Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF ENERGY (CONTINUED)

Mr. Chairman: I believe when we rose at 6 p.m. the member for Huron still had the floor.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Mr. Chairman, the member for York North (Mr. W. Hodgson), who occupied that chair before we adjourned at 6 o’clock, seemed to be most anxious to offer his usual contribution and now that we’ve reconvened I see he’s not here, but I was quite prepared to relinquish my time to listen to whatever words of wisdom he had to offer. I guess I’m not going to have that privilege, so I’m quite prepared to pass to those members who I think will have some words of wisdom for us. Thank you.

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

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Mr. Chairman, I want to say most of what I have to say tonight to the minister. He is going to flee already, I notice. However, having listened to the leadoff speech by the Liberal Party before supper, I can’t forebear one comment, and that is, it is positively breath-taking what enthusiasm the Liberal Party can muster for a new policy when somebody else has had the courage to initiate it elsewhere.

For years we have been arguing, in the New Democratic Party, about the role and the validity of a prices review board and the Liberals discarded it. They couldn’t be persuaded of it. Recently, they’ve come to the point of verbal support for it. But once somebody else, particularly if he happened to be a Liberal down in Nova Scotia, has implemented a prices review board, at least in the oil field, it has now become the heart and core, the central piece of Liberal policy, overnight. I repeat, it is positively breath-taking.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Typical, too.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Always the Johnny-come-lately.

Mr. MacDonald: However, let’s get back to the issues. The effort to grapple with problems related to energy, Mr. Chairman, has been bedevilled by policies that are uncertain, confused, in fact in many instances have been non-existent. That’s been our basic problem in Canada as a whole, in the nation, and I suppose nobody has been more critical of that non-existent national policy than the Ontario Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) and his colleagues, as they direct their criticisms to Ottawa.

The situation there has been clarified somewhat, because under pressure of events that came in the first instance from the international scene and then focused on the conflicting interests within Canada between producing and consumer nations, we have worked through a series of two or three federal-provincial conferences to something approaching a national policy.

Here in Ontario we have an energetic Minister of Energy; if nothing else he’s energetic. I don’t buy the hon. member for Huron’s dismissal of the hon. member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. McKeough). He is many things, but he is not as incompetent or foolish as the hon. member for Huron thinks at this point. The Liberals learn slowly.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): That is going to be the Liberal tactic anyway.

Mr. Cassidy: You may find the minister frenzied from time to time though.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That will be the Liberal tactic from now on.

Mr. MacDonald: He speaks often and he speaks frankly. Quite frankly, his speech at the OMEA last night was a delightful piece of frankness; I’ve only got half way through it at this point but perhaps I’ll have a chance to read it before we get around to it later in the estimates.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): I’ve heard the OMEA called a lot of things but not mischievous.

Mr. MacDonald: The problem with the minister is that his comments vary from day to day in tone if not in substance. The result, Mr. Chairman, is that we’ve had in the Province of Ontario something approaching the problem at the federal level -- a policy that is uncertain, is confused and in some instances is nonexistent. It’s really rather ironic that this minister, who has fired more volleys in the direction of those awful Liberals up in Ottawa, should be guilty of essentially the same thing down here but for somewhat different reasons. I want to analyse the reasons. In fact, I want to try to illustrate the point by taking a look at two sorts of basic problems in the energy field by way of an overview in these lead-off remarks.

The first one, of course, is in reference to the whole question of pricing, and related to pricing inevitably is the question of the supply of energy.

Let me begin with a quotation from one of the endless series of speeches the minister gives, this time from as far away as Calgary.

Mr. Laughren: Who writes them?

Mr. MacDonald: I don’t know who wrote this one. As a matter of fact, to be very frank with you, I don’t know who does the original draft but there usually is a McKeoughian touch to them by the time they are delivered. It’s either in the words or in the delivery but there is a McKeoughian touch in there.

I quote one paragraph from the speech delivered in Calgary a short time ago, to be exact, on April 16. He had been talking about the compromise in price which was achieved at the recent first ministers’ conference in Ottawa and he said:

“I should add, however, that there is, I perceive, a definite backlash in Ontario at what I thought was a reasonable compromise, stronger than I would have expected. The backlash, I suspect, arose from the two or three cent issue rather than the eight cents implicit in the $6.50 agreement. The oil companies have a capacity greater than anyone else for inflicted wounding.”

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Self-inflicted.

Mr. MacDonald: Self-inflicted? Well, you had better speak to your typewriter or the person who operates the typewriter.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Self-inflicted wounding.

Mr. MacDonald: Self-inflicted wounding? Good. I accept the correction; it was your speech. But here it says --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That happens to be my phrase, too.

Mr. MacDonald: As a matter of fact, on occasion it’s a very appropriate phrase. However, the text says ... “inflicted wounding”.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You can’t believe everything you read.

Mr. MacDonald: Particularly when it is wrong to begin with.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): He had to get your attention. That is not easy.

An hon. member: The trouble is they don’t know what they are talking about.

Mr. MacDonald: I will attempt to pick up on the mangled speech.

“That is their problem except the $6.50 agreement has been attacked. As a result, more than a few people in this country, including me, are impressed with the Nova Scotia legislation which recently ordered a rollback.”

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Including him.

Mr. MacDonald: I repeat, in case you didn’t get it, speaking was the minister in Calgary.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Yes, from both sides of his mouth.

Mr. MacDonald: I repeat:

“ -- more than a few people in this country, including me -- ”

Mr. Young: That is McKeough.

Mr. MacDonald: To continue:

“ -- are impressed with the Nova Scotia legislation which recently ordered a rollback.

“That Imperial Oil official by now no doubt has concluded that his remark ‘We charge whatever the market will bear’ represents a philosophy which is just no longer acceptable.”

You know that, coming from the Tories, is really a lulu. This is the red Tory touch coming in here.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: After all these years I have been listening to you and you didn’t --

Mr. MacDonald: Again, you are a slow learner but at least you are catching on.

Interjection by an hon. member.

An hon. member: He’s even got a partially red tie on tonight.

Mr. MacDonald: I pick up on the quotation:

“Again, that is the industry’s -- ”

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I heard your story about McLean so often, sooner or later it sank in.

Mr. MacDonald: To quote:

“Again, that is the industry’s problem that the spillover effect of public opinion calling for and demanding government action, can only be ignored by government at the politician’s peril.”

That is really the most fascinating paragraph. Implicit in it is a programme of action.

Mr. Laughren: Did the minister write that?

Mr. MacDonald: Why in heaven’s name the minister has been sitting on, what is quoted in another of his speeches as his “bleep,” when he has implicit in that a programme of action is the thing that mystifies me.

Let’s take a look for a moment at some of the implications. He talks, for example, rather cavalierly of eight cents as being what is justified to the oil companies on the basis of the increase from $4 to $6.50 for a barrel of crude oil. When the Premier (Mr. Davis) was discussing this a couple of weeks ago, he said the only price that the oil companies were entitled to on the basis of that increase was seven cents, and the minister rather cavalierly says eight. The difference between seven and eight cents is $44.8 million to the consumers of Ontario.

An hon. member: The minister knows that.

Mr. MacDonald: For every cent increase in gasoline it is $5.60 per capita. For an eight million population it is about $44.8 million. So why talk rather cavalierly of seven or eight cents?

I just want to raise this question, Mr. Chairman. If the oil companies were making profits on the $4 price for crude oil, which represents in the instance of Imperial Oil almost a 100 per cent increase in 1973 over 1972, what justification is there really, other than an acceptance of their self-serving statistics, for granting them the full seven cents the Premier mentioned, or the eight cents the Minister of Energy rather cavalierly throws off?

I suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that that is one of the reasons why we’ve got to have an energy review board in this province -- a board which is granted powers -- yes, Mr. Minister, you are so prescient -- by means of an amendment to the Energy Act, which gives them those powers, hopefully, to roll back prices, as they’ve got down in Nova Scotia, something that apparently is momentarily at least impressing the minister. The reason why we’ve got to have that is so that we can take a look at whether or not even the seven or eight cents for the increase in crude is a justified price that can be passed on to the people of the Province of Ontario.

That’s bad enough, but when we are told -- and I accept this for the moment until I’ve any other evidence to justify it or to controvert it -- that in addition to the non-crude increases in costs the oil companies might be justified in having a half a cent a gallon increase, taking it up to say 7 1/2 cents -- or about it going to 10 cents, which is another 2 1/2 cents, a rip-off of approximately $112 million or $113 million, then we have further evidence there of why we must have a prices review board and an energy board with powers to get that justification and, if they don’t get it, to force a roll back in prices.

This is obviously the core of the problem at the present time in the Province of Ontario. I’m glad we’ve got the minister in the House and he has got more than just an opportunity to reply flippantly to a question, or, let me put it perhaps more accurately, facilely to reply to a question or to avoid replying to a question. Tonight we are going to have an opportunity to ask questions until we get the answers to some of these questions.

The point I want to make with this minister, which he has consistently avoided all down through the recent months, is that the proposition of review of prices in the Province of Ontario rests with this province for any commodity that is sold, whether it is sold by a multinational corporation or whether it is sold by a company that is confined to Ontario alone. Don’t for heaven’s sake, continue to slough it off on Ottawa saying that it is Ottawa’s responsibility.

The minister is knowledgeable enough to know that under the BNA Act this power flows from property and civil rights. It is a provincial responsibility and it is a provincial obligation. In addition to it, if you had any doubts, it has gone to the courts as far back in 1940 in the case of Home Oil distributors versus the Attorney General of the Province of British Columbia, in which it was clearly indicated that the Province of British Columbia had jurisdiction over wholesale and resale prices within the Province of British Columbia and by implication on other commodities too. So this is your responsibility.

In fact, about a month or so ago, or maybe two months now, since time flies, a very interesting thing happened in the Province of Ontario. The papers down in the eastern part of Ontario, which happen to serve those 600,000 Ontarians who live east of the Borden line, east of the so-called Ottawa Valley line, and therefore in the area, prior to the equalization of prices, of high-priced fuel costs in eastern Canada, discovered that the oil companies were getting some of their fuel oil from the Toronto markets. Coming from the lower prices of western Canada, they were trucking it down over the Borden line and as soon as they got it over the Borden line, they were selling it at the higher eastern prices -- clear-cut, flagrant gouging.

It was an implementation of the principles so clearly enunciated by the spokesman for Imperial Oil, namely that they were gouging the market for all that they could get. But when this was smoked out and some of the media got to the minister here in the Province of Ontario, he had two comments: One, he hadn’t heard of the situation -- maybe that was to the first person who got to him; and secondly, that this was Ottawa’s responsibility.

It isn’t Ottawa’s responsibility. It is this government’s responsibility to put it under whatever agency this government wants to exercise that responsibility. If the oil companies were getting the cheaper product from the west and taking it over the Borden line to the east and were overcharging those citizens, then it was a government responsibility, if you had the powers under the Ontario Energy Board, to have brought them before the board and to ask for justification for it and to make them roll back the price and indeed, to reimburse the consumers.

This was the kind of thing that has been done voluntarily, if you can believe it, by the Irving Oil Co. at one stage earlier this year down in Nova Scotia. Now it is done mandatorily by way of a judgement of the Board of Commissioners of Public Utilities in that province.

The thing that intrigues me by way of the inconsistencies of this minister is that if you read his speeches throughout the last few months he has some very apt, some rather accurate, some rather harsh criticisms of the operation of the international oil cartel in the Middle East. It’s operating in the classic monopolist fashion. They have exploited and, indeed, assisted in creating a shortage prior to the outbreak of the war there so that they could use that shortage for boosting prices that would eventually end up in higher profits for themselves.

But does this minister above anybody else have any illusions for one split second that the oil companies of Canada, which are subsidiaries of the companies that make up the cartel in the Middle East, are operating on any different basis here in Canada? Do you think their philosophy is any different at all?

If you had any doubts about it, all you had to do was to read the frank testimony of theirs before the hearings in Nova Scotia. There they spoke in the most amusing terms about the mystique of pricing -- there was a great mystique in pricing. There is no mystique about it. They spelled it out. They gouged the market for everything they could get. It had nothing to do with the cost of production. Indeed, Mr. Bell, who was the spokesman for Imperial Oil, went one step further. He said that in principle they felt they were obligated to raise the price if the market permitted them to gouge it and to cream off some more. In short, their principles are the obvious reverse of the principles which were enunciated by the minister in his statement when he was speaking to his Calgary audience.

Where does this minister stand on all of these issues? He talks one way but he doesn’t act in conformity with his words. Where does he stand? He speaks in tough terms but there is no follow-through.

I have two or three clippings here, Mr. Chairman, which are really fascinating. I won’t bother to read the clippings in total, but just let me read the headlines. Listen to this for a mish-mash all coming from the same spokesman.

Here’s one headline from the Toronto Star on Feb. 28, 1973, which says: “Oil Companies Take Advantage of Foreign Hikes,” the minister says. Here we are Aug. 25, 1973: “McKeough Claims Oil Firms Can’t Justify Price Increases.” And then we get to the Toronto Star on Sept. 8: “Ontario Can’t Halt Price Increases By Gas Companies: McKeough.”

You see, there is such confusion. He is blaming the oil companies: he claims they can’t justify their price increases; and then poor Darcy, he is so helpless -- “We can’t do anything about it.” Maybe that was four or five months ago; maybe he is impressed with what can be done about it by the exercise of the legitimate provincial powers of the board in Nova Scotia, as indeed they are being exercised out in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

I suggest to the minister that it’s time for this doubletalk to end. It’s time for the government to move in terms of establishing an appropriate body that can protect the people of this province against increases which, on May 15 if the seven-cent increase goes into effect, will mean $313 million more to the people of this province in terms of consumer costs. And if an extra 2 1/2 cents goes on that is unjustified, they will be paying another $113 million. So there will be between $400 million and $500 million. Every one of those one cents that are thrown around with such abandon by the minister and the Premier, I repeat, represents $44.8 million. And if this government is not going to protect the consumers from this gouging by the oil companies, nobody will do it. The government is the only one with the power to do it.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s as much as the sales tax cuts.

Mr. MacDonald: Right. One cent on gasoline is the equivalent of the whole sales tax cuts that the provincial Treasurer (Mr. White) was so proud of.

Let me move to the second area that I want to illustrate by way of overview in leading into these estimates. For calculated confusion, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, we’ve never had anything to match it in the Province of Ontario -- nothing that comes within reaching distance of it. I’m referring to this government’s handling of the whole proposition of the southern pipeline for taking oil from Sarnia to Montreal.

The interesting thing is that when Ottawa announced late last fall that the pipeline was going to be built from Sarnia to Toronto and on to Montreal, it was done so after consultation and with the approval of the Minister of Energy in the Province of Ontario. I notice he doesn’t dispute that point. I wondered whether he might. But it was done with the consultation and approval of the minister in the Province of Ontario.

Then the whole cabinet flew apart. The Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) immediately became the champion of the farmers, and we were going to have some devastating consequences as a result of the building of the pipeline through the prime agricultural land from Sarnia to Burlington, looping around Toronto and on towards Montreal. And we all know that when the Minister of Agriculture and Food gets up on his little political podium in defence of the farmers, so often he really isn’t defending the farmers that he welcomes an excuse to appear to be a great defender of the farmers.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): He is a champion of the farmers.

Mr. MacDonald: He is quite a militant and aggressive fellow. However, he didn’t stand alone for long, because the provincial Treasurer, with the odd tax measure, is attempting to bolster the waning cause of the Tory party out in rural Ontario. He too joined in, and said that this was a gross violation of the rights of farmers and would involve the destruction of precious prime agricultural land. Not to be outdone, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) had a bit of pleading to do on behalf of northern Ontario, where he wanted the line to go through, so he got into it.

We had three ministers arguing against a pipeline route that had been accepted and agreed to -- informally if not formally -- by the minister in the Province of Ontario. But that was only the beginning.

Some of the media people got to the man who presumably runs the show, the Premier of the province, and he confessed that the cabinet had never discussed the issue; it had never come before cabinet.

Then they went to the man who then was the provincial secretary in charge of resources, the hon. member for Carleton East (Mr. Lawrence), and they asked him. He said that he was only now studying the matter, it had been referred to him for study. There had been informal endorsation of the route, he was studying it, and when it got to the cabinet finally, as a result of his study, there would be a statement.

Finally we got that statement, and it was read by the new provincial secretary (Mr. Grossman). It is almost as fascinating a document as some of the speeches of the Minister of Energy when he’s out in Calgary or before the OMEA.

In the first place, he defends the championing of the farmers’ interest by the various cabinet ministers. In effect, he says that they were valiant souls, doing the right thing. But then he goes on to say, in pretty emphatic terms, that the pipeline will be built in the south.

They now finally have gotten information -- presumably they were sounding off before without the adequate information -- and having gotten the information, now everybody was in agreement.

Indeed, one of the press boys went to the Minister of Agriculture and Food afterwards and said: “How come? You were such a vigorous opponent of this a couple of weeks ago and championing the farmers.” And his reply, at least in one broadcast that I heard, was to the effect that he didn’t have all the facts then. Now that he had the facts, he was accepting it.

Well, you know, that’s the kind of champion I thought he was sometimes on behalf of the farmers.

Mr. Gilbertson: He is a champion of the farmers.

Mr. MacDonald: He champions them without the facts until he gets the facts and then he ceases to champion them. That’s the kind of situation we have had. But the minister goes on further. Just let me quote one or two bits of it here:

“The most optimistic estimate of the federal government indicates that a northern route cannot be in operation before two years -- ”

Mr. Chairman, I draw to your attention that the minister in giving the statement to this government is very careful to pin all of the responsibility on Ottawa, so that a year or so from now if this situation blows up in everybody’s face, they can then join the crowd in blaming Ottawa; though for the moment they have accepted the decision and they are fighting it no longer. I quote:

“The most optimistic estimate of the federal government indicates that a northern route cannot be in operation before two years, and therefore no crude oil could flow through the line to Montreal before 1976 and the 1977 heating season. On the other hand -- ”

You see, we have got to keep everything covered here and our minister can really keep both flanks covered at the same time, better than anybody I know. He says:

“On the other hand, we have been led to believe by the government of Canada [Keep it pinned on them, boy] that if the southern route is undertaken, crude oil will be flowing to the east by 1975-1976 season.”

He tabled a fact sheet to indicate why this will happen --

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): I think that was pretty good stuff.

Mr. MacDonald: And then as a sort of finale of this bit of supreme political rationalization, he says:

“I might add here that we would support the federal government in its ultimate national goal of an all-Canadian pipeline.”

Well, you know, Mr. Chairman, this is really the most incredible piece of doubletalk on political rationalization. If the little bit of extra money -- relatively little bit of extra money in terms of the building of this nation and what we have put into railways and pipelines and everything else in the past -- that it is going to cost --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Like $100 million.

Mr. MacDonald: Right, like $100 million. Okay, if the hon. minister knows anything about Canada, we have spent billions of dollars in this country that we wouldn’t need to have spent if we just wanted to join the United States.

We built our railways. We built our pipelines and we have built everything because we came to the conclusion we wanted a nation on the northern half of this continent which had unity in itself and wasn’t an appendage that was going to be sucked into the American vortex. And in that context, $100 million is a small drop in the bucket of what we have spent in the past and which we will be willing to spend in the future.

However, if the argument is --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Which side is the member on, as a matter of interest?

Mr. MacDonald: Just wait and I will tell the minister which side I am on. Just wait and I will tell him which side I am on.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am listening. He has never expressed an opinion yet.

Mr. Martel: The minister expresses his opinion out of this building. He never says anything here.

Mr. Stokes: When he doesn’t understand, the minister always pleads deafness, doesn’t he?

Mr. Martel: Or when he doesn’t want to hear.

Mr. MacDonald: Well, there has been an interruption --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am still waiting.

Mr. MacDonald: Is he still waiting? Okay. I will tell him what should be done.

There may have been some justification because of the lack of planning to consider the proposition of a line in southern Ontario at an earlier stage in the game, but now that we have the urgency off, now that the situation in the Middle East has resolved to a point, I suggest to the minister -- and don’t laugh, because he wanted to know in a definite statement -- I suggest that what the minister should do is go before the Energy Board and oppose the proposition of a southern line in the Province of Ontario. Instead, he should promote the proposition, not of a line in the mid-north -- that isn’t a Canadian line, because it taps off American soil through the Soo and the middle part of the province -- but a line that will be on all-Canadian soil so that it would be an all-Canadian line with the security that, quite frankly, we are entitled to on the basis of the experience of the past year or two.

Now, if you want to know where we stand, that is where we stand. And, quite frankly, I think it is now a fully justified proposition. If we can get at it with vigour and build a line in northern Ontario in a year or so more, and have a line in all-Canadian soil that we control, then in the long sweep of Canadian history that is an infinitely better decision to make than the kind of decision into which we are letting events push us as far as the southern Ontario route is concerned.

The minister tried to have it both ways when he was speaking on behalf of the cabinet. He went on, after he had enunciated what they were going to do, and covered himself on both flanks, front and fore and everything else.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Like the hon. member is trying to do.

Mr. MacDonald: What does the minister mean? I am not trying. I have told the minister bluntly what should be done.

Mr. Stokes: Unequivocally.

Mr. MacDonald: Unequivocally. Right.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: After he had finished enunciating where they had stood, he was a little apprehensive that maybe they hadn’t appeased the farmers. So he finishes with a whole page that rehashes the whole thing.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s no concern of the hon. member. That is really not a concern of the hon. member. Because they won’t vote for his party.

Mr. MacDonald: Well, at the moment we are the only people who are fighting for them on this issue.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s why the NDP has so many rural members.

Mr. MacDonald: The leader of the Liberal Party (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has accepted it. The leader of the Liberal Party says it is a wholly defensible proposition and is no particular disruption. We are the only people who have been fighting it, with the leader of this party (Mr. Lewis) meeting farmers down north of London from the very outset of this battle.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And they are impressed too. He’s the new Messiah.

Mr. MacDonald: The Tories are running like mad to keep the fences mended, because there are a lot of loopholes in it this time.

Mr. Cassidy: What does the Treasurer think of destroying good agricultural land?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: How many rural members are there in the NDP? Not one. Don’t lecture to us about farmers. The hon. member always descends to lecturing sooner or later. He shouldn’t lecture.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): High Park is half rural.

Mr. MacDonald: May I say to the minister that he may be attempting to distract me, but I have no intention of being distracted.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, I just don’t want the hon. member to become pedantic.

When he starts to lecture to us about rural members and farmers, it gets just a little much. The hon. member was doing beautifully up until now.

Mr. MacDonald: Was I?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Really. Just beautifully. It was beginning to hurt, but when the hon. member starts about rural Ontario --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, I want to pick up with my line of thought which has been interrupted but I have just one question for the minister --

Mr. Chairman: Let’s hear the member for York South.

Mr. MacDonald: If I have done beautifully, have I persuaded the minister to amend the Energy Act and give the Ontario Energy Board the powers to review and roll back prices? Did I do beautifully enough for that?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: If the member is asking for a reply, I may say he is much more convincing on that subject than when he talks about something which he does not represent and which he knows nothing about, which is rural Ontario, because the hon. member is completely off-base on that score.

Mr. MacDonald: My question to the minister wasn’t a rehash of what he said before about my relationship to rural Ontario. My question to him was, “Have I persuaded him, in my beautifully doing up until now, that the Ontario Energy Board should have the powers to review prices and to roll them back?’ Maybe he can reflect on that, because that is going to be a pretty dramatic change of policy; undoubtedly he will be replying and he can deal with it at that point.

However, I want to get back to my line of thought, notwithstanding the taunting of the Minister of Energy.

After they had enunciated that the line was going to be built in the south, they had to turn around and bow once again in the direction of the farmers.

“This doesn’t mean” [says the Provincial Secretary of Resources Development] “that we have abandoned the concerns which prompted us to question the southern route in the first place. We are concerned with environmental impact in general and particularly with the disruption of food-producing lands in southern Ontario.

“We realize the southern route will cause very much more greater inconvenience and dislocation to citizens and to personal property than the northern route.

“Our greatest concern is the potential loss of agricultural production along rights of way. We recognize that the pipeline from Sarnia to Port Credit, with the exception of some 10 miles, will be built on existing rights of way.

“Regardless of whether we are speaking of an existing pipeline right of way or a right of way to be used in eastern Ontario, we don’t accept the proposition that this will be accomplished without disruption to the adjacent property.”

And he goes on and on.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Spoken by a true spokesman for the farmer.

Mr. MacDonald: Yes, sir. The leading hog producer of the province.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The hon. member doesn’t have to hit below the belt.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: He has been disowning pork production for so many years in this House that I am sure he has got a secret farm up in the Caledon Hills, raising hogs.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. MacDonald: The point here, Mr. Chairman, is that he then goes on to enunciate in the most vigorous terms all the reasons why there shouldn’t be a southern pipeline -- the disruption, the impaction of the soil, the loss of prime farmland and so on and on. But he started by saying the line was going to be in the south and he ended by saying the line is going to be in the south, so there is the champion of the farmers.

I say to the minister once again it shouldn’t be in the south. There is justification in the new set of circumstances, now that we have gained breathing time and aren’t a victim of events, to build that line where it should be built -- as an all-Canadian line throughout northern Ontario. Then we would have control of it and have the security of it, and wouldn’t have the kind of uncertainty that has characterized our whole fuel supply in the last six or eight months of crisis in this nation.

I would just like to see the minister speak up along this line when he gets to his intervention before the National Energy Board.

I turn, Mr. Chairman, to a third and final area on which I would like to touch briefly by way of overview on policy, and that is the inexorable drive of this government toward reprivatization, particularly in reference to Hydro.

The minister is infatuated with this whole concept of reprivatization. There was a wonderful story in the Globe and Mail a couple of years ago by one of the boys who followed him down to his -- what is his private school down in St. Catharines?

An hon. member: Ridley.

Mr. MacDonald: Ridley, yes, down to Ridley.

Mr. Cassidy: What? He is not a Ridley boy?

Mr. MacDonald: Yes, he is a Ridley boy and he -- it was almost like Saul on the road to Damascus. The light suddenly burst as he revisited the school.

He was preening the old school tie and he discovered that whereas before they used to have staff people who cleaned the floor and cooks who did the cooking and things of this nature, now they have reprivatized the whole process, and allegedly it was being done more cheaply. His infatuation with the thing was quite clear. It was part of his Tory philosophy, untouched by any streak of red Toryism at all -- real, unmitigated, unrelieved Toryism.

Unfortunately this process has emerged now with regard to the whole proposition of Hydro. I repeat, I haven’t had a chance to read the minister’s whole speech to the OMEA last night. I agree with and I don’t object to the restructuring of Hydro, as for example the great objections you had from the Liberal Party. What I do object to is the proposition of this minister kidding the people of the Province of Ontario that we can continue to have power at cost in any old sense, or any new sense, if you are going to reprivatize and hand back to the private sector great amounts of the normal operations of Hydro.

That is what this minister is hell-bent on; that’s his course at the present time. When the report of the “Make or Buy” task force for Hydro came out last fall it was immediately seized upon by the minister and his comment was that he looked with favour on it.

I suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that that report is a blueprint for the destruction --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: What was your reaction? You were immediately against it, without even reading it. You are a socialist, I am a Tory. Face up to the fact; you are against it. Be honest about it, you be honest about it.

Mr. MacDonald: Are you finished?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, I am not. Be honest.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): What do you mean, be honest about it?

Mr. MacDonald: Be honest?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Admit you are a socialist.

Mr. MacDonald: Of course I am a socialist.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Good for you.

Mr. MacDonald: The trouble with the minister is one day he talks like a Tory and the next day, when the pressure is on him, he too even talks like a Waffling socialist.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right. Why don’t you tell Ontario Hydro that you believe in reprivatization?

Mr. MacDonald: I will tell you what I did, Mr. Minister --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You wouldn’t have said that a year ago when you got rid of them. You wouldn’t have used that word; you wouldn’t have dared. You have come a long way. You talk about the Waffle now with impunity. You have really come a long way.

Mr. Stokes: How about a Waffling Tory?

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact we have come a long way.

Mr. MacDonald: As I once said in a comment about the Minister of Energy, he is the leading Waffler in the Tory ranks, and that he is. You don’t know exactly where his thrust and what his tune is going to be tomorrow, because he is playing both ends. I give him credit that at least on occasion his eyes get open and he faces some of the reality of the modern world and he sheds momentarily some of his doctrinaire Tory philosophy.

Mr. Lewis: Momentarily.

Mr. MacDonald: He is capable of getting a glimpse of the light of the future and what really makes this world tick, but then he is grasped and dragged back into the morass of Tory philosophy.

Mr. Cassidy: He was the Jim Laxer of the Tory party.

Mr. MacDonald: Yes, something of that nature.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And I remember when he was big over there. That is a very interesting comment.

Mr. Martel: You used to be big over there too, Darcy. You had a little downfall too.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Waffling socialists. They have never joked about it before. That’s really quite interesting.

Mr. Lewis: That shows how far we have come.

Mr. MacDonald: As a matter of fact now that this is raised about the minister’s downfall, I want to drag it right out onto the floor, and this will really maybe get him into a state of high rage, because on the two or three occasions on which I have mentioned it, he has been quite touchy and thought it was below the belt; but I thought you were the one minister who understood the principle of conflict of interest, the one minister who knew something about it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We are not in the Sunoco building, which is cheap, and that is what did you in and that is what is going to do your party in. Just cheap, just cheap.

Mr. Lewis: Relax, relax.

Mr. MacDonald: I’ll tell you, Mr. Minister, you have now led to some disillusionment in the one area in which I was unhesitatingly your champion, and that is --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Your cheapness gets me down. You are right, it breaks me down.

Mr. MacDonald: -- that you are the last man who should have failed to recognize that the Minister of Energy doesn’t put his offices on the top of the Sunoco building.

Mr. Lewis: That is right, that is right.

Mr. MacDonald: And if you didn’t then --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Who owns it?

Mr. MacDonald: -- you are even more of an unredeemed Tory than I thought.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Can I ask the hon. member a question?

Mr. MacDonald: Sure.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Do you have any idea who owns the Sunoco building?

Mr. MacDonald: I don’t care who owns it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Do you have any who the Minister of Energy rents this space from? The Minister of Government Services (Mr. Snow). Do you know that the Sunoco people do not own that building? You don’t care. You go on taking your cheap little two-bit shots and that is what brought down your leadership of the New Democratic Party. Just cheap.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: How dare they name a building they don’t own?

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): Who does own the building, then?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Just cheap.

Mr. Shulman: Who does own the building?

Mr. Lewis: Who does own the building?

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River) : Imperial Oil.

Mr. MacDonald: Yes, who does own the building?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I don’t know. I understand it is --

Mr. MacDonald: You mean you are speaking out without the facts?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- not the Sun Oil Co. As I understand it, it was originally Yolles and Rotenberg and it was sold to German money. We rent it from Government Services. I would think that instead of taking your cheap little two-bit shots you might find that out.

Mr. MacDonald: Is that right? You know something? You don’t know --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You know who else is in the building? The Provincial Auditor, the Ministry of Housing and about 10 other government ministries.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s right, that’s right.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: But you are so cheap and stupid you pick on a stupid little thing like that.

Mr. MacDonald: Is that right?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: I knew I’d get to them. Well I repeat, and I don’t back off one centimetre, that the one man in this cabinet who recognizes that the Minister of Energy doesn’t put his offices in the Sunoco building is Darcy McKeough. Quite frankly I say it more in sadness than in anger, I am sorry that you didn’t recognize it, because you obviously didn’t learn the lesson of a year or so ago.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Let me just say this to the hon. member --

Mr. Lewis: He was right. He will aggravate you.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Let me just say this to the member, that the reason I resigned and the reason that I stand in this House today and the reason that I do the things that I do today is because I am satisfied in my own mind that I am doing the right thing and not because of any criticism in cheap shots from cheap people like you.

Mr. MacDonald: You were right a year or so ago and you are wrong now. However, this is a digression.

Mr. Shulman: Stay cool over there. Don’t get excited.

Mr. MacDonald: However, we will get back to some more of these rather interesting conflicts in terms of personnel in your ministry and in some of the oil companies. I want to get back to this contention of the minister’s that I sounded off rather quickly without having read the report. I’ll inform him, and he can believe it if he wishes, that when the report came out, “Make or Buy” --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You were against it. You are against the title “Make or Buy.” That just upset you. Admit you are a socialist and save us time.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Martel: We are back to that again. We are back to square one, Mr. Minister, and you are going to tell us in a minute that you are a Tory I’ll bet you.

Mr. Stokes: Never mind, the OMEA loves you.

Mr. MacDonald: You had better put your chains on and get out of that mudhole over there because you get back to it; it seems to be the only thing that you can do.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You are in the mudhole.

Mr. MacDonald: I read the report, “Make or Buy,” and having read it some of my worst fears were confirmed.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I bet they were.

Mr. MacDonald: Right. And I said then what I shall repeat now as a jump-off --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: A what?

Mr. MacDonald: -- a jump-off with regard to the whole thrust of the government with regard to this.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s a new word.

Mr. MacDonald: It’s a blueprint for the destruction of Hydro as we have known it, because when fully implemented Hydro will be a public utility in little more than name only.

Mr. Sargent: Right.

Mr. MacDonald: Increasingly, its design, its construction, its operation and even its maintenance are now under consideration for transfer to the private sector.

Mr. Martel: Probably Acres.

Mr. Sargent: Worse than that, it’s foreign- controlled.

Mr. MacDonald: I don’t know anything about the foreign control for the moment.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Sargent: Check it out then. What’s left but foreign control? What other consortium is left? He’s in bed with all of them.

An hon. member: The member is making a laughing stock of himself.

An hon. member: He’s got everything.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister is really in deep trouble if he has to get assistance from the member for Grey-Bruce.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, no, he’s helping the member for York South. He is trying to dig him out.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister’s argument with regard to this whole policy is that it’s one way of giving a fillip to the economy of the Province of Ontario. The great technological advances of this institution, this publicly owned institution, the technological advances which were achieved by the spending of the people’s money are now going to be handed over at a fee. No suggestion? It is to be handed over to the private sector.

If you hand it over to the private sector in terms of doing the things which for the most part Hydro is going to be doing up until now, you start dismantling Hydro of its key personnel. The engineers who were getting $30,000 or $35,000, or whatever is the salary level today, will be offered $40,000 or $50,000 by the private sector to which you give the technology. You’ll begin to dismantle that key technical brains trust which has been something of the genius of Hydro. You will destroy the institution.

The supreme irony of the thing, Mr. Chairman, is that what has happened in this province is that we’ve wheeled a sort of Trojan horse into the whole question of Hydro by way of the COGP study. It was a task force which was dominated by outside consultants. It has frankly outlined a plan for the dismantling of Hydro as a public corporation, all apparently with the enthusiasm and approval of the Minister of Energy. Sir Adam Beck must be turning over in his grave these nights.

In fact, if this keeps up, may I say this to the minister, and I’ll let my introductory remarks rest there, Sir Adam Beck is going to stand in history where he stands as the creator of Hydro and the Minister of Energy is going to stand as the man who started to dismantle and to destroy Hydro as a public corporation in this province; because it’s inevitable that the trends that you have set in motion will have something of this result.

It may take more time than I think because of the kind of pressures that will come to the protection of Hydro, even with all its critics. Those critics will become friends when they find that the real enemy of Hydro is the people who are in power in the Province of Ontario at the present time.

We’ll have a later opportunity when we get into the detail of this in consideration of the estimates. I can assure you we will come back to it.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. minister.

Mr. Lewis: Go ahead. Admit you are a Tory.

Mr. MacDonald: Are you a Tory?

Mr. Cassidy: Are you going to sell Hydro? When are you going to sell Hydro?

Mr. Lewis: You Ridley aristocrat you, let’s hear what you have to say.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Chairman, I’m flattered by the fact that both the member for Huron and the member for York South, who shared very little else in what they had to say, spent most of their speeches -- I would think easily half, but we’ll check that in Hansard -- by quoting my speeches. That’s some sort of flattery, which I very much appreciate and I thank both my critics for the honour which they paid me.

They touched on some other things in the course of their remarks, gasoline pricing, nuclear safety, beans in Huron county, the question of Hydro and the OMEA. I’m not going to try to reply to the points that were made in the opening statements by the critics but just touch on some of them. No doubt we’ll come back to others as they’re raised during the course of these estimates.

I would say first to my friend from York South, who suggested that my speeches had varied in tone if not in substance, I think we’ve been consistent in the year and four months since -- year and three months, I guess -- since I became first parliamentary assistant and then Minister of Energy. I think our goal has been one and the same throughout the whole period of time, namely, which is enshrined in the legislation and which is our goal in the Ministry of Energy, to ensure for Ontario an adequate and secure supply of energy at a reasonable price operating under the constraints, quite frankly, that we don’t have the energy sources in Ontario and that

80 per cent of the energy we use comes from outside the Province of Ontario at the present moment.

We have water power. We have uranium, which may well be the fuel of the future, but the proportion 80/20 is not going to vary that much for some years to come. We operate under that constraint, but the goal and the objective and the substance of the speeches which have been made in the last 15 months have been one and the same -- to ensure that kind of supply, adequate and secure and at a reasonable price.

The concern of the province is very simply for the residential consumers of all kinds of energy, for our industries and for our commercial enterprises. More than that, to take into account the advances we have made in terms of protecting the environment in Ontario; and not to say, willy-nilly, that we are going to give up the progress we have made in terms of protecting the environment but to try and improve on what is a reasonably good record in terms of the environment and what can be a better record in the future. We do all that under the constraint that we don’t really have the energy here.

We do it under the constraint which the constitution imposes on this part of the Confederation. Although we are a member of the Confederation, obviously, and although we feel there should be national policies, we do have the problem of what the constitution says in terms of ownership of resources being vested in provinces, and we’re not really one of those provinces.

That’s been a tremendous hangup. It’s been a tremendous problem which has been faced in the past by previous administrations in this province, notably Mr. Frost and Mr. Robarts.

They came to grips with a gas problem and an oil problem and supported the building of certain pipelines which brought, at that point, more highly-priced energy to the province. It was energy which in the long run has proved to be secure and, at least in the case of oil if not in the case of gas, has proved to be available at a lower price -- and it is certainly a more secure supply -- than we would have paid had we relied on what was then a cheaper alternative to both natural gas and oil.

Those were, I think, bold steps in the days of Mr. Frost. Other bold steps have been taken since. But it is not as though we are talking about our nickel or our iron ore or our copper or our timber resources or our water, all of which we do control and which we have in adequate amounts. We are working with a commodity, or several commodities, which are not ours within some people’s reading of the constitution of this country.

I’d be the first to admit that the tone may have changed; quite frankly, the tactics change. If the tone has changed it has been a result of a change, from time to time, in tactics. And that tone will continue to change as the tactics change. I put it quite frankly to you we are engaged not in a classic black versus white situation. We are to some extent in a war of words and in a card game, if you will, where we don’t hold all the cards.

Mr. MacDonald: You don’t need to be in a war of words with the oil companies. You can just act.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The goal, the substance of what we are saying has not changed. If the tone does from time to time it may be for tactical reasons. It may very well be because there is a change of thinking on our part from time to time. I’d be the first to admit that we have changed our thinking on a number of issues.

We are a brand new ministry, some eight months old -- 15 months counting my experience -- with really very little knowledge other than in the electrical area and perhaps in the regulation, at one end of the pipeline, of natural gas.

Mr. Sargent: That’s not what you are telling the public. You know all the answers now.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): How would you know?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We are doing our best to learn as we go along; and as we learn our tone, if not our goal, will undoubtedly change.

The member for York South raised the question about the pipeline; I’ll just cover that briefly. I suppose my friend from York South weighs that in terms of how our position as a government might have varied. I would say to my friend from York South that the way we started was the way we ended up, and my friend from York South should know from his long experience, and perhaps from engaging in debates with me, that the way we start is the way we will ultimately end up.

Mr. MacDonald: You were wrong at the beginning and the end.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: There may have been some --

An hon. member: Playing politics.

An hon. member: Waffling.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That was your word. I wouldn’t use that word because I don’t want to upset my friend from Scarborough. I don’t like to upset him.

Mr. Lewis: What exactly are you trying to say?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: But we started off in a certain direction --

Mr. Laughren: You were lost at the beginning.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- and that was the direction in which we ended and that’s where we are now.

Mr. Lewis: Some of your colleagues dared to criticize and you got off track.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would say to my friend from York South that if he would keep his eye on the ball, and on the right ball, he will find there is a consistency and it will be there.

Mr. MacDonald: If you mean you were always right and we were wrong and played politics, I have got news for you; you were wrong.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I appreciate what he has said in his highly emotional appeal --

Mr. Lewis: Not emotional.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- about an all-Canadian pipeline. I support that; we all support that position. But to say very loosely as the member has said, “a pipeline under our control and on our soil”; I would have to ask the member, frankly and honestly, if in the 20 years since the pipeline has been built Canada has been hurt one jot or tittle because part of that pipeline went through the United States? I think we have to address ourselves to that fact fairly and squarely. The oil leaves Canada; it goes through the United States and comes out in Canada.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The amount we have bought comes into Canada and we have not suffered. You’ve come late to it; I take second place to no one on this side of the House in terms of where I stand on the whole subject of economic nationalism. I don’t back off from that position.

Interjections by hon members.

Mr. Lewis: Come on! You want to sell our uranium. You are right; you take second place to no one. You are a continentalist, you are.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Talk about rewriting history.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: One would like to be realistic; one likes to be practical. One likes to be emotional -- it’s great speech material.

Mr. Lewis: Come on now.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I ask the member whether we have suffered in the 20 years both pipelines have been built because the pipelines went through the United States?

Mr. MacDonald: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: We have.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We have not.

Mr. MacDonald: Do you want me to answer the questions?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, answer the question. Have we suffered?

Mr. Lewis: Certainly we have.

Mr. MacDonald: I could say to you would we have suffered if we had built the railways south, around Chicago, and then back into Canada? Of course we would. We wouldn’t have linked the bridge over the Great Lakes and united this nation.

Mr. Stokes: We are paying more for oil and gas --

Mr. MacDonald: With the kind of unity in this nation which we could have achieved if we had built our pipelines on Canadian soil, northern Ontario would have had reality instead of all the rhetoric that you give us.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It is not the question which I asked the member and he well knows it. We have had pipelines --

Mr. Lewis: Yes it is.

Mr. Stokes: We have suffered and you know it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We have not suffered.

Mr. Stokes: We have suffered more in northern Ontario than you have.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I say to my friend from Thunder Bay, for whom I have great respect, how have we suffered because one part of the TransCanada pipeline goes through the United States? How have we suffered because the interprovincial pipeline goes through the United States? Answer that question.

Mr. MacDonald: It should have gone down through his area and provided them with a pipeline for gas.

Mr. Stokes: I’ll tell you how we have suffered. Before the line went through the United States the oil companies built a refining capacity in Superior-Duluth. They used to truck the refined material to Thunder Bay and we paid more. Even though they closed down that refining capacity there they’ve started to build it up again and we are still paying more, eight to 15 cents a gallon more.

Mr. Lewis: The minister is out of his depth on this one.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would have to say with respect to my friend, and I am not trying to be provocative in this, that the fact that the two pipelines went through the United States has not hurt.

Mr. MacDonald: You’d better not be pro- vocative when you are on this ground.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We have never been in jeopardy because those pipelines went through the United States.

Mr. Lewis: Of course you have. They have added to the whole psychology of export of oil and natural gas.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, I don’t accept that.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please; order.

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Chairman, will the minister accept a question?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No. It is great to make a tub-thumping speech. I’ve made them in my time and I’ll make them again. But I would --

Mr. Sargent: On a point of order.

Mr. Drea: There’s no point of order; he said no.

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. member for Grey-Bruce have a point of order?

Mr. Sargent: The minister was talking about economic nationalism -- he is a great supporter of that. Would he answer me by telling me, on the consortium that you are having secret negotiations with --

Mr. Chairman: The chairman rules that is not a point of order.

Mr. Sargent: Well, does he think that he should answer questions only for the NDP and not the Liberals, or what?

Mr. Chairman: There is no point of order.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Chairman, I have to say that I am glad that my friend from Grey-Bruce is here. My faith in the Liberal Party has been restored, because most of the Liberal Party have gone to Sudbury but they left you here; and that is good news for the Liberal Party. I hope you stay here for the whole weekend.

Mr. Sargent: Before the night is over it’s bad news for you, I’ll tell you that.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Now, Mr. Chairman --

Mr. MacDonald: You are being provocative, Darcy.

An hon. member: Are you being provocative or impolite?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am being provocative. I have been provoked.

Mr. Chairman, I ask you to keep that in mind with respect to the pipeline. The other answer to the question is, of course, that nobody, including the member for York South, can stand in his place and say with certainty that it makes sense to build that pipeline. We don’t know whether the conventional oil in western Canada is there to put through it. That is of some concern.

The hon. member dismissed $100 million. That was the Soo pipeline, by the way. The connection to the Soo would cost $100 million more. If you want to be fair, if you are talking an all-Canadian route you are talking $300 million more, and that is a large sum of money; and so is $100 million.

Mr. Lewis: Just take it from the excess profits of the oil companies.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: At this point in time we have more than a little concern about the amount of oil which is going to be available from conventional sources to come through that pipeline to Montreal.

Mr. MacDonald: Why do you engage in the gesture and say you are in favour ultimately of an all-Canadian pipeline?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We are if the oil is there. And in the meantime --

Mr. MacDonald: You are trying to be on both sides of the fence.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, no; if you want to thump the drum, as you have about going through the United States, then let me thump this drum and say that at a time when eastern Canada needs the security of supply, we are supporting a pipeline in the quickest possible, most economic way, and we haven’t forgotten about the Province of Quebec --

Mr. Lewis: That is not easy.

Mr. MacDonald’: Oh, come off it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- the way you so cavalierly did tonight. Just forgotten about it. We won’t on this side of the House --

Mr. Martel: What kind of nonsense is that?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Or eastern Ontario or the Maritime provinces.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We come now to the subject that was raised by both members. The member for Huron raised the question of the safety of Candu. I say that at the same time that your leader is talking about exploiting our success in Candu and exporting it abroad, I find it a little hard to listen --

Mr. Sargent: What success?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- to your remarks about saying we shouldn’t be going ahead with nuclear programme. I say to you, I don’t care what your position is; your position for years in the Liberal Party was that Candu was a failure. Now that it’s a success your leader has jumped on the bandwagon --

Mr. Sargent: You can’t sell it any place. What are you?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: He has endorsed it, and yet his energy critic says we shouldn’t be putting the faith we are in the nuclear programme. I just say for your own sake, before you go to Sudbury, before Mr. Trudeau comes up and sets you straight, for heaven’s sake sort out the position between the front bench and the backbench, because it’ll make us happy, even if the confusion that you’re in doesn’t worry you.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That will be like the blind leading the blind.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I say that about the nuclear programme; and I am proud as we are proud, as your leader is now apparently proud after knocking Candu --

Mr. Sargent: You just got the job by accident; what are you talking about?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: After knocking Candu for 10 years he’s now swung around and says we should exploit the Candu technology in the world. Well all I’m saying to my friend from Huron -- who made some very nasty remarks, and you go ahead -- all I’m saying is, before you get up and talk about energy for your party, for heaven’s sake read your leader’s speeches. Don’t read mine. Find out what he’s saying, so that for once there’ll be some consistency on some subject in the Liberal Party, because there sure wasn’t any there tonight.

Mr. Sargent: Who writes your speeches?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And I feel sorry for you if that’s the tactic you’re going on. It’s easy to attack, but for heaven’s sake have some consistency between the front row and the back row.

Mr. Sargent: Since when are you an authority on energy?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I jump the middle row because there’ll never be consistency there. Never! Now I come back to the question of --

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am through with him. I’m devoting my full attention to the hon. member for York South.

Mr. Lewis: Well, that was too long!

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: They’ve had it. And now oil prices.

Mr. Lewis: All right, let’s get the stories.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We should talk about oil prices. Well you know, I have been here now for nearly 11 years. The hon. member for Scarborough West and I came in to the House at the same time.

Mr. Sargent: And everything you touch has been a failure.

Mr. Lewis: How come you went so far?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And when I came in nearly 11 years ago, the hon. member for York South, who was then in a somewhat more exalted position than he’s in now, was talking about the high profits of the oil companies then. And he’s done that for 11 years.

In good years and bad years, he has talked about the big profits of the oil companies.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Now if you’d talked about them only in the last year, I could listen to you with a little bit of credence. But you’ve talked about oil companies for 10 years. Whether they’ve made money or not, you’ve quoted facts and figures that they’ve made too much money.

Mr. Cassidy: And what have you done about it?

Mr. Martel: When did they ever lose money?

Mr. Renwick: Which were bad years for oil companies?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I put that fact on the record.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And for 10 years you’ve been asking for a prices review board.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Is that right? That’s right? Okay, we’ve got that on the record.

Mr. MacDonald: While you were talking about consumer protection we were suggesting what you could do about it.

Mr. Lewis: For 10 years we’ve been consistently right. That’s virtue.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: Right.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: So let’s talk about oil prices for a minute. Let’s talk about oil prices for a moment.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: My friend from York South, and my friend from Scarborough West in his interjection, wanted to be philosophical about where we stood. Philosophically, I make no apology for this, my position, and I suspect the position of those of us -- hopefully when there are more of us here on this side of the House --

Mr. Lewis: You found how wrong you were.

Mr. Martel: Even they couldn’t listen any more.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And we make no apology -- well there are quite a few over there, God bless them. We make no apology for the fact --

Mr. Lewis: Well then stop apologizing and get to it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We make no apology for the fact that we think that a free market works rather well most of the time.

Mr. Lewis: Come on! What free market? This is called monopoly capitalism, that’s what it is called. It is not a free market at all.

Mr. Stokes: I know where you got it from -- Mr. Armstrong, president of Imperial Oil; I am reading his speech.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: What a pleasure these estimates are going to be!

Mr. MacDonald: All that crap about the international cartel gouging the public.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. The hon. minister has the floor.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. They’re being awfully provocative over there, but I’m not being provoked. I hope you’ve noticed that, sir.

Mr. Lewis: Well, you are a dignified neanderthal!

Hon. Mr. McKeough: But that’s point one, where we stand philosophically. That is what I pointed out to you.

Mr. Lewis: But this is not a free market.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You socialists don’t believe in profit, let alone high profit or low profit. You don’t understand the word.

Mr. Lewis: Of course we believe in profit.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Do you? Do you really? What one of you has ever made a return on investment?

Mr. Lewis: All of us have made a return on investment.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Martel: You better believe it. Ask the member for High Park.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Do you really understand it?

Mr. Lewis: When you can tie your shoelaces you can talk to us about return on investments. When did you buy gold? When it was $10 an ounce? Don’t talk to us about return on investments.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That nice chap who used to sit in the front row -- what was his name, nice chap. Freeman. He was a small merchant, the only one you’ve ever had in your party. You went from there right up to Shulman, which none of us can understand. But he understood return on investment. He put the money out and he was making a return on investment. He ran a shoe store, didn’t he? The rest of you know nothing about investing and nothing about profits and nothing about returns.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: All I am saying to you is that, for heaven’s sake, when you stand up and talk about profits, why don’t you just admit that you think profit is a dirty word? You don’t like them whether they are big or small or excessive.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: For 10 years you have been asking for a prices review board when prices were at this level and profits at that level or the other way around. You don’t understand it. Profit is a dirty word to you.

Mr. Lewis: You don’t understand.

Mr. Stokes: We believe in profits but not in a licence to steal.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You don’t believe in profits and you never have. You don’t know the meaning of the word.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You are socialists. Admit it and you would be so much happier.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I will tell you this, if I am a Waffling socialist, you are wallowing in it, just wallowing in socialism over there. Admit it.

Mr. Lewis: Of course we admit it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Don’t stand up and try to cloak your arguments in some sort of economic garbage about all profits. You don’t believe in the thing to begin with.

Mr. Martel: Is he for real?

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I am hoping the minister can get ahead with his speech. He constantly gets back on trying to persuade us and get us to admit we are socialists. Look, we are socialists. Believe that we are socialists. Go ahead now and let’s find out what you are.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I will tell you very simply. I am not a socialist. I believe in a profit. I believe in a return on investment. That separates us and we really can’t talk about our problems.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: What about gouging?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Oh, you have been talking about gouging for 10 years.

Mr. Lewis: You don’t understand the difference between profit and theft. That’s your problem.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I didn’t hear you.

Mr. Lewis: You don’t understand the difference between profit and theft.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Oh, I do.

Mr. Lewis: Oh no, you don’t.

Mr. Stokes: What does the minister think about that wild-eyed socialist in Newfoundland who just confiscated Brinco -- a fellow by the name of Moores? A socialist?

Mr. MacDonald: Go back to your speech.

Mr. Chairman: I am wondering if the members of the House will allow the minister to get back to his estimates.

Mr. MacDonald: If the minister would allow it himself.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Chairman, what I am trying to do, as we begin this discussion, is to paint for all to see the philosophic differences.

Mr. Stokes: Between you and Frank Moores.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Oh, no.

Mr. Young: And don’t forget, this man runs the biggest socialist enterprise in the Province of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I just want to spell out the differences. I think I have succeeded.

Mr. Cassidy: When are you going to sell Ontario Hydro?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Chairman, I think we have had some success. I take some satisfaction in the fact that an oil company yesterday decided not to proceed with a certain price increase. I take some satisfaction that when most of this country was talking about oil going to international levels, including I might say the Premier of the socialist government of Saskatchewan who put it very, very well, and fought very hard for his province. He sure wasn’t talking like a socialist when he said it. He wanted world market prices. I give Mr. Blakeney full credit. He crystallized an issue which we have been trying very hard to crystallize.

Mr. MacDonald: He wanted to get some redress for the inconsistencies of Confederation.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: When he moved in and when he took the difference between the frozen price and the world market price into his own hands, he crystallized an issue.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, but he has backed off; and it is sort of sad.

Mr. MacDonald: To some degree, but he is forced to a compromise for the moment -- just like you are forced to accept a measure of socialism.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: He has decided he isn’t quite the socialist he thought he was, because he has now decided to encourage the producers. That’s interesting. There’s a little lesson there.

Mr. MacDonald: Like the lesson you are learning now.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Blakeney took the $6.50, the difference between $4 and $10.50. He took it all, and you know it and I know it. Within the last week the producers have been pulling out of Saskatchewan. He’s revising his whole system so that the producers are going to get a piece of the action. Now, whether they should get a bigger or smaller piece of the action is something that you and I can’t decide here. But all I would say to you, and that’s perhaps what separates us, is that the pure socialism of Mr. Blakeney fell apart this week --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- because he admitted there was a place for the private sector --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- and he has revised his high-faluting theories and he says: “We are going to let you in -- ”

Mr. MacDonald: Just as your --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: “ -- because we want the drilling and we want the production in dear old socialist Saskatchewan.”

Mr. MacDonald: Just as your pure Toryism is falling apart day in and day out; that’s your problem.

Mr. Stokes: You told them in Oshawa last night that you might have been wrong for years and years in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, Mr. Chairman, I am never afraid to admit when I have been wrong. But the smugness over there -- you know you never admit you are wrong.

Mr. Stokes: Always willing to learn.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: A little milk of human kindness would become you so much, really it would.

Mr. Sargent: You are making free enterprise a dirty word, you know.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The member talks about regulation by the Ontario Energy Board? This should be said: Profit increases of the oil companies, which have been announced for this quarter, were completely predictable.

Mr. Stokes: They are immoral.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The members opposite --

Mr. Stokes: They are immoral.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The members opposite -- just let me say this -- the members opposite, in that party, have talked about the increases that Imperial Oil have gained this quarter over last quarter. That didn’t happen yesterday. That happened 12 months ago when the price per barrel went from $3 to $4.

Mr. MacDonald: Now they are up from $4 to $6.50.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, that will not show up, I would suspect, until the second quarter or the third quarter of this year --

Mr. Stokes: But it is inevitable.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- when they start collecting their share of the difference between $4.50 and $6.50.

Mr. Cassidy: We’re in the second quarter now and you haven’t done anything.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: But they haven’t started to collect yet; I would say to my know-all friend from Ottawa, they have not started to collect. Ask my friend from York South; you keep out of this, because he knows what he is talking about, you don’t.

Mr. MacDonald: Thank you, Darcy.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: They have not yet started to collect that and I suppose those profits really will not show until the third quarter. Would my friend from York South agree with that? That’s when we will really see the profits, I suppose, because they are making the 90 cents they made from a year ago, plus they will be making one-third of the $2.50. What’s that? Eighty cents?

Mr. MacDonald: Are you going to reduce --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: One dollar and seventy cents a barrel.

Mr. MacDonald: What are you going to do about it?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: What are we going to do?

Mr. MacDonald: Yes, right.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: What are we going to do?

An hon. member: Yes.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, just how we get at the per-barrel price is a little bit beyond me. It’s a little bit beyond me.

Mr. Cassidy: Are you going to curb their profits?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Let me be serious for a moment; let me serious about this. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens as to how one defines an excess profit, and I’ll return to that subject.

Mr. Sargent: You haven’t tried.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am not here to apologize and I will not apologize for the oil companies. I’ve said some things which I sincerely believe. Let me say this.

Mr. Cassidy: But you have been apologizing for them.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Oh be quiet little boy, just be quiet. Let people talk who know what they are talking about.

Mr. Cassidy: You stop apologizing, I will stop commenting.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: When we look at the return on investment of the oil companies, BP this morning or yesterday morning -- by the way, a 50 per cent state-owned operation, that should go on the record -- BP rolled in and said their profit was up 50 per cent. And those are the figures the member from Scarborough revels in -- what this quarter was over last quarter; we on this side of the House understand something called return on investment, BP were way up and they pointed out that they were still making less than 10 per cent return on investment. I would have thought, and I say this sincerely --

Mr. Sargent: That’s bad?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- I would say that it is completely wrong when I can make 11 per cent on somebody’s mortgage.

Mr. Sargent: One per cent --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: When somebody can make 11 per cent on somebody’s mortgage, I don’t think 10 per cent is a very good return on investment.

Mr. Lewis: You tell us about the big companies, don’t give us this about mortgages.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: All right, all right; sure.

Mr. Lewis: Shell.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’ll talk to you about Shell, who for the last 10 years have made less than 10 per cent; about Imperial Oil who have --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: Standard.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Oh, we’re now going to regulate the American companies, too.

Mr. Renwick: They control companies here.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I will talk about Shell, who made something less than 10. They did better than that this year, no question.

About Imperial Oil, who are the biggest and the most efficient in my view, who made 12 -- now let me just talk about this for a moment -- who this year made 18 per cent. Then you look at their statement. They made an 18 per cent return, which works out to a couple of hundred million bucks on a book value of $1.3 billion.

They publish this. Why they do, and why they show the charts, is beyond me. If you multiply, they are making 18 per cent -- the member for High Park will appreciate this -- on the book value of the company, and that’s what they show.

If you take what the market value of that stock is, it is worth not a billion or two or three, it is worth, as of a couple of days ago, over $5 billion. At that rate they are making a rate of return of four or five per cent.

Mr. Sargent: That’s a lot of nonsense. You know that.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am pointing out to my friends opposite, who do not believe in -- you really don’t, you know -- in profit, in return on investment, in investment.

Mr. Renwick: That’s not correct, and you know it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You really would, let’s face up to it, you would like to make them all broke and then you could take them over and nationalize them and you would be happy.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Sure you would. That’s your aim, that’s your ambition purely and simply.

Mr. Lewis: Nobody is going to believe that nonsense.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s the premise you started with, purely and simply. You don’t believe in the word profit because you have never made it.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I think they are socialists.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, I do too.

Mr. Martel: How did the provincial secretary figure that one out?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The Minister of Energy convinced me.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Chairman, I have been as non-provocative as I know how.

Mr. Sargent: Read the notes they gave you.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would say this, in concluding these remarks. I said the other day that we were impressed with what Nova Scotia had appeared to have done. That decision is being appealed to the courts. Whether it will stand up -- whether it is within the competence of Nova Scotia remains to be seen.

Perhaps what is more important is that Nova Scotia is in some respects in a more fortunate position than we are, in that they have an excess of refining capacity, whereas I have explained to my friend from York South, we have in this province refining capacity for about 80 per cent of what we use. That is a constraint.

If Nova Scotia’s legislation stands up what happens to that refining capacity? If somebody can make a better return in a neighbouring province, or in a neighbouring state, is that where the crude and the refined product is going to flow?

Mr. Lewis: Of course not.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It is very pretty -- oh sure. Nova Scotia will put on tariffs. Is that what they are going to do?

Mr. Lewis: Oh, but the oil companies aren’t going to do that. They wouldn’t dare play that game with Confederation, and you know that. You just let them run rampant.

Mr. Renwick: You believe the Imperial Oil officers are a threat to them?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I say to my friend very simply --

Mr. Lewis: Are they blackmailing you?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- let’s not just jump and see if it is working. Let’s just not get overly enthusiastic. I am impressed --

Mr. Lewis: You are saying you can be blackmailed by them.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am impressed with what they have done.

Mr. MacDonald: Well do it then.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am impressed with the legislation which has been extant in Quebec for a couple of years now, but I point out to you that they started two years ago in Quebec. What direction they are going I don’t know. They don’t have price control at the moment or price regulation.

Mr. Lewis: You saw what British Columbia is going to do.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: In their marketing legislation, to date, they have hired 32 inspectors, they are regulating nothing. They have co-ordinators and directors and so on; they are an oil economy.

I would submit most sincerely, and I would completely admit, that it is probably within the constitutional jurisdiction of this province by amendment --

Mr. Lewis: Oh!

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I have never denied this.

Mr. Lewis: Well, the Premier has.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, he has not.

Mr. Lewis: He certainly has.

Mr. Martel: He is blaming everything on Ottawa.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: What the Premier has said and what I have said is that if there is ever anything that should be done nationally it is wage or price controls or commodity controls.

Mr. Lewis: No, he plays the game that it is a national issue.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: And you would balkanize this country in 10 parts; you would balkanize it.

Mr. Lewis: No, sir. You are the fragmenter because you allow Ontario consumers to be exploited.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You would balkanize --

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: If there is ever anything that should be national it is price controls, if they are necessary. It should not be done on a regional or provincial basis, and the member knows that very well.

Mr. Lewis: You are the balkanizer. No one protects the consumers of Ontario in other words.

Mr. Chairman: Perhaps the minister would return to the estimates please?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, having said all that, Mr. Chairman, --

Mr. Martel: It wasn’t very much, I assure you.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Having said all that --

Mr. Kennedy: It is all the member for Sudbury East could have said.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- I would simply say that we continue to examine this matter rather closely. We feel that it is a national responsibility. We think that totally there is inflation in the economy. I find it a little hard to know why you pick out -- I know why you do, I know why you pick out oil and gas. Why don’t you talk about lumber, which could be controlled by a socialist government in British Columbia and the price of lumber in this country today is a disgrace.

Mr. Lewis: And is being controlled.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It is a disgrace what has happened to the price of lumber.

Mr. Renwick: Quite different. The balance is international trade and you know it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It’s a disgrace, what has happened to the price of lumber. You can talk about the price of wheat, you can talk about the price of coffee. We are in a period of inflation and the only way we will come to grips with this is on a national level and not on a balkanized level. Having said all that --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: No, you are wrong. You have a responsibility to Ontario which you neglect. You forget your constitutional responsibility.

Mr. Cassidy: And all you do is play to the federal government.

Mr. Renwick: You can’t equate copper and lumber with domestic oil.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Having said all that, Mr. Chairman, I would indicate to the House that we continue to follow this whole matter with more than a little interest.

Mr. Chairman: It is the wish of the members of the House that we deal with votes 1802 and 1801 collectively?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: You are on weak ground. You are going to be sorry you are raising these things.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any comments on votes 1801 and 1802? The member for Sandwich-Riverside.

On votes 1801 and 1802.

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Chairman, as the environmental critic for the New Democratic Party the policies of the Minister of Energy are of great concern to me. I have just realized what the minister’s problem is. He explained it very succinctly. The minister said 80 per cent of our energy sources are outside the province. In other words we have only 20 per cent of our needed energy resources.

An hon. member: In the bank?

Mr. Burr: Of course he is ignoring, as almost everybody did until a couple of years ago, the fact that we in this country have sunshine, and all the countries of the earth have enough sunshine, to supply adequate energy for their needs if they had the technology. As one of the advanced countries in technology we, together with the Americans, are capable of supplying our own energy needs. If you take the view that we have to import 80 per cent of our energy of course your policies are going to be off-balance.

The energy sources the minister is interested in are all the dirty ones. He is not interested in the clean sources of energy. In fact we might just as well call him the minister of dirty energy.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Or the dirty Minister of Energy?

Mr. Burr: No, I wouldn’t say that; the minister of “dirty” energy. Perhaps we should have this cabinet create a new ministry, a ministry of clean energy.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Clean.

Mr. Burr: And we could put somebody else in that with instructions to get going.

I have a few questions to which I should like some answers and a few comments to which I would like some return comments. The first one is probably not answerable tonight but I would appreciate an answer at the minister’s early convenience.

According to the Associated Press story reported on Dec. 10, 1973, the 20 largest oil companies in the United States control first, almost 90 per cent of that country’s known oil reserves; second, virtually all of the oil shale lands currently under private ownership; third, between 30 and 60 per cent of the country’s coal; fourth, over 70 per cent of its natural gas; fifth, more than 50 per cent of the uranium supply used in nuclear power generation. My question is: What are the corresponding statistics for Canada and especially Ontario?

The figures I have just quoted show clearly that the oil companies have effective control over all the dirty energy sources.

Most of us can appreciate the extent to which these 20 oil companies control the White House and the policies announced by the White House. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the President’s panel on solar energy, which was set up at his request with the joint efforts of the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, had virtually no impact on the President?

The report of the 40 members who constituted the panel was made in December, 1972, and had no effect on the next budget. The panel had recommended a 15-year research and development programme totalling some $4 billion for the various kinds of solar energy but the President’s January, 1973 budget -- on the advice, of course, of his oil advisers -- allotted only $15 million for the fiscal year 1974 to solar energy research and development; a mere pittance compared with the $563 million allotted for further nuclear fission.

This year, presumably as a result of the so-called energy crisis, the Atomic Energy Commission, of all people, sent an urgent message delivered by hand to the President urging an $11 billion expenditure over a period of five years on research and development of new ways of using coal, new ways of using the sun and new ways of using the heat locked beneath the earth. The spokesman said, on that occasion:

“These are not piddling programmes that just pay lip-service to solar and geothermal research. What we are doing here is making a commitment to these programmes to get maximum use out of every usable energy resource we have.”

That came from the Atomic Energy Commission, whose spokesman emphasized the seriousness of the recommendation.

Have any startling announcements been made from the White House about a new direction in research and development allocation of funds? If so, I haven’t heard about it. Yet this December, 1972 report of this solar energy panel -- entitled “Solar Energy as a National Resource” contains such statements as the following:

“1. Solar energy is an inexhaustible source of enormous amounts of clean energy.”

This, Mr. Chairman, is the answer to an environmentalist’s prayer.

“2. In principle, solar energy can be used for any energy need now being met by conventional fuels.”

That, Mr. Chairman, should be the answer to an Energy Minister’s prayer; one would think.

“3. There are numerous conversion methods by which solar energy can be used for heat and power. Examples: thermal, photosynthetic, bioconversion, photovoltaic, winds, and ocean temperature differences.”

Mr. Sargent: The profit incentives aren’t there in solar energy as they are in nuclear power.

Mr. Burr: Is that the explanation?

Mr. Sargent: Motivation is profit.

Mr. Burr: To quote further:

“4. There are no technical barriers to wide application of solar energy to meet US needs.

“5. From sea thermal energy alone, the total annual production could exceed the total energy demands of the year 2000.

“6. For most applications, the cost of converting solar energy to useful forms of energy is now higher than conventional sources, but due to increasing prices of conventional fuels and increasing constraints on their use, it will be competitive in the near future.”

This was written, Mr. Chairman, more than 1 1/2 years ago. The near future has already arrived.

“7. With adequate financial support behind solar energy programmes, building heating could reach public use within five years; building cooling in six to 10 years; synthetic fuels from organic materials in five to eight years; and electricity production in 10 to 15 years.”

One member of this panel, a civil engineering professor, testified before an Atomic Energy Commission licensing hearing in January, 1973, that wind power, an indirect form of solar energy, could provide as much electricity for Long Island in 1977 as a proposed nuclear power plant at the same cost or less, and with much greater reliability.

The good news from the solar energy panel should have delighted every politician with any responsibility for forming energy policies. It solves the dilemma of nuclear fission power, which is: Is the benefit worth the terrifying risk?

The good news about the feasibility of solar energy as a fuel source creates a new equation involving unlimited benefits for mankind without any risks to the environment, to human health or to the genetic bank of the human race in the future.

Yet our Minister of energy seems to be not only not delighted by the good news but even somewhat embarrassed. Why is this? Every few weeks there is a headline in some paper or other such as this one: “Nobel Winner Says, ‘Sun Power Best, Safest Energy

Source.’ “ Another one. “Expert Says Solar Energy Safer than Nuclear Energy.”

In the United States we have the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility Inc. with headquarters in California. Its board of directors contains at least four Nobel laureates -- two of them in the field of biology and two in the field of chemistry. There are many other organizations in the United States that are taking a similar stand, most of these consisting of scientists in one field or another. These men understand nuclear fission and the effects of radioactivity on human cells and on human genetics. They want to end the proliferation of nuclear fission power plants.

The minister and I know nothing about the technical details of nuclear fission, nor does President Nixon. He made a speech in June, 1971, about the nuclear breeder as being “the best hope for the future”, but then blurted out in September, 1971, “This business about breeder reactors and nuclear energy is over my head”.

Politicians, who are not themselves scientifically trained, have to take advice on technical matters from their technical advisers. This is obvious, and nobody disputes it. But on moral issues, politicians should be able to make their own decisions. Oil companies may feel threatened by the good news about the feasibility of solar energy but politicians should not. The whole nuclear establishment may feel threatened by the good news about solar energy, but the Minister of Energy should not.

I have notified the minister about a seminar on wind energy conversion, to take place in Sherbrooke, Que. on May 29. On two occasions he has made reference to the expense that would be involved if my wife and I can go there at our own private expense, surely the government of Ontario can afford to send at least one civil servant as an observer. A few moments ago we were reminded how the minister approved a whole pipeline through southern Ontario without even consulting the cabinet. Then he has the temerity to suggest that he could not send anyone to Quebec without consulting the Chairman of Management Board.

Some of the most knowledgeable people in this particular field will be present at this seminar. They will be presenting concepts that will range from traditional to revolutionary. There will be talk of towers 800 ft high. There will be descriptions of off-shore floats on which tall towers with wind turbines will be built. Prof. Herconemus thinks big. It will be an interesting meeting. There are scientists both at the University of Sherbrooke and at McGill keenly interested in the conversion of wind energy on a commercial scale. It may turn out to be just another seminar; on the other hand it may become an historic meeting.

I don’t know how feasible wind power is but Buckminster Fuller says that it is the most promising form of solar power by 99 to 1. Buckminster Fuller, I believe in the year 1971 -- before the last election -- was eagerly sought after for his opinion on how to solve the Spadina ditch quandry. I don’t see why, when he gives free advice, it should not be listened to. That advice about Spadina did cost about $12,000, if I remember.

The point is, Mr. Chairman, that solar power is moral; nuclear power is immoral. The minister need make no apologies to anyone for attending such a meeting or sending an observer.

Mr. Sargent: He can’t go.

Mr. Burr: I asked in the House yesterday, I believe it was, about the perpetual methane economy; that is, methane gas converted from organic matter. The minister’s stock reply, as usual, was “the time for methane hasn’t come” or something to that effect. The conversion of algae or sorghum or other plants into methane gas is a technology which was demonstrated long ago.

In the United States the large-scale production of instant gas could be achieved if farmers were encouraged to cultivate algae on some of the land which they are paid to keep out of agricultural production. The National Science Foundation, in 1972, estimated that all the world’s energy requirements in the year 2000 could be met by this one method alone; that is, by combustion of high-energy plants cultivated on only about four per cent of the world’s land surface.

This, of course, is not the only method for producing methane gas. The United States Department of the Interior estimated in 1970 that the domestic animals in the United States -- cattle, pigs and chickens -- produce enough waste every year to make two million barrels of low sulphur oil or nearly 40 per cent of the United States’ requirements. This method of solar energy conversion is not my first choice but I would certainly favour it over a continuation of nuclear fission.

There are many clean alternatives, Mr. Chairman, to dirty nuclear power. It is natural enough for technical people to prefer and to promote their own brand of energy but it is not natural for politicians to favour dirty technologies over clean technologies.

Mr. Sargent: Sure thing.

Mr. Burr: If we, as politicians in this Legislature, have any role to play it is in keeping the various vested interests from jeopardizing the public interests whether it be in the conflict between doctors and chiropractors; between architects and engineers; ophthalmologists and optometrists; dentists and denturists; or the nuclear establishment and the advocates of solar energy. If this is our role we should play it to the best of our ability.

I would like to pause and ask how does the minister view the politicians’ role in general and that of himself as minister in particular? I notice that the minister was interrupted in the last couple of sentences. Would you like me to repeat the last two sentences?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I just heard what the member was saying.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Only with one ear he heard.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Go ahead.

Mr. Burr: Go ahead?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Repeat it.

Mr. Burr: I said how does the --

Mr. Sargent: Read it over again, the whole thing.

Mr. Burr: My question is at this point and I’d like an answer just to this one point now: How does the minister view the politicians’ role in general in this field of energy and how does he view his own role as the Minister of Energy in particular?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Chairman, we have had discussions about this in various question periods and I very much appreciate the sincerity with which the member is approaching what he considers to be alternatives which should be --

Mr. Sargent: He is getting through to you.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- seriously considered as opposed to what we regard as certainly proved sources of energy, such as coal, oil, gas -- not all of them dirty; they can be made cleaner and are being made cleaner, given research, given time -- water power and nuclear power. I think the member’s aversion, which he and I don’t share, is particularly to nuclear power. We think it is clean. It has a risk. Obviously, leaving this building tonight each one of us faces a certain risk. There has not been an accident in a nuclear power plant in the world.

Mr. Sargent: That’s why you made a $1 million mistake on Douglas Point. A $1 million mistake. Supposing something happens?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We believe the Candu system is safe; we believe the systems everywhere in the world are safe; the American system and the British systems. We happen to believe and, I think, with some confidence that the Candu system happens to be safer than any other. But there is al- ways the probability, remote as it may be, that there will at some point in time be an accident which may cause damage. I don’t deny that. But I think, as I said, when we leave here --

Mr. Sargent: Not an insurance company in North America will insure you against nuclear power damage at Pickering.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- and go down University Ave., there is a much better probability that we will be run over by a car or a motorcycle or a bicycle or by another pedestrian than there is of a probability of an accident at Pickering or at Bruce. Nothing is certain. I am going to be the last one to stand here in my place and say that we have a failsafe, a failsure system at Pickering or at Bruce or at anywhere else. We are making them as safe as they can be made and they are rigorously inspected.

With respect to the other sources of power which the member mentioned and the state of technology, with the greatest of respect, I am not an expert in any of these fields. I appreciate that the member has done a great deal of work for which I commend him. He is particularly keen on a conference at Sherbrooke.

Mr. Sargent: Why did you laugh him down two weeks ago then?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would think it would be fair to say that there are two or three invitations a day to conferences of one sort or another pertaining to energy which come into either my office or the deputy’s office. Really it can be said since we have started the ministry that I don’t suppose we have attended, other than here in Toronto and other as active participants, more than half a dozen conferences, nor do we plan to in the future. We are not going to Sherbrooke. We are not going to a dozen other places where people who have a genuine interest in a particular kind of energy development are promoting a certain idea. We will continue to read technical journals, newspapers and whatever we have time to get our hands on and monitor the various developments in the whole energy field.

Mr. Sargent: He is a one-energy minister.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The member mentioned at the beginning a very interesting figure. He said that the council which was interested in solar energy suggested that the United States embark on a $4 billion programme for 15 years to bring solar energy to a state presumably of commercial production. They’ve spent nothing like that. I doubt whether the total nuclear programme to date in Canada, up until this point, would come to $4 billion.

Mr. Sargent: It is $3.5 billion.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It’ll be double or triple that I suppose in the next five or 10 years.

Mr. Burr: In Canada or in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: To bring the nuclear programme to the stage we are at now cost $2 billion. Would that be a safe figure? I suppose with the heavy water plant in round figures it would be $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Mr. Lewis: How come there are no heads nodding over there?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The resources of this country have been completely committed to a brand of nuclear reactor, and we have had a very high degree of success. I don’t think in all conscience that the country, and I am not talking about Ontario, on a grand scale can commit the amount of money which the member is really talking about to something which is as unproven as wind power or geothermal power or solar power.

The one area in which we are doing something in a small way today and in which the Ministry of the Environment is participating is power from garbage. We are doing something about that, and we’ll continue to do something about that. When the day comes when the experts, not in Ontario but in Canada, see some need for us to move into some of the other forms of power, then I think we’ll move and when there is some chance of success.

Mr. Sargent: But you are committed to $8 billion. How can you change from that?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We are committed to a very successful nuclear programme. The member says that I am Mr. Unclean Energy. Well, fine and dandy. If we start it tomorrow, the amount of power which would be generated in the next 20 years from wind power or solar power or geothermal power would be small. There is none of that in Ontario. We don’t have the sun in Ontario or in Canada. We have about one-third of the sunlight here that they do in Arizona, which is one of the places they are working on it. But we don’t have the winds, I’m told, and we’ve discussed that subject before. It is not practical, it is not economical, it is unproven.

You have your opinion, I have mine. I can only rely on the advice of my experts. I am not an expert in wind energy or solar energy, and I simply say that in the view of the government of Canada, in the view of Ontario Hydro, who have been in this for some time, and in the view of the very limited number of advisers who are presently advising me, we have our hands full and we would be well advised not to go off on any chases for a new form of energy, or forms of energy, at this point. Even if we did tomorrow and committed massive sums of money, we wouldn’t change that 80 per cent figure in the next 20 years. We wouldn’t change it.

Mr. Burr: Mr. Chairman, I wish I could remember all those points that the minister made that should be answered. One of them is that which I read out just a few minutes ago. The wind engineer has conceptualized a plan for supplying Long Island with wind energy conversion power, electricity, by the year 1977. This would take four years to achieve. And up at Goderich you have a similar situation. You plan --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’m sorry, I missed it. This is a conceptual plan for Long Island Sound?

Mr. Burr: Yes. He says four years. And up at Goderich --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You really think it is going to happen?

Mr. Burr: Not unless somebody gets behind it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Do you not think that it would be a much more logical place for it to happen, with the pollution problems, the energy problems, if it’s going to happen anywhere, in New York City, than it would here, let alone at Goderich?

Mr. Burr: Well, sure. I would hope it would happen in several places. But you say $4 billion over 15 years. That was for the recommendation from the solar energy panel for all the various kinds of energy.

I’m not suggesting that Ontario should launch a similar programme. But what Ontario should do, in my opinion, is consult with the other provinces and the federal government and decide what share the provinces should have in exploring this. For example, British Columbia or Nova Scotia could work on ocean temperature differences; either one of them, possibly both, but you would have a duplication of effort. New Brunswick could work on tidal power, with government help from Ottawa, of course. We in Ontario have been told -- I wrote it to you in a letter -- that Lake Huron has a very good source of wind, and Georgian Bay, and continuing on across through Labrador and Newfoundland. There’s a very good source of wind there. A reliable source.

I don’t want to take too much of the members’ time, but I would like the minister, Mr. Chairman, to give me his comments on each of the three reasons I intend to give for putting an end to nuclear fission power plant programmes. I don’t admit, but I concede that the Candu system is operationally pretty safe. I’m not raising any objection there. Possibly I should, but I’m not. I’m conceding that the Candu system is best. I’m taking your word for it partly.

But these are the three reasons why I think that we should not continue to expand the system. The first reason is a moral one. Nuclear fission power requires uranium. Uranium mining condemns many of the unfortunates who are employed in it to a premature and painful death.

Mr. Lewis: That’s a serious matter.

Mr. Burr: And it’s a moral matter.

Mr. Lewis: And which the Minister of Natural Resources has not yet grasped.

Mr. Burr: And many of those who do not die, are so disabled that they can find employment in no other type of mining. In fact, they have difficulty in finding employment in any other field.

Mr. Lewis: They are unemployable.

Mr. Burr: They are virtually unemployable.

Mr. Lewis: Sure. Definitely.

Mr. Burr: The sad plight of the Elliot Lake miners is currently in the news. I needn’t repeat the details, which can be found in the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star of Tuesday, April 23. Yet early deaths among uranium miners have been common for many decades in Bohemia, which is now Czechoslovakia. In the 19th century, there was a survey that found 65 per cent of the miners dying of cancer, yet the mines continued to operate. By 1939, 90 per cent of the miners there were dying of what was euphemistically called lung involvement.

Why should the miners of Elliot Lake commit slow suicide to fill orders of uranium to be exported to Japan? Or are their deaths any easier to contemplate if the uranium is used at Pickering or Douglas Point? This one reason alone should be sufficient to persuade the government of Ontario to go no further with nuclear fission. This reason is a moral and a compassionate one, and only those who lack morals and compassion can reject this reason.

The second reason is also moral. Have we any right, any moral justification, to bequeath to all posterity the awesome responsibility of isolating from our environment the filthy radioactive waste of the atomic power plants? I quoted several famous scientists in my Throne debate speech of March 25 and 28 and I shall not labour the point. But this one reason by itself should inspire all moral men and women to seek out at all costs, alternative methods of producing electricity, so that this horrendous legacy of nuclear dynamite will not plague every succeeding generation of our heirs.

The third reason is not just moral. It is pragmatic. It’s based on the instinct for survival. I refer to the very real possibility that the daily increasing stockpiles of nuclear fission material may be used by men of ill will to blackmail, intimidate or conquer or even destroy governments and societies by the threat of unthinkable nuclear destruction.

We all know that there are enough atomic bombs in the hands of the military men to obliterate civilization and make the earth uninhabitable for any fortunate or unfortunate survivors. Yet we have all put this thought out of our minds as being unthinkable. Probably if I asked whether any members had thought of this in the last year, no one would acknowledge having done so. Yet only occasionally are we reminded of this threat -- for example, when some question is raised about the efforts of the military to keep the location of these military bombs secret.

Nevertheless, in the meantime governments all over the world are building atomic bombs openly and with great publicity, apparently assuming that being used for peaceful purposes -- I refer to the nuclear power plants, of course -- they will never be exploded by accidents or by sabotage or by deliberate enemy intervention or by terrorist action or by any act of God.

This third reason keeps many nuclear scientists awake at night, knowing as they do that they have been partly responsible for unwittingly jeopardizing the fives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of human beings.

As month after month passes, and the various forms of human madness seem to multiply; as Palestinian terrorists blow themselves up with dynamite after slaughtering a handful of so-called enemies; as airplane hijackers threaten to crash their planes into nuclear reactors; as mentally disturbed pilots attempt to dive-bomb the White House -- as all these evidences of human dementia are revealed in increasing numbers, it becomes almost inevitable that sooner or later one or more of our peaceful atom bombs, which we call nuclear power plants -- one might call them sitting ducks -- will be exploded with catastrophic results.

Any one of these three reasons would be enough to persuade most sane persons that no more nuclear power plants should be built.

In the last two years or so, the political decision to abandon nuclear fission has become an easy one to make, because the alternative forms of energy have been shown to be feasible even with existing technology. With a fraction of the money that has been devoted to nuclear research and development diverted into research and development for the various forms of solar energy, all our energy problems can be solved with ease, with speed, with greater economy and with complete safety to us all.

I believe it was the Nobel laureate, Sir George Porter, who said recently that if a thousandth of the money spent on nuclear research and development had been spent on solar energy, our energy problems would have been solved by now.

Those are my three reasons, Mr. Chairman, and I would appreciate the minister’s three comments.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, Mr. Chairman, some part of what the member has said, as it has been pointed out to me -- and I don’t mean this facetiously -- really was debated and settled during the Second World War. It may not have been done well, we may regret the decision, but that decision was taken some

30 years ago. The decision was to proceed with the bomb. And to some extent the member is still debating those very decisions.

The member has listed all the things that terrorists can do in this world today.

Mr. Burr: They can’t do them to solar energy power plants.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: He has mentioned that they can use dynamite to blow up a plane. Well, do we go back to banning dynamite? Or because a 747 is bigger than a DC-10, do we not have 747s?

Mr. Burr: That is irrelevant.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, I am sorry; then. I have missed the member’s point. I admit that a nuclear plant presents a temptation to a terrorist, I suppose. So does a stick of dynamite. So does a gun. So do hunting rifles. So do shotgun shells. Where would the member draw a line? I suppose at some point a bow and arrow also was a temptation.

Mr. Burr: I must be stupid.

Mr. Sargent: It is mass contamination he is talking about.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: No, we are talking about the member’s third point. I am afraid the member for Grey-Bruce wasn’t listening.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, but there is a collective difference between a shotgun and a nuclear plant. I mean, it is generally discernible to be different.

Mr. Burr: Has the minister heard of Hiroshima?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, very definitely.

Mr. Burr: Well, that is what I am talking about.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Right. And people agonized before --

Mr. Sargent: At Douglas Point there are 10 of those bombs there.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am sorry. I can’t go back that far. People agonized as to whether that bomb would go off or not. People agonized --

Mr. Lewis: Who agonized? The minister will notice they dropped it on Japan. There was no agony involved in it. It was madness, psychopathic madness, which is as much in evidence today as it was then. Don’t talk about agonizing over the bomb. It was Harry Truman’s exercise.

Mr. Burr: Is that the end of the minister’s answer?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I just don’t think we are on the same wavelength. The member’s leader is not prepared to admit that Mr. Truman and others, as I have read history, agonized over what --

Mr. Lewis: Agonized? He positively enjoyed it. He didn’t agonize over it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- agonized as to whether the bomb would be made and dropped, or whether it was better to let men go on dying in other ways --

Mr. Sargent: What a bunch of nonsense.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- whether to bring an end to war quickly and abruptly, which it did, at great cost of human life, or whether to string the war out. Now that was a moral question.

Mr. Lewis: He was experimenting. There was no moral question for him.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, the member has his opinion, and I am afraid I have mine.

Mr. Lewis: I appreciate that. Okay.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’m afraid I can’t agree.

As for the other points that the member raises, I think that to some extent there are no answers to the questions that he has raised. The question of mine safety obviously is of concern and is of concern to others in this government. Safety in any mine is something which has to be of concern at all times. Whether it is being looked after properly or not is not necessarily the criterion of whether it is mined or not.

We are bringing uranium out of the mines. And I have heard from members opposite that there are problems at Sudbury, where there is no uranium being looked for. Does that mean we stop looking for nickel? I don’t think so. I think we improve the safety practices if there are deficiencies in the safety practices. I don’t think we simply say this is a moral problem and we are not going to look for uranium any longer.

On the second point, regarding waste, the member would say that we should look at the alternative costs of energy from other sources. I think we also have to look at -- and they are being well looked at -- better and alternative ways of either getting rid of the waste or doing something with the waste. The member is aware of the research that is going on in that area.

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): Get all those windmills going, Darcy.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: But I don’t accept --

Mr. Lewis: The member for Sandwich-Riverside is a man ahead of his time; that is the problem with him.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I don’t accept that these are moral questions and that the member is moral and I am not. I am sorry I can’t accept that.

Mr. Burr: Mr. Chairman, may I just try to make myself clear? I am sorry I haven’t been able to do it before.

We hear every week or so about the large number of atomic power plants that are going to dot the landscape between now and the year 2020. According to the projections, they are going to be all over the place. And through some kind of human activity or possibly even an earthquake, but through some kind of accident -- and I have outlined the various kinds of accidents: intentional, deliberate, paranoic and so on that may happen -- any one of those plants could contaminate thousands of square miles of soil that would not be able to produce food for long periods of time, could kill large numbers of people immediately, as the atom bomb did in Japan, and could mean slow death for those who were not killed immediately.

I don’t know why the minister goes back to the atomic bomb for military purposes. Most of us say, “Well, there is nothing we can do about that. If some madman in the Kremlin or the White House pushes a button, we may all go. That is too horrible to contemplate.” So most of us, I think, put it out of our minds. Doesn’t the minister put that out of his mind?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I think it is a possibility.

Mr. Burr: But he doesn’t think about it more than once a year or so, does he? He doesn’t live with it every day?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I don’t live with the possibility of being hit by a car when I leave here tonight.

Mr. Burr: Of course not. Neither do I. But here is a peaceful use of nuclear energy, and we are putting ourselves in the same position. We are setting bombs all over the earth, and sooner or later one or more is going to be exploded, with dire consequences.

As I have tried to make clear, up until two or three years ago I was resigned to this situation because I didn’t realize that these other forms of energy were feasible, but in the last couple of years they have been found and demonstrated to be feasible. Here is one example which I have drawn to the minister’s attention -- the solar energy panel’s report. Therefore, it isn’t necessary for us to take all these risks and subject all of our neighbours and all of our fellow countrymen to the risks. Therefore, instead of continuing to increase the risks, why not stop the risk now and phase out the plants over the years -- live with the present risks, phase them out and bring in these new clean kinds of energy?

There is another advantage to this, Mr. Chairman. Almost any scientist will tell you that 50 to 60 years from now using solar energy is what you are all going to be doing, so why not get at it now instead of waiting until we are pushed into it? We are going to remove one of the sources of friction in international affairs. I think the minister will agree that last winter many of us were afraid that a war might break out because of the conflict over energy supplies. In fact, Mr. Kissinger or Mr. Nixon came pretty close to making a threat against the Arabs.

Let every country develop solar energy and if the sun shines on the country it has the energy. All it needs is the technology. Then we are taking a giant step toward peace. I think that you, the minister in Ontario, should be doing something to encourage this new clean form of energy. You should be taking the lead with other provinces, with the universities, with the National Research Council, and showing a little leadership.

Mr. Chairman, I see the minister isn’t even listening to me now so I will reserve my questions for a more favourable time.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Huron.

Mr. Riddell: Yes, Mr. Chairman. To deal more specifically with the votes. First of all vote 1801. In view of the fact that it is a new ministry we are dealing with, we are going to have to know just what staff you do have to assist in your responsibilities. It would be interesting to know what the background or the training of some of the staff has. Do you feel that you are operating with an adequate staff now or do you anticipate additional staff by this time next year?

In connection with the second vote, I was just wondering what your policy is on further nuclear development. In other words, is it absolutely necessary in your mind to spend an additional $8 billion on further nuclear development? I trust that this proposal is made because the assumption was that the demand was going to double over the next 10 years. On what did Hydro base this particular assumption?

Finally, do you feel, yourself, that it is worth sacrificing the bean industry in Huron county, to which I made reference in my county, in which I made reference to in my opening comments, for excess electrical power from a plant that is established in the heart of white bean country?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’ll deal with the last question first. Obviously the bean industry is not going to be sacrificed in Huron country or anyplace else. Before Hydro builds that plant, if it is to be built there or anyplace else, there will be a full environmental impact study, and whether the beans live or don’t live is going to be taken into that study. Obviously I don’t agree that it is worth damaging the bean industry to that extent.

The member asked about the kind of staff we have within the ministry, and, dealing with the ministry and the Energy Board totally, we have an approved complement of 63. We presently have about 58 on staff. That’s not quite a complete comparison. There are probably about 10 more to be recruited to come up to complement between the board and the staff we think is needed.

The background of the ministry is divided into four sections, plus the board. The policy analysis and development group; information and strategic analysis group; energy technology group, and the regulatory affairs group. The background of the various people; engineers; chemical engineers; economists; people, I think, of whom the majority have come from outside government rather than from inside. I’m now talking about the professionals. What other skills after these do we have particularly -- lawyers obviously. I can give you the breakdown but I think that pretty well covers it.

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Grey-Bruce.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’m sorry. The member asked another question about the nuclear programme. Hydro’s present policy is that 65 per cent of expansion in the future will be nuclear. He asked why we were doubling in the next 10 years. Basically, that’s predicated on historic trends, on the experience of the last 10 years. Whether that’s too high or too low is one of the matters which is being reviewed by the Ontario Energy Board and on which it will report in due course. But, on the basis of historic trends and on the basis of population projection, growth and energy demands, that’s Hydro’s best estimate. It will be revised from time to time.

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Chairman, to deal more specifically with the vote, last year on this vote we spent $228,700. This year we’re asked to spend on this segment of the vote, the first vote, $2,299,000.

The first vote is $391,000 for ministry administration. I anticipate there will be some legal costs in there, and the first name that comes into my mind is one of Robert Macaulay. How much has he been paid to date, Mr. Minister?

Mr. Stokes: Seventy-five bucks an hour.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The firm of Thomson Rogers involves more than just Mr. Macaulay. Since the formation of the ministry to the end of the fiscal year, Mr. Macaulay’s firm, Thomson Rogers, has been engaged by the ministry. They were engaged previously, when I was provincial secretary, and have been used as counsel before the Ontario Energy Board, more latterly in the Hydro hearings, and, I think, to date that firm has been paid roughly, to the end of the year, about $170,000.

Mr. Sargent: One hundred and seventy thousand dollars for Mr. Macaulay at $75 an hour. That is almost your total budget for the whole organization last year, paid to Mr. Macaulay and his friends at the rate of $75 an hour.

Mr. Chairman, this minister was an alderman in Chatham, he’s been the Minister of Municipal Affairs, he’s been the provincial Treasurer, and everything he has touched has been complete chaos. Now here we have him in charge of the most dynamic and dangerous operation in our whole economy and he has the audacity to hire a man at the rate of $75 an hour, paying that firm $170,000 since last fall. This is nothing short of verging on scandal and I think it’s time we had a royal commission inquiry into what the hell is going on here.

Mr. Lewis: I’m not a fan of Bob Macaulay but that was some of the best money we have ever paid a lawyer. He’s done a nice job at those hearings.

Mr. Sargent: I don’t care how you measure a nice job. The whole thrust of this Energy Board makes me sick to my stomach. They are committed to $8 billion -- that’s eight thousand million dollars -- and we don’t know how much of the total power load you are going to come up with. Tell me that right now, will you? How much of the total power load do you hope to handle within the next five years in nuclear power?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The present planning, as I just indicated to the member for Huron, is that for the next 10 years the total programme of Hydro will be about 65 per cent nuclear.

Mr. Sargent: I doubt that very much because I was told a while ago that it was going to be two per cent and it was upgraded to eight per cent. Now you’ve got it up to 65 per cent. I doubt that very much. However, we’ll go along from there.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Perhaps I should explain to the member that when Douglas Point was operating alone it was roughly two percent of the electricity which is being produced in the province. With Pickering now on stream about 15 per cent of the power in the province is being produced from nuclear sources.

Mr. Sargent: Will be when?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Is now -- 15 per cent. The future planning is that the total load will be about 65 per cent nuclear. It’s obviously going to take some years to reach that.

Mr. Sargent: Well, Mr. Chairman, the matter of concern I have is that we have in this province Ontario Hydro, which is an immense energy conversion and distribution system. It has a capital investment of approximately $6.5 billion in its plant. Each individual customer in Ontario considers himself to be very important in the ownership of that deal.

I hope that you will follow me when I ask you this, that you are quoted as saying that in giving your friends in the private sector a piece of the action -- in your words; you are quoted in the Toronto Star -- you say it’s good Tory philosophy. I suggest to you it is a drunken spending spree that we are now engaged in. You say in another quote: “Although we are not broke, our credit is going to be drained.” You are quoted as saying we are not broke -- the Province of Ontario -- but our credit is going to be drained. So your offshoot is that you are going to divide up some of the cost to the private sector.

Now, I’d like to ask you this, sir. In the consortium that you are having secret negotiations with at this time, the ongoing secret negotiations -- and my friend, the Chairman of the Management Board, hasn’t got the intelligence to listen when I’m talking about how important this is --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I wish you had said something intelligent -- that’s what I’d like to hear.

Mr. Sargent: Well, you listen for a moment because you should know something about this.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I have listened quite a white, and haven’t heard anything yet.

Mr. Sargent: If you are going to give this to some secret consortium, you name me one parcel of the consortium that is a Canadian company -- name me one that you are discussing with now. I suggest to you they are all American-controlled corporations. So we have in effect, Mr. Chairman, a very dangerous situation -- Ontario Hydro, owned by the people, now with American control taking over our hydro. I think it’s time that you tell us exactly what’s going on here right now.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well Mr. Chairman, the member is referring to an article in the Toronto Star. He is referring to a proposal which was made by me in terms of heavy water, going back to last August or September at the Exhibition, where we indicated at that time that we thought there was room for private-sector involvement in the production of heavy water.

Shortly after that we were informed by the federal government, who had supplied heavy water or who had undertaken the responsibility for heavy water up until that point, that having built or financed the two plants at Douglas Point, they would not build any more heavy water plants. More than that, if Ontario needed heavy water and Canada had it available, Ontario would be the lowest priority on the list; they would look after their own needs and the needs of other provinces, and if there was anything left over after export sales, Ontario then might get some heavy water.

It became very evident at that point that we were going to have to move, and very quickly to build our own heavy water supply.

It seems to me there were two considerations to take into account. We were talking about a technology which might, and in my view will, have a commercial acceptance in the world. It was desirable to encourage the private sector involvement in it and therefore early in January we asked for proposals from the private sector on the building of either the six or the four plants at Bruce. I think there were finally five proposals. The proposals went out to some 40 or 50 firms in Ontario and Canada, whoever was interested.

Hydro had discussions with a great number of them as I understand it -- I haven’t seen the final report -- and proposals, as I understand it, have been received from five. Discussions are going on with those five groups and no decision has been reached. Ultimately, Hydro will come to a conclusion as to whether one or any of them will best meet the objectives of Hydro. If they don’t Hydro will proceed on its own.

My friend from York South is still here and I would ask him to remember that there was a day when Ontario Hydro built every dam in this province. At about the point when dams weren’t being built quite as often in this province. Hydro, in effect, got out of that business. I doubt whether today Hydro, on its own without the advice of consultants, could build a dam. That makes a great deal of sense because the day of dam building is practically over or there are certainly going to be peaks and valleys in it.

What happened when that expertise moved out into the private sector, and it did, is we have Canadian firms today building hydro-electric power dams, really, all over the world. The genesis of that was in Ontario Hydro. It moved out into the private sector -- to Acres, Montreal Engineering and other firms and Canadian firms have built dams in India -- all over. I think that’s been a good thing for Canada and a good spin-off from some very fine work which was done in the earlier days by Ontario Hydro.

Mr. Cassidy: But you are giving ownership of the heavy water plant away.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Quite frankly, we have enough confidence in the Candu system to believe that Candu will achieve recognition in the world and that there will be sales made by AECL and by Ontario Hydro. If that happens there will be a much greater need for heavy water than from simply the heavy water plants which are being built for Ontario’s needs in the foreseeable future.

If that is the case, I don’t think Ontario Hydro will be in a position to build heavy water plants or to promote the technology. We would hope that the Canadian private sector would be in a position to take advantage of those sales around the world. In a small way we are attempting to move that technology out into the private sector.

I’ve said there are two principle objectives which, hopefully, will be achieved. If they are not it will not proceed and Hydro will presumably do it itself.

I have said that Hydro is not going broke, that may not be the best terms to use, but $600 million -- and I think that is the figure for the remaining four plants -- is not going to make or break Hydro over the next four or five years. Obviously, $600 million off the required borrowing of Ontario Hydro is a significant sum. With the money that Hydro has to borrow with the guarantee of the province over the next 10 or 15 years, it is not too soon to be taking a look at whether it needs to do all the capital works itself or whether some of them cannot be done in the private sector at a saving, and not at the credit of the province. If that can be done, good.

Much more important, in my view, is to try to take advantage of some of that technology, to use it and to export it into the world. Hydro can collect the royalty in so doing; and if AECL can collect a royalty or a patent, fine and dandy.

Mr. MacDonald: Are they going to?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: If we build up Canadian manufacturing expertise, build up Canadian technological skills and then step out into the world with it -- if we can do that, I think we will have done as much as was done when the whole hydro-electric dam-building capability moved out into the private sector. I suggest Canada and Ontario have profited from that since that expertise has been in the private sector and not in the public sector.

I can’t conceive of Hydro itself going into the business of exporting power, for example, as a deliberate thing, or of exporting out of Ontario heavy water as a deliberate thing. If we have heavy water in surplus, fine, it’ll be sold; but if that job is to be done, done in Canada, or done in Ontario, I think probably it needs to be done by the private sector. But I make it very clear, there are no secret negotiations. Proposals were called --

Mr. Sargent: Who are the five firms Hydro is dealing with then?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The five? I don’t know who they are. I have not had a report from Hydro, nor do I propose to until they have come to their conclusions. But they are --

Mr. Sargent: In other words, the minister is going to make a deal before the House knows about it -- with the facts confirmed?

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. Can we make this two votes?

Mr. Sargent: Oh, one second, Mr. Chairman. I want this question answered.

Mr. Chairman: Well, it is nearly 10:30.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: There are proposals which have been received from Ontario Hydro.

Mr. Sargent: It would be a fait accompli.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Ontario Hydro is considering those proposals. I imagine they’ll be considering them for some little time; and when they have reached a conclusion they will come to their decision.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves the committee rise and report progress and ask for leave to sit again.

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of supply begs to report progress and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, I would like to say that tomorrow we will continue with the estimates of the Ministry of Energy. If we were to conclude that consideration, we would proceed to item No. 8, Bill 25.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): I think the minister is safe to stop there.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, I won’t, because I will say that on Monday if we don’t reach these items tomorrow, we’ll continue on this routine on Monday and Tuesday. Following that, will be item No. 26, Bill 22, and then there is some urgency in regard to item No. 9, Bill 31, which somewhere up until the 6 o’clock hour of Tuesday, I will call in advance. Of course, the House will not sit on Tuesday evening.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Will it sit Monday night?

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Yes.

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

Motion agreed to.

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