel and time, because in areas like Thunder Bay, if you had to travel outside of Thunder Bay for two or three hours to a hearing, you'd lose the travel time and there's the cost.
Mr Gravelle: You wouldn't even get to Dryden in two or three hours.
Ms Adams: The other thing about the teleconferencing hearings is that you can only deal with straightforward ones that are not legally complex or where there aren't issues of credibility. So we screen those out when we do teleconferencing. That's the first step. We're going to be piloting videoconferencing in the next fiscal year.
Mr Gravelle: I apologize. I think I was almost talking about videoconferencing when I was describing the setup.
Ms Adams: We can do videoconferencing on a computer monitor in our office.
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Mr Gravelle: Obviously it is important that you do everything you can to cut costs. We all recognize the need to do things in a more efficient manner, but it's just as important, if not more so, that we maintain a system that is fair to those people who are in need of assistance. I certainly applaud you for trying to find ways you can do things in a far more efficient manner.
Mr Crozier: I just want to get a little better sense on the no-shows. Let's say it's a case where the director or the case worker or whatever isn't going to attend the hearing. Do you get any advance notice of that? Do they tell you ahead of time, "We're not going to show on this case"?
Ms Adams: The worker or the appellant?
Mr Crozier: The director. I think you referred to the director, the social worker.
Mr Peter Preston (Brant-Haldimand): The respondent.
Ms Adams: Yes. When we look at the affirm-in-absentia no-show rate, we're generally talking about appellants who don't arrive for their hearings. I'm not sure if that's the question you're asking.
Mr Crozier: No. It's on the other side: the case worker. Does the case worker look at the appeal as it comes in that says, "We're not going to bother shooing for this one," and let you know ahead of time?
Ms Adams: No.
Mr Crozier: They don't. Would that be helpful?
Ms Adams: I think it would be helpful, in the same way that this board and other organizations have tried to streamline, if they looked at what they should appear on and appeared -- which are the ones that are the more complex? -- and they should be at the hearings. We don't know who will be at the hearing except if there's legal counsel from the director; then we would know about that. Other than that, when you arrive at a hearing, you don't know really who you'll be faced with seeing in a hearing. For the purposes of the outcome of appeals, I think from the perspective of a full and complete hearing, it's always better to have a worker there who can cross-examine the appellant and provide the evidence.
The Vice-Chair: We've going to have to move on to the third party, the New Democrat caucus, and we're going to start off with Mr Kormos.
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): You see, we New Democrats are just giddy about the fact that we're up two points in the polls, from 16 to 18, so there's all thus hubbub going on.
I've been looking at the numbers in the 1994-95 annual report, especially at the FBA appeals by issue and GWA appeals by issue. There are more than a few areas where there are just incredible numbers. They cry out in terms of the percentage of total cases and the respective issues. Then, when I look at those and look at the number of successful appeals, or at least the percentage of successful appeals, is there any post-hearing feedback to the ministry or to respective communities if these can be identified as a problem?
What I'm saying is, there seem to be some patterns where there are a whole lot of problems around particular issues, perhaps in particular municipalities, where the process could be abbreviated if the initial decision-making was simply cleaned up. How was that responded to?
Ms Adams: I know what I've done since I've been the chair. I'm just trying to think of what happened prior to my time as chair at the board. We meet with the minister, usually quarterly, and in the initial meeting with a new minister we brief him on those very issues. What is a particular concern from an efficiency perspective is, should you keep hearing the same appeals over and over and deciding things the same way without getting down to the initial decision-making level?
We can identify, as you've stated, certain areas in the province where there are difficulties with certain types of appeals. We can give that information, but the main way that the tribunal speaks, as you know, is through its decisions. For example, when I first came on to the board, there were difficulties in some places regarding appellants doing job searches for work and whether they in fact knew what the requirements were for job searches. So through the board's decisions we saw improvements in that all across Ontario. People would apply for assistance as persons looking for work and the municipality would set out a policy that they were expected to meet. That helped to improve that in a particular area.
We can advise the minister of the trends and developments and we do, and of systemic problems and we do, but mainly the board speaks through its decisions. But we have identified that it is a problem to hear the same appeals.
Mr Kormos: I hope I'm correct, because I note that notwithstanding there's a fairly high rate of successful appeals to SARB, there is not a high rate of successful appeals of SARB decisions, nor is there a large number of appeals of SARB decisions to the Divisional Court.
Ms Adams: There's not a large number of appeals to the Divisional Court from SARB decisions and in every decision this year the board's initial decision has been upheld by the court, so there's not a lot of appeal.
Mr Kormos: I interpret that as an endorsement or an indication of the quality of the decision-making by SARB. Is that a fair interpretation?
Ms Adams: I would like to think that's a fair interpretation.
Mr Kormos: Has that changed, and can this be identifiably associated with the sort of quality control and the systems that are in place now in terms of the process of rendering a decision? Can that be identified as one of the factors which has contributed to the lack of criticism by the court?
Ms Adams: Yes. In the last number of years, in cases where the court has overturned a SARB decision, it's never been on an issue of the board has not written complete reasons, the board cross-examined or the board didn't address the issue of credibility properly; it's usually been on legal interpretation issues where there have been two views on a legal issue. That's generally what's been going to the court and generally they have been upholding SARB's decisions.
In a way, the court is the supervisor of the tribunal. If a party isn't satisfied with the board's decision either way, that party can appeal to the Divisional Court and the board is bound by the Divisional Court's decision. If the court says that when you're looking at credibility, you have to look at these factors, then of course those are the factors the board should be looking at when it's determining credibility and that's part of what the legal review would entail.
If a board member was making a finding of credibility and not using the factors that the court had indicated should be used, that would be pointed out to the member. However, the member still, as an autonomous decision-maker, could decide the case in whatever way they chose to, but if they didn't follow those court decisions, the chances are likely they might be appealed.
Mr Kormos: It appears that roughly half of all the appeals are resolved without going to a hearing. The reference is to them being settled. What happens there? How do you settle one of these without there being a hearing?
Ms Adams: We don't have a role in settling the appeals, but you're talking about the number of cases that are closed prior to having to go to a hearing and that number is high. What happens is, if there's counsel, then they can get disclosure of the file quicker and in areas where they do have an informal type of review, then the case gets an initial review and gets settled or withdrawn. There are many cases where an appellant, prior to the hearing, withdraws because when they meet with counsel or look at the decision that's been made by the administrator, they realize they perhaps haven't met the criteria of the regulation and they withdraw their appeals.
But for us, the withdrawal rate doesn't work well. We don't end up having to hear those appeals, but we've processed them. We may have scheduled hearings for them and right at the last minute they may be pulled off. From an efficiency perspective that needs to happen far earlier in the process. If a hearing is pulled off three days before, it's unlikely we can get another one on.
Mr Kormos: That's a problem the courts have and all of the tribunals have.
Ms Adams: Yes, it's a problem everywhere.
Mr Kormos: But that means there are decisions rendered in approximately half of the appeals each year?
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Kormos: In the case of 1994-95, some 6,000, again give or take.
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Kormos: It's every one of these decisions that goes through the process you were speaking of at the outset?
Ms Adams: No, not all of them.
Mr Kormos: Okay, help us here.
Ms Adams: It depends on the experience of the board member and it depends on how new they are. Those things go hand in hand, but our experience is that the people who have done adjudication before or the people who have had some legal training before need less review for shorter periods of time.
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Mr Kormos: Okay. I wasn't trying to imply every single one, because I heard what you had to say. So it's good we cleared that up. Every single one, all 6,000, give or take, are of equal impact and value, whether they're a one-pager or a 10-pager or a 20-pager.
Ms Adams: Yes, that's right.
Mr Kormos: You, as the chair, I trust, notwithstanding that there are 6,000 decisions rendered, try to keep on top of the sort of stuff the respective vice-chairs are dealing with.
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Kormos: One of your goals in reviewing decisions made is for that purpose, to have a handle on things.
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Kormos: I trust decisions are used as precedents. Is that correct?
Ms Adams: The binding precedents are from the courts, but a previous board decision is persuasive and what that means is that if you choose to go in a different direction, then in that case you just have to outline why, but they're not binding.
Mr Kormos: Fair enough, because they're at an equal level in terms of the hierarchy of authority, but when you say persuasive, surely counsel for appellants or respondents will produce any number of previous decisions --
Ms Adams: Absolutely, yes. So if I was adjudicating -- and I do adjudicate appeals -- an appeal and counsel comes for either side and produces board decisions that have been rendered on the same issue, then I look at them and I have to decide, are they relevant to this, am I persuaded in the same way the previous panel was? If I am, I accept that reasoning; if I'm not, I say why I'm not. That works with both sides, so government representatives bring board decisions going a certain way and representatives for the appellant bring decisions as well.
Mr Kormos: I trust, then, that the quality control you were speaking of when you were first responding to questions, in particular by Mr Wood -- granted, the quality control process may identify a typographical error or a grammatical error or what have you, but I trust the real goal of that is to make sure that a decision, because it has the potential of being referred to in a subsequent determination -- I trust the primary goal, and tell me if I'm wrong, is to make sure the decision is clearly articulated, so that it isn't ambiguous, so that it's say what you mean and mean what you say time.
Ms Adams: Yes. That function is carried out by the legal review. The quality control review is a clerical function related to the other things, editorial-type things. But the legal review looks at the very issues you've identified.
The other thing is that there is a power in our legislation to have a board decision reconsidered at our level, so a party can ask for a board decision to be reconsidered and there are certain criteria the board looks at in determining whether that will happen or not. So it's important the initial first decision be written well, well-thought-out, well-reasoned, to prevent appeal internally or externally. That's really the goal of it.
People can have a very different decision than one I might take, but that doesn't matter; what matters is that a well-written decision, if it gets before the court, will the court understand why the board decided this in a certain way, not whether I or anyone else agrees with the decision of the individual adjudicator? Is it well-thought-out, reasoned, clear? That's what we look at.
Mr Kormos: I know you appear to be blessed by not being a lawyer.
Ms Adams: I'm not a lawyer.
Mr Kormos: Bless you. I can say that because I am a lawyer and I understand the problems.
I just want to comment on this: Even from the point of view of grammatical sentence structure, all of us involved in looking at decisions have noted the incredible confusion that literally a misplaced comma can cause when it comes down to having to interpret that and apply it to a set of fact circumstances. I guess I'm not as bothered by the fact that there's quality control as some other people may be.
Ms Adams: I think my comments related to, the work that any of us do, in your capacity as politicians, people proofread the work. The word "not" and the words "may not" totally change the whole content of a decision and that's the purpose of the review. People are dealing with volume. People proofread their work and they think they've identified all of the errors in the work and it's not necessarily so, even some of our best board members.
Mr Kormos: Read Hansard once in a while and you'll see that more than a few members of this Legislature wish their speeches were proofread before giving them.
Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): Nobody over there on that side of the floor, of course.
Mr Preston: Especially the profanities.
Mr Kormos: Although we've got an idea of the number of vice-chairs and the number of cases, I didn't see any data about the average length of a presentation, and that is to say, the evidence put forward, and then what type of time frames are involved in evaluating that on the part of the adjudicator, because I hope that it's not sausage factory type of decision-making, that it involves reflection, reference to the law, as you pointed out, consultation with legal counsel to make sure you've got a clear handle on the law and what precedent-setting decisions might have done to interpret the law.
Ms Adams: Are you talking about the length of time of a hearing?
Mr Kormos: The length of time of a hearing and then how much time would an adjudicator or a vice-chair spend -- and again, I appreciate this can range.
Ms Adams: I think it's an important question, because we looked at case management strategies since 1993 to more effectively use the hearing time we had. In areas we knew there would be a higher number of withdrawals and resolved hearings prior to the date, we overbooked those kinds of hearings. So for example, we would book four hearings for the one slot. The courts are just starting to look at doing that now to deal with volume.
Mr Kormos: To the chagrin of lawyers, because they have to stay in one courtroom all week, whether their case gets called or not.
Ms Adams: When we overbook cases, we don't do them in cases where we know there's a lawyer on file, because it's not an effective way of moving those things through quickly.
We look at overbooking hearings, then we look at standard, straightforward hearings, and most hearings at the board take between one hour and one and a half hours. That's the majority of the work. Then the other hearings are usually half a day and sometimes up to three days on the spousal cases, the spousal and the charter being the most complex. We look at what type of issue, who we know in advance will be at the hearing so we have adequate time, and we overbook. Every tribunal and court now overbooks so that if things do drop off, you've got something else to fill in the slot. That's the goal.
Mr Kormos: I trust there's some cognizance of the need for an appellant to get a speedy hearing, especially when you're dealing with community and social services issues.
Ms Adams: There's no doubt about that and there's no doubt that's been a serious problem for the board and one that's concerned the board. You can't have the kind of delays we've had -- and we've had serious delays. There have been large improvements in the last year, but we have had serious delays that are unacceptable. We've been putting all our efforts into reducing those delays.
Mr Kormos: These delays, I trust, among other things, would mean either that there's going to have been an overpayment or there's going to have been a denial of a right for a protracted period of time, in either case a gross injustice.
Ms Adams: That's right, and the block was in the scheduling department. The files arrived and sat there waiting to be heard. We've improved that, but the delay we have is still not acceptable.
Mr Kormos: In terms of the workload of a given adjudicator, what does their work week consist of? Let's face it, SARB, along with WCAT, along with a whole lot of other adjudicative tribunals, is clearly under intense scrutiny for motives that may vary from moment to moment, at least.
In terms of the workload that SARB is handling now, are you talking about the need for an expansion of resources?
Ms Adams: No.
Mr Kormos: Tell us, then, because I surely can't see you working with less resources.
Ms Adams: As you know, if there's a volume increase in appeals, there are a number of things you can do. The first thing you do, and this happened to us initially when the volume began in the early 1990s, is you try to streamline. That's the first thing.
The second thing you do is you say, okay, we're doing three-member panels. Is there any way we can get away from three-member panels? So you go from three members to two to one, which is what we did.
Then you look at writing. Because of what had happened in the courts, there was a balance off between what a member would hear and what a member would write, so you had to build into the schedule writing time as well as hearing time. So as you tried to hear more, you shortened what you'd write. That was how the balances shifted over the years. Now the board members are assigned -- it depends on the complexity -- up to 15 cases a week and they're scheduled on five a day, depending on complexity. If they're straightforward, they get five; if they have a spousal case, they might get one for that day. So they have three days to do that and then they have a day to write the hearings, and that's built into the schedule.
We have a board that has regional members, so on Mondays, the board meets as a whole and the board also prepares the pre-hearing work necessary to get those 15 files ready for hearing for that week. So that's basically how the workweek goes.
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Mr Kormos: Are you aware of the history or a history of consultation with, for instance, the chair, in this instance SARB, for the purpose of considering new appointments or reappointments?
Ms Adams: Could you repeat that?
Mr Kormos: You see, that needed quality control. That's the very sort of thing, Chair, that needs some editing. In the past, has the chair of SARB, to your knowledge, been consulted about the appointment of new members or the reappointment of members?
Ms Adams: I was involved in appointments in the first year of my term as chair, so yes, I was consulted.
Mr Kormos: I ask that with respect to SARB because that's been historically the case with most, be it police services boards, liquor licence board, WCAT and so on, that the chairs usually have been consulted. Has that consultation been maintained to the present?
Ms Adams: I think people know that there were recent appointments to the board and I think it was public. As you know, the appointments are order-in-council appointments, they're Premier's appointments, and it's the Premier's prerogative to decide in what fashion people will be appointed to the board and to what level the chair will be consulted. In previous governments, it was done differently but always done with the understanding that they were recommendations and that the Premier always made the decision about appointments. But the last couple of appointments to the board was a different process, and I think that's been public.
The Vice-Chair: Your time has elapsed. You will have another 12 minutes when we go around.
Mr Kormos: That's hard to believe, Chair.
The Vice-Chair: I know, but that happens. So we'll move to the government caucus.
Mr Bob Wood: I have a couple more questions, Mr Chair. From the time of the hearing, how long does it take to actually issue the final decision?
Ms Adams: Six weeks. The delay in the board is getting the hearing on; it's not in the release of the decision.
Mr Bob Wood: After the hearing is held, it takes six weeks before a final decision is rendered?
Ms Adams: That's on average, out the door, yes.
Mr Bob Wood: So the process you described earlier takes six weeks?
Ms Adams: That's right.
Mr Bob Wood: Okay. Do you see any reason why what this board does couldn't be done by a Small Claims Court judge?
Ms Adams: I'm sorry, again, to say that I don't know what a Small Claims Court judge does.
Mr Bob Wood: A Small Claims Court judge basically deals with all kinds of civil issues under a limit of $6,000.
Ms Adams: Yes, I'm familiar with that part.
Mr Bob Wood: Do you see any reason why what you do couldn't be done by a Small Claims Court judge?
Ms Adams: I'm not sure I understand the question. You mean that the body of work would go to the Small Claims Court?
Mr Bob Wood: Suppose the government abolished your agency tomorrow and said, "This is going to be done by a Small Claims Court judge." Do you see any reason why that couldn't be done?
Ms Adams: I think that's a decision that you would have to make. It's a policy decision.
Mr Bob Wood: We understand that. We're asking you, do you see any reason why we couldn't do that?
Ms Adams: The tribunal has a historic expertise in the area. I don't know if a Small Claims Court judge does. I don't know if it's more cost-efficient to do it. We're talking about 12,000 appeals a year.
Mr Bob Wood: It costs you $1,000 a decision on average.
Ms Adams: No, that's not what the cost is.
Interjection.
Ms Adams: Oh, per decision, yes.
Mr Bob Wood: I don't think it costs $1,000 a decision from a Small Claims Court judge.
Ms Adams: I wouldn't know what it costs.
Mr Bob Wood: Can you suggest any reason why the Small Claims Court judges couldn't do this?
Ms Adams: I think that's your decision about whether you'd like to move a tribunal and you would have --
Mr Bob Wood: We understand that. We're inviting you to tell us why it would be a bad idea.
Ms Adams: I don't know enough about how that works or what that would mean. All I can tell you is that I know how the tribunal works, what we do. You know how the Small Claims Court works and what they do, and that would be a decision I think that you would have to make. It would remove it from the parties, so there wouldn't be a party problem because they wouldn't be a party to an appeal, but other than that, I don't have any other comments on that.
Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): Ms Adams, since you came to the board in 1988, could you tell us whether there was a procedures manual or an organizational practices manual on how SARB operated? Most public sector organizations do, so I presume there must have been some kind of procedures manual or whatever you call it.
Ms Adams: Yes. Where are the manuals, Mary-Louise?
Mr Hastings: I'd be curious to know what its thickness was compared to what it has become, or did it go the other way? If it was 50 pages, say, or 30, did it go down or did it go up?
Ms Mary-Louise Noble: Actually, I think I can answer that question. When the chair came to the board -- I came to the board shortly thereafter -- there was a procedures manual that seemed to be quite out of date. It was written, I believe, in the early 1980s, so it wasn't used. We now have a procedures manual that I think is written and the information that's provided to you deals a lot with the legal issues: how to deal with proceedings of the hearings, evidentiary issues, Divisional Court cases, case law. So that has become an updated procedures manual.
Mr Hastings: Did it get thicker?
Ms Noble: It got thicker because of the Divisional Court cases, for one, that I know of.
Mr Hastings: The other item I'd like to query you about is the number of cases increasing this year or in prior years. There's been a trend upwards, I presume, on the number of appeals. Do you believe that is attributable to sort of an open-ended approach to people being able to appeal, that they are able to appeal practically anything? And (b), do you think there ought to be, if it is open-ended in terms of reasons -- or no reasons, simply you were turned down initially when you made an application for welfare -- any kind of a limitation or set of reasons?
My other question deals with the administrative practices of how these appeals are handled. Do you believe that the caseworkers in Comsoc and the management and administration of Comsoc require more -- how shall I say it? Do they need to look for ways of prevention, if you will, to reduce the number of cases so that they don't even end up at sort of what I'd call a pre-hearing situation? I don't know the term you use. And do you have any specific recommendations on how that could be implemented?
Ms Adams: Thank you for those questions. I'll start with the first one, and that is the growth in appeals. The right to appeal is set out in the legislation and not in the regulations, so there's been no change in the right to appeal. A person can appeal if their benefits have been refused, cancelled or varied, so that has not changed. In the regulations there have been changes over the years related I would say primarily to assisting people who want to work. So there have been changes in looking at allowable earnings levels, self-employment and so on. There have been those kinds of changes, but the growth in those appeals is not significant.
There is definitely a trend with the growth in appeals that follows the growth in the caseload, so as the social assistance caseload increased over the years, the appeals to the board increased, and I think I mentioned earlier that appeals to the board represent 1.8% of the total caseload. Now, the caseload is going down, as you will I am sure be aware, and the appeals have not gone down along with that. There's usually a period of time for that to hit the tribunal.
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The second thing is, whenever there are changes in regulations that restrict things that may have been available before, there's an initial number of appeals that come before the tribunal till that issue gets settled. The biggest growth in appeals could have been the rate reduction, but the board determined that we would not hear the rate reduction because it was a regulatory change in a table in the regulations. So we didn't hear those appeals. Does that answer the question?
Mr Hastings: Yes, to some extent. Do you think there ought to be better supervision or training, or what is it? All those directors, how they slot the stuff up into the appeal situation?
Ms Adams: Yes, and I think the province has started to do that. In the last year they've trained case presenting officers at the provincial level and there's been an increase now in representation at hearings before the board. The tribunal assisted in the training of those workers. We spent a day with them for eight or nine months, training them on the tribunal and the law and so on. That has been an improvement to the board because we have better evidence to consider with a trained case worker being in attendance at the hearing.
If I'm being repetitive, please stop me, but the problem is the volume of work that the initial case worker is looking at in dealing with and making decisions on eligibility. That volume is so high, and in areas where there's a requirement that the case worker put something in writing about why the decision has been turned down, that immediately improves the whole process because at that early stage people then know what the issue was and what the basis of the decision was.
But we've supported training and the Ontario municipal social service agency has a training program now for municipal welfare workers, and all those steps improve initial decision-making. If it's improved at the initial level, it will stop appeals coming forward to the tribunal. But there's nothing provincial that's consistent, so a municipality may decide to do some training, and the province may.
Mr Hastings: What I wanted to ask you finally is, with the CAP ending and the -- what do they call it, Canada social transfer and all those initials?
Ms Adams: Canada health and social transfer, CHST.
Mr Hastings: Do you expect there will be an insistence by the federal government that an agency like yours continue under the new block grant funding that Ottawa seems to be prepared to go towards?
Ms Adams: We've talked to the ministry staff about what is happening with the CAP/CHST and the only information we had was that there was a ministers' meeting across the country to try to look at that. So I really don't know. What I read in the papers today seems to suggest that the province as a whole would like the federal government to be more involved in social security delivery, but I don't have any more information than that.
Mr Preston: How many appellants appear before the board with legal representation, and who is paying for the legal representation? That hasn't been quality checked yet, but carry on.
Ms Adams: I'll answer who's paying while Mary-Louise finds out how many come before the board.
The primary group of people who appear before the board are paralegal workers and lawyers from community legal clinics, so the legal aid system pays for that. It's not the legal aid certificate system where you get a certificate and go and retain counsel; it's out of the community clinic network.
Mr Preston: Just a percentage of how many. I don't want to know if it's 932.
Ms Adams: Yes, I'm just looking here.
Mr Preston: Half of them; 25%?
Ms Adams: In 28% of the total appeals there's a legal representative with the appellant. That's for April to December of last year. That's consistent. It's been the same for the last number of years. What we've started to look at now is, in what cases does the respondent send a representative to hearings? In the last year, 40% of the respondents sent someone to a hearing.
Mr Preston: That means 60% of those hearings were automatically given to the appellant? If your respondent doesn't appear, who wins the case?
Ms Adams: No, no. If the appellant doesn't appear, the appellant loses the case. If the respondent doesn't appear, it has no material effect other than the fact that there might not be enough evidence and the outcome might go to the appellant. It's when the appellant doesn't show that they lose, because the director's made a decision and they haven't refuted the decision. They lose if they don't show up. If the respondent shows up, it just goes to whether they have enough good evidence to uphold their decision.
Mr Sergio: One more question. Ms Adams, is the original intent with respect to this service that the board should have provided at the beginning still being provided today or has that changed?
Ms Adams: The service that the board changed?
Mr Sergio: No, no.
Ms Adams: I'm sorry, it's the microphone problem. I can't actually hear you.
Mr Sergio: The delivery of service, if you will, that the board was set up to provide, has it changed somewhat drastically or is it still performing the same duty that it was established to do originally?
Ms Adams: The primary duty of the board is to adjudicate appeals, as you know --
Mr Sergio: Yes, I realize that.
Ms Adams: -- and to release written decisions. That's primarily what the board has done. In recent times, the board has done other things like publish its decisions and so on. There have been other functions added into the board to enhance the work that it does, but the primary function has remained. The changes at the board have related to growth in appeals.
Mr Sergio: I believe that in fulfilling those needs and providing that service, from the answers we have been getting, changes have been made. Is it because of the change in needs?
Ms Adams: Mm-hmm. You're right, there have been significant changes. As I outlined, when I came to the tribunal, we were writing decisions that were 10 or 12 pages long. We're now writing decisions that are a page long in straightforward cases. Those kinds of changes that have happened have been as a result of trying to deal with volume without compromising rights, and we think we've been able to do that with the changes that we've made at the board.
Mr Sergio: Perhaps this question has already been asked. but how long would it take for a case from beginning to end, let's say? How much time would that involve?
Ms Adams: I'll just get it in the materials. I'd like to answer that question by saying that the delay is still unacceptable, but right now -- this is for the appeals received in 1995-96, how long it took to process them -- it took 4.5 months to get to a hearing and 1.5 months following a hearing to receive a decision. That's a large improvement over the year before. As I mentioned in my opening comments, we can see now that we're going to be current within the next three months. This is all related to getting hearings on, so once we deal with the backlog in the scheduling unit, then it won't take that long to process an appeal.
Mr Sergio: I don't want to belittle the suggestion that perhaps another body such as the Small Claims Court could do the job, but can you please spend a little bit of time, if you have time to respond to that, on how this could be accomplished when it takes months and years to bring one particular case to full completion?
Ms Adams: Are you talking about in the small claims system?
Mr Sergio: Yes.
Ms Adams: The problem I have with answering the question is that I'm not that familiar. I know the courts generally take almost a year longer to process appeals than we do, but I don't know if that applies to Small Claims Court. I think when you look at a system generally, tribunals generally are more cost-efficient than a more legal proceeding.
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Mr Sergio: I thought the idea could have had some merit. Are you saying then that the time period would be even longer through that particular --
Ms Adams: I'm saying that I really don't have sufficient information about Small Claims Court to answer your question.
Mr Kormos: Yes.
Ms Adams: I'm sorry, but I'm just not that familiar. The courts generally take longer.
Mr Sergio: We have another lawyer saying yes.
Ms Adams: The courts generally take longer. I don't know if that applies to Small Claims Court.
Mr Gravelle: The review that is being led by Mr Wood on, I guess, all agencies, boards and commissions, is your board involved in some manner in terms of discussion with him and the committee that's studying it? Have you had meetings -- any kind of discussion?
Ms Adams: Not at this time, no.
Ms Churley: Typical.
Mr Gravelle: Do you hope to have an opportunity to meet and discuss with him? Obviously, even in a format like this which is very, very short, we're all trying to get the best sense of the operation of your board, but would you like to have the opportunity to do that?
Ms Adams: I understand just from the press, when Mr Wood has spoken to the press, that he hopes to meet with the tribunals and talk about their work. That's the extent that I know what will be happening at this time, but I understand from him, from what he said in the Globe and Mail, that he would be meeting with the tribunals to discuss those issues.
The Vice-Chair: Bob?
Mr Bob Wood: I won't take up the Liberals' time.
Mr Sergio: What line of accountability exists between your board and the ministry?
Ms Adams: We're presently developing a memorandum of understanding which is generally the document that outlines the relationship between the chair and the minister and between our civil service staff and the equivalent deputies. So we're in the process of doing that. It's not in final form yet, but while we're undergoing that process, we meet with the minister quarterly, as I mentioned, and we produce quarterly financial reports that look at the financial nature of the board's budget and also all the statistical changes and any significant variances in cases received, decisions released. We report on the backlog in the organization in terms of the hearings that are to be scheduled, on the efficiencies that we've attempted to work on, are they being effected and are we having declines in the backlog and so on.
Mr Sergio: This is being contemplated to be put in place now. What has happened since 1988, or since 1969 rather? No accountability system, no people --
Ms Adams: No, no. This system is the same under this government as it was under other governments in terms of accountability between the chair and the minister. So that's not any different. I should say that the whole social assistance system, as everyone knows, is being reviewed as part of the reform of the system, and we'll be part of that review as well. That's a ministerial review.
Mr Gravelle: If I can just slip back to my previous point, I would certainly hope that Mr Wood's committee would make an effort to sit down and talk to you, and I would think that's what your intentions would be before you make --
Interjection.
Mr Gravelle: Well, I think it would be extraordinary not to at least use the opportunity to more deeply figure out just how the process does work.
Ms Churley: Scandalous.
Mr Gravelle: I wanted to ask you, if I may, just in terms of the makeup of the board -- and I apologize if it's been asked previously too -- clearly there are -- perhaps "regulations" is the wrong word, but there is a system in place. We had somebody who was previously nominated for this board appear before the committee and her responses were, in many cases, "I can't respond because I'm just simply going to follow the rules." In other words, there are things in place that help you determine your decisions, that on this basis you can approve and on this basis you can disapprove. You're looking at me quizzically. Am I not making any sense?
Ms Adams: Is this the most recent review of a member appointed to the board that's in Hansard?
Mr Gravelle: Well, I only use that as an example. I guess the reason that I'm using that as an example is that a lot of her responses were based on: "I can't give you my opinion on that because my opinion doesn't matter. I'm going to be governed by simply the way the regulations and the way the process is worked out."
Ms Adams: Yes, and the evidence at the hearing.
Mr Gravelle: Having said that, I guess there is the potential for some flexibility in terms of decisions based on the evidence that's put forward, based on the case that's put forward. I guess my question, what I'm leading towards is that, in terms of a philosophical position, if that's in any way appropriate, is there, in your opinion, an attitude or an approach or a degree of sensitivity that's crucial or important in terms of members of this board in making those decisions?
Ms Adams: I guess the way to answer that question is to answer it in this way, to say that people bring views to their work at the board. That's happened in previous governments, with people coming to the board perceived to have a certain perspective. It happens with judges. Judges come from this kind of a community, representing these interests, and judges come representing the other interests.
Our goal in the training program at the board is to talk in depth and at length about the impartiality and neutrality of decision-making, about the biases that one brings to the tribunal to be set aside and to decide the issue before you based on the evidence and the facts that you hear at the hearing. That's historically been a difficult transition for some people at the board. There's legal protection for that. If there's any allegation that a person is not being treated fairly in a hearing or that personal views are overriding evidence, then there's a legal remedy to make an application for judicial review. I think that's the best way that I can answer that question.
Mr Gravelle: I appreciate that, and in some ways that's certainly reassuring, because it seems to me that certainly people that come forward and are in this position where they are asking for an appeal are, generally speaking and I don't think it's wrong to say, probably in a somewhat vulnerable position themselves and are certainly potentially intimidated by the process. I would think there are probably some people who don't go forward because they are intimidated by the process. It seems to me that it's important that certainly there is a degree of sensitivity that's conveyed by the member of the board they're dealing with so they can at least be in a position where they can put forward their case.
Ms Adams: We train board members, in this five-week training program, about that very issue. We sit them with more experienced members initially so they can learn how to conduct hearings. Some of these hearings are difficult: They're hotly disputed, there's anger and tension, because they revolve around the basic necessities of life. We train members to do that. We also have a process where, if there is a concern about a particular conduct in a hearing, a person from either side can write in to the chair and raise that issue. But I think the most important thing to say is that we train people, to the degree that we can, to be impartial. If they're not, if that doesn't happen in a hearing, if there are any questions, the parties then can take a legal remedy on that.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Gravelle. We'll move on to the New Democrat caucus and Ms Churley.
Ms Churley: Thank you, Mr Chair. I want that in the record. Ms Adams, I think I speak on behalf of all of us to thank you and your staff for coming down today and providing us with a lot of information. I think there's a lot that all of us, including Mr Wood, have to learn about how SARC operates. I'm certainly not going to put you on the spot today and ask you questions about your agreement or disagreement about the direction this government is going. You of course have your job to do. I sense from your answers to the questions today and your presentation that you're doing your utmost to comply with the changes this government has put in place in the most sensitive way possible, and I appreciate that.
I personally, of course not surprisingly, have some difficulties with some of the directions because I believe, for example, the spouse-in-the-house rule could end up causing in fact more appeals and in a strange, twisted way more people on the welfare rolls. But I'm not going to ask you to comment on that. You have to deal with the system as it exists.
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I would like to come back to the cost of SARC per appeal case really. If you look at table 1, under C, and tell me if I'm approximately right here, on the financial report from 1994-95 you've got approximately a $5-million budget, and then on table 1 you have approximately 12,000 cases. My calculations are that that works out to approximately $420 per case. Is that correct?
Ms Adams: That's right. There are different ways of costing out.
Ms Churley: Yes. This is a very simplistic way.
Ms Adams: When we've been asked to cost this out with this minister and other ministers, we've talked about the fact that you can't just do it on hearings that proceed. You've got 12,000 appeals. They come in, you have to process them, set them up for hearings and so on. So, we actually base our projection on the cost of processing an appeal, and it's actually $425.
Ms Churley: I was pretty close then, $420.
Ms Adams: That's for 1995-96.
Ms Churley: I believe that the member of the government side mentioned something -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that it was $1,000 per case.
Mr Bob Wood: Per decision.
Ms Churley: Per decision.
Mr Bob Wood: As confirmed by them, it's $1,000 per decision.
Ms Churley: It is a bit complicated to work out, but approximately $420 a case.
Now what I'd like to come back to, and I was going to ask before Mr Wood spoke again, a question of, it's very clear from what Mr Wood is saying that SARB is on the chopping block. I think that all roads lead to that, for the time being anyway. I was going to ask you, after CAP disappears and SARB is no longer required by law, if it is thrown out, if SARB disappears, what would you suggest as a minimum needs to be in place to provide a fair appeal system to welfare recipients?
Now, after I composed that question in my head, Mr Wood came back on the floor and said, "What do you think about people being sent to Small Claims Court?" I have to say, Mr Wood, I am not a lawyer, but as the ex-Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations I dealt with a lot of people who were advised at times to go to Small Claims Court for minor consumer problems, and I can tell you that this is not a good idea. I was surprised that this was even brought up as a possible solution to replacing SARB, because, number one, it costs money to even get your foot in the door of a Small Claims Court, and I would take it that most people appearing before the board are destitute already and have no money. So right away that shuts them out, the majority of people, from having any possibility to appeal their case anyway.
But number two, I don't know if Mr Wood has been reading the newspapers himself or talking to Mr Harnick, because Mr Harnick has been making it clear lately that he's looking at more mediation and more tribunals to try to cut down on the number of court cases, because of course we all know -- and I don't have the costs in front of me -- that court is perhaps the most expensive means for justice in our system.
So that's why I brought up the costs of your tribunal cases compared to the court cases. So, I wanted to put that on the record because I just find it really appalling that the member who's looking into ABCs would even have a thought that this would be a solution to such a complex problem, to throw it all in the Small Claims Court. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's an absolutely ridiculous suggestion.
However, now that I've made my statement, I would like to come back to you, and after assuring people, from my knowledge, that Small Claims Court is not an option, what would you say, given the circumstances of people, is the minimum that is needed, what kind of system, or do you have any suggestions on that?
Ms Adams: I guess when I was talking earlier about what has happened in Britain and what has happened across the country is that even with downsizing, the delivery of social services and the tribunal were considered to be a core service of government. So I would say that there needs to be a requirement that there be an independent review by people independent of the ministry, independent of the parties. So while there could be an internal review, if an internal review system was developed, it could assist the tribunal because not all of the appeals would come before the tribunal, but there must be an independent review not conducted by the ministry.
But I must say that there's been no indication that that would not continue. The format might change, there may be reductions, but there's been no -- now, Mr Wood is starting his work, so he may know more than I know, but all that I can say is that in discussions with our ministry and our minister, there has been no indication that the tribunal would disappear but that it would be significantly reduced and downsized. We've looked at the tribunal, about what that would mean with certain types of budget cuts, to our performance, and we've tried to be ready for that. That was one of the reasons we looked at how to deal with the volume and clear the backlog, because in the event that the tribunal's resources would be restricted, we would still be able to hopefully meet our mandate. But I would say that there must be an outside appeal system.
I would also say, just following up what you're saying about whether you just remove it to another body, that there's a huge administrative cost here that just doesn't disappear. When the 12,000 appeals come in, wherever they come in, they have to be managed by someone, and the main expense of the board is the staff's salaries and the board members' salaries, and it's related to processing those appeals, and I think if you look at this tribunal compared to many others, we're actually at the low end in terms of our budget and in terms of the number of appeals that we receive and in terms of the salaries of members of the board and of the staff, and so we're actually at the low end.
We compared our system to the UIC model for the purposes of this committee, and we still provide the same level of appeal for a lower cost. So there are all kinds of costs associated with the secretariat of the board that have to go somewhere.
Mr Kormos: Again, if it's a question, it will probably be interpreted as rhetorical, so I'll identify it right off the bat as being far less of a question than a comment, and that is that obviously the existence of SARB, along with a whole lot of other administrative-style tribunals, dates back prior even to CAP. Any attack on them would be a failure to recognize, for instance, the important work that Justice McRuer did here in the province of Ontario many years ago when an essential element of democracy was brought to the province by his brave and insightful report. I would commend that people who are thinking about abandoning some of these principles of natural justice and relief from arbitrary decisions read the McRuer report and understand what was happening at the time and the relief that the establishment of tribunals did.
I've got to tell you, I do not envy members of the board dealing with even 6,000 adjudicated hearings, but none the less, 12,000 applications for relief from what are perceived to be unjust decisions, and recognizing the success rate of those appeals, some concurrence, some significant concurrence, on the part of the board and board members. I think it's a tremendously difficult task. I'm confident that the workload is tremendous as it is.
I do want to tell you about one of my constituents who was 48 years old during the course of last December, and she was on Family Benefits Act assistance, a disability pension. She had been suffering from mental illness since her early adult years, gone through an incredible regimen of mental health treatment -- some of it, in hindsight, barbaric -- but at the age of 48, having raised her own daughter and with two grandchildren, finally beginning to get control of her life, working 10 to 15 hours a week in a laundromat for minimum wage, three weeks before Christmas getting a letter from the local Community and Social Services office telling her that she was cut off from her Family Benefits Act assistance.
She was no longer, in this new Ontario, considered disabled. Weak enough, tragically -- again, no abbreviation of the appeal time would have helped her, because three days after getting that letter, the weight of the despair of being evicted from an apartment in January, of the sense of injustice and outrage when you say to yourself, "I've been doing all the right things, things have started to get better, I am working 10 to 15 hours a week, and hopefully at some point in my life maybe I can do more," but the despair and the sense of injustice that flows from that -- well, she abandoned her appeal, because she took her life three days after getting that letter of disentitlement in this new Ontario.
So as I say, your work is tremendously important and I do find repugnant -- I think anybody would, any fair-minded person -- any effort on the part of a government to corrupt an integrous tribunal like SARB, along with many others, by stacking it with political appointees whose personal views and allegiance to this government's agenda would be such that there is a grave danger of that allegiance infecting their independence as adjudicators. I think that's a reprehensible thing and I think that any fair-minded person should feel obliged to protect this board, along with others. This board, which has made so much progress in providing independent, fair-minded, compassionate decision-making, and has found itself well within the framework of the law as reflected in the failure of the Divisional Court to express criticism, I think that sort of stacking of the tribunal with political appointees is repugnant. Thank you.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. That runs us out of the time that we've set aside for review of your board. We will, as a subcommittee, be speaking about how we might come up with some kind of report from this committee. I want to say thank you for all the work that you've obviously done in preparing for today and for being here. Your being here has been quite helpful and enlightening, I'm sure, for everybody, so thank you.
Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): I have a point of order: the interviewee, I didn't get a chance to ask her a question now, but she mentioned the board salaries and the staff salaries, and in my report, I have a report of the board salaries, I saw nothing about staff salaries.
The Vice-Chair: Perhaps that's a question that you could put on paper, Mr Johnson, and submit. I'm sure that they'll be happy to give you an answer to that.
We're going to have a brief subcommittee meeting -- Mr Kormos, Mr Wood, and Mr Crozier. The rest of you are expected back here at 2 o'clock this afternoon.
The committee recessed from 1203 to 1414.
INTENDED APPOINTMENTS
The Vice-Chair: We have one slight change in the order this afternoon. On your agenda it says Mr Libman for 2:30 and Mr Vice for 3 pm. Just switch that around. We'll have Mr Vice at 2:30 and Mr Libman at 3 o'clock.
ARTHUR FISH
Review of intended appointment, selected by government party: Arthur Fish, intended appointee as chair, Ontario Mental Health Foundation.
The Vice-Chair: We'll start with the interview of Mr Arthur Fish. Thanks for coming today. I believe you have an opening statement to make.
Mr Arthur Fish: I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for the opportunity to come here this afternoon and introduce myself and the mental health foundation to you. I'm told you all have copies of my résumé so I'll be brief in speaking about myself.
I'm a lawyer in private practice. I also teach law and psychiatry in the faculties of law and medicine at the University of Toronto and at Osgoode Hall Law School. I've co-written a book on mental competency assessment. I'm an associate member of the Centre for Bioethics here in the city and a member of the human subjects review committee at the University of Toronto. A fair number of my clients are people who suffer from mental disorders or family members who are trying to care for such people.
The Ontario Mental Health Foundation is overseen by a 16-member board, all of whom are unpaid volunteers, and by a salaried executive director, Dr Howard Cappell, who's in the audience today, and three staff members. I became a member of the board in 1991. I've served as vice-chair of the foundation. Anticipating the retirement of the former chair, Mrs Lai Chu, my colleagues on the board unanimously nominated me for this position.
Every year hundreds of researchers in the province apply to the foundation either for fellowship or research funding. These applications are assessed and rated by two committees of scientists, a 20-member research committee and a 15-member fellowships committee. All these people are volunteers and they collectively donate thousands of person-hours every year to the foundation's work.
Even as I speak, the 15 members of the fellowships committee are sitting in the foundation's office in the second day of their three-day review of fellowship applications for this year. The committees make the recommendations to the board, which then sets the annual budget. In most years we come nowhere close to funding all of the meritorious applications that we receive.
Mental illness inflicts awful suffering on thousands of Ontarians and their families every year, and the province spends hundreds of millions of dollars yearly on mental health care. The foundation's resources are small given the urgency and the extent of the needs in this area, but even so we've managed in the past to support the careers of researchers who have made significant contributions on the world stage to the understanding and treatment of mental illness and who have raised clinical standards and education in the province. We've also overseen research projects that have been of immediate interest and use to government.
The foundation's aim is to assure Ontarians that they will have the benefit of a thriving research community whose members bring their collective knowledge and energy to bear on understanding mental illness and so ultimately on bringing hope and relief to those who suffer from it. Thank you. I look forward to receiving the committee's questions.
Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): Mr Fish, welcome to the committee. What are some of the particular goals that you have in mind should you be successful in becoming chair?
Mr Fish: To be successful in becoming chair?
Mr Newman: Yes. What are some of the goals, if you're successful in taking over as chair of the foundation?
Mr Fish: Over the past few years the foundation has gone through an arduous process of self-examination as a result of which it set some directions for myself and for the foundation. My primary goal at this point is to move the foundation forward towards the realization of those objectives. Briefly, they fall under three headings.
The first is, we're looking to do more with what we've got by combining our resources with other agencies and individuals in the province. For example, we have a cap of $60,000 maximum on research grants. When you're looking at research on the cutting edge of neurobiology, it's just not enough to get something done. By combining our resources with those of the Ontario Friends of Schizophrenics, we've been able to offer grants to a maximum of $100,000, which is enough money to drive research forward in that area. That's a model for the kind of relationship that we're looking to establish with other groups and agencies throughout the province.
We've also established a priority of ensuring that there's an adequate base of researchers in the province working on issues of mental health service delivery to assist the government as it moves forward with mental health reform, and the final area of particular interest is doing a better job of disseminating the results of our research and research done elsewhere to people in the field who might benefit from it.
Mr Gary Fox (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): How did you first get involved and interested in the foundation? I mean you're a lawyer; you've got to have a little explanation there of why this is of interest to you.
Mr Fish: Much of my practice centres around issues related to mental illness or mental incapacity, and that actually started long before I was appointed to the board of the foundation. I believe my name was brought forward by a person who was then a member of the board, and my name was put forward for two reasons. One, it's advantageous: the foundation has always tried to have a few lawyers on the board simply because you get free legal services that way. Also, I guess it was thought that because I was practising in the area and knew something about it, my skills and background would be a good fit with the foundation.
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Mr Hastings: Mr Fish, what would be your thinking about trying to expand the foundation into more private sector fund-raising involvement along the lines of the Ford or Rockefeller foundations? After all, it's called a foundation, and when people see the name they probably wouldn't think that it's getting taxpayers' moneys per se in its financing.
Mr Fish: When I say that we're reaching out to other agencies in the community, that's exactly what we hope to achieve over time. In the present economic climate it didn't make a whole lot of sense for us to go out and start running an independent campaign, looking for donations on the model, let's say, of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. It costs a lot of money to do and it takes a long time to generate a payback.
So we cast our minds, talked to people, talked to one another and decided that the best way we could achieve this and maximize our resources and look to other sources for funding is to position ourselves as a research agency that's available to all those in the community who have an interest in seeing research conducted, whether that's in the not-for-profit sector organizations that have an interest in seeing research done into a particular affliction or in the for-profit sector for that matter. That is how we think we can move ourselves in that direction and attract private money to us over time.
Mr Hastings: Will you be presenting specific proposals some time in the next year to advance this goal of matching up with other groups in the community? I'm especially interested in the for-profit.
Mr Fish: The foundation has moved beyond just talking about this already. The starting point was to canvass the present members of the board and to see who knows who and what kind of contacts we have to begin work with. We've also canvassed the members of our research and fellowships committee. We've compiled a list of contacts, some in the not-for-profit sector and some in the for-profit sector, and we're getting busy.
Mr Hastings: So you're hopeful that in the next year or two there might be some loot coming in from the private sector? Because in this country the foundations are sitting on big, big, big dollars and they are not getting them back into the community, except the minimal amount by federal charter.
Mr Fish: We are going to make our best effort and I believe we can be successful. As I say, we've already been successful in these kinds of partnering relationships and we're going to go for it.
Mr Hastings: I see. Thank you.
Mr Sergio: Mr Fish, good afternoon. You presently occupy the position of vice-chair?
Mr Fish: I am.
Mr Sergio: If you had to pick a particular area where you had difficulties communicating with the government of the day, what area would you improve upon?
Mr Fish: Specifically in dealing with government?
Mr Sergio: Between the foundation and the government.
Mr Fish: We've had a long history of open and, I think, warm relationships actually with the bureaucracy in particular, and the foundation has a long history of working cooperatively, especially with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. We'll continue that.
At the request of government we entered into discussions that have resulted in a draft memorandum of understanding that's intended primarily to document the lines of communication that we've already opened up and to ensure that they remain open in that way. I think the truth is that there's not a lot of work to be done in improving on our relationship with government. The real work lies now in reaching out to the broader community.
Mr Crozier: Mr Fish, thank you. It isn't often that we get the opportunity to have someone of your expertise and dedication before the committee. My question is more one of if you're able to comment on looking a bit into the future with the help of, I guess, what's already been done. Many of us don't understand the broad implications of mental health and what it is that can be done. Are you optimistic that there is research that will find cures for what we see now are mental health disorders that are not curable? Is there some hope for this?
Mr Fish: Well, I'm not a scientist, but I do my best to talk to them and try to educate myself about the work, the foundation's work and research that's being carried forward in the province. My colleagues in the sciences are indeed optimistic, especially with the advent of new brain imaging technologies that allow them to actually watch the brain as it goes about doing its work. We are sitting on the edge of a dramatic improvement in understanding especially the serious mental disorders: chronic depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and so on. So it does appear to be a time of enormous hope. They also tell me that they expect that in the order of five to 10 years we'll begin to see new medications becoming available that represent a significant improvement over those that we currently have. That's one side, I guess.
The other thing I'm told is that when it comes to mental health service delivery, there's a huge body of knowledge that's already been amassed elsewhere. It appears that we can play a role in ensuring that there are an adequate number of people in the province tapped into that existing knowledge and aware of what's being done elsewhere and who can bring it back to Ontario so that government and agencies can take advantage of it.
Mr Crozier: So do you in a sense sit as a layperson on the foundation, albeit, I assume from your experience, an experienced and well-informed layperson, as opposed to being a scientist?
Mr Fish: I talk to people who seem to know what they're saying.
Mr Crozier: But you are involved in the decision of how this money is going to be expended.
Mr Fish: The way the foundation is structured, individual applications are reviewed and rated by committees of scientists. That's very much the way it should be. That's a structure that emerged over years. In general, the board has taken a very firm policy that it does not want to be in the position of saying, "We are going to fund this particular application or that particular application."
Professor Polanyi, that Nobel laureate in science, has recently warned us that there's a danger in going too far towards micromanagement of research. To some extent, what you have to do is let all these intelligent people who are making career choices and deciding what it's worthwhile for them to study go out there and do that and then come to the foundation and make their case.
We did, however, invite a number of experts to come and tell us -- this was about a year ago I guess -- if there are areas that we appear to be missing and in which we should be taking slightly more proactive steps. One of the things they identified for us was mental health services. We have taken steps to encourage people to enter that field and pursue it. It's a good example, actually, of the board setting a general policy direction based on the advice it receives from experts without actually stepping into the fray and saying, "Well, we're going to say that Mr X gets funded but not Ms Y," and so on.
Mr Crozier: Thank you. I think you're going to continue to be an asset to the board. I wish you well.
Mr Gravelle: Good afternoon, Mr Fish.
Mr Fish: Good afternoon.
Mr Gravelle: The foundation was first formed in 1962, I saw from our research, and obviously there's been 30-plus years that you've developed and received support from the government. I think we're certainly in a time now where value for money being spent by government is becoming more and more of a factor in decisions as to whether agencies continue or don't continue. In fact, there's a review going on right now, of course, of all government agencies. I think it's important probably to establish that and give you an opportunity to tell us about some of the things that actually you've been able to accomplish in a specific sense too, if you can. I noticed in 1994-95, you supported 52 research projects, there are a number of things that you did.
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I'm working from the premise that a lot of these things certainly wouldn't have happened were you not there to support them. In other words, there aren't any other avenues for these research projects to take place. I would be just curious, whatever time we have left, if you could tell me some of the things that did come forward as a result of you providing that kind of research help.
Mr Fish: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to blow our horn a bit.
Mr Gravelle: Please.
Mr Fish: Let me answer the question in a general sense first. We don't have an enormous amount of money, especially compared to the really big granting agencies in the area. We've been able to ensure that the province has people working in all the areas of importance, so that as developments take place on the world stage, they can bring them home. We've developed the careers of a number of people who are now world leaders in their field and who continue to practise here in the province of Ontario, for example, Dr Paul Garfinkel, who is the chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and the director of the Clarke Institute, and others as well.
The big thing that we brought to the province is people -- good people, knowledgeable people -- who are here to conduct research, but also to bring research to bear on clinical practice. So I think our work indirectly has had an enormous effect in benefiting people who suffer from mental disorder in that way.
Then there are a number of projects we've undertaken over the years that have been of immediate use to government, one of which is the mental health supplement to the Ontario Health Survey, which I'm told is the largest epidemiological survey of mental health issues ever conducted anywhere. Although much of the funding for that came from the Ministry of Health, we topped the funding up. I believe it's fair to say that it was the foundation's initiative that got the supplement under way and completed, and without us it would not have happened and certainly wouldn't have seen the light of day.
What it's now given us, I'm told, is a very powerful tool to assist the district health councils and so on as they plan to meet the needs of different parts of the province. The fruits of the supplement have been made fairly widely available by the ministry, I understand, and we've undertaken a program that we hope will encourage researchers to continue to take advantage of the data that we've amassed.
We've also conducted other research programs into investigating various aspects of the care of people with developmental disorders in the community, for example, for the efficacy of medications for treating Alzheimer disease, and those were projects undertaken directly at the request of government.
At the moment, we're engaged in negotiations with a number of agencies, hoping to pool our resources and establish something like a mental health policy investigations unit, an agency to which government could turn without having to throw more money at the problem, and say: "We need to understand something better. Can you help us sort out how we do that in the best, most cost-effective way?"
Mr Kormos: I come from a part of the province, Niagara region, which is well documented as being grossly underresourced, especially when it comes to mental health treatment, services and programs for adolescents, notwithstanding that it's very much part of the Golden Horseshoe and by no means a remote part of the province. So I understand very much what you're saying today in response to some of the questions from my colleagues, but I am hard-pressed to accept a philosophy -- and I'm not suggesting you have it or have expressed it -- that dictates that we should fund things as important to people and indeed to our province, to our economy, what have you, as health care, mental health care included, by way of bake sales or selling raffle tickets.
I firmly believe the public in this province expects to see programs for health care, including mental health programs, adequately funded and fairly funded, and expects and can tolerate it being funded out of tax dollars. You made reference to the fact that so-called fund-raising can oftentimes be a very expensive process, and we've seen many illustrations of how little of the dollar collected ends up financing the programs it was intended to as compared to funding the cost of the fund-raising.
Having said that, just because I wanted to make it clear that I obviously disagree with my Conservative colleagues in the matter of what constitutes adequate funding, and in the matter of trivializing health care to the point of, as I say -- and I appreciate it's hyperbole, but none the less not inappropriate to draw up imagery of, as I say, bake sales and lemonade stands and raffle tickets. That's a wacky way to invest in health care.
I have no idea why you're here, because you're obviously thoroughly qualified. You were referred into the appointments process by the chair of the foundation itself, the retiring chair. You've been there for five years, give or take. You're as qualified as anybody. You were chosen to come here by the government and it's because we sort of go round robin in terms of selecting potential appointees to come here. We of course are interested in screening out the dogs that occasionally come barking in here, the Tory hack appointments. They're interested in creating as much positive spin as they can. They would have that with you but for the fact that you're obviously not a Tory hack appointment. You're somebody who was referred by the chair of the foundation. I don't know why you were called upon and why your time was wasted by virtue of coming here. There are a whole lot of folks out there that the government's proposing for positions who have to be scrutinized. You're not one of them. So thanks for dropping by this afternoon. We don't want to be partisan or anything.
The Vice-Chair: You have 30 seconds, Mr Wood, if you wanted to rebut Mr Kormos.
Mr Bob Wood: After that statesmanlike comment, we'll waive our time.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Fish, for taking time out of what I'm sure is a busy schedule. We've appreciated your participation and it's been helpful.
PETER VICE
Review of intended appointment, selected by third party: Peter Vice, intended appointee as member, Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton Police Services Board.
The Vice-Chair: Next up is Mr Peter Vice. I believe you have an opening statement to make.
Mr Peter Vice: Good afternoon, Mr Chairman and members of the committee. I was born and raised in small-town Ontario. I don't see any eastern Ontario members here, but it was the town of Renfrew I was born and raised in. I attended elementary and high school there; took off to Ottawa, attended St Pat's college and Ottawa U law school.
I commenced my legal practice with the city of Ottawa legal department, and it was at that time that I first really came in contact with police forces in Ontario. During those periods, the legal departments of the various municipalities used the police as their investigative services on bylaws. So I worked fairly well day in and day out with the Ottawa police department in the first four or five years of my practice. After leaving the city of Ottawa, I entered private practice with a firm, and have since then, 1976 actually, taken off and my partner and I formed a small law firm within the city of Ottawa.
I was appointed a part-time crown attorney in 1976, and during that time period I worked extensively with all police forces in the Ottawa area and with the Ontario Provincial Police actually in areas outside of Ottawa when I was called on to do special prosecutions.
In 1984 I was appointed to, as it was known then, the City of Ottawa Police Commission. I served on that commission for a period of three years and I was on numerous committees at that time including acting on the negotiating committee on two different occasions.
From a community point of view, I've served in the past as a member of the board of trustees of the Ottawa Civic Hospital, the advisory board of the CNIB, as trustee and president of the Carleton County Law Association, as a fund-raiser for the YMCA, the Canadian Cancer Society and numerous other charitable organizations within the Ottawa area. I teach the community planning course at the University of Ottawa law school and I've taught in the past at Algonquin College and Carleton University.
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How do I believe that I can be of some help on the Ottawa-Carleton Police Services Board? First of all, I've had a great deal of experience in dealing with police in the past. I have either acted for, or acted in, every municipality within the RMOC. If you haven't heard, you will know that we have recently amalgamated all our police services within RMOC. I think I've travelled to every nook and cranny within the RMOC, so certainly I know the area very well.
I think with my background in interpreting legislation, regulations and policy, I can also be of very, very great help after receiving this appointment, which of course has to be approved by this committee. I have met with both the police chief and the association president, Mr John Petersen, and discussed with them some of the pressing matters that they both think have to be dealt with. Surprisingly enough they were pretty close; they weren't all that far apart at this particular time. Thank you very much, Mr Chairman.
Mr Crozier: Good afternoon, sir. My concern it seems usually lies in the area of finance. So I would ask you, in view of the fact that we all understand we are under financial constraints and our objectives may have changed over the past period of years, do you see any particular difficulty with the police services and providing those services within the financial situation we find ourselves in today?
Mr Vice: Oh, I definitely think there's going to be in any form of government, just like in the private sector. I run a small law firm and I'll tell you, we've all had to tighten our belts and follow our budgets. There are going to be some problems. Salaries have escalated. People are looking for more and more services. We're now into what they describe as community policing, whatever that means in different people's minds. But certainly we're going to have to be very careful with the money we spend. We don't have the money to spend on policing, just like anything else. But at the same time, it's so important that I hope all parties will fund as much as they possibly can.
But at the same time, I'm well aware of the problems. I have taken a quick look at the 1996 budget for the RMOC. I think they're about the same as 1995, maybe $500,000 more that they're going to spend. That's going to be a problem and that's going to be difficult for us, but it's one of the things that we have to deal with and stay within the budgets.
Mr Crozier: What area of law would you say you practise the most now? What's the greater percentage?
Mr Vice: Administrative law with a strong preference for the planning end of municipal. We act for a lot of municipalities and some developers, some community groups. But 50% of my clients would be municipalities probably.
Mr Crozier: In my former life, when I was an elected municipal official, I sat on the police services board as mayor and almost felt as though I was -- and I guess I was -- the elected town representative on that board. Although I can't recall that we had any difficulty, I can see that it could be, where we might not agree with town council as to the budget that the police services board should have, in which case there would be attempts to negotiate that and, if all else failed, why then it would go to the Ontario civilian commission, I believe, or a term similar to that. In essence, the decision on funding for policing would be decided outside the community. Can you comment on that system of arriving at the final budget figure?
Mr Vice: I suppose that somebody has to be the ultimate arbiter, and in this case the legislation says -- and I still refer to them as the old Ontario Police Commission. They have always fulfilled that function. Thank goodness in the Ottawa area generally the police services board and the RMOC have been able to get together and agree on the funding, but there has to be someone who has to make that decision. You refer a lot of the funding problems when somebody can't get along to the OMB or somebody else; in this case it's the Ontario police services board. There has to be somebody if you can't do it.
Now, if you're asking, should it be somebody else or should the municipal council make that decision --
Mr Crozier: That would have been my next question, yes. Perhaps someone with elected accountability should, in the final analysis, make that decision.
Mr Vice: I suppose that gets back to the age-old argument that I have heard, which is, should you have more local reps on your police services board than provincial reps? It probably amounts to the same thing. I suppose I am one who thinks that policing should be the same all over Ontario. I'll be as frank as I can: When it comes to dealing with local reps, especially in urban municipalities, I'm always concerned as to the tradeoffs that are made, one councillor with another. Now, I'm more used to the urban area, where you don't have six councillors or three councillors serving overall. But in the urban area it's no secret that votes are traded off, and I don't think that votes should be traded off; you know, "I'll put a police station here today for you if you'll put it someplace tomorrow." I'm firmly of the view that the control should stay with the Ontario Solicitor General's department.
Mr Sergio: Mr Vice, you are a long-time resident of the Ottawa area.
Mr Vice: Correct.
Mr Sergio: Are you familiar with any problem with respect to drugs or other crimes in the area?
Mr Vice: I don't think there's any doubt that we have our share, just like everybody else. Probably, being closer to the Quebec border, we may have a little more. I think we pride ourselves in sometimes saying we don't have as many problems as Toronto, but indeed there are drug problems in Ottawa. Of course, the feds generally take care of that, or we hope they do.
Mr Sergio: Who takes care of that?
Mr Vice: The federal government and the RCMP are really in charge of most drug investigations.
Mr Sergio: I see. So you wouldn't support any community-based programs to assist or eliminate drugs in the particular Ottawa area?
Mr Vice: I think we already have them. when I say the RCMP is in charge, the RCMP is the lead agency. They do work, of course, with the other police services. I can tell you that there are numerous programs within our area that the Ottawa police department supports. Going back to Mr Crozier's question though, it's going to become a matter of priorities. But certainly, drugs we have to control.
Mr Sergio: If funding were to be a severe problem, would you suggest to the board to resort to a user fee to raise funds or would you cut some community-based programs?
Mr Vice: I haven't really given a lot of thought to that. Just to give you an example -- and I don't want to get off too far -- in Ottawa the fire chief has just come forward with some user fees whereby he will present some programs for all of Ontario. I really don't think police services should be provided on a user fee basis. Having said that, I think somebody who has their alarm go off in their house seven times in a month should start to pay for it. But I don't think that --
Mr Sergio: I know you're looking at the other side.
Mr Vice: I don't think that controlling crime should be on a user fee basis. I think everybody should have a right to police service.
Mr Gravelle: Good afternoon, Mr Vice. You mentioned community policing in your opening discussion and talked to the effect that there are different definitions of community policing. As I understand it in terms of where I come from, which is Thunder Bay, it's viewed in a very positive way, as being an opportunity to get on the ground and basically have the community connect more directly with the police officers in the community, and that can solve a lot of the problems. I'm curious as to your point of view on community policing or what your understanding of it is in that, as you say, different definitions abound.
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Mr Vice: My understanding of community policing is that it's making police officers available as much as you possibly can for education purposes within the community, maybe at the community centres, certainly in the schools. My wife happens to be a school teacher and she says they have great support from the regional police service with regard to a police officer going in a day a week or whatever.
I don't necessarily think that community policing is as it has been established in some parts of Ottawa where you have two people sitting in a police station dispensing information. I like to equate it to the old days when I was growing up in Renfrew, when the community policing was the police officer walking on the beat, the guy who got to know the kids -- probably got to know all the bad kids and the criminals too. I think community policing is really an education type of thing, as best you can. I'm not saying there's anything wrong, if you have the resources, as to setting up within a community centre in a particular area, but resources are going to be important, to get back to Mr Crozier's question. I don't think we can open a police station on every corner.
Mr Gravelle: Community policing in Thunder Bay terms --
The Vice-Chair: Time is up. You've asked your limit of questions.
Mr Vice: I'd be glad to talk to you after, Mr Gravelle.
Mr Kormos: Mr Gravelle can finish his sentence on my time, but do it fast, Mr Gravelle.
Mr Gravelle: I just want to say that certainly the cop on the beat and walking the street, they're moving in that direction in Thunder Bay. You're so right, resources are still a very big factor, but I think people seem to want that and maybe in a setting like Thunder Bay it works.
Thank you very much. You're very kind.
Mr Kormos: That's just the kind of guy I am.
Mr Vice: I live in an area of Ottawa called the Glebe. We have an officer who does walk the streets. Unfortunately, I was just broken into. He called me; he wanted to come over and show me things that could be done. He said: "I'm going too much north-south. I should be going more east-west." But I think probably we need, not only in our area -- but it would help to have maybe a second officer in there. In certain areas where you have people of different ethnic groups, maybe there should be one from that group too to go in and work with the people.
Mr Kormos: It's often been said that the definition of a redneck is a liberal whose home was broken into the night before.
Mr Vice: It was three weeks ago.
Mr Kormos: Fair enough. The sting is still there.
The issue of drugs and drug trafficking, drug use was raised. I come from down in Niagara and I don't think it's any different there than it is in Ottawa, Toronto, virtually every other part of the province. My sense as well is that a large number of property crimes and crimes of violence can be related to illicit drug use and illicit drug trafficking. So we're talking about a package there.
You've been a crown; I don't know whether you've done criminal defense work.
Mr Vice: I've done a little criminal defence work, but more on the crown side.
Mr Kormos: Fair enough, but you've been in the courts and you know darn well that, especially when dealing with drug trafficking and conspiracy charges, developing a case on a conspiracy prosecution, it's very labour-intensive. There's a lot of surveillance, both physical surveillance and perhaps undercover work and wiretap surveillance, and that as often as not, when there's an acquittal, it's because the police were hamstrung in terms of the amount of person-hours made available to them for a given investigation.
How then do you evaluate what is the cutoff point? This makes reference to some of the questions already put to you: How do you put a price on that type of policing when you consider the incredible social and human cost that flows from that sort of crime? How can we say we can't afford to fight illicit drug trafficking and drug use?
Mr Vice: I think you put it very well. You take that vis-à-vis health care, though -- and that's your job as legislators. I would like to have, as a member of the Ottawa police services board, as much money as I could possibly have. I couldn't agree more. I've prosecuted some drug cases in conjunction with the federal crown, and because you didn't have that extra guy there to hear the statement that was taken or whatever.
If the resources are there, sure we'd love to have them; I also agree with you that one of the great problems comes out of drug dealing and the kids who are using the drugs are stealing to buy them etc. So I couldn't agree more, but that has to be a decision of the Legislature as to how much money you're going to give us. I can assure you -- and I know Peter Clark, the regional chair, extremely well -- that he'll take as much money as you're able to give us for the Ottawa police services.
Mr Kormos: This is an important role of police services board members. I know you've had previous experience on the old commission and I respect your comments about the need to have Solicitor General-appointed people there, because then you avoid an inherent conflict of interest that a regional councillor has also serving on the police board. A regional councillor may be in a more difficult position to advocate for the police services when she or he is also on regional council and have to justify to their voting constituents why they propose, for instance, a tax increase or an increased mill rate to pay for police services.
But as a member of a police services board, is your job to advocate for an effective police service or is your job to help this government trim back policing?
Mr Vice: I think it's a combination of both. I don't think anybody who wants to serve on a police services board is at all advocating cutting back policing. I hope there isn't anybody. But you have to, once again, work within the dollars that are there. I would hope nobody who appears before you advocates indeed to cut back police services today. I'd be shocked. Certainly it is our job to make sure, once again within reason, that there are enough dollars to go around to do things properly.
Mr Kormos: You're no longer a crown attorney?
Mr Vice: No, no I'm not.
Mr Kormos: So there's no concern about conflict of interest as there might be certainly if you were a crown attorney.
Mr Vice: No. I actually resigned when I was appointed to the Ottawa police commission in 1984 because of that possible conflict.
Mr Kormos: There was a hiatus there in your service on the commission, from the termination of your appointment in 1984 until the present.
Mr Vice: I was appointed in 1984 and I sat until 1986. Then I haven't served on a police services board or a police commission since 1986.
Mr Kormos: On your part, was there a reason for not seeking a similar appointment after 1986?
Mr Vice: The practice got busier, we were in those late 1980s and I didn't seek to be reappointed.
Mr Kormos: Fair enough. Now you undoubtedly know that four women, members of the Ottawa-Carleton Police Services Board, were fired, if you will. Their terms, I'm told, expire in March 1997. Can you believe that, Chair -- March 1997? They were fired by this government. Of course you've also read, I'm sure, that they are in the process of initiating litigation against I suppose as many people as they can find.
Mr Vice: That's what you always do as a good lawyer, Mr Kormos. You add anybody you can at the end of the writ.
Mr Kormos: The deeper the pockets, the better, which, as you point out, is the norm.
Do you have concerns about being appointed to the board and then being called upon to remove yourself, should these litigants be successful in for instance obtaining an order that they be reinstated to the board as compared to merely collecting damages?
Mr Vice: No, not at all. I think that somebody else makes the decision as to who is to be appointed; I suppose who is to be hired and fired. If they were to be reinstated by the courts -- I understand Marion Dewar has an application. In fact, I chatted with her lawyer last Thursday evening, before the courts.
I think that's part of being appointed to anything. You roll with the punches. If she happened to be reinstated, then I suppose we'd have to be fired.
Mr Kormos: Then there might be more litigation.
Mr Vice: No, not likely. I can assure you that if I was fired I wouldn't be litigating.
Mr Kormos: What about police forces and their representation of the community? Of course, I'm speaking to issues: You know that the Employment Equity Act and the equity provisions of the Police Services Act, which pre-date the Employment Equity Act, were unceremoniously repealed recently, in short order.
Mr Vice: Yes, I understand that they were repealed. It's certainly my view that as much as possible the police force should reflect the population -- females, aboriginals -- but at the same time I do not advocate quotas in any way, or I do not advocate not appointing the best person to the job; I have enough faith that there are enough good females out there -- in our law firm and there are five of us; we have two females -- enough people from the minorities that they will make their way. But I still want the best person appointed to the job.
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Mr Kormos: Fair enough. As a member of the police services board, in view of your clearly expressed view that the police services, the police force, should reflect the makeup of the community, how would you then achieve that goal?
Mr Vice: You may want to look at some policies in that regard, but at the same time I am not really sure as to how you would. I must be quite frank, I haven't really given a lot of thought as to how maybe you should implement it.
Mr Kormos: Do you know what the makeup is now of the Ottawa-Carleton Police Services in terms of gender or minority representation?
Mr Vice: In speaking to the chief, I think there were about 8% to 10% female, there were about 4% aboriginal and maybe about 10% total from the other minority groups. That's recollection, because I did put that question to the chief when I met with him.
Mr Kormos: I trust you were familiar with the provisions of the Police Services Act for equity goals in police forces, police services.
Mr Vice: Yes, I was aware of them and I was aware, in speaking to the chair of the police union, that he was very concerned about all the paperwork that his officers were doing in order to meet the process that had been set up under the police services board prior to that.
Mr Kormos: With respect to the equity provisions?
Mr Vice: Yes, the reports that had to be completed, things of that nature.
Mr Kormos: In terms of hiring?
Mr Vice: Yes, in terms of hiring and I suppose in not hiring. You had to file reports on a monthly basis, if I remember right, as to how you were meeting the terms or the provisions of that legislation. The chief and the head of the police association both had concerns about the amount of time that was taking. They both mentioned that to me.
Mr Kormos: I hear what you're saying, but that's the first time I've heard that from a police association. Of course, you're not involved in hiring, but I appreciate what you're saying.
Mr Hastings: If I'm a resident of Bells Corners or Richmond, let's say, both neighbourhoods have had a lot of break-ins, vandalism or what have you, the residents of those communities are very upset, and your police commission and police services board are probably in downtown Ottawa, what's your thinking with respect to outreach into the community? I don't want to go downtown to meet with you guys and gals; I want you folks to come and talk to us at Bells Corners or Richmond or one of those areas. One of the biggest problems of regional police forces is the seemingly inadequate policing available in the rural areas or the suburban builtup areas. I'm wondering, would you as a police commission or a police services board try to get out and meet with those folks if they made such a request rather than them trotting themselves downtown to the city of Ottawa?
Mr Vice: By all means, Mr Hastings. In fact, in fairness to the present police services board, they have set up a meeting process whereby they do go out at different times. In speaking to the chief and to some of the present members of the police services board, or one of them at least, I am a little concerned that when you go out into those areas, you bring your whole meeting out there. In bringing your whole meeting out there, you're bringing a number of officers on matters that those people really aren't concerned about. So I think we should be going out, as members of the board, but I don't think we have to bring eight inspectors and three staff inspectors. I'm not trying to get re-elected. I want to hear what the people have to say. I don't think we have to talk about finances out there, unless they specifically request it, but I'm very concerned about what's been happening in the past with having the whole meeting out there. I don't think that's fair, but I think we have a responsibility to be out there.
Mr Hastings: Excellent. You were a former crown attorney at one time?
Mr Vice: Part-time.
Mr Hastings: You were involved in the law for a long time. Have you got any specific suggestions on how we can have our police officers more out in the field rather than filling out the increasing amount of documentation they seem to have to go through in practically everything? Granted, a lot of it's required, but I'm wondering if we've gone too much in the other direction.
Mr Vice: I have heard -- and just heard -- that maybe within Ottawa-Carleton our computer system isn't what it should be in giving the officers the ability to not have to sit and do those bureaucratic things. It bothers me when I do go down to the police station and you have a uniformed officer greeting people at the front door. I think the uniformed officers should be out on the street. You might want to call them special constables. One problem we have, though, on those matters is that there are contracts, collective agreements that have been struck and we have to live with those at least for the time being.
Mr Newman: Mr Vice, what's the feeling about an amalgamation of the police force in Ottawa-Carleton with neighbouring municipalities?
Mr Vice: I guess it doesn't matter what the feeling is; it's a fait accompli. But there's no doubt, at the time of amalgamation, and I can understand why, some of the smaller communities had a great concern that they would not be policed as well as they have been in the past. I was one who was pro amalgamation; it didn't make sense to me to have one police force on one side of Base Line Road and one on the other. But I do certainly understand the fears that the smaller municipalities had.
As Mr Hastings has asked -- I don't know if you know -- the rural areas are presently served by the OPP under contract. So it's only the three urban areas in Ottawa that are not served by the OPP at this time. By 1999, the legislation states that we have to take over all of that policing with our own services. So that's one of the things that is facing us in the next couple of years. But I am pro regionalization and -- I'll go as far -- I'm pro for fire too, although I understand the smaller municipalities and their concerns.
Mr Newman: You mentioned your house was broken into about three weeks ago. Being a victim of crime, how does that influence your view of policing?
Mr Vice: Well, I've cooled down a little bit now.
Mr Newman: I've been there.
Mr Vice: My wife had that feeling of our home being violated. The things they took are the usual types of things, the TVs. Actually, it was Superbowl Sunday and I came back to watch the Superbowl. That probably bugged me as much as being broken into. I couldn't watch the ball game. They took a few keepsakes. With the jewellery, they didn't even know enough to take the good jewellery. I guess that made my wife happy, but they took grandmother's favourite ring and things like that. But I think I'm objective enough to know that it can happen to me as well as it can happen to anyone else.
Mr Newman: It's happened to me, so I know what you're talking about.
Mr Hastings: Did you have your house adequately secure?
Mr Vice: It wasn't, but it is now.
The Vice-Chair: Are there any further questions from the government caucus? If not, we'll say thank you to Mr Vice for coming today. We appreciate you taking time out of what's probably a busy schedule. Your being here has been helpful to us.
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PETER LIBMAN
Review of intended appointment, selected by third party: Peter Libman, intended appointee as part-time vice-chair, Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal.
The Vice-Chair: Next we're going to call forward Mr Libman, who has been selected by the third party as an intended appointee to the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal. Mr Libman, do you have an opening statement to make?
Mr Peter Libman: Just a very brief one. Much briefer than my colleague's before.
The Vice-Chair: I just want to say welcome. Thanks for coming. Go ahead.
Mr Libman: Thank you very much. I'm also a lawyer. It seems to be lawyers' day here today. I got my law degree in 1972 at the University of Toronto. I was called to the bar in 1974. I got my undergraduate degree in 1985, so I actually reversed the order most people do it in. I got my master of law degree in 1990.
In 1986, I was appointed by the Minister of Housing to the Rent Review Advisory Committee. In 1992, I was appointed by the government to the Rent Review Hearings Board. I was cross-appointed in 1994 as a rent control officer.
In the first 18 years of my legal career, I basically had a general practice, although I did a lot of family law and a lot of legal aid work. After I finished on the Rent Review Hearings Board in March of last year, I joined the law firm of Gardiner Roberts and I've been with them for the last 10 months.
Mr Kormos: I think your background and expertise put you in a good position, assuming there is a WCAT a year from now, because after all everything's on the auction block and this country, or this province, is being stripped -- when you look at the concurrence of these provincial policies with some of what's happening in Ottawa, the country's being stripped -- of institutions that our parents and grandparents sacrificed a lot for and worked hard for and indeed suffered to create.
In terms of the process, it's indicated to us that 70 applicants were identified by the WCAT itself; and tell me, I'm just reading the material we got here, candidates were tested using "a written exercise with a hypothetical fact situation requiring a written decision; 31-candidate short list interviewed using a standard" interview "and scored against predetermined criteria." How accurate is that?
Mr Libman: I can tell you about how I applied.
Mr Kormos: Please.
Mr Libman: In 1994, I was still a member of the Rent Review Hearings Board, but I knew my term was up in March 1995. The chairman of my board, Brian Goodman, is a member of an organization called the Circle of Chairs, which is basically the chairs of all the boards and agencies. They meet once a month, and within the circle they pass along opportunities on other boards. For the five remaining members of the hearings board, Brian advised us to apply to WCAT, together with other boards. I wrote a letter in September 1994 to the chairman of the board, Ron Ellis, and asked if I could apply for a position and then I went through the interview process, I wrote the test, and now it's February 1996 and here I am.
Mr Kormos: You were identified by the chair of your rent review board as somebody who would be qualified for and suitable for WCAT, among other things.
Mr Libman: Yes, as an experienced adjudicator.
Mr Kormos: I'm intending, of course, to support your appointment. Good luck, and healthy tenure.
Mr Bert Johnson: Good afternoon. I wanted to know, the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal deals often, as I understand it, with chronic pain and chronic stress cases, and I would like to know the position of the tribunal.
Mr Libman: I just received, at the beginning of the week, a copy of the discussion paper that Minister Jackson has now put forth and he deals extensively with that issue, because apparently, from what the paper says, the WCB and WCAT took different positions on the eligibility of workers who suffered from chronic work stress-related symptoms. It appears from what he describes in the paper that the WCB has now accepted the position that WCAT has taken with regard to it being, if I could say, a predominant cause of the injury.
Of course I have to be approved by the committee, but if I'm approved by the committee, I'll be taking an extensive training course and I'll be exposed to the jurisprudence that's developed and I'll have a better handle on the area of law, but he does deal with it in his paper.
Mr Hastings: Mr Libman, instead of going before an agency as the sort of hearings officer, have you ever thought of going before, particularly WCAT, as a potential injured worker, as a customer just to see how this organization is supposed to be functioning, and if you have, what is your estimate or assessment of how it is working or how dysfunctional it really has become?
Mr Libman: In private practice, I probably represented about six clients who appeared before the predecessor to WCAT; in other words, prior to 1984. One of the reasons I was interested in applying to this board was that the board I was on, the Rent Review Hearings Board, had a reputation within the sort of boards and tribunals community as being an arm's-length, externalized, independent tribunal and WCAT also has the same reputation within our community.
Each year I would attend a conference called COBA, Conference of Boards and Agencies, in Toronto which is a conference of all members of boards and agencies across Ontario, and WCAT has an excellent history and an excellent reputation within the community for being an arm's-length, independent tribunal. That's what I'm looking forward to, should the committee approve me, to being a member of that tribunal.
Mr Hastings: Surely it doesn't have an excellent reputation when it comes to serving its customers. If you look at its backlog, if you look at the way it deals with people in terms of being an ordinary injured employee who's come to get some kind of justice and they end up -- the language is all legalistic etc. How would you reform that or try to make it a little more customer friendly? I know "customer" sounds a pretty bizarre word dealing in the context of this organization from what I have personally observed.
Mr Libman: I can tell you what I did as a member of the Rent Review Hearings Board. We also sat on panels of three and also in other cases as single members. At the end of each case, I would always tell the parties a time estimate of when I was going to get their decision to them. Typically I would say, "I will have your written decision in four weeks." That basically put the pressure on me and my colleagues to deliver.
One of the practices I would like to do as a member of WCAT is to also do that so that the parties know that under normal circumstances they at least have a deadline when the decision's going to come out.
Now as far as the backlog to get to the hearings stage is concerned, as a person who's not yet been a member of the tribunal, I really can't comment on the backlog or why there is a backlog. I can only talk about my own practice as a member of a tribunal.
Mr Hastings: Okay. My final question relates to the WCB gets its moneys from the taxpayer and from the employer community. It funds WCAT, as far as I know, yet WCAT in many instances, since it set itself up as a so-called supertribunal, has issued policy decisions which are at variance with the WCB itself and in fact has become a policy-initiating agency. I'm wondering whether that is safe ground on which a tribunal ought to be operating when the real policymaker is the board itself, even though it's supposed to be at arm's length. A strange relationship has evolved between these two organizations, especially WCAT. Any comments on that?
Mr Libman: I have to go back to my experience on the hearings board, which is very recent. The hearings board sat on appeal of decisions at the first level of rent review from people called administrators, and often the hearings board would take completely different policy approaches to cases than the rent review administrators and it was within the legislation that allowed them to do it.
I can't comment on the relationship between the WCB and WCAT because I have yet to even take the training. Of course, I have to approved by the committee. But I know that in the discussion paper there is comment on that and obviously you, as legislators, will have to deal with that when legislation is presented to the House.
Mr Hastings: I'd just like to wish Mr Libman the best. If he can create a miracle in even getting an announced time frame for a decision, that would be a major move in WCAT.
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Mr Fox: Basically, my question has been answered. I was particularly interested in why you were interested in getting involved with this committee and the only thing you really didn't mention is the salary part of it. Is it a high-paying job?
Mr Libman: It's part-time work and you're paid on a per diem of $450 for an entire day and then lesser amounts for a half-day or by the hour. It was estimated when we applied that we would get three to four cases a month. The arrangement I have with my law firm is, should I be successful in this appointment, I'm basically deducting the time I would spend in my law practice. I'm not coming any farther ahead; I'm probably coming worse ahead by accepting this appointment, but I really believe in the adjudicative system and I like adjudicative work.
Mr Crozier: Mr Libman, you've been very forthright and something you said interested me. You said there is a caucus of chairs, I believe you called it, of various boards, committees and agencies that meets once a month.
Mr Libman: Circle of Chairs.
Mr Crozier: One of the things they do is advise each other of vacancies that are coming up on other boards, agencies and commissions and either encourage or would encourage, I think, members whose appointments were expiring to apply to another board, agency or commission.
That's rather a closed circle. How is this fair to the general public who may not be aware of these and does it in any way -- although I can see in your case where you went through a very exhaustive interview and written process. Is that fair to the general public?
Mr Libman: Again, I can only talk about what happened in my particular case. In my case, when I was appointed to the hearings board in 1992, it was actually two weeks before the proclamation of the Rent Control Act. So when I was appointed, I knew that the board was going to wind down, and in fact when I started there were about 40 members of the board and when I finished there were six, and that was over a two-and-a-half-year period.
I think the reason our chair was searching for other job opportunities for the remaining members of the board was we knew when we applied that it was a dwindling number and a board going out of existence. I don't know with regard to other boards what the practice is in terms of discussions about other openings. I know that because we knew we were appointed to a board that was winding up and had been replaced by another piece of legislation, our chairman, Brian Goodman, made concerted efforts to try to find other opportunities for us to apply to other boards. I don't know if that's a general practice or not.
Mr Crozier: It's very interesting. I'll give some thought to that. Thank you.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Sergio.
Mr Sergio: Mr Chairman, just to welcome a good North Yorker down here. It's good to see one once in a while. I have read the material and I hope he gets the appointment and I'm sure he will do well. We have no questions.
The Vice-Chair: That's it? Thank you very much. That seems to be all the questions we have, although each caucus still has some more time left. We want to thank you for coming today, for taking time out of your schedule. Your being here has been helpful. Good luck.
Having done all the interviews we had scheduled for this afternoon, we will move on to concurrence and then adoption and discussion re the subcommittee report. Does anybody want to move concurrence on Mr Fish.
Mr Kormos: I so move, Chair.
The Vice-Chair: Any discussion or debate on concurrence on Mr Fish? If not, all those in favour will raise their hands and indicate so. All those opposed? Carried.
Concurrence on Mr Vice?
Mr Gary L. Leadston (Kitchener-Wilmot): I so move.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Leadston so moves. Any discussion or debate on that issue?
All those in favour of Mr Vice's appointment? All those opposed? Carried.
Concurrence on Mr Libman?
Mr Bob Wood: I so move.
The Vice-Chair: Moved by Mr Wood. Any discussion or debate on the appointment of Mr Libman?
All those in favour, raise their hand. All those opposed? Carried. That's that.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Vice-Chair: We'll entertain a motion of adoption of the -- I'm sorry. We'll read the subcommittee report into the record.
Mr Bob Wood: I'd be satisfied to move dispensation of the reading of the report, Mr Chair.
The Vice-Chair: Can we move adoption of the report?
Mr Bob Wood: So moved.
The Vice-Chair: Any further comment on the report?
Mr Bob Wood: I will move one of the options once we get the thing adopted.
The Vice-Chair: All those in favour of the adoption of the report? All those opposed? Carried.
Mr Bob Wood: I'd like to move the adoption of option (b) in the report, Mr Chair. I might say, in speaking to this, the minister has indicated that he is prepared to spend a day with the committee in the north, and we think that's an excellent idea. We have seen the expenses that are involved in going north and we don't think we can go north more than once, but we do think it's important that when we go, we have the minister with us. The minister has indicated to me that he is prepared to spend a day with the committee in the north in May, and we are prepared to designate that day as one of our days for the review of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission.
So we are certainly quite happy to proceed with the plan as decided earlier and we are certainly more than happy to go to the north, and we think that's very important, but we want to go with the minister and we think that's the best plan.
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): Mr Chair, I would like to speak in opposition to the motion that's on the table at the moment, and for these reasons. This government is moving very rapidly, to the approval of some and to the dismay and concern and frustration of others, on some issues that are very fundamental to the health and wellbeing of the citizens of the whole province, both economically, socially, healthwise, and most particularly as I consider the impact of some of the decisions that are being made on the citizens of northern Ontario and particularly, in my own instance, the citizens of Sault Ste Marie and surrounds.
Although I suspect and have noticed as I've travelled the north -- and I've been around quite a bit in the last couple of months. I've been to Thunder Bay, I've been to Timmins, and I've driven back and forth through various small communities of northern Ontario as I've come back and forth to Queen's Park. I've spoken to a lot of people. They're concerned by a lot of the decisions that are being made, the impact they're having and the fact that they're happening so quickly and there's so little time to ask any questions or lay concerns on the table or to offer alternatives.
This crosses the board, but there's probably no other issue that is more fundamental to actually anything we do in the north than the question of transportation and good transportation. That in fact is why the ONTC was initiated in the first place and has evolved over the years into the organization that it is today. So anything that you do by way of negative impact on our ability to get around in the north, whether it be road or rail or -- in today's world, where things move so quickly, we want to have access and we need to have access if we're going to be an important part of any economic development and growth, any advancement in the ability to keep people well, any interchange recreationwise or socialwise or from an economic perspective. We need to have sometimes immediate access, and that means that we need to have airports in place.
There are decisions being made by this government at this particular point in time that are going to have some very direct and immediate and serious impact on many of the communities that some of us live in, some of us represent, and that many of us care about in northern Ontario.
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So in having an opportunity in this place vis-à-vis the work that we do here to question and look seriously at how the ONTC operates and what services it provides, and in particular pieces of that, the railway and the airways, we are aware that some major decisions have been made and are beginning to play themselves out now and that there are some time lines in which we are all stuck. That creates some tremendous concern. The people in the north want to have an opportunity to speak to those issues, and they want to have an opportunity to speak in a timely fashion, not after the fact but before the fact, although there's certainly a feeling, even with the time line that we're suggesting via the motion that I will table if given an opportunity following the discussion on the present motion that's on the table, that it would still be after the fact, because decisions are already made that are going to affect air service to many small, vulnerable communities in northern Ontario.
We feel in the north that we haven't had adequate opportunity to explore the alternatives. We feel very strongly that the ONTC and the government have not taken the opportunity to explain to us in detail any impact study they may have carried out, or in fact even allowed for the time or provided the resources necessary to particularly the smaller communities to ascertain for themselves the impact these decisions are going to have on them.
So I'm asking today, with all due respect, and recognizing that the government is honouring our request to review ONTC and to have some people from the north come down here, that we go up there. Too often, decisions are made about parts of this province down here that don't reflect in the end any real understanding of the challenges that we face up there. So I'm suggesting that this committee on March 7, which is the date -- we've scheduled two dates, February 21 and March 7, to deal with this issue. I'm suggesting that this committee travel to Sault Ste Marie, which is the headquarters for the air service, which is the most immediate piece of infrastructure that's going to be affected by decisions that are being made, on March 7, and that we make that decision today and get on with it.
I just can't see putting off this visit that is so important, this opportunity for the people of the north to have some input and to ask some questions and to participate in the decision-making in the way that they will be allowed to, because they will participate in this, until after the air service is closed down, until after decisions that are being made as we speak by ONTC actually come into affect. So I would urge you, across the way, to, with me, encourage those in your caucus who would want to put this off to do it sooner than later, to hear from the north and to make ourselves available to the folks in the north in a more intimate way that would be provided by us going there, and to perhaps either vote against this motion or amend it to see us going to Sault Ste Marie on March 7.
Mr Leadston: Mr Chairman, are we dealing with (a) as the motion or (b)?
The Acting Chair (Mr Bruce Crozier): Mr Wood has moved that the committee hold hearings on Ontario Northland, so we're dealing with transportation commission on February 21 and March 7 in Toronto, and travel north with the minister on a date to be determined, so we're talking about (b).
Mr Leadston: I'm supportive of the motion. I think it's quite vital, and I agree with my colleague in that too often -- and I understand that I, like many of us in this room, am new to this role in political life. But I think it's absolutely vital and very important to the people in our northern communities to demonstrate the democratic process and the legislative function by this committee appearing in the north, particularly when we have a minister who is willing, in my understanding, to travel with us to the north in May, on a date to be determined.
That date isn't etched in stone; it may be moved. Obviously, subject to the minister's timetable and schedule, that date may be flexible. I'm not party to any firm time. But I do think it's essential that this committee give very strong consideration to having the hearings in the Sault or in another northern community because, as I said to one of my colleagues just a short while ago, if you really want to see Ontario, turn the map over. We tend to think of north, in southern Ontario, as north of Steeles, and north of Steeles as downtown to a northerner. I mean, that's due south.
So I do support (b), particularly, as I say, because we do have concurrence that the minister will travel with us on that day for some full and frank discussions with the citizens in our northern communities.
Mr Gravelle: It's certainly encouraging and I think we all appreciate the fact that all members of this committee agree that we should be going to northern Ontario. There's no question that we're all in agreement for it, and I appreciate my colleague's comments just now about the need to get up there. He and I had a private discussion earlier about that very same thing.
I think it is significant -- and I hope this can be discussed, because we haven't had an opportunity to discuss both the options before -- and please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the reason that you might be putting this motion forward is that the minister is not available until that time in terms of being able to be in Sault Ste Marie on that day. The difficulty was the minister couldn't be in Sault Ste Marie on March 7.
Mr Bob Wood: May I interrupt just to answer your question? I gather the Premier is trying to organize a week-long tour in the north, and the minister would like to do this in conjunction with that if possible. He's also indicated to me that he'll come in May even if this other event doesn't materialize. So I have from him a firm indication that he will come with us for a day in the north in May.
Mr Gravelle: That's just great. I think that's really encouraging. But in terms of what we're trying to achieve here, I think it is important, on the basis of timing, that when we discussed it earlier in committee, the idea of having our first session here in Toronto and then on March 7 one in Sault Ste Marie -- it still makes a great deal of sense for us to go forward to have our meeting in Sault Ste Marie on March 7.
Again, the timing is crucial in terms of the end of March being the shutdown date for norOntair, and in that there's agreement, I would hope that you would either amend your resolution or change it so that we could be in Sault Ste Marie on the 7th. We would like to see the minister on the 7th. It appears we can't, but we certainly can see other important people, and if the minister is available in May, I'm sure we'll all look forward to seeing him in May. But in terms of the 7th, I would hope that we could still go forward and have that trip to Sault Ste Marie and have our day session there on March 7. I sense certainly an agreement that we all should be up there, and rather than hold off that and rather than have the session back down here on the 7th, I think we should be in Sault Ste Marie. As I say, I sense that there's some cooperation on your side and some understanding of what we're trying to achieve here. The minister being available in May, if that's it, whatever the trip is, I will look forward to seeing up him there at that time, but I would hope you would amend the resolution so we could be in Sault Ste Marie on March 7.
Mr Bob Wood: I'll respond to that later.
Mr Preston: I think you're correct. I don't think there's anybody who disagrees with a meeting in the north. The timing is the only thing that we're discussing now. I don't believe there's anybody against it.
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Mr Bob Wood: Okay, everybody suggests we should meet with them.
Mr Preston: I'm starting to look at costs now. The general idea was, to begin with, and I believe the idea first came from Mr Kormos, that this could all be done for about 10 grand. Is that not correct?
Mr Bob Wood: That was his estimate.
Mr Preston: Yes, that was just an estimate, but that sounds reasonable.
Mr Martin: The estimate's about $14,000.
Mr Preston: It's gone up to $14,000 if we go twice?
Mr Martin: Once.
Mr Preston: If we go once it's $14,000, if we go twice it's $28,000.
Mr Martin: That's not the price here. We're still only talking once. We don't want to go twice.
Mr Preston: The suggestion was made after yours that we go once and then go up with the minister once.
Interjection.
Mr Preston: Why don't you hire a plane and send them up? Sixty thousand students and they can only get 125 to protest. Shocking.
I'm starting to be concerned about the cost, though. If the minister can't go on the 7th, you're suggesting that we go up anyway, or somebody goes up, and you're also suggesting the minister should be there, which would mean another trip at his --
Mr Martin: Apparently he's going up in May anyway, because he and the Premier --
Mr Preston: That part is not etched in stone. That's trying to be set up. But for our purposes, if he was coming up in May anyway, would this committee go with him? I think it's a matter of timing. I don't know what you want to do about that, Bob. I'm not on the subcommittee, so these aren't my proposals put forward. Number one, we all agree we should go north, so there's no argument about that. We're only concerned with timing, and being concerned with timing, a whole bunch of us have a meeting at 4 o'clock.
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): Let me make a couple of comments, because timing is critical, especially with respect to this issue. Let me say I'm pleased that the committee is prepared to travel to the north. I did find in the time that I was Minister of Northern Development it was very important to be in small communities where people work and live, so that you saw at first hand what their problems were, so that you had a better understanding of what their needs were and so that you could better respond to them. I'm very pleased that the question of going to the north and meeting in a community and hearing deputations from northerners is not the issue.
Secondly, I would be very pleased to see this committee travel with the minister. It would be even better if the minister would make himself available in northern Ontario because he is very scarce in northern Ontario these days, especially when there are some major cuts being made to services, particularly important transportation services, by this same minister.
In fact, if the minister could go and attend and hear deputations about norOntair and about other aspects of ONTC in northern Ontario, we'd be very pleased. The last time we heard from him on this issue was December 18 and we haven't heard from him since with respect to what he's going to do to try and make sure those communities that are going to lose their air service are going to have something after March 29 when norOntair ceases to exist.
The issue of timing is the critical issue. I understand the minister was asked to make himself available in Sault Ste Marie on March 7, and he is on holidays. I find that convenient. However, let me suggest to you that the minister would probably be available on February 21, because I know on February 22, the very next day, he is going to be in Sudbury at the head office of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines.
He is going to be there. He is supposed to be meeting with a number of the northern mayors and reeves of the 17 communities that are directly affected by the decision to cancel norOntair service. This is a meeting that those representatives asked for at the end of November. It has taken some long time to schedule, but it has been scheduled and he will actually be in northern Ontario on that day.
I would like the committee to be in the north. I suggest the committee could look at being in the north with the minister, in Sault Ste Marie, on February 21. It seems to me that if we're really serious about having the minister there, if the minister himself is serious about having some public input before he continues with a decision that is going to devastate a number of northern communities, then he would do his utmost to try to accommodate this committee and try to accommodate northern communities that are worried about this issue and make himself available to deal with this matter in the Sault a day before he is scheduled to be in Sudbury.
I would encourage this committee to either withdraw or amend section (b), ask the minister's staff if he can make himself available to be in the north, in the Sault, on February 21, and that way we could accomplish a number of goals. You will still have your meeting in northern Ontario, you will still have the minister there and you would have a chance to hear from people about the most negative impact this is going to have on their community before the last flight of norOntair actually occurs, which is on March 29.
Mr Hastings: I appreciate the member for Sault Ste Marie's comments about going and finding out what's occurring and impacts and all that. Three specific suggestions for resolving this. One, why don't you have the subcommittee handle it? Two, if the minister isn't available or has other commitments following his Sudbury meeting, perhaps his parliamentary assistant could go on the 22nd or the other date, if available. Three, as a suggestion for cost containment, which some of the other committees are trying, at least the Legislative Assembly committee is attempting, instead of sending everybody, which is nice sometimes and is probably essential most of the time -- in the case of the Legislative Assembly committee, I think 50% of the committee went to visit Ottawa and Quebec City on security concerns.
I put forth that as a possible suggestion. If you have to go twice -- that's the other thing that people are concerned about -- the subcommittee could possibly negotiate who would go as the subcommittee or alternates instead of the whole committee if it's not possible. I make those suggestions to move the item along.
The Acting Chair: With the Legislative Assembly, wasn't it the subcommittee that was going to Ottawa?
Mr Hastings: I don't think it was the exact subcommittee that is the subcommittee of the committee. I think there were two other members. Whatever can be arranged.
Mr Leadston: These are the two options that the subcommittee has tabled with us today. Am I correct?
The Acting Chair: That's correct.
Mr Leadston: In all fairness to the minister -- I personally do not know of his timetable -- there have been three different dates: February 21, March 7, and I believe there was another one mentioned when you would like the minister in Sault Ste Marie. In all fairness and with all due respect to the minister, I do not know his timetable, but I think we have to defer to the minister on what day or days are appropriate.
From one who has a riding in the south, as most of us do, I would like the option, and I'm sure my colleagues on both sides of the House would like an option, to have a dialogue with the people in the northern communities and not leave it to one or two people. I understand and I appreciate the significance of the financial considerations, but this is a legislative committee of this government and I think we owe it to the people of the north or the east or the west to meet with them and discuss their concerns, and that's what this committee is prepared to do. I again emphasize and bear in mind the significant cost, but we are the government and we've indicated a willingness to appear.
I guess it's a question of the date. That's subject to having further discussions with the minister, and I believe Mr Wood or the subcommittee will entertain that.
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Mr Martin: I appreciate that. I just want to table an amendment to (b) here, to the motion that's on the table, and just make a couple of comments. I would like to amend (b) after having listened to everybody and appreciating the concern that's been expressed and the interest that's been expressed, and certainly hoping that you understand the real crisis that faces us re some of the decisions that are being made and our wanting to get this done before the gate's closed and the horses are out as opposed to after.
I suggest that we amend the motion to state that the committee hold hearings on Ontario Northland Transportation Commission on February 21 in Sault Ste Marie and on March 7 in Toronto.
The minister is, I believe, making an effort to be here on the 21st anyway, as part of the contingent ONTC management and the minister. We've invited them to come. It would mean that that group, instead of coming here, would go to Sault Ste Marie and the minister would come. If, as the member for Sudbury has said, the minister is going to be in Sudbury on the 22nd anyway, it might actually be more convenient for him to be up north on the day before that. I don't see where there would be a whole lot of logistical problem there, except if he had some scheduled meetings in the afternoon and evening of the 21st, but as I said, he's scheduled to be here on the morning of the 21st anyway.
I make that amendment with those thoughts in mind. As I've said before, the reason that we're being pretty adamant on the dates on this is that we just feel we need to hear from the people of the north and the communities that are going to be affected directly re some of these decisions before as opposed to after the fact.
Mr Bob Wood: I have to say I cannot support the amendment. I think everyone here agrees on the principles, but we do have a significant disagreement on how to accomplish this. We have no problem with this matter proceeding on February 21 and March 7, at which time you can have whatever people you want here. I understand the deadlines that we're dealing with. There's no reason under our proposal why the committee can't fully deal with all the concerns that you have raised. We do, however, feel that we only have one trip north.
Mr Martin: Make it February 21.
Mr Bob Wood: At a cost of $15,000 we can't do two and we want to make it the most effective trip possible. The way to do that is to have the minister with us. There's not a thing that anyone here wants to do on the 21st and the 7th that can't be done in Toronto. Let's proceed and do that and let's take advantage of what I think is a very excellent offer from the minister and take him up and spend a day and go around and meet with people and find out what they're saying. There's no impediment to the opposition accomplishing what they want to accomplish in our proposal at all.
I've gone through this with the minister, and he has indicated what his schedule is. We can't go back to him three times and say, "Did you really mean it?" We have to assume he really meant it. I do not support the amendment, but I do think the motion (b) is a good motion and I strongly support it.
Mr Gravelle: Mr Wood, with all due respect to it, it seems to me that if we've learned indeed that the minister would be available on the 21st and if indeed we can --
Mr Bob Wood: No.
Mr Gravelle: Well, he was going to be here perhaps. If we can confirm that the minister is going to be in Sudbury on February 22, obviously this is a way of accomplishing all our goals, including the goals that your colleagues and yourself agree we should be doing, which is getting to the north. It simply makes sense to have our trip to Sault Ste Marie on February 21. The minister may indeed find that a perfectly suitable arrangement in terms of his plans for the next day. We'd go to Sault Ste Marie the 21st, which accomplishes that goal, and we'd come back here on the 7th. We're able to do it in the two days.
The minister's trip up in May is obviously planned for separate reasons as well, and if the opportunity does present itself, I can see no reason, at least I can't imagine any reason why you would say we could not check with the minister to see whether indeed he's available on the 21st to be in Sault Ste Marie, in that he's going to be in Sudbury on the 22nd and Ms Martel has confirmed he's going to be there for this specific reason.
The timing seems perfect. It seems to accomplish our goals, which are to get to the north, which you've agreed we should do. We get to the north on the 21st and we come back here and wrap it up on the 7th. I just don't understand why you wouldn't at least pursue it on the basis that this might work out well for the committee and certainly could be very suitable for the minister.
Ms Martel: If I might follow up, I was given the clear understanding that at the subcommittee people were told that the minister was going to make himself available to this committee on February 21. I was clearly given that understanding. If the minister has already committed himself to appearing before this committee on February 21, we do know then that he has set aside some time to do that. For the life of me, I cannot understand why we would not ask him then to accommodate this committee in Sault Ste Marie. He was going to make himself available anyway. The question might be that he has meetings scheduled in the afternoon and the evening. We don't know that for sure, and I'm sure that a member from the government side can check that out with his staff. But he has given a commitment to be here on that day. I think we should see if he cannot be with this committee on that day in Sault Ste Marie.
The committee then accomplishes all of its goals. It gets to go to the north, as members agreed they wanted to do. The committee only then has to travel one time and the minister can do what he wants in May with whomever he wants. The people of northern Ontario get a chance to have a say on this very important issue before the issue is all over and done with, which it will be on March 29.
Frankly, I think if this can't be accommodated, it's only because the minister doesn't want to make himself available in Sault Ste Marie to talk to the people before this happens. I hope that is not the case. So I would most respectfully request from the government members, knowing that the minister is already going to make himself available, that we see if he cannot make himself available on the same day, at the same time, but in Sault Ste Marie.
The Acting Chair: Before we proceed any further, Mr Martin has asked to speak again. We're pretty much divided on how many speakers we've had, so I would ask you to at least consider that this just be one more speaker per caucus. Okay?
Mr Bob Wood: Fine.
Mr Martin: That's fine. I just want to very clearly, and with as much concern and seriousness as I can muster, say to you that transportation in the north is of the utmost importance; it's fundamentally essential to anything that we do. Any change to that, any influence on that to the negative -- and we've had a number of decisions made by this government that have had that kind of impact over the last six months, decisions that have been made very quickly and acted on very quickly, without any time for reaction or input from those of us who are negatively affected by those. It's just not in the long-term best interests of the communities up in that part of the province.
We have a chance here, as a committee of the Legislature, to have a fairly detailed look at where ONTC is going, what is planned for ONTC and to ask some questions and maybe even to lay on the table some ideas we have re the impact of decisions and perhaps what else could be done, in particular the decision that is being made by ONTC, on the direction of the minister, re norOntair.
I'm getting two messages from you across the way. You're telling me, by the things that you're saying, that you want to come to the north, that you understand the need for this committee discussing an issue that is of vital importance to the north, to actually be up there and talking to the people that it affects the most, and yet on the other hand you're telling me that you don't want to go in a timely manner and in fact want to wait until all these decisions are made. There's really not much point in going at that point anyway, particularly where it concerns the question of the future of norOntair and the communities it serves.
I just ask you to consider the juxtaposition that's there and work with us over here as we try to serve our constituents, as we try to offer them the same opportunity that constituents in southern Ontario are so often offered by way of the convenience of just walking over here and participating in some of these discussions around an issue that is of vital importance to the economy, to the health, to the social life, to every aspect of life in northern Ontario as the future unfolds. So I would urge you to please support the amendment.
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The Acting Chair: Any further discussion on the amendment?
Mr Bob Wood: Yes. I'd just like to say we feel, as discussed earlier, that everything that needs to be done on February 21 and March 7 can be accomplished here in Toronto. We're happy to hear whatever witnesses you people want to bring. But we also feel that we only have the resources for one trip north and that trip should be with the minister. We think we're getting the most done by our proposal. That's why we're going to oppose the amendment put forward by Mr Martin and we're going to support the motion based on (b).
Mr Gravelle: Mr Wood, if you truly want to be credible in terms of speaking to people in the north about what your intentions are, clearly it's extremely important that the hearings get to northern Ontario and get to Sault Ste Marie before the end of March. I recognize that it may put you in a position or your party in a position where you're going to be dealing with people who are going to be expecting some strong points of view, but I know you're not afraid of that. I think you've invited that you want to have that.
It's hard to imagine that you could be taken seriously, that you intend to accomplish those goals, by simply putting it off when indeed the minister may indeed be, and in fact probably is, available on the 21st to be in Sault Ste Marie. I think we need to at least investigate that. I'll be quite happy to go and see himself myself right now if that would help. Because I think that if you really do want to maintain your credibility about your eagerness to be in the north, indeed you will at least investigate that possibility of the 21st in Sault Ste Marie, recognizing that indeed there will be some heat that perhaps you'll feel up there. But again, I'm sure that it's something you would not be afraid to get, I would hope.
It's important. My colleagues have spoken very eloquently about it and I can only echo what they're saying: It's important. If you really do want to hear the voice of those of us in northern Ontario, you've got to go there and you've got to go there, in this case. before March 29. It appears the circumstances are set up so that this can work out perfectly, as it turns out. I wasn't even aware at noon at the minister was going to be available on the 21st. So this is obviously something that can happen and so I think it really is a question of credibility in terms of your eagerness to be in the north. This is the time to be up there. I may say it would be also not a bad idea to be up there during the winter to see what some of the conditions are like up there, for those who are not familiar with that. I would like at this time to also invite Mr Palladini to be there with us.
Ms Martel: To drive there.
Mr Gravelle: Whatever. But I think it really is a point of credibility here and I would think you would at least, before you vote on this resolution, investigate whether or not the minister indeed will be available on the 21st. He was going to be at the hearings here on the 21st. Clearly, the 21st in Sault Ste Marie will work out in an absolutely perfect way and will give him an opportunity to meet the northerners he says he wants to meet, meet all of us up there in the north. It's a scenario that, unless you're willing to accept it, it's hard to take you seriously that you really do want to come to the north to meet with us on this issue.
Mr Martin: Absolutely.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, members. Are you now ready for the question?
Mr Martin: Recorded vote.
Ayes
Gravelle, Martin.
Nays
Fox, Leadston, Hastings, Bert Johnson, Newman, Preston, Bob Wood.
The Acting Chair: The amendment is defeated. So we're back then to the main motion that was made by Mr Wood. Is there any further discussion on the main motion?
Mr Martin: I just want to say that I'm really disappointed. I thought we had a feeling of understanding about this and how important the timing was. I don't know really, because you haven't put on the table, the real reasons for this delay. That disappoints me as well. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the fact that your budget will probably be out by then and you'll be into a big public relations campaign around that and all that entails. But I just wish you would have been a bit more honest with us around why it is that you don't want to come up in a time that will allow for some discussion about these very important issues before the damage is done, as opposed to after. So I'm going to be voting against this motion as well.
Ms Martel: Very briefly, I don't want to blame the committee members here. I'm sure they got their marching orders before they got here today and were told not to try and accommodate this request at any cost. Having the committee go in May, when norOntair is not flying any more, is absolutely ridiculous.
Mr Bert Johnson: Excuse me, Ms Martel. I have a point of order, Mr Chair: I think that my motives are being impugned here and I object.
The Acting Chair: I'll take that under consideration. Ms Martel.
Ms Martel: To go in May, when norOntair is already closed down, is ridiculous. That points very strongly to the fact that the minister has no intention of hearing from northern communities, no intention of even trying to understand the negative impacts in terms of health care, in terms of economic development on those 17 communities in northern Ontario that are served by this company. There are nine communities that will have no scheduled air service after March 29 -- none. The minister himself, on December 16, stood in Thunder Bay in front of a TV camera and said he would guarantee that those communities would have service when norOntair was eliminated. Those communities are not going to have service. Those communities are not getting any help at all from this ministry.
We heard in Timmins last week, when we met with a number of those communities, that they haven't seen or heard from the minister or his staff or anyone else who is concerned about trying to make sure they have some scheduled flight after norOntair is eliminated. In nine of those communities there were 4,500 people evacuated by air ambulance over the last three years. When those airports are closed, how the hell are we going to get people out of those communities to get health care? They can't travel for three and a half hours from Chapleau to go to Sudbury in an emergency.
The minister needs to hear about these things and he has refused to hear about these things. What the committee should have done, and what the minister should have done if he had any guts at all, was to go to the north on February 21, because I'm sure he's available, to hear directly from these folks and to give them a chance for the first time to tell it like it is and to tell him what the problems are of shutting down this air service. I think it's just absolutely unacceptable that he would send you folks in here today to do his dirty work, because that's what he's done, and that he doesn't have enough guts to make himself available to talk to the representatives of those communities who need this air service. Shame on him and shame on you folks for having to come in here and deliver this.
The Acting Chair: We're back to impugning again, so we'd better be careful. Mr Gravelle.
Mr Gravelle: I'll be very brief as well. Perhaps I'm naïve, and maybe it's just being a newly elected member, but I must admit that I truly thought half an hour ago that we had a genuine understanding and a genuine agreement among the members across that indeed it was important that we get up to northern Ontario to discuss the ramifications of the ONTC. I felt good about it. I must admit that as a result of what's happened in the last 20 minutes or so, I am really quite shaken by it. I realize that's perhaps where I'm just going to have to toughen up, because I really believed that we wanted to have a co-operative sense. We found a perfect solution in terms of the minister being able to get there, in terms of not having two trips up there, having an opportunity to do it at the right time, and it's clear that's not what you want to accomplish. So I'm feeling bitterly disappointed about that and will certainly be voting against this resolution.
Mr Leadston: Very quickly, I have very strong sympathies with your position. However, and I said very clearly in the outset of my remarks earlier, I have no idea what the honourable minister's timetable is. I don't know. I can't dictate to that particular minister his time frame and his schedule any more than I could dictate to you or to one of my colleagues.
Mr Gravelle: So we call him.
Ms Martel: On the cell phone.
Mr Leadston: In that respect, there have been three dates bantered around. I'm not about to establish a flight time or a date for a minister or a backbencher unless I have some concurrence and some discussion with them. That's my position. I'm sorry.
Mr Gravelle: Put off this vote until we have --
Mr Bob Wood: I'm not going to repeat the arguments I've already made, because we think this is a good plan, but I might say I am disappointed that those on the opposite side are going to vote against a motion that gives us a day with the minister in the north. However, we're going to vote for it because we think it's a good motion. Perhaps we can now put the motion.
Mr Martin: The issue isn't a day in the north with the minister -- you could have a raffle about that one -- but the issue is getting this committee up there to hear some good, honest input from the people of the north on the issue of transportation and the ONTC and norOntair.
Mr Bob Wood: We hope you'll bring them down.
The Acting Chair: Mr Gravelle, and then I'm going to ask the indulgence of the members that we not add anything to the discussion that hasn't been already stated.
Mr Gravelle: Before we vote on this resolution, I simply ask you, Mr Wood, to make a call to the minister to see if he's available on the 21st to be in Sault Ste Marie. That's all we ask.
Mr Bob Wood: We've already had that discussion and I'm not going to argue.
Mr Gravelle: You won't ask him whether he's available on the 21st?
Mr Bob Wood: I'm not going to raise it again. We've already had the discussion.
Mr Gravelle: It doesn't matter if he's available, in other words.
Mr Bob Wood: I move, Mr Chair, that the question now be put.
The Acting Chair: The motion has been made that the question now be put. All those in favour that the question now be put? It's carried.
Now, all those in favour of the original motion, which was (b) in the subcommittee report? Opposed? It's carried.
Mr Bob Wood: One further matter I'd speak to that flows out of this: We're going to have to make a request, I think, to the House leaders to get an order or a resolution, or whatever it's called, from the House to permit us to make this trip in May. I'd like to put on record the fact I'm going to request that of our House leader. I hope the other two parties may consider making a similar request to their House leader.
The Acting Chair: Would it be proper, Mr Wood? We don't know the date yet.
Mr Bob Wood: That's quite right. I'm saying I think we should notify our House leaders that this request is going to come forward, which it's going to.
The Acting Chair: Would we have a date when the minister --
Mr Bob Wood: No, I'm not making a motion now.
The Acting Chair: You'll bring this up at a later date?
Mr Bob Wood: That's right, and I'm going to inform our House leader now that we're going to request that. Others may wish to consider doing that.
The Acting Chair: Prior to adjourning, there's been a little dust-up at the front door and it's been asked that you proceed directly to your offices. In other words, go to the basement and across the other way. Just avoid the first floor, if you can.
The committee adjourned at 1613.