Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

SUNDAY TRUCKING OPERATIONS

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Speaker, on March 14, 1974, the Canadian Transport Commission granted exemption to two Manitoba-based highway carriers under the Lord’s Day Act. The decision means that these two truckers may use the highways in Ontario and Quebec to run their trucking operations on Sunday.

Last week I issued instructions to my staff to appeal these two decisions. I have been advised that applications, pursuant to section 28 of the federal Court Act, have been filed today requesting the federal Court to review these decisions.

Mr. Speaker, you will recall that in October and November of last year the motor vehicle committee of the Canadian Transport Commission held hearings in Toronto respecting the requests of these two carriers for exemption, and the governments of Quebec and Ontario intervened against the granting of such exemptions.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

PRICE FREEZE ON PETROLEUM PRODUCTS

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to ask the Premier whether Ontario has conveyed a position to the Prime Minister of Canada and the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan regarding the freeze on the price of oil and petroleum products? Are we in a position to assist in the negotiations that seem to be, let’s say breaking down to some extent as the deadline for the price change comes closer?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, the understanding at the conclusion of the last first ministers’ meeting was that there would be some adjustment of price on April 1. The Prime Minister of Canada, according to the press -- and I think it is accurate -- has had meetings with the premiers of both Alberta and Saskatchewan; and of course he is convening a meeting of all the provincial premiers under his chairmanship on Wednesday.

I can’t predict, Mr. Speaker, what the results of that meeting may be. The position of this government was, I think, very dearly stated a few days ago in this House by the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough). While we don’t totally understand the $6 figure, which was used by the federal government as a possibility at the last meeting, we did state, or the minister did in this House, that we would not take violent exception to the establishment of a $6 price.

Now, whether or not this will materialize on Wednesday, Mr. Speaker, I wish I could tell the Leader of the Opposition. I would like to know whether it will, in fact, be accepted by everybody and that that will be the result of the meeting; but quite honestly I can’t at this stage, nor can I give him any further guidance at this moment until after the Wednesday meeting.

NORTH PICKERING DEVELOPMENT

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A further question of the Premier: Is it the plan of any member of the administration, on behalf of the government, to submit any material to the commission that is investigating the Pickering airport while they are holding their hearings in the Malton area, with the idea of the possibility of expanding Malton instead of sticking with the Pickering airport?

Has the government of Ontario’s position on this changed in any way? Are there any surveys that are available to the Premier, or any member of the ministry, having an impact on this that could lead the government of Ontario to indicate that they feel the present Pickering plan should not go forward in its present form?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, Mr. Speaker, we have no additional information as it relates to the need or otherwise of the second international airport. We have communicated, to Mr. Justice Gibson I believe it is, that if there are certain factual things that might emerge during the hearing where information from the province would be helpful, we would be quite prepared to supply it.

But as I recall the terms of reference, they are relatively narrow and they are confined to the question of need; and here we feel, Mr. Speaker, is the area for the federal government, of course, to make the ultimate determination; and of course this is the rationale for the hearing itself.

Certainly, if there are certain facts that emerge or certain questions that are raised during this hearing where ministries or personnel in the government can be helpful in answering them, we have communicated to the commission that we would be prepared to provide information.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Is there any change in the government’s attitude, that was first expressed by the present Minister of Energy, that Pickering is the ideal site as far as Ontario is concerned?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I don’t like to quote a colleague. I think, as I recall it, the present Minister of Energy stated that if there was to be a second international airport, that we felt from the standpoint of the province there was merit in having that international airport east of Metropolitan Toronto rather than, say, some substantial distance north or west.

I don’t think the Minister of Energy, the then Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, said it was the best site; because I don’t think we are in a position to make that determination. What we did say was that if there was to be a second airport -- if there was in fact a need for a second one -- that it would fit in with the TCR and the desire on the part of this government to see development created east of Metropolitan Toronto rather than the continuation of the pressures to the west.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): By way of supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the Premier placed it in the context that he has, he would agree that the scheme envisaged by the Toronto-centred region plan did not permit of an airport immediately on the periphery of Metropolitan Toronto, that this would in fact violate the plan, but considered growth somewhat farther east than that in order to conform with government objectives. Since the Premier put it in that context himself, why does he not now make a submission to the Airport Inquiry Commission indicating the inconsistency of the present site, given the overall economic objectives of his government?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, with great respect to the hon. member, as I understand the function of the commission it is to determine not the location of a second international airport, but in fact whether a second airport is necessary.

I think it is fair to state, Mr. Speaker, that if we’d all had our druthers, if the airport had been X number of miles farther east it would have been more consistent -- no question about that -- with the TCR. But I think it is not a question of saying it should go --

Mr. Lewis: We wouldn’t have had the airport then -- it achieves the same purpose.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think it is not a question of saying it should be farther east; I think the commission really is inquiring into whether there is a need for a second facility, period.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Shouldn’t this government have a report on that?

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary to the Premier, is it reasonable to conclude from what he has just said that he is going to move with prompt dispatch to establish residential facilities in the North Pickering site? Or is that still left in abeyance?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to state that we will be moving with all reasonable dispatch to provide residential accommodation in that area, because that is consistent with the TCR and with the objective of this government to provide housing. I would assume, as we get into this during the estimates of one ministry or another, that the members opposite will be as enthusiastic about a residential community out there as we are.

Mr. Singer: In line with that answer, Mr. Speaker, could the Premier explain the reason for a report addressed to the Ministry of the Environment and dated February, 1974, which relates to water services for North Pickering. It says: “Stage three: Provide for the completion of the water supply system for North Pickering -- 1985 ultimate.” Does that tie in with the Premier’s statement about prompt development?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I think it does. There are two aspects of servicing. As the hon. member for Downsview is fully aware, there is the question of the long term and the major trunks; there is nothing to preclude a certain amount of development going ahead without the complete overall servicing. We’ve done this in other areas of the province, and this really should be asked of the Minister of Housing (Mr. Handleman). But I’m relatively optimistic that we can move ahead without completion of the total water and sewage systems.

Mr. Singer: Is the Premier familiar with that report and the staging of the services?

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

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: Why doesn’t the Premier make public now all the private little studies that are taking place on North Pickering, that have been requested by the members of the management consortium, who are working on the whole project, in order to give the citizens, with whom the government pretends to consult publicly, some sense of what is going on in the background of the government plans?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, it is the intent of the government, and this was made very clear by the former minister, that we involve the people of the area in the development of the overall plan. This was quite consistent with the fact that the three hamlets, as I call them, will be maintained, that the people there will not be expropriated, that they will be part of the overall plan for the area and that they will be involved in the process itself.

I can’t comment this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, as to what reports will be made available to the consortium that is developing the plan, or how relevant this is. I can only assure the hon. member it is the intent of this government to take into consideration, in the overall plan, the views of the people who are continuing to live in that area. There’s no question about it; it makes a great deal of sense and we intend to do it.

Mr. Singer: Like this report of February?

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the inquiry commission is now studying whether or not there should be an airport, I want to ask the Premier if in the event it is decided a second airport is not necessary at this time, would the present freeze on areas of Whitchurch, Stouffville, Uxbridge and Scott township be lifted immediately after the commission’s report comes out?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh yes; right away.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well Mr. Speaker, I would think that if the federal government decides that there will not be a second international airport in that area, then the restrictions we have placed upon some of that area at the request of the federal government quite obviously would be lifted forthwith.

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

PARKWAY BELT

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Premier if he can explain to the House why there is a continuing delay in making public the detailed descriptions of the boundaries of the land covered by the Parkway Act that went through the Legislature, I believe last June. Are there still negotiations between the government and individual landholders concerned with whether certain parcels will be included or not, or is this just a delay in the bureaucracy?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, Mr. Speaker, there are no negotiations with any owners within the parkway belt. The finalization is a complex matter as far as metes and bounds descriptions are concerned, and of course this information then will be the subject of a hearing before a hearing officer. It is our hope that we can start these hearings sometime in the next two or three months. It will be a complicated process --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The government starts the hearing?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Yes, it has to go through hearings. There is the establishment of the parkway committee -- I forget the exact terminology -- which will have some involvement in the general concept of the scheme; but the details of it, of course, are complex. The rough outlines are there and there are no negotiations with owners within the parkway as to whether the line might be moved a little bit north, south, east or west. That is not going on.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Why wouldn’t the hearing take place before the metes and bounds descriptions are made public? Surely there is some room for argument before the final boundaries are established and the hearings should take place before that is determined.

Hon. Mr. Davis: With great respect, Mr. Speaker, it really should be just the reverse. We will lay down what we think the boundaries should be. The people who are affected will then have an opportunity to present their points of view to the hearing officer, who in turn makes recommendations to the government. When those recommendations are received then it is the responsibility of the government -- and I think we bring it before the House, I am not sure -- to accept or reject the recommendations of the hearing officer.

If we were to do it on the general basis now, it could be that some owners who, when the metes and bounds descriptions are finalized, would not be affected, might have to go to the trouble of going and preparing some information for a hearing officer; and then find out, subsequently, that they wasted their time. It is also possible that the reverse may be true.

As I say, it’s a complex legal matter that has to be finalized. I think really to have the metes and bounds descriptions and so on finalized before the hearings is really the only logical way to do it.

Mr. Singer: By way of supplementary, can the Premier tell us why it is taking so long to prepare the metes and bounds descriptions? They were promised in November, in January, in February, and according to advice I’ve received they are still now two months delayed. Yet when metes and bounds descriptions are necessary, such as those the government needed for North Pickering, they are produced very quickly. Is the real reason why they haven’t been produced that the government is intending to abandon the whole parkway belt concept?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the member for Downsview, for reasons that completely escape me -- and perhaps other members of his party -- would like to see this government abandon the parkway concept, and see nothing but urbanization from the centre of downtown Toronto to north of Snelgrove -- nothing but concrete and asphalt -- which is a view shared, I am sure, by the member for York-Forest Hill (Mr. Givens). But I want to assure the member for Downsview that we are not that reactionary. We do believe in urban control --

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Just inquiring.

Mr. Lewis: Not reactionary?

Hon. Mr. Davis: We intend to stick to the parkway belt concept; the answer to that is yes.

Mr. Singer: Well why does it take so long to make the metes and bounds descriptions?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Because we want to do it right.

Mr. Singer: Oh, baloney! Baloney.

Mr. Breithaupt: It is taking a long time.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): I am glad to see the Premier pays attention to some of the things the members of the opposition ask.

Doesn’t the Premier think that it is terribly unfair to people who are caught up in this parkway belt, that the government has waited a whole year before even coming around to public hearings, and that it will probably take at least another year until a report comes in after the hearings are held? At the rate the government is going, it will probably take five years before it is ready to come in with a report as to where it finally stands with the parkway belt. Doesn’t the Premier think it is terribly unfair to people who are involved in this scheme?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I would think that if it took five years, it would be somewhat less than equitable. In that it won’t take five years, I don’t think it will be less than equitable.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It’d be more inequitable --

Hon. Mr. Davis: I can only say to the member for York-Forest Hill that this is a very major programme and undertaking by this government. We believe we are doing this in the interests of the general population, and while I recognize without any question that there are some people within the parkway belt, some corporations, some developers, who are being affected, without any question, who are being inconvenienced --

Mr. Lewis: Some private owners.

Mr. Singer: Some farmers; a lot of farmers.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Not that many farmers, with great respect. They are, in fact, being inconvenienced --

Mr. Singer: How many is many? More than one?

Hon. Mr. Davis: We recognize this, but at the same time, if one is going to undertake as comprehensive a programme as this, to say you are going to do it without some degree of inconvenience to some of the owners is just not realistic. However, I can assure the hon. member for York-Forest Hill it will not take five years.

Mr. Singer: How many surveyors has the government working on it?

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

The hon. member for Scarborough West.

TRAILWIND PRODUCTS

Mr. Lewis: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Labour. I’d like the Minister of Labour to tell me something about his view of the metes and bounds -- it’s clearly a fashionable phrase now -- of the behaviour of Trailwind Products division of Indal Products Ltd. closing down its plant on Friday afternoon, with less than eight hours notice to its workers, to move to Brampton in order to pay lower wages to the work force without guaranteeing further employment to those whose employment was terminated on Friday.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): And lower taxes!

Hon. F. Guindon (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, this matter was brought to my attention just before coming into the Legislature today and I promised to look into it. I will be glad to report to my hon. friend tomorrow.

Mr. Lewis: All right. Well I have a supplementary then. Could the minister in the process of his report explain how this is possible, since the Employment Standards Act section on termination says no employer shall terminate the employment of a person who has been employed for three months or more, unless he gives a certain amount of notice; and the employees received notice on Friday for a shutdown that day?

I want to know, in his reply, what the minister is going to do with respect to provisions of the Employment Standards Act. Could he also explain whether it is now desirable in Ontario for a plant deliberately to lower the wages of workers and deny certification to a union by shifting in this fashion?

Would the minister do that when he answers?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Yes, Mr. Speaker; that’s the reason I would like to get all the facts before I make a decision.

UNION GAS

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I have another question of the Minister of Labour. Can he bring the House up to date on negotiations between Union Gas and the OCAW?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, all I can report at this time is that the parties did meet last week -- as recently as last Thursday -- on their own.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: Is the minister aware that negotiations broke off at 10:10 in the morning last Friday with no rescheduling? And has the minister taken a look at the possibility that the prolongation of this strike, now into its seventh week, might have some serious connection with the company’s present rate application and its wish to plead poverty before the Energy Board in order to make a case? Doesn’t he think that is a useful thing for the Ministry of Labour to examine when it is looking over this strike?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I am keeping very close to this strike at the present time, along with my senior officials, and I will continue to do so.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Can the minister tell the House if the Minister of Energy’s, let’s say, rather quick decisions to ask that the OPP be brought in to protect certain facilities, has in any way affected the negotiations that have now been broken off?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, in reply, I would say to my hon. friend, not to my knowledge.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Are the OPP still guarding these facilities?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: As far as I know, they are.

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

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, if the minister has kept in touch, does he realize that the matter has bogged down, essentially, on non-monetary issues; which is very unusual in prolonging this kind of a strike? Would he report to the House the behaviour of Union Gas over the first two or three weeks of the strike in its bargaining position? Can he do that?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I’d be glad to report any information I can possibly give at this time.

PENSIONS TO SPOUSE

Mr. Lewis: All right, I have another question for the minister about the Horton strike in Fort Erie, it is a subsidiary of Chicago Bridge. Is the minister aware that this strike has occurred because the company refuses to provide a 50 per cent payment to the spouse in the event a man should die before pensionable age of 65? Does the minister not think, in the light of what has been recommended from the Law Reform Commission and to the Canada Pension Plan, that he might speak to the company about the appropriateness of making these pension funds available to the spouse?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I would like to see the collective agreement in this particular case, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, surely the minister would recognize that they were in negotiations and that this is now a negotiable item? Doesn’t the hon. minister think it makes sense that the widow should receive 50 per cent at least of the pensionable benefits if the worker dies before retirement? After all, he has paid into them, presumably. Doesn’t the minister think that is a worthy basis for his intervention?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Quite right, Mr. Speaker. I know it is a negotiable item and I am sure the two parties will resolve it.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary; the hon. member for Welland South.

Mr. Haggerty: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On the Horton Steelworks, Fort Erie, Ont., the question I want to ask the minister is a follow-up to what the leader of the NDP asked. I believe the minister, two years or a year ago, reported to the House that there was a study to be made on such items as mentioned -- survivors’ benefits, dealing with pensions and so forth; is that report ready now?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I haven’t had the report as yet, although I do expect it at any moment; I would say within weeks.

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

TTC SUBSIDY

Mr. Lewis: A question, Mr. Speaker, of the Minister of Transportation and Communications: Can the minister indicate to the House whether or not he might be willing to increase the subsidy to the Toronto Transit Commission in order to maintain fares at their present level and in order to avert the fare increase that would be forthcoming; all of this given his alleged policy on public transit?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, this is a subject which is being considered at the present time. There are a number of discussions going on and I don’t think I can give a direct answer at this time.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, I take it that an additional subsidy to the TTC is therefore now under consideration with a view to holding the line on fares?

An hon. member: No.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I think the answer is that we have already stated there was to be some increase made to the subsidy. I think that has been discussed already by the TTC.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, the minister is saying that the previous announcement, which will require an increase in fares, will in fact be endorsed by this government; I ask him what it does to his emphasis on public transit to allow fares to rise to a prohibitive level?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, we are well aware of the circumstances at the present time, and if there is any further information for the House I will be pleased to bring it here.

Mr. Givens: A supplementary.

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

Mr. Givens: Having regard for the fact that a considerable proportion of the revenue raised, which is paid by the transportation user, goes on the payment of sales tax -- the provincial sales tax on rolling stock, equipment and diesel fuel -- would the minister consider exempting these articles from the provincial sales tax in order to keep fares down?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I am afraid the question of exemptions from the provincial sales tax or the federal sales tax doesn’t fall within my jurisdiction.

Mr. Givens: But can he not recommend it to the appropriate ministers?

Mr. Lewis: I have a question of the Attorney General, if I may.

Interjections by hon. members.

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

PROSECUTION OF DENTURISTS

Mr. Lewis: I understand why the member for York-Forest Hill is exercised because the government does nothing for public transit except talk about it.

May I ask the Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General, if he can undertake to the House not to permit any further prosecutions of denturists in the Province of Ontario while discussions are taking place behind the scenes with the Minister or Health (Mr. Miller) about a possible revision to the Denture Therapists Act?

Hon. R. Welch (Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General): Mr. Speaker, it would be quite improper and irresponsible on the part of the Attorney General to give such an undertaking.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, is it not equally improper to persecute selectively or prosecute selectively -- both are appropriate -- individual denturists; particularly when there is clearly some kind of re-examination taking place of the legislation? Why hound people through the courts when retroactively the government will exonerate them?

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

Mr. Lewis: No further questions.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Housing has the answer to a question asked previously.

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member for Brant (Mr. R. F. Nixon) asked on March 15 if I would undertake to table a complete list of the land holdings of Ontario Housing not yet developed that might be said to form part of the land bank, such as it is.

In answer to the hon. member’s question, I am tabling a list of the Ontario Housing Corp.’s land bank inventory. The list of some 18,000 acres of land includes some land now under development, such as that in Hamilton and Saltfleet. As well, it includes lands being held for future development, such as Niagara Falls, Waterloo and Ottawa-Carleton. These lands wall, of course, be developed in accordance with regional and municipal land development priorities, and we will be working closely with them.

In addition, any acquisition the corporation is assembling or will assemble in the future will be announced when the assemblies have been completed.

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

HOUSING COSTS

Mr. Givens: I would like to ask the Minister of Housing whether he considers an apartment vacancy rate of less than one per cent in Metropolitan Toronto and an average house price of $50,000 -- particularly when one hasn’t got the money -- psychological or economical?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I assume the hon. members question was facetious. I don’t consider the situation to be satisfactory.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Ottawa East with a supplementary -- Ottawa West with a supplementary.

Mr. Cassidy: Ottawa Centre, Mr. Speaker!

In view of the minister’s comments about there only being a housing price crisis, does he feel that the fact that housing starts have declined in major urban centres in the province is only a reflection of the housing price crisis, or reflects a genuine housing shortage?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Well Mr. Speaker, I don’t know whether the hon. member has checked his facts, but housing starts have, in fact, not decreased in the urban centres of the province -- and therefore I can’t answer the question.

Mr. Cassidy: In major urban centres.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. member have a supplementary? If not, the hon. member for High Park.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Has the minister considered bringing in rent control as one way of bringing down the cost of housing?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, the answer is no.

An hon. member: Why not?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Downsview.

WATER AND SEWAGE SYSTEMS REPORT

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of the Environment. Would the Minister of the Environment advise us about the recommendations received by his ministry in a report called: “Water and Sewage Systems, Central York and Pickering Areas”? It says, among other things, the development of these projects over the last seven years has been delayed several times; and that when the recommendations in the report are carried out, the recommendations call for the building of watermains and sewermains in the period projected beyond 1985 but very little between 1974 and 1975, How is the government going to build houses and relieve, in the words of the report “the pressures for serviced land and housing,” if it is going to stick by these recommendations, which are to be considered, the report says, “not the proposals of a single ministry but rather a provincial undertaking as a whole”? Can the minister tell us how he is going to get on with housing if the government doesn’t build anything until 1985?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Now if the minister can remember the question.

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Well quite obviously the member didn’t read the initial report that came out three years ago.

Mr. Singer: No, I am talking about this report in February, 1974.

Hon. W. Newman: The whole programme is a staged programme; and the member is talking about far-reaching parts of the area in 1985.

Mr. Singer: Yes, but the government is not doing anything in 1974 and 1975.

Hon. W. Newman: There has been --

Mr. Singer: In dollars or anything else.

Hon. W. Newman: Oh, yes --

Mr. Speaker: Was that a supplementary? It didn’t sound like one.

Mr. Lewis: I have a supplementary. How many serviced lots does the government expect to be able to release in the North Pickering area within the next three to four years?

Hon. W. Newman: Well, as the member knows, there is still an environmental board hearing to be held on the York-Pickering sewer lines. This will be started very shortly. I can’t give the member the exact number of lots that will be released for building in 1974-1975.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, a further supplementary, having to do with the problem that was expressed by the member for Downsview: Has the Minister of the Environment got a report that indicates there is a threat of serious deep-well pollution in the York area, because of the development that has gone on in an improperly serviced manner in an area called the Oak Ridges moraine; which, in fact, provides the water facilities for a good deal of the area under consideration.

Hon. W. Newman: I know they are rapidly running out of water in that area, but certainly I haven’t seen that particular report.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of further supplementary: Does this report represent government policy, or is the staging going to be as the report sets out? Or what staging does the minister have in mind and how is he going to provide serviced lots in the central York and Pickering area?

Hon. W. Newman: As the member knows, the hearings are already over on the matter of the plan. We are moving forward as quickly as possible in our ministry, and we are also working with the Ministry of Housing on this project.

Mr. Singer: Is the minister following the schedule in the report?

Hon. W. Newman: Which report is the member talking about?

Mr. Singer: Ah, the one of February, 1974, with the name of the Ministry of the Environment on it.

Hon. W. Newman: We are working on a programme to expedite water and sewage as quickly as possible so that the people of this province may have homes.

Mr. Singer: But nothing in 1974.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I believe that I called two members of the Liberal Party in succession the last time; therefore, in the interests of equalization of opportunity, I shall call two members of the New Democratic Party.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth.

BECKER MILK CO.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker; I would like to ask the Minister of Labour a question. How long is it going to be before the Becker Milk Co. is required to adhere to the recommendations of Mr. Carter, after he inquired into the unfair practices which it has with regard to its employees?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is referring to the Becker case, of course. Four of the former employees have been dealt with, I think, by Prof. Carter. I understand that if there are any other applications, or any other employees who feel they come under the same category, they would have to apply to the company.

However, I must admit that this is a fairly complex case which has lasted several months, and I will probably have to refresh my memory before giving the member a definite answer.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They should get Anthony Bazos on that.

Mr. Deans: Well, is it the intention of the government to bring Becker Milk Co. employees under the Employment Standards Act and give them the kind of protection that’s required? Is it the intention of the government to do it now and to put a stop to the kind of practices that employees of Becker Milk have been undergoing and taking over the last 10 years?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: This is very actively being considered by myself at this time.

Mr. Deans: Oh, supplementary question: I’m not interested in whether it’s actively being considered. Is it the intention of the government to do just what Prof. Carter in fact recommended, and find that the Becker Milk employees are in fact employees rather than franchised dealers, and give them the protection that other employees in the Province of Ontario have?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Yes. As I said, Mr. Speaker, I have given this some serious consideration in recent months, and I propose some day to amend the Employment Standards Act to protect these people.

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

MUMPS VACCINE

Mr. Shulman: Question of the Minister of Health, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: When is he going to resign?

Mr. Shulman: In view of the minister’s well-known interest in preventive medicine, why has his department consistently refused to supply mumps vaccine to doctors and clinics?

Mr. Lewis: And he must have an opening line.

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been investigating a triple vaccine, just to show the member that I know there is one.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s a relief.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I sometimes wonder if the hon. member is more interested in questions than in answers.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: What does the minister think?

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): He gets so few answers.

Hon. Mr. Miller: The question of vaccines is being considered at this very moment by the ministry, as to which ones should or should not be issued at the government’s cost to various clinics in the province. I have it under consideration.

Mr. Shulman: As a supplementary, if I may: Inasmuch as all other vaccines are now being issued free -- all other routine vaccines, such as measles, smallpox, diphtheria, polio and the rest -- why has mumps vaccine been singled out as not to be given?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can’t answer that specifically. As I say, I know that we were offered a single vaccine that incorporated three different treatments -- the NMR vaccine -- which we thought would have certain cost-benefit factors when we allowed for the medical cost of injecting the vaccine. It was about three months ago that we started studying this, and I hope to have an answer on it very shortly. I understand the group within the ministry has just about finished its calculations and is about to make a recommendation to us.

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

COST OF POLICING

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Solicitor General. I’m sure the minister is well aware of the high cost of policing services in the regional municipality of Niagara and in other communities throughout Ontario. What progress has been made through his ministry in negotiating an agreement with the federal government to provide financial assistance on a cost-sharing formula similar to other provinces throughout the Dominion of Canada? I believe that under the cost-sharing formula, 48 per cent is picked up by the federal government. What progress is being made by the ministry now?

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I didn’t hear the first part of the question. Is the member talking about police or policing? I am sorry.

Mr. Haggerty: The cost of policing in the regional municipality of Niagara and in other areas and communities throughout Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: No, Mr. Speaker, there have been no discussions with the federal government directly in respect to regional police or municipal policing.

As the member knows, Ontario has a provincial police force, as has Quebec, while the other provinces have the RCMP. We have attempted to have some sort of consideration given to Ontario for the fact that we provide our own provincial police. Quebec, particularly, took the lead in attempting to obtain some compensation in that regard and were turned down. However, as far as direct subsidy from Ottawa for policing in a municipality is concerned there has been no discussion on that.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sandwich-Riverside.

WIND ENERGY SEMINAR

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Energy, of which he has had prior notice. Is the minister aware of the wind energy seminar to be held in May at the University of Sherbrooke?

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Minister of Energy): Yes, Mr. Speaker, because the hon. member was good enough to write me about it.

Mr. Burr: Is the minister going to send observers to this seminar?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The conference, I think, for the benefit of the House, concerns wind energy.

Mr. Breithaupt: The minister ought to know about that.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): At least the conference is concerned with energy.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Is the minister the guest speaker?

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Is the minister going to give a demonstration?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The ministry has not yet made a determination as to whether we will send observers to that conference, nor will we make such a determination lightly. I’m sure the Management Board will have to be consulted.

Mr. Bounsall: Is the Management Board interested in energy? Lots of wind there!

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’m sure that because it’s out of the province we will be consulting with the Premier, but when we make a decision we will certainly inform the members --

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

INQUIRY INTO HOSPITAL EMPLOYEES’ REMUNERATION

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker; I have a question of the Minister of Labour. Can the minister indicate the exact date that the report of his commission investigating the problems in the hospitals and with hospital employees will be brought down? Will it be available before -- I believe it’s May 1 when the hospital workers have threatened, at least in Toronto I believe, to go out on strike?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Yes, Mr. Speaker, several weeks ago I appointed a commission of inquiry to look into the remuneration of employees, particularly in the service industries, in hospitals. I met with this commission myself a few weeks ago; we have done some work at the ministry level.

Mr. Deans: That is a delaying tactic.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I see that they are now inviting submissions by persons or organizations interested in making a presentation to the commission. Now as you know, Mr. Speaker, the scope of this inquiry -- the magnitude of it -- is fairly large. I must admit I do not expect a report before May 1, although the commission has been told to proceed as quickly as possible.

Mr. Reid: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker, if I may: Does the minister not agree that the whole problem crystallizes itself into the fact that hospital workers are underpaid as compared to people in similar occupations outside of the hospitals --

Mr. Deans: Oh, that is what the problem is!

Mr. Reid: That these people are being exploited and that the ceilings imposed by this government on hospitals are, in fact, one of the reasons why these people are so poorly paid? And does the minister not feel it incumbent upon himself to provide some guidelines so that these people can be paid a fair wage?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the purpose of the commission, of course; to give guidelines to both parties when the time comes for negotiations.

I must stress the fact that last year there were awards which were above -- and as a matter of fact far above -- the ceilings during the course of the year.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary: Does the minister realize that the Province of New Brunswick has just now granted a $125 wage increase as a cost of living allowance to hospital workers in the middle of existing contracts because of the rise of the cost of living?

Does the minister realize that the Province of British Columbia just negotiated a province-wide contract giving $1 to $1.50 more per worker, per job, than is received in the Province of Ontario?

Doesn’t the minister think he has an obligation, moral, political and otherwise, to say to his cabinet colleagues: “Get off the backs of the hospital workers in Ontario and pay them a legitimate wage”; in advance of any strike order?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, we have never been on the backs of the hospital workers.

Mr. Lewis: The government certainly has. It is a shocking position they take, the government and its commissions. The hospital workers are 20 per cent behind the other public sectors.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: That’s the reason the commission of inquiry was appointed by me.

Mr. Lewis: What does the minister need a commission of inquiry for? What does he need it for?

Mr. Bounsall: When it is self-evident.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact my hon. friend will recall that both the former Minister of Health and myself have recognized the fact that hospital workers were underpaid.

Mr. Lewis: What is the government going to do about it?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: That’s the reason for the appointment of the commission -- hopefully they’ll provide the guidelines.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Give them bargaining rights and the minister won’t have to be so paternalistic.

Mr. Lewis: Who needs a commission? What use are they?

Mr. Reid: The facts are self-evident.

Mr. Lewis: The minister knows the difference. Why doesn’t he rescind the Act and raise the ceilings?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: Well that business about raising it above the ceilings last year -- they need 40 per cent to become aligned.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister of Revenue has the answer to a question asked previously. The hon. the Minister of Revenue.

Hon. A. K. Meen (Minister of Revenue): Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

ASSESSMENT NOTICES

Hon. Mr. Meen: I was asked a question by the member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) on Tuesday, March 12, as to why my ministry was not issuing assessment notices this year to the citizens of this province, except in special cases and for new construction.

I would advise the hon. member that on Oct. 18, 1973, the former Minister of Revenue (Mr. Grossman) read a statement to this House which included a commitment to return new and updated assessment rolls to every assessed person in all municipalities in Ontario in 1974 for 1975 taxes and for each year thereafter. As a result, every assessed person will receive an assessment notice in 1974 and each year thereafter.

Mr. Speaker, I was also asked a supplementary question by the hon. member for St. George about a successful appeal by the owner of a condominium apartment in her riding. The owners of the condominiums at 40 Homewood have very recently written to the assessment division of my ministry with respect to the appeal that was made and the court decision that reduced the assessment of one of the owners of the condominium. The remaining owners want to know whether or not this decision affects them.

The matter is presently being investigated by the assessment commission, and while in previous property cases the reduction in assessment by the court only accrues to a person who has successfully conducted such an appeal and not to anyone else, there may be a difference in the case of a number of substantially identical condominiums. My legal officials will be looking into this matter.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Windsor West is next.

LETTUCE LABELLING

Mr. Bounsall: I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, Mr. Speaker. Has he commenced, and if not will he commence, an investigation into or initiate legal action against Dominion Stores, which on Thursday of last week in Toronto deliberately and falsely mislabelled lettuce as being United Farm Workers lettuce; a fact discovered by three Toronto clergymen?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Mr. Speaker, we have no jurisdiction on misleading advertising; that would come under the federal Combines Investigation Act.

Mr. Reid: Use your head.

Mr. Breithaupt: Nineteen cents a head.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I am not aware whether there has been a charge laid or not relating to that particular situation. I know there are some 280 charges outstanding now, initiated by the federal authorities, dealing with similar situations.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, by way of a supplementary question, isn’t the minister aware that there is a section of the Consumer Protection Act of the Province of Ontario dealing with misleading advertising?

Mr. Lewis: Of course, it is specific.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, I am aware of that.

Mr. Renwick: It has never been used but it still exists.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, I am well aware that exists. But we are of the opinion it doesn’t apply to people in this particular instance, that it applies to itinerant salesmen.

Mr. Renwick: Just a certain kind of misleading advertising.

Mr. Lewis: Just a moment, what was that? The ministry has a section under the Consumer Protection Act which, if I recall, explicitly sets out areas where complaints can be laid against misleading advertising or merchandising practices. There are penalties applied.

There is no reference to itinerant salesmen or merchandising of any kind. It is to protect the consumer in Ontario. And the minister is saying that would have no application, either to the case at Dominion Stores, or for instance to the increase in prices in the course of one day at A & P last weekend? None of that would apply?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I am advised by my law officers that is correct.

Mr. Lewis: Is the minister going to change it?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes sir!

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

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Mr. Henderson, from the select committee on land drainage, presented a report which was read as follows and adopted:

“Your committee recommends that it be authorized to sit concurrently with the House on Tuesdays between the hours of 3 o’clock, p.m., and 5 o’clock, p.m., for the purpose of considering its final report.”

Mr. Breithaupt: That just cost us $10,000 a word.

Mr. Cassidy: Who will pay for this report?

Mr. Singer: A report of 13 pages.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Is that the entire report -- 13 pages?

Mr. Breithaupt: That’s not much of a report.

Mr. Carruthers presented the final report of the select committee on motorized snow vehicles and all-terrain vehicles.

Mr. A. Carruthers (Durham): Mr. Speaker, additional copies of this report will be available as soon as they are received from the printers.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

BEDS OF NAVIGABLE WATERS ACT

Mr. Haggerty moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Beds of Navigable Waters Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to provide a uniform interpretation of the deeds of property bounded by navigable water so that the high-water mark shall be deemed to be the boundary of riparian owned lands and so that certain rights shall still be reserved to the Crown.

Mr. Speaker: May I have the permission of the House to revert to reports? One of the hon. ministers forgot to present a report or was not here.

Mr. Lewis: It depends on the minister.

Mr. Speaker: Do I have the unanimous consent of the House? The hon. Attorney General.

Hon. Mr. Welch presented the sixth annual report of the Ontario Legal Aid Plan for the year ended March 31, 1973.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

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

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Mr. Speaker, this speech has had a rather long gestation period. I had intended to speak before the recess on at least three different occasions, but because my long-winded friend from Ottawa Centre was as long-winded as I intend to be today, I didn’t quite make it.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): There couldn’t be two.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I haven’t said a word in this debate yet. The member is well in advance of himself.

Mr. Gaunt: I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t intend to be unduly provocative.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Oh, go ahead.

Mr. Gaunt: I was just anticipating my friend, based on his past performances, and I thought it likely that he would give one of his extended presentations again.

In any case, it is a pleasure for me to participate in this debate. I really don’t want to say very much about the Throne Speech; actually there isn’t much to talk about in regard to the Throne Speech. I think the lack of government initiatives in regard to that particular speech, particularly in some very vital areas including housing, inflation, agriculture, land-use planning, and so on, indicate that really it was a tired old song by a tired old government.

Some hon. members: Right.

Mr. Gaunt: I should perhaps make some mention about the cabinet changes that took place. I was very interested to see the changes. Actually, I noticed one press report in which the Premier had billed the cabinet changes as an effort on his part to bring new blood into the cabinet and to add some youth and vigour. I noticed that there were some cabinet ministers who were 53, and they were replaced by cabinet ministers who were 50, and I couldn’t quite understand how that was going to result in a new and vigorous cabinet.

In any case, I want to congratulate all of those people who were appointed to the cabinet, the new parliamentary assistants, and of course I want to pay tribute to you, Mr. Speaker, for your fairness and your patience in what has to be a most difficult job -- certainly it is the most difficult on many occasions, I am sure.

The main burden of what I have to say today centres on Ontario Hydro -- the power line corridor from Bruce generating station to Bradley junction, from Bradley junction to Wingham, and thence to Seaforth, and from Bradley junction to Georgetown. This last leg of the corridor is now under study and public meetings are being held -- I rather believe that they are just about concluded -- to get input from farmers as to where the lines should be located. The hearings of necessity under the Expropriations Act for the other legs of the corridor were completed as of two weeks ago.

In this past series of meetings, and for at least the past year, it has been painfully obvious that Hydro has lost the complete confidence of the farmers and the property owners with whom it is trying to deal.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Right.

Mr. Gaunt: I want to study this situation for a moment, Mr. Speaker, because I pose the question: What has happened; what has gone wrong? One only has to listen to the comments and understand the tactics that have been used to appreciate the depth of feeling and bitterness that radiates from these meetings. Hydro is charged with misrepresentation and with playing one farmer against another to get a price advantage, of leaving scars which will never be healed and of not having accurate information. Indeed, on that point. Hydro’s soil maps have been inaccurate, its corridor maps have mistakes in them, and its impact study for Wallace township was almost totally useless.

They showed the power line would have a low impact in that particular township even though the township contains 99.7 per cent class 1 and 2 land. Hydro came into the hearings of necessity on the first day. They said, “We told you all along that we wanted 540 ft right of way from Bradley junction to Wingham. But now we’ve decided, because the farmers don’t want us to take so much land, that we need only 490 ft.” Why the sudden change?

Needless to say, it threw that hearing into a morning of chaos. If Hydro had been sincere, that change could have been made at least six months ago because Hydro knew for at least a year that the landowners were opposing the land acquisition. They knew that. Hydro undoubtedly thought it would be the sugar topping to make the hearings go smoothly. It had the reverse effect.

Is it any wonder that when Hydro called a public meeting in the Howick Central School for Feb. 27, the meeting lasted more than five hours -- three hours after Hydro officials had tried to adjourn the meeting. Hydro officials were told that farmers did not trust their negotiating methods. Every tactic in the book had been used, they said -- negotiating with the threat of expropriation, and taking pieces of paper and writing offers on them with no date, no signature, no letterhead, just a few figures on them. I have a few examples here.

If you can tell me, Mr. Speaker, that those types of officers indicate a good business procedure on the part of a corporation like Ontario Hydro -- it’s now a Crown corporation -- I must be mistaken. On a plain piece of paper, foolscap paper, it says without prejudice”; the name of the person; Hydro requirements; the amount of land needed; and the price per acre. It’s totalled up at the bottom and the price at the bottom is divided by the number of acres to get the cost per acre. There is no letterhead, no signature.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is it written in pencil?

Mr. Gaunt: That one is written in ink. This one is written in pencil.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A dull pencil.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): What’s the matter?

Mr. Gaunt: I can’t understand what possesses Hydro to deal with land owners in this fashion. How unprofessional can one get? It’s a shameful exhibition for a public corporation, the third largest power producer in the world.

Hydro has offered $175 per acre to a farmer; then gone right across the road and offered another farmer $300 per acre simply because the first farmer was an old age pensioner and looked an easy mark to the buyer. There is no other explanation.

This entire display by Hydro on this power line has been nothing short of scandalous. It has been a fiasco from beginning to end. People have no quarrel with the local Hydro officials; it’s head office. Every time someone from head office comes up, it seems it ends up in an entire fiasco. It’s a comedy of errors from beginning to end.

It seems that every time someone leaves 620 University Ave. their new-found freedom goes to their head and they take leave of their senses. There is certainly no other explanation for their unusual behaviour. Is it any wonder that Hydro officials were told their public meetings were ridiculous? One farmer said this travelling road show should be halted until Hydro had the information that people were seeking.

I don’t really enjoy making a speech like this, Mr. Speaker, but I think these things have to be said. What Hydro has been doing and the tactics it has been using in negotiating have been wrong -- dead wrong. It is about time Hydro cleaned up its act. When these things were cited to Hydro officials they would always deny it; then the same thing would happen the very next day.

It’s interesting, Mr. Speaker, that apparently these things have not only been going on in our area, in my riding, they have been going on elsewhere as well. I received this morning a letter from a lady at Hagersville. She had had word that I had some interest in the matters related to Hydro and its land acquisition policies and so on, so she undertook to write to me to cite a few of the things that she and her husband had encountered with respect to Ontario Hydro and Hydro’s desire to purchase property from these people for a hydro power line.

She talks about how they dealt with them; how unfairly Hydro dealt with them. She says: “We had 150 acres. Hydro towers will go across the back of the farm halfway and then take off one side of the farm on a slant. We keep at least 50 beef cattle all the time and the 43 acres Hydro has taken will certainly curtail our beef operation.” She goes on to say a little later: “Land is one commodity that cannot be substituted. They keep mentioning that agricultural land is so important and vital to our nation so how is it that the Ontario government and Hydro can walk in, take our land by expropriation, and pay mere farmers just what they want to, while they give developers, no doubt, what they ask?”

In that connection, as she has cited earlier in her letter, these people were offered $600 an acre. Right across the road there was land which was set aside apparently for development -- it was owned by a developer -- and Hydro gave the developer $2,000 an acre. She is complaining that their land was just as valuable to them as the land was to the developer. I simply say, Mr. Speaker, that Hydro has certainly dealt most unfairly with the farmers in my area.

All of these things, I suppose, are never without their lighter moments, and we have had a number of lighter moments with respect to the dealings of Ontario Hydro in our area. I cite to you one which is somewhat amusing but indicates the point, I think, that I am trying to make.

A Hydro buyer approached a farmer and, for some reason or other, he thought he was talking to his neighbour. The Hydro official proceeded to tell the farmer what a good price he was being offered for his land and how much better it was than what his neighbour was getting. After the farmer listened to this for some time, he finally said: “Well, you know, I’ll have to tell you that I am the one who is getting the lower price.” That actually happened, Mr. Speaker. I can get an affidavit to that effect.

I simply say to you that this certainly is not the way to instill trust, it is not the way to conduct good faith bargaining. The tragedy of it all is that it could have been avoided. If Hydro had dealt with the farmers in a forthright, honest way and offered them $500 or $600 an acre for their land at the start -- it will have to be considerably higher now -- most of the land would have been purchased, I venture; perhaps even 90 per cent of it would have been purchased and nothing could have been done about changing the alignment of that route.

The hearings of public necessity may not have been necessary and the entire atmosphere and attitude toward Ontario Hydro would have been different. Instead, Hydro started on a path of deception early on, and it has done nothing but breed contempt and disdain. This is evident from a letter which was written by the then Minister of the Environment (Mr. Auld) to Gordon Hill, president of the OFA, in response to a letter Mr. Hill had sent asking for a full independent environmental assessment on the line from Douglas Point to Seaforth.

This letter to Mr. Hill is dated March 15, 1973, and in it the hon. minister indicates, as one of the major reasons for refusing such a study, the fact that about half the properties had been already acquired. I will just read that paragraph to you: “Hydro generally endeavours to satisfy as much as possible the preferences of land owners, and I understand that agreements have already been reached on about half the properties.”

That statement, Mr. Speaker, is simply not true. Undoubtedly that information came from Hydro to the minister, and the minister was relying on Hydro to give accurate information to Mr. Hill and to provide him with accurate facts on the situation. Hydro certainly did not give the minister accurate information.

One year later, March 12, 1974, only one third of the land owners have reached agreement. Yet a year ago Hydro was telling the minister that about half the land owners had reached agreement with respect to acquisition for the power line.

Hydro was censured on the report on the head office building for doing exactly the same thing in regard to supplying the minister with misleading and inaccurate information, which he in turn supplied to the House in relation to Hydro’s contract with Canada Square.

Learning seems to be difficult for Hydro. I can’t understand how that organization can be so brilliant in some fields and so obtuse in others. However, I want to deal with the central issue in this controversy, the matter of Hydro corridors slashing through prime agricultural lands when other alternatives through poorer farm land are available to them.

Three continents -- North America, Europe and Australia -- export more food than they import. Asia, Africa and South America import more food than they export. However, this situation is changing very rapidly. There are a number of reasons why it’s changing. One of the reasons for this change is the fact that prime agricultural land is being gobbled up for development, whether it be for industry, housing, highways or power corridors.

In this province we are losing 26 acres of prime agricultural land per hour to development. In the last three years, Ontario has lost over 683,000 acres of prime land. This represents about 1,626,857 tons of corn. If this is not stopped, Ontario will not have any prime agricultural land left 50 years from now. Ponder the implications of that for someone shopping in the supermarkets. It’s startling. The downturn in our food production has already started.

In 1973, we imported 62.6 million pounds of butter into Canada, most of which came from New Zealand and Australia. In our own province, the consumption of fluid milk increased by 1.6 per cent. Production was down from the previous year by five per cent, which meant we had a shortfall of 6.6 per cent in fluid milk production last year in the Province of Ontario.

To be sure, we have an energy crisis. However, we have our priorities in the wrong order. The No. 1 priority is not the energy crisis, it’s the potential food crisis. And if we don’t take steps to preserve our top agricultural land immediately, it will become our No. 1 problem. If we don’t do something about this now, we will have people starving on this continent within five years.

That’s not an hysterical comment, that’s a distinct possibility. People won’t be able to get food, not because the price is too high, but because it won’t be available at any price. Ultimate development of the world and Canada will depend on how much food, not on how much energy we have.

If food -- the most important ingredient in human survival -- is to be available, the producer must be encouraged to farm the land that produces this food. Farmers must be allowed to do so without interference. We in Canada have never contemplated the possibility of going hungry. Let me tell you why it is a possibility, and I call upon a number of experts to alert us as to the danger signals which are now on the horizon.

Raymond Ewell, professor of chemical engineering at the State University of New York in Buffalo and a recognized expert on fertilizer production, has recently returned from Asia. His observations are pertinent. He indicated that India used about 3.5 million tons of chemical nutrients in 1973. This year she will have to make do with 2.5 million tons. This will reduce India’s grain harvest by some 10 million tons, a tenth of last year’s total.

The US Department of Agriculture estimates a shortage of more than a million tons of fertilizer this year. There are some conflicting reports on that, but the best and the latest information apparently is that they are going to have a shortage of approximately a million tons this year.

The oil crisis is the immediate reason for difficulties in fertilizer production. Demand for more food has always been met by expanding cropland. Now, the arable land has just about run out. There is certainly no more worthwhile acreage available in the most densely-populated areas of the world. So an increase in our food supply has to come from more intensive cultivation of the available land. This is where fertilizer comes in.

Figures on fertilizer usage are certainly revealing. In 1945 American corn growers used about 7 lbs of nitrogen, the most important fertilizer element, per acre. In 1970 they were using 112 lbs -- sixteen times as much. Large amounts of fertilizer are necessary for intensive cropping. Yet the energy crisis is a major dislocating factor because it takes energy in large amounts to make nitrogen fertilizer. It comes from ammonia, which in turn is made from a hydrocarbon, usually gas or oil. It takes a ton of oil to make a ton of ammonia, which converts to two to three tons of fertilizer, depending on the type.

The principal raw material of modern US and Canadian agriculture is fossil fuel. The recent shortages in the Middle East oil situation have had an immediate effect on fertilizer production. Japan, which has been the largest exporter of nitrogen, is said to have cut shipments by about 30 per cent, to the distress of China, India and Indonesia.

Zooming energy prices will have a permanent impact on fertilizer economics. The statement made by the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) before the Easter break in relation to energy and the pricing of oil certainly mentioned this fact. I was interested to learn just a few days ago of a big fertilizer plant which is going to be built out in Alberta. That’s certainly going to help our situation here; but even with that, it all depends on the oil and gas that we have available in order to make the fertilizer.

Eighteen months ago urea, a nitrogen nutrient, was selling for $50 a ton. In some places in the world it has recently sold for as high as $225 a ton. Prof. Ewell feels the Indians should be using at least 10 million tons of fertilizer, because they now have the seed, the land and the water. Ewell concludes by saying: “The present world-wide shortage of fertilizer will continue indefinitely, at least for the next five years and probably for the rest of human history.” There is no doubt that expanding world population is straining the limits of land and agricultural technology. The world population presently stands at close to four billion people. By the year 2000 world population is projected to be close to seven billion people. That is close to an 80 per cent increase. And, incidentally, Mr. Speaker, that’s down from the projections of a few years ago.

Can we increase our food production by 80 per cent in the same period? Maybe, just maybe, we can. But we can’t if we put asphalt and concrete on all our best land. We must preserve that land if we want to be fed. Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 winner of the Nobel prize for peace said civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor could it survive, without adequate food supply. Yet food seems to have been taken for granted by most of the world leaders today.

Canada’s Maurice Strong, of the United Nations Environmental Secretariat, warned us about misuse of our heritage. His report says: “A global picture of food scarcity is now emerging with disquieting implications both for hungry people and for world political stability. We have no safety margins left. Another international crop failure like that of 1972 or the recurrence of a dust bowl like that of 1932 in the US could now, with scant reserves, trigger major regional disaster.”

I also came across an article in one of the farm magazines; and it quotes a person whom I would consider to be somewhat of an expert in this regard, an agriclimatologist by the name of G. D. Williams. He’s with the Canada Department of Agriculture’s Chemistry and Biology Research Institute in Ottawa. He says:

“Farm land is already scarce in areas with the best growing climates. Farm land, like oil, is not in limitless supply. People should not rely on the false security they might feel when looking at vast unpopulated expanses dominating the map of Canada. Only one-twentieth of the country consists of improved farmland and a minuscule two per cent of that small amount is blessed with excellent rainfall and temperatures.

“Although Canada has twice as much farmland per person as the United States our climate makes Canadian land only half as productive on the average as that in the United States. Instead of increasing to meet growing food demand, the land suitable for farming in the climatically-favoured parts of Canada is actually decreasing at the rate of about 100 acres per thousand person increase in the urban population.”

Mr. Williams estimates that about 400,000 of Canada’s 160 million acres of farmland are covered by urban development every 10 years. He says: “Unfortunately, those 400,000 acres tend to come from areas most climatically suitable for farming. Nearly half of the farmland losses to urban encroachment in Canada is coming from the best one twentieth of our farmland. This is a serious problem, if not a crisis, and it is cause for concern and, perhaps, alarm.”

I’ve called upon a few experts; it’s not only my view, Mr. Speaker. I think, with the knowledge that these men have in international affairs and as serious students of the situation, their words are well worth noting. Anyone who says we’ve all kinds of good farmland left in this country or in the United States isn’t very astute or isn’t a very serious student of what is happening on the world scene today with respect to food production.

I noticed an article also in the Farm and Country over the weekend in which one of the experts was indicating that as far as climatic conditions are concerned our climates are changing because the atmospheric circulation is changing and it’s affecting our rainfall. It’s affecting our rainfall in areas of good farmland. It follows from that, of course, Mr. Speaker, that it is affecting the rainfall in areas of high food production. That’s another implication that’s easy to draw because if our climates are changing, and if we have a poor crop this year, next year, the year following, we’re going to be in real trouble from a world food standpoint.

These are matters which Ontario Hydro does not seem to understand and appreciate. Agriculture has a low priority on its scale of values. The Sibbald study, a private report done for the affected Bruce and Huron farmers, indicates that in this corridor of 68 miles, for every 900 ft width, farmers will be losing approximately 108 acres. For every mile of 540 ft width approximately 80 acres will be lost.

The present Hydro alignment from Bruce GS to Bradley junction, to Wingham to Seaforth, chops through about 80 per cent of class 1 and 2 agricultural land. The conceptual alignment proposed by the Huron-Bruce power negotiating committee would utilize about half the class 1 and 2 land or about 40 per cent. But Hydro’s argument is that this route would increase its costs of constructing the line. Further, the Huron-Bruce proposition is based solely on soil capability.

That’s true. There’s no question that the Huron-Bruce proposition is based on soil capability but it’s a very important consideration and one which Hydro hasn’t properly recognized.

When it comes to the Bradley junction-Georgetown route, Hydro is going through some of the best agricultural land in the townships of Tumberry, Howick and Wallace. Wallace township alone has 99.7 per cent class 1 and 2 land. In Howick township, the line is cutting across some excellent cornland. It is chopping up farms, some of them operated by young people who basically are just getting started. Interestingly enough, a survey was done in Howick township on the age of the farmers in that particular location. There are 15 over the age of 40, 37 between the ages of 35 and 40, and 26 under 35 years of age. It is obvious that these farmers have a great stake in the future of their land because they are going to be around for some time.

If a farmer is operating a 100-acre farm, and Hydro comes along and takes 10 acres, it is obviously going to have a very serious effect on his operation. This is what is happening. Yet Hydro says there is no problem, that it will license the land back to the farmer for a nominal fee so that he can work between the towers, and the only land that will be lost will be the land on which the towers are sitting. This at first blush sounds good. The sad part of it is that it isn’t.

This is forcefully underlined in the study Bruce Hewlett did for the Solandt commission on the power line between Middleport and Pickering. Part of that study addressed itself to the impact of powerlines on agricultural land. It is found in appendix 1 of the report and is entitled, “Concerns expressed regarding impact of transmission corridors on prime agricultural lands.” I want to read some of the more pertinent points made by Mr. Hewlett in this connection because I think it bears directly on what I am talking about.

Hewlett says, and I’ll quote the entire report, or most of it, here: “Towers to support the 500,000-volt lines at present being considered by the Solandt commission will be over 100 ft high, necessitating broad-based areas. From three to five of these towers will stand abreast in the corridors, but will be separated enough to allow service helicopters to land between them. Obviously farmers who rent the corridor back from Hydro will have great difficulty in cultivating, sowing or harvesting areas around and between the towers in each group. Such areas will not only involve non-productive land for which rentals will be paid, but will create weed problems causing additional costs.”

If I may just interject a point, Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about reducing or increasing costs and reducing efficiency, it is interesting to note that at the Wingham hearings of necessity the farmers there made the point that, if these power lines reduce their efficiency and increase their costs by 10 per cent, that means that their profit has disappeared. I think for any farmer trying to make a living today producing food that that has a serious implication. To continue with what Mr. Hewlett says:

“In spite of the plan to service by helicopter, Hydro reserves the right to use the corridor for trucks to transport materials and men for special services to tower lines. It is clear that major damage to crops will occur when such services are carried out.

“Farming operations between and around the towers will be slower and time-consuming. In any period of limited good weather and good soil conditions, such wasted time could be costly. Any farmer who has experienced the frustration and loss caused during seeding or harvest by a delay which prevented him from finishing his operation in time to avoid a week or more bad weather or wet soil will appreciate what such time loss can mean.

“The farmer who rents back the corridor and who uses high powered tractor equipment will need to exercise great care if he attempts to operate such equipment close to the towers. He will be responsible for any damage done to them, and any such damage caused by a heavy farm tractor could be of a serious and costly nature. Turning too short and not allowing space enough for the implements, especially if more implements than one are being drawn at the time, have been the cause of such accidents. The only way to minimize the farm problems caused would be to place it, that is the corridor, in the centre of a concession along the rear of farm properties. Here the lines would be as distant as possible from farm dwellings since these are usually located near the roads. There is no question that huge towers in a broad corridor cutting a farm diagonally in two sections would seriously depreciate its value both now and in the future.

“Hydro’s payment for the land would be in terms of land values today. If the trend toward higher land values continues, such payments would be far below the value of the land a few years hence.

“Farm producers are currently meeting many difficulties through high costs of operation and narrow profit margins caused by fluctuating sale prices. Further complications caused by land loss to hydro corridors may well be sufficient to prevent some farms from being operated.

“When consideration is given to the rate at which Ontario’s limited farming land is disappearing from agricultural use, the risk of further loss occasioned by hydro lines being routed through areas specifically designated for future farming is a serious one.

“Surveys of citizen opinion to find out what environmental impact by power line corridors is least acceptable, usually reveal large numbers of people concerned over lines going through wooded areas of countryside. Many of these people do not live in the areas under consideration but are organized through membership in conservation groups, naturalist associations and Sierra clubs. They are reached through mailing lists and so can voice their opinions in overwhelming numbers.

“Worthy as their objectives are in connection with such aspects of the environment as woods, streams and wildlife, they frequently display a remarkable lack of concern over farmlands and the operations which provide our food. This lack of concern frequently arises from ignorance of farm activities, which is understandable since many members of conservation groups are urban dwellers.

“The emphasis provided by such people, through their numbers and their legal representatives, tends to outweigh that from farm people, who usually are widely scattered, relatively small in number by the very nature of large farmland areas, and often not as efficiently organized -- and I may add effectively organized -- to make their wishes known in a concerted fashion.

“The choice for hydro corridors frequently is to go through either wooded regions or farming districts. Surveys of public opinion obviously place the farm voice in an unfavourable position in deciding the choice. Yet farmers are the people whose livelihood is directly and adversely affected by hydro lines passing through their farms, while many active conservationists live in urban areas that are in no way affected by the corridors.”

Then finally, as far as Howlett is concerned, I just wanted to refer to a letter from Mr. Herb Grown, who is the director of the ARDA branch here in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Part of Mr. Crown’s letter says: “There is a very limited supply of class 1 and class 2 agricultural land in this province, and with the many demands that are being placed for non-agricultural use on this land -- such as residential, industrial development, transportation corridors, energy corridors, and recreation areas -- this ministry of the government is greatly concerned that there be minimal intrusion made on this high-quality agricultural land for nonfarm purposes. We recognize that this hydro line must be built. Our recommendation is that it be located through low agricultural-productive lands.”

That letter, incidentally, was dated March 8, 1973, So I think a good case, Mr. Speaker, can be made for routing these hydro power lines through poor agricultural land. I’m sure the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman) can appreciate this particular point, being a farmer himself and being one who is interested in farmers and food production.

The report of the hearing officer, Mr. Craig from Owen Sound, will come directly to the Minister of the Environment. My hope would be that, without prejudging what the report is going to say -- because I have no idea what it is going to say -- but without prejudging it, I would hope that the minister -- and I am going to talk to him about this -- would suggest, along with the Minister of Energy, that Ontario Hydro take another look at this entire line.

If these ministers don’t want to bear the full burden of assuming the responsibility for having Hydro review the situation, then I suggest that perhaps the only other alternative is to come up with a feasibility study on the entire line to see if that is the proper route for that line, in view of what I have been talking about.

This is really where I criticize Hydro severely. They really have no intimate knowledge of agricultural matters. They hired a conservationist not too long ago to advise them with respect to rural lands and rural areas when they were deciding the routing of these power lines; but they really have no expertise in agricultural matters -- none. And this is pretty obvious when you get them out to a farm meeting. They don’t understand; they don’t appreciate.

Frankly, I think Ontario Hydro should be setting up an agricultural department; they should be setting up a department with people who are fully conversant with agriculture. It needn’t be large. I am not suggesting that Hydro increase its present great numbers of staff to any extent. I am not suggesting that at all. But I think that it wouldn’t hurt -- indeed, it is vital -- for Hydro to have some expertise with respect to agriculture, and they certainly haven’t got it now. Two, three or four people would do it; that’s all they need. And I suggest they had better do it very quickly.

All of these points -- the points that I have been talking about with respect to agricultural land and the need for saving it -- apply to the Bruce-to-Georgetown and the Bruce-to-Seaforth power corridors.

This is really an aside, but I think that the Food Prices Review Board and Mrs. Plumptre’s posse up in Ottawa would be much better employed if they decided to do a study on what the loss of good agricultural land is doing to food prices, rather than going around nipping at the heels of the various marketing boards, which really isn’t a very effective exercise. It certainly is not, in my view, the way to locate the culprit in the food pricing system.

I think that such a study should be done and I believe that this government could undertake it. I understand Mrs. Plumptre is looking for something to do, so I would think that it would be well for her group to undertake a serious study to determine the degree of impact the loss of good agricultural land has had on the price of food over the past 10 years. I think that study might be quite revealing.

There are other matters in relation to the power line problems I would like to mention. I have talked about the loss of good agricultural land, and I have talked about the fact that these power corridors should be going through poorer land that is not suited for food production, but there are other things too that worry me with respect to these power lines.

I noticed an article in a Detroit paper dated March 3, 1974, describing the difficulties experienced by farmers and other people in the State of Michigan who were affected by the power lines going through no, I am sorry, it is not the State of Michigan, it is Indiana -- going through the State of Indiana, around a place called North Liberty. These power lines are taking a swath about 200 yd wide, I understand, and it’s possible for a person who is walking near those power lines with a fluorescent tube in his hand to have that tube light up. And the article goes on to say that this is no sleight of hand parlour trick. “The tube glows because of ultra-high voltage electrical current passing through 12 thick strands of power transmission line strung high overhead between giant towers. Air normally is a good insulator, but its insulation properties break down beyond a certain critical voltage and electricity is discharged. The electrical field that surrounds the ultra-high voltage wires radiates for many yards in all directions around it. It is strong enough 100 yd away to light a fluorescent tube.” Now, you can imagine what the farmers in Bruce and Huron counties will be doing if they walk out some morning with a fluorescent tube and the thing happens to light up on them.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Hydro hasn’t informed the people of this.

Mr. Gaunt: That’s a problem. You know, the environmentalists say, “Well, it looks as though there may be some damage from that.” Hydro says, “No, it’s perfectly harmless.” But I’m not so sure.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): The Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman) is listening.

Mr. Gaunt: There are other matters here too. These people in Indiana apparently are voicing numerous complaints. One farmer said that he gets a shock if he is riding on his tractor when he goes under the line. And he says: “You try to keep your arms insulated on a cushion.”

Well now, Mr. Speaker, can you imagine farmers during the busy seeding time and harvest time -- you come up to the power line and you have to stop and tuck in the cushion so you won’t get a shock when you drive under the power line? Really, Mr. Speaker, I think that Hydro is glossing over these problems, because I think they are real. They have been experienced by other people and I suggest there is a danger that our people are going to be confronted with the same thing.

People have been shocked when touching farm implements. People complain about TV reception. Here is another complaint -- the main complaint is about electrical shocks from farm equipment operated within the electrical field that surrounds the lines and even from wet weeds and grass. And the one farmer said that his cows wouldn’t go underneath the line in damp weather because they get a shock.

So that really these are problems with which Hydro has not come to grips. They are not prepared to compensate for these things. They simply gloss over them and say: “Well, there is no problem. We’ll look after that. Our research has indicated that these things don’t happen and I don’t know why people are talking about them.” That’s basically their answer. But yet experiences in other areas have indicated otherwise.

Hydro has assured farmers time and time again that no such ill-effects will take place. I think it’s important for me to put on the record what I consider to be an eloquent plea from a farmer faced with the prospect of having his land crossed by these Hydro towers.

His name is Bruce Nunn. He is a Wallace township farmer and he has travelled into many parts of the province where these tower lines have gone. He calls the tower lines “a spreading cancer of rural blight.”

I want to quote what he says in an article in the Listowel Banner. This was at a public meeting conducted by Hydro and he says: “As farmers we have only to drive down the roads that front these tower lines to see the change in the rural life habits of the people. This was not an isolated case but rather the general rule from end to end.” And just on that point, I believe that Bruce took his aeroplane and he flew these lines from one end to the other. I think he took in at least four or five.

My friend from Perth knows Mr. Nunn and he does have a plane of his own. I believe that he flew these lines to get a perspective of what sort of changes these lines make with regard to rural communities. He goes on: “We saw empty farm houses, empty barns, the skeletons of gutter cleaners that previously dairy herds had stood in front of. We saw the signs of absentee cash croppers that moved in to acquire large acreages of frontal lands adjoining these power lines. The heartbreak that must be covered by these boarded windows and dilapidated barns can only be judged by a farmer whose livelihood comes from his farm, as well as his very reason for life.” Mr. Nunn is making the point there that these lines, in direct opposition to what Hydro is saying, are creating changes in rural life. They do affect farmers’ ability to make a livelihood and they do have an impact on the communities which they cut through.

There is no question in my mind that the impact of these lines running across good agricultural land is substantially greater than we have been led to believe by Hydro officials. Yet Hydro is not prepared to alter its position and indeed takes every opportunity to drive a hard bargain. They are not prepared to alter their compensation and, on top of that, they often drive a very hard bargain indeed. They not only intend ripping up good agricultural land, they want to steal it into the bargain. They are not paying enough for injurious affection. They are not taking into account the hardships for the farmer and the economic impact on his operation.

I want to indicate briefly what I feel should be done with respect to Hydro with regard to going across agricultural land. The first thing that Hydro should do is reconsider its position that its power needs will double every 10 years. I do not believe that to be so. Even Bob Macaulay doesn’t believe that to be so and he is a much more authoritative person than I when it comes to dealing with Hydro. As I recall it, he was Hydro’s counsel at $75 an hour before the Energy Board in Ottawa some while ago. I would think that he should have the ear of Hydro with respect to some of these matters.

Hydro should be stressing conservation instead of greater consumption. Consolidated Edison in the United States had a growth rate of eight per cent. In 1973 they put on a conservation drive and they reduced consumption by 10 per cent. I am sure that Ontario Hydro could do as well or perhaps even better if they really tried.

A complete independent assessment of the routing of these lines from Douglas Point should be undertaken immediately, because Hydro should not be going over class 1 and 2 agricultural land. As I said previously, if the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Energy will not take a firm position with Hydro in regard to this line, then I think the other alternative is to come up with an independent assessment as to where these lines should go.

If the government won’t do this, then I think the minister should insist that Hydro take 500 instead of 900 ft coming from Douglas Point. Five hundred feet is sufficient for the facilities presently approved and is certainly able to handle all the power capable of being produced until 1990 and even beyond. Hydro is actually land banking at today’s prices. In my strong view, they should not be allowed to do so.

Hydro’s methods of negotiation and acquisition are severely lacking, even mediaeval. For goodness’ sake, I think Hydro has to clean up its act in this regard. I think it’s disgraceful. Surely there are enough problems without inviting them, and all they do is invite them. They go in to a farmer and say, “We are prepared to give you so much money. Take it or leave it. If you don’t want it, we’ll expropriate.” That’s the basis upon which they get started, and then it just goes on from there and gets steadily worse.

If they would go in and ask the farmer --

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): They sit around the kitchen table.

Mr. Ruston: A good place to do it, sometimes.

Mr. Gaunt: When they sit around the kitchen table, it often means that the farmer ends up pounding the table and the Hydro negotiator is almost thrown out bodily. I think Hydro should sit down with its buyers and negotiators and come up with a uniform policy in this regard.

Mr. Ruston: Right. Right on.

Mr. Gaunt: There’s no point in one buyer going out and saying, “Look, we’ll give you $500 an acre” and the farmer refuses it, then another buyer coming back a month later and saying, “Well, we’ve reconsidered. We will maybe go up to $550,” What should be done is for the buyer to go in and ask the farmer how much he wants for his land, then start from that basis. No other buyer in the world would go in and say to a farmer or a property owner, “This is what we are going to give you. Take it or leave it or we are going to expropriate it.” That would raise the hackles of anyone, and I don’t blame property owners for getting upset.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Or trying to offer a farmer less money when they found out he had more land.

Mr. Gaunt: That’s right. I think it’s fair to say that Hydro, in terms of this particular line, has tried just about every trick in the book in regard to purchasing land. I don’t know why they have done it. I can’t understand it, but that’s what they have done. I think it’s wrong, and I think it should be corrected. When we tell Hydro about it, they say, “Oh, we are not doing that,” but they go out and do exactly the same thing the very next day. It’s frustrating to say the least.

There’s another point I think that should be made in regard to the easements. I got a letter from a George Adams, who is the chairman of the Turnberry-Howick corridor committee, and I think he makes a very good point in respect to these rights of way. He says:

“Hydro should offer a third option to land owners on the Hydro right of way. This would be a lease agreement. This lease would be for as long as there are Hydro installations on the land. This lease would pay so much per year for the land that is used. The rent would be revised in stated intervals, perhaps every 10 years.

“This would give the next land owner compensation for the installations. The way it is now, he has to buy the property at a reduced price to equivalent land values in the area or he does not receive any compensation for the installations on the land.

“This would also keep the land in the farmers’ hands. The money received would go to help finance the operation and not to pay off the low-interest mortgages they now have.”

Now, just on that point, when Ontario Hydro comes through, they ask for a severance; and that farmer may have a mortgage on his farm with Farm Credit or, if it’s an old one, with Junior Farmers. If it’s with Junior Farmers, anyway, it’s at five per cent, so Junior Farmers will ask for some of their loan to be paid off because their equity position has been reduced. This is what’s happening: Not only is the farmer getting a poor price for his land but he’s losing his low-interest rate financing. I think that point is very valid and hopefully, if Hydro listens to any of these remarks at all, it will consider that particular proposal.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): They should be made to capitalize the income that’s lost.

Mr. Gaunt: I want to turn now for a few moments to another matter; it’s still really dealing with Hydro but it’s another facet of what’s happening at Douglas Point. It’s a problem which confronts the town of Kincardine. This is a parochial problem but it’s nonetheless an important one and I want to raise it because I think Ontario Hydro should reconsider its rate of compensation not only to Kincardine but to the other towns affected by Douglas Point.

Let’s take Kincardine, as an example and I’ll cite the situation in the town in 1965. The town had carried out studies in regard to its official plan and it was established that the plans and services within the town were capable of providing serviced lots for more than 25 years of normal residential growth. Specifically, the studies indicated that the population of Kincardine had been increasing very slowly in the years 1960 to 1964. The growth in that period was from 2,790 to 2,882.

The household formation rate, while increasing more rapidly than total population, grew only from 802 units in 1951 to 915 units in 1961, an average of 10.27 per cent. On any accepted basis for projecting population growth it was unlikely that the population would reach 3,900 by the year 1990, and that a more probable 1990 level would be 3,300.

In 1965 Kincardine had an inventory of serviced and serviceable land which was capable of meeting its needs for at least 25 years.

Now let’s take a look at the situation in the town in 1974. The Bruce nuclear power development drastically altered all of this and the changes are apparent in the figures which I want to put on the record. In the year 1965 the dwelling starts in Kincardine were 10; in 1966 five; in 1967 seven. Then we move up to 1971 to indicate what sort of impact Douglas Point is having on Kincardine and other towns in the area -- Port Elgin, Southampton and so on. In 1971 the dwelling unit starts were 58; in 1972, 51, and in 1973 well over 100. In 1969-1970 Kincardine extended its sewer and water services to a 219-lot subdivision beyond the town limits, and at least 170 dwellings have been constructed there, bringing the total for the 1965-1973 period to 562.

This growth, 562 dwelling units, is almost exactly double the projected growth for the 25-year period to 1990. The impact, in terms of housing demand, of just the first stage of the Bruce nuclear power development has seriously depleted the stock of serviced and serviceable lots. Even if each and every remaining serviced or serviceable lot in Kincardine was available for building, the supply would be totally exhausted by mid-1975. In point of fact, all possible lots are not available and there will be an absolute shortage of serviced building sites by mid-1974.

The rapid depletion of Kincardine’s serviceable land reserve since 1968 reflects only the impact of the first stage of development at the Bruce nuclear power development. The impact of the doubling programme announced in June, 1973, is just now about to be felt while the effect of the redoubling announced on Jan. 17, 1974, staggers the imagination.

If Kincardine is to replenish its supply of serviceable land to meet this anticipated demand, it must open an entirely new, serviced district.

I’d like to cite, just for the record, the cost of doing this. To improve and enlarge its sewage treatment facilities would cost $250,000. The cost of building an outfall line from the treatment facility to deep water would be $230,000; to provide a trunk force sewer main and pumping station, $170,000; to provide increased elevated water storage capacity, $250,000; to provide increased trunk water line capacity, $116,000; to construct some arterial roads, an estimated cost of $145,000 -- for a total of $1,161,000.

And that’s a minimum, Mr. Speaker; that’s a bare minimum. This $1,161,000 minimum cost does not include any work within new development areas. This cost is not all-inclusive. It represents only that portion of the cost for which provisions must be made before any steps can be taken to plan for development of the new areas.

I should mention that Hydro is spreading a payment throughout the area to alleviate some of the pressures for education, housing and development generally. That payment this year will bring in to the town of Kincardine something in the neighbourhood of $7,900. When the redoubling programme was announced in January, Hydro said it would give the town of Kincardine another $250,000. Mr. Speaker, that is far short of what these requirements are going to cost, and unless Kincardine is in a financial position to undertake these projects, there is going to be a very serious housing problem indeed in that entire area.

The problem of meeting the requirements to permit development of any new residential areas is twofold. First, there is the absolute inability of the town to finance any undertaking of this magnitude even if the Kincardine taxpayers were willing to assume an additional debt of about $1,000 per household. Secondly, before any additional lot servicing can be undertaken, several time-consuming procedures must be completed.

The depletion since 1968 of the supply of serviceable land in Kincardine has been the direct result of Ontario Hydro and its announced expansion programme. In 1965 Kincardine was in a position to absorb its expected growth for 25 years or more without requiring substantial increases in non-residential assessment. The Bruce development changed that. It caused the town to use up 25 years’ reserve of serviceable land in just five years. Fortunately, the development of the Bruce facility has not sparked a corresponding increase in commercial and industrial development within Kincardine.

The Bruce development is local in its impact on housing demand but it is provincial in terms of benefit. So that’s why I say, Mr. Speaker, that Ontario Hydro and the government should be in a position, and should be prepared and willing, to pay to Kincardine and to the other towns affected by the impact of Bruce, more money to allow them to develop their serviced land and to allow them to build new roads, so that we won’t have this tremendous increase in taxation at the local level, as I indicated previously, of at least $1,000 per household.

I make that plea to Ontario Hydro and to the government in the hope that they will come up with some more money to alleviate these very pressing needs on behalf of the towns of Kincardine, Port Elgin and Southampton particularly.

I’ll conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker, because I have taken longer than I anticipated. These problems are important to my constituents, important to the people whom I have the privilege of representing in this House, and I thought it my duty to bring them to your attention, sir, and to the attention of the government in the hope that something can be done about them.

In conclusion I just want to say that I hope that all members, after serious consideration, will support the amendment put forward by my leader in his reply to the Speech from the Throne. It is a reasoned amendment. It sets out the deficient areas in the Throne Speech and in the government programme. I hope that all members, after serious reflection, will decide to vote with my leader and this party on the amendment put forward by him. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sandwich-Riverside.

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, first I should like to pay my respects to you. We are all glad to have you back and to see you in such good form and in good spirits.

I have two topics I wish to discuss today. One is in the field of health regarding the denturists, and the other is in the fields of environment and energy. I announce this in case any of those ministers wish to come in and listen to the remarks.

On Monday, March 11, during the private members’ hour debate on the denturists, the member for Scarborough Centre (Mr. Drea), asked a very good question -- but he failed to answer it.

Mr. Foulds: That is usual.

Mr. Burr: He asked: How can you equate the training that a dentist or a dental surgeon goes through with the training that there is for a denturist or a denture therapist?

This drew to my attention one aspect of the controversy that has been largely overlooked: the relative training of the dentists on the one hand and of the denture makers on the other. If Alberta is any criterion, a precise answer is to be found in the January, 1974, issue of the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry in an article by a University of Alberta faculty of dentistry professor, Dr. Allan D. Fee. On page 20, he says: “A dental student receives 600 hours of instruction in complete and removable partial prosthodontics. A dental mechanic student receives 1,334 hours of instruction in complete dentures alone. A dental student treats seven edentulous patients. A dental mechanic student makes dentures for 200 people.”

The point is, that even before graduation a dentist’s experience in making a complete set of dentures is limited to seven patients, whereas a denture maker’s experience has reached 200 patients. After graduation, of course, very few dentists ever make another set of dentures, whereas denture makers work at the job daily.

May I remind the member for Scarborough Centre that it is the denture maker who is the expert, not the dentist, in the making of dentures?

Mr. Foulds: Well said.

Mr. Burr: Some members of the Legislature may not realize that when a patient orders dentures through a dentist the set is made by a denture maker who often does not know whether the teeth are for a man or for a woman. He does not know anything about the patient’s colouring, or size or personality. Any skilled denturist can do a better job and take a greater interest in his work when he deals directly with the patient.

When a dentist orders a set of dentures they are often made in an assembly-line type of operation. As anyone informed about dentures knows, the age, sex and physical personality can be and should be reflected in the shading, the positioning and contouring of the teeth -- yet some dentists fail to provide the dental lab with any of this pertinent information. A denture maker who meets his patient can do a far better job than he can do for a person he has never seen or heard of. That is logical. As the member for Scarborough Centre says, it is just common sense. As Dr. Fee sums up in his article: “In four of our provinces [he should have said five, Mr. Speaker] the dental mechanics have won their independence from the dental profession. They have by their own efforts raised their standards. There has not been a public outcry about poor service. There is no indication that the legislation will be rescinded. They are providing complete dentures to an increasing number of people.” The only other real point of concern is that a denture maker dealing directly with the public might fail to recognize an abnormal condition in the mouth because he lacks the training to do so. This is not a valid objection for two reasons.

Firstly, for the past year the Ontario denturists have been insisting on certificates of oral health, signed by a medical or dental practitioner, as is the requirement in British Columbia since March 29, 1962, and in Manitoba since Nov. 1, 1972.

Secondly, the denturists want and are eager to improve their knowledge. As a matter of fact two years ago the Ontario Denturists Society asked for a course to be given at Humber community college. On the basis of favourable discussions with government and college officials they prepared, at considerable expense, not only a course, but also the number of hours, and costs itemized to the last penny.

When Bill 203 was introduced, revisions were made to bring the course into complete conformity with the bill. The denturists agreed that the course should be mandatory and that any denture makers who could not pass the course successfully would not be allowed to deal with the public.

A hundred years ago the time of most dentists was spent in extracting teeth and making dentures. Dentistry has come a long way since then, with emphasis on preservation of teeth. In fact, the ideal family dentist, in my opinion, is one who spends time with his patients warning them of the various sugar-filled foods and drinks that cause tooth decay and encouraging them to avoid such items. The family dentist should consider that he has failed when he has to extract the final teeth from the patient. That would be the ideal situation.

Furthermore, just as a doctor cannot also be an undertaker, so a dentist should have no further financial interest in a patient whose teeth he has been unsuccessful in protecting and preserving. Denture makers are to dentists what undertakers are to physicians. The sooner the spheres of activity are clearly delineated, the better for everyone concerned.

Mr. Speaker, denturists are recognized as legal practitioners in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Quebec. Newfoundland and Saskatchewan will be following with legislation this year, it is thought.

Although Prince Edward Island has no legislation on the subject one way or the other, there is no objection to denturists in that province.

When will the Conservatives of Ontario become progressive, at least in the matter of false teeth?

Mr. Foulds: Never.

Mr. Gaunt: Just in name only. That’s all.

Mr. Burr: My colleague suggests maybe tomorrow.

Mr. Foulds: No, never. Although we can always hope -- “hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

Mr. Burr: On another topic, Mr. Speaker. I wish to speak on nuclear power. I intend to speak at first mostly about the type used in the American enriched uranium light water reactors rather than the Canadian reactors.

One reason for my emphasis on the American type is that we in Essex county are immediately threatened by the presence of enriched uranium nuclear reactors in Michigan and not so much by the CANDU (Canadian Deuterium Uranium) stations at Bruce, Douglas Point and Pickering. One might say that I am taking a parochial view. Actually I am merely starting from a parochial viewpoint.

Being downwind, Lambton and Kent counties may also feel equally threatened by the Michigan reactors, a factor that may have caused our Ontario Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) to criticize the American nuclear system. He says of it, and I quote him, “If a pressure vessel containing enriched uranium should crack, the results could be very serious.” In making this statement, he is merely echoing the opinions and fears of many far more knowledgeable men, many of them scientists who have worked for the United States’ Atomic Energy Commission for years.

The nuclear establishment’s motto is “trust us.” Yet according to the AEC’s 1973 task force report, there had been 850 accidents in the previous 17 months -- an average of 50 per month or of five every three days. At any rate, one can truthfully say that, on average, the nuclear power station accident rate in the United States is daily.

One such accident happened at the Enrico Fermi atomic power plant at Laguna Beach on Lake Erie, 30 miles south of Detroit and Windsor. This plant, costing at least $133 million, was begun in 1958 and went into test operation in August, 1963. It was to provide enough electricity for a city of 75,000 by 1964 and for a city of 150,000 by 1969.

At the end of August, 1965, hearings were held before an AEC safety and licensing board to get permission for the plant’s operating level to go from the testing level of one thermal megawatt to the full potential of 200 megawatts. Giving testimony, Dr. Hans Bethe, a Cornell University professor of physics and a consultant on the nuclear reactor project, billed in the newspapers as an internationally known nuclear physicist, said: “I am confident that the Fermi plant can be operated safely and will give satisfactory results.”

The board took his word. The plant did operate at full 200-megawatt capacity, but only on 26 different days and for a total of only 378 hours during its 10-year life.

On Oct. 6, 1966, the plant was closed for nearly three years for repairs after a metal object clogged the flow of coolants and caused the nuclear substance in the reactor to melt. It is recorded that the involved executives and scientists were terrified by the threat of a catastrophe if the melted radioactive matter should reassemble in a critical mass and result in an explosion. Evacuation of Detroit was considered. However, Mr. Speaker, I can find no mention that evacuation of Windsor, La Salle, Amherstburg, Harrow, Chatham or any other Ontario community was considered.

At the Fermi plant the automatic cutoff system apparently failed to function. Fortunately a cool-headed workman had the presence of mind to shut down the reactor manually. The Fermi plant, incidentally, was the first fast breeder reactor to be built.

So the closing of the Enrico Fermi plant was announced on Nov. 30, 1972. The amount of electricity it had produced cost $4 a kilowatt hour, not the four mills that we had been promised. In other words, 1,000 times more than we had been promised. The plant’s nuclear core was removed and disposed of by the Atomic Energy Commission at an undisclosed location. It was announced that the 30,000 gal. of sodium coolant would be frozen and stored in stainless steel tanks enclosed in concrete vaults on the plant site.

The nuclear establishment is undeterred by its mistakes. On May 9, 1969, the Detroit Edison Co. applied to the Atomic Energy Commission for permission to build one of the biggest atomic plants in the world, producing 1,127 megawatts of electricity, enough for a city of one million. It was scheduled to open in 1974 and it was to be built right beside the original Enrico Fermi plant, about seven miles north of Monroe, Mich., 30 miles from Detroit and Windsor and about 12 miles from Amherstburg.

Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the atomic bomb, said of the Enrico Fermi accident in particular and of the whole nuclear programme in general, “We have been extremely lucky,” At least five United States’ nuclear plants have so malfunctioned that they have had to be abandoned. Sealing off a radioactive plant raises the problem of continued radiation seepage. United States’ plants have a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years; after that they become tombs which can never be opened, at least for thousands of years.

At a later date I hope to discuss the economics of nuclear power in some detail but for the moment I shall record briefly the following facts.

The United States has had nuclear plants producing electricity for many years but it was not until near the end of 1971 that the total electrical energy generated by its nuclear power plants exceeded or equalled the accumulated amount of electricity that had been used up by the enrichment plants to produce the required nuclear fuel. In other words, the whole nuclear system had used up more electric energy than it had produced until the end of 1971.

When one takes into consideration the billions of dollars contributed by the United States taxpayers to build those plants, pay for research and development, the nuclear system was, at the end of 1971, a colossal financial disaster.

However, there are far worse sins than ripping off the taxpayer. One of these is subjecting him to unnecessary risks to his health, his environment and his descendants’ genetic legacy -- unnecessary because of the many safe, clean, inexhaustible, feasible alternatives.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. prides itself on its low emission rate of radioactive materials and on its apparent ability to contain, so far, any radioactive releases resulting from internal accidents. Apart from pointing out that the permitted emission levels are set by man and not necessarily by nature, and that the only safe level is zero, as most people agree, I shall not question the containment capabilities of the CANDU reactors.

What can be questioned, however, is the wisdom and morality of man creating plutonium whether for war or for peace. We must all question the wisdom and morality of building these huge nuclear bombs which we euphemistically refer to as power plants; there are about 40 of them already in the United States and four or five already in Canada.

The Atomic Energy Commission talks of 1,000 reactors in the United States within 25 years as well as 2,500 fast breeders within about 45 years. Every one of these reactors becomes a target for saboteurs, terrorists and assorted maniacs. Every one of these becomes a potential Hiroshima bomb or even worse.

At least four years ago I drew to the attention of the House, and especially to the then Minister of the Environment, the danger presented by nuclear power plants. My examples back in 1969 were chiefly American. The minister’s reply was that because Ontario’s CANDU reactors did not use enriched uranium, they were much safer than the American ones. This was some comfort and events have so far vindicated the minister as far as the apparently safe operation of Ontario’s nuclear power plants has been concerned.

Unfortunately, since that time, hijacking of planes, kidnappings for ransom and kidnappings for reasons of political blackmail have become so common that many well-known and well-informed persons have become increasingly concerned about the possibility, the likelihood, perhaps even the certainty, that nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel will become part of that game now being played so frequently and so successfully by terrorists of various kinds.

Theodore Taylor, a nuclear physicist who has made atomic bombs, is now trying to alert any politician who will listen -- in fact everybody -- to the grim probability that unauthorized persons, meaning those outside the military, will steal or hijack fissionable material and make one or more bombs. He is quoted in the Wall Street Journal of June 18, 1973, as saying: “Scientists are raising a horrendous new possibility. It is too easy for a crazed man, a revolutionary, or a criminal to make an atomic bomb. I have been worried ever since I built my first one.” Theodore Taylor’s views on this possibility are explained at great lengths, Mr. Speaker, in four issues of the New Yorker, beginning at the end of November, 1973.

The Washington Monthly for January, 1973, contained an article entitled, “Nuclear Hijacking Now Within the Grasp of Any Bright Lunatic.” One sentence read: “Man’s blindness and vanity that suggests that he can do anything, even play with vast quantities of the most intense and long-lasting poisons, could any day lead to the biggest disaster in history.” Even at the University of Toronto, Dr. Philip Jones, chairman of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, has within the past year referred to the possibility of nuclear hijacking. He used the same words: “Any bright lunatic could do it.”

Dr. Jan Prawitz, of the National Research Institute of Stockholm, believes that he could produce a nuclear explosion from essentially any grade of reactor-produced plutonium that might be available. There are others who believe that plutonium produced from the uranium in the fission process may fall into the wrong hands. Their fear grows with every new nuclear plant that is announced.

Even if all nuclear reactors operated perfectly and all the humans in charge of them made no mistakes, and even if the safe disposal of radioactive wastes for ever and ever were feasible, still the possibility of sabotage or hijacking makes the proliferation of nuclear power an act of extreme rashness. Some people have called it criminal insanity.

So much for nuclear hijacking by terrorists. I have been asked whether anyone else has raised this possibility. The answer is that as long ago as the 1969 Los Alamos nuclear safety symposium, it was accepted that “supply-stimulated” theft would develop rapidly as more and more plutonium was created and became accessible.

A former FBI man told that meeting that the transportation industry in the United States is riddled with Mafia members, any of whom might be interested in making deals for big money to obtain plutonium. He also foresaw deals with foreign groups.

The matter was discussed at a recent Pugwash conference. A British nuclear physicist reported that the international security system is incapable of coping with these extra legal and extra technical problems.

Let us consider now the safety of nuclear reactors on site and the problem of disposal of radioactive wastes after the fuel has been used. These two dangers could be treated separately but I have not had time to separate them. As many scientists are equally alarmed by the on-site danger and by the unsolved problems of successful disposal, I shall discuss them together.

In July, 1971, the Union of Concerned Scientists, consisting of several hundred scientists in the United States, warned that the licensing of nuclear power plants with dubious emergency core cooling systems might result in “a catastrophe and loss of life exceeding anything this nation has known.”

The first chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, David Lilienthal, was reported in the New York Times of July 20, 1968, as warning that crucial problems were still unsolved. He said: “Once a bright hope shared by all mankind, including myself, the rash proliferation of atomic power plants has become one of the ugliest clouds hanging over America.” Albert Einstein said: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Science magazine of Sept. 1, 8, 15 and 22, 1972, had four articles on nuclear safety. The author said that the plan for safety in one reactor “outlines 139 unsettled safety questions and designates 44 of them as very urgent key problem areas.”

Dr. George L. Weil, the first chief of the Atomic Energy Commission’s reactor branch, said in an article entitled, “Nuclear Energy: Promises, Promises,” just two years ago: “Today’s nuclear power plant projects are too many, too large, too soon, too inefficient. In short, they offer too little for too many risks.” Philip Sporn, the former head of American Electric Power, a representative of the private sector, said several years ago (Nov. 15, 1968): “We ought to slow down. We are going to have some accidents with atomic plants.”

We don’t want to, but we are going to. Rene Dubos and Barbara Ward, the authors of “Only One Earth,” say: “Men are not making a simple calculation of gain or convenience. They are confronting their own survival, that of their children and grandchildren and the whole race of men.” I could quote many other scientists, Mr. Speaker, and many well-informed persons on this subject, but suffice it to say that there is a movement in the United States to stop further development of nuclear plants.

As some members may know, Sen. Mike Gravel introduced a bill on March 14, 1973, to phase out the operation of all existing civilian nuclear power plants in the United States no later than January, 1980. The shutdown would last indefinitely or until the electric utilities had demonstrated that nuclear power plants will not be a significant danger to public health and safety or render the country vulnerable to blackmail, terrorism or economic chaos, which I think cannot be proven.

Members who saw Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee at the televised Watergate hearings will be interested in his May 31 statement on a Frank Reynolds ABC-TV show after he had said: “I don’t think we can have a five-year moratorium. I think we have to go forward as fast as possible with the development of a nuclear energy system.” When the interviewer asked, “You do acknowledge the risk?” Sen. Baker replied: “There is a risk. It’s probably the biggest risk, the biggest single risk that any civilization has ever taken.”

Later, Sen. Baker sent Sen. Gravel the fallowing clarification of what he meant to say: “The containment and storage of radioactive wastes is the greatest single responsibility [he underlined the word responsibility] ever consciously undertaken by man. We can ill afford to fall short in our obligation to protect future generations.” This statement applies to Ontario just as much as it does to any other country contemplating more nuclear power plants. Either of Sen. Baker’s statements, the one on risk or the one on responsibility, should be printed across the letterhead of every page that issues from the offices of the Minister of Energy and from the offices of Ontario Hydro. Wishing to be helpful to the Minister of Energy, I have composed a letterhead statement for him, although Hydro has 100 PR personnel, men and women, who could do it for him.

My first draft, a hurried one of course, is as follows: “Containment and storage of radioactive wastes is the greatest single risk any civilization has ever undertaken.” I have a few words left over that could be added, such as, “of its own free will, foolishly, stupidly, insanely, criminally.” But I’ll leave this rough draft for the PR men to polish. They probably have more time than I have, Mr. Speaker. Certainly some of them must have long periods of wakefulness at night before they’re able to fall asleep.

I should like to make a few remarks about what I shall call, using the kindest euphemism I can, the myth that nuclear power is clean. Electricity, generated from water power, may deserve the label “clean,” although after listening to the hon. member for Huron-Bruce this afternoon on the effect of the transmission of power in huge amounts by the hydro towers, perhaps I should revise that label somewhat. Electricity is generally regarded, let us say, as being clean, but nuclear power is filthy.

Instead of calling this a myth, I toyed with such expressions as “the greatest falsehood ever told,” but then I found that Dr. John W. Gofman, whose study of nuclear power and whose appreciation of its perils have been intense, had a better description. He says : “Eco-pornography takes many forms, but none exceeds such statements as ‘nuclear power is clean.’ “

We all know that coal-fuelled electric power plants are dirty, but at least after one of them has been operated for a span of time and is shut down there is then no further pollution, beginning the next day. But a filthier process than nuclear fission is inconceivable. It’s the only process which creates pollutants so terrifying that they must somehow be kept out of man’s environment for at least 24,000 years. Can any member in this House call that a clean source of energy? In the long-term, nuclear power is not merely filthy, it is obscene.

Anthony Tucker, science editor of the Manchester Guardian, a fairly well respected newspaper, said on Feb. 19, 1972, that if the predictions of professional engineers are correct about the number of nuclear power plants we shall have by the year 2000, then “the United States and Europe jointly will each day have to bury or dispatch into space the equivalent of 2,000 Hiroshima bombs.” Every day, Mr. Speaker, and yet Ontario Hydro propagandists have the effrontery to call nuclear fission clean.

Do the members know how hopeless and desperate the search for an effective disposal site for fission wastes has become? Dr. James Schlesinger, a recent chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, has urged the development of a space shuttle vehicle which would fire radioactive wastes to the sun.

Now if any member of this Legislature had suggested such a fantastic idea he would have been laughed right out of this House. Yet such is the prestige of these high priests of nuclear fission that this proposal was printed in the newspaper with no loss of respect to Dr. Schlesinger. Perhaps the reason no one laughed was the sobering statement which accompanied his proposal. He said: “We hope to remove these wastes permanently from the environment of man and that means for tens of thousands of years, because some traces of plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, remain in the waste.”

The United Nations environmental programme issued a 97-page report early this month. It was referred to in the media as a “state of the environment” report and the member for Huron-Bruce referred to that same report, I believe, an hour or so ago. On page 23 we find two paragraphs that include the following comments -- this is the United Nations, Mr. Speaker: “A possible outer limit on energy conversion through nuclear fission is imposed by its production of large quantities of extremely toxic radio-isotopes with half-lives of the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. Plutonium 239, a bone-seeking, 24,400-year, hard alpha emitter that is toxic in sub-microgram quantities and can form respirable aerosols, is a prominent example.

“Such substances require infallible and perpetual isolation from the biosphere and it is hard to imagine how this can be done. Plans to manufacture large amounts of transuranic isotopes must therefore be urgently re-examined. Many classes of substances can now be identified which may be so hazardous that man cannot trust himself to take care of them. Identifying such a risk is a technical problem; deciding whether to incur it in the pursuit of some benefit is a political and ethical problem.” That last sentence, Mr. Speaker, is the text for my speech today. Remember, it is not merely my opinion; it’s the carefully considered opinion of the United Nations environmental programme.

As recently as December, 1973, at the Pugwash conference at Oxford, Prof. Bernard Feld of MIT stated that the diversion of small quantities of plutonium, produced in nuclear fission power plants, could result in the clandestine production of hundreds of nuclear weapons and possible blackmail by terrorists groups.

Members of this Legislature should keep in mind that for each pound of uranium that is mined, CANDU produces, in its natural uranium heavy water reactors, three times as much plutonium as do the enriched uranium light water United States’ plants. In that respect CANDU is three times as dangerous as the United States’ type of nuclear reactor.

Lorne Gray, chairman of Canada’s AECL, is authority for this statement, yet the AECL has no present plans for using this accumulating stockpile of plutonium and no long-term plan for its safe disposal. In the United States, the AEC has scores of bookkeepers keeping an inventory of this most toxic substance whose half-life is over 24,000 years, but with every day that passes, chances of theft increase as the stockpile increases.

With every new atomic plant that is put into operation that stockpile of wastes increases. In the May, 1972 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Hannes Alfven, Nobel prizewinner in physics, says: “Fission energy is safe only if a number of critical devices work as they should, only if a number of people in key positions follow all their instructions, only if there is no sabotage, no hijacking of transports, only if no reactor fuel-processing plant or repository anywhere in the world is situated in a region of riots or guerrilla activity and no revolution or war, even a conventional one, takes place in these regions. The enormous quantities of dangerous material must not get into the hands of ignorant people or desperadoes. No acts of God can be permitted.” The twin dangers of nuclear fission power plant operation and of the relentless, hourly accumulation of long-lived radioactive wastes are the concern not only of such well-known individuals as Dr. John Gofman, Linus Pauling, Ralph Nader, and Sen. Mike Gravel, but also of such groups as the Federation of American Scientists, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Rand Corp., and such lay groups as Voice of Women.

Last October the committee of presidents of 29 leading chemical societies in the United States, representing about 300,000 chemists, urged a review of the whole programme of nuclear fission. Recently the prestigious Sierra Club in the United States has declared itself. In addition, there is widespread discord among top scientists of the Atomic Energy Commission itself over the safety of reactors, standards, waste disposal, the threat to public health, and even their economic validity.

I shall give one example only. Alvin Weinberg, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, after referring to the military priesthood which guards against inadvertent use of nuclear weapons by the United States, said in the July 7, 1972 issue of Science: “It seems to me that peaceful nuclear energy will make demands of the same sort on our society and possibly of even longer duration.

“We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with society. On the one hand, we offer an inexhaustible source of energy, but the price we demand of society is both of vigilance and a longevity of our social institutions to which we are not quite accustomed.

“Reactor safety, waste disposal, transport of radioactive materials are complex matters about which little can be said with absolute certainty. [He asked the question:] Is mankind prepared to exert the eternal vigilance needed to ensure proper and safe operation of its nuclear system?” There, Mr. Speaker, is my text again, different from the United Nations’ wording, but the same in thought.

The answer to this question is twofold. First, an emphatic no. Fallibility is so characteristic of man that a perfect performance is a rare and admirable event. Even the achievements of astronauts have been flawed, although not always fatally, by failure of men and man-made equipment, although actually three astronauts were incinerated at the beginning of what was supposed to be a routine flight into space. A set of figures, checked by at least 100 different experts, contained one simple error. No, man cannot provide infallible vigilance, even for a short time. Eternal infallible vigilance is a fool’s dream.

If the first part of the answer is “No, he cant” the second part is “Why should he?” Why should he, indeed, when there is no necessity whatsoever?

The Faustian bargain, described by Weinberg -- that is, a theoretically inexhaustible supply of energy in return for handing on to all our descendants the agonizing, inescapable and probably impossible burden of eternally guarding the filthy, radioactive, gene-changing carcinogenic wastes of the nuclear system -- is a bargain that has already been accepted by a few without disclosing the details to the rest of us. It is not too late to cancel the bargain, although it becomes increasingly difficult as month after month goes by and the proponents of filthy nuclear power promote their concepts relentlessly to all governments.

The atomic establishment in the United States is facing increasing opposition. Just recently it was refused permission to build a nuclear reactor near Philadelphia because of the large population living there but it was told it could build it in a rural area where the population was less dense. Rural people are apparently more expendable. Consequently, the American nuclear establishment is now trying to get Canada to build nuclear reactors with which to supply the United States with electricity.

This arrangement seems headed for success in Nova Scotia. It seems headed for success in Ontario. In British Columbia the plan to get an atomic plant built at Skagit seems to have run into some trouble. Premier Barrett has turned thumbs down on nuclear power in British Columbia.

Let’s take a second look at this Faustian bargain. The offer is a supposedly inexhaustible supply of energy. Attractive? Of course. But we have an alternative choice of a different but guaranteed inexhaustible supply of energy, namely solar energy.

It seems likely that all of this continent’s electrical needs could be supplied even from wind power alone. From the Windsor Star of March 22, 1974, we learn that United States’ scientists in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are even now designing inexpensive, efficient windmills which could generate 10 megawatts of power in moderate winds. Twenty thousand of these spaced across the western plains on their own transmission towers could provide half of the present United States’ consumption.

Let us do a quick environmental impact study on wind power, keeping in mind what the answers might be to the same question if one did an environmental impact study on fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.

First, carbon monoxide effluent, zero; carbon dioxide effluent, zero; sulphur dioxide effluent, zero; hydrocarbon effluent, zero; plutonium produced, none; strontium 90 produced, none; cesium 137 produced, none; carbon 14 produced, none; tritium produced, none; probability of radioactive discharge, zero; probability of a melt-down of radioactive core, zero; need for everlasting disposal sites, none; number of uranium miners incurring lung cancer, none; number of lakes and streams polluted by radioactive effluent, none; number of poison gas shelters required in case of leaks of deadly hydrogen sulphide, like those near Kincardine at Inverhuron, none; thermal pollution, zero.

I outlined some of the dangers of thermal pollution on June 4, 1973. Hansard records them on pages 3207 and 3208 and I have no intention of repeating them today. But the above list of problems that will vanish with the development of wind power or other forms of solar energy is not complete, of course. Although I may have exhausted my listeners I have not exhausted the list of pollutants that will be eliminated from man’s burden and environmental worries when various forms of solar energy, such as wind power, replace the enormously wasteful and dirty methods now being used.

Mephistopheles’ legendary offer of great skill and magical powers required Dr. Faustus to give his soul in return. The nuclear establishment threatens not only our souls, if we accept this immoral bargain, but also our bodies, or at least those of our descendants, through the genetic havoc which some of them will almost certainly suffer.

On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, nature offers us a safe, clean, limitless power, with no strings attached. Nature’s offer is an offer that we cannot refuse. There is probably only one man in Ontario who is in a position to end this Faustian bargain, and that of course is our Minister of Energy. This is not a technical or a technological problem, it is a moral or ethical problem. The minister is not a technical man, but surely he is an ethical man.

Mr. Foulds: But is he not a moral man either? He’s ethical, yes.

Mr. Burr: We have a choice either of various forms of solar energy or of nuclear energy. The former have virtually no disadvantages; they have all the virtues of an angel: safe, clean, moral and eternal.

Mr. Foulds: But the minister is not eternal.

Mr. Burr: The latter is open to every possible kind of objection. It is hazardous in the extreme, eternally filthy, downright immoral; in short, devilish.

A speech prepared by the Deputy Minister of Energy for an engineers’ meeting in Thunder Bay, Nov. 23, 1973, appealed for citizen input. “The minister has made it clear in a number of his speeches that there is a further informal group from which we have certain expectations, I refer to citizens who have new ideas or concepts.” Later, the deputy minister added: “We need the support of all those people who are the real authorities and experts on energy matters. You name the area -- wind power, etc.; pick your own -- and I can assure you that we need on that subject a greater depth and breadth of knowledge.” Professor William E. Heronemus of the University of Massachusetts, probably the best known authority on wind power, will be speaking at a University of Sherbrooke (Quebec) seminar on wind energy in May, a few weeks from now. At both McGill University and the University of Sherbrooke, there are groups very interested in wind power conversion. Our Minister of Energy should send observers to the seminar in order to gain the “greater depth and breadth of knowledge” so eagerly sought.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): And to contribute too.

Mr. Foulds: Get him out of our hair.

Mr. Burr moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, I would like to say that tomorrow we will proceed with item No. 4 and then return to this debate of item No. 1.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 5 o’clock, p.m.