Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock p.m.

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Have the Conservative members decided to leave permanently?

Mr. Speaker: When we rose at 6 o’clock, I believe the member for Windsor West had the floor. He may continue.

Mr. Lawlor: Quite a remarkable phenomenon; hour after hour, day after day, nobody here. Don’t they like the place? Why don’t they get themselves dis-elected?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Quality matters.

Mr. Speaker: If we could hear the member for Windsor West.

An hon. member: The quality of the rest is pretty poor.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): I would endorse those remarks by my colleague from Lakeshore, Mr. Speaker. I feel that none of my speeches is really a success unless the member for Lakeshore has added something to it. I hope he does as we go on. He often gives me ideas for them, anyway, so he can contribute vocally at any time.

Mr. Lawlor: It’s talking to a vacuum at the best of times so they may as well be away.

Mr. Bounsall: That’s the agreement we have.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Bounsall: The other side would say that’s why my speeches are so non-humorous at times, because of the contribution of the member for Lakeshore, but that’s obviously said with tongue in cheek by those who know him.

l am going to speak at the moment on the auto trade pact and the responsibility which the Premier of this province (Mr. Davis) and at least the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Bennett) have in pressing the viewpoint of Ontario home to the federal government. It is a responsibility which in my opinion, they have been abrogating because the auto pact strikes right at the heart of Ontario’s economy.

In August, 1973, there were 88,800 workers employed in Ontario in the auto industry; 10.9 per cent of all the manufacturing workers in Ontario are in the auto industry. That is up slightly from the figures of March, 1973, a year ago. Obviously there are many communities in Ontario which are -- indeed the entire province is -- very dependent upon this industry and would be adversely affected by any downward revision of the auto pact or, what’s very clear now, a continuation of the status quo in the auto trade pact.

Quite briefly, as all members perhaps know, the pact became a necessity because of the deplorably depressed state of the Canadian auto industry in the late 1950s. Prof. Bladen, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, headed what became known as the Bladen commission which was established to investigate the entire situation in the auto industry in Ontario, essentially. There was no auto industry at that time in Canada outside Ontario.

The members considered all points of view of the commission and reported in the early 1960s. At that time Canada was running an enormous trade deficit with the US in automotive products. The wages were lower than those paid in the US industry and the prices of the automobiles were higher. In addition, due to the short production runs in Canada and the small Canadian market, the Canadian auto industry was protected by tariffs and was highly inefficient, productively. There appeared to Bladen to be two main alternatives and the Bladen commission, in the reports, discussed them both thoroughly.

They said rationalize the industry behind tariff walls and in Canada produce only a small number of models for the Canadian market only. The other models brought in from other countries would therefore be much, much more costly; their price would be exorbitant. Or, they said, rationalize the entire auto industry on a continental basis which guarantees a minimum level of production in Canada. At that time very few, if any, of the North American models or parts for those models were produced in any other country. Of course, that is not the case today.

As we know, the second alternative was chosen and the auto pact become operative in January, 1965.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): The sweetest deal for Canada.

Mr. Bounsall: It seemed at the time that the plan would benefit Canadian workers and consumers --

Mr. Haggerty: It has.

Mr. Bounsall: -- in both increased jobs and rates of pay, or at least about the same number of jobs.

Mr. Haggerty: It has.

Mr. Bounsall: If the member for Welland South will just hold his comments until later on, I will produce the figures and the facts that show in a lot of areas that this was not a deal that we could have or should have entered into.

The second alternative was chosen and the auto pact came in. It seemed that it would benefit the workers in both increased jobs and pay, or at least about the same number of jobs was the hope if increasing automation eliminated jobs at the ever-relentless rate it appeared to be about to do. The expectation, of course, by all Canadians -- make no mistake about that -- was that the price differential would disappear completely between US and Canadian models or at least the factory retail price differential would disappear completely as a result of the greater efficiency of production and the rationalization of the entire industry on long-run models with one plant producing all of the models of a given kind for a huge section of the market in both the US and Canada.

It was clear the main benefit, in a monetary way though, would be to the automobile manufacturers themselves. The US government agreed to the scheme primarily on the grounds of what is good for GM is good for the US, and indeed it has been quite a golden harvest for the US auto makers themselves. By rationalizing the production, as they have done right across North America, they have definitely maximized the profits.

What actually was the agreement in 1965, because it is hard for a casual reader of the newspapers to actually keep in mind what the agreement was? What were the safeguards that we hear mentioned that were inserted into the auto pact? What, in fact, was it? There were, very simply, two things. They said that the ratio of finished assembled automobile units to sales would not be ever less than the 1964 ratio of 0.92 to 1 or 92 per cent. As long as the assembly of autos in Canada did not fall below 92 per cent of sales -- the 1964 figures -- that was one of the main safeguards.

Then the Canadian added value was the second point. That would be not less than the 1964 figure in monetary terms, which was 60 per cent of the Canadian sales, that is, the production in dollar amounts from all sources. This includes parts, depredation on capital equipment and buildings, as well as the labour in assembling the vehicle, which should be no less than 60 per cent of the sales. Another way of saying it is that the Canadian content in terms of parts and labour should be no less than 60 per cent of the Canadian sales which, in effect, put a base figure on auto production, a figure of $774 million for Canadian labour and parts.

In return for these safeguards, of course, all tariffs were abolished by both countries on new parts, and new cars are transferring back and forth across the border.

In addition, and completely separate from the pact -- these two points were the only points of the pact -- the automobile companies gave letters of intent to the Canadian government, letters of understanding between the four auto-makers and the Canadian government, in which the manufacturers promised to increase production facilities in Canada by $268 million by the year 1968. In the preamble to the pact itself, the objective of what was sought to be achieved in this US-Canada auto pact was quite clearly and categorically stated.

It says: “That the trade barriers are to be liberalized to enable the industries in both countries to participate on a fair and equitable basis in the expanding market of both countries.” The keys words are “a fair and equitable basis” in the ever-expanding market.

What effect has the pact had since 1965? It certainly appears on the surface to be a success for all concerned. The car manufacturers have certainly rationalized production and maximized their profits. They, above all others, would hate to see the pact discarded or cancelled, which of course can be done by one year’s notice on the part of either the United States or Canada. The big losers would be the people who have maximized their profits, the auto companies.

It appears to be a success in terms of providing jobs for the Canadian workers, but this is slightly misleading. Since 1965 employment has increased in the automobile field in Canada, in spite of the automation that ever relentlessly reduced the jobs, but so have the sales increased tremendously. The percentage increase in jobs has not come anywhere near to matching the increase in sales, the units assembled and so forth.

It is therefore very difficult, if not impossible, to determine if the pact itself has resulted in an increase in jobs or a decrease in jobs, because without the pact one cannot tell what the employment in the industry would be since the market has expanded so much since 1965. There really is no way one can prove that.

In 1965, in dollar terms, Canada consumed 7.5 per cent of the North American output and produced four per cent. In 1973, Canada consumed eight per cent of the North American output and, in the terms of the dollar value going into those cars from all sources, produced six per cent. So we still haven’t reached that fair and equitable basis whereby our production from all sources in terms of dollar value has expanded to meet the sales that are made here in Canada.

In 1970, mainly because of the commitment by the auto industry to expand and the addition of new plants -- first in Ste. Thérèse, Que., by GM, then at Talbotville by Ford to produce the Pinto and the Maverick in 1970 -- as well as a lot of sales of Pintos and Mavericks, it looked as if the dollar value of sales for the first time would equal the dollar value of production and that perhaps they had caught up. But that, Mr. Speaker, was the only year in which the dollar value in production ever got close to equalling the dollar value in sales. That was a peculiar year in which compacts sold well.

Also contributing to that situation in 1970 was the fact that snowmobiles were added to the auto pact, something not anticipated at the time of the embarkation on the pact. At that time, Canada enjoyed, and still does enjoy, a large balance of trade in snowmobiles with the United States, which helped to even out the 1970 figures and helped to make the figures not look any worse than they are at the present time.

In terms of other benefits, wage parity has been negotiated; so, for the workers who are employed, wage parity has been achieved. It’s been a success for the US workers as well. Although they haven’t experienced the same percentage increase in jobs in assembly as have the Canadian workers, it is the type of job created in the United States as a result of the pact that has benefited the United States worker. In the auto industry, all of the design, all of the research and development, and virtually all of the purchasing, except for a small amount still done by General Motors at their Oshawa plant, are being transferred to the United States. All of the top managerial positions and all of the related secretarial positions are all in the United States -- and some of the positions in all those areas have disappeared from Canada. It is also the quality of the job as well, particularly, in which the US and the US worker has benefited.

Along with these positions that I have mentioned, those areas for the vast majority of all the skilled workers, there are the technical and managerial positions requiring persons of either advanced education or advanced training.

Indeed, it is clear that since 1965 the jobs created in Canada -- in the Talbotville plant, the St. Thérèse plant -- have all been in the labour-intensive area, in the assembly area, but not in any area that requires any skills.

So this means that Canadian workers as a result of the pact are again just one step removed from being hewers of wood and drawers of water. We have become screwers and drivers -- and that is all we have become in the auto industry as a result of the auto pact.

At a time when our society is producing highly trained, more educated people from the youth of our nations who could be employed in the auto industry, we find in Canada they do not have that opportunity.

The Liberal government has said that the auto industry is capable of standing on its own two feet without any safeguards -- and we are well beyond the 1964 level anyway. Well, that couldn’t be more wrong. As I said in a speech about two years ago, in terms of expansion there is nothing now to prevent all of the expansion in all areas of the auto industry occurring solely and simply in the United States. And this, in fact, is what has happened.

Automotive investment in 1973 was only five per cent of US investment, compared with the norm of around nine per cent. It has been below this norm ever since 1970.

This suggests that the US government is succeeding in getting the auto makers, in terms of dollar value in all of the areas, to expand and produce in the United States. This expansion is not taking place in Canada and this is quite easily seen in these figures.

Back in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968 we were always around eight per cent to 11 per cent. We are now down to five per cent of the expansion in the auto field. So if the safeguards are not negotiated upward we cannot leave the status quo as it is. We will simply find that the dollar value of Canadian contribution will continue to shrink.

The 1965 floor level will in fact become a ceiling, because no one is saying to the auto makers that they must go by the spirit of the wording in the pact -- a fair and equitable share of all expanding sales.

Expansion in both plant and equipment was needed, starting in 1972, so that now in 1974 there would be plant production facilities here to meet the 1974-1975 consumer demand.

Canadians no longer produce. This production drop will be at an ever-increasing pace from here on in. And the preservation of the present safeguards is no solution whatsoever. This represents the status quo, and we will continue to fall behind.

In fact, if we return to the 1964 level -- which was supposed to be the floor but which is now becoming the ceiling -- 35 per cent of Canadian workers now employed would be jobless. Production facilities shifting to the US, and all the expansion taking place there, is causing this to happen.

In 1972 Canadian content in a car was 44.2 per cent. In 1973 it had fallen to 43.7 as a result of expansion in the industry taking place in the US; and this will continue to be the case.

The Canadian content of North American new vehicle production as a percentage of the Canadian motor vehicle sales in 1972 was 103.2 per cent but in 1973 it had fallen to 95.7 per cent. So Canadian content of North American produced vehicles declined as a percentage of Canadian new vehicle sales from 103 per cent to 95.7 per cent in one year. Exports of cars and trucks from Canada grew by only 11 per cent to 12 per cent between 1972 and 1973, and at the same time Canadian sales, increased at more than twice that rate.

Our sales increased by 25 per cent; our exports grew between only 11 and 12 per cent. In this situation, Ontario, because of the large work force -- over 10 per cent of our work force in Ontario is associated with the auto industry -- should really be making firm proposals to the federal government, in any and all negotiations on whatever subject, that they must quit taking a laissez-faire attitude and get out there and see that the safeguards in that auto pact are increased.

Retaining the safeguards certainly doesn’t represent, as I’ve said, nearly enough. They must be drastically increased. As the auto industry expands in North America -- and there is no reason to assume that it won’t still continue, in spite of a gigantic scare over an energy crisis this winter -- the expansion of facilities that must take place in Canada should take place almost entirely in the non-assembly area. It should take place in the skilled employment area, the area of tool and dye makers and the auto parts industry.

Canada, in fact, has a vast assembly capacity and very little else. Again, my concern is that all we’ve become, because we simply assemble, is a nation of screwers of nuts and twisters of bolts.

In 1970, the ratio of passenger car production in Canada -- that is, the assembling of them -- to sales, was 1.9 to 1. In other words, we assembled 90 per cent more cars in Canada than we sold. How is it that our dollar value is so much less? It means that virtually all the parts going into all those automobiles that we assemble are produced in some other country. There were new plants being built in the last year in Portugal and in Brazil and over the last two or three years in Japan. All of these parts coming in are going into the auto companies. I think it is the Pinto that is assembled at the Talbotville plant -- not one part in that entire Pinto car is made in Canada or Ontario. Every part is imported -- the ball-bearings from Germany, the motors from Japan, etc.

In 1972, the ratio of passenger car production to sale of North American cars went to 1.77 and in 1973 fell to 1.57. You might say we are getting back on the proper side of things; the ratio of cars assembled to cars sold is decreasing. In fact you could say, simple-mindedly, with our car assembly not so far outstripping our sales in North American cars, we must be catching up in some way.

Well, exactly the reverse turns out to be true, because our assembly capacity has in fact stayed the same; all that has happened is that our sales have gone up and we have not increased in any area of the parts manufacturing industry. In fact those figures simply reflect the fact that we are not expanding in the Ontario or Canadian field because no one is forcing the auto companies to do that expansion here. Of course we should demand that we transfer to Canada, as part of an increased, updated auto pact, some of the research, design and the development work.

Canada’s sales, as I’ve said, equalled eight per cent of the North American market for North American vehicles of all kinds. Research and development should occur in Canada and design should occur in proportion to the Canadian sales. Doubt may be expressed by some people as to the feasibility of this, but I simply point out that the United States government has forced General Motors to keep all its design and entire managerial section separate. Buick is not supposed to know what Chevrolet is doing in design. What I am saying is that one section of all these different designs of all these cars and all its design components and team could very easily be moved to Canada and done here in Canada with Canadian design people.

And, of course, the factory retail price must be equalized. There is no conceivable, no defensible reason why the factory retail prices should continue to exist as a difference. I have some interesting figures on that. Mr. Speaker, two years ago it was clear, when you subtract the difference in Canadian taxes and you subtract the value of the Canadian dollar vis-a-vis the American dollar so you can actually see what the factory retail differences are, on the larger model of cars, 75 per cent of the actual price differential, amounting to as much as $400, came from a difference in factory retail price. In the smaller cars it fell to 25 per cent. But there is no justification for either of those figures being different.

I have some 1973 figures at the moment, and I have got a long list of them here, that came into my hands. I can mention some of the models. After taxes, a two-door Pinto, assembled in Talbotville and shipped to any place in the US, has a factory price in the US of $1,968. That same car, after subtraction of taxes, amounts to $2,319 in Canada. They are all assembled in Talbotville, Ont. After taxes and monetary values are subtracted, there is still $343 difference in the price, and there is no possible way that can be justified in any way. It is absolutely ridiculous, and you can go on and on and on. That represents a 19 per cent difference in factory price. The Pinto three-door has a 20 per cent difference and the Pinto wagon, 18 per cent.

As you go further up the scale, Mr. Speaker, in size of car, it gets even worse. The Ford Torino, four-door, has a 23 per cent difference and the Lincoln Continental, 25 per cent difference in factory retail price. In no way can it be explained and in no way should it be tolerated.

In General Motors the small Vega two- door has a 15 per cent difference in factory retail price after subtraction of taxes and US-Canadian dollar differences. The Chevrolet Impala sedan, has 21 per cent and the Oldsmobile Delta, 24 per cent. In the Chrysler products, the Chrysler Newport has a 19 per cent difference; the Plymouth Valiant four-door, 20 per cent difference and the Dodge Polaris, 16 per cent. In the American Motors field, the little Gremlin has a 17 per cent difference in the factory price; the Ambassador wagon, 19 per cent and the Matador four-door sedan, 23 per cent difference. None of them are justified whatsoever.

The argument that the auto companies tried to use for years was the simple-minded one, that there’s a difference in taxes. We have subtracted the taxes. The values of the Canadian-American dollar can be easily adjusted, and we subtracted those out. They had to search for something else.

They came out with the appallingly incredible line once, that it’s because in Canada we have to translate our brochures which are used across the rest of the North American continent into French. It has been estimated that the total cost of effecting all these translations, the difference in cost to the companies in having a French and English one, if you add all the costs of the French translations chargeable to Canada, is about $30,000 a year per company. If they pay more than that they are getting taken.

So the four major companies were talking about $120,000 total attributable to that. That was the single explanation they gave at one time. If you take the number of vehicles produced and divide it into $120,000, it works out to about 10 cents per vehicle. Mr. Speaker, yet the prices have a $323 difference. It’s a ludicrous argument they made. And let’s say that my estimations are out by a whole factor of 10 in terms of the cost of translations. Then it’s $1 a car difference, not $323 a car difference. There is just no justification for it whatsoever.

Now for the last couple of years we’ve had negotiations with the US where the federal government has feebly suggested that there should be tariff-free transfer of all vehicles by individuals. The answer is sure. Not one Canadian would object to automobiles being transferred across the border by individuals. If you live in Toronto go down to Detroit and buy yourself a car and drive it back. Go down to Alabama or Florida on vacation, buy a car down there and drive it back to Canada; no duty. That would be completely acceptable if the factory retail prices were equalized. We would have nothing against that whatsoever.

The only difference would therefore be the taxes. Even in the border towns, with service now being a very important factor in buying a car, I cannot see my fellow residents of Windsor flocking across to Detroit -- it isn’t very safe over there anyway -- to buy their new cars to avoid a one or two per cent difference in sales tax, or something of this sort. It just would not be done in sufficient numbers to give automobile dealers great cause for concern.

In addition, the US government has taken it to the next step; they’ve said: “What about used cars?” I say sure, let tariff-free transfer of used cars take place two years after the introduction of tariff-free importation of new cars, when from the dealers’ point of view the auto sales market has adjusted to what they can expect.

I made a suggestion that there should be a logbook provided with each car in which the name, the address and the occupation of each and every owner is listed. That logbook must stay with the car. That’s a complete record of that car and if a car has that logbook with it, then that car can be sold in Ontario irrespective of from where it comes and there need be no duty charged. Or, provided there is a logbook with that used car, an Ontario resident visiting any other province or state or any other country should be able to bring that car back into Canada duty free.

One conclusion about the auto pact that I have come to is that we’ve taken a terrific hosing. The factory retail price has not been equalized and no government of Canada seems to have put any pressure on these auto companies to ensure that that occurs. Because of that, we in this party would strongly oppose any further continentalization of any other product or rationalization of any other segment of the North American industry so that, as has happened with the Canadian auto industry, the Canadian industry comes wholly under US control.

With the auto industry firmly and entirely in US hands anyway, we have little to lose due to rationalization. We simply needed to monitor this pact so that we in Canada were sure we were getting all of the benefits.

And I say to the Premier of this province and I say to the Minister of Industry and Tourism --

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): In their absence.

Mr. Bounsall: In their absence, that’s very true -- that they should be going to Ottawa over its negotiations on other points and saying to them in the strongest possible terms. “You update the auto pact agreements so that we in fact end up with our fair and equitable share of the expanding market here in Ontario and Canada.” They have not done this; they have not taken that seriously and they are under an obligation to do so.

Let me tell you one other thing that we in Ontario here can do, Mr. Speaker. It’s very galling that whenever I want to get any of these figures that I’ve talked about and produced here tonight I have to go to the annual reports of the Present of the United States -- to the Congress and its annual reports on the operation of the automotive products trade agreement. That’s where I have to go to get my figures because these are not even collected in Canada by our federal government. There is no monitoring of that auto pact of any sort done by the Canadian government.

The Province of Ontario, to safeguard its own workers’ jobs, to safeguard the 10 per cent of all manufacturing jobs done in this province by the auto industry, could and should set up its own monitoring of this auto pact. The government then would have the figures to show Ottawa how it has been abrogating its responsibilities. If Ontario doesn’t do at least this in the area which is fully open to it to do so it is abrogating a responsibility to the workers and to the economic success and prosperity of this province. We would have some Canadian figures we could wholly trust to use in our negotiations.

With respect to the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker, there was one other area I was very disappointed in, being the labour critic for our party. I was a little bit disappointed but not unduly --

An hon. member: Was the member?

Mr. Bounsall: -- because I really didn’t expect much, but to find absolutely nothing in the Speech from the Throne in the area of labour was a little bit disconcerting. There was no reference at all to the minimum wage in the Province of Ontario; no reference at all to an increase in the minimum wage in this province. Of course, the standard position has now prevailed in Ontario as it has always prevailed; we are always behind every other province. As we stand right here today, in terms of minimum wages across Canada, either in effect or announced, we are, of course, tied for fifth place in terms of provinces. The Provinces of Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba are now ahead of us, or will be ahead of us very shortly, and the federal government is now ahead of us for its employees.

Mr. Foulds: We didn’t even make the playoffs.

Mr. Bounsall: There is a $2.20 minimum this month for a federal employee and we sit here in Ontario at $2. This is the most industrialized area in Canada and we are content to stay tied for fifth place with the other provinces and the federal government has even outstripped us.

I have made the arguments many times before. I said the government should have started a couple of years ago; it should have fixed a fair base rate and adjusted that base rate semi-annually according to the percentage increases in salaries and wages. If it took the Manitoba formula for adjusting its minimum wage, based on a percentage of the industrial wages prevailing in the province, the minimum wage that should be paid in the Province of Ontario right now would be $2.63 an hour -- and we sit content at $2 an hour.

There was not a reference to it. Maybe the announcement will come just in time for Christmas, as if the workers who are receiving it don’t know already exactly what that attempt is. It is a simple move to bamboozle them and they are not buying that any more, Mr. Speaker, in terms of the minimum wage.

There was no reference at all to increased workmen’s compensation benefits. We heard so much about that workmen’s compensation task force report. We had a bill in this House, which we debated last December, which implemented that task force’s recommended reorganization. With all that discussion, the workers across the province who heard of something going on in the Workmen’s Compensation Board were convinced -- or thought -- they might be getting increased benefits. Oh, no! Not for our Workmen’s Compensation Board recipients, those people who were injured in the workplace. Not at all.

Now, we have another Throne Speech in March, 1974, and not a mention of workmen’s compensation pension benefit increases. It is appalling. People are still on pensions based on the earnings they made 15, 25, 30 years ago in this province. No adjustment has ever been made for per cent increase in salaries and wages or the cost of living in this province. It is nothing shy of chicanery, really, and not a mention this time again.

All of us here in this House get workmen’s compensation recipients contacting us, saying, “This is what I have been offered. I have been on this pension for 17 years and never an increase. When are you going to do something?” Every member in this House gets this and nothing is done. Nothing was mentioned in this Throne Speech with respect to workmen’s compensation benefits.

The holiday situation is rather interesting, Mr. Speaker. Last December we passed a bill in this House, which was a step forward; that is why we voted for it finally. We couldn’t oppose legislation coming in in Ontario which gave an extra week’s holiday for someone in his or her first year. Someone in the first year of employment in Ontario is now guaranteed two weeks holiday.

Well, it might be interesting for the House to know that on March 13 legislation was introduced in Saskatchewan which guaranteed everybody three weeks vacation in their first year of employment. And Saskatchewan isn’t industrialized. Here’s Ontario -- with the great industrial work force we have here, in the many routine boring production jobs that require time off from that just for the worker to retain his sanity -- and we are happy to say there is two weeks holidays. Here is Saskatchewan with three weeks holidays already.

One other point that is rather interesting. I got a call just last week from a superintendent of an apartment building here in Toronto. This is one of the areas which we said would not be subject to statutory holidays and vacations in the Province of Ontario. He pointed out that he is manager of an apartment building that has 224 units and why cannot he have a right to a vacation. He and the rest of his colleagues in the apartment management business get no vacation in the Province of Ontario. A 224-apartment unit building keeps him on the go all the time. He gets a vacation only by being able to make a deal with the apartment manager of the one next to him so that that guy does double the work for a week while he gets away.

In other words, if he wants a holiday he has to work double and take over the management of a second apartment building for somebody else in return for his time off. That’s a discrimination in our holidays that has got to be removed. There may well be a lower limit you want to put on the number of units. You might say a manager who is a manager of a 20-unit building has really only a part-time job anyway and he can always get away a few hours a day or maybe two or three days at a time. In a 20-unit building you may well have tenants who know each other and they may well have someone within the building who would be happy to manage it for a week and hold off their problems until he comes back.

But in a 200-unit apartment building that situation is an impossibility. Yet we say to this guy, “No, sir, you don’t have any right to any vacations at all in this province.” That and other holiday anomalies have got to be removed from that legislation.

I am going to speak very briefly on the situation of Hydro tonight, Mr. Speaker, very briefly. I have been deeply involved with the Hydro transmission corridors and the expansion of the problems involved with and the public concern over the expansion of the nuclear generation plants, particularly up at Douglas Point in Bruce county, and other concerns about other nuclear plants being built across Ontario.

I had a very productive meeting today with some of the top workers -- not the top management, but some of the top department workers of Hydro -- with respect to how they go about, and how they are going to go about in the future, treating the farmers across whose land the Hydro transmission corridors occur, and how they will go about seeing that they get a fair offer. In the situation that arose in getting the power lines and buying up the land for the power transmission lines down from Douglas Point, from Bradley station down to Wingham station particularly, it was absolutely appalling the way in which the purchasers for Hydro treated those farmers.

We fully understand that if you have a farmer who does not want to sell any bit of his property, who is concerned about the value which his farm now has in producing food which is in short supply in this world, that farmer is seeing himself now as a rather more important person in the economic life of our- country, something which he hasn’t been for a few years. If he is utterly opposed to that hydro line going across his farm, the Hydro person going in to try to negotiate a sale can’t ever be right in those farmers’ terms. But they have just been incredibly screwed about by the Hydro negotiators.

Hydro have realized this. They have realized some of their errors. At least, they said they did today. They have said the way in which they are going to set about redressing this for the future. But just a word to Hydro: You had better train the people in this field very carefully. You had better have them spend five, six, seven hours if need be with the farmer on first contact so that he absolutely knows all the parameters in terms of the purchase. He knows all of the situations in which he can lease it back or not lease it back.

One of the other options as well, if the farmer therefore finds the whole thing intolerable, would be to sell his farm to Hydro and let Hydro lease it out or lease it out through ARDA; or sell it again on the open market if that particular farmer doesn’t want to get involved.

We will be looking very closely at this because of the conversation I had today, as to just how much Hydro will live up to its commitment to treat the people, particularly farmers, whose lands and livelihood they are playing around with -- how well they treat them in the future in the land purchases they obtain from them.

I was up in Kincardine a couple of weeks ago at a public meeting put on by Hydro to explain the safety or lack thereof, and the reasons for the expansion of their nuclear generating plant at Douglas Point. I was very impressed with that meeting. Their technical staff was there and no matter how emotional the comments were from the floor they took the time to explain the situation in laymen’s terms as carefully as they could. Being a research chemist, I can assure the House that in terms of the operation of these nuclear generating plants -- this CANDU system which Canada has developed for nuclear power generation -- they are absolutely safe. Short of bombs landing directly on the plants, there is no way that these reactors can either get out of hand or can be easily sabotaged.

If you think of a nut trying to come into the plant to do something which will sabotage that plant or cause vast leakages of radiation, that just can’t occur.

Mr. Foulds: Not even the member for Scarborough Centre (Mr. Drea).

Mr. Bounsall: So that indeed is reassuring.

Several other points, though, need to be of concern to the Canadian public. They still have not yet solved what to do with the radioactive waste materials. At the moment they are keeping them in concrete containers under guard. When I asked at that meeting what was the volume of radioactive waste that needed to be stored, because they had not mentioned any volume, they said by 1990, based on what they had and the plants they have set up, it will be only a rather small total volume. I pressed them again on it and they said “from our calculations it is a six-storey building the size of a football field.”

Now one can look at that in two ways. One can say that’s pretty big, or that’s not so big in terms of what you can find around the country in underground storage facilities and lead-lined concrete containers to hold a volume of material equal to a six-storey building the size of a football field. In all of Ontario one might be able to find that capacity.

But the problem is the half life of radiation is about 7,000 years -- meaning half of the radiation level will have decreased in 7,000 years. For radiation to be nil takes about six or seven half lives. We are talking about that stuff being held in those containers for 40,000 to 50,000 years.

Mr. Haggerty: That’s no problem.

Mr. Bounsall: I can see our great, great grandchildren, ever so far removed, cursing our generation for handing a storage problem of radioactive waste on to them in the way that we are doing it. With each nuclear generating station that we build we are going to be producing more radioactive waste which is going to have to be stored for this length of time; and that is a real concern to me in terms of what we are handing on to future generations.

The storage facilities themselves present difficulties. They wear out in about 50 years. So we are always going to have to be going through a continuous process of transferring these stored radioactive wastes from one place to another; from one storage tank which is starting to wear out into another one. And we are going to hand this problem on for 40,000 or 50,000 years from the volume which we will have in 1990. I am not so sure we have the moral right to do that.

I would really question that whole area of proceeding blithely ahead with nuclear power generation, even though the production of it, as far as the operation of the plant goes, is safe, 10 times as safe in its operation, as any other nuclear design, particularly the system in the United States.

Whenever you bring this up to Hydro -- and I must admit that Hydro officials don’t make these decisions; these decisions are going to be made by, essentially, the Minister of Energy here in Ontario (Mr. McKeough) -- their reply is: “Well you know, what’s the alternative, going back to coal-steam generation?” I say no, that’s not the alternative, that’s the bogeyman which they bring out, that by 1990 we’re going to be dependent upon coal for energy generation.

The present Minister of Health (Mr. Miller), one of the two other engineers in the House, I forget whether it was a year ago in his speech in the Throne Speech debate, or last fall in a budget address, laid out the technology of hydrogen production from water. And he is right on, his figures were correct; we are only 15 years away from it being technologically feasible, in economic terms, to take water and extract from it the hydrogen that’s going to be replacing natural gas as our main source of heat and energy from 1990.

What I’m saying is if a nuclear station is not to be built and some other form of energy is used in that plant it will be a hydrogen-operated plant; and the only product of hydrogen’s combustion is the very clean water vapour itself. That’s the type of thing to which we can be looking forward and to which we should be looking forward.

Let me say something else: If the Province of Ontario really wanted to be serious in this whole field, Mr. Speaker, they would, in fact, give funds and approve research projects to speed up that process of technological advance. They would give funds to the Ontario Research Foundation so that the 15-year period on feasibility could be reduced to possibly eight or 10 years so that we wouldn’t have to build colossally costly pipelines from Baffin Island to get some natural gas down here.

We could be producing hydrogen gas and replacing natural gas in this province in eight to 10 years if this Minister of Energy and this cabinet wanted to make that commitment in research funds. Give it to the Ontario Research Foundation and get the patents on the process, the same as was done with the CANDU nuclear plant. There’s a forward step which the province can take and get for itself a product which can be marketable.

In those terms I have something to say about the Ontario Research Foundation.

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Yes, but the cabinet isn’t listening.

Mr. Foulds: Sure he is.

Mr. Bounsall: There are some prospective cabinet ministers over there, perhaps.

Mr. Foulds: Possibly some recycled ones.

An hon. member: Stick around a while.

Mr. Bounsall: We can trust those gentlemen over there to pass the good word along. The Premier is always prone to say he always reads Hansard.

Mr. Foulds: See the member for Carleton East light up at that suggestion.

Mr. A. B. R. Lawrence (Carleton East): I don’t think I have ever seen one recycled in here.

Mr. Bounsall: I want to say a word about the Ontario Research Foundation. You know, Mr. Speaker, Ontario has reneged completely on its commitments to do any sort of research or have any sort of research endeavour in this province. Let me give the members some of the figures.

In 1964-1965, through the Ontario Research Foundation, the Province of Ontario spent $4,753 million. From there it started to taper off, and then picked up again so slowly it’s not even worth remarking. I won’t give you all the figures, Mr. Speaker.

In 1970-1971 there was $1,485 million; a little bit of a jump between 1970-1971 and 1971-1972 in which the figure reads $2,215 million.

What was the jump between that year and 1972-1973, in spite of the cost of living going up tremendous: $2,224 million. That, if my calculations are correct, represents about half of one per cent increase in research-fund spending by this province.

Members say what might be a proper expenditure level on research in this province? The Province of Ontario is roughly about five times as large in population as the Province of Alberta. The figure for 1972-1973 in Ontario was $2,224 million to our Ontario Research Foundation. In Alberta, in that same year, the amount was $3,935,000. Alberta has a commitment to the Alberta Research Council to put funds in there to see that some original research is done as well as applied research that will be of benefit to the people of the Province of Alberta. They have put a lot of funds into the petroleum research section of the Alberta Research Council.

We are producing electrical energy by nuclear means in this province, and we have got a means of replacing that energy with hydrogen. We could well put those kinds of funds for that type of research into the Ontario Research Foundation or farm it out to other places if it can be bought more cheaply elsewhere in Ontario. And if those funds go to corporations in the United States, do it here. We should see that that is done.

If we funded research on the same per capita basis as the Province of Alberta, in the fiscal year 1972-1973 we would have spent over $20 million on research into problems in which this province is interested, as opposed to the $2 million that we did spend.

In other words, we are spending a factor of 10 less than we should be spending relative to the per capita expenditure in the Province of Alberta. And we have vastly more government funding at our disposal to do this than has the Province of Alberta.

What I am saying is that the $4 million expenditure in Alberta costs the taxpayer of Alberta a hell of a lot more in sweat and tears than the same per capita amount would in this province. We, as a government, could spend twice as much as that on research -- even $40 million -- before we would even start feeling the pinch. We have certainly abdicated our entire responsibility in this field.

Mr. Foulds: Absolutely.

Mr. Bounsall: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say a few remarks tonight about the arrangements -- not so much the arrangements, but the distribution of the food in the members’ cafeteria, down below. Having reached this time of night, I don’t think I will spend much time on this subject, except to relate one incident.

A party of us went in there once, shortly after it was opened, and the waitress was serving 23 different locations. No wonder it took an hour and 20 minutes to get in there, gulp down our lunch when it finally arrived, and then leave. She was overworked.

It seems to me they have slightly increased their staff, but let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, part of their problem is the menu. I walked in there once last week, and because I am from Windsor I said to the waitress, “I’ll take the Windsor soup.” She said, “Well, the Windsor soup is...”

“Don’t bother to tell me, I’ll just take it.”

Presumably, because the menu said, “Windsor soup,” she felt impelled to tell everybody who ordered Windsor soup what it was. This was at lunch time, and it certainly would take up some time.

The Windsor soup happened to be old chicken gumbo with some noodles tossed in. That’s Windsor soup! I wouldn’t advise anyone to try it. I can’t see why chicken gumbo with noodles added somehow is a connotation of Windsor -- but there it was, Windsor soup.

Mr. Foulds: That is what they do in Windsor Castle.

Mr. Bounsall: Add noodles to the chicken gumbo soup? Ah yes.

When I got to the main portion of the meal, I said, “I’ll take the omelette of the day.” She said, “The omelette of the day...” I said, “Don’t bother telling me. I’ll just take the omelette of the day. I’m in a hurry.” Well, the omelette of the day turned out to be the omelette that was featured on the left-hand side -- the omelette with kidneys in it.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Kidneys in the omelette!

Mr. Bounsall: On the left-hand side, in the dinner section, it was described as “omelette with kidneys and mushrooms.” On the other side, where I ordered it from, it was the “omelette du jour.” It was the same thing that was on the left. I thought, “Well I have gone this far...” so I said, “For dessert, give me the coupe St. Jacques.” She said, “The coupe St. Jacques is…” “Never mind what the coupe St. Jacques is. Whatever the hell it is, I’ll eat it.” On every item I ordered she was prepared’ to give me a two-minute explanation as to what it was. People were lined up out the door of the members’ dining room waiting to eat, and we had to go through these explanations!

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): That’s the personal touch.

Mr. Bounsall: Well, if anyone wants to know what coupe St. Jacques is, just go down and try it. I’m not even going to tell what coupe St. Jacques is.

Mr. Foulds: Or ask the Minister for Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle).

Mr. Deans: But it certainly has prompted this speech.

Mr. Bounsall: One other thing: I had a couple of complaints. We were all upset in this House when the ground rules were being set up for that dining room, that staff were going to be excluded unless accompanied by a member. And although there were enough remarks and petitions that that proposed rule was changed, I am not sure the attitude has changed one iota.

I have had two or three complaints come to me about staff not being allowed in there unless they were able to be seated at a table by themselves. A couple of times I sat there and watched, and sure enough, there are two MPPs at a four-person table or three MPPs at a four-person table and there is the staff lining up outside. No way will that employee who is on the door let them come in and find their place with an MPP. If there are two other staff people at a table, and two staff people lining up waiting to get in, they’ll be ushered in and .seated with the other staff. In no way is that guy going to let them sit with MPPs. I think that attitude had better disappear.

In fact, there is one incident I noticed in particular, having watched for it. There is a lady who has been employed around here for a great many years who walked in to be seated by herself. She is well known to all the MPPs. She is employed in a capacity in which she does work for us all and is in contact with us from time to time. There were three MPPs and four chairs at our table and the same was true over lunch at various other tables. She was not allowed the freedom to walk in and even ask MPPs with vacant chairs at their table if she could join them. There wouldn’t have been one of us who would have turned her down. Because she couldn’t take the time to wait until presumably a table opened up in some other location, she left.

I don’t think that attitude, that was written down in black and white and which we thought we had changed so that staff could eat there, has really been carried through. Someone, the Speaker preferably, or the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Snow) secondarily, should talk to whoever is managing that place and see that that type of attitude is not continued.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): Mr. Speaker, in rising at this time, I would like to go through a few of the formalities associated with the Speech from the Throne. Rather than congratulating you, Mr. Speaker, and adding to your already imposing list of credits from this session, I would like to offer my congratulations at this time to what I would like to call your unsung help, that is, the member for Northumberland (Mr. Rowe), who so capably served as deputy Speaker. I think that he deserves a special plaudit, sir, because rank of course always has its privileges. I think there is usually a tendency to reserve the better debates for oneself and, unfortunately, the deputy gets those of a lesser light.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Not in this particular case.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): Is that why we have the Speaker in the chair now? Is that what the member is saying. Is that the implication?

Mr. Drea: I hadn’t even thought of it. I was going to be peaceful tonight. I started off in a nice way and the member for Sarnia has now provoked me.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Oh, dear!

Mr. Bullbrook: The member said the Speaker reserves the best debates for himself and he is in the chair now.

Mr. Drea: I did not say that.

Mr. Reid: That is what he said. He said rank has its privileges.

Mr. Drea: I said rank had its privileges, and there was a tendency, Mr. Speaker, I suggested, for your deputy --

Mr. Breithaupt: Try to carry on.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): It is difficult.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, to come back to my congratulations to your deputy, I think he does an outstanding job, particularly because it is upon his shoulders there are inflicted the numerous tedious operations in this chamber, particularly --

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): He would do a better job if he could count.

Mr. Drea: -- the number of endless replies to the Speech from the Throne and, I suppose, commencing the week after next a seemingly endless number of replies to the budget address. I would also like to offer my congratulations to the member for York North (Mr. W. Hodgson) who serves as assistant to the deputy Speaker and also as chairman of the committee of the whole House.

Mr. Shulman: He can’t count either.

Mr. Drea: I also offer my congratulations to my colleagues who are not on the official roster but nonetheless do sit in, particularly during the time of the estimates -- the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Mr. Wardle) and the member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. R. G. Hodgson).

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to point out that since the last session two of our attendants have retired, Mr. Cy Saunders and Mr. Stan Stevens. When I had guests or other members had guests both of those gentlemen were most courteous to them. They were most helpful to them in the Speaker’s gallery, sir, and I certainly hope that they --

Mr. Bullbrook: They didn’t retire. They were told to retire.

Mr. Reid: They didn’t do it voluntarily.

Mr. Bullbrook: Does the member realize that, they were told to retire?

Mr. Drea: The member is stealing my line. Would he just hold for a moment?

Mr. Bullbrook: Oh, I am sorry. The member had said “retired.”

Mr. Drea: Well, we were coming into something else.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: I would wish them well in whatever endeavours they are doing now. But I would point out to you, sir -- and I suppose it’s because I have perhaps an aversion for uniforms -- I for one do not think that having attendants dressed up as some kind of a policeman or some kind of a security guard either lends any dignity or any decor to something as traditional, as peaceful and as symbolic to the citizens of the province as this chamber.

Now, sir, I realize there is a tendency in government, particularly this government -- and if I recall the words of my friend from the press gallery, Mr. O’Hearn, correctly, it seems to be the last watering place for every retired general that is around -- there seems to be a growing tendency here to put all kinds of people into some type of uniform. I suggest to you, sir, and most respectfully, I would --

Mr. Shulman: Wait until the member sees the uniforms they are getting for the NDP.

Mr. Drea: I didn’t get it; what was it?

Mr. Shulman: They are going to put us all in uniforms next year.

Mr. Drea: Oh, I think they’d like to; I think they’d like to.

Mr. Deans: Some of us will be in straitjackets.

An hon. member: It may be; it may be.

Mr. Drea: Speak for oneself. But, Mr. Speaker, with the deepest of respect, I submit to you, sir, that it is a discordant note in this chamber to have attendants in that particular style of uniform. I would suggest to you, sir, perhaps a blue pin-striped suit, or something of that calibre.

Mr. Singer: With a vest.

Mr. Reid: As long as it’s blue.

Mr. Drea: I think that the presence of a uniform in the corners here, to me is a very discordant note --

Mr. Deans: A sword?

Mr. Drea: Discordant.

If you would take a sampling of opinion, Mr. Speaker, I think that perhaps some changes in that area might be accomplished. And since it was brought to my attention about the fact --

Mr. Shulman: That’s an important one.

Mr. Drea: -- that Mr. Saunders and Mr. Stevens were asked to retire --

Mr. Deans: Because they couldn’t afford to buy uniforms.

Mr. Drea: -- well, I wish them well. I wish that they hadn’t been asked to retire because I think, quite frankly, that we are getting to be too security conscious around here. In fact, I think we are on the verge of becoming security nuts. The old system seemed to work very well in this chamber, when a rather middle-aged or senior gentleman could make sure that people were seated in the proper gallery. With all due respect to everyone, sir, I really don’t think there is a threat to life and limb every day in this chamber. I think we are going the way of the United States and other jurisdictions without any reason to do so.

Mr. Bullbrook: The member should come to the question period.

Mr. Singer: The changes in public life are misconstrued.

Mr. Drea: Yes.

Mr. Shulman: We’ll die of boredom, that’s the only thing we’ll die of in here.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, as is usually my custom in the Throne debate, I would like to say a few things about some problems in my riding --

Mr. Reid: That’s unusual.

Mr. Drea: -- in the borough of Scarborough, and as they relate to other matters across this province.

Mr. Bullbrook: Does the member mean he is going to retire?

Mr. Reid: Retire again.

Mr. Drea: First of all, sir, I would like to talk about electricity. Over the past year we have been mesmerized to some degree that supposedly in Canada we have an energy crisis. I have yet to find that in this country we really have any kind of an energy situation, sir, that justifies the use of the word “crisis.” However, that is not to say that in the future we will not reach the point where other industrialized nations found themselves last year where, because of increased consumption and increased demand, the inability of the existing systems to carry the load for that consumption and demand would place us in a situation where there is something of scarcity.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to point out to you something from the annual report of the utilities commission for the borough of Scarborough -- and I think this has some significance. I want to talk for a few moments after this about a rather insidious movement toward eliminating the elected members from either public utilities commissions or hydro commissions, whatever they are called in particular areas.

Mr. Speaker, in the last seven years in Scarborough the population has increased by 37 per cent but there has been a 59 per cent increase in the domestic usage of electric power. And I think that is of some significance. As they point out here, this reflects the greater use of electricity by borough residents for space heating as well as in utilizing many more electrical appliances. And the trend is expected to continue, due to the energy crisis and the scarcity of fossil fuels.

Now then, Mr. Speaker, with an increase in electric power consumption that is running far ahead of a population increase there would be a tendency to believe that a public utilities commission, like the one that so ably serves the borough where my riding is, would have a tremendous increase in the number of its employees. Yet, Mr. Speaker, despite the 37 per cent increase in population and the almost 60 per cent increase in domestic electrical consumption, the staff has increased only 22 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, two of the commissioners on the Scarborough public utilities commission must face the electors every two years. The third commissioner is the mayor serving in an ex officio capacity; to remain there he also has to face the electors every two years. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that one of the reasons for the remarkable record of the Scarborough public utilities commission is that those people are elected. They have to face the people. If they go to the electorate and say, “We are going to run your public utilities in a businesslike and efficient manner,” and the rates go skyhigh then there will be replacements, and rightfully so.

But, sir, we are only about a year away in this province from concerted drives by local municipal councils that there become a provincial policy to amalgamate hydro commissions and, as the price of amalgamation, that commissioners be appointed. The argument somehow goes --

Mr. Shulman: It’s a Communist plot.

Mr. Drea: -- that the public is not really in a position to determine the quality of the commissioners who put themselves up for election, that it would be better done in a calm and meaningful discussion by the council.

Sir, I suggest to you that the record of Ontario Hydro in bringing electricity to this province and keeping abreast of increasing consumer and industrial demand, of meeting the challenges of a technological society, of being able to provide you with electricity, whether for industrial or domestic use anywhere in the province, that while they may get the glory for this, it has been the local public utilities commissions that have been doing the work over all the years. It may be all very well to honour Sir Adam Beck. It may be all very well to honour every Hydro chairman down through the years. But were it not for the local hydro or public utilities commissions nothing very much would have been accomplished.

Now, I suggest to you that what the municipal councils want to do is to raid the treasuries of the hydro commissions and they also want to make it a sinecure for retired politicians, rather than allowing the public a direct voice in the operation of their local public utility. And I think this has deep significance for us, sir, because there is a difference between the lifestyle in Ontario and that of other jurisdictions. One of the primary differences is that electricity long ago was recognized as a public utility, owned by and operated for the public; and the public is provided power at probably the most reasonable rate on the continent. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that to begin to tamper by merging, by amalgamating, by getting rid of elected officials, we are going the road, which, in some other areas, other jurisdictions have gone. Bigness, efficiency and appointments may sound very well on paper, but when it comes down to it I have pretty basic faith in people to determine and to elect the kind of person who can represent them.

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): Now he is talking; now the member is talking sense.

Mr. Drea: I was just pointing out that record of accomplishment. I know of no government under which population has increased 37 per cent or production by 60 per cent that has increased its staff by only 22 per cent and still can meet the need. When government gets into the game with appointments, sir, the staff goes far beyond any type of production, any type of service, any type of anything.

Perhaps a little bit later in my remarks tonight, while I read to members some of the development courses for our civil servants for which they and I are paying, we may see the reason why more and more buildings apparently are required to house the bureaucracy.

Secondly, sir, on a matter that, while I think it is in need of immediate attention in the borough of Scarborough, I think it is also, because of economic trends and because of the situation in housing, going to become a significant problem for urban dwellers in the very near future; and I am referring to the old question of the invisible population or the hidden population, the ones who live in basement apartments. Primarily because of zoning and secondly because of taxes, these people are never reported.

The reason they are called hidden, of course, is that they are there. Their children are using the schools. They are contributing to the waste disposal problem. They are demanding and crowding the recreational facilities.

I think if the people who live in that basement apartment had their options they have no intention of cheating the municipality; they would pay their taxes, they would pay their way. But it is the owner of the home who tells them they should keep it the way it is or they will have to get out.

With the present shortage of housing, particularly for lower income groups or for older people, there is a tendency, sir, for more and more of these basements to be converted into living quarters without the knowledge of the provincial assessors; or indeed without any knowledge by the local fire departments or other people who are and should be concerned about this situation.

Now of course the history of the basement apartment is one that I suppose was brought about by zoning. In the after-the-war years people wanted -- well I don’t really know if they wanted, they were once again taken in by the planners. Planning doesn’t appear anywhere in this province in regard to housing until well after World War II. I somehow think that in a lot of ways the unplanned portion of the province is better than the planned one.

However, the planners brought in this zoning and everyone was supposed to live in the same kind of house on the same kind of street, with the circular drive; you were going to be with the same kind of families and this was going to really reorganize society, and so on and so forth. Of course 25 years later we know that it didn’t work.

But in any event, there was a tendency in the day of the high basement, the full basement which no longer exists, that that could be converted into living quarters and that was how you helped ease the cost of the second mortgage. Of course you were at the mercy of your neighbours, Mr. Speaker, because if they called the zoning inspector he could order you to remove those tenants because you were breaking the zoning law. So therefore you wouldn’t pay taxes because the mere payment of taxes would be a prima facie case that you had broken the zoning law and a mere reading of the names of the occupants of the household would be sufficient for a zoning inspector or a bylaw enforcement person. They could simply call at the door and say that either the people moved and the basement was converted from rentable tenants’ quarters into what it was intended for in the house, or they would have to take action. Over the years there has developed an underground style of life in Toronto and now, particularly, in the suburbs.

Older people, Mr. Speaker, are finding it very difficult to keep up with taxes and therefore they put somebody into the basement apartment. That person’s rent, since it is never declared, helps defray the cost of taxation, so on and so forth, and this really enables them to keep their home. But now, sir, I suggest we are at the crunch in this situation.

I think the time has come when the province has to get really tough and take some decisive action. I think, quite frankly, we are going to have to come up with some type of legislation or programme which will offer amnesty to those who have been renting basement apartments. We are now in a situation in which many of these homes are older, probably more prone to fire than they were in the beginning, and, Mr. Speaker, there’s an awful lot of concern about rooming houses in Toronto now and the number of people who have been burned to death in them.

I know of no basement apartment which has more than one exit. If anything happens in that basement, there is only one stairway out and I suggest this is indeed a dangerous situation, particularly when the people who use this type of accommodation most are either older persons -- and therefore less able to race up a flight of stairs to beat the fire -- or families with a number of young children.

Of course, the problem has been that the assessment officer -- or the assessor when he was a municipal employee -- supposedly had powers to come into one’s home. He does have the power. However, there are a great number of people who take a certain amount of umbrage at that. They do believe that their home is their own castle and therefore there has been a kind of resentment, particularly in the new round of assessments.

The fire department, of course, if it really wants to, does have the right to come in and inspect one’s home. It may, by necessity, have to go and obtain a court order but it can do this. Unfortunately, the fire departments have more than enough work to do and if they find homes where people do not answer the doorbell for them, as I say they have more than enough work to do, therefore they do not bother.

Sir, there are two questions in this. One, with municipal taxes, particularly in Metropolitan Toronto going to soar in the next month or so -- and I mean really go just about out of sight -- there is the question of taxes. If these establishments were legalized, we could put a levy on the owners and they would pay their proper tax to the municipality. I don’t really think that after the neighbourhood has been accustomed over the years to two families living in that supposed one-family home there is going to be any demand in the neighbourhood for mass evictions or so on and so forth. They have known for years. They know the situation is there but they are powerless to do anything about it. So one, there is the question of taxes; two, there is the question of the enormous costs of schools.

Mr. Speaker, I have an area in my riding where, according to the official count -- according to the census count, according to the assessment, according to everything -- there are sufficient schools, there are sufficient playgrounds, there is sufficient everything -- but everything over there is jammed to death because about one-third of the people in the area are from that hidden population

It is also very difficult, Mr. Speaker, to turn back the tide of some rather ruthless developers, because after all they take the figures and they say: “There are X number of people living in this area. According to the standards there can be this number: we are well within the limit, we should have the maximum density permitted by law.” When you go to argue that, Mr. Speaker, you are confronted with those figures. Everybody admits that the figures are erroneous, that of course there is a hidden population in those basements, but nobody can do anything about it and you are stuck with those figures. Therefore you wind up getting highrise apartment houses, 60 residents to the acre; stacked town houses 30 to the acre, in an area where there shouldn’t probably be anything more than single homes.

And you can’t fight it, sir. You cannot fight it before the planning board because they read you those erroneous figures. You can’t fight it before the council because once again it is the matter of record of those figures. You can’t fight it before the OMB because they say according to the figures that area is not overcrowded. So once again the bureaucracy has triumphed.

It was the planning by the bureaucrats of particular kinds of houses that got people into the basement apartment situation in the first place. It was the lack of planning by all the bureaucrats who were supposed to be able to do something to provide houses. And I say all the bureaucrats -- municipal, provincial and federal. It was their lack of planning that has landed us in a situation where there aren’t enough houses for people even if they could afford them.

Now it is the bureaucrats who are rattling off official figures while saying of course they are not really official, that there is a hidden population. Once again the whole burden passes back on to the individual who went into a neighbourhood, who bought or who rented accommodation in good faith and wanted only to be left alone. Now he is finding out that because of some peculiar arithmetic and the refusal particularly of the assessment branch of our Ministry of Revenue to face up to the situation, that there really is no remedy for them.

I suggest to you, sir, as I mentioned a few moments ago, I think three steps are needed -- and by the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Meen).

The first step is that the assessment officers, particularly at this time when everything is being reassessed, go down and inspect those basements and if they are equipped as a basement apartment, regardless of whether there is someone in there, that this is drawn to the attention of the municipality.

Secondly, it is necessary that the fire department inspectors be given more power that will give them the right to look into those homes. You know, Mr. Speaker, the fireman is a pretty nice guy. He is really not interested in what you are doing in that house, he just doesn’t want you to burn to death in the middle of the night. Certainly he doesn’t want to be there when some poor little kid couldn’t get up the stairs and nobody knows there is a little kid in there because there really isn’t any population in the basement of that house, it’s single family residential. I think the fire department should have far more power.

Finally, I suggest that the Minister of Revenue makes it abundantly plain to the municipalities through his assessment people that we are going to allow them to impose the full burden of municipal taxes upon that dwelling, regardless of whether that basement is rented out or not. Because, Mr. Speaker, if you have a basement apartment equipped to rent, sir, you will rent it sooner or later. It is like buying a licence for an automobile; it may be parked in a field, but sooner or later you are going to put it on the road and that’s why we want the licence on it.

I realize that this is a bit of a local problem but I suggest to you it is going to spread across this province. It is going to spread into the smaller communities. And I think the final crunch is you can imagine people saying, “We are overcrowded in this area. We don’t want to be dumped in with another huge highrise,” and the figures that show this area is underpopulated come back to haunt them.

Of course, it’s one thing for me to know that, Mr. Speaker, and it’s another thing for you to know it, but it doesn’t do one a single bit of good before the Ontario Municipal Board. That fellow just leans over and says, “I’ve got the figures and that’s what we go with.”

I think it’s unfair to the people who own houses, Mr. Speaker. I think it’s unfair to the people who, by economic or social circumstances beyond their control, reside in basement apartments. I think they have a stake in this. This is a Legislature which is supposed to be responsible to all the people of Ontario including those who are in this type of accommodation. I think it’s about time the Minister of Revenue -- I congratulate him on his new post -- stopped hiding behind a bureaucratic screen, passing the problem to somebody else, and came up with a policy that the buck stops here and we’re going to do something to bring out the underground population of the Province of Ontario.

I don’t think there would be a revolution, Mr. Speaker. In fact, for the tax coffer, municipalities might be able to lower the mill rates a bit if we end the kind of nonsense that’s been going on for a number of years.

Now, sir, turning to the contents of the speech itself, for the second year I am somewhat disillusioned, but only in one regard and that is a rather parochial matter. Mr. Speaker, I am a little disillusioned again because my friend, the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells), has not accepted my request that there be an assistant Deputy Minister of Education for separate schools in this province.

Mr. Bounsall: Good idea.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you that the time has come, particularly with a piece of legislation which we are going to consider in this session, the consolidation of the school boards Act, or whatever the title is.

Mr. Bounsall: How about one for the French schools, too?

Mr. Drea: What?

Mr. Bounsall: How about one for the French schools?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): There is one.

Mr. Drea: There is one but not for the separate schools.

Mr. Bounsall: Oh.

Mr. Drea: I’m going to come to that. Before the assistant deputy minister for French education was put in there was an identical problem. I think that since the appointment of that person -- and it’s my understanding that that is not the title but it is clearly understood that is the status so it’s the same thing -- this has certainly proved a great shot-in-the arm for the educational aspirations of Franco-Ontarians in this province.

Mr. Speaker, the reason I raised this -- about an assistant deputy minister for separate schools -- is that we are consolidating the school Acts and we shall probably achieve that consolidation in this session. Of course, in that consolidation, sir, the very words “separate schools” are going to disappear. You know and I know, because of the fact that we belong to the party which has done more for separate schools and for Catholic education than any other political party in North America.

Mr. Bounsall: What about Quebec?

Mr. Drea: We have done more. I have children in the separate schools and they were broke until this government put money into them. The Premier at that time was John Robarts and the Minister of Education was the present Premier. The NDP’s 80 per cent --

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for

Resources Development): Even Father Matthews says that.

Mr. Drea: Its blank cheque policy of paying 80 per cent of whatever the boards of education decide to do would be taking money away from a great many separate school boards because they are subsidized far more than 80 per cent.

Mr. Breithaupt: That is ridiculous and the member knows it. That is absolutely ridiculous.

Mr. Reid: He is getting paranoid.

Mr. Drea: As I said, Mr. Speaker, you know and I know the tremendous advances of separate school and Catholic education in this province because of this government. With the consolidation that title separate schools is going to disappear.

Mr. Deans: Great government, great province, super world to be in.

Mr. Drea: Secondly, Mr. Speaker, there is the continuing question of the status of separate school education after grade 10. Since I have children in the system and I am a product of the separate school system --

Mr. Deans: They deny that.

Mr. Drea: No, they are very proud of me.

Mr. Deans: Oh I’m sorry. They are proud of the member. I beg his pardon. Just watch his arm doesn’t break patting himself on the back.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He is patting his children on the back. Nothing wrong with that.

Mr. Drea: Well, the suggestion that was made to me by my hon. friend was that my children weren’t very proud of me.

Mr. Deans: No, no. I said the system was not proud. I am sure the member’s children are quite rightly proud of him.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, regarding the separate schools and coming back to the point that I was making. There is the continuing difficulty in finding a mutually acceptable solution to the problem of separate school education in grades 11, 12 and 13. The separate schools -- and I really don’t want to reopen that particular question, although I want to make it abundantly plain that I support the decision of the party to which I belong and the position of my leader, the Premier. But there is that question, and there is the overview in it that sooner or later we are going to have to get into the sharing of facilities.

Mr. Deans: It is causing a lot of problems.

Mr. Drea: I just don’t think there is enough money in this province to run two or perhaps even 2¼ or 2½ school systems side by side all the way from kindergarten to grade 13.

I also frankly don’t think it would be very fair to a number of children because, of course, the separate school education does not include vocational education anywhere in this province. Therefore, even if it was to continue on through grades 11, 12 and 13, it would be academic education and would benefit only a small minority -- I shouldn’t say small minority -- a minority of the children who are in those grades.

But because of this consolidation, sir, and the elimination of separate schools as a title in the law, I think the time has come that we allay all the fears and suspicions. I know those fears and suspicions are unfounded, Mr. Speaker, and I think that so do you.

This government has no intention of destroying the separate school system in this province. As a matter of fact it is the stated policy of this government to enhance all forms of education in this province.

But I think the appointment of the assistant deputy minister at this time would do for the separate schools in this time of change exactly what the appointment in the French education field did for the Franco-Ontarians when the great change was being made in their education. And after all, Mr. Speaker, that was a very significant change because most of the French-language schools came out of the separate school system. And because they were dealing in the French language from kindergarten to grade 13, they in essence became part of the public school system.

Above and beyond the question of just a different language as the language of instruction, I think that question also was taken into account in the appointment of the person with the status of assistant deputy minister as a focal point for people who were concerned or interested in that particular aspect of education in Ontario. I suggest to you the same would happen in the separate schools.

There was a newspaper article in the Globe and Mail last week by Father Matthews, which incidentally pointed out the rather remarkable financial contributions of this government to the separate school system. But it was also pointed out that there was fear, and there was uncertainty, and there was some apprehension.

I think the appointment of a person to this post in the Ministry of Education would ease that and would provide, I would hope, a climate whereby men and women of goodwill from the public school system, from the separate school system, and from the ministry, could work out a system of shared facilities which would I would hope permanently solve the question of funding of separate school education in grades 11, 12 and 13. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that this question was worked out at the university level many, many years ago and their sharing of facilities certainly has enhanced education.

Mr. Speaker, I say to you and I say to the Minister of Education -- I wish he was here tonight -- that I don’t particularly care what title you give this appointment, provided there is the clear understanding that whatever this person or office is to be called he has the status of at least an assistant deputy minister.

Now, sir, to point out some of the things that are in the Throne Speech, once again the Throne Speech indicates the tremendous concern this party and the Premier have for the people of Ontario, because again our No. 1 concern is jobs. You will see very early on in the Throne Speech 149,000 new jobs. This party is not content with Ontario remaining a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. This party is concerned about creative, meaningful, technical, brain-work jobs for young people.

Mr. Deans: Like the ones that will be created at Maple Mountain.

Mr. Drea: No, like the ones that will be created by the GO-Urban and in the development of the GO-Urban system.

Mr. Deans: Five hundred out of the 800 jobs will be menial, meaningless, boring jobs, paying $1.60 an hour. I am sorry about that.

Mr. Drea: Well, the only difficulty with that thesis is that Maple Mountain hasn’t been approved. I had to sit through a very boring half hour today while they went through all the aspects of Maple Mountain and whether we had approved it without any public hearings or not. All of you over there today were so confident that it would be approved. Then why do you worry about jobs that will never be created? Let me come back to my 149,000 jobs that are there now.

Mr. Deans: Because it is an indication of the willingness of this government to see people in servitude, that’s what it is.

Mr. Drea: There is no government on this continent that has created more new jobs through its economic policies than this one, and the member knows it and I know it and they are the best paying jobs in the country.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): The federal government in Ottawa has.

Mr. Breithaupt: The federal government in Ottawa.

Mr. Drea: The only thing the Liberal government in Ottawa ever created was unemployment insurance and they can’t even run that properly.

Mr. Breithaupt: They pay this government the money and it takes the credit.

Mr. Drea: I may say, Mr. Speaker, I thought that two of the points that were raised by the preceding speaker were in the area of very excellent constructive criticism. I don’t really think that we have the jurisdiction to do much more than to push and prod on the auto pact revisions. Having asked our Ministry of Industry and Tourism and our provincial Treasurer (Mr. White) to get cracking and get down to Ottawa and shake up Mr. Gillespie and friends concerning the revisions -- particularly revisions that would bring down the price of automobiles as well as create more jobs, more industrial production in Ontario -- I would have thought that perhaps he could have seen another role for himself in that; that perhaps he could have got on the phone -- if he hasn’t already -- and called his national party, because according to what is in the press, the federal leader of the NDP is what makes the Liberal Party in Ottawa go round.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: And round and round and round.

Mr. Drea: In the case of the uranium situation it was pointed out very, very dramatically by the phone call from Timmins to Ottawa that there is that situation. So while I feel that his remarks about the auto pact are very constructive criticism -- I agree with most of them -- I would say that besides urging our ministers to go to Ottawa and get something done, there is also responsibility upon the people in the provincial NDP, that they can phone Ottawa and put some pressure on their federal counterparts.

I was also impressed by the constructive criticism about research. I think that he made excellent points. It concerns me that we are in a paradox in research in Canada. At a time when science is demanding more research, public and government have so little regard for research that it is the area that is being cut and trimmed.

Mr. Speaker, it was all very well for everyone to pound their desks here today when the rather substantial increases to education ceilings were announced. I would have felt a lot more confident if some rather substantial contributions to research grants were announced. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the person who does the research and develops the technology controls not only the jobs but the economy of tomorrow. The reason that I am impressed with the 149,000 new jobs is that they are the result of projects underwritten by this government, such as CANDU. This government underwrote the development of the Canadian nuclear reactor because it isn’t a Canadian nuclear reactor. If we were really patriotic or chauvinistic, we would say it is the Ontario nuclear reactor --

Mr. Singer: Oh, come off it!

Mr. Drea: -- because it was Ontario that developed it.

Mr. Singer: Half the money was federal money, and the member knows that.

Mr. Breithaupt: This government always take the credit, but they put up the money.

Mr. Singer: Yes. The plan was written in Ottawa and paid for by Ottawa. The member knows that.

Mr. Drea: I don’t know that. In fact, the only thing that Ottawa did in the whole thing was to try and make a heavy water plant that didn’t work. And we are still bothered by the fact that they haven’t got heavy water.

Mr. Singer: How much of the $2 billion that first went in came out of the Ontario government? Not very much.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: And 45 per cent of the taxes.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Now that my favourite automobile man is back in the House, maybe perhaps I can come back to my thing about Go-Urban. The thing that fascinates me so much about Go-Urban, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that these will be the kinds of jobs that are created in development, in research and in technical areas for people who are the products of our educational system.

Mr. Deans: Who is the member’s favourite automobile man?

Mr. Singer: I have a car.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you that this is the record of accomplishment by this government, that we are not providing routine, drudge, dreary and other types of jobs for people. We are offering them the opportunity for exciting, creative, meaningful jobs.

Mr. Deans: Like cutting dead elm trees.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I don’t ever want to be in a position where I appear to knock work. When I talk about a drudge job or a dreary job, I respect the person who does it. I respect the person who goes to work and does the job that he doesn’t particularly like, that he accepts his role in society and doesn’t come with his hand out to the government begging for some money because he doesn’t like his working conditions. I respect him a great deal.

But the future of a country is not built with repetitious, dreary, drudge jobs like that; it is built with the creative, the exciting and the technical. While I respect both types of employment, as I respect all kinds of employment, I would suggest to you, sir, that we are far better off with the creative jobs that will produce the kind of economy that will make for the Ontario of the future as high a standard of living as we enjoy now.

Mr. Speaker, I have heard for about two hours this afternoon what a despicable operation the Ministry of Community and Social Services is. Mr. Speaker, I intend to spend a few moments tonight setting the record straight. The first thing I would like to do is offer my congratulations to the minister, my friend from Cochrane North, in that that ministry bears a significant new look this session, and that is by the appointment of Miss Dorothy Crittenden as deputy minister, the first female deputy minister in Ontario.

I suggest that that is only typical of the new look in that ministry since this minister has taken over. I think it is indicative of the new paths that he is going to pioneer. I think that Miss Crittenden deserves an enormous amount of applause and admiration because she is a female who triumphs over a male-dominated system. She was a school teacher, but when she went to work for the minister’s department back in the 1930s she had to accept work as a typist because a female simply did not aspire to higher executive positions in those days. She has worked her way up step by step till now she is at the summit of her professional career. She is the first woman deputy minister in this province and I certainly hope that she has many years of productive service in this ministry.

Mr. Deans: Is there nothing higher?

Mr. Drea: Pardon?

Mr. Deans: Why is she at the summit? Is there nothing higher than deputy minister?

Mr. Drea: Well, of course, I would think she’d be admirable as the deputy Premier, but that may be because I am prejudiced.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Or Premier.

Mr. Drea: But I don’t really think she has any ambitions in that direction.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: To go any higher, she is going to have to run for office.

Mr. Drea: But that is only typical of the Brunelle touch in that ministry.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Will the hon. member behave himself?

Mr. Sargent: That’s the kiss of death.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would also --

Mr. Sargent: Why doesn’t the hon. member say something intelligent?

Mr. Drea: If I said anything intelligent with my friend in this room, it would be lost.

Mr. Deans: If anyone over there said anything intelligent, it would be amazing.

Mr. Drea: No, it would be routine.

An hon. member: Right on.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank the minister on behalf of some other females in this province, those who are not as fortunate to have had the success as his deputy minister.

Mr. Deans: The mothers’ allowance recipients!

Mr. Drea: No, they are going to be mothers, but they are not going to be on mothers’ allowance, because they are women who are not married, who are residing in maternity homes, sir, because for one reason or another --

Mr. Deans: The hon. member surely isn’t blaming the minister for that?

Mr. Drea: No, I am going to thank him, because after only two representations from me the whole scale of benefits in that particular programme has been changed in a most remarkable manner. I think that a minister who does that deserves the credit of the whole House, because it is a very small part of our population. It isn’t the kind of thing that represents a lot of votes or gets a lot of headlines, but it takes a man who is a real humanitarian, a man who cares and a man who is willing to do something for those who are less fortunate than him in a way that he could -- and he did it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: I’m talking about my friend from Cochrane North, the Minister of Community and Social Services. There is a maternity home in my riding, sir, and, as you know, I feel very strongly that there have to be alternatives provided to females, other than the OHIP-paid abortion route when there is a child --

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): Why doesn’t the member for High Park leave, then the NDP benches will be empty?

Mr. Shulman: The member has driven out the whole press gallery.

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): Go on -- soon there will be no NDP members in the House.

Mr. Shulman: I volunteer to stay and be bored.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Allow the member to continue.

Mr. Sargent: This is not one of the member’s better efforts.

Mr. Drea: Oh, I am only warming up.

Mr. Kennedy: It’s one of the better efforts of the member for Grey-Bruce; he is staying fairly quiet.

Mr. Drea: Yes, he can go if he wants. I won’t tell.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: Okay. I’d never say there was nobody in the NDP benches except the member for High Park.

Mr. Kennedy: He’s not a member, he’s an independent.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Well, I’m pleased that he is staying. I like his audience.

An hon. member: He’s getting out of the NDP anyway.

Mr. Drea: Now then, can I just come back to the matter of maternity homes, because I think it is a great credit to the minister.

Mr. Speaker, I was approached on this subject some many months ago, because there is a maternity home for unwed mothers in my riding. They face enormous financial difficulties because over the years, for financial purposes, that type of home has been placed under the Charitable Institutions Act. And one of the difficulties was the peaks and the valleys, because to be in a residence like that required special circumstance. And unfortunately pregnancies do not go along on a regularly scheduled, stable, organized basis.

Mr. Sargent: They are still nine months.

Mr. Drea: Pregnancies occur and no one has real control over the number that there will be at any time. Yet the facility is needed. If there are a number of women who are in that position at that particular time then, of course, the place is filled and again there maybe two months when the place is relatively empty. This is very difficult to plan for, Mr. Speaker, because quite frankly you can’t plan it. It is very difficult for a minister to have to plan this.

In this province of almost eight million people there are only at any one time probably, in homes like this, somewhere between 150 and 175 women. We had financing. There was the usual per diem programme and so on. I think it shows the mark of a ministry and its minister when he can take time out from the enormous administration of the very large programmes that he has, and he can literally spend about three days finding out about the finances, not only of the maternity home in my riding but indeed every one across the province, of immediately raising the per diem, of also ordering a new cost formula programme to be studied and worked on, for the first time in about 15 years offering new hope to people who thought there was no hope for the continuation of the maternity home.

Mr. Shulman: How is sycophant spelled?

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you that with this one action, which has provided an alternative for the supposedly unwanted- child problem -- because the alternative of abortion has been there for some time and was becoming increasingly attractive because the decks were stacked in favour of the decision to have the abortion rather than to have the child and either to raise it or place it out for adoption -- that with this one major change in the maternity homes programme of this province, the Minister of Community and Social Services has done more to come head- on into this problem than all of the speeches, all of the programmes and all of the machinations of the federal Minister of Justice --

Mr. Sargent: Who is this guy?

Mr. Drea: -- in trying to pass the buck on abortions back to the provinces. I commend him for it, sir, because there were so few people involved. I know the personal amount of work that he put into it and again I suggest to the House again that that is the mark of the hon. member for Cochrane North as the Minister of Community and Social Services in this province. I think that augurs well for people who are less fortunate than ourselves and who have to depend upon that ministry for their sustenance.

I think the fact that they can do something for so small and so specialized a group in this province indicates that he is capable, and when the numbers are big he can do the same thing. I salute him for it, and I am sure that there will be thousands of children who will owe a great many things to him, and they will never know and they will never be able to thank him for it. But that is a magnificent contribution to the future of this province which he has done for the maternity homes in this province.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to come to the Ministry of Health. I am not so happy with the Ministry of Health as I am with the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, something has to be done about the administrative nightmare over at OHIP. I have had two incredible experiences with the lunatics who operate out of there today.

Mr. H. C. Parrott (Oxford): Yield the floor to the hon. member for Waterloo South.

Mr. Drea: I have had two incredible experiences with the lunatics who operate today out of there, on Overlea, that rival what happened to the preceding speaker with his coupe St. Jacques and so forth in that bit of wasteful, sinful extravagance that is known as the members’ dining room in the basement.

Now I had two problems with constituents concerning OHIP. The first was the refusal of OHIP to pay a bill. This woman had gone in for her annual checkup --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: While she was in the physician’s office, after having her annual physical examination completed, she pointed out to him --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: That’s a dreadful thing to say about the member for High Park; I guarantee you.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Singer: Okay, I have to wait and watch.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): The member for Scarborough Centre will never make it.

Mr. Drea: I haven’t even got my first breath yet.

Mr. Riddell: We have been waiting for a year and --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: As the remnants of a once proud party they sit there. I am sorry for them, but I guess that’s the way it is.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: In any event, Mr. Speaker, this woman had had her annual physical examination completed in the doctor’s office, and she had a small cyst on her arm. She complained to her physician that that small cyst was causing her some difficulty, catching on clothing and so on and so forth. I am given to understand it was not medically hazardous or anything like that.

In any event, the doctor agreed to remove that piece of tissue, and of course she received the bill. There was a bill for her annual examination and there was a bill for the removal of that particular piece of tissue. When she sent the bills into OHIP they wouldn’t pay her. They sent her only the money for the annual examination.

When she called up OHIP they told her she should have had the date changed or should have done something else, because as long as it was done at the same time in the office they wouldn’t pay the two bills. She said: “Do you mean if I went back the next day you would have paid it?” And they said: “Of course.”

Now Mr. Speaker, they have just confirmed that in writing to me, in the most incredible letter I have ever received. Unfortunately, I left it in my office downstairs. Perhaps I may refer to it a bit -- no; no, I am glued here, I am glued for another 27 minutes.

Mr. J. P. MacBeth (York West): He is starting to sound like the member for High Park now.

Mr. Drea: In any event, Mr. Speaker, the clerk --

Mr. Shulman: Why doesn’t the member suggest the Minister of Health resign?

Mr. Drea: I suppose it’s a bit different from a cattle auction, but you know we all have to change a little bit.

Mr. Sargent: That’s a new one.

Mr. Shulman: He’s not at his best tonight, that’s what the member of the left said.

Mr. Drea: There’s nobody from the left over there.

Interjections by an hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Drea: All right, Mr. Speaker; so in other words, apparently if the physician is efficient and accomplishes two medical tasks in the same visit to the office, he cannot be paid even though to me it would seem quite simple. The annual examination was medical and the removal of that particular bit of tissue was surgical. In any event, I am still fighting with OHIP on that one.

However, I have another woman who was operated on on Feb. 7 for removal of a gall bladder and who was charged $250 by a surgeon. The bill was sent into OHIP to be paid and she hasn’t received any money yet. Since she has to go back and see that doctor for some treatment, she feels rather badly because she would like to pay him; and unfortunately at the moment she doesn’t have a bank account of any size because she is unemployed.

She called OHIP and after giving about the third person who talked to her the name of the particular surgeon, she finally got a clerk. The way they work over there, apparently, is that you have to find the right clerk who is responsible for payments to the right doctor.

The mind is already beginning to get suspicious. This is another one of the triumphs of bureaucracy.

In any event, she gets to the woman and the woman says: “Oh surgery, that’s different.” The woman says, “Why?”

“Well,” she says, “bills for surgery we put into the computer, but the computer rejects them so we have to do it all over again manually.” The woman says: “Well, if you know the computer is going to reject the bill, why do you put it in?” And the girl I says: “I know it sounds silly, but that’s what they tell us we have to do.”

Now, Mr. Speaker, when I heard this from this woman, I simply wouldn’t believe it. I called up OHIP; and you know that’s true.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that they have a marvellous system over there for payment of surgeons’ bills? They say that because there is post-operative care and there probably will be a claim coming in after that, they will not pay for the original surgery until the claim for the post-operative care comes in; they want to pay it in a package. They say to me “You should tell this woman not to worry because everybody understands the system. The doctor won’t ask her for money; the doctor won’t even look at her and his nurse won’t bother.”

But, you see, Mr. Speaker, everybody understands this marvellous system over at OHIP except the people who have to deal with it. When you find a clerk who says “We put it into the computer but if there is surgery the computer rejects it and then we do it over manually.” Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you, as a taxpayer, right at that moment you would like to get your hands around somebody’s throat. If the computer is going to reject it why not do the thing manually in the first place? Or why not arrange for these things to be paid or at least acknowledged?

Surely, if the doctor understands what the method of payment is -- and I have a doctor who lives by me and I hear a lot about OHIP payments, so I am not so sure that doctors go along with all of this as happily as OHIP lets on -- if this is a bookkeeping transaction type of thing between OHIP and the physician, surely when one is supposed to pay the bill a little card could be produced from that awesome computer over there which would come back to one and say “This amount will be paid to your physician and he will receive the cheque shortly” or “it will be paid to you” so that at least one has the acknowledgement on it.

It would seem to me, Mr. Speaker, that a bureaucracy which can produce the recent change in regulations which allows a 16-year- old girl to have an abortion without parental consent or to be sterilized without parental consent, the efficiency of a bureaucracy which could do that should be able to set up a system by which one can have hospital or medical claims paid on a little more efficient basis than, “The computer rejects it all the time so we would have to do them manually and that’s what takes the time.”

It would also seem to me that a medical bureaucracy which finds that lifeguards are no longer needed in private swimming pools -- and it was very efficient about getting rid of that one, Mr. Speaker -- if it is so efficient about that, it seems to me that one of people could go over and put a little bit of his or her brain power into straightening up OHIP’s payment procedures.

Mr. Speaker, this question about the swimming pool lifeguards bothers me a great deal. When I was in the newspaper business I campaigned for a very long time -- about three or four years -- for those regulations which ensured that people in private swimming pools would have lifeguards. It strikes me as very peculiar that with no fanfare, no discussion, nothing of any kind, they were suddenly removed -- and don’t tell me it was the apartment owners who wanted them removed. They have so many insurance structures they are keeping the lifeguards there.

Mr. Singer: Who removed them? The government removed them, not the bureaucracy. The member should not blame these nameless, faceless civil servants; it was the government which made the change.

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

Mr. Breithaupt: The member has to take the credit.

Mr. Drea: I’m not taking any credit. That one has to be changed, I will tell the member.

Mr. Singer: All right, then beat the cabinet minister over the head. He did it.

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): He is not doing that badly.

Mr. Drea: I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that a medical bureaucracy which can produce that kind of efficiency in fields where it wants to make sudden changes, can do something about the payment procedures over at OHIP.

Mr. Speaker, I would also urge the Minister of Health either to drag the city of Toronto into a district or regional health council or else to allow the other municipalities which are being held back from a much greater health subsidy by the contrariness of the city of Toronto, to have a regional or district health council without the participation of Toronto.

When it is a question of the amounts of moneys involved, the amount of money my own borough would receive in provincial subsidies which is now being provided directly by the taxpayers there, I suggest that allowing Toronto to hold up the formation of this district health council because of its concerns -- and some of the concerns may be justified -- I cannot see why, for instance, Scarborough, North York and East York might not form a viable district health council: or perhaps Etobicoke, the borough of York, and another part of North York. There are all kinds of ways. It may very well be that because of its own particular and peculiar problems, the city of Toronto might very well have a district health council of its own. But I suggest we not delay the formation of the health councils throughout Metropolitan Toronto because there cannot be unanimity.

Mr. Speaker, this is not the kind of thing that promotes good government or efficient development of health services. It’s ridiculous. By the same token, if we needed a unanimous vote in this House we would never pass the legislation.

I certainly like unanimity and I think people of good faith and of good conscience can get together and solve many of these things, but sometimes there is a balky member.

This situation has been going on not just a month or two months; it has been going on years and years and years.

In other areas of the province the Ministry of Health has made some accommodations. In my brief time in the House, for instance, I think we’ve changed the scope and dimensions and programmes and outlook of those district health councils about five or six times because they came to the conclusion there wasn’t one happy formula that could be applied across the entire province.

Now, why this head-in-the-sand attitude over Metropolitan Toronto is beyond me -- unless, of course, the Ministry of Health wants to save some money. If they want to save some money by not paying out the subsidies, then why don’t they say so instead of saying: “Well, get Toronto to come in with you and we will pay the 75 per cent on these programmes.”

Once again, Mr. Speaker, a ministry that has a bureaucracy that is so efficient in changing regulations should certainly be able to move into this field very efficiently and very quickly.

Mr. Speaker, I want to come to my old friend, the censor; the one who is in the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations -- the film censor. Mr. Speaker, frankly I would like to see the theatres branch in this province follow the lead of British Columbia. I personally think that the operation of the censor in that province is positive. I think it makes a contribution to the entertainment industry and I think it also protects the public, if indeed anybody wants to be protected these days, from the indulgences or extravagances of the film industry.

The reason I suggest that, Mr. Speaker, is that in the Province of British Columbia it is mandatory for the advertisement of a film to carry the censor’s comments about it. So you see in the theatre pages of the Vancouver Sun or Province the short, terse comments of the censor in the film ads. They say that, frankly, the language may be very profane, or the language may be very crude, that there be rather explicit scenes of violence and, to a lesser degree, that there may be some nudity or what-have-you.

I’m not so much concerned at this time with the nudity, Mr. Speaker, but I think what a growing number of people in this province are concerned about in the film industry is the cult of violence. There are more and more films being produced that, frankly, sir, I would think might rather be shown in an amphitheatre with psychiatrists taking a look at the products of people who have either an obsession or a penchant for masochism or sadism.

Mr. Speaker, in this province it is virtually impossible for a person who does not read movie reviews to know whether or not when going to see a film just how violent it is going to be. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that some of the technological innovations of the film industry have made violence somewhat attractive. It is much easier, for instance, to produce blood and gore in a rather dramatic and impressionable way these days than it was a number of years ago. Also, you find a great number of particular occasions of violence. Apparently these days -- and because these examples are from the United States it may indeed he the situation there -- in terms of law and order the police have to break the law in order to punish the criminal.

I find that kind of thing that is permeating a society like our own particularly dangerous to young people, because young people are the product of a total environment. They get a taste and a penchant for violence, then it shouldn’t surprise us in later life, not that they become an aberrant or anything, but that we have a society that accepts the brutalization that apparently is the hallmark of a great many movie productions.

Mr. Speaker, I have long ago given up asking the censor to do something about sex and nudity in films. I have gone the route with the fellow who retired there; to ask him about the ads, did he pass them? He couldn’t see anything the matter with them. I am surprised that newspapers ran them. So I don’t really care about that aspect of it any more.

I have surrendered to the apparent lures of Yonge St. I guess that is what people want, or at least the people whom we hire as censors want. But I do suggest to you that the time has come when we start taking a look at the violence or the language.

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of films in Toronto right now that frankly my wife would have been very uncomfortable at and she would probably have fainted at some of the language in them. There is no question that these are first-class films. I don’t quarrel with the technique or the artistry or anything else. But I think, Mr. Speaker, in fairness to people who do not want to get into that kind of a scene, that the adoption of the British Columbia policy might be a good one in this province, because it would compel the advertisement in the newspaper to state that the language is very profane and offensive.

If you go in afterwards you have no complaint. If you choose not to go in I think you have been protected, because you are not left in the theatre until the middle, had no idea this was coming and there it has come; what do you do about it?

Mr. Singer: Get up and walk out.

Mr. Drea: I think it works very well in British Columbia. I think it is something that we should study here. If we are not going to do it then let’s save the taxpayers some money and let’s clean out the whole theatres branch.

I have never wanted anybody fired. I am sure we can get them horizontal transfers within our mammoth and magnificent civil service. But we must do something, because we don’t censor the films any more, we don’t do anything. If we can’t even put in little pockets of protection for people then why do we have to employ all of those people?

As I say, I don’t like to fire anybody, but I do like a bit of efficiency. Perhaps if they aren’t interested in going into this and still want to go on with a job that apparently has no meaning, has no beginning, has no end, then I think perhaps we should get them some horizontal transfers within the civil service.

Speaking of the civil service, Mr. Speaker, I have a magnificent book here called the Staff Development Course Calendar 1973-1974. It is a very humorous book, very humorous until you figure out that we as taxpayers paid for it. It deals with such things as the secretarial seminar, interpersonal relations programme, the communications workshop, the internal consultants course, the power play, effective speaking, instructional techniques, problem employees’ seminar.

I would like to deal just for a few moments with good old power play here, because it is magnificent. We paid for this. Do you know they actually sent people to take this course? We have to subsidize them to take it. If I had to operate with this kind of a book I would lock it up. But apparently they find that it is a very --

Mr. Shulman: The Premier isn’t going to be happy with the member’s speech tonight.

Mr. Drea: The Premier is happy with all my speeches.

Mr. Shulman: Not this one.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Why not?

Mr. Drea: There isn’t one thing in it with which he would disagree.

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of power play, is -- and why have these silly courses? -- “to improve the awareness of public administrators of various manipulative communication techniques and faulty reasoning processes which may influence the decision-making process.”

Mr. Shulman: What ministry is that under?

Mr. Drea: The Civil Service Commission.

Mr. Shulman: Who is the minister?

Mr. Drea: I would take it the Chairman of Management Board is the minister.

Mr. Shulman: All right, thank you.

Mr. Drea: May I continue?

Mr. Shulman: Please. I am sorry the minister isn’t here to hear it.

Mr. Drea: Oh, I’m sure I don’t think he’s probably ever seen the book. I’m drawing it to his attention.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: In any event, this workshop does not utilize lectures, films or other traditional teaching methods. Instead, participants compete as members of teams in a series of games which analyse such power plays as appeals to superior authority -- Mr. Speaker, I guess that’s me to you on most occasions; faulty generalization; personification; reification -- whatever that may mean; analogy, confusing all and some; cultural bias --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That’s the opposition.

Mr. Drea: -- emotional words. Duration is four days in residence and eligibility is designed for managers, professionals, public relations officers, government representatives who deal with outside clients, and internal consultants.

Mr. Speaker, the taxpayers of Ontario are paying for this nonsense. If you can’t hire somebody who knows his job and you have to send him away for four days to play games called power plays, this is really a bit much.

Mr. Shulman: Does the member think that minister should resign?

Mr. Singer: Don’t they listen to this member in the caucus?

Mr. Drea: Oh, I save it just for the member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Well, we can’t really help him too much. It is his fellows over there he should watch.

Mr. Drea: Oh, somehow I get help.

Mr. Shulman: Why doesn’t he tell the Premier to fire the minister he is talking about?

Mr. Drea: I don’t think this is the ministry’s thing. This is the Civil Service Commission. I wish he would do something about the Civil Service Commission.

Mr. Shulman: Does the member mean the minister doesn’t know what is going on in his jurisdiction?

Mr. Drea: No, that is not what I said.

Mr. Singer: A terrible admission of defeat

Mr. Drea: I’m just drawing this to his attention.

An hon. member: Maybe the minister is taking the course. Are members eligible?

Mr. Drea: No.

Mr. Singer: This is a terrible admission of defeat. The member’s influence in the Tory caucus isn’t very great.

Mr. Drea: We have the communication workshop. The thing that fascinates me, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that this is for PR men, because it says:

“The purpose is to improve the process of interpersonal communication in the accomplishment of work within the government of Ontario.

“Content: overcoming barriers to effective interpersonal communication; communication of one-to-one relationships; listening and understanding; communication at meetings; feedback techniques, team-building techniques.

“Duration: five days in residence.”

Now here is the eligibility. “Preference will be given to incumbents of positions where communication skills are particularly emphasized, such as staff engaged in public relations.”

Mr. Speaker, if you hire a public relations man, surely even in the civil service he should be able to talk to you. That would be the same as getting a politician who was tongue-tied. It wouldn’t work. We now have a programme where we take the public relations man in the government of Ontario and send him away to some weirdo communication workshop which the taxpayer has to pay for so that he can overcome his barriers to effective interpersonal relationships.

Mr. Speaker, when the taxpayers hear about things like this and they see there is actually such a book, they will begin to get ideas. My criticisms of these are remarkably mild compared to what they would say.

We have another little one in here, the file supervisor seminar. This one really moves me.

Mr. Shulman: The member has driven the chairman of Management Board to the other side of the House.

Mr. Drea: This is to familiarize file supervisors with current record management practices in the Ontario public service.

Mr. Singer: Why doesn’t the member talk to the member for Halton East (Mr. Snow) as he is in charge of that one?

Mr. Drea: No, no; it is not him.

Mr. Singer: It is not him?

Mr. Drea: Nope. Nope.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): He’s driven the House leader to the other side of the House.

Mr. Singer: That’s right. The member has driven him to the other side. He can’t stand it any more.

Mr. Drea: Oh, I think he’d find it very fascinating.

Mr. Shulman: He has taken the course.

Mr. Drea: No, I don’t think he has taken this one because, after all, it says: “Content: Objective of the Ontario government’s records management programme.” Well, if a person is hired and doesn’t know what the objective is, why do we have to send him away up to that school in Barrie for five days? Why do we have to feed him? Why do we have to subsidize him by getting someone else to take his job?

Mr. Shulman: It’s a beautiful summer resort.

Mr. Drea: And then it says, down at the bottom: “Eligibility: This seminar is open to personnel presently employed as file supervisors or file coders.” Well, they are hired and they don’t even know the objective of the place they work in. If I didn’t have the book, even with my profound distrust of the bureaucracy, I wouldn’t really believe that they could produce such a thing.

Mr. Speaker, I think that we ought to send one of these books to every household in Ontario and say, “Here it is, the product of the civil service mind.”

Mr. Shulman: That’s what the Tory government has done.

Mr. Singer: Oh, it’s the product of the Tory government.

Mr. Drea: It is not the product of the Tory government; it is the product of the Civil Service Commission.

Mr. Singer: Oh, come on. How can we separate the two?

Mr. Drea: Is the member saying the civil servants are all Tories?

Mr. Singer: No, I am saying the Tories control them. And if they can’t, they should quit.

Mr. Drea: I certainly wish we did. That’s a very interesting thought, that we own the civil service,

Mr. Shulman: That programme was developed’ by the minister, and Tory MPPs have been up there.

Mr. Singer: The Tories run the government. If they can’t do it properly, they should quit.

Mr. Drea: My friend, there are two governments. We are one of them. There is another government of many thousands.

Mr. Singer: Oh, come on.

Mr. Drea: And just because my friend may have some influence in there, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we own it.

Mr. Shulman: The minister’s deputy developed, that contract.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, the reason I raised the question of this staff development course calendar --

Mr. Singer: Yes, that’s a good question.

Mr. Drea: -- is that, until things like this are brought to light, they tend to perpetuate themselves.

Mr. Singer: Leslie Frost used to stop them when he saw them.

Mr. Drea: Pardon?

Mr. Singer: Leslie Frost used to stop them. John Robarts stopped them. If Premier Davis can’t, well, get rid of him.

Mr. Drea: I suggest that it would probably be a very happy day for the Liberal Party if the Premier of this province was not to be in office or was no longer going to continue in his job, because the member has a party and a leader that can’t even tie the Premier’s shoelaces and will never be able to if it takes 100 or 200 years.

Mr. Singer: His shoelaces are tied. I just looked.

Mr. Drea: Because it can take a century, and as long as the Liberals are around, the Premier of this province will still be Premier, with an ever-increasing margin.

The member and his leader are our greatest allies, the two of them together.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That’s why the Leader of the Opposition doesn’t wear laces.

Mr. Eaton: “Blank-cheque Bob.”

Mr. Breithaupt: Well, I guess that’s the end --

Mr. Drea: When people criticize us, I just say, “Would you like the member for Downsview?” and they say, “Oh, God, no, we’ll vote for you again.” I may use his picture in my campaign, and say “Do you want him?” I may not even have to knock at the door.

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: Why doesn’t he move the adjournment?

Mr. Singer: “The Perils of Pauline.”

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the hon. member would observe the hour and move the adjournment.

Mr. Drea: Well, I have been trying to, but I have been so rudely interrupted, sir.

Mr. Singer: “Will she fall off the cliff or not?”

Mr. Drea: And it’s very difficult for me. with the shading of the light on the clock --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would adjourn the debate.

Mr. Singer: “Or will fearless Frank come to the rescue?”

Mr. Breithaupt: Can we hope for more tomorrow?

Mr. Drea: Oh, yes, until tomorrow.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): We’ll look forward to it.

Mr. Singer: In breathless anticipation, we shall wait.

Mr. Drea: Well, as our greatest ally, I would hope that the member has breathless anticipation.

Mr. Singer: Yes.

Mr. Drea: It would be a novel form of levitation --

Mr. Deans: The member has moved the adjournment, will he sit down?

Mr. Drea: -- and that member doesn’t like any levitation.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Very breathless.

Mr. Drea moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we will continue with this debate.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:30 o’clock, p.m.