Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce to the members a group of 25 students from W. H. Morden Public School in Oakville who are with us today in the west gallery.

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce to you, and through you to the members of the Legislature, a group of young ladies from Seneca College, King campus, who are enrolled in the secretarial course.

POINT OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: The point of privilege first.

Mr. Singer: I wish to draw to your attention, sir, what I think is a blatant breach of the privilege of the members of this House by a senior civil servant.

Apparently there is to be tabled in the House today, by the Attorney General (Mr. Welch), a report of the Law Reform Commission dealing with family law. Copies of this report were made available on Friday by a senior official of the Attorney General’s department to two Toronto newspapers, and only to two Toronto newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the Star. They were not solicited by these papers; the reports were handed to representatives of these papers.

Not only were all the rest of the news media ignored -- The Canadian Press, all the radio and television stations and so on -- but much more serious, Mr. Speaker, was the fact that this information was first brought to the attention of the public by news stories far in advance of the information being available to the members of the House.

It would be my submission, sir, that there has been a very serious breach of the privileges of the House; that information of this sort, commissioned by this House, directed to the Law Reform Commission, has no right to be handled in this way; and that for whatever reasons, the official of the Attorney General’s department acted in serious breach of the privileges of this House, and I think he should be disciplined by you, sir.

Mr. Speaker: Of course I am sure that the facts submitted by the hon. member for Downsview are correct. I have not had any prior knowledge of the situation, nor do I have any other information than that submitted by the hon. member for Downsview, which I do, of course, accept as being correct at this moment.

Before I undertake to make any further comments, while it does appear as if there has been a breach of privilege, I would ask the indulgence of the hon. member, and the House indeed, for time to look into this matter and to get all of the information available so that I might be in a position to comment further upon it.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): On the point of privilege just for a moment, Mr. Speaker, I am so relieved to have this particular report out and public that one would almost excuse anything. But I must say, apart from the apparent impropriety of giving it only to selected news media representatives, it really is a bit much, Mr. Speaker, that the report could not simultaneously be tabled in the House so that those of us who are called to comment on it, on any side of the House, might have an opportunity to scan through it as quickly as those from the media.

Mr. Maeck: I would like to introduce some students from the great riding of Parry Sound, 29 grade 8 students from the elementary school at Britt, who are in the east gallery.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

CONSOLIDATED COMPUTER INC.

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): Mr. Speaker, I have a statement regarding Consolidated Computer Inc., which is being released by the federal agency and the company at this very hour. I wish at this time to inform the hon. members of new financing arrangements being entered into by the Ontario Development Corp, and the federal government’s General Adjustment Assistance Board with respect to support for Consolidated Computer Inc. This new joint support programme will enable the company to expand in both the North American and overseas computer markets.

As members may be aware, Consolidated Computer is the largest Canadian-owned computer manufacturing company. Their products are already installed in 18 countries throughout the world. The company has developed two new products, the Key-Edit 50 and the Key-Edit 1000 systems, which have not yet been introduced to the North American market, although the Ontario government has recently purchased the 50 system for the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and the federal government for its Manpower division has purchased the 1000 system.

The General Adjustment Assistance Board has indicated willingness to support a lease-financing programme for the marketing of the company’s products here in North America. It is our understanding that they will have a financing programme up to a maximum of $26 million. New federal and provincial support will be provided through a plan that will make available up to $7 million to the company in additional operating funds during 1974. Of that amount, $3 million has now been advanced, half by GAAB and half by ODC. Over the long term, the plan foresees increased participation in the ownership of the company by private industry.

I think it would be useful, Mr. Speaker, for me to say a few words about the history of Consolidated Computer Inc. It was formed in 1968 and became a public company in 1969. In the fall of 1971 the company suffered a liquidity crisis and went into receivership. However, with the support of ODC and GAAB the company was reorganized and was profitable in 1972.

During 1972 and 1973 the company carried out a major redesign of its products and restructured its plant and products into two new systems. Development expense amounted to several million dollars. Large orders were secured from two firms in Europe and Japan and South America. Two of the company’s overseas customers, ICL in England and Fujitsu in Japan, are the largest non-American computer companies. Unfortunately the development of the new system took longer and cost more than anticipated which resulted in losses in 1973.

In spite of these losses, the company’s current prospects, while carrying some risks, are believed sufficient to merit the support of GAAB and ODC in attempting to penetrate the North American market and expand into overseas markets. The prime objective of our assistance is to help develop a viable, self-sustaining Canadian-owned and operated company that is based on high technology. There are certainly risks associated with any venture into this area but we consider that the company has a reasonable chance of achieving this objective.

This year the company expects to export $23 million worth of its new systems, purchase $5 million in Canadian components and increase employment above the current rate of 550, of whom 400 are in Ottawa associated with the company’s engineering and manufacturing operations. To date direct loans or guaranteed advances from ODC amounted to $4.3 million. Under the new programme, ODC may advance another $3.5 million.

We will, of course, monitor the operations of Consolidated Computer very closely. There are several conditions to the agreement for the extension of the funds. We have already taken steps to ensure that over the next few months, the company’s management will have the best support available. To this end ODC and GAAB have arranged for the appointment of Mr. W. V. (Bill) Moore, former president of IBM Canada, as full-time interim chairman of the board of Consolidated Computer.

Hon. members will no doubt have taken note that the Ontario Securities Commission, in consultation with the company, temporarily suspended trading of Consolidated Computer stock last Friday. This action was taken to enable the financial community to properly assess the impact of these new arrangements on the company’s financial status.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions. The hon. member for York Centre.

WITHDRAWAL OF TEACHERS’ SERVICES

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) I wish to ask the Premier if, in view of the fact that the chairman of the negotiating committee a week ago suggested the possibility of the minister’s setting up a trusteeship, and in view of the fact that I now have 7,309 names in two days, names of registered voters who wish such a trusteeship, will the government --

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): The member went out soliciting on Saturday.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Did the member consult with his leader?

Mr. Deacon: In the event of a lack of agreement being reached by continued negotiations today, or the teachers not agreeing to voluntary binding arbitration by 9 p.m. tonight, will the government introduce legislation it might feel is necessary to set up a trusteeship, or at least follow the path the government used on a previous occasion when a board got into financial difficulty and under section 12(1) of the Ministry of Education Act did set up legislation for trusteeship. Will the Premier undertake to do that?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): No, Mr. Speaker, the Premier won’t.

Mr. Deacon: In light of the fact that for over five weeks students have not been educated in the high schools of York county, at least not a full education, and the fact that something has to be done and that voluntary arbitration is preferable to compulsory arbitration, will the Premier indicate to us what he will do?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Is the member making a speech or asking a question?

Mr. Lewis: He is asking for compulsory arbitration.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The acting leader of the opposition party, in his usual convoluted way, is asking this government, in solving the problem, to encroach upon local autonomy about which he preaches with such vigour from time to time.

Mr. Singer: It’s the government’s problem, why shouldn’t the Premier solve it?

Hon. Mr. Davis: The answer is that this government is far more concerned, obviously, about the welfare of those 14,000 students than the members of the opposition. This has been evident here for a long time. But I would think the hon. members response the other night at the meeting of the board, where many board members disagreed, and members of the public as well, with the approach that he was taking, should have been sufficient indication.

The Minister of Education has worked on this problem, as he has on the other 16, with a great deal of success; the York one has not been successful to date. It poses a very real problem for this government and it is our hope that we can come to grips with it.

But I would say with respect, to the acting leader of that party, that it’s time the hypocrisy was over; they should recognize that having voted against Bill 274, as they did, which bill was intended to bring some of these things to an end, and today coming in here as they are, is just completely contradictory.

Mr. Deacon: Would the Premier not agree --

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West wanted a supplementary.

Mr. Deacon: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member has had one. We’ll take turns on it.

Mr. Lewis: The hon. member can open it again if he wishes.

Can I ask the Premier; could he table the document which the Minister of Education submitted as a basis for arbitration, or could he tell us specifically of its content as it relates to non-monetary items?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can’t recite these matters specifically. There were several items contained in the proposal from the minister to the board and to the profession, which I understand was acceptable, and I think as a matter of fact was executed by the board; but the various items in it I can’t relate to the hon. member. However I do believe I can get him a copy of it.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary.

Mr. W. Hodgson: Mr. Speaker, supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary?

Mr. W. Hodgson: In view of the proposition put forward by the member for York Centre, has it been drawn to the Premier’s attention at any time that the board of education in the county of York has been acting irresponsibly?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, if that question is directed to me, or through me to the acting leader of the opposition party, it’s quite obvious that the acting leader of the opposition party is saying that York county board is incapable, is acting irresponsibly and is not acting in the interests of the elected people in that part of the Province of Ontario; I am not prepared to say that.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Supplementary.

Mr. Deacon: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Deacon: In view of the fact that the Premier has talked about hypocrisy, would not the Premier agree that five weeks of no school in York and the minister’s intervention being so ineffective would indicate maybe there is hypocrisy on his side?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would say this, and I will quote to members opposite, chapter and verse, the observations made by some of their own members as to how a few weeks out of school would be a good thing for the kids. I say to the House that this government is far more concerned than members opposite about the educational welfare of the children in York. And this was demonstrated here last December. The member should read what his leader said in Peterborough.

Mr. Deacon: The Premier didn’t help education quality then.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Come on. The member knows better.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order. In keeping with the programme of alternating, it is the NDP’s turn. The hon. member for Port Arthur.

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although the Premier cannot remember the details of the documents submitted by the minister and executed by the board, can he recall if the contentious pupil-teacher ratio was specifically mentioned in the document, and the assurance to the teachers that that ratio would not be above the provincial average?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I have a copy of the document here. The minister is meeting on this situation at this precise moment. I expect he will be here fairly shortly. Quite frankly, because there are discussions going on, I would like to talk to the minister before I table this as a public document; but I do have it here and if the minister has no objection we will undertake to do it.

Mr. Lewis: It is kind of crucial to the debate.

Mr. Speaker: This must not develop into a debate and there have been five supplementaries. I will permit one more; the hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that the parents of the children attending these North York secondary schools have made arrangements for their children to attend Toronto secondary schools, what action does the ministry plan on taking to ensure that they are in attendance at the North York schools?

Mr. Lewis: How is the member going to vote when he brings it in?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, one would think that the member for Windsor-Walkerville, who had something to contribute with respect to the debates of last December, wouldn’t be too concerned that the children have only been out the five weeks. I recall very factually how this was a good educational experience, some of it flowing from over in the other opposition party admittedly.

I would say to the hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville that the attendance by the York students within the Metropolitan Toronto school system, in my opinion, does not constitute a viable alternative to the proper functioning of the educational system in York itself; so we are not encouraging it.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York Centre on a new question.

CONSOLIDATED COMPUTER INC.

Mr. Deacon: A question of the Minister of Industry and Tourism: In view of the fact that we have just heard the announcement about Consolidated Computer, is it proposed to give some of the government business now awarded to IBM to Consolidated Computer to help this company?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, in my statement I have already covered that very point. One of the machines, the new production, the 50 model, has been purchased by the government of Ontario for the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Complimentary remarks should be paid to the federal government; it has purchased the 1000 series for the Manpower centre in Ottawa as well. That, I think, speaks well of both governments trying to stimulate some activity with a Canadian company.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York Centre.

MANAGEMENT BOARD ORDERS

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Chairman of the Management Board: In view of item No. 66 in the auditor’s report indicating that Management Board orders amounted to some $110 million, of which $96 million was actually spent, why was it not possible for this very substantial amount of money -- as I would consider it and I think most people in the province would consider it -- to be approved by cabinet and presented to the Legislature? Was there a shortage of time or was it considered to be an insignificant amount?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, all these moneys, of course, are spent in the public’s best interest and it is not always --

An hon. member: Is that right?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I say yes to the member. It is not always that the moneys which appear in Management Board orders are separate items; they are often transferred within departments. Therefore if the member wanted to be specific and had a point I would answer it.

Mr. Deacon: A supplementary: In view of the fact that most of the moneys, or a good part of the moneys, are spent before this Legislature does consider them, because we don’t get into the estimates until after the budget is handed down and we don’t complete their consideration until late in the year, would it not be appropriate for these Management Board orders to indeed be placed before the Legislature for consideration during the year so that we actually do have an opportunity to comment upon them and whether, in our view, they are in the public interest?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, there is a Management Board of Cabinet Act, as I am sure the hon. member knows, and he will have the opportunity to discuss: them in due course when the estimates are before the committee.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary, surely the Chairman of the Management Board must recognize the basic principle of responsibility to the Legislature, and through the Legislature to the people of Ontario, for expenditures. Would the chairman not agree that the expenditure of $100 million by Management Board order is stretching the credibility of the people of Ontario and is really spending money without proper legislative review?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, that is not the case. The Management Board of Cabinet Act was passed by this Legislature, and we conform to it very rigidly.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary? The hon member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Attorney General: Will the Attorney General tell us how long he has had the Board orders when his estimates come up. That, I think he will agree, will be about 15 months after the actual expenditure of the money. What steps will he take in future in order to ensure the possibility of debate of Management Board orders at or around the time that the money is being spent?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, the entire matter is open to discussion and surveillance by the public accounts committee and, as far as the calling of estimates is concerned, I think the hon. member knows full well that we spent more time last year than we have ever spent before. As far as that session was concerned, the members opposite had the opportunity but it was used for other purposes; I have no arguments there. When the opportunity comes for the estimates to appear before the estimates committee, I will be there.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s current estimates. We are talking about a year ago.

LAW REFORM COMMISSION REPORTS ON FAMILY LAW

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Attorney General: Will the Attorney General tell us how long he has had the Ontario Law Reform Commission reports on family law and when we can expect to receive legislation based on it for consideration by this House?

Hon. R. Welch (Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General): Well, Mr. Speaker, I just happen to have some copies of the report with me this afternoon, which I am going to table; and following full public discussion, our legislative proposal will be placed before this House.

Mr. Singer: Why did the minister give it to the papers on Friday?

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: What was the point of leaking the report in the fashion he did prior to its being tabled in the House and only to selective groups in the media?

Mr. Singer: Two papers.

Mr. Lewis: How did he come to that decision?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Well, I think the word “selective” is a very unfortunate word to use --

Mr. Foulds: It was a very unfortunate practice.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Quite accurate, though.

Hon. Mr. Welch: It’s a very good word, but it doesn’t happen to describe what happened, so there’s a nice distinction.

Mr. Singer: What did happen?

Hon. Mr. Welch: If I might just explain the procedures: There are occasions when the Ontario Law Reform Commission’s reports have in fact been released prior to them being tabled in the House. The Attorney General, I understand from the legislation, can decide how in fact he makes these reports public or what reports he does make public. But let me explain, quite frankly, what I did in connection with this: These three reports were there. The contents, as far as I am concerned, have far- and wide-ranging implications. There are those in the media who, I think, are very responsible and who suggested that if in fact it was to be properly reported, there might be some advantage if they had the opportunity to study the report --

Mr. Singer: Oh, come on. Only two of the media of the whole province are responsible?

Hon. Mr. Welch: -- so that in fact they could quite correctly expand on it in the course of reporting. Therefore, those who requested it, on the understanding that it would not appear until such time as it was tabled --

Mr. Singer: Oh, that dirty old Globe!

Hon. Mr. Welch: -- they in fact were given copies of the report.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: The Globe will not observe release dates.

Hon. Mr. Welch: All I say, all I say -- well, so I understand, so I read --

Mr. Lewis: The minister is a novice in politics.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Yes, but the point that I want to make --

Mr. Singer: The terrible Globe and Mail!

Hon. Mr. Welch: -- is that with that particular understanding, copies of the reports, which I will table later this afternoon, were made available --

Mr. Lewis: To whom?

Mr. Singer: To whom?

Hon. Mr. Welch: To anyone who requested them.

Mr. Lewis: Anyone who requested them?

Hon. Mr. Welch: That’s right.

Mr. Singer: Didn’t the minister’s executive assistant hand them to representatives of the two papers?

Mr. Lewis: We requested them in the House.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, whose question am I answering at the moment?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Does the minister know the question?

Hon. Mr. Welch: The point I want to get across is that that is exactly what happened; and if there are any members of the House who feel affronted by this, I apologize. I did that -- quite frankly, that’s exactly what I did on Friday.

Mr. Lewis: Somebody asked and the minister gave them to them.

Hon. Mr. Welch: This was the understanding. Now, as a matter of principle, the legislation does not preclude the release of reports before they are tabled in the House; so when you put it into that context, there has been nothing done to violate any statute --

Mr. Singer: Shame on you.

Hon. Mr. Welch: -- or any particular rule or regulation. In fact, up to this time there are two copies of reports which were released and one of which is not yet tabled.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, could the --

Mr. Speaker: Is this a supplementary?

Mr. Singer: Yes, a supplementary: Could the Attorney General explain why his executive assistant sought out representatives just of the Star and of the Globe and gave them copies and ignored everyone else? Are those the only two news media that can be trusted in this province?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, the question is not properly worded because my executive assistant sought out no one for copies of the reports. The representations with respect to having these reports were made to him by representatives of the media so that they could adequately report them.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of further supplementary, could the Attorney General tell us how long ago the executive assistant was sought out, who sought him out, and whether, when the decision was made to release copies of these documents to these representatives, why the executive assistant did not seek out representatives, say, of The Canadian Press, of the Ottawa newspapers, the Hamilton newspapers, the Windsor newspapers, the radio stations, the television stations?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Would that have made it all right?

Mr. Singer: Or least of all, to seek out members of the Legislature who had expressed more than a passing interest in these reports?

Mr. Lewis: The government may even have to hold a press conference.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, certainly on the basis of the experience, under these circumstances, the hon. member can be assured that different procedures will be followed in the future and we will, in fact, invite everyone to what is referred to as a “lock up,” when everyone will have access to them.

I am sorry if there has been any misunderstanding, either among members of the House or among members of the gallery. It was certainly unintentional on my part and I was acting in what I thought was the best interests of the public in order to have this type of reporting with respect to a very important matter. And, quite frankly, I have no other explanation to give. Really.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. It would seem to me --

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): I have a supplementary remark, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would like --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The Speaker would like to make a remark at this point. It would seem to me that the point of privilege as raised by the hon, member for Downsview, by virtue of a debate that has taken place, has now been clarified and there will be no further necessity on the part of the Speaker to make any other comments.

Mr. Singer: You should chop off the Attorney General’s head.

Mr. Speaker: I will now permit further supplementaries.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: In view of the fact that the Attorney General, in replying to our leader’s remarks, mentioned public hearings, would the Attorney General now tell this House what procedure he is prepared to set up for public hearings on this particularly urgent matter?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, at the time of tabling the report I will, in fact, share with the House some initial statements with respect to this. Certainly I want a very wide discussion of this matter before we proceed, and indeed would welcome any suggestions from the hon. member to ensure that we, in fact, are covering all possible groups or individuals who may want to make some comments insofar as the follow-up on these reports is concerned.

Mrs. Campbell: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: On that I wonder what we mean by wide publication and hearings. What length of time does the Attorney General consider would be adequate to come to some conclusions in this matter?

Hon. Mr. Welch: I think it would be difficult to specify certain periods. I would want to be satisfied, Mr. Speaker, that there was sufficient time to allow all who were obviously interested in this matter to express views with respect to it.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. member for York Centre have further questions? The hon. member for Scarborough West.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): It will still be in in time for the election.

Mr. Lewis: The Minister of Education having appeared in the House -- well, let me ask a question of one of his colleagues while he chats with the Premier. Could I ask a question of the Minister of Natural Resources? Why will his ministry not release the most recent annual statistical report on the mineral production of Ontario?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, this question has never been asked of me, and we will release the information.

Mr. Renwick: Good.

Mr. Lewis: Well, then he is countermanding what we have specifically been told twice by the mineral resources branch of his ministry -- that the report is available, but was not to be released publicly. It has been available for some time and printed for some time, I gather.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I think this change came about three years ago when Management Board in an austerity move to cut down the amount of material that was put in the annual report --

Mr. Renwick: We have noticed. It has been cut down. To eliminate the minister’s picture perhaps.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- chose to pull this information out, and to narrow down and put a little more efficiency in the report. But this information has always been made available to the public on request.

Mr. Lewis: Fine. Well, will the minister table this document in the House?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you.

WITHDRAWAL OF TEACHERS’ SERVICES

Mr. Lewis: I have a question of the Minister of Education. Could he advise us in any way how the teachers are responding to his ultimatum? If, for reasons of negotiation, he wants to qualify that, can he table in the House the document which he signed with the chairman of the York county board as a basis for arbitration?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Yes, Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to. If the hon. member wishes to have it tabled afterwards, I will table it at the appropriate time. I can send him a copy if he would like it. It’s a public document. It was given to the press yesterday afternoon, and we are now waiting, although the teachers have said that they will not accept it. I gave a 9 o’clock deadline and I’m waiting for an answer.

Hon. Mr. Welch: The public has a right to know.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes. The hon. member sort of smiles when I mention it is a public document.

Mrs. Campbell: I laughed out aloud.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I have always held that the public should be informed on these things. That’s precisely why this document was made public.

Mrs. Campbell: Before the House, Mr. Speaker?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, this really is not --

Hon. Mr. Welch: On Sunday when we were working on it.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- a document of this House. This is a proposal by the Minister of Education to two parties who are engaged in a bargaining dispute. I think I would be very happy to table it in the House, but for the hon, member to suggest that it should have been tabled in this House before it was made public is preposterous.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West.

TENDERS FOR CIVIL SERVICE INSURANCE PACKAGE

Mr. Lewis: Could I ask the Chairman of the Management Board whether he is recommending to the London Life consortium of companies which hold the fringe benefit package for the civil servants of Ontario that that consortium be broken up at the point of next tender and that free and open tenders be made available for all insurance companies which choose?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I don’t object to that suggestion. As a matter of fact, I think that was the case the last time the package was tendered. It just so happened that the consortium was made up of the companies that are. Those people had an opportunity to tender too. As a matter of fact, the method of tendering is discussed by the commission and by the members of the CSAO; so I have no hesitation in saying that I’ll consider that.

Mr. Lewis: Well, there is a difference between considering it and accepting it. Will the minister put that fringe benefit package out to open tender where any one member of the consortium may tender rather than the consortium as a whole?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Yes, I will.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you. I’m having difficulty asking questions, because when I turned around I thought the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle) was here. He is not.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Yes, he is here. He’s coming in.

OHC BUDGET

Mr. Lewis: Sorry. Could I ask the Minister of Housing a question first? In the light of his vigorous housing initiatives, why has the revised budget estimate for this year for the Ontario Housing Corp. been dropped by $20 million in the most recent publication of Ontario finances?

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, I’ll have to look into that question and give the hon. member an answer as quickly as possible.

DAY NURSERIES ACT REGULATIONS

Mr. Lewis: Thank you. I have one final question of the Minister of Community and Social Services. When will he provide the regulations under Bill 160 -- the provision of day care -- which would govern co-operative and non-profit day care in the Province of Ontario?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): Mr. Speaker, those regulations should be in force this month. They’ve all been approved. They will be gazetted, I would hope, this month, so they should be in force this month.

Mr. Lewis: And they will take effect when? At the moment they are proclaimed?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Yes, I believe so, Mr. Speaker, on the date they are proclaimed.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. member for Scarborough West have further questions?

Mr. Lewis: No.

Mr. Speaker: If not, the hon. Minister of Energy has the answer to a question asked previously.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF PUBLIC WORKS

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Minister of Energy): Mr. Speaker, on Thursday last I was asked certain questions by the member for Ottawa Centre pertaining to the Arnprior dam. He suggested that I was not making certain information available. I’m pleased to table today --

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Did the minister change his mind?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- letters which have been written to the member for Ottawa Centre by the vice-chairman of the then Hydro-Electric Power Commission, dated Jan. 31, 1974, Nov. 19, 1973 and Dec. 20, 1973; together with certain material which was supplied to the member under date of Jan. 31; a letter from the chairman of the then commission to me, dated Aug. 23, 1973; certain documents of the commission, a study of the generation projects division dated May, 1972, a report of the study on the impact on the community dated March, 1972, and a report entitled “Geotechnical Feasibility Studies” dated January, 1972. All these reports have been provided to the member.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Now the hon. member has to read them.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: They are tabled in the House.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Minister of Natural Resources also has the answer to a question.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary? All right.

Mr. Cassidy: I appreciate all the information which I have had from Mr. Evans and Mr. Gathercole and other people in the ministry concerning the Arnprior dam. The unfortunate thing was, and the reason I raised the question in the Legislature, Mr. Speaker, none of that information, in fact, provided a satisfactory explanation for the initial decision to construct the dam.

That is why I asked last week in the Legislature if the minister would table the engineering feasibility study which was another document in that series which included community impact, environment and geotechnical feasibility studies. Those three studies have been made available but the minister last week said he would not make the engineering feasibility study available, nor would he make available information prepared by the geologists who reported to Hydro on the project at the start.

In view of the openness he is now displaying, would he undertake to table in the Legislature the engineering feasibility study and the geological material provided to Hydro in order that we can have as complete a record as possible?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, I think the information which has been provided is more than sufficient.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary: Could the minister explain how the information provided can be deemed to be satisfactory when the basic engineering feasibility data have not yet been tabled?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I doubt very much, Mr. Speaker, if even I could explain that to the member’s satisfaction.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary: Would the minister explain why the ministry is being so defensive as to deny information after seeking for a while to provide information about this project? What is it that the government is trying to cover up with this project?

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): The feasibility study said “don’t build it.”

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, this party and this government tries to cover up nothing. We are not going to get down and play cheap little games like the member has been playing for the last several weeks.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: What is it about this engineering feasibility study which has the minister so frightened? Why can it not be made a public document so we can see the basis on which the decision was arrived at? Why does the minister have to hide this particular study? Why is it so central?

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): The member is so concerned about it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, we have provided all kinds of information to the member. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t believe it.

Mr. Lewis: He has read it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: He continually quotes it out of context and plays some sort of little game which we are not about to play.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Stokes: If the minister has nothing to hide why hide it?

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): A supplementary to the minister: Did the feasibility study recommend against building the dam?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No.

Mr. MacDonald: It didn’t? Will he table it so we can come to our conclusions on that point?

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: The minister states that I have been quoting material out of context. I think that is a serious charge to make in the Legislature.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The member’s colleague --

Mr. Renwick: They do it all the time over there.

Hon. Mr. Davis: He is laughing.

Mr. Havrot: Give us another funny one.

Mr. Cassidy: Would the minister kindly cite where or how he feels I have been quoting material out of context? Would he explain why Hydro is refusing to provide information because it says we might not be able to understand it? Does he consider that is a justifiable reason for refusing information to this Legislature?

Mr. Havrot: The expert on everything.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Perhaps the member could explain if Hydro was referring to him or to others; or just him in particular?

Mr. Cassidy: I don’t know.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker, I would like you to take into consideration the refusal of the Minister of Energy to provide the document legitimizing a project of $78 million -- all of which is public money -- by a Crown corporation, allegedly accountable to this House? I say, Mr. Speaker, that the minister cannot refuse to table that kind of study. It must be tabled in this House. It is part of his ministerial responsibility. If he thumbs his nose at us on this, he thumbs his nose at everything. It should be made a public document so that the questions can be asked. Who does he think he is, other than Darcy McKeough?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I hardly think that is a question, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: It was a point of privilege to the Speaker.

Mr. Cassidy: On the point of privilege, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Havrot: Oh, sit down.

Mr. Cassidy: I would just add that for all the information provided --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: There is no information by Hydro to justify this dam --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: This is a misuse of the question period.

Mr. Cassidy: -- apart from the political desirability of electing the member for Renfrew South.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. This is a misuse of the question period. I will undertake to investigate the point of privilege raised by the hon. member for Scarborough West. I will look into the matter. I shall be pleased to look into the matter but this is developing into a debate.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The hon. member is underprivileged.

Mr. Lawlor: The Minister of Energy is a provocative kind of fellow.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. member for Scarborough West have new questions?

Mr. Lewis: No, I didn’t ask a question.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West is quite correct.

The hon. Minister of Natural Resources has the answer to a question previously asked.

WEEKEND ROAD MAINTENANCE

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, in reply to a question asked of me by the hon. member for Thunder Bay concerning the Gull Bay-Armstrong road which was apparently not ploughed one weekend; I might point out to him that we contract the maintenance of that particular road with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications who in turn sublet it to a local contractor. On the particular weekend that he refers to, the operator was off duty on the Saturday, but following my investigation he was back up there on Sunday and the road was ploughed on Monday. I might say we have already made arrangements for next year’s operation, where we will shorten the contract length on that particular road and the operators will be on a seven-day basis.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary?

Mr. Stokes: Is the minister aware that in awarding the sub-contracts it is usually done on a 40-hour-week basis and they get their time in on a Monday-to-Friday basis, which means that there is no maintenance on Saturday and Sunday when a lot of the traffic is in and out of remote communities such as Armstrong? When he is negotiating his new contract will he see that all times during the week will be covered for road maintenance?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I just mentioned in the latter part of my reply to the member that the contracts for next year would be on a seven-day basis, so they will be operating right around the clock.

Mr. Stokes: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York-Forest Hill.

ONTARIO BUILDING CODE

Mr. Givens: To the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations: How does he intend to process this voluminous tome, draft of the Ontario Building Code; when does he intend to do it, and what’s more to the point, when does he intend to table any legislation on this very vital subject?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Mr. Speaker, I intend this session to file the legislation under which the code -- which is really regulations under the legislation -- will apply. I filed those regulations back, I believe, in December, Mr. Speaker, to give an opportunity to those many communities and municipalities and individuals who exhibited an interest in the contents from a technical sense and I undertake to file the legislation and introduce a bill this session in this House.

Mr. Givens: Supplementary: Does the minister not intend to have some kind of public forum, a standing committee or another committee, to consider the mass of detail and the technical details in this draft?

Hon. Mr. Clements: That is a possibility, Mr. Speaker. May I point out that legislation was not tendered in December at the time that I tabled the regulations which the hon. member has in his hand, because at that time there were intense negotiations being conducted in Ottawa with the federal government on the part of two or three associations insofar as a warranty or a house guarantee was concerned, and if the federal government was going to proceed by implementing legislation providing for warranties and guarantees on residential housing, then that would have altered our position on the ultimate legislation which I have referred to today.

Mrs. Campbell: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: In view of the fact there are apparently going to be amendments, as I understand it from consulting with the ministry, how will those be brought forward to ensure that they are in fact incorporated? I’m talking now about such things as asbestos liners for chimneys and about the code for the handicapped. Will that be brought forward as a separate and supplementary item, or how will we be assured it is there when the time comes?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I think the proper procedure with legislation of this nature would be to introduce the bill and give those interested parties, including many members of this House who have indicated an interest in certain technical aspects of the bill, including the hon. member for St. George, the communities, the building inspectors, the various technical and professional associations, an opportunity to study it in the light of the legislation. Then I would think that the place where it should be debated would probably be a standing committee of the House, in order that we can have the advantage of listening to these particular interest groups, and at that time the parts of the legislation or the regulations dealing with ramps and this sort of thing would well form the subject matter of that discussion.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for High Park.

PHYSIOTHERAPISTS’ FEES

Mr. Shulman: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Health: In view of the very large increases that he has given to the physicians and to everybody who works for his ministry since 1966, why does his ministry flatly refuse to give any raise to the physiotherapists and has held their pay at the same level for the last nine years?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for High Park appears to be applying his interest in preventive medicine and has switched “an apple a day” for “a question a day,” which seems to be having even a greater effect upon my constitution.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister had better answer the question.

Mr. Lewis: Does the minister have a carefully prepared preamble for every question?

Mr. MacDonald: And for every answer given.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It’s nice to be able to count on something from the opposition -- and the one thing I can count on is a question a day.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister would atrophy otherwise.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well, not too long ago a study was made -- I believe by a consulting firm -- of the fees paid to physiotherapists. At that point in time it was agreed that the $3.50 rate -- which I believe is now the rate paid to them for a service rendered in their offices -- was in fact giving them an ample return on their time and investment on the basis upon which those services were currently given. In other words, they are not unique to one patient in the main. They usually are treating a number of patients simultaneously. Now, that is not to say that it went on to cover home treatments: but it did cover those granted in the offices.

Mr. Givens: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Shulman: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for High Park should be entitled to the first supplementary.

Mr. Shulman: Thank you. How can the minister possibly justify his statement in view of the fact that his own department has raised the physiotherapy rates in hospitals during that time? The Workmen’s Compensation Board has raised the physiotherapy rates, and yet the minister has remained adamant that $3.50, which was an adequate fee in 1966, is still an adequate fee today.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I simply said that it was not us who arrived at that conclusion, but a team of people hired to study it.

Mr. Shulman: It was the minister’s team.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

Mr. Good: Is there truth in the statement that has been made on numerous occasions that the Ministry of Health would like to see the private practice of physiotherapy eliminated, and have all this work done in hospitals? And is this why the ministry has refused to raise their rates for the past nine years?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, I don’t think so, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Shulman: Supplementary: Is it fair that because of the ministry’s refusal to raise the rates, physiotherapists are no longer able to make home visits?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’m not going to say that I’m aware of that, because I’m not positively aware of it. But I would be glad to look at this. And in fact I’m sure very shortly well be looking at many of the monetary ramifications within the ministry.

Mr. Lewis: Monetary ramifications!

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Perth.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I learned that from the leader of the NDP.

VEHICLES ON CONSIGNMENT

Mr. H. Edighoffer (Perth): I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Mr. Lewis: That kind of verbal flow --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Edighoffer: Does the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act allow the registrar to issue a directive prohibiting a dealer to place on his premises a vehicle on consignment?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I am sorry -- a vehicle on consignment?

Mr. Edighoffer: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, I am not aware whether he is permitted to attach a condition referring to that matter or not. I’m just not aware of it.

Mr. Edighoffer: Supplementary: Will the minister find out and reply?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I will be glad to.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Thunder Bay.

HYDRO BOARD APPOINTMENTS

Mr. Stokes: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Premier. Has the Premier been approached concerning the dissatisfaction over people residing in northwestern Ontario -- particularly the Ontario Municipal Electric Association -- because of the failure on behalf of the government to appoint somebody to the new Hydro board? And will he pay heed to their request to see that somebody from northwestern Ontario is represented on that board?

Mr. MacDonald: The 13th appointment.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think there were some observations made on this. Of course, there is a gentleman there who I would certainly not say is from the northwest. There is a representative recommended by the OMEA from Sault Ste. Marie, if memory serves me correctly. But it was brought to my attention that the people in the northwest don’t really regard Sault Ste. Marie as being the north. That has been brought to my attention.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wellington South is next.

CORRECTIONAL CENTRE TRAINING

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Correctional Services. In the Speech from the Throne there was a statement made that inmates of the correctional centres were going to be employed in industries located in the institution in which they are resident. In light of the fact that they will be paid wages, what steps has the minister taken to ensure that these people will be given the opportunity to vote in provincial elections or federal elections as taxpayers?

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): Mr. Speaker, at the present time negotiations have been going on with one or two abattoirs in the province, as the hon. member is probably aware, asking for proposals for them -- in the case of one institution in particular in Guelph -- to operate the abattoir in Guelph as a private abattoir would be operated, employing residents of the institution and paying them the salaries they would be expected to pay in the private sector. They in turn would pay $20 a week, I think it is, room and board and the rest of the pay would be available to them to send home to keep their families.

It is still at the negotiating stage. We are hoping it will be successful because if it is we will be one of the first countries in the world to implement a scheme such as this. As you know, there have been programmes attempted in which token money was used, but this is the first time that this type of an enterprise has been considered.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth.

RESALE OF HOME PROGRAMME HOUSES

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Housing. Is the minister aware of a practice which is developing whereby HOME programme houses built not more than six months ago have been offered for sale on the free market at a price almost 100 per cent higher than the price at the time of the original sale?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: No, Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of the practice and if the hon. member would send me some details I would be pleased to look into it. It was my understanding that steps had been taken to remove the speculation from resale of Home Ownership units.

Mr. Deans: Will the minister make himself aware of the fact that certain realtors are approaching Ontario Housing Corp. with an eye to getting permission to sell these homes, sold originally for less than $20,000, for a list price of some $41,000 on the free market today, and that it requires some kind of chicanery behind the scenes in order to get the down payment?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker. I would be glad to make myself aware of this, but if the hon. member has any details I would be pleased to hear from him.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

PROVINCIAL PARK AT PAPINEAU LAKE

Mr. Good: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Natural Resources regarding his announcement of a provincial park on Papineau Lake which was made in January, I believe:

Does the minister have environmental studies of that area, in view of the facts that 90 per cent of this lake is already built up and that there is a water resources commission report of 1971 stating that the fecal streptococcus count now exceeds what it should in that particular lake?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I have to answer yes to those questions. I would point out to the hon. member that the demand for recreational opportunity is growing at a rate of 10 per cent per year, particularly in southern Ontario, and my own ministry is having difficulty meeting this objective. We carry out some very close and sound and, I think, effective planning in locating just where these new parks should be.

At the present time we are dealing with the Papineau Lake situation and we are working on a master plan for the area. There will be public meetings held in that particular area where the public can be involved. We have met with the council and we are waiting comments from the local planning area, but in all this certainly we take into consideration the environmental aspects and the Ministry of the Environment does comment and we have their comments, which I will table.

Mr. Good: A final supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Could the minister make public his study of the environmental impact the park will have on this lake, in view of this adverse study that was done on the water quality in 1971? Has the condition changed in that time? This is what I am concerned about.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, we have prepared a very in-depth report and an outline on the planning of this particular park to date. I would be glad to make this information available to the member.

Mr. Speaker: The Chairman of the Management Board has an answer dealing with a previous question.

NEGOTIATIONS ON BEHALF OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I want to make a correction to an answer that I gave on Friday to the hon. member for Windsor West on the question as to whether certain items in dispute between the Council of Regents and the community colleges are bargainable. It is at this moment in the hands of Judge Little. I inadvertently said in the hands of Judge Anderson, and I would ask that the record be changed accordingly.

Mr. Speaker: The time has now expired for oral questions.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I present to the House today three reports of the Ontario Law Reform Commission dealing with family law -- the Report on Family Property Law, the Report on Children and the Report on Family Courts. The receipt of these three reports, taken together with the earlier reports in the family law series, means that we are now in possession of sufficient Law Reform Commission material in this complex area of law to begin to consider appropriate legislative measures.

The Report on Family Property Law is a very significant document. It analyses the situation that has occurred in the law of Ontario and other common law jurisdictions in which the traditional legal concepts relating to the division of property between spouses need to be reconsidered in the light of the major social and economic changes of the 20th century. This report suggests that the legislative task before us not only requires changes in details of that law but also consideration of changes in some fundamental and well-entrenched legal principles.

I am very happy that Mr. Allan Leal, the chairman of the Ontario Law Reform Commission is in the House today, and indeed will be available to explain to those interested anything in connection with these reports.

Throughout the report, two things persist, Mr. Speaker. First, that the law should recognize the individual rights of husbands and wives during a marriage, even though they are united by the marriage contract. Secondly, if a marriage breaks down, the law should ensure the equality of the spouses in the distribution of marital property, unless the spouses agree to their own format of distribution.

The commission proposed a wide range of specific reforms dealing with testate and intestate succession, support obligations and agency relations, marriage contracts, separation agreements, joint bank accounts and a host of other matters where the common law developed and applied by our courts does not appear to have kept pace in all respects with the social reality increasingly perceived by many of our people.

Statute law that retains a common law base did not escape criticism and proposals for reform either. The commission discussed in this connection the Married Women’s Property Act, the Deserted Wives and Children’s Maintenance Act, the Devolution of Estates Act, the Dependants’ Relief Act, the Dower Act, the Matrimonial Causes Act and many others.

Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, the most significant recommendation in this report, in addition to the recommendations for updating the historical approach of the common law, are the proposals for co-ownership of the matrimonial home and for equalization of property upon divorce or marriage breakdown. What is recommended is that each spouse would be entitled to occupy the home and to use its furnishings, regardless of the question of legal title; and in certain circumstances such as divorce, the equity of the family home would be shared between the spouses.

Another recommendation of the commission is the establishment of a new property system for married persons in Ontario. According to the commission’s recommendation, the value of all property acquired by either partner after the date of the marriage would be shared evenly between the spouses upon death, divorce or marriage breakdown.

Although there are some aspects of the Report on Family Property Law that are independent, I would stress that a great many of the proposed reforms appear interrelated and thus probably cannot be treated in isolation. The effects of the recommended changes will be profound and there’s no greater responsibility at this point than that borne by everyone who would be affected by these changes, and this means most adult persons in Ontario, who should be encouraged, as indeed the member for St. George indicated in her question, to come to grips with the implications and the consequences of this report, to discuss them and to respond to them.

Officials of my ministry will of course be giving the report intensive study. But at the same time as we are considering what steps are required to introduce the major conceptual and practical changes that are entailed in this report, I believe that I have a clear obligation to encourage a thorough public discussion of these matters.

A recent Gallup poll disclosed that 63 per cent of people in Canada favoured, as an abstract proposition, some sort of property sharing in divorce. We now have a concrete proposal, and I would like to have the views of the people of Ontario on it.

The second report of the Ontario Law Reform Commission tabled today is its report on the law of children. This is another area still largely governed by the common law and one that is also in need of meaningful change. One basic reform proposed by the commission is that the common law discrimination against illegitimate children should be purged from all aspects of the law in this province. The word “illegitimate” itself should no longer be used.

Almost a quarter of the report is devoted to detailing the way in which children born outside of marriage are, and have been for centuries, the victims of insidious and unfair rules whereby property and inheritance interests were consistently allowed to override the simple requirements of ordinary humanity towards children.

I must say that the case made by the commission for reform in this area is compelling and we will dedicate considerable effort to finding the appropriate legislative solutions.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, the report gives detailed attention to the law of adoption, the law dealing with children in need of care and protection, and the law of guardianship and custody of children. Here, the commission emphasizes that the only question that should be before the courts is what is in the best interests of the child. Regrettably, some areas of the statute and common law do not make it clear that what is in the best interests of a child is what the law should do. The commission recommends that in these areas changes should be made.

The third report of the Law Reform Commission tabled today is the report on the family courts. And there can be no doubt that Ontario now has the finest family court system in Canada, if not in the Commonwealth.

Mr. Lawlor: In the universe! Come on, Bob, don’t be diminutive.

Hon. Mr. Welch: It is equally true, however, that there is much that can be done to strengthen this court that deals with so vital an aspect of our society as the family. All courts are important, but the family court is unique in the valuable contribution that it makes to the community in dealing with family relations.

The basic reform proposal in this report is that there should be a single court in which all family law matters are dealt with. At present, family law jurisdiction is exercised in the Supreme Court, the county court and the surrogate court, as well as in the family division of the provincial court. The reasons for this are partly historical and traditional and partly constitutional.

The proposal of the Law Reform Commission for a single family court with integrated jurisdiction will, along with the other recommendations of the commission, receive very careful study and consideration by officials of my ministry and, I hope, by members of the profession and, indeed, the public as well.

Mr. Lawlor: Get the legislation ready.

Hon. Mr. Welch: And so, Mr. Speaker, all in all, the Ontario Law Reform Commission has given the government and the people of Ontario a substantial amount of sophisticated and professional analysis in these three reports. I believe that from these reports and the public discussions they will no doubt engender we will be able to move toward a new and better system of family law that will, we hope, be recognized as the finest in the world. Indeed, no government could have a higher goal than this.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lawlor: Do they do that compulsively?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I have been given a report by the Minister of Education which has associated with it a proposal to bring to a conclusion the dispute between the York County Board of Education and District 11 of the OSSTF.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of section 5 of the Expropriations Act, being the Revised Statutes of Ontario 1970, chapter 154, I lay before the assembly a copy of the order of the Lieutenant Governor in Council dated Jan. 9, 1974, made under subsection (3) of the said section.

Mr. Cassidy: Is that in relation to Pickering or somewhere else?

Mr. Lewis: Is that Cedarwood?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Cedarwood.

Mr. Lewis: That’s been scrubbed, hasn’t it?

Hon. Mr. Welch: It has to be tabled before the House.

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister without Portfolio): Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a copy of the report of the joint study group on the investment policies of the Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System. Copies of the report are being distributed to members of the House and representatives of organizations and groups participating in OMERS. On behalf of the Treasurer (Mr. White), I would like to thank the members of the study group for their work and invite public comments which will assist him and the OMERS board in reviewing it.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

The hon. member for York-Forest Hill.

PROTECTION OF HOUSE BUYERS ACT

Mr. Givens moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to provide for the Protection of House Buyers.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. B. Newman: Long needed. Long needed. About time.

An hon. member: Good bill.

Mr. Givens: Mr. Speaker, this is not a very dramatic title for a bill which I think is long overdue. I think the law of caveat emptor should be relegated to the scrapheap because it’s outlived its usefulness.

This bill will provide for house buyers the protection which they have when they buy the simplest electrical device or the simplest appliance today. It sets up a commission and requires that houses should be built in accordance with minimum standards of the Ontario Building Code, and the minister today said he was waiting for the federal minister to bring in such a bill. This is my conception of what the bill should be.

It will require that a house be inspected at least four times during the course of construction. It will protect buyers from hidden defects, latent defects, for a period of five years, and from patent defects, obvious defects, for a period of one year. It will require the vendor to list all the defects on the agreement of purchase and sale of a house. It will provide for grievances to be heard by the commission and the commissioner which this bill purports to set up and it will provide for an insurance fund into which all builders must contribute in the event that a builder may not be able to compensate the house owner, such as in the case of bankruptcy. I commend this bill to the members of the House.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day, I want to present a petition to the government of Ontario signed in the past --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I thought the hon. member had a bill to introduce. I should perhaps determine for certain that there are no further bills to be introduced. Are there any other bills to be introduced? If not, the hon. member.

Mr. Deacon: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I present this petition, signed in the past two days only by 7,309 voters of York county who are requesting that the Government of Ontario set up a trusteeship in York county to get the schools into full operation. I hope the minister will indicate how many more voters’ signatures he will need to satisfy him that this is the action the people want to resolve the impasse. This petition is not, in any sense, to be considered a condemnation of the trustees of York but rather as the best solution now available to get the schools into operation forthwith.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The first order, resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Mr. Speaker, I shall try to be entirely to the point this afternoon.

I begin, sir, along with everyone else in the House, in expressing personal pleasure at your presence, your continued presence in the chair. Not that one -- well, one did doubt it for a moment or two, perhaps, at one point -- but you are back, you are there; and you have displayed equanimity, joviality and impartiality on almost every instance that I can recall -- save one, and that is when you disagreed with me. In all such circumstances, sir, we are glad to see you back and wish you long tenure -- at least until the life of this parliament is over.

I want to deal very briefly, Mr. Speaker, with the York county dispute, simply because it is appropriate that it be done right now when things are moving toward a clear crisis. I suppose some would characterize the present situation as a crisis. But we are moving to evident breakdown and a solution which may be entirely unpalatable.

I have looked at the document which the minister has tabled. Would that he had made some kind of legitimate recommendation to both parties some considerable time ago. It would have carried more weight than it does at the 11th hour and it would have carried more weight than it does when it comes in the form of an ultimatum.

I can understand why the teachers respond as they do. They have been bargaining with a group that has bargained in bad faith from the outset; and then suddenly the minister has chosen to take sides. That is what really has happened now in the York county dispute; the minister has taken sides. He has taken sides with the board against the teachers.

There is a very neat clause in section 11 in the tentative proposal put to them both that will obviously inspire enormous apprehension in the minds of the teachers. Section 11 says: “The board of arbitration shall remain seized of and may deal with all matters in dispute under paragraph one between the parties until a final and binding agreement is in effect between the parties.” Well, the use of the word “may” leaves it open to the board of arbitration to do what boards of arbitration frequently do, which is to refuse to accept certain non-monetary items and certain working conditions as negotiable, contractual clauses. And the whole point of the teachers in York county -- what they have rested their case on from the outset -- is not a matter of salaries but is a matter of working conditions; primarily pupil-teacher ratio and class size. And what this document says to the teachers is very simply, “we will not guarantee that an arbitration board will rule on class size or pupil-teacher ratio.” It may if it wishes to. It may abandon it if it wishes to. The document, therefore, has a fatal Achilles’ heel in the minds of the teachers. And I can understand why they will now feel betrayed by the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells); just as they have felt betrayed by the board.

Now this caucus, Mr. Speaker, is not to play the parliamentary niceties game of looking on the board with charity and talking about whether or not they have been responsible. That York county board is so irresponsible it deserves to be turfed out; or all of the members who have been intransigent deserve to be turfed out in a way that they wouldn’t even save their deposit in a federal or so-called provincial election campaign.

I have never seen a board argue in such bad faith from day one. That board, when it entered negotiations, didn’t want to recognize the York county OSSTF as a bargaining agent. Now, I mean how do you start negotiations on that basis and expect to induce any kind of free and open and supportive collective bargaining atmosphere? And frankly, when the member from York Centre says that he wants the board taken into trusteeship, but that that shouldn’t reflect on the capacities of the board -- well, that is mental gymnastics.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): The voters will do that.

Mr. Lewis: Well, I hope the voters do do that. As a matter of fact, I think the voters feel very strongly.

Mr. Deacon: They are going to decide, providing there is an election.

Mr. Lewis: No, the member doesn’t have to provide an election.

Mr. Deacon: It is not up to the leader of the NDP to sit in judgement.

Mr. Lewis: For people who believe so strongly in local autonomy, the Liberals play fast and loose with it.

The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that there is no reason in the world why the Minister of Education could not arrange to do the bargaining by way of legislation if he needs it in the case of the teachers.

Mr. Deacon: He doesn’t need it.

Mr. Lewis: Allow the board to continue. The voters will deal with the board, if they so choose at the election. That is up to the voters, I agree.

I am not so interested in the formal application of trusteeship. That is a precedent that worries me almost as much as compulsory arbitration worries the rest of us.

Mr. Deacon: They have used it before.

Mr. Lewis: But in fact that is what it looks as though we are headed for. In this case, the Minister of Education didn’t even withdraw the grants. At least in the Windsor board last year they withdrew the grants, which was a considerable incentive to settlement.

What you see here is a carefully calculated rhythm towards the guillotine falling tomorrow or the next day. That’s what’s the strategy now is. That’s what emerges, because the board bargained in bad faith, and the minister knows it. The minister has confided as much in confidence to those who have talked with him privately.

I think -- let me put it this way -- that the Minister of Education is as fed to the teeth with the behaviour of the York county board as is any member who has had anything to do with them or any member of the public who has been able to witness it.

What you’ve got is bad faith bargaining from the outset, intractability on working conditions; refusal of the minister to make a recommendation until the 11th hour, and then with a very severe deadline threat hanging over it; refusal of the minister to appropriate the negotiating process from the board, settle on an agreement and then reinstate the board.

The teachers say, and the teachers are right, how do you arbitrate human relationships? How are we ever going to resolve the anathema which has developed between the board and the teachers if they are forced to compulsory arbitration? How is that going to handle it? How are those teachers going to be forced back to work? How are you going to resolve the antagonism between the teachers and the director of education in York county under such circumstances?

It may serve the government to invite confrontation on this instance in order to pave the road for Bill 275, but this is a very carefully manipulated process, Mr. Speaker. No one should engage in the naivety and self-delusion that I often engage in, thinking that maybe the Tories really don’t want to force the issue. Well, I think now they do.

I think the Premier (Mr. Davis) in his incessant repetition today about the five weeks indicates that they had their time parameter. Then they could go to the province and say, “You see the axe had to fall in York county and that’s why it has to fall in Bill 275.”

What does that mean for collective bargaining for the teachers in Ontario? What that means is very simple. Everything will go to compulsory arbitration hereafter, and the relationships, the human relationships, the teaching relationships, the personal relations between teachers and board in one board after another across this province will be impaired.

I appeal to the minister. I know he is meeting now with the Premier. He is meeting with the member for York North (Mr. W. Hodgson). He will doubtless be meeting with others during the day. I appeal to him and to the cabinet to draw back from the precipice, to take those negotiations over and settle with the teachers and by their example to demonstrate to the York county board that collective bargaining can work, if it is followed in good faith and then left to the electors of York county to deal with those trustees in the next campaign.

That’s the way to do it. But not to bring in compulsory arbitration, not to resort to those extremes, because the damage that is done to the system isn’t immediately apparent, but it is evident to everyone.

It’s done to kids; it’s done to teachers. Who knows which of the teachers will return or why? I haven’t even discussed with my colleagues from Lakeshore and Riverdale the legal niceties, the mind-boggling legal niceties of how those who resigned will be reinstated, whether it will be retroactive, whether the resignations will again be delayed by legislation. The complexities are almost beyond handling. It needn’t come to this; it simply needn’t come to this.

Mr. Speaker, I want to deal with the Throne Speech, but not at length in terms of every one of its clauses. I want to deal with it in the context of one paragraph arid one paragraph alone, which seems to me to be central to the Throne Speech and seems to all my NDP colleagues to be central to the Throne Speech -- so central that I don’t have it in front of me. If somebody has a copy of the Throne Speech I wouldn’t mind one.

It’s the clause which deals with inflation, the one clause which deals with inflation. It says: “While my government will employ all practical means at its disposal to alleviate the causes and effects of inflation, nevertheless it bears repeating that the problem can only be dealt with in a national context with all governments co-operating.” That one paragraph is the greatest single deficiency in a Throne Speech distinguished for its mediocrity. That one paragraph is a kind of commentary on the government of William Davis over the last three years. As I think I shall try to show, and as others of my colleagues shall try to show as this Throne Debate continues, the William Davis years, in terms of that single issue which most preoccupies public attention, were years of speculation, inflation, and profiteering; that the public burned while the William Davis cabinet fiddled; that never has a cabinet so large done so little on an issue so great -- and indeed that may be true in other areas but extremely pronounced in this one -- that no other province in this country has so betrayed the trust of its citizens in dealing with basic matters of the cost of living, matters which affect the daily lives of the people of Ontario; and that ultimately, Mr. Speaker, it is our conviction in this caucus that that’s what will bring the government down.

It’s not going to be the transgression, so it’s called, and it’s not going to be the gross indiscretions, and it’s not going to be the so-called scandals and it’s not even going to be the inadequacy or incompetence of individual ministers, whomever they may be; but it is the refusal of the government to deal with those matters which are absolutely central to the way in which people live their lives. And the evidence mounts, the documentation accumulates and it is now clear that those are the grounds on which the electoral outcome in this province will be settled 18 months hence.

The Tories have taken to mind the old Churchillian maxim that they have resolved to be irresolute. They start with inertia in the area of cost of living and they end with paralysis. That’s the history of governmental mobility in this field; and it is most unfortunate that that’s the case because on everyone’s lips is the question of the cost of living.

Now Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. R. F. Nixon) raised matters pertaining to housing. I want to do the same but in a slightly different context. I want to tell you about the William Davis years, Mr. Speaker, because I want to put most of my remarks in the specific dimensions, the specific boundaries of the period during which the present Premier has been the incumbent chief minister. And I want to steal something from my colleague from Ottawa Centre, if he’ll forgive me -- I presume if I thieve from him it’s less offensive than when other parties do -- and give you a chronicle in the housing field of what has happened in a number of areas of Ontario, but starting first with Toronto.

Well, in March of 1971, which seems to be a reasonable date to begin with since the Premier was then Premier, the average Toronto house sale price was $29,627. One year later it was $31,357. When the Comay task force was set up it had already jumped to $34,137; that was in November of 1972. When the Throne Speech came down last year it had jumped to $34,718. When the present Attorney General (Mr. Welch) was appointed Minister of Housing, it had leaped to $44,022 on the average; and when the current Minister of Housing (Mr. Handleman) inherited the portfolio, it had jumped to $46,210.

Within the life of the premiership of William Davis -- I guess just three years now -- the housing increase in the city of Toronto has been 56 per cent. Now that may be an achievement which some premiers would cherish; others would shudder were they to realize it.

Let me tell you something else about what’s happening in the Metro Toronto area, Mr. Speaker, as the research department of this caucus had analysed the figures. A most extraordinary acceleration of the inflationary trends in every area has occurred in the central portion of the Premier’s stewardship. He became Premier in March; he stopped Spadina somewhere along the way; he set himself for an election in October, 1971 -- it was October, 1971?

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Right.

Mr. Lewis: I have blocked it all out.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): How could the member forget?

Mr. Lewis: I certainly do, and the sooner I forget the better. Then he won a fairly considerable mandate, looking at the way in which the Tory hordes engulf this legislative chamber.

Mr. MacDonald: They slop over to this side.

Mr. Lewis: Slopping over is not as dignified a phrase, although perhaps a more descriptive one.

Mr. Speaker, one would assume that by the years 1972 and 1973 in particular, the policies introduced and undertaken by the Premier of Ontario would begin to be felt. Well, they certainly have; they certainly have.

In January, 1973, 65.3 per cent of the houses in Metropolitan Toronto sold for less than $35,000; almost two-thirds of all house sales were for less than $35,000. By December, 1973 -- mark this, at the end of the same year -- only 27 per cent of all housing transactions in Metropolitan Toronto involved amounts less than $35,000. In fact, only 14.7 per cent of houses sold sold for less than $30,000.

If one takes the median family income in this area which is now roughly $12,000 a year, and if one assumes what most reasonable housing economists assume, that one shouldn’t spend more than 25 per cent of gross income for carrying costs, it means, Mr. Speaker, that 73 per cent of those who might purchase homes are now excluded from purchasing them.

The great bulk of people who earn $12,000 a year and under, that is somewhere around 70 per cent now of total income figures -- I will give them more specifically later on -- are excluded from the housing market. In a period of two short years the Premier has achieved what few men are able to achieve -- the exclusion of two-thirds of the people of the Province of Ontario from ever being able to own or carry a house in this province.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Shame!

Mr. Lewis: That’s quite something. Let me give you another figure which is perhaps equally interesting. In January, 1973, only seven per cent of the sales in Metropolitan Toronto involved homes of over $50,000. In December, 1973, 28.5 per cent of the sales in Metro involved houses over $50,000, and the houses selling in the over $50,000 category constitute by far the largest percentage of house transactions taking place in the Province of Ontario. Now, will the Premier tell me how the people of this province can afford homes upwards of $50,000?

Someone in the NDP research department did something which I thought was really quite fascinating. We went to TEELA. Members all know something about TEELA. I don’t know what the letters stand for but it is a private outfit with close connections with the Revenue ministry -- an outfit the minister will soon be getting rid of I understand -- which notates every real estate transaction, computerizes them and has them available on small cards. We went through the pattern of acceleration in house costs for a representative number of residences in the Metro Toronto area; residences that were all initially considered to be low income and lower-middle income ownership potential. Let me tell the House what we found.

In the borough of York, in the 280 block of Caledonia Rd. -- my colleague from York South knows it well -- we both knocked on doors up and down Caledonia Rd. In 1965, a house sold for $12,600; in February, 1973, $28,800; estimated value in February, 1974, $38,300. No. 525 Dune St., just northwest of High Park, in the west end of the city -- 1965, $21,800; May, 1973, $42,400; February, 1974, $50,500. No. 5 Clinton St. in Toronto -- you may know, Mr. Speaker, that that lies between Bathurst and Dufferin, the old stamping grounds for some of us who inhabit these legislative benches --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: The hon. member springs from there too, eh?

Mr. Lewis: -- in 1963, just 10 years ago, the price on the home -- sorry, this was a number on Clinton St.; I have the actual numbers, but I am not sure how the homeowners would feel if photographs were being taken. I will have to think about that. At any rate, it’s a very low odd number on Clinton St. -- 1963, $11,700; March, 1973 $28,250; estimated value in February, 1974, $36,700.

On Markham St., Toronto, one block west of Bathurst. Markham St. -- some of us grew up on Markham St.; the Duddy Kravitzes of this world grew up on Markham St.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Your memory is good, Mordechai.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, that’s not me. That’s the member for York-Forest Hill. What makes Philip run?

In 1964, the price of this home on the 400 block of Markham St. was $15,900; May, 1973, $43,100; in February, 1974, it could change hands for an estimated $51,400.

Mr. Givens: Nothing on Markham St. can be worth that.

Mr. Lewis: Can be worth that? Well, as a matter of fact, I wandered down Markham St. to Ed’s Markham St. “Village” just a couple of weekends ago, and it struck me that obviously the whole character is changing. Now you can get a house for --

Mr. Givens: That’s north Markham St.

Mr. Lewis: That’s north Markham St.

No. 10 Metcalfe St. -- now mark this; this is in Don Vale, in that area which we assumed would be preserved for low- and middle-income earners. In 1965 the house sold for $7,500 -- again, it is a very low number on Metcalfe -- in 1966 for $9,203; in November, 1972, for $31,500; in March, 1973, for $61,000 -- these are actual sales and estimated value in February, 1974, was $79,200.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): What a government!

Mr. Lewis: Low-income, middle-income housing!

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): I tell you, that’s even more than for chicken.

Mr. Lewis: Well, even the member for Huron-Bruce would have to sell two or three turkeys for that kind of down payment, Mr. Speaker.

No. 32 Strathcona Ave. in the riding of my colleague from Riverdale; he can tell you it’s part of a riding that should be low- and middle-income housing -- in 1964 the house -- again a number very low on Strathcona, on the even side of the street -- sold for $11,000; May, 1972, $26,900; March, 1973, just a small jump, relatively speaking, $29,900. It is now estimated for sale at $38,800.

In East York, so that no borough is exempt, in the 400 block in East York -- 1964, $25,500; May, 1972, $42,000; May, 1973, $50,000 -- these are sales -- February, 1974, estimated value, $60,000.

Then we come to Scarborough, the provincial riding of Scarborough Centre, the federal riding of Scarborough West, and a home on Brenda Cres., in the area of the 100 block -- again it’s a reasonable lower-middle-income area. In 1963 the house sold for $14,500; 1967, $18,000; March, 1973, $36,300; February, 1974, $47,100.

Willowdale, North York, between Bayview and Yonge, north of Sheppard, one of the lower middle-income groups in that part of Metro: in 1965 the house was valued at $15,700; in 1966 it sold for $18,500 and in 1967 for $21,900. Then we move into the William Davis period again -- April, 1973, $40,000; February, 1974, $50,000.

I see the chagrin on the face of the Minister of Energy so I will talk about the Darcy McKeough era. I don’t want him to feel neglected.

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Minister of Energy): I was Minister of Housing before that.

Mr. Lewis: No. 145 Niagara St. -- remember that property, because I want to bear reference to it at the end -- in 1966 it sold for $9,500; January, 1973, $21,000; May, 1973, $25,600; February, 1974, $30,500.

And one last house, on Laurier Ave., a low number on Laurier, north of Wellesley and east of Parliament, again in what would seem to be the eventual preserve of lower middle class housing -- lower middle income housing is a much more appropriate way of putting it -- 1964, $9,700; 1967, $15,400; in the Davis-McKeough regime in May, 1973, $63,500 and estimated in February, 1974 at $75,700.

Mr. Speaker, the acceleration, the unbelievable increase in the cost of housing and the cost of land, has occurred right at the heart of this Premier’s incumbency, right at the heart of this government, of the government now in power, over the last two years. That’s when all hell has broken loose. That’s when everything is out of sight.

I think I must have read the accounting of a dozen of them. In all of these homes only one, Mr. Speaker, can any longer be considered available for low-income housing. And that’s 145 Niagara St. at $30,500. Before anybody rushes out to purchase it, let me tell you that it lies downwind of Toronto Refineries and Smelters Ltd. And that’s why it’s still $30,000. But everything else is not.

I think this random cross-section sampling means very simply and very accurately that all of the housing in the 1960’s that we assumed would be available for low-income families and for middle-income families is now completely out of range, courtesy this government in the last three years.

Let me tell you something more about what I choose to call the William Davis years or the era of this cabinet, this incumbency. In the city of Hamilton, the increase in the cost of housing from 1967 to 1972 was 17.4 per cent. In the last two years, Mr. Speaker, it has jumped by another 22.5 per cent. In the city of Ottawa from 1969 to 1972 the increase was 18.4 per cent. In the last two years it has jumped another 23.5 per cent. In the city of Kitchener from 1969 to 1972 the increase was only 2.5 per cent. In the last two years, really in 18 months, it has jumped by 28 per cent. In the city of Windsor the increase from 1969 to 1972 was 7.7 per cent. In the last two years it has jumped by 27.2 per cent. In London from 1969 to 1972 it was only about 20 per cent. In the last 18 months to two years it has jumped to 29 per cent.

The housing market has collapsed or skyrocketed, however one wishes to view it, in the Province of Ontario, firmly within this regime, firmly within the period where we have played games with housing, where the Tories have appointed one minister after another who’ve seen it more as a sinecure than as a stewardship. This has happened in every single community that we scrupulously looked at, Mr. Speaker.

In Peterborough the price of a new home has jumped from $26,000 to $32,000, a 23 per cent increase. In Stratford from $22,600 in the spring of 1973 to $28,000 in September.

In July, 1973, the price of a new three-bedroom bungalow in Thunder Bay was $32,500, $10,000 more than similar accommodation in Winnipeg. A vacant lot with a 50-foot frontage in Thunder Bay sells for $12,000. Headway Corp. is the prime developer. Incidentally, Headway Corp. for the first nine months of 1973, over a similar period in 1972, had an increase in profit of 126 per cent.

For the Niagara region housing is going up in identical fashion and the same in Guelph and the same in Brantford.

In Kitchener-Waterloo, listen to what has happened to lot prices. In 1963 a 50-foot serviced lot cost $3,500. In 1968 the same lot sold for $5,750. In 1973 the same lot sold for $11,000.

You know, Mr. Speaker, one can only stand for so much of that kind of thing. Everything has gone out of control in the last 18 months and there’s not a single policy initiative, there’s not a single tittle of evidence that the government intends to do anything about it. It is not just the housing costs, the land costs; everything now is beyond the range of low- and middle-income earners. The vacancy rates for apartment dwellers are reaching levels which suggest that one just won’t be able to find an apartment to live in in this province in 18 months from now when the government’s tenure is up for public accountability again.

The apartment vacancy rates for major centres in Ontario are, as we have been able to find them -- the most recent figures for December 1973 to January 1974 -- 2.2 per cent in Hamilton; 3.6 per cent in Kitchener; 1.9 per cent in Ottawa; 1.4 per cent in Toronto; 1.9 per cent in Windsor and 9/10ths of one per cent in Thunder Bay, the lowest apartment vacancy rate in Canada.

Let me say, Mr. Speaker, that any vacancy rate below four per cent means tremendous pressure on the upward spiralling of rents and cannot really be tolerated. The costs of individual apartments are something that some of my colleagues will deal with in later speeches.

Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, of what some of these development companies are making while all of this is occurring. Bramalea Consolidated: For the year ended November, 1973, over November, 1972, Consolidated’s profits went up 66.2 per cent. Cadillac Development: For the year ended Sept. 30, 1973, over 1972, Cadillac’s profits went up 57.5 per cent. Caledon Mountain Estates -- do you remember that little company that was so active on the Niagara Escarpment --

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Some of our best friends.

Mr. Lewis: -- to whom we paid such extravagant amounts of money to purchase a few hundred acres of escarpment land? Caledon Mountain Estates is not doing badly by it all. For the year ending Feb. 28, 1973 over the previous year, its profits were up 89.7 per cent. Campeau Corp., for the nine months ending Sept. 30, 1973 over 1972 its profits were up 44 per cent. Headway Corp., for the year ending Aug. 31, 1973 over 1972, profits were up 39.8 per cent. Markborough Properties, for the year ended Oct. 31, 1973 over 1972, had an increase of 515 per cent in profits.

So here you have the picture. You have in the Province of Ontario, in the city of Toronto alone, housing prices escalating during this Premier’s stewardship by 56 per cent; prices right across the board escalating 20, 30, 40 per cent in towns and cities all over Ontario in the last 18 months; the same true of the cost of land, indeed more exorbitant in prices; the apartment vacancy rate declining; the profits of the major land development companies and those who do the building, increasing at an unconscionable level -- and I’ve not dealt with the rate of return on investment, but that is equally out of line. So finally we have, Mr. Speaker, a new Minister of Housing -- a new Minister of Housing whose first speech says, and I quote him into the record:

“My ministry believes the situation can be greatly improved by increasing the supply of serviced land and changing the income mix for new housing. The capacity to make these changes is within our reach if we receive the co-operation of local government and developers. One aspect I’m quickly perceiving is that our goals within the ministry and the goals within the private sector, and this certainly includes the real estate profession, are to a great degree the same.”

Well there it is as firm from the Minister of Housing as it has ever been stated, I will say that for the member for Carleton. The member for Carleton doesn’t even dissemble about his loyalty. The member for Carleton says the unlovely alliance, the special relationship, the favoured rapprochement, between the government and the building industry shall continue -- and what’s more, “I’ll stimulate it.” He even says: “For we all have a responsibility, both professionally and morally, to do all we can to assist in the housing needs of the people, the families living in this province.”

Well, you find me a developer, Mr. Speaker, who has a moral obligation to provide housing. You show me this creature. You bring Bramalea Consolidated or Cadillac Development or Markborough Properties or Headway Corporation before the bar of the House, or before a committee of the Legislature and ask them about their moral responsibilities for provision of housing.

What kind of nonsense is this? They are in this game for profits. Every penny of profit they can extract, whether by virtue of public accessibility or by virtue of the private housing market.

And you know, that’s the nature of the free enterprise system, they are presumably entitled to it. But not unconscionable profits. Not profits that exceed a return on investment that everyone would regard as unreasonable. Not profits that make it impossible for us to sell homes to low-income and middle-income families across the Province of Ontario. The reality is that the Minister of Housing made his peace with the private development industry the moment he assumed his portfolio.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): He sold out.

Mr. Lewis: He leaped into their arms as soon as he had taken the official oath. I may say, the Minister of Housing leaping into the arms of Bramalea Consolidated is a picture to conjecture with. Presumably this afternoon he’s streaking his way to Markborough -- and anyone else who will have him.

The reality is that not a one of the members over there on the Tory side is prepared to do in the housing field what is required to be done. And if I may say to my friend, the member for Brant, I don’t think the Liberal Party is ready either to do the only thing, the only thing that can conceivably rescue the present housing situation.

In this situation, Mr. Speaker, there is a sine qua non. There is a basic policy position which must be accepted before anything else can happen. And that policy position involves massive public acquisition of urban land for housing development.

To chronicle, as I have chronicled the injustice, is not nearly enough. To chronicle, as the Leader of the Opposition did the foreign ownership of certain properties in downtown Toronto, is not nearly enough. As a matter of fact, to leave out the Four Seasons-Sheraton owned by IT&T is an oversight that is quite beyond belief. That stands at the head of our list. And I won’t tell you which list.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): That is where the NDP held its convention.

Mr. Lewis: Never again, I will tell the members.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Is that why?

Mr. Lewis: But that is not enough. To talk of taxes -- which I’ll do in a moment -- is not enough. What is required is that the government of the Province of Ontario goes out and buys a sufficient percentage of the land adjacent to the 20 major urban centres in Ontario to bring the housing market within the bounds of availability. It buys the land, then it leases it on a long-term basis and on that land you build homes -- whether one builds them through the Ontario Housing Corp., or whether one builds them through the private sector.

And don’t play the pathetic games that are played by the Comay report, which reinforced all the prejudices about the private sector which are now so fashionable. The report which said we should acquire something like 10 per cent of the 300,000 acres over a 20-year period.

Acquire something like 50 per cent of the 300,000 acres. Get 80 per cent or 90 per cent of it back from the federal government. Make that kind of social investment for the people of Ontario. Then, finally, provide homes for low-income and middle-income earners. Otherwise there is not a solution; otherwise everything else is so much claptrap, because nothing will change.

That alone, taking that land, presumably from major developers and speculators, won’t do it either. Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, we would take it for the original purchase price, plus holding costs and not a penny more. Even if the government takes that land from the original speculators or developers, that isn’t enough. The land which is held by the remainder, the other 150,000 acres of which Comay talked, has to be under so much tax pressure that there will be an immediate incentive to provide it for the public sector or for the provision of housing.

That doesn’t mean some vague, graduated income tax. That means capital gains at 75 per cent of value minimum so that there is a tremendous inducement to part with that land. When the public sector owns half of it and puts a 75 per cent capital gains on the other half, finally we will begin to get housing built in the Province of Ontario at a cost which families can’t afford.

Mr. Speaker, there is no use playing games with it any longer. I want to make another point. In the last 18 months of the Premiership of this province, of the tenure of this government, of this cabinet, housing has become an investment in this province; an investment in the most pernicious description of the word. Housing has become an alternative to the stock market for a great many people, and the unconscionable profits on housing as an investment should be removed.

They should be removed in much the same way as we set up an Ontario Securities Commission to avoid insider trading on the stock market. We set up some kind of housing and land transactions commission to avoid the kind of insider trading and the kind of fast profit which is made on the buying and: selling of homes -- they call it white painting of homes, I think -- in some of the downtown areas of urban centres. They buy at $20,000 and refurbish and sell it for $40,000 or $50,000 within the next month or two.

Mr. Speaker, in the process of looking at individual houses and the amazing shift in values with each transaction over the last few year, we, within the caucus research department, came across a number of cases in certain communities which were so incredible that I’m afraid to use them. We are going back to check on them to see whether it is possible. There are cases of profits of 100, 150 and 200 per cent turned over on houses bought and sold within the same month. There are things happening in Ontario, with the use of housing as an investment, that simply can’t be permitted.

One can’t play that way with what is a social need and a social right. Maybe one can do it where people are voluntarily taking a risk, but one doesn’t do it when dealing with a social right, a social obligation, that the government is obliged to provide.

We will present those figures to the House, Mr. Speaker, but I must say that I was so thrown when they were given to me, particularly in one or two communities in Ontario, that we have asked them to be checked yet again, although I suspect they are entirely accurate.

We are also going to have to look at the reduction of growth in southern urban centres because of what is happening to communities from Barrie to Peterborough -- Barrie, Orillia, Peterborough. There is more information on them but one needn’t put everything on the record simultaneously. What’s happening is that the people who live in those communities -- and some members live in them; they know the little communities that lie just east of Metropolitan Toronto; they know what is happening in their own bailiwicks -- the people who live in those little communities are being forced out of their own homes because of the pressure of Metropolitan Toronto. That, too, is not tolerable.

As a matter of fact -- I guess this is in the riding of my colleague from York South -- the Cobourg Star, on Feb. 27, carried an article on the front page and a most extraordinary map or chart inside. The headline in the paper reads: “Most of Lakeshore Land Owned by Non-Residents”. These are not non-residents in a multinational sense. These are non-residents of Cobourg, Port Hope and the area, but residents of Toronto, residents of Oshawa and residents of other major southwestern Ontario centres, systematically going into the hinterland and buying up all the most desirable land for speculative purposes, for the worst kinds of greed and acquisitiveness, to turn a fast profit at the expense of the people who have inhabited those parts of the province for generations.

The pressure that Toronto is exerting right now all the way out to Stratford in the west and all the way out to Peterborough in the east is something that has to be brought under control, even if it means pretty fierce controls on matters of location of industry and economic growth.

The more I see what is happening to housing the more I am persuaded that those of us who feel that the airport is madness have been right all along and that North Pickering is the atrocity we’ve all thought it to be, because what we are doing is simply enhancing the land values and the speculative gains in a way which cannot be defended.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, in basic housing policy there must clearly be mortgages provided provincially through the Province of Ontario Savings Offices, with an effective rate of six per cent which would be arranged through the tax credit, the easiest and most equitable way of arranging for that kind of interest rate for houses.

If we did all those things, Mr. Speaker; if we reduced the pressures of growth in Metro; if we brought in mortgages from the Ontario Savings Offices; if we reduced interest rates to six per cent by using tax credits; if we put a capital gains tax at 75 per cent on all speculative land acquisition; if we set up some kind of commission in Ontario which would look into housing as an investment to avoid the insider trading and the unconscionable profits; if we purchased in the public domain 50 per cent of the land of which the Comay report talked adjacent to the 20 urban centres -- then we would have a housing policy worthy of the name in this province.

Short of that, everything is unacceptable! Short of that, the Minister of Housing has dressed himself in ashes and sackcloth and prostrated himself before the development industry. Short of that, Mr. Speaker, the pattern of the William Davis era will simply accelerate, and an ever greater percentage of people in this province will be denied the right to shelter by the way in which this government refuses to come to terms with a system which is so discriminatory and prejudicial to the mass of the people in this province.

Mr. Speaker, what is true of housing is true equally of food, and that’s what makes the Throne Speech again such an inadequate document.

If you think that I am going into detail on the cost of living, Mr. Speaker, you ain’t heard nothing yet, because the NDP is staking much of its ground, as we always have, on the question of a fairer deal for the people of this province in dealing with inflation. We have a pretty strong declaration of faith where that is concerned, because we happen to believe that it can be brought under control and are going to take measures to do so.

Let me tell you about the William Davis years in the food industry, Mr. Speaker. In the same three-year period since the present incumbent took his seat -- and the Premier is simply symbolic of the Conservative government, I don’t know how else to characterize him -- let me take the choice commodities for you; well, not choice but representative commodities in the food section. Let me tell you what has happened to prices from the middle of 1971 -- to be exact August, 1971; several months after William Davis became Premier -- right through to March of 1974. I’ll give it to you for the Metropolitan Toronto area and point out to you, sir, that the discrepancies with other regions of the province, particularly east and north, are very great, but regional disparities are something some of mv colleagues will deal with more specifically.

For Metropolitan Toronto in August, 1971, a quart of milk cost 32 cents; in March, 1974, it cost 36 cents for an increase of 12.5 per cent. A pound of butter was 57 cents in 1971 and 79 cents in 1974, 3.6 per cent increase. A dozen grade A large eggs cost 41 cents in 1971 and 90 cents in 1974, an increase of 119.5 per cent, a pound of bacon 70 cents in 1971, $1.15 in 1974, an increase of 63.4 per cent.

A pound of sirloin steak cost $1.36 in 1971, $1.78 in 1974 -- 30.9 per cent. A 24 oz. loaf of bread; 32 cents in 1971, 41 cents in March of 1974 -- a 28 per cent increase. A can of vegetable soup, 14 oz. can; 18 cents in 1971, 23 cents in 1974 -- a 27.8 per cent increase. A can of corn, 14 oz; 22 cents in 1971, 28 cents in 1974 -- 27.4 per cent increase. Five pounds of potatoes; 35 cents in 1971, 85 cents in 1974 -- an increase of 142.9 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, I think that milk, butter, eggs, bacon, steak, bread, vegetable soup, as a representative item of canned goods, corn, as a representative item of canned goods, potatoes as a staple which is pretty widely in use, represent a not bad example of the kinds of things on which families are dependent. I want to point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that that means on the average those commodities have increased, in the William Davis era, some 55 per cent in cost in 2% years -- 55 per cent.

As a matter of fact there is something quite interesting in that, an increase of 56 per cent in housing and 55 per cent in food. And you know, just while the figures are in my mind, housing and food constitute on the average 56 per cent of the total family budgetary expenditure. So you can see what has been achieved by this government in the last 2% to three years. It is in its own way the strongest possible indictment of this government that can be found. In the world of inflation they are the delinquents.

Just so I wouldn’t seem to be unduly unfair, because I am using selected figures, the Premier and his cabinet use a different measure of tabulation. They use what is called the Ontario Food Council market basket, and the market basket contains a great many more items than those I have designated and many of them have not increased at the same rate. But let me just simply tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the market basket was valued in February of 1971 at $56.33, and in February of 1974 it was up to $77.81, which is an increase of over 38 per cent in the government’s own carefully-monitored Ontario Food Council market basket. And again that is an increase of roughly 13 per cent a year, which outstrips the cost of living in other areas and which obviously most families simply can’t handle.

I want to say a word about sugar prices too, because I think it is time we talked in no-nonsense terms to the government about some of these things. Prior to the summer of 1973, sugar in Ontario was costing eight to 10 cents a pound. In September to October, 1973, it went up to 15.4 cents a pound. On Jan. 1, 1974, it was up to 21.6 cents a pound. At Feb. 19, 1974, it was up to 30.8 cents a pound.

I would like the government of Ontario to inquire into the behaviour of the sugar industry in this kind of acceleration of prices. We are the last people in the world to deny the workers in the industry a legitimate wage, and if I thought that the increase in prices had anything to do with an increase in wages then we would applaud it, but in fact the increase in prices looks suspiciously like control by a cartel. It harks back to the point being made by my colleague from Wentworth the other day in question period about the possible cartel activities of the supermarket chains, and it’s time that the Province of Ontario launched the kind of inquiry that would bring the facts to public view.

We would also like the same kind of investigation of the bread industry and what is happening within the bakeries; and we would also like to provide to the farmers, through the Ontario Milk Marketing Board, the increase per quart which they are going to require this summer -- presumably about three cents on a quart of milk -- but we would like very much to have the profits of the major dairies examined by a committee of this Legislature. But more of that in a moment.

Having set out some of those items, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you a little bit about what has happened to real wages and real purchasing power. Something has happened in the most recent part of the tenure of the Premier and his colleagues that we couldn’t find another parallel for since the Second World War. Now, probably there is a parallel since the Second World War and I presume you will be able to trot it out, but we couldn’t find it.

What has happened is that when you correct the average wages and salaries for the effects of inflation, the average wages and salaries in the last six months of 1973 have actually been declining. Now that is absolutely unprecedented. Absolutely without precedent, certainly I guess in the last several years -- I had better be more cautious; I get carried away when I hear ministers of the Crown comparing things with the Commonwealth and the world, so I am given to hyperbole myself -- within the last several years, it is clearly without precedent, and I am not sure you can find one, that the actual wages and salaries, corrected for inflation, are in a state of serious decline.

Let me tell you the figures, because they are really interesting when you compare them to the costs of food and the costs of housing. In January of 1973 the average wage and salary was $161.42; if that figure can stick in the head of Treasury Board’s mind, $161.42. Now, in July of 1973, when you correct the average weekly wage for inflation, the value is $157.11. In August, $156.35; in September, $150.10; in October, $158.76; in November, $157.96; in December, $152.24 -- a drop in actual buying power per weekly wage of something like $9.18 over the value of the wage in January of 1973 and its effective value according to the price indexes in December of 1973.

That’s absolutely fantastic! A drop in one year of the equivalent of between $400 and $500 of real purchasing power as measured at the end of the year compared to the beginning, and there is no reason to believe that pattern has changed; and it’s the first time! Again, when we worked out the price index, the average wages and salaries, the correction for inflation and the change in real buying power, we had to check it out several times, because in all of the analyses of such figures it’s really hard to find any other example.

We couldn’t; and what that means is that at precisely the moment when all hell’s breaking loose in the inflationary spiral, the real value of wages and salaries is declining in absolute dollar terms and that’s why there is such public furore about it. Obviously the public doesn’t understand it in that way. They don’t look at price indexes. But it’s worth the Legislature understanding it in that way.

Now at the same time that’s happening to wages, let me tell members about profits. Profits in 1971 represented 9.6 per cent of the gross provincial product. In the third quarter of 1973 they represented 12.4 per cent.

Let me tell members about interest rates. They represented 4.1 per cent of the gross provincial product in the third quarter of 1973, the highest that has ever been noted in the history of commercial interest rates. In terms of salaries and wages, as a percentage of gross provincial product, they declined from 55 per cent to 53.5 per cent in the same period.

The Chairman of Management Board will know that those are statistically significant computations, because they again demonstrate that it is the real wages and salaries which are clobbered as the prices and the profits and the interest rates continue upwards.

It’s all happening here in the Province of Ontario, without the slightest initiative from the government of Ontario. Well, it has been off the hook long enough; it’s time we joined battle. Perhaps it can be put in another context.

Mr. Stokes: They don’t even understand.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): They don’t even have the decency to come and try to find out.

Mr. Lewis: The task force on social security of the Canadian Council of Social Development --

Mr. Stokes: One cabinet minister has the courtesy to sit and listen.

Mr. Deans: One and a half.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t begrudge that. The Premier and the Minister of Education, I suspect, are out in York county and I don’t begrudge them that. I would have thought all the others would be here, but apparently not.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I issued the invitations.

Mr. Lewis: The Canadian Council on Social Development, in computing a new poverty line for this country and this province, suggested a median income of half the average annual income. That would be a poverty line. It seems to me to be a little unfriendly to those who are impoverished but that’s what they’ve taken.

If one does take, not for the country but for the Province of Ontario, half the amount of the average family income on the last figures available, which were in 1971, the poverty line for -- I guess it would be the average family -- husband, wife and two kids, is $5,742. If one applies that poverty line to the Province of Ontario, 19.9 per cent -- 20 per cent -- of the people in this province are even now living below the poverty line set in 1971.

There isn’t the slightest suggestion that it’s changed. Between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the families in this province lie below the average median income in Ontario which at that time was $11,483. I ask the members how, in God’s name, they’re supposed to cope with the incredible upsurge in prices during this Premier’s era.

During that era, which will be known with a certain infamy in days to come, the friends of the government -- and I mean that in an entirely generous and descriptive way -- the ideological friends of the government, the corporations which share the government’s view of the way this system should work, have not been quite so oppressed. Their values are not declining in real dollar terms and let it be put on the record, I guess for the first time, explicitly; I once did part of it many months ago at a press conference.

For the nine months ending Sept. 30, 1973, Burns Foods profits were up 22 per cent. For the six months ending Oct. 30, 1973, over the same period in the previous year, Becker’s was up 57 per cent. For the 39 weeks ending Dec. 29, 1973, Canada Packers was up 40 per cent. For the year ending Dec. 30, 1973, Canada Safeway was up 41 per cent. For the year ending May 30, 1973, over the same period the year before, Canadian Canners was up 69 per cent. Dominion Dairies, for the nine months ending Sept. 29, 1973, over 1972, was up 46 per cent. Dominion Stores, for the 39 weeks ending Dec. 15, 1973, over 1972, was up 13 per cent.

Let me tell members what the analysts say about Dominion Stores. They see a much better prospect for food stocks for a number of reasons: less intense competition, improved productivity and inflation. Rising costs of goods can be passed on to the consumer, in addition. Where the price of a case of goods rises by a fraction of a cent for each unit, the unit price is often increased by a full cent. These are the formal analysts looking at the market potential for one of the supermarket chains; reaffirming again, not the kind of nonsense that comes from the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, who has opted out entirely in his public responsibility to do something about prices and inflation, but indicating support for the kind of position taken by members of the NDP caucus and put again by the member for Wentworth last week that something has to be done about the way in which the supermarket companies are manipulating prices and gouging the consumer in this province. And this government can’t sit interminably by and leave it to Beryl Plumptre, because that’s a dance of absurdity -- and everyone in this House knows it.

General Foods up 11.5 per cent for the year ending March 31, 1973. General Bakeries, for the six months ending Oct. 6, 1973, is up 232 per cent. M. Loeb Co. Ltd., for the 40 weeks ending Nov. 30, 1973, over the same period the year before, is up 70 per cent. Maple Leaf Mills -- I’m beginning to understand why we have to increase the cost of a loaf of bread -- for the nine months ending Sept. 30, 1973, up 147 per cent. Nestle Co. of Canada, for the full year, up 93 per cent. Oshawa Group IGA, up 11.8 per cent -- and on net profit volume that’s one hell of an increase. Schneider’s Ltd., for the 40 weeks ending Aug. 4, 1973, over the similar period the year before, up 67 per cent. Silverwood Industries Ltd., for the 36 weeks ending Sept. 9, 1973, up 88.9 per cent.

Steinberg’s Ltd., up 11.7 per cent. And you know, the major factor in the increase for Steinberg’s -- which, incidentally, went up 14 per cent on sales, 11 per cent on income after taxes; all of these figures are after taxes -- the largest contributor to the income was the food store operations primarily in the Ottawa Valley.

It is a tremendously lucrative business now and the turnover has them laughing all the way to the deposit box, while the Province of Ontario wrings its hands and holds bogus food conferences in September of 1973.

George Weston Co., that made so much clamour about the need for the increase in the cost of bread, for the year ended Dec. 31, 1973, profits up 86.4 per cent.

Mr. Deans: Disgusting.

Mr. Lewis: Now, I’ll tell you, this government is letting the corporations in Ontario get away with murder going around gouging profits and with their increases in prices. It’s time the government put its foot down. Stop playing patsy for them all; stop playing patsy for them all. This government can only allow the consumer to be taken advantage of for so long before it’s joined issue with -- and consider this the joining of issue. We’ve talked to this government in a hundred different ways about what it might do, but now we’re going to make specific proposals and press the government every step of the way. Some of the proposals will echo what we’ve said. Some of them will be, in some sense, new.

Let me just remind you that in Delhi, I guess it was, the Premier said, quote: “The federal government must make a greater effort to control inflation, the most pressing problem facing the country today.” Mr. Speaker, something has to be said very specifically about this. We believe, as a provincial party in Ontario, that the responsibility for the control, of containment, of prices and profits is a provincial responsibility first and foremost -- and, in constitutional terms, that’s absolutely clear. In constitutional terms, property and civil rights gives to the provincial government the right to do something about prices.

The federal government can argue, in an emergency period, under the peace, order and good government clause, constitutionally, but otherwise what the federal government does it chooses to do because it accepts a certain moral responsibility for pricing policy in national terms. And who would deny them that? But if the federal government is delinquent, if the federal government abdicates basic responsibility, then it is clearly both the prerogative and the obligation of the province to enter the pricing and profit picture. As a matter of fact, the pricing picture in provincial rights terms was demonstrated in the Home Oil, I guess it was, decision in 1940. It is very clear in the legal context and constitutional context that the Province of Ontario would have no difficulty whatsoever were it willing to move in on this field.

What is happening, as I will show you, Mr. Speaker, in a moment, is that in the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia where you have NDP governments there are now serious initiatives in the fields of pricing policy. They are obviously not prepared to abandon to the federal government the whole range of prerogative over prices and profits. That is of some consequence, because very soon those provinces are going to be able to demonstrate what we have wished for the world we could demonstrate in Ontario, that this government has the muscle and the capacity to do it. And when it refuses to do it here, it is not that it is collaborating in some national policy.

There is no national policy, except for the subsidy on bread and milk and wheat. Except for some occasional and capricious programmes around oil prices and the security of energy supply, there is no national policy. This government knows it. And it further knows that constitutionally it has the right to move in. If the people of Ontario are looking for someone to blame for the cost of living and for inflation, that they can look right here, because it is easily discernible when you look at the policies, or the absence of policies, of this government.

Back in Charlottetown in August, 1973, the Premier said he’d call in the supermarket heads for a discussion of pricing policy. I remind the House that nothing has happened. He said at that time, and I quote him: “Some of the food chains were quite irresponsible.” If a Premier of a province thinks that food chains are irresponsible, where the devil is he? What happened between Aug. 10, 1973, and March, 1974?

At the Ontario food conference on Sept. 18, 1973, do you remember the promises of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations? Let me list them for you, Mr. Speaker. He promised, number 1, a business practices Act to prohibit unfair and deceptive practices. Not a word heard of it! It isn’t in the House yet. After seven months, where is it? Number 2, he promised, that the courts be given power to rule on what was an unconscionable profit. Where is it? Where is the legislation that would give the courts that right?

Number 3, he would explore cease and desist orders in case of unconscionable price increases. Where is the legislation? Where is even the public discussion. Number 4, he would arm the government with authority to act against food hoarding, speculating, profiteering and fraud. Where is that material? Number 5, he would monitor regional price disparities. I have yet to see a single regional price disparity document tabled in this House.

As a matter of fact it was the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations who said, if the public has the facts and acts on them, the powerful forces of the marketplace can be brought to bear on any inequities or anomalies that arise. There is the old free enterprise fetish. Like the member for Carleton in the housing market, so is the member for Niagara Falls in the food sector. We will leave it to the market to do the job. Well, they are certainly doing a job -- 55 per cent in 30 months of the Davis era. No group of corporations have profited so lavishly from the abdication of government as those in the food and development industry here in the Province of Ontario.

Let me suggest to you a series of policies, Mr. Speaker. Number 1, get the facts. And the facts require a rigorous monitoring and exposure of all of the prices in selected communities across the Province of Ontario.

In the Province of Manitoba they have a price monitoring system for northern Manitoba. They select a whole range of communities for assessment. They take into consideration such factors as modes of transportation, the number of retail outlets, sources of supplies and co-operation of local community councils. They compare them to the prices prevailing in Winnipeg at the time. Those are now published documents. Gradually it’s becoming apparent to the people of Manitoba where the disparities exist, and the pressures are so great because the embarrassment is so acute as some of these northern communities reveal what they are paying for basic goods, that they are correcting themselves internally even in advance of the likely legislation.

But more important than that, Mr. Speaker, in the getting of the facts we need a monthly report of price spreads from the farm gate to the checkout counter, and let that be a matter of straight public policy and public accessibility. Can you imagine if the consumer of Ontario saw what was received at the farm gate in any one of the whole range of commodities and what was paid at the checkout counter? There would be a public outcry that this government could not resist and the middle man and the supermarkets, who have taken off the extravagant profits, wouldn’t last very long, I’ll tell you.

Two, we need a prices review tribunal in this province -- a prices and profits review tribunal really -- so tough and so unrelenting that it could roll back any price that was illegitimate, would have the power to command witnesses and balance sheets, and have the power to make public the various components that go into the prices charged by various sectors of the economy. Mr. Speaker, I say, as we have said before, roll back one price in Ontario; just one price, once. Just do it once. Try it, you’ll like it; it won’t hurt you. Roll back one price and the effect will be so instantaneous and dramatic right across the province in all the other sectors the people of Ontario will suddenly believe that maybe inflation can be controlled, that maybe it is possible to come to grips with the cost of living. But the government’s refusal ever to move in, even on one unconscionable price, is a sort of commentary on its social philosophy, its refusal to intrude on the private sector.

Three, Mr. Speaker, we need an excess profits tax badly in this province, in the whole food industry and in related industries. We need an excess profits tax that arrives by learned consensus -- representatives of the industry, representatives of government -- on what is a fair rate of return on investment after taxes and then beyond that rate of return the profits are taxed at very high levels. Then we would begin to have another disincentive for accumulating such profits.

Four, Mr. Speaker, we need immediate corrective action for a guaranteed annual income, especially for senior citizens, and it has to work at the level of $225 a month minimum, plus all of the ancillary benefits, the cost of living factor, the tax credits and so on.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, we need to solve our supply problems and that’s going to mean an agricultural policy which talks about support for the family farm, something that was nowhere mentioned in the budget, as well as a retreat from the present governmental obsession with turning as many farms into concrete as they possibly can.

I met Gordon Hill, the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, at a provincial council meeting this last weekend when he was speaking on the Arnprior dam to the NDP members of council to an emergency resolution which we’d passed. I talked with him quietly about the government’s decision on the Sarnia-to-Montreal pipeline. I was assured by Mr. Hill, and I don’t think I misquote him, that despite what the government said about the OFA being interested primarily in compensation, what the Ontario Federation of Agriculture is arguing for -- and with enormous justice, in many ways -- is that the whole route should be through the north and should be within Canada -- that the entire route should be within the Canadian north -- and that the disruption to farmland will in fact be very severe and that they are not to be fobbed off with simple references to compensation. That’s an undeserving slap at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and a very gratuitous crack that was contained in the announcement made by the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development.

Mr. Speaker, there is one other way of measuring the William Davis years in terms of inflation which is immediately apparent. There are many, many other items we can look at, but just let me look for a moment at the rate of inflation, which is extremely difficult to calculate in one sense but I think useful in another.

In February of 1971, right at the point of the ascendancy, the percentage increase in the consumer price index from the same period a year earlier was 1.7 per cent. In December of 1973, the increase was 9.2 per cent. Now, what I’m saying, Mr. Speaker, is that the rate of inflation over the life of this government has accelerated in a three-year period by 550 per cent. That’s the rate of accelerating inflation. At least, if you have to have an inflationary rate, keep it down to something that’s manageable. But that it should be five and a half times what it was at the beginning of the Premier’s tenure to this point, is something that is really beyond the pale.

And whether it is in this Throne debate or on other occasions, Mr. Speaker, we will be dealing with fuel oil, with gasoline, with the cost of cars, with automobile insurance premiums, with drugs, with every aspect of the economy and documenting and setting out the kind of cost-of-living increases that we feel are so unconscionable for the people of Ontario and must somehow be turned around.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that when one is in opposition one is constantly fighting for a kind of credibility, for a capacity to influence the government.

Mr. Givens: The member’s audience is gone.

Mr. Lewis: Well, I don’t care about that. If I worried about audiences I would have left politics 10 years ago. New Democrats have spoken to mass audiences of three for a long time and it’s never been a problem to us.

But gradually the word gets through, Mr. Speaker. It gets through through the initiatives of three western provinces. It gets through through the initiative of having the balance of power in Ottawa. What we are doing is we are serving notice on this government that we are going to be unrelenting in our insistence that it do something about all of these areas of inflation. And that we’re setting the grounds and we’re telling it in advance that the cost of living and the effects on individuals and families in Ontario is what we think the next 18 months are about. And that we are going to be talking about it in no uncertain terms and that if it was possible either to influence or to change government in this province it is in the field of controlling inflation that we would wish the change to be felt.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to deal with one other matter to tie it together which I’d like to have put in the Hansard of this House. I guess I’ve done it from time to time on other occasions but I think it should be done in this forum. We New Democrats feel that one of the problems that the government obviously senses and constantly carps on is its inability to make it easier for individuals and families out there because you don’t have any more tax resources, and that although you’d like to diminish the impacts of inflation you can’t because you don’t have the tax revenues. You can’t give any more money to old age pensioners other than a $50 bonus at Christmas time. You can’t buy up sections of the Niagara Escarpment. You can’t purchase land for public housing developments. You can’t expand medical care insurance to include dental care. You can’t do any of these things because you are so strapped financially.

And you go to Ottawa. And you meet with John Turner. And he says the cupboard is bare. And the Treasurer comes back to Queen’s Park and wailingly beats his chest with that repetitive refrain that “We don’t have any additional sources of revenue and the federal government won’t give it to us.”

Well, another area that the NDP feels very strongly about and wants to engage the government on and which ties in directly to the inflationary battle is the question of redistributing taxation in Ontario and moving it from individuals and families to the corporate sector, specifically, Mr. Speaker, the resource sector. And let me put the material on the record of the House, and I know that in this policy we will find no support, either from the Tories or from the Liberals, and that’s all and well to the good, because we’d like the people of the province to know where we’re going to find the additional moneys to finance NDP programmes and to redistribute wealth.

For the year 1973 over the year 1972, the increase in net profits for base metals was 397 per cent; the increase for industrial mines was 569 per cent; the increase for paper and forest products was 344 per cent.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Incredible!

Mr. Lewis: Let me tell you the increases for the individual mining companies in the Province of Ontario -- and I must say, when I think of what has been extracted from the resource-based communities of northern Ontario and how pathetically little has been returned to them by way of basic community supports, it amounts to something verging on the criminal in public finance and in public priorities.

Let me tell you about these mining companies right now. International Nickel, for the fiscal year 1973 over 1972, had an increase in profit of 106.6 per cent; Falconbridge Nickel, for the same year, had an increase of 766 per cent; Campbell Red Lake Mines, for the year ended Sept. 30 over 1972, 84.9 per cent; Pamour Porcupine Mines Ltd., for the year ended Dec. 31, 1973, over the previous year, 271 per cent; Mattagami Lake Mines, for the same period, 169 per cent; Noranda Mines, for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 65.7 per cent; Rio Algom Mines, for the year ended June 30, 1973, 175 per cent; Denison Mines, for the year ended in Dec, 1973, 24 per cent; Kerr Addison Mines, for the same period, 66 per cent; Dome Mines, for Sept. 30, 1973, over the previous year, 99 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that we have the potential wealth in this province to do everything we would wish if we would only tax it. In the last year for which figures are available, the 1970-1971 year, the net profit for the mining industry in Ontario, after taxes, was $425.4 million. The total taxes paid provincially were $22.2 million. That’s an effective tax rate of 5.2 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, that means the mining companies of Ontario are paying a provincial tax rate of something less than the effective rate of people earning less than $7,000 a year. And when you add in all the municipal and federal moneys, it still works out to something like 10.8 per cent as an effective tax rate, which is still in the vicinity of a rate less than for people earning $10,500 a year.

We submitted those figures to the Toronto Star -- and before there are questions or scepticism, or eyebrows raised by the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development, whom I pilloried mercilessly in his absence --

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Does the member want to apologize in my presence?

Mr. Lewis: -- but have nothing but affection for in his presence --

Mr. Foulds: Especially for his eyebrows.

Mr. Lewis: Especially for his eyebrows -- let me read to you, Mr. Speaker, what the Toronto Star reported in Saturday’s “Insight” section about those figures:

“The Ontario Mining Association assembled a battery of nine accountants associated with the province’s major mining companies to deal with the NDP figures at the request of the Star.

“The result: They were sure Lewis was wrong, but they couldn’t prove it.

“’We simply have never assembled such figures,’ said one accountant.”

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Just a natural instinct.

Mr. Lewis: He added: “We are planning to do so, but right now we just don’t have them.” They were sure Lewis was wrong, but they couldn’t prove it.

Well, first of all it is not Lewis; it is those who work for the caucus in the research group. Let that acknowledgement be made because without them we would be in a sorry state. But in fact those figures are impeccably drawn from the documents and materials which the government has at hand. That is why I asked the Minister for Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) today to table the next edition of the annual statistical report of mineral production of Ontario; it has the tax tables in it. This is unfortunately only for 1970. They have got 1971 sitting in a desk over there. Three weeks ago we asked for the printed copy. They said “No, you can’t have it. The cabinet has decided not to release it but you can ask to photostat certain pages.” We sent over a specific request for a photostat of the page dealing with tax statistics. This morning they called back to say, “You can’t have it. It won’t be released.”

I am very pleased the Minister of Natural Resources has now decided to release the document but we know why they wanted to sit on that document until one has to purloin it or force it out. The government has got to be embarrassed by an effective tax rate of 5.2 per cent for the mining industry. It has to be embarrassed because people in this province earning less than $7,000 a year pay more by way of taxes than International Nickel, Falconbridge, Rio Algom, Mattagami, Denison Mines, Dome Mines, Porcupine and all of them put together.

We are not going to rest our case on those grounds. For what it’s worth, we don’t think that the effective rate of taxation for the resource sector should be based on net profits and we don’t think so because we are extremely uncharitable politicians when looking at the mining sector. They have so much that they write off before they get to the profits after taxes that to deal with net profits is not to deal with an accurate representation of what they are realty worth.

They have cut their depletion allowances, their depreciation allowances, their special tax concessions, their special early write-offs. They have fiddled and diddled with the books. They have done everything under the sun to present the gloomiest picture possible and then they present us with a net profit of $425 million.

No, we accept the formula which says one should base the resource tax on a percentage of total production -- not productivity but total production -- and one gets away with the complexities of the smelting and refining operations lumped in with certain other aspects of the resource industry and one gets away with the tremendous range in the fashion in which statistics are computed for profits.

If one looks at that -- I have the latest off the press in front of me -- let me tell members what Ontario has been receiving as a percentage of total production from the natural resource sectors, specifically the mining sector, in the last several years. In 1970, the total production was $1.59 billion. The total taxes paid were $27.6 million, total provincial revenues. That includes mines profits tax, acreage tax, leases, permits, fees, licences, royalties, everything, $27.6 million. The provincial tax expressed as a percentage of total production was 1.7 per cent.

For 1971, total production was $1.55 billion; the total mining revenue paid provincially by way of provincial taxes was $16 million. The effective rate was one per cent of total production. In 1972, total production was $1.5 billion; the amount of money paid with everything included in provincial revenues was $18.9 million; the effective rate of taxation was 1.2 per cent. In 1973, the grand total, estimated, of mineral production is 1.8 billion, the total tax revenues, estimated, is $22 million; again, 1.2 per cent as a total reflection of production.

Mr. Speaker, these figures are really appalling. If you would lump in the corporation income tax, federal tax, property tax, do you know what you do? You actually tend to double it. They pay two per cent instead of one per cent but in provincial terms they are paying around one per cent of total production on the average. The NDP says that the natural resource sector should pay -- mark this -- 15 per cent of total production by way of direct provincial taxes and another 10 cents on each ton of ore in reserves, the total of which would approximate $300 million in additional annual revenue for the Province of Ontario. Now, the government of Ontario, as presently constituted, will never do it. In fact, in last year’s budget --

Mr. Deans: But we will.

Mr. Lewis: -- it said that it wanted to alter the tax arrangements for the mining industry in a way that would leave them approximately the same.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister said he’s going to give them more incentives to get out and explore. They have quit exploring.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, that’s true; there would be additional incentives. We’re saying we’re going to turn that one per cent into 15 per cent. In other words, we’re going to do here what the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are doing.

And I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, and through you to the Secretary for Resources Development, that there are no mineral industries leaving BC; that there are no jobs leaving BC; that the exploration hasn’t been constrained; that everything continues apace except that the public is finally getting the share to which it’s entitled.

Now, for a generation or more the Province of Ontario has been ripped-off by the mining industry. This government has conspired in a denial to the public of its rightful entitlement in a way that is really -- well, it’s indescribable. I don’t know how it came to that conclusion. Again, it’s clearly a sharing of social philosophy.

When the chips are down and the government is pushed to the wall, it raises the sales tax. That’s what it does. Or it raises income tax. Or it allows property tax to be raised so many mills. The Tory government will do anything --

Mr. Deans: Or collect more premiums.

Mr. Lewis: Or collect more premiums -- exactly. It will raise every regressive tax and every tax that falls indisputably on individuals and families; but it will never allow itself to go to the one source of revenue which is there and waiting and legitimate --

Mr. Deans: And it’s ours.

Mr. Lewis: -- and would do something about redistributing wealth in Ontario. But most of all, I was going to add -- as my colleague from Wentworth said beside me -- most of all, it’s ours. It’s yours and mine and it belongs to the people of Ontario. And the government has no right, it has no blessed right in the world to squander on the profits of these blessed multi-national corporations, what is rightfully the people of Ontario’s.

And I may say, the government does it in a way that it will never recover, because they’re non-renewable resources. If we start collecting $300 million a year now, it will never compensate for the billions of dollars in lost tax revenue which we’ve simply never collected. It will never compensate for the destruction in the Sudbury basin; for the collapse of communities like Geraldton, when a one-resource industry closes down; for the denial to the north of everything that they’re entitled to. It will never compensate.

But we can begin to introduce an element of justice and equity into the tax system. We can begin to retrieve for the people of the province that which is rightfully theirs, and we will finally alter that arrangement which this government has in its single-minded fashion and in its special genius for seeing injustice and making of it a social principle.

So, in the area of inflation, in the area of housing, in the area of taxation we would remove the inequities in Ontario. We know we can do something about it. We understand the problems and we’re advancing solutions that are viable.

The pleasure of it is that for the next 18 months those solutions are going to be on parade for public view from three western provinces -- talked about, discussed, argued and watched.

We’re very confident about the impression that that’s going to leave; and we’re very confident about the way in which the members over there are going to have to move to meet the demands of this kind of opposition, or they’ll be in dreadful trouble with the electorate. Because when all is said and done, this government’s friendly little land transactions, or its squabbles with the teachers, or what it does to the hospital workers, aren’t what is at root in Ontario -- severe and objectionable as they may be. What is at root in Ontario is the question of the cost of living and how people survive from day to day.

Mr. Speaker, one of the phenomena which is most fascinating as one wanders around a little more as I’ve done, and colleagues have done, at mini-caucuses and in trips and tours and visits everywhere. What is really fascinating is the way in which these cost of living, these inflationary issues have taken hold. One hears about them on radio hotlines, one has them raised in public meetings, one is subjected to them in interviews everywhere in Ontario. The cost of living issues mean something. And the difficulty of the government, the problems the government has, the serious chinks in the armour are reinforced by the emergence of the public group, of the community groups all over the province who raise protest and social dissent against abhorrent policies.

I simply want to say that it’s the juxtaposition, it’s the combination of all these things, Mr. Speaker, which is making for government an impossible situation. It’s not just the impropriety of a land transaction. It’s not just the impropriety of a social policy like regional government. It’s not just the impropriety of cost of living and its increases. It’s also the fact that out there from Douglas Point to Seaforth you’ve got a whole community of farmers aroused because no one will consult them in advance on taking their land for inadequate payment when Ontario Hydro acts like some arbitrary, foolhardy, self-centred corporation.

You’ve got a group of people in the town of Durham who don’t understand why they can’t be consulted in advance when a major political decision is made to take away their name -- and with it, they feel, a good deal of their history and culture -- and give it to another regional area.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Take away their name? The member is wrong, just plain wrong.

Mr. Lewis: They just don’t understand why it’s not possible to be consulted in advance, to be brought down and have it discussed at Queen’s Park, They don’t understand this pursuit of determined alienation of public groups.

There is a group in North Pickering that doesn’t understand why it has to be the sole group in Ontario for whom the Expropriation Procedures Act is now effective in a way that; “in the public interest” removes from them the right to a hearing. There is a group up around Maple Mountain, whether they are right or whether they are wrong, who simply don’t understand why they have no access to all the public information for which we have already spent $155,000 and are well on our way to spending $300,000 -- why it is that government by leakage is what obtains in the Maple Mountain area. And let me say to the credit of the member for Timiskaming that there are --

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Thank you.

Mr. Lewis: Well, I know of few leaks as effective as the member for Timiskaming -- and why should it be? Why should it be that he as a member, or somebody who picks up rumour or gossip or speculation, should comment on what is purported to be a major economic project for the northeast part of the province? Again, a kind of determinedly insensitive and arbitrary exclusion of the public to the process of planning, to the process of development, to the process of participation.

Unto this day we have not had a full public statement about a project that’s been in process from two to three years, and which my colleague from Ottawa Centre has raised time and again, the Arnprior dam. Today, the Ministry of Energy announced he won’t table the engineering feasibility study. Well, one need only ask “why?” What is there about that study that raises such doubts that it would be of such embarrassment for the government to table it?

And the coalition against garbage operating in Vaughan township and Hope township and Pickering township -- all of these groups -- appearing before an environmental hearing board that was interested only in the technical and scientific data, not in the social considerations of major public policy of this kind.

What they are doing over there, wantonly, relentlessly, inexorably, is alienating Ontario, group by group, community by community, issue by issue and it’s all beginning to merge. This pathetic little performance in the Throne Speech, the “business as usual” tenor of the Throne Speech, is not what will bring it all together for the government because it’s gone too far. It has to have some imagination in order to rescue it.

Mr. Lewis moves, seconded by Mr. Deans:

That this government be further condemned for its failure to institute satisfactory actions in the following policy areas:

Inflation in the cost of living:

1. Failure to investigate increases in profits to ensure no excess profit-taking;

2. Failure to establish a price and profit review tribunal with power to investigate every aspect of price increases and take whatever action is necessary to ensure no unreasonable increases, or to have selected increases rolled back;

3. Failure to establish a consumer protection code extending not only to marketplace transactions and commodities but to the provision of services;

4. Failure to institute a province-wide warranty for home building standards;

5. Failure to institute a public automobile insurance programme.

Northern development:

1. Failure to establish economic growth in northern Ontario based on the resource potential as a catalyst for secondary development;

2. Failure to establish northern economic development in employment based on long-term secondary growth as a number-one priority;

3. Failure to recognize the massive economic disparity between northern and southern Ontario and the adverse effects of the two-price system in this province, and failure to take appropriate measures to bring about equality.

Land use and urban growth:

1. Failure to move immediately to acquire for the public sector sufficient land to meet the projected housing needs over the next 20 years;

2. Failure to begin a house-building programme aimed at producing at least 250,000 homes, both private and public, within 18 months;

3. Failure to develop a land-use policy and overall development plan to meet recreation requirements in all areas of the province with immediate emphasis on the “golden horseshoe” area;

4. Failure to establish rent review and control measures.

Employer-employee relations:

1. Failure to amend the Ontario Labour Relations Act to meet the legitimate requests of the Ontario Federation of Labour as conveyed to all members of the Legislature;

2. By allowing conditions of work and wages for the hospital workers of Ontario to deteriorate to a substandard level;

3. By creating a confrontation with teachers in this province and then failing to respond to the consequences of this action;

4. By inflicting compulsory arbitration on Crown employees;

5. Failure to legislate against strike-breaking and the use of firms and individuals to disrupt orderly, legal strikes.

Income maintenance:

1. By failing to institute an income maintenance programme to meet the legitimate needs of the elderly;

2. By failing to establish adequate income levels for the disabled and other disadvantaged people of Ontario.

Health:

1. Failure to provide a sufficient range of institutional facilities to ensure adequate health care at lowest cost;

2. By failing to institute a dental and drug care programme;

3. By failing to take initiatives which would upgrade the value of preventive medicine.

And further, that the government shows gross negligence in its refusal to tax the resources industry of Ontario at a level which would allow individuals and families in this province to experience major relief from the inequitable and oppressive system of taxation presently in effect.

Mr. Wardle moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ HOUR: DENTURE THERAPISTS ACT; PRACTICE OF DENTAL PROSTHESIS ACT

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely we are just doing one bill, are we not?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): I thought it was by agreement.

Mr. Speaker: I have not been informed to the contrary, other than by way of a notice listing the speakers, and both bills have been listed on the private members’ hour for this day. I might say that the custom in the past has been on occasion to deal with two identical or similar bills at the same time. It is my understanding that agreement had been reached in this respect, in which case we will deal with the two bills. The hon. member for Sudbury might move his bill and then the hon. member for Brant (Mr. R. F. Nixon) would move his bill and we would proceed with the speeches.

Mr. Germa moves second reading of Bill 2, An Act to amend the Denture Therapists Act.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition perhaps would move his bill too.

Mr. R. F. Nixon moves second reading of Bill 5, An Act to provide for the Practice of Dental Prosthesis.

Mr. Speaker: We will now proceed with the debate. The hon. member for Sudbury.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, the subject under discussion today is an old chestnut which has been kicking around for several years. I know many of the members of the Legislature have taken an interest in it and have followed the convoluted course that this problem has taken since the introduction of Bill 203, which was withdrawn and replaced by the infamous Bill 246. The objective of this present bill, An Act to amend the Denture Therapists Act, 1972, is to correct what I feel to be features of Bill 246 which are repressive, not only to the general public but are also repressive to the people in this province who have done a service to the public in supplying dentures at a cost that the majority of people can afford.

There are only four features in the amendment, Mr. Speaker. Section 1 of the bill would make an amendment that would remove from the denture therapists licensing board the dental hygienist and the dental technician who are part of the board as it is presently constituted.

The second section of the amendment removes the requirement that the denture therapist work under the supervision of a dental surgeon. It allows the denture therapist to deal directly with the public but only where the patient can produce a certificate of oral health signed by a dental surgeon or a legally qualified medical practitioner.

Section 3 would amend the limitation period for commencing a proceeding under clause b of subsection 1 of section 16 of the Act. This is changed from two years to one. In section 4 the amendment provides that the Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations setting fees to be charged by denture therapists.

It is my belief, Mr. Speaker, that if these amendments were adopted as outlined in this bill it would go a long way to solving the impasse which has plagued and embarrassed this government for the past several years. I think we are not asking the government to embark on any adventure that has not been tried. We are not creating precedent here. We already know that there are denturists operating in five of our provinces already, in fact, in Alberta since 1961 and in British Columbia since 1962. Even despite all the charges by the opposition forces that these denturists are not qualified and they are going to do harm to the public, we still have not got on record any charges or any malpractice suits which the insurance companies have paid.

I believe that the record tells the story itself. If these people have operated since 1961 in Alberta and 1962 in British Columbia, then there is no legitimate reason that I can see why we should not have the same services in the Province of Ontario. Quebec also allows denture therapists to operate. Nova Scotia presently has legislation on the books, and Manitoba. In the case of Manitoba and British Columbia, a certificate of oral health issued by a dentist or a physician is necessary. Newfoundland and Saskatchewan are also planning to establish denturists as a legal, independent profession. Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick have no legislation concerning denturists. Only Ontario of all the 10 provinces is the one that has made it illegal. I think the reason this government reacted was because of the terrific lobby which was put up by the Ontario Dental Association in its efforts to protect what I suspect is a vested interest in the supply of dentures to the public.

Mr. Speaker, there was a very interesting booklet distributed quite recently, written by a dentist by the name of Revere, and it’s entitled “Dentistry and its Victims.” In this book I think this dentist has hit on the reason there is so much opposition by the dental profession to allowing these paramedical people to get into the field. I will quote one paragraph from this booklet:

“The public has been conditioned to accept a high fee for denture services and a relatively low fee for fillings and peridontal work but the reverse would make more sense. Though the cost of materials in a denture is but a few dollars, fees for new dentures have always been high.

“Today’s quality laboratory fee for full dentures may range from $50 to $90. This is paid by the dentist. An average neighbourhood dentist’s fee for full dentures, upper and lower, might be between $300 and $500. Since the average practitioner does not spend much time with his patient, a close commutation could only prove that dentures are a more lucrative field for the typical dentist. It is ironic that the end product of neglect and poor dentistry should be profitable.

“The construction of full dentures has always been a lucrative field and one might well wonder why this should be. An old-time dentist whom I respect once told me that it was his belief that high fees were originally established for denture service because the denture represented the last opportunity the dentist had to make money from the patient and the most had to be made of it.

“If this is so, and it may well be so, it gives an uncomfortable insight into the operation of economic motivation in the healing arts. It is time and more than time that the professions took a fresh look at their aims and ideals.”

I think we have to reduce the whole argument, Mr. Speaker, to something very crass. It is the self-interest of the dental profession which I think is blocking the people of Ontario from gaining this service.

There is further evidence of this attitude, Mr. Speaker, in a booklet published by the Ontario Dental Association, September, 1972, entitled “A Public Concern.” In appendix K the dental profession posed questions and answered its own questions, and as I went through these questions I came to the conclusion that in its efforts to make its case it had actually subverted its case more than it had made it.

Question 1 was: “How can the dentist justify fees of $400, $500 and $600 for plates?” This is the dental association asking itself a question and here is how it answered its own question.

“Answer: There are very few dentures made for $300, $400 and $500. However, with the sophisticated methods available to dentists today it is possible to construct dentures using techniques that would justifiably entail fees of this magnitude and even more.

“Under the free enterprise system if the dentist feels his talents are worth that much and a patient looking for this level of expertise agrees to pay that fee, that is strictly their arrangement. The patient appreciating excellence is glad to pay for it.”

Mr. Speaker, this is precisely what is wrong with the delivery of health services. We have tried to overcome that by introducing a medical and hospital plan but the dentists are still operating on the free enterprise philosophy that those who can afford health care will get excellent care. Those of us who are somewhat limited in our financial strength will just have to do without. This is precisely what is going on in the Province of Ontario today. There are hundreds --

Mr. Speaker: There are 30 seconds remaining in the hon. member’s time allotment.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): No, he has got 20 minutes.

Mr. Speaker: No. It was my understanding there would be 10 minutes each. Otherwise there would only be two other speakers.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, we are entitled to 20 minutes. It is our time slot and the lead-off speaker is traditionally given 20 minutes.

Mr. Speaker: But there are two bills.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: On a point of order, I would agree with the hon. member who just spoke. This is the NDP’s private members’ hour; they have introduced their bill and they get 20 minutes and everybody else gets 10. That’s why I was surprised that you were asking me to introduce my bill under the same circumstances.

Mr. Speaker: Of course the notice given to me includes two bills, that of the hon. member for Sudbury and that of the hon. Leader of the Opposition. If we were to give 20 minutes to each of those hon. members, it would leave 20 minutes for only two other speakers and the usual 20 minutes for the lead-off speaker and 10 minutes for each other. I was not informed of any other arrangement.

Since there are two bills I fail to see how I can give each person 20 minutes and deal with both bills under the same hour. Perhaps the whips could enlighten me as to what the arrangements might have been?

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Mr. Speaker, I think there is precedent when bills are combined. Usually the two who combine their bills each have 15 minutes, which takes up the 30 minutes, and then we go on in the 10-minute routine. I may be wrong on this but there are lots of precedents for combined bills.

Mr. Speaker: Well, I am in a generous mood and will do whatever the hon. members wish to do. But the time has expired for the first speaker, if it is to be 10 minutes each.

Mr. Germa: I am not aware of what your ruling is, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I can’t very well make a ruling without all the information. Was there any agreement to the effect that there would be 10 minutes each?

Mr. Stokes: No.

Mr. Speaker: Was there any agreement to the effect that both bills would be heard today?

Mr. Kennedy: Yes, between the three whips.

Mr. Speaker: We certainly have never allowed 20 minutes when there were two bills during the same private members’ hour.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that if the present speaker were to continue until 5:20 o’clock anyone else who wanted to take part in this debate could speak for 10 minutes. Would that be agreeable? That would certainly suit me.

Mr. Speaker: And would it be the wish of the hon. member that Bill 5 also be considered?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It is quite all right. It is already before the House, Mr. Speaker. Let’s get on with the debate.

Mr. Speaker: Does everyone agree to that arrangement? The hon. member for Sudbury.

Mr. Germa: Mr. Speaker, the second bill which is going to be under discussion, Bill 5 I believe it is, would in effect accomplish the same thing that the amendments which I have proposed for the Denture Therapists Act. I think all the arguments I am making in favour of the four amendments I am putting are also included in Bill 5. The arguments are valid as far as both situations are concerned.

We are talking directly about money, Mr. Speaker. There are a lot of people in the province who are deprived of this health service because of the attitude that the dentists have had in the past. As I read their answer, they rely on the free enterprise system. If someone wants to pay $1,000 they will accommodate him, and if he wants to pay $500 they will also accommodate him.

I was talking to one of my denturist friends from the city of Sudbury today. He informed me that he knows of a recent case where the dentist did charge in excess of $1,000 in the city of Sudbury for a full set of dentures. This is unconscionable profit.

I think eventually our health delivery systems have to be brought under some central control. The bill will provide for this in that the Lieutenant Governor in Council would make regulations setting fees charged by the denture therapists. It is not very often that any of our professionals will agree to allow the government to set their fees. I can just imagine -- well we already know what the medical profession has said about these. They are in the habit of determining within their own little ivory tower what the health bill for the province is going to be. Then they divide the pie up without negotiations with anyone.

I think it is a symbol of the good faith that the denturists have that they are willing to submit their fee schedule to be regulated by order in council. We already know that the present fee structure of the Denturist Society is between $150 and $200. That is their maximum range. In the case of senior citizens and welfare recipients the price is $125 for both an upper and a lower denture.

It is ironic to me that this government has presently seen fit to hail into court seven people and charge them with illegal practice in making dentures, while at the same time the welfare departments, which are also an agency of the Province of Ontario are utilizing the services of these illegal clinics. In the case of the city of Sudbury, 90 per cent of all those welfare recipients who have to have dentures are referred by the welfare agency to one of these illegal clinics. This points up how ridiculous the denture therapist bill which is presently on the statutes is, that one agency of government will hail them into court and the other agency will see fit to use them. Now, the denture therapists have also agreed that in order to meet those complaints from the dental profession, and also in order to assure the general public that they are genuinely concerned with the health of their patients, they have submitted that they would go along with the provision that a certificate of oral health should be provided before the denture therapist should be able to fit a complete denture.

In fact, in some of the clinics this is already happening. In speaking to some of these people, I was told they do ask each and every patient to go and get a certificate of oral health from a dentist or from a medical practitioner. There has been publicity circulated by these organizations, between themselves. Some doctors are not prone to signing this certificate of oral health, nor are some dentists prone to doing it. But even despite the efforts of these professional organizations to prevent patients from getting certificates of oral health, many of these certificates are now being filed with the denturists, and I think it is in the public’s best interests that this is done.

It is recognized, Mr. Speaker, that these people are mechanics. They do not have the extensive educational background that the dentists have. There is a place for dentists in our society, but I suspect and I submit to you that there is also a place in society for the dental mechanic.

Now, I will conclude, Mr. Speaker, by reading an excerpt from Time magazine, Dec, 7, 1973. It is an essay on the rights of patients; and I quote: “Medicine may be the last forum in which the voice of the consumer makes itself heard; but eventually it must and will be heard, since the ultimate consumer is the patient and it is on the patient that the profession practices.” Now, Mr. Speaker, there is ample evidence that the public of Ontario has accepted the denturists. There are committees across this province -- spontaneously-formed committees -- which are fighting for the repeal of Bill 246. These amendments which I have proposed would in fact make it unnecessary to repeal Bill 246. It would only put Bill 246 in an order which is livable, both for the public of Ontario and for the denturists.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: One very important thing has happened since we discussed this bill in the Legislature last, and that is that we have a new Minister of Health (Mr. Miller). He is having a little difficulty paying attention to this debate because colleagues on all sides are so delighted in having him actually here, captive for a moment or two so they can find out about their nursing homes, that he is having a bit of a problem in listening to the strong argument put to him.

I believe that this is a more important debate than is sometimes heard in the private members’ hours, because I believe that the government should and no doubt will, under the leadership of the new minister, change its policy.

You may recall, Mr. Speaker, that we have found ourselves in circumstances similar to this before when arguments on all sides, including government benches, urged the inclusion of the chiropractors in the services of OHIP. The then Minister of Health, the present member for Ontario (Mr. Dymond), adamantly refused and said as cogently as any minister could possibly say, that the chiropractors were not to be included. But then, in the course of time, he gave up that heavy responsibility and assumed a new one -- what is he now, chairman of the Science Centre or something? -- and the responsibility for the governance and administration of our health policy passed on to someone else. It wasn’t long -- for reasons really not well known on this side, since the same strong arguments were put forward -- until OHIP was amended to include the chiropractors.

I feel something similar could be established at the present time, because the bill that I am putting forward simply has within it the basic principle that was put before the House on June 26, 1972, by the then policy minister, the present Attorney General (Mr. Welch). It was No. 203, and it certainly established denturists as a practising group within the community, with the power to deal directly with the public. This is precisely what Bill 5, which is before the House now, would do.

We feel that amending Bill 246 would in fact just reverse its principle. And you may remember, Mr. Speaker, when the original bill, which restricted the practice of the denturists, was introduced by the former Minister of Health (Mr. Potter), he asked for an amendment which in fact reversed the principle; and you, sir, ruled that it could not be continued with since its principle had been reversed in that way.

So I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, that we don’t want to make our arguments in any way other than those which could be acceptable to a reasonable minister, and I believe we’ve got one. Because surely he cannot continue with the chaos that has been willed to him by his predecessor in the area of this particular issue.

We are not prepared to see the Attorney General enforcing a law which is diametrically opposed in principle to the bill which he personally introduced into the House when he was policy minister in those days; for him to be required, through some agency probably higher than himself, to go to the denturists in the province -- and there are 107 of them practising -- select six to begin with, and an additional five or six, to be raided and to have their patients mistreated. In one case, a set of dentures was taken right off the table beside a lady who was being treated; the teeth were bundled into a package and taken away to the police station as evidence of malpractice.

Surely this is the kind of intimidation which is unconscionable and unacceptable, and the Attorney General himself must just cringe when he sees that he is using these practices for the enforcement of a law that is diametrically opposed in principle to one which he put before the House on June 26, 1972.

I don’t intend to trace out all of the circumstances, but I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. Speaker, that the Ontario Council of Health reported on June 25, 1972, that the denturists should be allowed to practise only under supervision. When the bill, which was opposed to that particular recommendation, was introduced the next day, the then policy minister, the present Attorney General, said the government is always free to accept or reject whatever advice it wants. In other words, it rejected the advice of the Ontario Council of Health and brought in legislation which was generally parallel to legislation already in effect at that time in four provinces of Canada.

The point has already been made that denturists do practise under government supervision, but independently in the community, in most provinces of Canada; and this is the only province where they are directly and specifically prohibited from so practising.

Mr. Speaker, you may further recall that the Barry Lowes committee on the standards for licensing the denturists brought in a report that called for an extensive programme of training, following the licensing of denturists -- I think they called them denture technologists or something like that -- but that was reversed as well when the former Minister of Health decided, for reasons unknown to us but alluded to by the previous speaker, that in fact the denturists should not be permitted to practice independently.

The former Minister of Health did go forward with a fairly substantial programme of professional training or technological training for those who did want to designate themselves denture therapists. I understand that some 85 to 90 took the training in the original course but that only a handful are practising in this regard because they find that their income is not parallel with what they might have expected to gain or earn if, in fact, they had continued as denturists.

My colleague, the member for Waterloo North (Mr. Good), put an interesting excerpt from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, dated March 9, 1974, in my hand a moment ago. It’s an advertisement as follows: “Mr. Derek Groves, LDT, wishes to announce his commencement in the practice of denture therapy, by appointment, 884 -- 8386, 122 Weber St North, Waterloo.” It’s an indication, Mr. Speaker, that there is a further complication, that the licensed denture therapists who have taken the course that has been put forward by the ministry -- that this particular individual is apparently going to practise directly with the community and without the supervision of a dentist. It may be otherwise, but certainly when he advertises his practice of denture therapy by appointment there is every indication that a licensed denture therapist has broken the ranks and is prepared to practise without the supervision of dentists.

Let me make it clear, Mr. Speaker, that we are not here being critical of the dentists. It is their job to keep all of us out of the hands of the denturists or the denture therapists, but not by using regulation and statute, but surely by practising preventive dentistry which, in the long run we hope, is going to render obsolete the building and fitting of dentures for those of us who at least take the kind of advice from the dentists that we should.

I’m simply saying to you, Mr. Speaker, that the new minister can, in fact, exercise his authority to make the recommendations to his colleagues to reverse what has just been a comedy of errors from the first time that his predecessor decided that the denturists should not be able to practise independently. It flies in the face of the practice elsewhere in this country and it is diametrically opposed to the principles put before the House as government policy on June 26, 1972.

Frankly, I’m tired of being told by experts in the field, certainly dentists and others, that my bill and the bills that are also before us today would put the public in the hands of those people who would harm them. I do not believe that this is so. I do believe that we are moving in this province and elsewhere toward the recognition and the substantial development of paramedical and paradental services, similar to the optometrists and the chiropractors, which are going to come under direct and rigid government training and supervision. There’s no suggestion, certainly in my bill or the other one, that anybody off the street would come in and plunk down $10 for some sort of a licence that would enable him to fit dentures and hang out a shingle and start dealing with the public. Of course, that cannot be true and is not part of the principle of this bill.

The concept is similar to the one put forward on behalf of the government by the present Attorney General in his bill numbered 203 in 1972. We believe that this is what the government must come to. I would simply say to you, Mr. Speaker, that we urge the Minister of Health in his new position of authority, where he must take sole responsibility for the welfare of the people -- and there is certainly no doubt about that -- also to take the responsibility to advise his colleagues on the basis of common sense what the community requires, and what, in fact, the community demands.

We’re not pressing for this bill to be passed at this time. We would hope that it would be, but we would expect the Minister of Health in his wisdom to see the advantages directly to the community of Ontario and to the taxpayers in the principles of the bills before us this afternoon. We would hope that before this session ends we will see a change in government policy, which is overdue.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Oxford.

Mr. H. C. Parrott (Oxford): Mr. Speaker, the discussion on these two bills that the members for Brant and Sudbury have presented cannot be significantly different, in my view, from the debate that was held some years ago. It is true that certain things have transpired in that time but very little has changed. The basic arguments that were true then are true today.

Whenever I take part in a debate of this nature, it seems that I am instantly accused of having a vested interest or a strong bias. Well, probably today is no exception.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): Pull some incisors!

Mr. Parrot: I cannot deny, nor do I wish to deny that I am a dentist. And if that puts me into a position of as one having a vested interest, or even a conflict of interests, then so be it. But let me assure the members of this House that I do not have a monopoly on conflict of interests on this particular subject. In my view, the Liberal caucus and the leader of that party sees this issue as primarily a political problem.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Does the member mean to say it is good for the people therefore we might support it? What are we here for?

Mr. Parrot: I’m afraid the Liberals have not looked at all of the aspects, some of which are far more important. I suspect this bill was prompted for purely political gain.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Oh no, we would not do it for political gain.

Mr. Parrott: And there can be no doubt that the vested interest of the leader of the official opposition is far greater than my own. And for quite different reasons.

Mr. Gaunt: The member sounds like a dentist. Is he?

Mr. Parrott: But what is far more important --

Mr. Gaunt: I think he does have a vested interest.

Mr. Parrott: Indeed I have; I admit that readily. But I submit that so does the member. But what is far more important --

An hon. member: Too bad he is a politician.

Mr. Parrott: What the members opposite have failed to see is the true issue. It is health, not votes, that those members should be concerned about in these deliberations. Certainly the political implications should be considered, but I have yet to see or hear the Liberal Party suggest any reforms or improvements so vitally needed in the delivery of dental services. Instead, they seek as usual the expedient rather than the responsible approach.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Somebody wrote that for him. One of those creeps that sits under the gallery has written that for the member.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Parrott: I would --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Parrott: It must be hurting. I must be on the nerve again.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Is the member for Oxford going to run federally next time?

Mr. Gaunt: I know he didn’t get into the cabinet; but he knows he will never make it telling the truth.

Mr. Parrott: The members opposite deal with only six per cent of the dental services of this province and they fail to consider the other 94 per cent. The making of dentures is obviously important.

Mr. Ruston: He seems awfully worried.

Mr. Parrott: But in typical short-sighted fashion, these bills fail to propose the great needs of this province. I refer to those things that will deliver dental services to all of our people.

Mr. Gaunt: I don’t like the Minister of Health. The member for Oxford should fire him.

Mr. Parrott: Oh, I’m disappointed, too --

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): The minister is disappointed, too. The member for Oxford should have read his speech before he came in.

Mr. Parrott: Very good.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I can remember when the member for Oxford made a speech in favour of this.

Mr. Parrott: I am disappointed, too, that the hon. member has not seen fit to propose much-needed changes relative to the vast majority of dental auxiliaries. We talked about it very briefly. Rather, he has chosen to focus on a very small portion, something in the range of two per cent of all those people, other than dentists -- and I repeat, other than dentists -- but simply two per cent of those who are involved in the delivery of dental services in auxiliary roles.

In fact, the whole debate on this controversial subject seems to have forgotten some 6,000 dental assistants, some 500-plus dental hygienists, and some 1,300 dental technicians and their employees. The opposition has forgotten that large segment. In other words, there is a total of nearly 8,000 dental auxiliaries who have been forgotten far too long. Surely, all of these properly trained, adequately trained, and thoroughly trained people should be given far greater consideration.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Do they want to practise independently, too?

Mr. Parrott: We’ll deal with that in a minute. And may I repeat that those who feel I have a vested interest in this subject might be right.

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): Who does the member buy his teeth from?

Mr. Parrott: But again, I say to those members opposite who would deal with such a small segment of the problem, it is small in comparison. Why don’t they get with it? Why don’t we plan for the 8,000 auxiliaries --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The government bill deals with it. That’s all it deals with.

Mr. Parrott: -- and provide services to save teeth, and not be involved with those problems involved with those of replacing teeth? Let’s plan how we can assist those people who cannot afford dentistry.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s another dental Act.

Mr. Parrott: Let’s plan to utilize the large number of people in the dental auxiliaries who have been well trained --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Denticare?

An hon. member: That’s another type of cavity --

Mr. Parrott: -- and increase the productivity of the thousands of dental offices by the use of these auxiliaries. Certainly I’m prepared to use the dental therapists or the denturists, whichever you wish to call them, but let’s plan to use them in a team approach and to utilize all the auxiliary personnel in an effective manner.

Unless my NDP friends in the immediate vicinity here think that they are in a satisfactory position on this subject, let me refresh their memory on a couple of items. May I say that I’m appalled at their lack of aggressive attitude to the rights of the many people and workers who have been employed in this field of endeavour.

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): The unsung heroes.

Mr. Parrott: Right. So often the members of that party have spoken about tokenism; well, I ask you, what kind of tokenism is it --

Mr. Drea: They are tokenists!

Mr. Parrott: -- when there is only one male hygienist in a register of nearly 600, or few if any of the 6,000 auxiliaries have a male receptionist or assistant? You know, it works both ways.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Is that our fault?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Parrott: But I ask them, why have they not championed the cause of the dental hygienist who, as they know --

Mr. Laughren: My friend is full of red herrings.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Parrott: At least the dental hygienist is by far the most trained person --

Mr. Stokes: Pretty weak. This is a pretty weak defence of government policy.

Mr. Parrott: I am amazed they haven’t championed the cause of the dental hygienist, who has taken her formal training and has been a great asset in the delivery of dental services.

Mr. R. Gisborn (Hamilton East): I remember when the hon. member supported us on this. Can’t he reflect back?

Mr. Parrott: I’ve always been in the same position, and my friend knows it. I’ve been in the same position; his party vacillated.

Mr. Drea: The member for Oxford should work in the same place as he does.

Mr. Parrott: You know, those of us who are a little more involved with this process realize that a hygienist is perhaps the one person who is overtrained and under-utilized and yet painfully not available to those who are in the direct business of delivering dental services to the people of Ontario.

Mr. Bullbrook: Dentists are never painfully not available; they are painfully available.

Mr. Parrott: I said the hygienist, if my friend from Sarnia would listen.

It seems to me that the dental laboratory technicians are another large segment, and the NDP too have ignored their plight. There are 1,300 of them, and their livelihood is at stake. The dentists will go on with or without denture practice. But I’m telling you that the dental laboratory field is in very grave condition. In fact, I doubt if very many of the so-called experts who have spoken on this recognize the difference between a dental technician and a denture therapist. I feel sorry for those 1,300 people who have no one to speak for them, and I protest on their behalf. Their livelihood is at stake and the members opposite have failed to recognize this.

What we are witnessing here in these kind of bills is a fragmentation of dentistry, and I suggest that what we need is not fragmentation but indeed a team approach. If we are going to go on with the proposal as suggested here, that the denture therapist work by himself, why not let the dental hygienist and the next auxiliary work by themselves?

Mr. Speaker: Sixty seconds remaining.

Mr. Parrott: But that will fragment all of the profession, and I’m saying that will be the greatest disservice we could possibly do. If we are going to have one, we should permit the others; and if not, then we should have all of them in a team approach.

In closing, let me hazard a guess as to why so many of these people are ignored. It is because there are so many dollars available to a few denturists who have so much to gain by this bill and at the same time, by a few politicians who are far more interested in votes than they are in teeth.

I want change as much as anyone else in this field, and I want dental services available to all the people. But I want those services available from a team approach and I want them available now, and the concepts in these two bills certainly won’t do that job.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Parkdale.

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): Mr. Speaker, I am continuously fascinated by the ability of the medical profession and, at the moment, the dental profession to mystify and to mythologize what is often a quite simple matter. I agree with the member for Oxford that we need a team effort, but what he proposes is a team effort under almost complete domination of one profession. We are speaking now in respect of the dental field. A dentist has an overwhelming lead over almost everyone else. This is not what is called a team effort under any condition.

This ability to mystify extends itself from a very simple matter. One of the old arguments used in an attempt to prevent a denturist making dentures was that a denturist is unable to deal with major oral pathology in the mouth. The first diagnostician of any major pathology, or any pathology at all, in the mouth is always the patient. He says there is something bothering him and he is going to see a guy to deal with the pain in his mouth. There is no real major problem of defining what the problem is. You feel the pain and you go and see someone about it.

Both the medical and the dental professions have always produced this element of mystery in an attempt to make sure that only the profession can deal with it. The whole field of both medicine and dentistry is moving now toward participation of the patient, participation of the community, in spreading the involvement in the practice itself to the paraprofessionals, yet the government, prompted very strongly by the dental profession, has moved in a retrograde action to stem that new tide. Almost all of our technology, all of our theoreticians, state over and over again that we must in fact have other people besides the actual professional delivering the service. And it is not enough to deliver the service as an extension, as an arm of a dentist or a physician; you have to train the other people to deliver the service in a more autonomous fashion so that he or she gets the job satisfaction and can do the job better.

Nobody denies that you need training for almost anything pertaining to the ailments of the human body. We need training just as much for a denture therapist as we need it for a physician. The point I’m trying to make is that to make dentures for a teeth-free mouth is a fairly simple matter. It does not necessarily involve six years of training or extensive training as a denture therapist, nor does it involve an expensive procedure, as the dentists have claimed it does. It is a fairly simple matter.

Though the denture therapists or denturists need some training they are quite willing to do it, but they have to be able to practise autonomously afterwards. It is a simple matter and it would well behove the new Minister of Health if he perceived this -- that we need not more professionalization of the field but that we need less professionalization. We need a more open health delivery system in which the various members of the team function in an integrated fashion but function more autonomously of each other. This whole concept of a team effort is that the people co-operate as a team, not as if they were in a military platoon in which there is only one leader and everyone else obeys orders instantaneously.

I know that even to debate this private members’ bill seems like an academic and intellectual exercise, but both myself and the member for Sudbury stand up to say that our approach toward the denturist is only part of our approach to the whole health field, and we state that we must move toward a more intense community involvement, more intense usage of paraprofessionals and more intense participation of the patient himself.

I speak in support of this bill as a part of an overall support to the long overdue change in the health field. And though it’s truly a small group we are speaking of it is very significant in terms of the whole approach which the government has shown up to now in ignoring what are the major problems in the health care delivery system. May I say again that it behoves the minister well to listen to some of the remarks that people have made so far because the whole matter has been blown out of all proportion. It would be a most graceful thing if he withdrew it or changed it or introduced a new bill which would allow the group to practise, after suitable training, what it wants to do which is to make cheap dentures for the people who need them.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of Bill 5, An Act to provide for the Practice of Dental Prosthesis, as submitted by my leader, and to support Bill 2, An Act to amend the Denture Therapists Act.

Either one of the two bills, I think, would resolve the issue of the dentists and denturists. There is hardly one of us in the House who hasn’t over the past two years -- especially approximately a year or two ago -- received not one but hundreds of letters from both sides of the issue, both from the individuals requiring the services of denturists as well as those who required the services of dentists.

However, in my own particular riding, for every one letter that I received in support of the approach taken by the dentist I received approximately four from people who had had to use the services of denturists, and found them to be most efficient; found them to be satisfactory; likewise, found them to be within their financial means.

Mr. Speaker, the legislation originally started on June 26, 1972, when the then Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mr. Welch) introduced the original bill permitting denturists to deal directly with the public. This is just as it should have been and we assumed that the government was going to follow on with its original plan. However, on Dec. 5, I recall I noted at the time, when the Minister of Health (Mr. Potter) submitted amendments to Bill 203 his amendments were in direct opposition to the intent of the bill and I brought it to your attention. Others spoke on that also, Mr. Speaker, and as a result that bill was withdrawn and the government introduced Bill 246 on July 6.

On Dec. 5, the Minister of Health made the proverbial flip-flop and from being in support of denturists working by themselves and dealing directly with the public, he introduced legislation that would require them to work under the supervision of a dentist.

From July 6, 1973, until January, 1974, the denturists continued to practise without any crackdown on the part of the Attorney General’s office. However, after the bill had been in force for 13 months the government decided it was going to raid selectively certain denturists’ clinics in an attempt to crack down on the denturists operating in open defiance of the law. Why selectively, Mr. Speaker? Surely, if the ministry thought that the denturists were openly defying the law and were not performing the services of which they were capable, the ministry should have gone after every single one of the denturists operating throughout the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, the former minister’s tactics on this issue can really be said to be nothing but deplorable. I am sure that now the new minister -- and the former minister as well as the government -- knows that Bill 246 is a piece of bad legislation, the new minister is having second thoughts and is trying his darnedest right now to turn back the clock to June 26, 1972, when the original bill, which permitted denturists to deal directly with the public was introduced.

Mr. Speaker, ads in the papers even today still carry the name of the hon. Mr. Potter as being the Minister of Health. I know the new minister will see to it that those ads are no longer carried and that the government will withdraw its original legislation or accept the legislation that has been introduced by my leader and make it a piece of government legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the concern of the public was so great that they presented hundreds of petitions to various members throughout the length and breadth of the province. I will read only a few comments, a few lines out of some of the letters.

“The price I was quoted was $500. It is far beyond the reach of the lower-income bracket and the senior citizens. Having a set of dentures made by a denturist, I was extremely happy with the end result.”

A second: “Our province is one of the most developed of all provinces. Should it be necessary for a denturist to face a jail term? In the rest of Canada, this practice has been made legal.”

A third comment talking about a denturist: “I feel he is quite capable of his work. He has been doing the same thing for dentists as he is doing now. Why can’t he do it for himself?”

A fourth comment]: “Why is it necessary for a denturist in Ontario to face up to a possible two years in jail term when in other provinces, both in the east and the west of us, this practice has been made legal? I think it is about time the legislation realized the needs of the province in this matter.”

Mr. Speaker, I could come along and read from probably 200 different letters that I have received. However, I would like to close and allow the member from the government side to make his comments. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, as well as to the members on the government benches to put common sense behind their thinking on Bill 246, realize that they have made a mistake, admit they have made a mistake, accept the bill introduced by my leader, resolve the problems once and for all and allow the denturists to work as they have requested.

No one for one minute would say that the denturist should not be fully qualified. We agree with their qualifications except that we think that they have been doing a good job in the past, They are responsible people. They are not fly-by-night operators and they should be allowed to continue as they have prior to the passing of Bill 246.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What did we do to deserve this?

Mr. Drea: The member wanted it and now we’re going to have to take it. Mr. Speaker, if I could just start off on a pleasant, conciliatory note, the government and particularly the members in this row of the government have always prided themselves upon abundant common sense. That is why we want no part of either one of these two bills which were conceived in moments of frustration.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’d sooner hear the member for Wellington-Dufferin (Mr. Root) than the member for Scarborough Centre if he wants a common sense man.

Mr. Drea: Oh, I am a common sense man, but after listening to what the Leader of the Opposition churned out in the middle of the afternoon, it’s enough to make anybody frustrated. I can understand the frustration that was there when he found two bills combined into one and had to limit his remarks to a few moments. I have only got four minutes and I want to make some points about common sense.

First, how can you equate the training that a dentist or a dental surgeon goes through with the training that there is for a denturist or a denture therapist? If you want to tell me, Mr. Speaker, that all the training one needs to work on the inside of one’s mouth is so far not even a single course, then, Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you we are into the element that common sense is being defied.

Secondly, Mr. Speaker, there has to be an element of control in the situation, and indeed the denturists themselves admit that there is a very essential need for control. They propose that a certificate of oral health be obtained from either a dentist, a dental surgeon or a medical practitioner prior to themselves operating and providing dentures inside the mouth. This is a very frank admission, and I respect the denturists for this, but it is a very candid admission that they have not been specifically trained to cope with the very many oral diseases.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): They are not pretending to be.

Mr. Drea: I didn’t suggest they were. I said they are admitting they are not qualified. My friend, the Leader of the Opposition, if he had any common sense, that is why he should go along with the government position because our concern is about the protection of the individual.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member supported the government position when it was just the opposite. He supported the original bill too. He doesn’t know what he is going to support. He will support whatever they tell him from the front bench.

Mr. Drea: I didn’t support the original bill. If there was any common sense over there, they would support our position because our position is quite basic.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member still supports anything the front bench tell him.

Mr. Drea: We want control and there is going to be control on people who by the necessity of their occupation have to deal with the inside of the human mouth. I was on that committee that heard all of the representations. There’s one that comes back to me over and over again -- and it wasn’t me who asked a particular person -- how does one determine if there is anything wrong on the inside of the mouth? That person, a denturist, said, “I put my flashlight in and I take a look.” Mr. Speaker, at that point common sense told me --

Mr. Gisborn: Does the member think he would put his foot in?

Mr. Drea: -- that these people should operate under the supervision of a qualified dentist or dental surgeon. I agree some of the denturists are qualified. I agree a number of them have taken a particular course and will pass the examinations that have been set up by this Legislature. But, Mr. Speaker, when there is no formal education programme yet for a denturist --

An hon. member: Whose fault?

Mr. Drea: It certainly isn’t my fault. If there’s been such demand for it over the years, where is it?

Mr. Breithaupt: The member is putting his mouth where his money is!

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, there is no formal education course yet for denturists. There is a very brief upgrading course. There are courses that will take a lab technician or someone who has had a considerable amount of experience with the fabrication of dentures and will put him into a position where he can work under the supervision of a dentist who has been very carefully and very expensively trained to do his job for society. I think that is the essence of the government legislation. That is not to say that at some future time, with a proper control mechanism, a proper education mechanism and a number of things that my colleague from Oxford has talked about, the opportunity for the denture therapist or the denturist or the other people in dentistry to operate independently may not be here.

Mr. Speaker, I have about 15 seconds left and I want to make the final crushing point of the day.

Mr. Breithaupt: Thanks for the warning!

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, about an hour and 10 minutes ago this party was told there should be a single rollback on a price and how much better we would feel. It was this party and it was the former health minister, who did achieve a price rollback.

Mr. Breithaupt: On what?

Mr. Drea: The reason I bring it up is it is in this field. It was through the efforts of the minister and this government and this party that there is now a guaranteed price of $180 for dentures done by a dentist enrolled under the plan that the minister originated. Mr. Speaker, I must concede to the leader of the NDP that the entire party not only does feel better, we have felt better for one long time.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell moves the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 6 o’clock, p.m.