Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

TAX CREDIT INFORMATION CENTRE

Hon. A. K. Meen (Minister of Revenue): Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise members of my decision to broaden the public’s access to the counselling facilities of the Ontario tax credit information centre in my ministry.

The Ontario tax credit information centre was established in early January. We have a staff of about 20 trained counsellors manning telephones to answer the public’s inquiries and to provide direction on claiming the three tax credits available.

To date, we have already received well over 23,000 telephone calls with 60 per cent of the calls originating from within Metropolitan Toronto and some 40 per cent from the remainder of Ontario.

I might add, Mr. Speaker, that I am most impressed by these results. In contacting the information centre, many people have thanked us for establishing this public service.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Oh sure.

Hon. Mr. Meen: I intend, therefore, to broaden its scope through an evening and a weekend service.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): It’s such a complicated system, no wonder people need assistance.

Hon. Mr. Meen: During March and April, the tax credit information centre will be open from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m., Monday to Friday, and from noon until 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

Our purpose is to provide people with access to government on these important tax credits at times most convenient to them. As many people claim their credits by completing a federal income tax return during the evenings or on the weekends, it makes sense to have our staff available to them at those times.

The information centre has been open during weekends and evenings on a trial basis for the last two weeks. More than 800 residents, mostly from outside Metropolitan Toronto, telephoned between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. The response during the past two weekends, however -- and I emphasize weekends, Mr. Speaker -- was disappointing to the extent that we received only 370 calls. Clearly we need to advertise the service more extensively and this we will be doing as I have indicated.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): How about the $500,000 the minister has already spent on the service?

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): He can take out full-page ads.

Mr. Roy: Half a million.

SALARY INCREASES FOR GENERAL SERVICES EMPLOYEES

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to announce to the House that the tentative agreement on salary increases for bargaining unit employees in the general service category has now been ratified by the employees concerned and, for the employer, has been accepted by the Management Board of Cabinet.

The settlement involves some 18,000 public servants, the majority of whom are in typing, stenographic and general clerical functions, as well as a number of investigative personnel in fire services and securities investigations, and inspectors in the motor vehicle branch of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.

Salary increases range from eight per cent to 10 per cent in the first year of the contract, with the large majority of classes receiving increases of nine per cent, while the increases in the second year is seven per cent for all classes. The contract covers the two-year period from Jan. 1, 1974, to Dec. 31, 1975.

It is particularly gratifying to note that agreement was reached in direct negotiations between the parties without third-party assistance of any kind. This marks the third settlement on salary matters in the public service which has been arrived at in direct negotiations between the parties since the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act came into force in December, 1972. In addition, complete contracts have been renegotiated in direct bargaining between the parties during the past year for employees of the Liquor Control and Liquor Licence Boards, for two groups of employees in the Niagara Parks Commission and for the Ontario Provincial Police bargaining unit.

It must be reassuring to the members of this House to know that the great majority of the labour agreements for Crown employees are being resolved by the good-faith-bargaining of the parties. It will continue to be the goal of the government to resolve any contract differences in this way.

Mr. Lewis: What about fringe benefits?

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

TAX CREDIT INFORMATION CENTRE

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): A question of the Minister of Revenue, following his statement: How can he justify to the taxpayers of the province the fact that his excessively intrusive advertising programme promoting something called Ontario’s “fair share” programme would have been overlooked by so many citizens that he would have to express disappointment at the small number of people who had called his offices during the week- end, when he says most people are most concerned with receiving that information?

While I am up, I might as well ask a supplementary to the first question. How much money has he spent on that advertising programme already?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Mr. Speaker, the programme is ongoing --

Mr. Ruston: It will be going until six weeks before the election.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mil. Meen: We have a schedule of weekly papers and daily papers and of radio and television, whereby we hope to reach the maximum number of people. We did a survey back in January, in which we discovered that some 69 per cent of Ontario residents -- I think that was the figure -- did not know or, frankly, if they did know, they certainly were unsure, whether there was even a property tax credit available to them this year.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): The government sure mangled it.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): And that’s called effective communications!

Hon. Mr. Meen: That survey was done after most of those people had received from the federal government their income tax forms for this year, in which our material was included.

It was obvious, therefore, that for us to be able to reach the elderly people who perhaps don’t read the papers and don’t look at these forms, to reach the disadvantaged generally, and receive these income tax returns becomes they may not have been paying income tax for quite some years, and to let them know that there was in fact money available to them under this programme, we undertook the advertising programme to which the hon. member has referred and to which I referred.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): The minister said they didn’t read the papers -- why advertise?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Now, as to the cost; the cost will be around half a million dollars for the total programme.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Shame, shame.

Hon. Mr. Meen: When we are talking about a rebate of some $300 million to the elderly and the needy, it’s a very small price to pay to be able to let them know that that money is available.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Why does the government take it in the first place?

Hon. Mr. Meen: This cost works out, Mr. Speaker, at about 10 cents for every tax filer. Another way of working it out is that it’s approximately one cent for every $5 of money being paid back to these people. We think it’s money very well spent.

As to the availability of weekend service, we think that’s an appropriate way to help out those who haven’t comprehended in some way what the programme is all about.

Mr. Roy: Especially when the government is getting the PR value from it.

Hon. Mr. Meen: They are reading the ads. They are seeing them on television. They are hearing them on the radio. They are telephoning us for the necessary advice and assistance.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Aside from the cost of publicizing the minister’s department, what is the cost of the administration of this scheme to get back the money that the government extracted from them in the first place? What’s the cost of administration?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Well, that’s pretty hard to estimate at this time, Mr. Speaker, but it’s a small fraction, possibly 20 per cent, of the balance of the cost.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): Money well spent.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scar- borough West.

Mr. Lewis: I didn’t hear what that small fraction was.

Hon. Mr. Meen: I didn’t indicate the amount, Mr. Speaker, but I would think --

Mr. Lewis: The minister said 20 per cent, I think.

Hon. Mr. Meen: -- that it is perhaps 20 per cent or so of our other costs that are directly related to the advertising.

Mr. Roy: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: How can the minister justify spending half a million dollars for this advertising when in fact in the tax returns there are forms to fill out to claim a tax rebate? Secondly, which of the minister’s PR friends got the job of preparing the ads? And, thirdly, is it necessary to have the minister’s name and the Premier’s name (Mr. Davis) so prominent on the ad?

Mr. Lewis: That turns people off.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Meen: Incredible though it may seem, people do not read these inserts, and we have had calls from people after --

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Meen: If the hon. member for Ottawa East will just sit back and listen for a minute, he might hear the answer.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): The minister might learn something too.

Mr. Singer: Lesson one, how to be a cabinet minister.

Hon. Mr. Meen: I want to tell the hon. members that we’ve received telephone calls from people who have seen and heard our advertisements, or read them in their weekly press, saying, “I filed my return but I didn’t realize I was entitled to any kind of credit and I threw out that insert.” As a consequence, by providing them with additional material, we’ve been able to help them to make a claim through the mechanism of the income tax for their proper and fair share of the money being paid back.

The second question the hon. member asked me was, who has the advertising programme? I will get that information for him. And the third question -- the hon. member had a third question?

Mr. Roy: Why the minister’s name and the Premier’s name is mentioned, but not my name?

Mr. Bullbrook: Why is the minister so mean?

Hon. Mr. Meen: It’s a rather common practice to include the name of the Premier and the minister involved. As a matter of fact, I might point out that this gives the hon. member the opportunity to ask me these questions in the House, I suppose, be- cause I can take the responsibility for the ad.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He still didn’t explain why he was so mean, but that’s another matter.

YORK COUNTY SCHOOL GRANTS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Premier if the cabinet -- the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) particularly -- is contemplating some kind of programme to assist with special grants for the provision of summer schools in the York county area to provide additional education to make up for what will have been missed by the time the schools are reopened?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Education may have some observations on that. I don’t know that any consideration has been given to that, if initiated by the local board. But I would suggest that that might be a proper question to ask the minister.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Supplementary: Would it not be important that students who have worked hard should get credit according to the work they’ve done, and that it not be just a blanket approval for all students, regardless of whether their work in the past has been satisfactory? In effect, the minister had indicated that everyone would be looked after. Surely they should be looked after in accordance with the work they have been doing.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I would think that’s a very natural conclusion, and one that I’m sure will be drawn by the board that has the responsibility for the administration of the educational programme in the county which the hon. member represents -- which board the hon. member has no confidence in. We happen to have some.

Mr. Roy: People in the area have confidence in the member.

Mr. Lewis: The government doesn’t have all that much confidence in the board.

Mr. Deacon: On what does the Premier base that statement?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. member for Port Arthur.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a supplementary of the Premier, if he can disengage himself from this tête-à-tête with the hon. member for York Centre. Does the Premier recall or can he tell the House whether or not the per-pupil grants for the secondary school students were withdrawn when the teachers went out on strike?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I have no idea whether the grants were withdrawn. I think it’s a question of, as I recall, the grant formula, and I now have to go back in memory. The grants are payable on the basis of monthly average attendance and no longer of daily attendance. I would think that when the calculations for the York board are made the number of days in attendance on an average basis will be calculated. I don’t think it’s a question of withdrawing the grants, it’s a question of the grants that will be payable as the requests are made or as the documentation comes in. I stand to be corrected because I really haven’t dealt with the grant regulations now for a period of time.

Mr. Foulds: A question of clarification, Mr. Speaker, if I may: Does that mean if there were a relatively low attendance, i.e., about five per cent for a monthly period, the grants would only be at a five per cent rate for that monthly period?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I really don’t recall the specifics of the regulations. I think the member should properly ask the minister. My best recollection is that it now does relate to average attendance rather than daily attendance, and it does relate to those figures when the grants are made.

Mr. Givens: Supplementary: What is the government going to do to correlate its grant system in its settlement, with the obvious decline in enrolment which we’re experiencing in this province?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think the answer to that is relatively obvious. Enrolments are determined basically in September of each academic year, and although there is some fall-off, unfortunately -- because of a limited number of students dropping out of the system, and these are calculated as well -- as enrolments decline the grants payable to the boards reflect this. It does relate to numbers of students. Once again, I think it’s on either weekly or monthly average attendance.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Op- position.

PRIVILEGE OF ELECTED MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask another question of the Premier: Did he read the reports this morning about the continuing problems with lead pollution in Toronto and, specifically, the threats of action by way of injunction against the chairman of the Board of Health of Toronto, Mrs. Anne Johnston? What does he think of the suggestion put forward that a certain type of privilege of the type that we enjoy as members of the Legislature should be extended to elected municipal officials so that they can speak frankly and without fear under these circumstances? Surely, that is something to which we should give careful consideration.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I have only glanced at the headlines because my attention, I must confess, was occupied with one or two other matters so I can’t comment on the content of the news stories. I think there is some degree of privilege, although I would have to check this out. I was going to observe that some day we might even discuss privilege as it relates to what is said in this House from time to time but I won’t suggest that sort of debate on this occasion.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Will the Premier, besides seeing what privilege is available, give an opinion to the House as to whether or not we might consider, through legislation, extending the same privilege to people who have this kind of responsibility and who are expected to be able to speak out without fear or favour?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I’m quite prepared to consider anything that’s reasonable and I’m quite prepared to see just what privilege there may be and see whether or not we should consider it.

Mr. Deacon: If it is reasonable for us it should be reasonable for them.

Hon. Mr. Davis: We sometimes abuse it.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Op- position?

The hon. member for Scarborough West.

COST OF LIVING INCREASES

Mr. Lewis: A question, Mr. Speaker, of the Premier: Given the quite startling jump again in the cost of living announced today, is the government of Ontario prepared to take any initiatives beyond the paragraph contained in the Throne Speech?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, the government of this province -- I think it was clear in the Throne Speech and in other speeches that I and the Treasurer (Mr. White) have made -- regards the whole question of inflation -- and I don’t just say the cost of living -- as being the most significant problem that this jurisdiction, Ontario, faces. I think this is true nationally.

I can only say to the hon. member that this government, and the Treasury people in particular, have given consideration to what means might be available within provincial jurisdiction to assist in this very basic problem. I’ve made it very clear to the first minister of Canada. It was contained in the Throne Speech and I have communicated to him directly that this province is more than prepared to play its role in any national approach.

While I don’t want to get into a lengthy discussion today as to the problems of jurisdiction, I think it is evident to the hon. member -- and I’m sure he’s very familiar with it -- that it is very difficult for a province unilaterally to come to grips with the issue of inflation. I wish we could, because we regard it as serious, perhaps more serious than some others who sometimes speak about it and who do have, I think, some of the financial and fiscal tools to do something about it.

Mr. Roy: One wouldn’t know from the Throne Speech.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I mean the member’s colleagues in Ottawa, quite frankly.

Mr. Lewis: By way of a supplementary, Mr. Speaker, I do not concede that it is difficult for the Province of Ontario at all. I think it is wholly within the powers of the Province of Ontario constitutionally.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: What are the specifics that the Treasury Board, the Premier and his colleagues are considering to play their role in the Province of Ontario? Can he give us a glimpse of any policy that he has which would effectively fight inflation in the field of food prices, for example, within the Province of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, one area in which this government, I think, has made a really very significant effort, and one which is not totally supported by the members opposite because it does have an impact on inflation, is the level of government expenditure. There is no question whatsoever that the level of government expenditure -- and I have seen the member for High Park (Mr. Shulman) on television on this issue; I saw him two or three times on television talking about this very matter himself --

Mr. Lewis: Come on!

Hon. Mr. Davis: There is no question that municipal, provincial and federal --

Mr. Roy: Does the Premier watch it that often?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Yes, he did, he did indeed.

Mr. Lewis: I turn him off.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He turns us off.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I’m sure the leader of the NDP turns him off. There may be some days when the leader of the party turns off the member for High Park. The reverse may also be true from time to time, I don’t know.

Mr. Lewis: We have a very friendly relationship.

Hon. Mr. Davis: However, before I was sidetracked and getting such enthusiastic nodding support from the economic expert in the New Democratic Party, I was saying to the hon. member that the level of expenditure by municipal, provincial and federal governments has, without any question --

Mr. Lewis: They are contributing services to people all across Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- an impact on the rate of inflation.

Mr. Lewis: No it has not.

Hon. Mr. Davis: And the member’s people across the House argue against ceilings, his people particularly --

Mr. Lewis: No we do not.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- in a hypocritical way, incidentally, to try to throw us off.

Mr. Lewis: Certainly we do in health.

Hon. Mr. Davis: And this is where this government, with some political flak, and I don’t minimize it, has indeed made a genuine effort to restrain expenditures.

Mr. Roy: What about the sales tax?

Mr. Lewis: Well, where have they done it? Mr. Speaker, I have not had my supplementary answered. I will ask it again.

Hon. Mr. Davis: There is a specific instance --

Mr. Lewis: In those factors that are monitored in the cost of living index, specifically in terms of food, let the Premier name one initiative that this government is taking to control the rising prices in the food sector.

Don’t let him talk to me about the public sector generally; we’ll debate that another time. Let him tell us about food prices.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): It helps curb inflation.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, we have debated the question of control of food prices in this House on two or three occasions. I think both the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr.

Clement) have dealt with this in a very constructive, very positive way.

Mr. Lewis: Not a single specific.

Hon. Mr. Davis: And I think they have made it abundantly clear that for a provincial jurisdiction to move in to endeavour to control costs where many of the commodities are a part of the international marketplace is just totally inconsistent.

Mr. Lewis: A cop-out.

Hon. Mr. Davis: It is true and the member knows it is true.

Mr. Lewis: No, it is not.

Hon. Mr. Davis: It is.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Further to the Premier’s, I think, third answer, is he then saying that since the economy of the province requires the restraint which he is so proud of, we can look for something approaching a balanced budget brought down in April? His record as Premier has certainly been ever-increasing deficits, the biggest in our history. He took a situation where his predecessor had a $150 million surplus and he has added $1.6 billion to the deficit. Is that not inflationary?

An hon. member: You don’t want any ceilings.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The hon. member for Brant has demonstrated his great expertise in mathematics in this House on more than one occasion, and again this afternoon.

Mr. Roy: He has been right on.

Hon. Mr. Davis: He has not.

Mr. Roy: He has.

Hon. Mr. Davis: He has not. The question of a provincial deficit --

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Does the Premier mean that his deficit is bigger?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He said my figures were as good as his.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Oh, I would say with great respect they were way out. Now, getting back to the point raised, the question of the extent of the provincial deficit does not relate to the rate of inflation. There is just no relationship between the two.

Mr. Singer: Oh come on.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: There is not.

Mr. Lewis: That is true.

Mr. Ruston: Forty per cent increase in sales tax.

Hon. Mr. Davis: If my economic experts, both of them --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What does the member for High Park say? Ask him.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Now I am in trouble, because the member for Scarborough West says yes and the hon. member for High Park says no.

I would also say this, that the extent of the deficit is very directly related to the necessity of this province to continue to maintain the level of service which is important, without the recognition by the Liberals’ federal friends in Ottawa that they have not done their part in federal-provincial rationalization of the tax scheme. What is more, he knows it is true. And you know. Mr. Speaker, If I can give the member for Brant some advice, the sooner he disassociates himself economically from the federal government in Ottawa and those who are supporting him, the much better off he will be.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The government in Ottawa is supported by the NDP, too, just the way this government is.

Mr. Lewis: A balanced budget is an Eisenhower argument. It is not a Turner argument.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Does the Premier, to use his own words, not feel somewhat hypocritical standing in this House and talking about inflation --

Mr. Lewis: Answer yes or no.

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): The member shouldn’t discuss that one.

Mr. Reid: -- when it was his government that raised the sales tax from five to seven per cent, and even his limited economic experience should tell him that increasing taxes is going to raise the price of goods and services?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, Mr. Speaker, I am not an economist.

Mr. Ruston: That is obvious.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am sure that that is very evident. But there are some things I am that the members opposite aren’t, which is also increasingly evident day after day.

Mr. Reid: Yes, but they are not repeatable here.

Hon. Mr. Davis: We won’t get into that.

Mr. Singer: Privileged or not.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Privileged or not -- and I would only say this, Mr. Speaker. I’m not going to argue whether tax increases are palatable or otherwise; we don’t like them.

Mr. Reid: Are they inflationary or not?

Mr. Lewis: Why doesn’t the Premier try the resource sector?

Hon. Mr. Davis: But the basis and the rationale for the increase in the sales tax was basically to bring about a redistribution --

Mr. Lewis: Because the government wouldn’t tax its friends.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- in benefits to the general public in this province.

Mr. Lewis: No, because the government won’t tax the resource sector.

Hon. Mr. Davis: And without any question the bulk of the increase in revenue from the sales tax has gone back to the tax credit system and the grants to the municipalities to relieve those people who feel the causes of inflation to a greater extent than others in a way that I think is most appropriate.

Mr. Reid: And how many civil servants did the government have to hire to administer that?

Hon. Mr. Davis: The Treasurer may have some other views to express.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Op- position.

Mr. Stokes: You are right on, Mr. Speaker.

FOOD PRICES

Mr. Lewis: Believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, I’ll ask that question. May I ask a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food -- I’m sorry to interrupt him?

May I ask the Minister of Agriculture and Food, with the increase in the cost of living which was announced today, it now emerges that the average Ontario food basket monitored by his ministry has risen by some 40 per cent in the last three years. Is the minister making any recommendations to cabinet which can put some control in the area of food prices at the checkout-counter level -- at the supermarket level? Is there something that can be done to control this rate of inflation?

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Mr. Speaker, with regard to the food prices that have been referred to by my friend, most of those prices are reflected at producer level. Over the last three years there has been a substantial increase.

Mr. MacDonald: Has the minister looked at the profits in supermarkets?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, I don’t see how our friends over there, who are doing everything they can to charm the farmers of Ontario at least to believe enough in them to elect one farmer to their party --

Mr. MacDonald: They are not reflected at the producer level.

Mr. Lewis: That is a start.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: -- can stand in this House and be as hypocritical as they are about food prices, condemning the very people whom they are supposed to be trying to serve.

Mr. Stokes: Not so. Not so.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: I don’t mind the Minister of Agriculture and Food defending the farmers -- that’s his job, and he knows and I know that the farmers should get the increased income.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Yes, right.

Mr. Lewis: What I want to know is, why is he defending the profits of the supermarket chains? That’s not his job.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Watch your image now.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend refers to profits of the supermarket chains. If we follow through on some of the matters that have been raised in that food basket, beef particularly --

Mr. Lewis: No, that is not the serious one.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Oh, yes it is. That is probably the greatest illustration of any advance over the last three years.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: What does the member want them to do, eat pork?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: It wouldn’t be the first time that either of them did.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That will come back to haunt the member for York South.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I think I’ll pass.

Mr. Lewis: I have eaten it all my life; I have never had that problem!

PRICE FIXING IN SUPERMARKETS

Mr. Lewis: May I ask of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, is he prepared to take a look at the possible price fixing in the supermarket and retail food sector as a way of beginning to take under control the kinds of skyrocketing inflation in the food industry which some government somewhere seriously has to contain?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Mr. Speaker, as my hon. friend probably knows the question of price fixing is, in fact, if it can be proven, an offence under the Combines Investigation Act, and therefore a federal matter. However, in my ministry, through my chief economist, we are currently doing an analysis of food market profits for the past 24 months in an effort to ascertain just where they have been derived.

The member will recall I mentioned the other day that one particular chain had what would appear to be a substantial profit last year, but it turns out the bulk of that was derived from the sale of capital assets.

Rut we are doing this analysis, and hope to have it completed shortly; then we will proceed from there once we know the facts of that inquiry.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary: Would the minister be prepared to provide for the public a monitoring of food prices in a range of communities across the province, and a monitoring of the disparities in individual commodities in various communities across the province?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, we are already monitoring in the Metro area, in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and in northern Ontario in, I believe, three different areas --

Mr. MacDonald: Why is the minister hiding the results?

Mr. Lewis: He won’t give us the results.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I’ll make the results available without identifying the stores at this particular time.

Mr. Lewis: Why won’t the minister identify the stores? Why is it not in the public interest to know who were responsible for the high prices?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I have taken a look at those figures from time to time; they vary as much as 10 or 15 cents a week between the different chains, and the next week the situation might reverse itself.

Mr. Lewis: Then let the pattern be demonstrated.

Hon. Mr. Clement: There is nothing particularly astounding about it at all.

Mr. MacDonald: That was spelled out by William Janssen in study No. 14 for the farm income committee five years ago.

Hon. Mr. Clement: This week one supermarket may be up, and the public may interpret it that that supermarket is ripping off the public; next week it may be in the low part of the scale. The difference between the low and the high is very insignificant.

Mr. Stokes: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Has the minister noticed in the ongoing survey that the rate of increase is much greater in northern Ontario than it is elsewhere in the province?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, going by recollection -- and I haven’t seen the figures for possibly three or four weeks -- it seems to me that the last set of figures I saw show that at that time the highest prices for articles in our basket were in the Thunder Bay area.

Mr. Stokes: Does the minister propose to do anything about it?

Mr. Lewis: Sure, he’s going to buy in Toronto.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, I propose to do this about it: We have had correspondence with the people at the Food Prices Review Board in Ottawa. They have conducted investigations to see if those particular prices are, in fact, not warranted.

Mr. Stokes: Unconscionable.

Hon. Mr. Clement: But insofar as my doing something about it, I would welcome any observations that any member of this House might make as to what legislation currently in our books we can act under.

Mr. Lewis: Pass some -- roll them back.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Oh, but it is criminal. The price fixing to which my friend alludes, sir, is definitely under federal jurisdiction.

Mr. Lewis: This isn’t price fixing; this is entirely price gouging. They are just unwarranted increases.

Hon. Mr. Clement: But in my hon. friend’s initial question he called it price fixing --

Mr. Reid: It’s price gouging.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is the minister telling the House that the province has the power and the authority to equalize beer prices across the province but cannot equalize fundamental foodstuff prices across the province?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, I will tell the House that. That’s nothing profound; that’s absolutely the truth.

Mr. Lewis: Well, by way of supplementary, why is that the truth, when property and civil rights are provincial rights within the constitution? The minister can regulate prices if he wishes.

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): That is a good government.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I cannot do that.

Mr. Lewis: Certainly he can!

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

Mr. Lewis: No further questions.

Mr. Speaker: All right. The hon. Minister of Transportation and Communications has the answer to a question asked previously. Then I will recognize the hon. member for Sarnia.

RECONSTRUCTION OF HIGHWAY 401 NEAR WINDSOR

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a question that was asked yesterday by the member for Windsor West (Mr. Bounsall). Perhaps you’ll take note and tell him about it when he gets back.

The question is, what is the schedule of reconstruction of Highway 401’s right-hand lane westerly to Windsor from 10 to 15 miles out of Windsor? When will construction start, and will it be commenced and finished this summer?

Mr. Speaker, two resurfacing contracts were awarded on this section of Highway 401. Contract 73-171 covered the section from interchange No. 6 westerly to interchange No. 4, a distance of 8.7 miles. It was awarded on Jan. 9, 1974; work is to start May 1, and the anticipated completion date is October, 1974. Contract 73-172 starts at interchange No. 4 and continues westerly to the Highway 3-B interchange, a distance of 10.3 miles. This was awarded on Jan. 16, 1974; work is to start May 6, 1974, and completion is anticipated in October, 1974.

Mr. Ruston: I told him that yesterday. I knew that. It’s in my riding.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sarnia.

WORLD FOOTBALL LEAGUE

Mr. Bullbrook: A question of the Premier: Could the Premier advise as to whether he agrees with the Minister of National Health and Welfare that the intrusion of a World Football League entry into the city of Toronto is a threat to the peace, order and good government of our nation? And could he use his influence with his friends in Ottawa to stop that silly symphony that is going on?

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): They’ve got to keep the government busy up there.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can only assume from the question that the member for Sarnia disagrees categorically with the Minister of National Health and Welfare and his policies --

Mr. Bullbrook: I am asking the question! I wondered if --

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, no -- but the member said it was a silly symphony, and I am taking from that, that is what he is saying.

Mr. Lewis: Why football?

Mr. Bullbrook: I am asking, does the Premier agree or disagree?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I expressed the point of view, I think, on a certain television programme on Sunday evening, where I made it very clear, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Deacon: Has the Premier ever made anything clear?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Yes, I know that there are some for whom these words are difficult to completely understand and I won’t go any further. But I will now try to answer this matter of urgent public importance --

Mr. Bullbrook: Don’t use the word “hypocrite”!

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The member for Sarnia has asked me whether I agree that the awarding of a franchise and the operation of a team in Toronto in the World Football League will hurt the question of peace, order and good government. I think to answer that part of the question, I would say I don’t think it would. I don’t think it is going to disturb peace. I don’t think it is going, you know, to affect order; and I don’t think really it’s going to --

Mr. Bullbrook: What about government responsibility?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I don’t think, really, it’s going to alter the questionable government we are getting in Ottawa. Now I have other solutions to that.

Mr. Bullbrook: What about the Premier’s friends in Ottawa; what is he going to do about them?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well, I must confess that we have not had a great deal of success with our friends in Ottawa who are much closer to the member’s people across the House; and if the member for Sarnia feels strongly on this issue, I would suggest that he communicate his views to the minister responsible and perhaps bring this matter to a speedy conclusion.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What are the Premier’s views?

Mr. Roy: What are the Premier’s views?

Mr. Bullbrook: By way of supplementary, and in a more serious vein, does this government intend to make any representation to the federal government with respect to the intervention by the Minister of National Health and Welfare on the supposed grounds of a threat to the peace, order and good government of this country?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Does the Premier agree with vocal John or silent Bob?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, Mr. Speaker, we have not contemplated making any representations to the minister himself, and as I say I expressed a personal point of view the other evening. I think I made it abundantly clear on that particular occasion that the federal government has been responsible for. shall we say, developing this debate; and I think that it is its responsibility to bring it to a conclusion. We are not contemplating, as a government, any action to stop the World Football League.

An hon. member: Is he arguing with the law?

Mr. Bullbrook: One final supplementary: Do I understand the position of the government here in Ontario to be that it has no function in connection with the present dispute at all, and that it is solely and totally the responsibility of the government of Canada, notwithstanding the provisions of the constitution of our country?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well Mr. Speaker, I think that certainly the federal government has been responsible for, shall we say developing this debate, and certainly --

Mr. Bullbrook: Does this provincial government have any responsibility; yes or no?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think it’s within this area of responsibility they have to solve it. We have not looked into the question of any constitutional responsibility or jurisdiction we may or may not have.

Mr. Bullbrook: The Premier has nothing to say as the leader of the government, not a thing?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, not at this point.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sudbury.

PAYMENTS TO JURORS

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Solicitor General: I’m sure the minister is aware of a five-man coroner’s jury which has been sitting in Sudbury for eight weeks investigating the deaths of 23 people in the Sudbury General Hospital. Is it not expecting a little much from these citizens to give up, say 25 per cent of their incomes, in order to do their civic duty? When can we expect amendments to the legislation which would adjust the per diem rate of jurors; and what special steps is the Solicitor General going to take to relieve the financial hardship which has been caused to these five people presently sitting?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, because of the number of deaths involved in that unfortunate incident in Sudbury --

Mr. Roy: The minister figures six bucks a day is enough.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: -- and because of the fact --

Mr. Ruston: Get to the point.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: -- that most of the families have retained counsel, those are among the reasons the inquest has been going on for so long.

Now as far as jurors’ fees are concerned, this is of course something for the Attorney General’s department to decide.

Mr. Roy: The coroners are under the Solicitor General.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: It is my understanding those fees are being looked at and are expected to be increased this year.

Mr. MacDonald: Retroactively?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I might say that although the fees are apparently low, particularly in a situation where you have a long inquest, in some cases the salaries of some of the jurors apparently will continue on.

Mr. Martel: What about the rest?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: In any event there are expenses as well as the per diem fee, but I do admit that that fee is low.

Mr. Singer: What is the minister going to do about it?

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary?

An hon. member: No.

Mr. Speaker: All right. The hon. member for Ottawa East is next.

SUDBURY HOSPITAL INVESTIGATION

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller) I’d like to ask the Premier a question in relation to this inquest in the Sudbury General Hospital. Is the Premier aware that according to the evidence, had the Canadian Standards Association code which was drawn up in 1963 been accepted by the provincial government, by this government in this province, it would have probably avoided the gas mixup? What possible justification could he give us here today as to why this code has not been accepted by this government?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I am not familiar with the transcript of the evidence that has been given during the conduct of the coroner’s inquest. I’d be delighted to discuss this with my colleague the Minister of Health at an appropriate time and I’m sure he will be delighted to give the member a reply.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Port Arthur.

YORK COUNTY SCHOOL GRANTS

Mr. Foulds: I have a question of the Minister of Education, Mr. Speaker. Could the minister state clearly, which the Premier was unable to do earlier in the question period, whether or not the per pupil grants for secondary schools in York county have been withdrawn from that board since the teachers’ dispute in which they withdrew their services?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, what actually is happening, and it is the same as happened in Windsor last year, is that the amount of grants that the board receives is being reduced by the amount that would have been paid in salaries to those teachers who have withdrawn their services. The ceiling is also appropriately reduced for the period of time when those people are not in the employ of the board.

Mr. Speaker: Was there a supplementary?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: I wonder in that connection if the minister could make it clear whether there would be special additional grants available to that board to provide summer courses for those students who might choose to make up some of the education time lost?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, this would be something we would have to discuss with the board. If the board wishes to talk to us about it we would discuss it with the board. There are many boards operating summer courses at summer schools at the present time, as I am sure my friend knows. Secondary school credits during the summer for students who want to take them are offered by many boards. I assume that they finance those under present arrangements, but I would be glad to discuss this with the board if they wish.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: To what extent would the minister’s statement -- I think made in conjunction with some board members -- apply that no students would suffer from the fact they have been out of school now for six weeks? Does this mean that their promotion won’t suffer or that the actual body of knowledge that they would have been able to impart to the students would remain unchanged through some additional make-up courses?

Hon. Mr. Wells: What my statement meant, Mr. Speaker, was that we were going to take all measures possible to study ways to help anybody who felt he was at a disadvantage because of the period of time he had missed.

We have two people in the ministry specially appointed to meet with the principals of the schools and the teachers when they resume full operations to assist in the study and interpretation of any of the regulations that perhaps may be wrongly interpreted. We are going to assist, so far as applications to universities are concerned, to make sure that the people realize that there was a problem here and that the students are given special attention where their applications are concerned if their marks weren’t available at the appropriate time, and things like this.

There are a lot of details that will be taken care of. If there have to be make-up courses or things like this, we will assist them to do that.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lanark.

CAPITAL GRANTS FOR FARMERS

Mr. D. J. Wiseman (Lanark): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. In view of the fact that $10 million has been set aside for capital grants for farmers, and in view of the fact that in my riding there are quite a few who have applied and have been told they have to wait till next year to receive the money, is the minister considering adding to that before the end of the fiscal year, or if not, will it be raised in the coming year? The $10 million figure just doesn’t seem to be enough to cover these grants to help the farmers.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to advise the House through you, sir, in answer to my friend’s question -- I know he has been very much concerned in the past about this matter -- that we will honour all of the applications on hand for capital grants prior to the end of this fiscal year for every farmer in Ontario.

Mr. Lewis: Because the government is afraid we are wooing the farmers.

Mr. MacDonald: No, because there is an election coming, that’s why. Right before the election there is no end of money then.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener has been trying to get the floor for some time.

PROVINCE OF ONTARIO SAVINGS OFFICE

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Revenue. Has the Minister of Revenue instigated a review of the operation of the provincial savings offices, especially with respect to the comments made in the auditor’s report that five of the 21 offices have run at a consistent loss for the last 15 years or more? Would the minister in his review, which I would hope would be tabled in the House, advise us of other financial institutions in the communities where these branches are operating at a loss, particularly in light of the financial ability of nearly every other institution, whether it be bank or trust company or whatever, to make a substantial and healthy profit in this society?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member will also recall, if he read the full text of the auditor’s report concerning the Province of Ontario Savings Office, that to a substantial degree it really depends on how you adjust certain of the interest-earning portions of the portfolios carried by those various banks. If it were adjusted on a different basis, I believe he will recall that the Provincial Auditor indicated the profit and loss picture on some of those branches might be very different.

Consequently, it may or may not be the case that there are five that are losing money. In any event, they are providing service. Even if they are losing money, I don’t think one would automatically say they should be closed down. It might be that changes in the operations of those branches and perhaps in many of the others as well could be made which would enhance the facility and service they provide to the banking public in various communities.

I can say with confidence that my ministry will be looking at the report and at the operations of the Province of Ontario Savings Office to determine whether its operations may be streamlined, and I suppose, peripherally to that, whether any of them should be adjusted and, indeed, whether some expansion in the activity might be undertaken.

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

SUPPLY AND PRICE OF FERTILIZER

Mr. MacDonald: I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Now that his ministry has hosted a national fertilizer conference and confirmed what everybody knew -- namely that there is a shortage of fertilizer and the companies are capitalizing on that situation with higher prices -- what does the government propose to do about investigating the validity of those higher prices and perhaps countering them?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I missed that question. Did my hon. friend ask if we were going to do something similar to the government of Manitoba in investigating fertilizer prices?

Mr. MacDonald: No, the four western provinces including Alberta; a gentleman known as Lougheed.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I have the report of the Manitoba government’s investigation of fertilizer prices. I will be interested to see what it does with that report. The conference we held here on Monday and Tuesday of this week --

Mr. MacDonald: The minister turns me off.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: -- which was a national conference.

Mr. MacDonald: He can turn me off.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I wouldn’t say that.

Mr. MacDonald: I would.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: The member could but there we differ. That’s why he is over there and we are over here.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: The real concern, Mr. Speaker, is that there could be a scarcity of fertilizers. There’s no question of it. There certainly will not be enough fertilizers to meet all the demands in Canada and the United States, and certainly on a world-wide basis there is no possibility of meeting those demands. I would suggest that it’s going to be extremely difficult to do anything about lowering the price of fertilizers in view of the fact that there are standing orders from off-shore sources for quantities of fertilizer of almost any analysis or type, without any price attached. “Just simply send us the fertilizer” -- those are open-ended orders.

I would think we will probably be lucky if we can get anything like enough fertilizers in Canada and the United States to meet the demand, even at the prices they are being held at now, which are much below world prices. I share the concern my friend from York South has suggested. It is a very real concern but I really don’t know how one puts a lid on it today in view of the enormous demand there is for these commodities.

Mr. MacDonald: I will try to get the minister some answers, then.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That’s fine. I will be interested to know what they do in Manitoba because they have that report on their hands now and we will be watching that with some interest.

Mr. MacDonald: In other words, the minister is going to do nothing.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Chairman of the Management Board has the answer to a question asked previously.

APPOINTMENT OF CSAO ARBITRATION MEDIATOR

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have a reply for the member for Scarborough West to a question he asked the other day on the appointment of a mediator in the employee benefit negotiations.

Mr. Howard Brown was appointed to mediate the dispute last November and scheduled a meeting with the parties on Nov. 26. This meeting was cancelled by the parties because they wished to have one more try at resolving the matter in direct negotiations. In spite of the efforts of both parties an impasse was reached for the second time on Jan. 16. Mr. Brown was contacted by the spokesman for the CSAO by letter, which Mr. Brown received on Feb. 4, and asked to convene a meeting of the parties.

By this time, Mr. Brown’s schedule did not permit him to schedule an early meeting and he so advised the registrar of the Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal on the same day. A copy of his letter was sent to the CSAO and to the staff relations branch of the Civil Service Commission. After several weeks had passed without any further word on this matter, a member of the staff relations branch contacted the registrar of the tribunal during the week of Feb. 18. He was advised that the registrar was waiting for some indication from the parties as to their views on the appointment of a different mediator.

A letter was delivered to the CSAO on Feb. 26, urging them to make their views known so that this matter could proceed. The CSAO responded to this urging by a letter dated Feb. 27, asking the tribunal to appoint another mediator immediately, or send the matter on to arbitration. Although the government was not the party to apply for conciliation services in this instance, and therefore is not the party with primary responsibility for follow-up, it will be seen that we have consistently tried to keep this matter moving along.

As further evidence of this, Mr. Speaker, I would point out to the members that although the government objects in principle to the bypassing of any stages in the collective bargaining process, there have been so many delays in these particular negotiations that we have advised the tribunal that the government would not object if this matter were referred to arbitration, rather than to appoint another mediator.

The hon. member for Scarborough West will want to be reassured that these steps were taken by the government before the matter was raised in the House on Tuesday.

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

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes presented the annual report of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission for the year ended Dec. 31, 1972.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

Before the orders of the day, I should like to deal with a matter that had been raised earlier this week. I’m referring to the alleged matter of privilege raised by the hon. members for Scarborough West and Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy).

I must again point out, as I have on several other occasions, that by standing order No. 27(i) a minister may, in his discretion, decline to answer any question. I know of no recognized privilege of Parliament that would supersede that provision. Nor can members demand, as a matter of privilege, the tabling by a minister of documents which they may consider important. The standing orders provide procedures for members who are not satisfied with answers to questions, and for notices of motion for the production of documents.

In the latter case I should point out, however, that the mere tabling of a notice of motion for the production of papers does not compel that production of the documents. The motion must be passed by the House and become an order of the House before it becomes obligatory on a minister to comply therewith.

I suggest that this latter fact re-emphasizes what I said at the outset, that is, that the refusal of a minister to comply with an oral demand in the question period for the production of documents is not a matter of privilege.

Mr. Bullbrook: Prior to the orders of the day, I rise on a point of personal privilege, or perhaps clarification. Some time ago it had been thought that the government would integrate certain services in the hospitals in the city of Sarnia, sir, and at that time I wrote a letter to the then Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mr. Welch), thinking that it was within his purview of responsibility. During a heated exchange in the House last week, I said that the then secretary had not responded to my correspondence, and I wish to advise that I misled the House and that the secretary did reply to my correspondence. I apologize to him. He did nothing about the matter, but that’s to be expected.

Interjections by hon. members.

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.

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Minister of Energy): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Prince Edward-Lennox (Mr. Taylor) has been good enough to yield so that I might make a government statement at this point. It is somewhat longer than a normal government statement and it was thought that it would better fit as a contribution to the debate on the Speech from the Throne -- which I trust, sir, meets with your approval?

Mr. Speaker: I might say that it meets with my approval. I’m not so certain that it might meet with the approval of all of the members of the House. Do all the members of the House agree that this may be proceeded with in the manner suggested?

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Why need we agree? He has a right to enter the debate.

Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. minister did not suggest that he was going to present this as a part of the Speech from the Throne.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, he did.

Mr. Speaker: Did he say that?

Some hon. members: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: I apologize to the hon. members. Proceed.

An hon. member: Why is he stealing the Minister of Education’s thunder?

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Minister of Energy): Yes, he does not agree, I might say.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make some remarks today about energy and to put certain matters on the record and that’s the reason I have intruded on the time of my colleague, the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells). Since this is a contribution to the Throne debate, sir, I of course, join with others in congratulating the hon. members for Timiskaming (Mr. Havrot) and Brantford (Mr. Beckett) for the very excellent contributions which they made to the debate. I, of course, add my respect for you, sir, and echo the sentiments of all of us that we are glad to see you back in the chair and in such obvious good health and good humour.

It is now over seven weeks since the first ministers’ conference on energy convened. The overriding concern at that conference was the design of an energy policy that would result in an adequate and secure supply of energy at a reasonable price for all Canadians.

It was predictable that in view of the circumstances which had developed since the conference was called, the major emphasis should be on oil and natural gas, and in particular on oil. Oil is a vitally important energy source; it is readily trans- portable. Canada has regions that produce surpluses and regions that are deficient; further, some part of the oil-deficient regions are served with oil from domestic sources and some from offshore. The potential for different oil prices in the different regions of Canada and the major and contrasting economic impact on the various regions obviously resulted in different perspectives and different concerns.

We are all well aware of the accomplishments and the failures that marked the progress of that conference. It did result in the discussion of short- and long-term energy issues. It defined some of the clear differences of viewpoint as between the consuming and producing provinces. Some common ground was established. There was some agreement on certain broad goals. But there was no clear agreement as to the proper answer to the urgent question of appropriate arrangements for adequacy and security of oil supply and the more difficult problem of the price level at which oil might move in trade within Canada.

The broad goals of agreement were itemized at that time. It might not be inappropriate to remind hon. members as to the general nature of those goals, as enunciated at the time in a summary statement by the Prime Minister of Canada.

The long-term energy policy of Canada should aim at self-sufficiency in energy and should comprehend all forms of energy.

Two, whatever solutions are worked out should be sensitive to and subject to national development policy.

Three, any solution must take into account the legitimate desires of the producing provinces to develop industries based on their own resources and to reduce their dependence on primary industry.

Four, solutions should be consistent with the basic fiscal arrangements and the existing constitutional provisions.

Five, there should be one domestic price for crude oil, subject to adjustments for transportation costs; this price might have to be higher than the price at which oil for domestic consumption was frozen, but should be lower than the price at which oil was moving in international trade. Consideration would be given to phasing-in any domestic price adjustments over time.

Six, export prices for Canadian oil should be the price at which oil was moving in world markets.

Seven, the solutions for the various problems should be sought on a federal-provincial basis, with appropriate mechanisms to assist.

Now, sir, these goals were contained in Ontario’s opening statement at the conference, and they have been accepted by the government of Ontario for some time. However, the urgent question of pricing was not solved. It was, in fact, deferred for 60 days.

The broad goals of the policy had been agreed to on the first day of the conference. The question of pricing was dealt with on the second day. A short-term compromise agreement restrained prices for a stated interval, and procedures were adopted that would prevent any further deterioration of the relative position of that part of Canada to the east of the national oil policy line.

I should like to refresh the memory of hon. members as to the actual substance of that 60-day agreement.

The voluntary restraint on crude oil prices at about $4 a barrel was to continue until the end of March.

Saskatchewan, which produces some 15 per cent of the national production of oil, was to be permitted to increase the price of oil by $1 a barrel effective Feb. 1.

The export tax on oil was to continue to be levied; half of the resulting revenues were to be returned to the producing provinces.

The federal government was to cushion any further increase in the price of imported crude oil to prevent a further widening of the price differential on the two sides of the Ottawa Valley line.

That agreement as to price and price policy will continue in force until the end of this month. As of that date, a policy that is of a more permanent nature will presumably come into effect.

The time made available for policy design through this temporary expedient has been used for holding bilateral meetings between the government of Canada and the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan -- the two major producing provinces.

In these meetings it is reasonable to assume that the immediate interests of the producing provinces in higher prices for petroleum and gas is being vigorously advanced. It would be surprising if these views correspond in every aspect with those of the consuming areas of Canada and, indeed, in some ways with the aggregate interest of the nation.

The Ontario government, representing the major consuming province in Canada, has a responsibility to voice its concern and has been doing so.

So I propose today to discuss with hon. members the implications of possible pricing policies and, concurrently, to place firmly and publicly on the record the attitude of the government of Ontario to energy policy in general and oil and natural gas policies in particular.

I know that hon. members are well aware of the implications of the pressures that the increase in world oil prices is visiting on the economies of many of the industrialized nations of the world. Japan, which consumed oil at a rate of close to five million barrels a day last year, had to import 99.7 per cent of the oil that it used. France, Britain, West Germany -- most of the industrialized countries of the western world -- were in similar situations. The United States and Canada are in a more fortunate position. The United States has to rely on offshore sources for only about one-third of the 15-million-plus barrels a day that it uses. Canada’s total production just exceeds its consumption, but exports of roughly 50 per cent of production are made up by imports.

For the oil-deficient countries, the implications in terms of balance of payments, inflation and the prices of goods produced for domestic consumption and export are immense. And the increase in the oil bill of the so-called third world countries at about $10 billion a year, throws additional strain on economies that are already under severe pressure.

And so in this incredibly changed world Canada -- and really only Canada -- finds itself in a remarkably favourable position. The price of commodities is rising. This nation is rich in commodities. The price of energy and supplies of energy have altered to the disadvantage of the industrial nations of the western world -- nations that have grown fat on a diet of cheap resources. And among these industrial nations, Canada alone produces more oil, more gas, more energy than it consumes. And in addition to the energy we produce and use, we have immense re- sources of energy in the oil sands, the heavy oils, in the frontier regions, in the uranium mines and coal deposits.

The current situation can enable this nation to broaden in locational and technological terms the fabric of our industry. Ontario, with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., has already demonstrated the immense benefit of adding technology to a proven resource base in the design and construction of CANDU reactors -- a nuclear generating system that relies on our reserves of uranium. Similar opportunities exist in terms of the petroleum resources of this nation. Price, and policy that truly reflects the national interest, can result in a solid foundation for continuing growth for the remainder of the decade and beyond.

I quite understand the position being taken by Saskatchewan and Alberta. They have seen the world oil price move up to about $10.50 a barrel. Naturally they want to merchandise their product at that price. But what relevance does that price really have to the marketplace -- the workings of supply and demand? It is a phoney price, a manipulated price, a price designed by those producing nations that have joined together into the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. That price bears no relationship to cost; it bears no relationship to the long-term supply prospects; it bears no relationship to anything other than the calculated judgement of a group of monopolists as to what the market will bear for the foreseeable future.

In fact, the suggestion made by the government of Canada at the national energy conference was that the wellhead price of oil would be allowed to move up to $6 a barrel. Certainly this suggestion did not gain the endorsement of the producing provinces. But I think it important that hon. members should be well aware that such a price means an increase of approximately six cents a gallon for our heating oil and gasoline. This implies an increase of some $350 million in the energy bill of the Ontario consumer.

If the price in Canada were allowed to move up to the present world price -- about $10.50 a barrel -- the additional cost to Ontario oil users would be in excess of $1 billion a year, very close to 20 cents a gallon for fuel oil or gasoline. This, obviously, would not be in the interests of Ontario or of the national economy. The disruption and distortion would be frightful. The impacts of similar increases on all other provinces have been estimated and are indicated in tables which I am placing on the record and which are attached to this statement.

I apologize to the members for developing this argument at length. I do so because I urgently desire the understanding and support of all members of this Legislature in the matter of the price of oil. I wish to underline our absolute conviction that escalating our domestic price of oil up to existing world prices flies in the face of the national interest. I am not simply enunciating a position which favours Ontario. We must also ensure that the benefits of the lower price are truly dispersed across the country.

The hard fact is that the challenge to Canada is an industrial and a development challenge. They know very well in France and Britain and Japan and the United States that you cannot insulate the cost of energy from your national industrial planning pro- cesses. We had better learn that fact here. If we escalate the price of petroleum to current world levels, we will have a rich Alberta largely at the expense of the rest of Canada. We would be turning our back on nation building and focusing attention on the building of great economies in the oil producing provinces.

But if we hold the price of oil to a reasonable level, if we process our resources, if we strengthen our capital position, if we do this -- and we can do this -- we can provide jobs for our people, good jobs. We can build our capital strength. We can increase domestic control of our corporations and of our resources. We can build an economically powerful nation. We can protect the long-term welfare of all the people in all parts of our nation. The United States has immense resources of energy and a highly sophisticated technology. It is surely imprudent to make the facile assumption that the United States will fail in its stated national purpose of achieving self-sufficiency in energy. If it does achieve domestic self-sufficiency the control of the price of energy in the United States will become a domestic matter. In that case projecting the actual level of cost of energy or price of energy in the United States a decade from now becomes a highly speculative undertaking. If ill-advised pricing policies in Canada today result in our costs of production of energy and industrial goods being distorted upwards, relative to those of the United States, we will have done much more than simply lose a few years of relative advantage. We can easily find that we have built costs into our industry that result in that industry being unable to compete in major markets.

As I noted, the price of oil suggested by the government of Canada at the national energy conference was $6 a barrel. That is high. That is a 50 per cent increase from a price base into which there is already embedded a significant increase. It represents a one per cent increase in the consumer price index. But, as we have said before, subject to a very significant proviso, the people of Ontario can live with it and, subject to the same proviso, it will not too brutally prejudice the opportunities that, as a nation, we should be seizing.

The proviso is that this is not the first step on the rung of a ladder that will automatically carry us on to $7 a barrel, then $8, and on up to whatever the world monopoly price might be. Our pricing policy must be flexible enough to reflect changing costs of exploration, production and distribution in Canada and legitimate changes in world, particularly US, prices. And this could mean lowering prices as well as raising prices.

I now wish to discuss with the House five other aspects of energy policy in Canada, primarily with respect to oil.

1. Export policy and export levies: At the present time we are prepared to support the continued export of oil from western Canada to the United States. There are several reasons why we do not oppose this export in spite of the fact that Canada lacks the reserves to assure adequate domestic supplies late in this decade. We have obligations to a customer, not to mention contracts, and these should not be lightly disregarded. Further, perhaps of greater significance, we do not have the pipelines and the transportation facilities in position to move the oil that we now are exporting to the United States into the areas east of the Borden line. Capturing an export levy, which can be used to cushion the higher energy costs in these regions of Canada, higher costs that are inherent in the higher world price for oil, is also of clear benefit to many Canadians.

This is a policy position that we would anticipate will change. Certainly, when the transportation facilities are in position and this nation has achieved a real ability to be self-sufficient in energy, the oil export policy must be reviewed in the light of national interest at that time.

2. The allocation of resulting revenues: This aspect of policy is the allocation of the revenues that accrue as a consequence of the price increase and the oil export levies.

Let me underline at this time as a matter of principle we accept that the producing provinces should receive reasonable rewards associated with the oil and gas within their borders. We also accept that the producing provinces should determine the balance of funds that should be directed toward the expansion of reserves within their borders, whether through the direct involvement of the provincial government in exploration and development of fossil fuel or through flowing certain funds through to the privately-owned producing companies. But we would argue that the development of these resources, irrespective of the vehicle employed, must take into account the long-term energy needs of all of Canada and must be within the framework of an appropriate national energy policy.

We would observe that the federal government proposal for allocating revenues resulting from higher prices and the export levy between the producing provinces, private industry and itself appears to be unnecessarily complicated. We would support additional revenue from the price increases remaining with the producing province concerned, but we would suggest that the proceeds from the export tax be dedicated to the benefit of all Canadian consumers. This should take the form of a cushion against the higher priced oil bought on the world market by those east of the Ottawa line.

3. Fiscal arrangements: Changing oil prices, reinforced by changing natural gas prices, have an enormous potential for distorting the existing fiscal arrangements of the nation. The sums involved are huge. Price increases will result in greatly increased revenues flowing to the producing provinces and this, in turn, will create new liabilities to certain of the provinces under the equalization agreements. And I would refer members again to the tables which are attached to this statement.

We have made some rough estimates of the impacts on each province arising from these added oil revenues. For example, a rise in the domestic price of oil to $6 a barrel increases the charge on Canadian consumers by almost $1.5 billion a year. Assuming that of this sum $500 million was a return to the producing companies to stimulate research and exploration, nearly $1 billion would pass as direct revenue to the producing provinces. Alberta alone would receive approximately $850 million -- a sum that approaches half of that province’s current annual budget.

It is perfectly obvious that the massive infusion of new revenue that would accrue to the producing provinces, as a consequence of raising the price of oil to $6, will not be matched in the other provinces. An established principle of Confederation is that, to the extent practicable, fiscal imbalances between provinces should be corrected.

If the full amount of the $1 billion going to the producing provinces were made subject to equalization, some $350 million a year would be required from the federal treasury for additional equalization payments, to the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Manitoba. Because of its oil revenues, Saskatchewan would find its equalization payments lowered by some $40 million.

The potential imbalances are of such a size that their correction would imply the raising of federal taxes or the abridgement of existing programmes. Either expedient would impact on the taxpayers and residents of Ontario.

These effects are a result of raising the price of oil to $6 a barrel. If the price of oil should be allowed to go to $10.50 a barrel, the additional revenue accruing to the producing provinces would total over $4 billion and Ontario could actually be eligible for equalization payments of over $600 million, since our revenue raising capacity would be below the national average.

Now, I would hope nobody can be serious in suggesting a price of $10.50 a barrel. Such a price is unthinkable when it is clearly recognized that even a price of $6 a barrel throws severe strains on the fiscal arrangements in Canada.

Alberta has consistently maintained that oil revenues should be treated as a capital return on a depleting resource -- that these revenues should not be included in the calculation of equalization payments. If this were accepted, it would further exacerbate the existing regional disparities within the nation. One must have some sympathy for the attitude of the producing provinces but, certainly, such a procedure would be unacceptable to the people resident in the eastern provinces.

Ontario has always supported the principle of equalization. We still do and, certainly, we would favour either the inclusion of a proportion -- perhaps quite a substantial proportion -- of these additional revenues in the equalization base or a ceiling on the total of equalization payments.

This is a very difficult area and it is going to require a measure of compromise.

The fourth element of a national oil policy relates to the urgent necessity of assuring that we do not balkanize this nation in terms of the price of oil.

At the energy conference, Ontario vigorously espoused the cause of a single price for crude oil in all parts of Canada, subject to a differential related to delivery costs, and we hold to this view. The only real question is the equitable distribution of the cost burden that is implicit.

The simplest and most effective way of assuring this equitable price relationship is to directly cushion the refiners of higher priced, imported crude oil and to realize the necessary funds from the export tax associated with crude oil that is exported from Canada. In the longer term, pipelines or oil discoveries on the eastern seaboard may modify the necessity of this policy.

In the meantime, most assuredly, national policy should not result in the disruption of the economies of the provinces to the east of Ontario that presently rely on high-priced oil from foreign sources. Given that the oil now being exported is Canadian oil, it seems logical that it should contribute to the achievement of this national price equity.

The export tax revenues would provide a cushion of approximately $1.5 billion for consumers in the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and that part of Ontario east of the Borden line.

The final aspect of oil policy that I wish to discuss today relates to the administrative mechanisms that will be required to deal with such matters as the setting of price, the cushioning of price in some of the more exposed regions of Canada and other policy matters, quite possibly including the export of oil and other basic sources of energy.

Clearly this divides into mechanisms to deal with both the short and the long term. The time constraints are now so severe that a vehicle that can deal with the immediate price problems is needed. At the same time, a more sophisticated mechanism will be required for the implementation of energy policy in the longer term in Canada, including the adjustment of domestic prices. Much closer federal-provincial consultation will be necessary.

The government of Canada has proposed a national marketing board. To the extent that the powers of such a board might extend beyond pricing considerations, Ontario would have reservations. Indeed, a new organization is not inevitably necessary. The continuation of the existing federal government procedures for compensating the consumers of the imported, higher priced oil might be adequate provided that there is joint federal- provincial decision making.

The Ministry of Energy is exploring the feasibility of various methods of equalizing crude oil across Canada, one of which is a system of “tickets.” These tickets would be issued to all refineries of crude oil to enable them to purchase rights to acquire Canadian crude. The tickets would be allocated to the refineries of both domestic and foreign crude in amounts that would result in the equalizing of crude oil prices throughout Canada.

Now, sir, this discussion covers the major policy concerns relative to oil. Obviously, however, the national economic impacts will further be re-enforced by changes in the price of natural gas. The Alberta and Southern Gas Co. Ltd. agreed in January of this year to pay a field price for gas of 56 cents per mcf, effective July 1.

It should be pointed out that virtually all of the Alberta and Southern gas is gas for export, but export prices surely should not set domestic prices. If the 56-cent price became universal then the producing provinces will receive annually an additional $400 million in royalties, of which Alberta will receive $250 million. Ontario consumers would pay an additional $300 million each year.

It would be perhaps useful to digress for a moment about our supply of natural gas, which is also a concern to Ontario. Consider these points:

TransCanada Pipe Lines Ltd, and others are expressing concern that the supply of natural gas from the southwest sedimentary basin has plateaued.

Additional supplies from Alberta will be much more expensive to produce, if, as and when found and proven.

Mackenzie Delta and Polar Gas projects are promising, but like the oil sands are long=term alternatives. They will ultimately be available, but more expensive sources of supply.

Ontario supports the oil sands, has announced its interest in Polar Gas and will participate in the Mackenzie pipeline hearings. Again, however, I stress that these are long-term thrusts to ensure future capacity for self-sufficiency.

The problem, sir, is now. We detailed the other day the presently frustrated plans of two Ontario companies who want to spend $100 million each to produce anhydrous ammonia for desperately needed fertilizer production -- fertilizer needed now in Ontario and for export of a Canadian value added product. These plans are in danger of not proceeding because of their inability to purchase natural gas.

Reverting to price, it must be remembered that an enlarged petrochemical industry, be it in Alberta, Ontario, or Quebec, faces tough competition from, for example, the Gulf Coast where natural gas prices are still regulated and as a result, low-priced.

The National Energy Board last summer sat on an application by Dome Petroleum Ltd. and Dow Chemical of Canada Ltd. to export a relatively small amount of natural gas as ethane and ethylene. No decision has been given, presumably because the board is finding difficulty in deciding that the gas is surplus to Canada’s needs. Yet we continue to export, essentially as a raw material, almost as much natural gas as we consume.

Pan-Alberta Gas Ltd., Gaz Metropolitain and others continue to talk about new and additional exports of gas. Even if Dow-Dome were approved, we would submit that there is no room for additional exports. Rather, we suggest, as does Mr. Eric Kierans and others, that Canada’s needs are such that we may have to examine whether existing exports can be continued at current levels.

The situation, sir, is a little unreal.

It is easy to acquiesce in the argument that higher prices will solve all natural gas problems. Higher prices to governments or to producers or to both? We do not subscribe that higher prices, with windfall profits, to either industry or government, are a cure-all palliative.

Ontario is prepared to support a price that returns to gas producers their cost of production and a rate of return that will encourage exploration and the development of additional reserves. We are opposed to any proposal to index or key the price of gas to a so-called competitive price of oil. We accept a two- price system that distinguishes between “old” or “flowing” gas, and we will pay a higher price for pew gas. Such a pricing procedure would encourage exploration and lead to the development of new or additional reserves.

We support Alberta in its effort to design the best possible procedures for managing its fossil fuel resources. We have done so in the past. Since 1961, we have paid a higher price than would have been necessary had we been unwilling to lend our support to the development of the Alberta petroleum industry.

As we have in the past, we support the Alberta aspiration to build a strong base of secondary industry and, in particular, accept that there is justification for the development of a petrochemical industry close to the source of supply of fossil fuels, subject, of course, to the legitimate expectations of the existing petrochemical industry in Ontario and Quebec.

We have already begun, through the agency of Ontario Hydro, a $10-million test programme to determine the feasibility of mining, transporting and burning western coal in thermal generating stations in this province. If successful, this could result in the negotiation of contracts for some five million tons of coal from western Canada and would result in Ontario again providing needed stimulation for a western Canadian coal industry, as was provided by Ontario in the 1960s for the oil industry.

On uranium, Ontario is in a favourable position compared to fossil fuels, as about 80 per cent of all proven Canadian reserves are located within our boundaries. Our policy as to the development of these uranium resources is entirely consistent with our attitude towards oil and gas. Uranium should be considered as a national commodity to be managed in the national interest.

In view of the crucial importance of this resource to the future growth of the nuclear industry both in Ontario and elsewhere, the government will shortly be making a more detailed statement on uranium, and I leave my thoughts on that subject at this point.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): What about the supply? Is it secure?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes.

Mr. Bounsall: Enough for our needs?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, for the time being.

As in the past, Ontario is prepared to support policies that serve the national interest and that do minimum violence to the producing and consuming regions of Canada. Ontario is prepared to co-operate in all reasonable ways in assuring, for the producing regions, the achievement of their legitimate aspirations with respect to the development of their economies. We do not consider that the disruption and distortion of the national economy and the prejudicing of the long-term economic prospects of the nation can be defined as legitimate.

Ontario’s objective is a reasonable and stable resolution of the question of oil arid gas pricing within Canada. We submit that the position outlined is reasonable and can result in an environment for growth and development and more or less equalized economic opportunity in all parts of this nation. We do not think that the national interest is served by excessively high prices, interminable negotiations or persistent uncertainty. If this is the prospect, then it is the clear duty of the government of Canada to exert its power and exercise necessary leadership. We believe it has the constitutional power to regulate prices at the wellhead if that should be necessary.

The government of Canada should, however, be guided in all its policies by the demonstrable interest of all Canadians, in both the producing and the consuming regions of the nation. It should assure, very simply, security of supply of needed energy resources at a reasonable price.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Gaunt moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

YORK COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION TEACHERS DISPUTE ACT, 1974

Hon. Mr. Wells moves second reading of Bill 12, An Act respecting a Certain Dispute between the York County Board of Education and certain of its Teachers.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, there are two regrettable things about the circumstances around the introduction of this bill yesterday. In my view, the most regrettable is that it does achieve a solution by compulsory arbitration under circumstances which have become extremely familiar, not only to us in this House, but to the students and the parents in the York area.

The second regrettable thing -- and I’m not sure this really isn’t one that is almost unforgivable -- is that the minister delayed so long in expressing in a strong and effective way that pupil-teacher ratios were to be negotiated. In fact, through this bill he has dictated to the local board what they them- selves were unwilling to accept over these many weeks -- in fact, 10 months -- of continuing negotiations.

Frankly, I had thought that with the introduction of Bill 275 in 1973 that the statement there on the right to negotiate all matters pertaining to conditions of employment did clearly include the right of the teachers to negotiate the pupil-teacher ratio. We are aware of the sensitivity of this matter, since many teachers feel substantially that they have as much responsibility to deal with the quality of education as anyone, perhaps more than anyone else. But they also see, because of the planning of the Ministry of Education, because of the number of people who’ve gone into education as a profession, that more than half of the graduates from the colleges of education last year were unable to obtain employment.

In other words, there is a substantial pressure on those who presently hold teaching positions, unless they conform to the requirements of their board and their administrators, that they can very readily be replaced. In many aspects, this fear is substantially unfounded. The teachers through their professional organizations have a great deal of protection, which we hear of from time to time. Still their contention has been clear and unequivocal, that they have the right to negotiate pupil-teacher ratios -- essentially, how many teachers a specific board will hire to carry out their responsibilities.

This has been substantially opposed by almost all the boards of education and the trustees as individuals. In the case of the York board, it has become a matter of basic faith. They have expressed themselves in this regard as individuals from time to time. They have said, as many people would agree, that the school board, democratically elected, has to represent the rights of the community to run the school. One of the basic rights is to decide how many teachers they need in order to achieve their goals for education and achieve the quality that they establish for themselves.

This oversimplification of the standoff -- and a standoff it certainly has been -- has been in many respects obscured by the intervention of the minister previously. There is, for example, the intervention of ceilings. Under these circumstances, in this particular negotiation and the arbitration which will come about if this bill follows its intended course, the salary negotiations are not going to require, let’s say a breaking of the ceiling that has been imposed. Yet it has interfered with the full and free negotiations, both in York and elsewhere, since the minister has assumed a specific budgetary control, by Act of this Legislature, and by the imposition of the ceilings across the province. But the bill itself -- and the specific area is in section 2, subsection 2, and I quote it: “Pupil-teacher ratio is arbitrable and shall be deemed to be included as a matter in dispute in the notices referred to in subsection 1.”

While the minister may say this is not a departure in his own policy, it is seen to be a departure by the trustees in York, I would submit. In fact, it is the clearest enunciation of his acceptance of the fact that he believes, and therefore the government believes, that conditions of work, pupil-teacher ratio specifically, must be negotiable in the future and are, under these circumstances, arbitrable.

The teachers themselves have suffered from a great deal of community criticism based on a misunderstanding of these circumstances. We are aware that the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, bargaining on behalf of the teachers in the area, has refused to go to voluntary arbitration because of the doubt, at least, about the arbitrable basis for the pupil-teacher ratio.

Many people have said, “The teachers’ case must be weak otherwise they would submit it to voluntary arbitration.” But they have held, and I believe that they are correct in this, that they are not prepared to accept an arbitration as to whether or not pupil- teacher ratios will be, in the long run, negotiable between teachers and boards.

This is a matter, obviously, of high policy. The minister recognized it as such and included it in section 2, subsection 2, of the bill which, in fact, dictated to the board members in York -- and I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, makes it clear to all other boards of education in the province -- that this matter is, in fact, arbitrable in this bill and must therefore be negotiable in the contacts between the teachers and the schoolboards across this province in the future.

This is a substantial breakthrough. The minister may feel that his statement in the clause in Bill 275, in the previous session of the Legislature, was sufficient. But he knows, as we all know, that whether it was wilful misunderstanding or an unwillingness to accept the minister at his word, most trustees were not prepared to agree that pupil-teacher ratios were a matter for negotiation or arbitration. This has changed and it could have been changed six weeks ago or two months ago or even three months ago. Many of the problems that the government experienced in late 1973 with the introduction of Bill 274 and with the protracted negotiations in the York area were therefore unnecessary.

The minister is aware of the level of ill-feeling which has developed among the teachers and the board directed at him and other people. He is also aware of the removal of the education services to the students and he, probably more than anyone else, speaks of this and I’m not saying that he does so improperly. I simply say it is unfortunate that a clear statement with regard to this matter was not made in good time so that, in fact, the negotiations in York might have been brought to a successful conclusion without the imposition of a bill of the type that is before us.

I have mentioned to you, Mr. Speaker, previously in my remarks to this House that I have been in the York region in my capacity as Leader of the Opposition. I was requested to attend meetings of the teachers and did so in Aurora and Newmarket. They were there in force to hear my remarks and the remarks made by the education critic for the NDP and also to extend their views and their questions to us.

It was interesting indeed to talk to individual teachers and representatives of the OSSTF pertaining to the eight points at variance which had not been settled under the normal conditions of negotiation. Obviously, salary establishment and salary levels was one matter of some concern. They felt that they deserved a similar salary schedule compared with Metropolitan Toronto and certain jurisdictions nearby. And no one could condemn them for that. When close questioned, many of the teachers were not directly aware of where their salary schedules fell substantially below the schedule in nearby jurisdictions although, of course, the information was available.

The point I am making is this; that while there was a negotiable item pertaining to salaries, in my opinion it was not one upon which the six weeks’ strike and the bitterness associated with this matter could be based.

There were other matters that they brought forward very strongly to my attention, one particularly. They felt that the administration was unfair in insisting on a provision that would permit the school board to hire specialists, category 4 teachers, and then assign them to duties where they would not be teaching in their specialty and therefore would be paid at a lower category level.

In my opinion this is unfair. But, once again, it is a matter surely which could have been negotiated without going to the lengths which separated the board and the teachers for these many weeks -- and, in fact, 10 months.

One matter is of personal nature, which I raised in my reply to the Speech from the Throne last Friday. It is an unfortunate one; and that is the high feeling among the teachers against the director of education himself in that area.

I can remember discussing the matter before one of the meetings. When I mentioned that it had been made apparent to me by the individual teachers that they had no confidence in the director of education, the applause -- which, as you know, Mr. Speaker, politicians are very sensitive to -- was prolonged and hearty. This was an indication to anyone who was there that there was a substantial breakdown in the confidence between the teachers who were responding in that meeting -- and there were about 400 of them -- and the director of education himself.

Someone came up to me and said: “I wish the school board realized that we would trade 670 resignations for one.” The implication was that they were asking for his dismissal or resignation from his position of high responsibility.

It is interesting that this matter pertaining to administration did not surface more formally -- or at least according to the reports that were available -- in the continuing negotiations. I think it is a matter that must be dealt with frankly, as I trust that we can raise it here without personal references of a seriously damaging matter. I simply put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that it was an issue lying below the eight which were specifically referred to in the formal negotiations, but is a very real issue indeed.

But the other real issue had to do with the negotiation of the conditions of work. The trustees, as I have said, were adamant in their refusal that pupil-teacher ratios were negotiable. The teachers, reflecting Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation policy, were just as adamant that they as teachers must have, and were prepared to demand, the right to negotiate -- not dictate, surely -- but negotiate the staffing under the jurisdiction of the board.

It was on this shoal that the ship of negotiation stuck, in fact floundered, for so long. The board completely failed in their attempts to bring about a successful conclusion to the negotiations. It was in my view that because they were adamant on this single point that the negotiations failed.

The minister has, along with his leader, been substantially critical of statements made by me and my colleagues which they construe as being an infringement on the autonomy of that board. But surely, Mr. Speaker, you are aware that the provisions in this bill in section 2, subsection 2, directly dictate that the matter that the local board had consistently refused to accept must now be accepted. And that subsection, of course, casts an entirely new complexion on the whole negotiation.

I have had an opportunity to talk to a limited number of teachers concerned since the bill was introduced. Frankly, I have been surprised at the strength of their continuing opposition. Obviously Bill 274, and the tabling of Bill 275, sensitized all teachers to the dangers and created their feelings of repugnance associated with compulsory arbitration. It is a feeling we share and leads us to vote against the principle of this bill.

But it seems to me that there is an alternative which might still be achieved by the board and the teachers if the trustees now realize that they cannot continue their adamant opposition to the acceptance of pupil-teacher ratio as a negotiable matter.

I would be the last to suggest any significant further delay in this matter. We have already had a six-week strike, there is a week’s vacation coming up, and somehow or other I have the feeling that the idea that school will start there Monday while it doesn’t continue in other parts of the province is not going to be well accepted -- no doubt many parents and students have made vacation plans. I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that while it is an interesting alternative, I have a feeling that the schools in York will remain closed next week as they will be closed elsewhere.

But it appears to me that there now are grounds for the teachers and the board to come together, because while the teachers are substantially offended by the compulsion in this bill leading to arbitration, there is no doubt that the trustees are offended by the compulsion associated with the pupil-teacher ratio.

The minister said it yesterday when he introduced the bill. He said, “Some people are going to say this favours the teachers, some will say this favours the board.” Well, in my reading of it, there is a substantial dictation to both groups concerned. Our objection is that this particular procedure is unnecessary.

If the minister were going to replace his judgement for the board’s judgement, he might very well have done it under legislation already on the books and assumed a role of trusteeship under these circumstances, since he and others were unwilling to accept the adamant position of the board that pupil- teacher ratios were not to be negotiated or arbitrated.

In other words, he has replaced his judgement for the board’s under these circumstances. It could have been done under present legislation without using the power, the undoubted power of this Legislature to command a return of the teachers under the circumstances of compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Speaker, there are many matters that could be thrashed over in this continuing circumstance, which no one wants to delay for any significant period of time, other than to see that the views are essentially put before the public for their consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I know you will permit me to digress from my remarks for a moment to welcome, along with you, sir, our good friend, the member for Nipissing (Mr. R. S. Smith), who is back in his place in the Legislature after an illness. We are delighted to have him back.

In closing my remarks, Mr. Speaker, I simply put it to you this way: Essentially, two things have happened. The minister, in expressing the policy of the government in 1973, said that he was not prepared to allow any schools to close. Well, in fact the schools in York did close. The teachers, as we have said -- and we have been criticized for it, but we believe we are right -- have the right to withdraw their services or to strike under these circumstances. Their objections to their negotiations with the board have been made clear on a regular basis in a number of specific and well-prepared statements and in reports in the press.

But the whole thing floundered because the trustees were unwilling to accept the pupil-teacher ratio as a significant arbitrable or negotiable item.

The minister through this bill has interposed his judgement for the board’s in this regard. We are saying that he could have done so in a different way. He could have done so months ago with a clear and unequivocal statement of government policy in this regard. I would like to hear him eventually express his views as to whether he feels he did that or not, but I simply draw to his attention an interesting report in the Globe and Mail this morning, wherein certain trustees on the York board said they specifically asked the minister whether in his opinion they should accept this as a negotiable item and that he refused to answer.

Now this is reported, and I think he should make it clear as to whether or not his position was known by the board. Certainly, if the board members were unaware of his position, it is unforgivable and, in fact, it means that the minister was personally responsible for this six-week delay and the closing of the schools. That is a very serious statement to make indeed but one which I believe to be true. He should have taken all of the measures available to him -- and they are almost unlimited -- in his position of eminence and power in this regard to indicate to the trustees that this matter had to be negotiable. Now, all of a sudden, the decision is made by the government that six weeks is long enough and it comes out with this particular bill coercing the teachers and, in fact, coercing the board. The teachers are required to go back to work; the board is required to negotiate or, in this case, arbitrate these matters.

We regret that the strike has been so prolonged. We believe that the length of the strike was unnecessary if the government’s position had been made clear. We are not prepared to support the position taken in the bill with regard to compulsory arbitration and we’ll therefore vote against it in principle.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Mr. Speaker, most of us, I suspect, have neither stomach nor heart for this particular debate and wish that it didn’t have to happen at all. I would wish to see it as one item in isolation. I am assuming that the York county dispute is a separate and distinct phenomenon in the Province of Ontario, never to be repeated again and, hopefully, not ever to be used as a reason to spawn further legislation of a comparable kind. I think that while people will clearly remember this day, the government may also regret this day because I have yet to be persuaded that this kind of legislation need ever have been brought be- fore the House.

I want to comment on three areas, not at great length -- some of my colleagues will elaborate on certain of those areas -- and then make a few final observations. The obvious areas are those of the board, the teachers and the government.

Let me start with the board, Mr. Speaker. There are too many tender sensibilities about the board in York county. There is too much hesitation, too much inhibition, too much constraint when dealing with the board in York county. When a board is as dramatic a throw-back to archaic and reactionary views of education -- as is the case in York county -- when a board, almost single-handedly, serves to undermine the education system for 14,000 students and, by implication, jeopardizes it for a great many others, I think it is our responsibility to deal with that board directly. The attitudes the board displayed, the behaviour the board displayed, the devices the board used were ultimately destructive and there is no way of disowning that. There is no way of concealing it or forgetting it or scrapping it, simply by saying they are elected representatives and have local autonomy.

If any government, if any opposition party, if any group of elected politicians behaved that irresponsibly, then they must be confronted. I don’t know that there is a more shocking display of irresponsibility on the part of any board in the province than has been shown by York county. It has some competitors. The minister will never admit it -- it’s not the minister’s job to admit it -- but I suspect that as the minister tramped around Ontario dealing with the 15 outstanding disputes in the month of January, he ran into one or two boards -- the Windsor separate board comes to my mind, Mr. Speaker -- which might have sent shivers down the spine of any educational reformer and any man of goodwill in the field of education. It is wrong for a board to behave in this fashion. And I think it is also wrong -- most of us in this caucus feel it is wrong -- for it to have been tolerated so long by the Minister of Education. But more of that anon, Mr. Speaker.

It made for the teachers in York county an impossible situation, an absolutely impossible situation. You have a group of teachers who feel somewhat oppressed. You have a group of teachers working within rules, regulations and contractual arrangements, which none of us in this room would tolerate for a moment. And then you have the teachers expected to enter into negotiations with a board which behaved in good faith in its majority. Not all of its members, because most of the votes for the last two or three weeks have been 12 to eight -- there have been eight members of that board fighting back -- but the majority of the members of that board frankly, Mr. Speaker, simply evoked fear and anger and resentment and rigidity on the part of the teachers with whom they were to negotiate. And who can blame the teachers for it? Who can blame them for it? It’s as if you took a time machine and hurtled the York county board back some 50 years and expected it to negotiate in the 1970s on that basis.

Now, the most serious charge I can make about that board, Mr. Speaker, and make it quite willingly, because I believe one calls them as one sees them in a situation like this, is that they negotiated in bad faith from the day negotiations began. From that in- credible day when the board wasn’t even sure that it wanted to recognize the OSSTF representatives in York county as the team, the representatives who would bargain on behalf of the larger group of teachers.

In January a document on voluntary arbitration was drafted. That document refused to include pupil-teacher ratio as a mandatory arbitrable clause. And so the document went to the teachers and the teachers said, “Well, maybe we’ll accept voluntary arbitration but we think PTR should be mandatory. And we want it in. And we want a number of other items added to the schedule.” And at that point, because the minister still held back, the board threw up its hands and said, “To the devil with you. We’ll not include that in the agreement,” and the voluntary arbitration fell through again on the eve of Jan. 31.

And then you have, as the tension mounts, as the pressure builds, as the public consternation accelerates, a board that says to its teachers that “on such and such a date we will accept your resignations and will begin to hire anew.”

Now, you tell me, Mr. Speaker, how you are supposed to negotiate in good faith with a school board which says, “We are going to turf you out of your jobs and replace you with anyone we can get our hands on.” And a school board that knows the moment it does that that the various teacher affiliates across the province will condemn it; that it will in fact be blacklisted, pinklisted, or whatever the precise word is -- and that it is immediately arousing the antagonism of the teachers.

Mr. R. Gisborn (Hamilton East): A violation of the Labour Relations Act of Ontario.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, my friend from Hamilton East points out that if you were under the Ontario Labour Relations Act you could never get away with that kind of behaviour, because labour relations -- except where York county board is concerned -- usually encompass civilized behaviour.

And throughout the negotiating process, Mr. Speaker, well known to the minister, the board played cat and mouse with its individual members. Mr. Honsberger and his right arm, the legal man, Mr. Winkler, did most of the negotiating. There were considerable periods of time when the other trustees didn’t know what the hell was going on. During the period of the blackout, Mr. Speaker, there were trustees on the York county board who knew as little about events as did the teachers. And so within the board there was bad faith bargaining. I mean, even within the tiny structure of 20, things were conducted in bad faith.

All of this the minister knew, because the minister was having regular reports from Mr. Mancini, the arbitrator. And behind the whole dispute, in the background of it, seldom of -- why I don’t understand, because when a whole school system grinds to a halt and 14,000 kids are out and parents are up in arms, then we level with each other. But behind it all, looming like the spectre in the back- ground, was the director of education, for whom the teachers felt an anathema so profound that it raised yet another barrier to the possibility of settlement.

Ironically, the director of education was over at OISE somewhere through this dispute. There is an acting director of education in York, for whom the teachers have much more gracious feelings. But none of that was spoken of openly and frankly. Better to let the controversy disintegrate than to speak the truth. The teachers in York county put up with more than teachers put up with almost anywhere else in the province.

A couple of colleagues and I were in York county just the other night when they met outside at Aurora. I am going to tell you something about our voyage to York county the other night in a moment, Mr. Speaker. We were meeting with some of the teacher leadership in Aurora the other night and they showed us -- it is stupid of me not to have it -- the rules and regulations which govern the activities of teachers within the schools in York county; and what they are required to do by the administration in terms of extra-curricular duties, in terms of special duties for the students, in terms of following unquestioningly and obediently the directive of every principal.

The demands placed upon the teachers of York county are preposterous; but very little was said about that in the course of the dispute.

So here, Mr. Speaker, you have a board which bargains in bad faith throughout -- the greatest testament to that is the content of this bill -- bargains in bad faith throughout. Nobody ever called their bluff; nobody ever sees that as offensive; everything grinds down. And we finally reach this extremity.

Well, I don’t think that there is an excuse for the Ministry of Education in such a situation. I don’t think that the government has the right to allow a board to work in such bad faith and to trample on the rights of teachers for so long.

All right then, what of the teachers? Well, despite the provocation -- and surely it was greater than in any other single area in Ontario -- despite the provocation, despite the bad faith bargaining, the teachers hung in there. They kept on making their counter offers. They kept on trying to reach a negotiated settlement. They kept on reasonably and thoughtfully and persuasively suggesting the alternatives. They went to lengths that teachers nowhere else have gone to.

When the board wouldn’t accept the traditional definition of PTR, the teachers of York county at the OSSTF level, offered three separate alternative definitions. As a matter of fact, the various alternatives are in the memorandum which the Minister of Education has had included in his schedule of issues, March 7, 1974, to be submitted to voluntary arbitration at the time.

The teachers even submitted proposals about which they themselves had qualms in order to get PTR and class size negotiated. Now, the duplicity of the board knows no limits. When I picked up the Globe and Mail this morning I noticed a half-page advertisement from the York County Board of Education listing the things which allegedly they had offered and to which the teachers did not respond.

I will tell you, Mr. Speaker -- and I think as the minister knows -- there is an awful lot in that half-page, as judged by this legislation, the truth of which one can question.

I would like to know who pays for half-page ads in the Globe and Mail put out by the York County Board of Education to argue their case against the teachers on the same day that the government is settling the dispute. I have a very strong suspicion that the public pays for the advertisements which one side chooses to take to misrepresent the situation. There is something about the way in which the York county board has handled this whole affair which is profoundly offensive in every sense.

Every day during the dispute the teachers collected in their centres. I think the minister was mentioning this to me just the other day that the teachers, quite amazingly, got together day after day in the legion halls, or wherever it was that they were gathering, in Richmond Hill and Aurora, and sat and had what would amount to professional development days almost every day.

Some of them met with students and provided special support. Some of them invested themselves in some special kind of educational opportunities if kids needed it, but they took seriously their roles as educators and they just didn’t run off. They were there and accountable every day of the strike, every day the schools were closed.

They showed a much greater loyalty to the students and to ending the dispute than did the board. But they were so locked into the adversary system, they were in such a straitjacket that it was such an impossible business; this intractable board which took an absolute delight in perversity and a group of teachers who in some ways were kind of bewildered about why it was that they couldn’t reach an agreement.

The sum total effect of that is an absolutely natural, normal, human consequence. You get bitter. You get frustrated. You have suspicion. You don’t know whom you can trust any more. So when the opportunity comes along for a settlement of a kind that’s something less than compulsory arbitration, you are not sure you can take it.

The minister made such an offer. I think the minister knows that some of us in this party acknowledge the role he played in the month of January, tirelessly, vigorously trying to settle the outstanding disputes. I am more than happy to acknowledge the honourable contents of the document which he submitted to board and teachers for the purpose of voluntary arbitration last Friday and again on Sunday.

The document had an Achilles heel. The Achilles heel of the document is that in section 11, there is the use of the word “may” rather than “shall,” which means that it could be construed to read that a board of arbitration appointed may negotiate teacher-pupil ratio rather than shall award on teacher-pupil ratio. I think the Minister of Education, as evidenced by his subsequent act, obviously meant it to be mandatory, but the document didn’t say so. It confirmed in the minds of the teachers again a kind of suspicion that they have about the way the whole relationship was being handled. Unfortunately, the document, honourable in itself, was accompanied by an ultimatum, the time limit ultimatum of 9 o’clock on Monday night. That again forces on men and women of goodwill the kind of irritation and frustration which is not conducive to an immediate settlement.

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you, sir, that the NDP does not oppose voluntary arbitration like some Pavlovian reflex. We don’t like it. Voluntary arbitration only comes into play when everything else has broken down; so what it implies is unhappy. But voluntary arbitration is, after all, the free choice by the parties to a binding agreement. If free choice operates, then presumably it should be one of the roots at the end of the collective bargaining process. Mr. Speaker, in that vein, with that in mind and knowing of the minister’s offer, last night -- I guess it was last night -- my colleague from Port Arthur, the education critic for this party, and my colleague from Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) and I went up north, or went up to Aurora. I call it north because I used to live in Newmarket. Was it Monday night?

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Monday night.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right. We went up to Aurora and we attended the demonstration, which was kind of touching in its solidarity but a little touching, too, in what it presaged, because 1,100 or 1,200 people gathered in a little knot on a dark night in an empty field beside the Aurora Civic Centre don’t give one the sense of a crusade. It does give one a sense of isolation.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): I am sure the member rose to it.

Mr. Lewis: No, as a matter of fact I was very subdued by the occasion. I didn’t consider it a mob.

Mr. Reid: That’s not what I heard; the Ku Klux Klan!

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): Is the member sure when he said it was the empty field beside the Civic Centre?

An hon. member: Is he sure he was in Aurora?

Mr. Lewis: Yes, I was in Aurora. It was, in fact --

Mr. Foulds: Is the member for York North sure he is here?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: By an empty field I mean the plot of ground beside the parking lot. All right?

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): I know one place the member for York North was not, when some of us were there.

Mr. Lewis: I was going to say something nice about him later on, but not now.

Mr. Speaker, after that was over, my colleagues and I journeyed back to Richmond Hill with the teachers. I don’t think it’s any particular secret that we stayed with the OSSTF negotiators from 10 o’clock until about 1 in the morning and we argued very strongly that a document to voluntary arbitration be agreed to. In fact, I don’t think the word plead is too strong.

We put to them as strongly as we could that in terms of the York county dispute and in terms of the future collective bargaining arrangements for teachers it made very real sense for them to attempt to find a basis in voluntary arbitration which they could sign and with which they could agree and pre- vent the axe from falling yesterday afternoon.

We knew, both in advance and after, that the Minister of Education would probably be flexible in that regard -- he had demonstrated that before -- and that if the teachers could come back with a specific number of items added to the schedule, and with pupil-teacher ratio absolutely ironclad, there might be the basis for a voluntary agreement.

As it happens, there was a difference of opinion. We were not as persuasive as we would have wished and the teachers that night and the next morning, meeting together, decided on the basis of all they had known, even on the basis of the next morning, I think yesterday morning, of personal representation from the Minister of Education at the 11th hour, even on that basis, that there were simply no grounds for trust. There had been such a disintegration of trust that it was not possible to pull it together.

I must admit, Mr. Speaker, that it was probably easy for us, a group of three interlopers looking at it from outside, to come in and make that kind of recommendation or plea to the teachers. If we had been deeply involved ourselves, I suspect we would have had the same kind of perceptions of the whole situation.

Their perceptions were based on the man- handling of the board. Their perceptions were based on Bill 274. Their perceptions were based on the amount of public criticism. Their perceptions did not allow them to believe that the document could be honourable and that they would serve the interests of their members by signing it. After all, their members had turned down voluntary arbitration by overwhelming votes on at least three occasions.

I must say, Mr. Speaker, that I wish it had been possible to achieve it that way rather than this way. I think that the compulsory arbitration component of this bill will do very great damage in the long term. It may even do damage in the short term. I don’t know how to measure the feelings of the teachers once they have returned to school.

At that point in time the onus wasn’t really on anyone other than the minister and the government, whatever interventions came in from any third party. And the minister and the government failed.

I don’t know why they failed all the way down the line. I suspect it’s mostly the straitjacket of Progressive Conservative philosophy. I don’t think the government was behaving Machiavellianly. I don’t think it was, at that point in time, trying to manipulate; although I’m not as sure about the bill now. I simply know that its social philosophy did not permit it to do all the things it should have done from day one which would have ended the dispute early.

Let me tell members where the Minister of Education and the government might have intervened. No. 1, when he saw the board was bargaining in bad faith, he should have brought his foot down -- and I would say that for either party.

One of the most perplexing and frustrating things about labour relations in this province, relationships on a collective bargaining basis between any group or groups, is that when this government has clear evidence of bad faith it refuses to do anything about it. We have laws which require good faith bargaining but evidence of bad faith means not a tinker’s damn to anyone.

And so, despite the chronicled evidence of bad faith, one week after another, even before the crisis began on the part of the board, no one said anything. Even though, in his heart, the Minister of Education harboured profound suspicion about what the board was doing -- probably there were times when he was irritated with the teachers -- at no point did he say, when it was clearly beyond the pale:

“Look, you beggars, that’s bad faith bargaining. The public can’t be held up for ransom by your display of bad faith. The kids are being manipulated by the board in this process. You get back to that bargaining table and you make a good faith offer. I, the Minister of Education, direct it.”

Someone has to use that kind of authority. Somewhere the people of the province have to feel that good faith bargaining makes sense.

So, whether it was the question of who constituted the bargaining unit, or whether it was when they were going to accept their resignations, or back in January when they refused to have pupil-teacher ratio included as a mandatory award clause of the voluntary arbitration agreement, any one of those occasions, Mr. Speaker, would have been sufficient for the minister to say to the board: “I can stand this no longer. I’m going to tell the public what is real. You’re simply not taking this in good faith.”

But at no time did he do it. He watched the dispute gradually disintegrate before his eyes and he refused to intervene.

Let me tell the minister a second time: On Jan. 30, he had a memorandum from Terry Mancini, conciliation officer from the Ontario Labour Relations Board, telling him in no uncertain terms that pupil-teacher ratio was at issue. A document was drawn up. The board refused to include pupil-teacher ratio as an issue for award. The minister’s refusal to intervene publicly at that point meant that the dispute would continue to March 13 rather than end in the middle of February. Because if he had made Mancini’s report public, or if he had said to the board: “Look,” -- but without any declaration on his part; without the kind of command, the kind of directive that indicates to the world -- “this is unacceptable to me as Minister of Education.”

We have to realize what happened here. On Jan. 31, or Feb. 1, whenever it was, the schools closed in York county because the Minister of Education refused to come to grips with what he had been told by his own mediator.

Now, had he done that, he could have wrapped up those negotiations in two weeks. He has been close enough to it. So have some of us. We know that if the pupil-teacher ratio had been accepted as arbitrable everything else would have fallen into place in one night. Everybody understood that. And here, he has it in writing on Jan. 30 and he let it go to March 13.

It may have been laudable then, in some misguided view of the sacrosanct nature of bargaining that allows a strike to go on forever without the responsible minister saying anything; but it’s not admirable now, not at this end of the trail.

The other thing, of course, that flows from the Terry Mancini episode, is something that’s terribly important for the future, I suggest to the minister. Terry Mancini is an excellent chap with a lot of knowledge, and a lot of training, and he worked round the clock to settle that dispute. But you see, it’s an educational dispute. It’s not a traditional labour dispute and there’s no way that a labour mediator, schooled in all the rituals of labour-management exchanges, the tribal rights that exist across a bargaining table in classic labour-management confrontation, there’s no way that such a mediator is going to win the confidence of both parties. I don’t care whether it’s Terry Mancini, Vic Scott or Bill Dickie. Compulsory arbitration or arbitration of a traditional kind in an educational model just won’t work because we are dealing with things that are so unusual and so sensitive; pupil-teacher ratio, class size. These aren’t the conditions that we talk about when we talk about Stelco, about Inco or about a small secondary manufacturing plant. These are things beyond the realm of normal labour relations.

If the minister is going to bring in a bill several months or a. few weeks hence, advising compulsory arbitration at the end of it, which bill will be passed through the Legislature and used countless times over in the next year or two, he had better find a group of people who can handle mediation in the field of education, because it is completely different. It is like nothing else.

That is why compulsory arbitration makes no blessed sense for the educational model. It is not the traditional kind of labour dispute. Compulsory arbitration makes no sense anywhere, but certainly not here. And one of the failures was the minister’s willingness to impose the old model on something for which it was totally unappropriate.

I guess the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of our view of the ministry was when the board said it would accept the resignations of the teachers and hire afresh, and no one over there said anything.

For sheer belligerent provocation, nothing could have been worse. But no one said anything from the ministry side.

No one said to the board: “Okay, you have overstepped the bounds so unconscionably that I, the Minister of Labour, am moving in and taking over negotiations.” I think the House perhaps would have given the minister almost unanimous consent to do that. I don’t know about trusteeship. That seems to me to be a little far-fetched in terms of taking over the whole board on a permanent basis and running York county.

I must say the idea of final offer selection, coming in after the strike was already on, was something that neither party could even conceive of. And the suggestion of voluntary arbitration while negotiations were still going on in a semi-serious way caused them to grind to a halt, because that is the immediate response of the parties. Somebody suggests arbitration and everybody stands still for a day or two. But had the Minister of Education got to his feet and said: “I will take over negotiations. Enough is enough. I believe in the bargaining of PTR. The salary grid is clearly negotiable. There aren’t so many items outstanding. I will show you that the collective bargaining can work.” And then he could have settled it.

I suppose the old “intrusion on local autonomy” is the argument that will be made, but I am not sure that is so bad. I am not sure that is as bad as this. Because what has the minister done? He has got an- other confrontation on his hands. He has got deteriorated relationships between board and teachers which will take years to repair. He has got compulsory arbitration which almost no one wants, other than the Conservative Party. He has the worst of all worlds, and for no reasons that anyone can see, for no reasons that are plausible. Surely it would have been possible for the minister to have made his intervention at some earlier time when it might have saved it all.

The Province of Saskatchewan also has collective bargaining legislation for the teachers. The minister knows it fairly well. It allows all kind of routes. It allows mediation. It allows conciliation. It allows voluntary arbitration that is binding and voluntary- arbitration that isn’t binding. It allows, although it has not been used, the right to strike. It allows every conceivable avenue to be explored. And that means it is good faith bargaining. But none of that was forthcoming from the Province of Ontario. All that is forthcoming from the Province of Ontario is the guillotine at the end of the road.

Well, Mr. Speaker, the minister is hard-working, and he has invested an enormous amount of time, emotion and intelligence in this series of disputes. But so help me, as I stand here, Mr. Speaker, this strike in York county was the government’s responsibility. They could have ended it within two weeks. They chose not to take the initiative. They chose to allow it to be prolonged. They chose bad faith bargaining to be the central reality of that dispute. Therefore, although the minister will be commended on March 13 for his sudden initiative after X weeks, he won’t be commended when people look back -- because when people look back, the delinquency is all too obvious.

Sure, the clauses in this bill aren’t as bad as the clauses in Bill 274; we wouldn’t be able to oppose them with the same remorseless feeling. We are not going to oppose the mandatory award on PTR. We are not mad. We understand there are some contents of the bill which, if one has to have this kind of objectional stuff, are at least acceptable in their own perverse way, even to the teachers.

But the compulsory part of it; boy, the minister will never get us to accept that. That’s the government’s view of the negotiating process. I hope the parties settle in the next 48 hours. Politically, the minister has won his spurs. Politically I know he feels he can’t lose. The Minister of Education on a stallion, you know, rides through the corridors of Queen’s Park saving the students of York county.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Streaking.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That was Lady Godiva.

Mr. Lewis: And I suppose that if they do accept a negotiated settlement of some kind in the next 48 hours, it will be the Minister of Education -- hanging the sword of Damocles high over teachers and trustees -- who wrested the settlement from the jaws of defeat; and all the rest of the garbage.

The fact of the matter is that it didn’t have to happen. It never had to happen at all. The minister deserves no great commendation or plaudits.

I tell you what else I hope, Mr. Speaker. I hope and my colleagues hope -- I’ve discussed it with them -- that if the bill does go through that the teachers accept the terms of the bill and return to the schools. Laws can be profoundly objectionable in this province, and this would be one of the worst. But for everyone concerned, even if the law is an ass, it exists; and teachers should observe it and therefore the schools function again. And I suspect that many people would agree that that should be the case.

But I can’t help but regret the way this whole thing has occurred -- accidental at the beginning, orchestrated at the end -- ultimately destructive of the educational system; causing fear and anxiety and resentment amongst the teachers, uncertainty amongst the students, belligerence from the boards and bewilderment from the public.

And none of it need have happened. If any of the members over there understood a thing about the way in which the collective bargaining process can work when positively supported, it need not have happened.

So we not only oppose the bill in principle, because compulsion is so abhorrent, but we oppose it because it shouldn’t even be here; because the kids could have been back in York county on Feb. 15. The government could have been bringing in Bill 275, with all of the avenues available as in the Province of Saskatchewan -- including the right to strike --removing forever from the field of education the idea of compulsion. Education is more about freedom than it is about authority; and this government is fixated on authority.

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

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Yes, Mr. Speaker, in reading the title of this bill: “An Act respecting a Certain Dispute between York County Board of Education and certain of its Teachers,” I think of the dispute as not one that has just arisen in the last few weeks or even months. It really started back in 1968, Mr. Speaker.

I remember well as one of my early responsibilities as a member for York Centre, arranging a meeting between trustees in the York Central District High School district and other trustees in the lower part of the county. They wanted to meet with the Minister of Education -- who is now Premier (Mr. Davis) -- with a view to not having as large a board run the affairs in the southern part of York as was proposed in the legislation at that time.

In their view they felt that the setting up of a large board would lead to major problems in communication between teachers and trustees. How their forecast has been borne out, not only in York but in other counties of this province. Due to this large educational bureaucracy that the Premier imposed across the province -- bureaucracy at all costs; big buildings, big boards, big spending -- we have a breakdown between the most important element in our whole education system, the teacher, and those who employ the teachers.

I well remember back in 1971 there being an item that showed what was happening in York because of this big bureaucracy that was set up by this provincial government and imposed on York. The item said the director was reminding the trustees they must not visit the schools without an arrangement through the administration, and that policy development was their only responsibility and they developed policy on the basis of information they got from the administration.

I then wondered, as I wrote to the director as to what he meant by that, if indeed they did have to depend upon the reports from the administration as to policy decision. That would be, in my mind, a breach of responsibility on the part of anyone expected to direct and bear responsibility for policy, were he not free, and in fact if he did not take advantage of all opportunities to get information from all sources on which he could base decisions that would make sense for the benefit of the students in the educational system he was responsible for administering, or running, or making sure it provided education.

During the winter of 1973, I had a meeting for some time with the director of education one night in the home of the subsequent chairman of the negotiating committee. We had a meeting for several hours discussing what I feared was the building-up of a very serious rift, a complete breakdown in the relationship between the teachers and the board. The rumblings that I heard across the county disturbed me greatly. I was told that it was only a few radicals. I didn’t feel it could be, because many of those who were speaking to me were people who had taught my own youngsters and whom I knew to be very good teachers, not to be radicals.

But these people had been feeling the heavy hand of direction for some time. There was fear taking over; taking over from a feeling of confidence and mutual responsibility and satisfaction out of working together to provide education. It was a typical example of what happens when big administration is imposed to run something that runs far better when there is a much closer relationship between those who have the job of teaching and those who are going to be learning and receiving the benefit of the teaching.

This is what has happened; not because of a specific or a special situation in York, it’s because of a plan that this government thrust upon the people of Ontario years ago.

And then ceilings had to be imposed. They were the last straw -- ceilings that imposed restrictions on spending, which we all know are necessary; but not restrictions that were based upon the common sense, the knowledge, the sense of responsibility that locally elected people had. No, they were ceilings imposed by this government, making its own decisions -- arbitrary decisions -- in making these restrictions effective right across the province.

I was therefore not surprised, but I was disappointed when in November I learned that York was among the counties where there had not been a settlement of the contracts. I was certainly disappointed that it was among those listed in Bill 274, a bill which was, of course, one of the most atrocious pieces of legislation ever brought before this House.

But I stated at the time of the debate of Bill 274 that I did not want my own family attending school where we had broken the terms of contract of a teacher, where we had removed a right that he or she had had at the time he signed the contract, and where we were imposing our authority under conditions that did not give that teacher a feeling that he or she was going to be dealt with fairly.

On Jan. 25, near the end of the time of the deadline for those resignations, a public school principal came up to me in a meeting and said: ‘“What’s going to be done in York?”

I said: “Aren’t they going to settle like everybody else?”

He said: “No way. And the public schools are next.”

It was because of that that a little while later, when the schools were out and some of us were struggling to find a way of bringing them back together, I worked out with a few teachers and a couple of trustees I talked to the idea of a form of arbitration using the final offer selection principle. The teachers, however, were unwilling. They had no confidence, they said, in the board to go into any sort of voluntary arbitration. It was one thing that just wasn’t successful.

Those of us that have some responsibility in elected office in that area continued to try to find a solution. I was interested a week ago Sunday when it was reported to me that the chairman of the negotiating team for the trustees had suggested to the minister that the minister set up a trusteeship. But the minister apparently stated he had no power under the present legislation, although I understand that section 12 of the Ministry of Education Act has indeed been used for setting up a trusteeship in a northern district board of education which got itself into financial difficulties.

There is nothing in section 12(1), which was used I understand in that instance, which refers to financial difficulties. It just refers to the fact that:

“Subject to the provisions of any statute in that behalf and to the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, the minister may make regulations with respect to schools or classes established under” [the various Acts listed] “and with respect to all other schools supported in whole or in part by public money:

“1. For the establishment, organization, administration and government thereof.”

That’s a broad clause, but it has been used before, I understand. Therefore, if it has been used before for financial reasons, surely it could be used where the students have been denied, for many weeks, an opportunity to receive the education that they are obligated to take.

This would have been a fine approach for the minister to take, because it would have been asking the trustees to step aside at a time when the future of the students was at stake, enabling the minister to deal directly with the teachers or the provincial Ministry of Education dealing directly with the provincial secondary school teachers. It would have given an opportunity to resolve a province-wide issue on pupil-teacher ratios and on other matters which were in dispute, and indeed an opportunity for the whole merits of the case, in York county in particular, to be settled later on in the ballot box.

In two days, over the weekend, 7,309 people indicated this was the course they wanted to take. Subsequent to that, I have received several thousand more signed affidavits supporting this trusteeship approach to get the students back in the school and to allow the public to settle what approach they want the trustees to take in the future in administering the educational system in York county.

Unfortunately, as has been stated, the bill that has been placed before us, although it is a way of getting the schools back into operation, will not remove the basic problems of personalities that are still in conflict here.

We will not have settled the problem coming up in the next few months when the public school teachers can resign. We do not want to have a continuation in York of this feeling on the part of many trustees that they are the last bastion of protection in the province against an over-powerful teacher federation. If they are right, let the electors say they are right; and if they are wrong, let that be stated also; but at least it would enable those of us in York to have the matter settled in the fairest court, that of the ballot box.

Trusteeship would resolve this. The minister’s delay in dealing with these matters unfortunately has caused a serious further deterioration in relations over that which occurred over the last few years, and I am sorry that in this bill the minister has resorted to what I would feel would have to be the very, very last resort, compulsory arbitration, in order to get these schools back into operation.

Teaching is not a matter of putting an individual in front of a classroom; it is also a matter of having that individual wanting to provide the service because that individual is convinced he has a duty to do, he has been given fair recognition for the responsibilities he is carrying out and is therefore enthusiastically helping our youngsters prepare themselves for the life they have ahead of them.

I certainly am sorry that the minister has chosen this route and, as my leader has indicated, we are not going to be delaying the legislation placed before us but we are going to be opposing it in principle.

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

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I have no particular desire this afternoon to get into an argument with my friend from York Centre or the Liberal Party, because quite frankly my main thrust wants to be over on that side of the House, but I just want to say as unprovocatively as I can that the effort to drag into consideration of the York county dispute all of the current philosophy of the Liberal Party with regard to big units of administration and what it does to destroy relationships between that administration and the people that it is seeking to serve, I think in this instance is irrelevant.

Mr. Deacon: I realize the member is in support of big units.

Mr. MacDonald: Could I make my case as unprovocatively as possible? The member obviously hasn’t heard it yet. He just wants to defend the indefensible.

My point is simply this, whether the administration were big or small, if it were an administration as mindless as the trustees in York, and as perverse -- and I take this as second hand -- as perverse as the attitude of the director of education up there, I don’t care whether it were big or small, you are going to have problems. Therefore I think the basic argument, which I leave the member to pursue in his own good time, was irrelevant in this case. I listened to it being presented up in Richmond Hill two or three weeks ago, and indeed out at York Mills Rd. Secondary School and the few other places where the hon. member from York Centre and I found ourselves in the same circuit in the last six weeks; but it didn’t convince me then and it doesn’t convince me now.

Mr. Deacon: No, the member liked those big boards.

Mr. MacDonald: No. Look, the member for York Centre likes them when it serves his purpose, and his purpose now is to deplore them. It is irrelevant. That is the point I am making.

While I am dealing with this business of the initiative of the Liberal Party, personified in the hon. member for York Centre with regard to the whole dispute up there, let me repeat to the House what I said to a group of teachers on a platform with the hon. member for York Centre two weeks ago this Thursday at Richmond Hill, with regard to that specific proposal of the final offer selection that the hon. member felt was going to solve the problem up there.

I said then and I say it now, I don’t know what my attitude is, quite frankly, toward the final offer selection. Society is looking for some kind of an alternative to strikes, which have seemed up until now to be the only means to settle disputes when an impasse has been created between both sides of the bargaining table, and whether or not final offer selection will ultimately be an effective kind of answer I just don’t know. As the hon. member for York Centre pointed out, it originally was the brainchild of a couple of NDPers, Jim Norton and Val Scott. It certainly hasn’t been accepted with any degree of enthusiasm in the trade union movement or anywhere else.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): The member says final offer selection is the brainchild of Val Scott?

Mr. MacDonald: Yes.

Mr. Bullbrook: Unbelievable!

Mr. Lewis: No, that isn’t true, it was he who devised it.

Mr. MacDonald: Once again, the Liberal Party has picked up something that was created by the New Democratic Party, but we are having difficulty on whether or not we want to accept it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: No, it was not. That’s what the Liberals did with it because it is Val Scott’s creation. That’s why I know it’s wrong.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s why we are taking a careful second look at it.

Mr. Bullbrook: The member talks about irrelevancy. He accuses my colleague of irrelevancy.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my train of thought in dealing with this whole issue has been seriously fouled up, but I have got to digress to deal with the hon. member for Sarnia because if the hon. member for Sarnia doesn’t know that the proposal being put forward by his deputy leader for the last month --

Mr. Bullbrook: Was invented by Val Scott?

Mr. MacDonald: It was not only invented by Val Scott but was credited to Val Scott by the member’s hon. colleague when he first presented it.

Mr. Bullbrook: He didn’t know it either then. The two of them are ignorant.

Mr. Lewis: No, the member is wrong. He doesn’t know what a nightmare Val Scott is.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): Val Scott stole it from Eugene, Ore., USA.

Mr. Bounsall: He calls his fellow members ignorant.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: Say something about final offer arbitration. Get into the debate.

Mr. MacDonald: What I wanted to say, so that I can conclude this portion of my remarks with regard to the initiative taken by the hon. member for York Centre in peddling the ideas of Val Scott, to the current shock to the hon. member for Sarnia --

Mr. Deacon: I don’t know where I get good ideas.

Mr. MacDonald: Good ideas? What’s wrong with the member? I want to say this; What my ultimate assessment of this proposal will be I honestly don’t know, but what I do know and what I said to the teachers up there is that I object to the proposition of switching the rules in the middle of the game. This is what the hon. member for York Centre was attempting to do -- to come up with this kind of a proposal after the teachers had got locked into a situation with their board and after their confidence in their relationship with that board had been so completely destroyed. Therefore, what in effect he was proposing -- and I almost believe he didn’t realize it himself -- was that having opposed compulsory arbitration here in the House on Bill 274 and having professed to be opposed to compulsory arbitration almost irrevocably, he was trying to smuggle it in the back door -- after having professed to be opposed to it at the front door. That’s what the final offer of selection was going to be under these circumstances.

Mr. A. Carruthers (Durham): That’s right; that’s right.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: The members for Wentworth (Mr. Deans) and York North were arguing for free collective bargaining and the Liberals were arguing for arbitration. How do the members like that? The Liberal Party, flying its colours again.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I give you my word of honour, from this point forward I am not going to say another word about the Liberal Party and its role during this debate this afternoon.

Mr. Bullbrook: He won’t mention Val Scott either.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): We have always spoken well of the member for York South.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): The member for Downsview is off on another tangent there.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my detailed knowledge and my exposure to this whole confrontation in the county of York was pretty well restricted to one day. Quite frankly, it was one of the most memorable days I have had in some 20 years of Ontario politics. I had to go up and share a plat- form with a representative from each of the other parties, one of whom was absent as he is absent again this afternoon -- namely the hon. member for York North because he didn’t think the cause of the Conservative Party at that point was defensible in that particular atmosphere

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): He’s just gone out for a phone call did the member say?

An hon. member: Yes.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): How can he be in the phone booth and the washroom at the same time?

Mr. Laughren: With a glass in his hand?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York Centre has the floor.

Mr. MacDonald: Like “heck-ell” he has! If one can get a combination of heck and hell together, that’s what one gets from what I said.

Yes; York South, Mr. Speaker!

I attended a meeting with some 300 of the teachers who were engaged in one of their afternoon or full-length day sessions considering the whole problem that had been created by this withdrawal of their services.

It was, I repeat, a very memorable kind of afternoon and I will tell members the thing that came through to anybody who became aware of the details in that argument and of the atmosphere that had been created: It was that the system in the county of York had completely broken down. An impasse had been reached. The relationships between teachers and board of education had deteriorated to a point where one almost wonders when they can be restored again. The relationships between the teachers and the director of education could hardly be described in words that would be parliamentary. This was the message that came through.

Therefore, one didn’t need to view the situation very long to realize that at some early date there was going to be need for intervention from the outside, because the parties themselves weren’t going to be able to resolve the situation.

There was an absolute refusal on the part of the board to consider pupil-teacher ratio, although everywhere else it has generally been accepted as a legitimate item for negotiation and for arbitration. And the thing that puzzles me about the minister’s posture on this particular issue now is that he so long refused to intervene and to insist that this was a legitimate topic; and by his refusal to intervene he prolonged the strike. He personally or his ministry was responsible for prolonging the strike. And he has now conceded frankly to the world that he is wrong, because he has brought in a bill in which he flatly asserts and states that this is a topic that is negotiable and can be subject to arbitration.

Mr. Carruthers: He said so some time ago.

Mr. MacDonald: Well, if he said so some time ago, he should have said so in a way that nobody else would have had any doubt about it. Indeed, the one party in the dispute that was road-blocking any possibility of a resolution of it, should have been told that it was a negotiable item. But the minister didn’t say it. Therefore, as has been pointed out in this debate, the minister in a very real sense, despite all his noble and hard-working efforts otherwise, was responsible for the prolongation of this strike situation, if not for its initial breakdown.

There is another point that came through, Mr. Speaker, from a very cursory exposure to the facts of the situation up in York. It is that -- and as I attended many other meetings it was often repeated -- it was that about 70 per cent of the budget in most boards of education goes for teachers’ salaries. Now, when people hear that at first they’re a little bit taken aback. That bolsters the public image that some people spend so much time attempting to build these days, that teachers are the real problem in terms of high education costs. But about 70 per cent of the costs in hospitals goes for salaries. It goes to the people who are providing the service. And teachers are a very important element in the schoolroom, providing the education for the children. The teachers and the working conditions -- that is education.

The pupil-teacher ratio, as was pointed out by my colleague who is the educational spokesman for this party, the whole pupil-teacher ratio may be construed by the public as the working conditions of the teacher; but the working conditions of the teacher are the learning conditions of the pupil. They are one and the same thing.

Mr. Lewis: Well said!

Mr. MacDonald: Therefore, they are a very relevant part; and there’s no surprise that they are 70 per cent of the budget. But what startled me, Mr. Speaker, was that I discovered in the county of York, that teachers’ salaries comprised approximately 57 per cent of the budget.

Mr. Deacon: Oh, get your figures right!

Mr. W. Hodgson: Yes, the member is a little low.

Mr. Deacon: Everybody’s all over the place in those ratios.

Mr. MacDonald: Well, all I’m saying is that I have heard a lot of arguments as to what is the accurate percentage --

Mr. Deacon: Well, the member should state what his sources are or what amount he is talking about, because the ratios range all over the place.

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Sounds too low.

Mr. MacDonald: Okay.

Mr. Stokes: Has the member for York Centre concluded his speech?

Mr. MacDonald: Let me not get into an argument on this, Mr. Speaker. I will agree with my friend that there has been a lot of argument as to what is the appropriate figure. Various people come up with various yardsticks. It has been stated that the teacher proportion of the budget is as low as 57 per cent. There are others who argue it is higher.

Let me try to get out of an argument on statistics. The teacher salary proportion of the budget is lower in the York county board than it is in virtually any other board -- certainly it is away below the average for all of the Province of Ontario. Let’s get it under that generalization. Therefore, all I’m saying is that the government has another reason, though as my leader has pointed out salaries weren’t really the thing that brought this to the impasse, they weren’t really the thing. But salaries, in the first instance, were one of the irritants that created that sense of grievance in the teachers vis-a-vis the board.

I went down with my hon. friend the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Mr. Wardle) and shared with him a meeting of the teachers on Main St. in the east end of Toronto. I was rather fascinated to hear teachers in Toronto getting up and asking him questions as to why it was, for example, in York county that teachers with essentially the same jobs were getting $1,000-plus less than they were getting in the city of Toronto.

This was generally a factor, and this created something of a climate, and while the salary issue tended to fade into the background and to be overshadowed by PTR and by other issues, it was one of the issues that created the whole impasse in the first instance.

Mr. Deacon: The ceilings are substantially less up there too.

Mr. MacDonald: That may well have been.

The third point that became very clear from an assessing of the situation, and this has been referred to by virtually everybody who has spoken so far, is the role of the director of education. As a matter of fact, when I make the comment that the system had broken down, it had broken down in so many ways that it is almost a story in itself. One had the impression that the director of education was not only running the educational system, but he was running the board; that the board, in effect:, had abdicated much of its responsibility. The members may have been claiming in one breath that they were the elected representatives of the people and therefore they should be able to have management rights and everything else, but in fact they had conceded many of their legitimate rights -- much as they may talk of local autonomy -- to a hireling of the board, namely the director of education. That was another serious element in the deteriorating situation.

I was most intrigued, and indeed puzzled, to discover that in that day’s discussion up at Richmond Hill with the teachers there was also a very widespread feeling among those present, including some people who weren’t teachers, that in earlier instances in Ontario where difficulties had arisen with regard to a director of education being the evil genius in the picture, particularly down near Windsor, it had been virtually impossible for a board to get rid of a director of education. It was even said that the Ministry of Education tended to line up and support the director of education so that there was sort of a united front against the board when it was trying to regain some of that precious local autonomy.

It was a breakdown in the system. Because there was a breakdown in the system, Mr. Speaker, it became very clear that somebody had to intervene to break the impasse. The man who could and should have intervened, I suggest, was the minister himself, or somebody whom he might have appointed on his behalf.

I share with the leader of the New Democratic Party some misgivings about the proposition of complete trusteeship, because complete trusteeship means one takes over the board in all of its ramifications and all of its responsibilities, and how one sort of hands it back without having an election and getting a new board is a very difficult kind of process.

If the government had an impasse in the negotiations, as it surely had an impasse in York county, it would have been possible for the minister to step in and to take charge of those negotiations, as indeed the Minister of Labour has on occasion when the government reached impasses in labour-management disputes. Because of the prestige of his office and because of his presumably firm belief that some of those items like PTR were negotiable and should, if necessary, be sent to arbitration, he could have begun to break the logjam. But because he didn’t step in in a strike that started about Feb. 1, it went on for some six weeks.

Allegedly, the reason for the government’s hesitancy to do this is its respect for local autonomy and its desire not to breach this sacrosanct local autonomy. Mr. Speaker, I for one never buy that argument. There are too many occasions when this government is willing to breach local autonomy when they contend it is for some higher purpose, and for the public interest, and so on. Certainly, in this instance, the kind of situation that had developed and the minister’s concern and the growing concern of everybody else about the fact that the schools weren’t operating and the children weren’t getting the education that they were entitled to made it a paramount factor that justified what he might deem to be a temporary aberration, a temporary breaching of local autonomy, at least to get some resolution of the difficulties.

The real message, Mr. Speaker, that comes through on this is that the government has a basic commitment which, despite the minister’s efforts otherwise to avoid it, it always comes back to. That is a basic commitment to the concept of compulsory arbitration as being the method for solving unresolved difficulties in this field.

I said in December when we were speaking on second reading of Bill 274 that the government had taken a stance of great unhappiness at having to bring Bill 274 into the House. They were almost paraphrasing the comment of the father who is whipping his unruly son and saying, “Look, son, I don’t like to do this. It hurts me more than it hurts you.” This was the posture of the government that they didn’t like compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Speaker, I simply don’t believe that is the case, because compulsory arbitration has become the centrepiece of the government’s philosophy in terms of collective bargaining procedures. It was the government’s philosophy back in 1964 in the whole hospital workers situation in Trenton when one had another duplication of a complete impasse, another duplication of a situation in which there was no bargaining in good faith, in which one had had an impartial conciliation board chairman sharing along with the workers’ representative on the conciliation board the most devastating condemnation of the management attitude and actions throughout all that.

Yet in that instance, instead of bringing in a bill which would have at least dealt with that situation alone, the government brought in a bill which imposed compulsory arbitration upon hospital workers all across the Province of Ontario. That was done over the decision and the honourable promise given by a minister not to do it, but to bring in a specific piece of legislation to deal in an ad hoc fashion with that situation. The government repeated it again when we got into the civil service legislation. Now it is repeating it with the teachers’ situation in collective bargaining. At least in this instance the minister has brought in a bill to deal with the last of the 16 or 17 unresolved board-teacher negotiations. He is going to deal with it alone. It involves compulsory arbitration. The broader threat of compulsory arbitration as a strait-jacket to be imposed upon teachers as a whole has already been laid on the table in this House in the form of Bill 274 in the last session.

Mr. Speaker, this government’s commitment is to a procedure which simply will not work. It hasn’t worked in terms of the objective which the government itself professed with regard to the hospital workers of getting this group higher up in a wage scale so that they wouldn’t be working at subsistence level. Their differentials have widened. It is not going to work in the instance of teachers either in this specific instance because the government is going to make a bad situation worse even though it may get them back into the schools. And it certainly isn’t going to work when we get into permanent legislation, partly because it is wrong in principle and partly because it is particularly inapplicable when one gets into the very peculiar kind of circumstances in labour-management relations in an educational situation. As everybody who has spoken so far has said, the compulsory principle of this bill is abhorrent, and we are going to oppose it precisely because that principle is abhorrent.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I rise to record my objections to Bill 12, the bill introduced by the minister yesterday, An Act respecting a Certain Dispute between York County Board of Education and certain of its Teachers. I do so, Mr. Speaker, regretting the minister did introduce such legislation, legislation that would deal with forcing a group of teachers back to work simply because of a stubborn or an obstinate board that wouldn’t accept what the minister had said at one time that pupil-teacher ratio was a negotiable item.

However, at the same time, Mr. Speaker, I should criticize the minister, very, very strongly for not having spoken out loudly and strongly in the early stages of the board-teacher negotiations that pupil-teacher ratio would be an negotiable item and also that ceilings could be broached.

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I should commend the hon. member for York Centre for his role in an attempt to resolve the problem in his area. He has met with individual teachers and with teachers’ groups. He has met with federations. He has met with the board members individually and collectively. He has met with students. He has met with parents, individually and collectively, as well as with residents of his riding and the county of York who may not have had a direct involvement in the situation because they had no children attending any of the York schools. I think the member for York Centre is to be commended for his efforts in an attempt to resolve the situation.

Mr. Speaker, before any type of negotiations can be effective, there must be a sense of trust, a sense of faith, a sense of concern, a sense of goodwill and a sense of good faith bargaining. In the York situation apparently a lot of these elements were missing. I am not going to mention anything of the role of the director of education and how he may have held back the real eventual solution of the problem at an earlier stage. I will leave that comment for those that are a little more knowledgeable concerning him.

However, Mr. Speaker, boards have to realize that the master-servant relationship has gone. It has gone long ago. In the US they claimed that Lincoln freed the slaves back 100 years ago. The slaves in education in the eyes of some boards are the school teachers. We got rid of slavery. There is no need to maintain the attitude that teachers must continue to be slaves. They have a contribution to make and they want to make that contribution. There must be co-operation, there must be trust and there must be willingness to try to resolve the differences.

I can look back at the situation in my own area, Mr. Speaker. Imagine how you are going to develop trust and faith in a board, if after attempting to fight for a basic democratic principle, the right to withhold your services, or in the eyes of some, the right to strike, teachers in the area withdrew their services for one day, and rather than possibly be slapped on the wrist or simply have their pay deducted, the board comes through and sends to each teacher involved the following type of letter:

“The purpose of this letter is to inform you that due to your absence without the consent of the Board of Education for the City of Windsor on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 1973, you are in breach of contract.”

That paragraph is all right. But listen to this, Mr. Speaker.

“The board takes a very serious view of breach of contract. Should you be in breach of contract in the future, the board will consider it as cause for immediate termination of your contract.”

There we go back to the Abraham Lincoln days, the master-servant concept. We thought that --

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Board- teacher relations.

Mr. B. Newman: -- was an 18th or a 19th century and not a 20th century concept. We thought that went by the board years and years ago -- more than 100 years ago -- in our British democratic systems.

Mr. Speaker, that letter was by the public board. The separate board was a little more mild in its approach. I thought the letter by them was at least acceptable. However, the separate board did not seem to be willing to bargain in good faith.

I am bringing this out, Mr. Speaker, to show to you that the situation from my understanding is exactly the same situation as in the York area, the lack of bargaining in good faith. When the Windsor separate board suspended a principal, when the Windsor separate board fired a teacher for taking part in or for withholding services, just as did every teacher in the system in an attempt to fight for their democratic right, the right to withhold their services, a right that is granted practically everyone in our society that is not under an essential service category, when the board wishes to appeal a potential arbitration award, you wonder sometimes if the people of the board are living in the 20th century.

Don’t they realize that teachers are humans just as they are? They want to remain in their classrooms, but when they are forced to the wall they have no other alternative but to fight for their rights. If fighting for their rights means that they have to withdraw their services, there is nothing else that they can possibly do. They are by far more interested in the education of students that come under their wing than are the board members. They take a personal involvement. This, to them, is more than simply a livelihood it is a career. It is generally something to which they have dedicated their whole lives. We all entrust our children to their hands for their education. Yet, Mr. Speaker, when the teachers of a board want to negotiate a thing such as pupil-teacher ratio, which is really conditions of work, who knows better than does the teacher the working conditions that would be more conducive to better education for the student who is exposed to that teacher?

When the teachers in the province see actions on the part of boards such as the two that I have mentioned here, you can’t wonder why they don’t have the confidence in the boards that all of us would like to see them have. When they see board after board not bargaining in good faith, it leaves them reason to doubt.

A lot has been made, Mr. Speaker, concerning the loss of time by the students, the loss of attendance. At the end of this week, I understand some 30 teaching days will have been missed by the student. One day is one day too much. But education isn’t all in a classroom. The committee on the utilization of educational facilities in its very first recommendation, in the preamble to the recommendation, says that “an education is not confined to the facilities traditionally designated as educational. It is our view that educational facilities must include all the places where education is being and can be pursued.”

Mind you, Mr. Speaker, the book learning for given topics generally takes place in the classroom, but despite the fact that the students lost the 30 days, the teachers didn’t want them to lose the 30 days -- or it will be 30 days at the end of this week. The students didn’t want to lose the 30 days; the board members didn’t want this to take place. This could have been avoided, had the Minister of Education come out loud and clear immediately upon the introduction of Bill 274 that pupil-teacher ratio would be a negotiable item.

What he would have been saying is that “we, as a government, are interested in the quality of education. We want the best education possible for the students in our school system.” But by not coming out and spelling out the fact that the pupil-teacher ratio would be a negotiable item, he, in turn said, “We’re not too interested in quality education. We’re interested in the cheapest type of education that we can possibly get.”

I hope that wasn’t the idea and the attitude of the ministry. The 30 days will be lost if the students are not back before the end of this week. Mr. Speaker, there are ways in which the school system could catch up on the 30 days. I’m not the one to tell them that they should do it. I think that is a decision that has to be made by both the teachers and the board involved. There are five days of next week that could be used. I’m not suggesting that the students not have a break. I’m not suggesting that the teachers don’t have a break. But we could make up five days next week. We likewise have a series of 12 professional development days that under the unusual circumstances of this year could be put into teaching days. Next year we could go back into the professional development days if it is the wish of the teachers and the board.

There is also generally on the secondary level the month of June that is not used to capacity, to full time, in relation to classroom teaching and/or testing. I can recall at one time in my educational experience that on about the first week of June the formal classroom education was over. There were probably four or five days of actual teaching and then there were roughly two weeks in which the teachers either marked their papers or there were promotion exams.

Were we to extend, if the teachers and the board wished to, teaching up into the month of June and/or hold promotions either late in June or early in July, we could catch up the 30 days. We could likewise catch up the 30 days, Mr. Speaker, by the extension of the school day, if necessary. We could likewise catch up the loss by the use of summer programmes that my leader made mention of in the question period, if that is the wish of both the teachers and the board involved.

Mr. Speaker, the time could be caught up in a number of ways. The decision should be left up to both the teachers and the board, so that no student would suffer academically as a result of the 30 days in which the schools on the secondary level were not open. There is always the concern of the grade 13 student. If the Ministry of Education and the government had taken their own recommendations -- and that was the assimilation of grade 13 by absorption over the four years in the secondary level, or four years in the secondary level and two years in the elementary level, we wouldn’t have had a grade 13. We wouldn’t have that problem. Now that we have the problem, we have to assist those students that need assistance, so that it doesn’t deprive them of the opportunity to continue their post-secondary education.

I think they can be accommodated by mutual agreement among all three parties involved, that is, the teachers, the board and the students. No one wants to see any of the students suffer, but had the ministry eliminated grade 13 you would have had a cheaper secondary education. The boards probably would have been able to operate, or may have been able to operate, within budget.

Mr. Speaker, I will have to fault the Minister of Education for not having introduced some type of board-teacher negotiation legislation. He has had sufficient time since the Reville report has been tabled in the House to come up with some answers to the problem. I am not saying that he should have adopted what Reville suggested, but he could have come along in consultation with boards and teachers’ organizations over the past year and arrived at something that would have been more satisfactory, or maybe even completely satisfactory, to all parties concerned.

The introduction of Bill 274, Mr. Speaker, did one good thing and that was it unified the teachers to show them that unless they work as a body they are going to find that government will push them around. No longer are teachers going to stand up to being the scapegoats in the inefficiency and the lack of action on the part of the government.

Bill 12 that we are discussing at this time does remove some of the problems, but as I made mention, problems that could have been removed months earlier had the minister by his comments made known loud and clear that the pupil-teacher ratio as well as ceilings, these two issues, were going to be resolved or could be resolved.

Force is no answer. If we come along and try to force anyone in this House to do certain things, he may do those things, but he does them with rebellion on the inside of him, and the first chance he has to get back at the individual who forced him to take that action, he will come along and rebel.

Mr. Speaker, the teachers here don’t want to be forced back to work. They can resolve the problems and they would have resolved the problems, had the minister spoken out in the latter part of last year. Teachers want to negotiate their working conditions. Why shouldn’t they want to negotiate their working conditions? That is not unreasonable, is it?

The employees of Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, the auto workers, negotiate their working conditions, not that I am trying to equate the school teacher with the industrial worker and not that I am trying to degrade the industrial worker in any aspect whatsoever. But the industrial worker is a little more advanced when it comes to talking with his employer. He negotiates with the employer as to the number of cars that are going to be turned out in an hour, the number of men that are going to be working on the line to produce the cars and the speed with which the line is going to operate. All of these things are taken into consideration and the employer accepts that.

What is the difference with the teachers? They are human in just the same way as is the industrial auto worker. Mr. Speaker, the elected representatives don’t determine how fast an assembly line is to move or how many cars are to be produced. The elected officials are not being involved in the working conditions as far as the auto worker is concerned. The elected officials aren’t involved in the working conditions in a hospital. That is done by others.

The teachers, Mr. Speaker, are interested in improving the learning atmosphere in the classroom. Who knows more about this learning atmosphere than those professionally trained to work in a classroom? The pupil teacher-ratio or the conditions of work are extremely important. We need a realistic appraisal of the contribution of the teacher to society. Surely we can’t hold the teacher accountable for the education of future generations if we deny to that teacher a voice in the formulation and direction of that same education.

If teachers are given some control over the system in which they must function, then they can be held accountable for the effects of those educational policies. If we are interested in quality education, we have to be interested in the pupil-teacher ratio. I am very pleased to see that the minister has resolved that issue now, but it could have been resolved months ago.

Mr. Deacon: It should have been, too.

Mr. B. Newman: As far as ceilings are concerned, Mr. Speaker --

Hon. Mr. Wells: I said it last year but the member wasn’t listening.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Why didn’t the minister agree to this formula before?

Mr. MacDonald: If it was really his view, why didn’t he speak up?

Mr. Roy: He never said it publicly in here.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Everybody knows my views. Yes, I did.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, if the minister had been loud and clear concerning the ceiling situation, then that obstacle could have been removed and the resolution of the problem would have been accelerated.

Mr. Bounsall: Or the pupil-teacher ratio.

Mr. B. Newman: I want to ask of the minister at this time, if in the course of the negotiations the ceilings are broached, then where will the money come from to take care of the new demands on the board? Is this going to be a loan against future grants? Are we simply postponing the day of recovery? In the light of declining enrolments, Mr. Speaker, a better system has to be devised, to the agreement of both sides, to resolve the issue of declining enrolments and its effect on grants to the school board.

Mr. Roy: Is the minister going to make up the difference out of his own pocket?

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, going to compulsory arbitration is not the way to resolve the problem. Force only begets force. Co-operation, respect, trust, good faith and goodwill can do wonders. I am disturbed, Mr. Speaker, that in some cases of compulsory arbitration, or even in this case, the cost of the arbitration to the board, to the teachers, and likewise to the government for the arbitration hearings could be in some instances even greater than the award. It could cost more to resolve the issue than what the award would amount to. Compulsory arbitration is not the best way, especially, Mr. Speaker, when my colleague, the hon. member from York Centre has suggested an alternative. I will support my leader, Mr. Speaker, and vote against second reading of this bill.

Mr. Bounsall: Mr. Speaker, I paused to see if there were any members of the government who wished to come in and partake in this debate. There was a lot of thumping of the desks yesterday as if they approved of the bill.

Mr. Laughren: Why aren’t the members for Parry Sound (Mr. Maeck) and Peterborough (Mr. Turner) here?

Mr. Bounsall: Yet I don’t see any of them jumping up today to participate. They surprise me.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: I can remember many of these members in the debate on Bill 274 jumping to their feet with great enthusiasm.

Mr. Laughren: Why doesn’t the member for London North (Mr. Walker) participate in the debate?

Mr. Bounsall: I can remember the hon. member for Durham making a contribution at that time.

Mr. Foulds: Yes. Would he get his feet off the desk now?

Mr. Carruthers: What the member has done so far is waste time. He knows the answer.

Mr. Bounsall: -- and I’m waiting eagerly for his contribution in this one.

An hon. member: Does the member think he is making any contribution to this?

Mr. Laughren: Would the hon. member for Durham take his feet off the desk?

Mr. Bounsall: Up until the last speaker got up, the hon. member for York North was, I thought, waiting patiently to get in, and he has now left us. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, looking at this bill before us, I had the distinct feeling when I first saw it that the Minister of Education had indeed learned a lot since black Monday of Dec. 10 last.

Mr. G. W. Walker (London North): Does the member mean he is going to support it?

An hon. member: Now look who wants to speak.

Mr. Bounsall: Yes, now we are getting some involvement here.

Mr. Foulds: You mean there is a Tory that can speak?

Mr. Bounsall: I see them scribbling notes over here. I guess they’re about to get in.

Mr. Laughren: Let them tell us where they stand on this bill.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: We’d be interested in hearing what they have to say. They’re not going to get in on this one. It’s so evidently bad in principle that they are not going to embarrass themselves by getting up and talking about it.

An hon. member: That’s not true.

Mr. Bounsall: Is the member for Durham going to get up and talk about it then?

Mr. Foulds: He should get his feet off the desk.

Mr. Bounsall: We won’t know about their thoughts unless they get up and babble about them.

Mr. Laughren: Those fellows will never make it to the cabinet if they don’t speak out in the Legislature! I mean, look at the member for Scarborough East (Mrs. Birch). How is it that the member for Don Mills (Mr. Timbrell) made it into the cabinet? By speaking on issues in the Legislature.

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): We want the kids back in school.

Mr. Carruthers: They never know when they’re defeated.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: The hon. member for Port Arthur over there is getting some advice from the hon. member for Thunder Bay on what to say in the debate. Well, I hope he has taken it to heart.

An hon. member: Fort William (Mr. Jessiman).

Mr. Bounsall: Oh, I’m sorry; Fort William.

An hon. member: Say what you have to say and don’t repeat it to others.

Mr. Bounsall: That’s why many of them don’t talk! They haven’t much new to say, perhaps.

Anyway, looking at this bill I had the distinct feeling that the minister had, in fact, learned a lot since that famous black Monday. But by seeing compulsory arbitration as the only way to settle this dispute, it’s clear to me that he hasn’t quite finished his education.

I’m not implying that he should let this dispute linger on further, so that the Minister of Education can simply complete his education on this score and dream up some better solutions -- many of which we’re quite willing to supply to him, as a means of settling this dispute. I’m not implying that at all. But if I could read this bill with a pair of glasses that blocked out references to compulsory arbitration, I might even be caught saying that it wasn’t a bad bill. The penalties that are outlined in it are rather inventive. He doesn’t threaten teachers with fines or what have you. He puts them in a position --

Mr. Foulds: Contempt of court.

Mr. Bounsall: -- the teachers or the board, of being in contempt of court.

Mr. Foulds: Which results in fines.

Mr. Bounsall: Which implies fines and jail sentences, but not necessarily.

Hon. Mr. Wells: There could just be a reprimand.

Mr. Bounsall: Although it’s not a criminal offence, I think teachers or board members would probably be less inclined to have on their record a contempt of court citation than they would be to pay a $100 fine. So I find that provision rather inventive. And it makes clear that the board’s last salary offer was to be a minimum for the salary settlement in this dispute. That’s not a bad feature. And, of course, it makes clear that the pupil-teacher ratio is negotiable. An obvious point, because it’s one of the matters in dispute. It should have been obvious all along. Whether the pupil-teacher ratio is a working condition or whether it’s a financial condition, of course, doesn’t matter. It’s one of the matters in dispute and it’s obvious that it has to be settled by whatever means is chosen to settle it. And because it could be construed to be a financial matter certainly does not in any sense make it a management right and not subject to settlement by whatever means is chosen to settle it.

But the tunnel vision of the board, and the board negotiators, around the pupil-teacher ratio is second only to the minister’s own tunnel vision in seeing compulsory arbitration as the only final solution when he feels that collective bargaining has broken down.

Mr. Foulds: Tory tunnels.

Mr. Bounsall: It’s the only solution which a Tory can think of. That’s where the minister’s education isn’t complete. And it’s time now for him to get out of that tunnel before he imposes on the province a further bill under which all teachers must negotiate. Look around the world. Look outside Ontario and see what other means have been chosen to govern the teacher-board relationships in other jurisdictions around the world. Don’t be restricted with this narrow tunnel vision that the government has in this particular solution.

I heard a remark from the member for York Centre that in this dispute between the York county board and certain of its teachers one of the things hindering negotiations was the fact the board’s ceilings were lower. This should have told the Minister of Education something about that board if that, in fact, is the case. We heard this from the member for York Centre. Perhaps the minister can indicate if the member was wrong in his comment that the ceilings in the York county board are lower than they are elsewhere. Is this correct, Mr. Minister? Can the minister confirm or deny that?

Hon. Mr. Wells: No. What does the member for Windsor West mean by lower? Lower than what?

Mr. Bounsall: I’m quoting the member for York Centre’s words: “The ceilings are lower in York county education.” I can tell it to the minister in terms of --

Hon. Mr. Wells: I imagine if he means that the ceilings for the York county board, when they’re finally worked out, that the amount per pupil is lower, say, than Metropolitan Toronto. Probably they are. Yes, they probably are a lower per-pupil figure than

Metropolitan Toronto,

Mr. Bounsall: In other words, it’s simply due to the weighting factor not being as high. They are not one of the five or six boards that, when the government imposed the ceilings initially, found that they were so far below it that they weren’t allowed to go up to it only in steps? That was the case, as you know Mr. Speaker, of the Windsor boards. And it said something very much about that board; that over the years they had not been spending money the way they should have. Well, I see that that’s due to the weighting factors and not to the same situation that existed with the Windsor board. I’m glad to have that point cleared up.

One other matter which was spoken of rather heatedly here in the debate was the final offer arbitration that was proposed by the member for York Centre. We had some words about three-quarters of an hour ago about who in this world first dreamed up final offer arbitration; and confusion on the part of both parties in the argument as to whether or not it was good.

Well, let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that several states of the United States have adopted final offer arbitration. They have embodied it in legislation as one of the routes to reach a settlement under collective bargaining disputes. On the evidence which is now readily available from reports on final offer arbitration, any reasonable person would dismiss immediately final offer arbitration as a satisfactory means of reaching a fair solution to any dispute.

Certain members have heard the phrase, but have never investigated it; and it’s just those members who would propose this sort of solution to any dispute.

Reports on this subject have appeared in the past year in US News and World Report, the monthly Labour Review of the US Department of Labour, and the Industrial Labour Relations Review -- a publication of the New York State School of Industry and Labour.

Articles were written by members of those final arbitration panels, and in each case they have come to virtually the same conclusion. Those conclusions about final offer arbitration have been that if the arbitration board had, in fact, been given flexibility and had not been limited to choosing one of two final offers from each side, the interests of both parties would have been advanced.

Had they been permitted to use their discretion after the facts of the case had been presented to it by each side, a judgement would have been made which would have been workable and equitable and would have better met the needs of both parties. These are the conclusions of men who have sat on these panels.

The advocates of final offer arbitration argue -- and I think they argue quite hypothetically, having had no practical experience -- that the parties will refrain from making unreasonable offers so that, in the fear that the final offer selected by the panel is not theirs, they will try and make theirs a reasonable one. However, there is no empirical evidence from any of the negotiations prior to these final offers, and the amounts in those final offers, that bears out this hypothesis. It could be just as easily argued that the parties make unreasonable final offers, and simply attempting to be a shade less unreasonable than the unreasonable offer of the other party. There is no evidence to support that either. There is no evidence to support either side, that it affects the collective bargaining leading up to that arbitration based on final offers.

“The proponents of final offer arbitration simply and completely fail to take into account properly the cost that will have to be paid in the loss of flexibility and the likelihood that the quality of the decision is likely to be inferior.”

That is a quote from an article in the monthly Labour Review of the US Department of Labour by one of the members who sat upon the panel, a Dr. Fred Witney, professor of economics at Indiana University, in a dispute between the city of Indianapolis and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Mr. Speaker, a great public relations point has tried to he made by the government when it introduced this bill, and by the Premier in replies to questions, that all the government is interested in is the kids in this province.

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): The students.

Mr. Bounsall: The students in this province. All right.

Mr. Laughren: Don’t be so pious.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am not being pious. They tell me they want to be called students.

Mr. Bounsall: They wanted to be called students? All right. Will the Premier sort of bow to any suggestion?

Mr. Laughren: Does he want to speak in this debate?

Mr. Held: Is he going to speak on this bill?

Mr. Bounsall: I gather he is going to jump in.

Mr. Laughren: We’ll actually hear from the Tories.

Hon. Mr. Davis: In this matter I thought very concisely; in fact, far more concisely than some hon. members opposite -- and I’m far less contradictory and less hypocritical, wouldn’t my friend agree?

Mr. Laughren: Certainly less than the Liberals.

Mr. Foulds: Call him to order, Mr. Speaker, please.

An hon. member: The Premier is getting pretty conceited.

Mr. Bounsall: I haven’t heard anyone else say that about the Premier’s statement; only himself.

Hon. Mr. Davis: If I don’t, who else is going to?

Mr. Bounsall: He won’t get it from this side.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I didn’t really expect that.

Mr. Bounsall: Oh no, I have been giving credit where credit was due all along here this afternoon. I have said the minister’s bill was good in three specific respects. I’m always ready to give credit where credit is due.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Then why not vote for it?

Mr. Foulds: It’s not good enough.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Oh, I see.

Mr. Bounsall: No, the principle.

Mr. Foulds: Three out of five isn’t too bad.

Mr. Bounsall: The principle of compulsory arbitration -- we can never vote for that.

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): The member’s leader told us earlier he supports it.

Mr. Bounsall: I’m glad the hon. member is here to listen.

Mr. Laughren: The anti-labour member for Timiskaming has entered the debate now.

Mr. Foulds: Is he listening with his mouth again?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: We listened to it. We didn’t have the complete statement, though.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: We didn’t have the complete statement 45 minutes in advance, as we had on Bill 274.

Mr. Roy: But they knew it called for compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Bounsall: We didn’t have the complete outline of the bill --

Mr. Roy: They can’t get around it; they knew it called for compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Bounsall: -- as we had for 45 minutes before Bill 274 --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: -- or the half-hour caucus. We didn’t need a half-hour caucus either to decide what we were going to do.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Bounsall: Thank you. Would you keep this rabble in order, Mr. Speaker? I would very much appreciate it.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Bounsall: This rabble on the far extreme right, Mr. Speaker --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: The rabble on the extreme right over here. Much further right.

Mr. Roy: The member for Windsor West is inconsistent. He voted against it on first reading last time, and for it this time.

Mr. Bounsall: We are inconsistent?

Mr. Foulds: Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of the Liberal Party.

Mr. Bounsall: When one thinks of the Liberal Party, one thinks of inconsistency with a capital I and a capital C.

Mr. Roy: Why didn’t they stand up?

Mr. Stokes: Are the Liberals telling us how to run our affairs? They can’t even run their own affairs.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, the situation has deteriorated since the Premier came in.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, now I know why the Premier doesn’t sit in the House.

Mr. Bounsall: Now we know why he is here today. He is here to enjoy the fun.

Mr. Carruthers: Did the member for Ottawa East hear what the member called him?

Mr. Roy: No, what did he call me?

Mr. Bounsall: Remind me. I have called him so many things, both inside and outside the House, that I am not sure.

Mr. Roy: Was it parliamentary?

Mr. Bounsall: Does the member for Durham mean “inconsistent with both a capital I and a capital C”? Sure, when one thinks of them, that is what one thinks of. Capital I, capital C, inconsistent.

Mr. Foulds: Our thinking is not fossilized into rigidity like the Liberals’.

Mr. Speaker: Back to the bill, please.

An. hon. member: The professor is talking now; let’s be quiet.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): Stop this babbling about, please.

Mr. Bounsall: I know I shouldn’t but the Premier is obviously enjoying it; he’s here with the biggest smile I’ve seen on him in days.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Where does the train stop?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: In any event, talking about the students and who has what attitude toward the students in the province and in this situation, I might say with respect to one point which was just slightly touched upon -- that of whether or not the students would go back to school next week -- I can’t recall the actual wording on one of the signs which a small group of pupils here last week was carrying around but I think it read something like “Lack of classes makes us asses” or something of this sort. I can’t think, really, of a more ridiculous sign than that. If a student has to depend upon what is given to him or her in a classroom in order to learn something in this world, with all the fully stocked libraries we have around, then maybe the lower part of that sign does apply to that particular student.

Mr. Carruthers: Is the member suggesting we close the classrooms?

Mr. Foulds: That is what the report says.

Mr. Bounsall: No, I am saying they can learn something from schools, I’m saying they can learn a lot outside of schools.

Mr. Ruston: No wonder they had to let him go.

An hon. member: He should have quit a long time ago.

Mr. Bounsall: I’m sure some of the members over there would be the first to agree with me.

Mr. Ruston: No wonder the member had to have the --

Mr. Bounsall: One can learn a lot in class but one can also learn a lot outside class. Certainly, in this party we would not object --

Mr. W. Hodgson: But there are places in the classroom and that is where the students should be.

Mr. Bounsall: I can’t quite hear the member.

Mr. Foulds: His place is in the kitchen. Why doesn’t he get back there?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. W. Hodgson: The member had better go up to the north again.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Roy: In the member’s NDP paper, is he going to put in how he voted on Bill 12 on first reading?

Mr. Bounsall: The member would be afraid to put any collected statements by his members on paper anywhere. They are so contradictory.

Mr. Roy: Is he going to document it? He has even got the blue line of the Tories.

Mr. Ruston: The colour of the Tories.

Mr. Roy: They work together -- we know that.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Roy: They use the same colour of blue.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Gracious!

Mr. Roy: In blue.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Next thing we know, they’ll have a picture.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Roy: That looks like one of the Tory ads.

An hon. member: That looks like the --

Mr. Foulds: There’s a good picture of the Minister of Education in there.

Mr. Bounsall: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): They are reading good material there.

Mr. Bounsall: The one point mentioned here was whether or not --

Mr. Foulds: Looking for the soft underbelly.

Mr. Bounsall: Jeez, the member for Port Arthur is as bad as the member for Sudbury East.

An hon. member: There is a shortage.

Mr. Bounsall: One of the points mentioned in the debate so far has been whether or not the students would go back to their classrooms. The parents and the pupils who were down here in front of the Legislature building last week in a demonstration on behalf of a return to the classrooms, I am certain, would have no objection at all if the classrooms opened on Monday of next week. We would certainly find nothing wrong, having had a five or six week break, in that the normal spring break would see all of those children back in the classrooms of the York board of education.

Let me mention slightly another attitude with respect to students in this province, the minister, the Prime Minister, the Premier, mentioned it --

Hon. Mr. Davis: Which one?

Mr. Bounsall: Whatever one wants to call him. We call him a lot of other things but I’m sure he’ll take one of those three names --

Hon. Mr. Davis: Delighted -- any time.

Mr. Bounsall: Right, okay. He mentioned in reply to a question earlier in the week --

Mr. Roy: What about the World Football League? Is the Premier still supporting Lalonde?

Hon. Mr. Davis: The federal minister probably is in trouble.

Mr. Roy: Is the Premier still supporting them?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I never did.

Mr. Roy: It was his statement last week that he did.

Hon. Mr. Davis: That was erroneous.

Mr. Bounsall: One thing about the Prime Minister is that he can always change most subjects, no matter how serious, into a discussion on football.

An. hon. member: He didn’t say anything.

Mr. Bounsall: He is easily sidetracked. He’s got to watch that.

Mr. Maeck: Easily sidetracked?

Mr. Bounsall: He admits it. Without even speaking he admits it. He is easily sidetracked. His thinking gets sidetracked right along.

An hon. member: He had better keep his members in line back there.

Mr. Maeck: The member will have to go back and pick up the thread.

Mr. Bounsall: I have got the thread; I am speaking on the students. In defence of the government being the only party that had an interest in students in this dispute, and the remark made by me in my address on Dec. 18 of last year, with respect to the secondary school students who were out of their classroom in the city of Windsor for 13 school days in January, 1973, that it was ridiculous to suggest, as had two separate speeches made by government members, that their education had been “irreparably damaged,” and I repeat that statement that this has --

An hon. member: Irreparably.

Mr. Bounsall: Irreparably -- how’s that?

Mr. Roy: That was a difficult word.

Mr. Bounsall: Yes, I have a little trouble at this time of night.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Ruston: And he’s a professor.

Mr. Roy: Professor of what? Dentures?

Mr. Bounsall: Not of English, not of English. I started out as an engineer, so I am not supposed to pronounce anything properly.

Mr. Roy: Not only does he need new glasses but new dentures.

An hon. member: He should be running one of the CAAT colleges if he’s an engineer.

Mr. Bounsall: Well, if I had to depend on low-cost dentures, they wouldn’t be because of any action of the member for -- what is it? -- Ottawa East, on behalf of low-cost dentures in this province.

Mr. Ruston: He pioneered it.

Mr. Speaker: Can we return to the bill please?

Mr. Bounsall: I think I can spin it out till 6 now.

Mr. Carruthers: The member has covered a lot of subjects,

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): He’s got five minutes. Let him tell us something in that five minutes.

Mr. Bounsall: No, not yet, I am just starting.

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: Let’s have his stand on the denturists.

An hon. member: Get going.

Mr. Bounsall: Just getting started.

Mr. Roy: Don’t let us rush the member.

Mr. Bounsall: Oh no, I wouldn’t think of it.

Now, with respect to students, Mr. Speaker, for 13 days to have government members suggesting that the educational experience was -- I won’t say irreparably --

Some hon. members: Irreparably.

Mr. Bounsall: -- irreparably -- was forever damaged is just ridiculous, and for the Premier to try to twist that, as he did as part of his answer to a question, into a suggestion that the opposition members on this side of the House are not interested in students and in whether or not their classrooms are open so that they can learn is just almost as ridiculous as the members on the government side who made those statements I have quoted in the initial sense.

Hon. Mr. Davis: He’s not going to become provocative at this time?

Mr. Roy: Take that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Bounsall: We are against compulsory arbitration in any form, but should this bill pass, let me make a suggestion to. the Minister of Education as to whom he might choose, unless agreement is reached between the parties, for his chairman of the arbitration board. Should this bill pass, I would like to make a suggestion to him.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Is the member seeking to be called?

Mr. Bounsall: I am available anytime.

Mr. Laughren: And the phone number is --

Mr. Bounsall: Yes, right,

Mr. Carruthers: He is an engineer.

Mr. Bounsall: We can write though; we might not be able to spell, but we can write.

Mr. Laughren: Which is more than we can say for the member for Durham. Engineers have been pontificating for years.

Mr. Bounsall: My suggestion is that if the minister hasn’t looked at the Saskatchewan legislation in terms of what final legislation he might bring into this province with respect to teachers, he should do so. One of those things is that arbitration can be chosen; they can choose voluntary arbitration, and whether it’s binding or not can also be chosen.

They have had some experience in Saskatchewan at the local level with salaries and fringe benefits to settle province-wide; they have had some experience at the local level. The local boards deal only with things like working conditions and pupil-teacher ratios. There have been arbitrations at that level in the Province of Saskatchewan, and therefore chairmen of arbitration boards out there have done arbitrations that have dealt solely with that matter.

I would suggest to the minister, for the travel cost that would be involved to the Province of Ontario, that in this arbitration, if it comes to that finally, he might search for one of those experienced arbitrators from the Province of Saskatchewan who have dealt with that touchiest area in this particular dispute. A decision taken by an arbitration board, headed by a chairman who has had that kind of experience, might result in a settlement which would be acceptable in this province, even if the means of arriving at that arbitration board is unacceptable.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Carruthers: Good speech.

Mr. W. Hodgson: Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Roy: Make it quick.

Mr. Speaker: In view of the hour, perhaps the hon. member would like to wait until we resume at 8 o’clock?

Mr. W. Hodgson: I move the adjournment of the debate.

Mr. Speaker: The motion to adjourn is not required.

It being 6 o’clock, p.m., the House took recess.