Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 10 o’clock, a.m.

Prayers.

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw to your attention the fact that we have in the House today, in your gallery, the Minister of Education for the Province of Quebec, Hon. Francois Cloutier, who has been visiting this city yesterday and today. He comes here, sir, not only as the Minister of Education for our great neighbour province but also in the role as chairman of the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada, a role which he is filling very well and very admirably.

I should also draw to the attention of the House that as well as his responsibilities for all education in the Province of Quebec, Mr. Cloutier is also responsible for the development of a language policy for that province. I am sure we will be hearing much about that in the next few weeks.

I would like to say, sir, through my association with Mr. Cloutier in the Council of Ministers of Education, we have enjoyed an excellent relationship; one that has existed for many years between this province and the Province of Quebec. I am sure the members of the House would like to welcome him here to our House today.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to draw to your attention the presence of 30 students from Nickel District Secondary School in Sudbury under the direction of Mr. Darroah. I hope the House will give them a warm reception.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

Oral questions.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

FRENCH-LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, this might be a convenient morning to ask the Minister of Education for a progress report on our committee on French education, which I believe was appointed more than a year ago. Does he expect some recommendations to come forward which will improve the teaching of French language and literature in this province which, as the minister himself has agreed, is something less than it should be?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I would be very pleased to answer my friend’s question. The Gillin commission, which is what my friend is referring to, will be reporting towards the end of June. Its report, together with the research studies on the language programmes that are being conducted in the national capital area by the Ottawa and Carleton public and separate boards, I think, will chart a new course for the teaching of French to Anglophones in this province. As soon as these two pieces of information are received, we will be announcing further plans in this regard.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Has there been any interim report or communication between the commission and the ministry that would lead the minister to make plans for the inauguration of a much improved programme of French-language instruction at the very earliest grades in our school system, a programme that would not be spotted in just a few communities across the province but would be available in all communities?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Of course, Mr. Speaker, there is co-ordination between the people in our ministry who are working on these programmes and the members of that committee. We don’t know what their ultimate report will be, but in the interval things are not standing still.

I think my friend will recall I have indicated my personal desire on several occasions to see as many school jurisdictions in this province as possible establish immersion kindergarten programmes for Anglophones who wish to become truly bilingual. In our grant regulations, which we issued just a few months ago, there was also a new way of computing the grants, a further visibility of the French-language grants and, indeed, more money for a lot of boards in this particular area,

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A final supplementary as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Speaker: Can the minister assure us that the federal funds for provincial use that are designated specifically for French-language instruction are directly applied for that purpose and not submerged in the general grant system, as appears to be the case in some communities?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, I can assure my friend of that, Mr. Speaker. The new way of computing the French-language grants this year makes that even more assured. I can also assure my friend that this province spends much more than the federal grants for bilingual education.

Perhaps, with his vast contacts in Ottawa, he might lend support to my request that the Secretary of State continue for another year the money he has been giving us for the programmes in the Ottawa area. As he knows, they’ve been giving $2 million a year for these special programmes in the four boards in the Ottawa area. We’ve written and requested an extension of that. I’m hoping that my friend will see his way clear to extending that programme for an- other year in that area.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister thinks that I can get it and he can t?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I think that perhaps the member could lend some support in my appeal to his friends in Ottawa. It might help.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In fact, I’ve been ahead of the minister in proposing a new French education setup.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough West): The member has never been ahead.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh listen, the member won his battle yesterday when the denturists got it.

Mr. Drea: I what? The member is wrong again.

LAND PURCHASES IN HALDIMAND-NORFOLK

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Treasurer why he did not make his announcement to the House yesterday, as he said he would, on the proposal for a new town in the Haldimand-Norfolk area?

Hon. J. White (Treasurer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): I didn’t say I would. I said I hoped to. There’s a difference. The reason I didn’t is because I wasn’t able to -- and I’m not able to deal with the subject in this House today.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): What does that mean?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He can but he is not able to.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): He says he would if he could but he can’t.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Treasurer as a supplementary, although he has said he is not prepared to deal with it today, if the delay is simply to apply some pressure to the consortium that holds the land to improve its price. Is the minister just attempting to reduce the price, which in my view would be an excellent thing to do? What is the holdup on this statement?

Hon. Mr. White: Well, sir, I am not able to comment on this matter today.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: When would the Treasurer hope to comment on it?

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

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): What does the Treasurer’s cherubic giggling mean?

Mr. Speaker: Is that a supplementary?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): It is the same as that cynical remark.

Hon. Mr. White: Have patience.

KRAUSS-MAFFEI SYSTEM

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In the absence of the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes), I wonder if I could put a question to the policy secretary? The Provincial Secretary for Resources Development directs the policy in that ministry, doesn’t he?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): I just direct the traffic.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He directs the traffic.

Mr. Stokes: He thinks about it.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Is it firm policy?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Can the minister confirm that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications was advised recently by technical staff that the completion date for the CNE transit experiment will have to be delayed by a full year?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I can’t confirm that, Mr. Speaker, and I don’t think the question is so urgent that it can’t wait until Tuesday when the minister is here.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is the provincial secretary prepared to deny it?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: No.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, we’ll follow up with it on the minister’s return.

UNION GAS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’d like to ask the Minister of Labour if he can give a report to the House on the circumstances involving the Union Gas strike?

Hon. F. Guindon (Minister of Labour): Yes, Mr. Speaker. As you will recall, last Friday I told the House that I would call the parties in for a meeting last Monday. However, because of a union council meeting the first meeting started on Tuesday. The parties met on Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday. I still haven’t received a report whether there has been any progress made in the talks so far.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Does the minister intend to take part himself if there is no progress reported by his officials?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I am expecting a report today from my senior staff and it depends on what’s going to happen. But the members know by experience that the minister doesn’t shirk his responsibility.

THISTLETOWN REGIONAL CENTRE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’d like to ask the Minister of Community and Social Services does his ministry now have the responsibility for the Thistletown regional centre or is that still with the Health ministry?

Mr. Lewis: Health.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I guess his ministry doesn’t have it.

Mr. Lewis: It is still Health.

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): I think it’s still Health, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Is there some thought that there will be a transference of responsibility to the Ministry of Community and Social Services along the lines brought forward by the bill a few weeks ago?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Yes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister is nodding in this connection. Is he aware that there has been a substantial budget reduction at the Thistletown regional centre, amounting to something over $300,000, which may mean a substantial reduction in staff and facilities?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of the reduction. I am surprised to hear this, because with the transfer of many of the programmes under mental retardation from Health to our ministry it is our intention to improve, and to expand some of the services. I’d be glad to look into that, Mr. Speaker, because I am not aware of this reduction.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Supplementary: If the minister is going to look into this, will he also look into the long waiting list and why it takes so long for parents to get children in there?

Mr. Lewis: They have no place for them.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: I’d be glad to look into that.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary of the minister. Is it in fact true that there is in the works a quite massive shift within government organization of all matters dealing with children, children’s mental health centres, children’s institutions, and even the training schools, into his ministry, to centralize all of these functions in order to take advantage of the moneys that might then be available under the Canada Assistance Plan, as has now been taken advantage of by moving mental retardation to his ministry?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, when I introduced the bill, the Developmental Services Act, I mentioned that about half of those who are in institutions, both adults and the children, could be rehabilitated within their own communities. I said with the adults we would take advantage of assistance under the Canada Assistance Plan and that, as far as the children were concerned, this matter would be fully discussed with the parents and the local associations for the mentally retarded. No decision on that has been made.

Regardless of the cost-sharing, we will be improving our services to the children, we will be building more developmental daycare centres, and group residences for the children and we will be providing assistance in supportive services for the parents.

Mr. Lewis: I am sorry, just a quick supplementary. I am not making it clear apparently. I am not talking about mental retardation. I am talking about the whole field of children’s health, of which Thistletown is a part. Is it intended that this will also be transferred to the Ministry of Community and Social Services in order to take advantage of Canada Assistance Plan money? Does that not raise enormous qualms in the minds of your ministry since it clearly isn’t competent to handle the whole field?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, I am not familiar with Thistletown, I’ll be very frank. All I’m familiar with is the transfer of the mental retardation services from Health to our ministry.

Mir. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Op- position? The hon. member for Scarborough West.

PETROSAR LTD.

Mr. Lewis: A question if I may of the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development: Has the government of Ontario directly contacted the government of Alberta to check the position on the Petrosar development in and around Sarnia, which Premier Lougheed has now indicated he will scuttle, if he can, by not providing the crude for it when the development is built?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, that question should be directed to the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) --

Mr. Lewis: Really?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- who has this matter in hand. Yes, really.

Mr. Breithaupt: What is the minister being paid for?

Mr. Lewis: The minister means it is not a policy matter to deal directly on a several billion dollar project in southwestern Ontario?

Mr. Stokes: Surely the minister is going to discuss this, even though he didn’t discuss the pipeline with his policy secretariat.

Mr. Lewis: Let me ask the minister, will he undertake to raise it, since Alberta now unilaterally has announced that its own petrochemical developments in Alberta will take total precedence and that it does not see any obligation to supply oil to Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, perhaps this is just as good a time as any to clarify the position of the provincial secretaries in respect to policy.

Mr. Breithaupt: Confession is good for the soul.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Obviously, if the provincial secretary is going to deal with policy matters as they relate to each one of the ministries in that field -- in my case it would be seven ministries -- and have to deal with policy in respect of all of the programmes within each one of those ministries, of course, I am sure the hon. members opposite will appreciate, that is an impossible task.

The policy direction and the policy co-ordination of the provincial secretaries is internal as between the ministries, and many of the things which are discussed here in the House have been discussed of course at the cabinet committee on resources development.

Mr. Lewis: It is a co-ordinating role.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The particular matter which the hon. member raised should probably be answered by the Minister of Energy. Those matters, if, as and when we discuss the matter -- and if indeed we have discussed the matter or are going to discuss the matter -- the policy as it eventually evolves will be answered for by the respective minister.

SILICOSIS, CANCER THREAT TO URANIUM MINERS

Mr. Lewis: A further question, Mr. Speaker, if I may to the same provincial secretary -- a question which involves co-ordination of Labour, Natural Resources and Energy and, therefore, is perhaps in his field: Now that Rio Algom has announced its intention for a massive expansion of uranium production to eight million pounds of uranium oxide by the late 1970s, is the minister prepared to make a public statement about the safety features for the miners who will be employed in Rio Algom, in order to do something about the accelerating rate of discovered silicosis and cancer in the community? Can we have some commitment from the minister and an explicit definition of what that commitment will mean, before the expansion takes place?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member prefaced his question by the implication that since this perhaps had to do with policy overriding a number of ministries --

Mr. Lewis: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- perhaps I would be in a position to answer it. I didn’t say, in discussing the previous question, that the secretariat was not involved. I merely advised the hon. member that a particular minister would answer for it. In this particular case, there is an overriding concern with a number of ministries, it is under consideration, and if, as and when the government is prepared to make a statement he will hear it from the appropriate minister, whether it be myself or whether it is decided that another minister in the field will answer. At this particular time, all I can tell the hon. member is that it is under consideration.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Since the minister’s answer indicates some structure to his role, what was the purpose of the meeting his policy group held yesterday with John Robarts?

Mr. Lewis: Presumably Algonquin Park.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Quite frankly, I don’t want to set a precedent by making the House feel that we are going to follow a policy of advising publicly what goes on at a cabinet committee. The hon. members will appreciate that it is a cabinet committee and therefore we are, generally speaking, bound by the same rules as cabinet.

Mr. Breithaupt: Answer the question.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Therefore, I am going to answer this question specifically, but I don’t want it to be taken as a precedent that we are in a position to advise publicly what has taken place at a committee of the cabinet.

However, in view of the fact that it was practically a public meeting because the representative of the London Free Press was there and it was, by and large, a deputation which is known publicly in London and here as having taken place, they were here to discuss the possible involvement of the province in the Middlesex courthouse programme for rehabilitating a very large area of London. As I say it has some very imaginative implications and they wanted some support from the provincial government.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Since it is a courthouse, what has that got to do with the minister?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It is not really just a courthouse. It’s a centre in which the courthouse is involved, etc.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: So that’s what he does; he has meetings with John Robarts.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He led a deputation of very distinguished citizens, including even the few Liberals they could find; some very distinguished Liberals from that area.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: There are some very distinguished Liberals.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: There are some; they are hard to find. In this case they did find a couple.

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): There will be some from now until July 8, but after that they will just disappear.

Mr. Breithaupt: He has always been very kind to us.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I must say Mr. Robarts made a very good presentation.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Might we assume the minister said “Yes, John, we are prepared to do whatever you say”?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: We said nothing of the kind, sir. We said we would give it our very best consideration.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He would understand that.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

PRICE INCREASES BY FALCONBRIDGE

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the provincial Treasurer. Now that Falconbridge has announced it will increase its prices by some 14 per cent across the board, and since the most recent profit jump, 1973 over 1972, for Falconbridge was 770 per cent, might he perhaps call that company in, as he was not prepared to do with Stelco, and ask it to justify this price increase in view of the consequences for the economy as a whole in an inflationary period?

Hon. Mr. White: No, I am not prepared to do that. This large Canadian firm is selling in the world market; whether or not it can make that price stick only time will tell. To the best of my knowledge the other producers have not followed suit. If it should happen that they do not follow suit, my expectation is that at some point Falconbridge will have to retreat from that new price level.

Mr. Stokes: Is the Treasurer saying that if the others follow through it will be okay?

Hon. Mr. White: It is an international type of situation.

Mr. Deans: A supplementary: Can the Treasurer tell us how much or what portion of the price increase can be attributed to the Premier’s (Mr. Davis’s) blundering in regard to the price policies for oil?

Hon. Mr. White: Sir, this is the kind of thing which is obviously unparliamentary and I think calls for an apology, personally.

Mr. Deans: What is he talking about? Explain his blundering.

Mr. Lewis: Only the modesty of the word “blunder” was unparliamentary; it could be called other things. May I ask the Treasurer if he is going to allow all of these price increases -- gasoline, Stelco, Falconbridge -- and if it’s going to be the policy of the government never to intervene to protect the consumers of Ontario? Is that the position he is taking?

An hon. member: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. White: I hope that when Mr. Stanfield gets in that there will be a 90-day freeze. When there is that 90-day freeze the federal government can sort out appropriate long-term policies.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): If he gets the power he will use it.

Mr. Lewis: The Treasurer has no answers himself.

Mr. Stokes: Is he waiting for him to bail him out?

Mr. Deans: I hope he is better at it when he negotiates.

Hon. Mr. White: This did work following Aug. 16, 1972. It did assist in deterring price increases in the United States for a considerable length of time.

Mr. Cassidy: Look at them now.

Hon. Mr. White: I think the phases which they introduced subsequently came along too fast.

Mr. Lewis: The Treasurer is arguing for price and wage controls now.

Hon. Mr. White: Look at them -- they are not doing too badly even today.

Mr. Lewis: What about profit control?

Hon. Mr. White: Their numbers are a lot better than ours are.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. White: If the members think a province can get into the price control business they have another think coming. It would be no more effective than the city of Toronto applying a price control on butter, let us say, and having no butter to sell.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Since the minister feels that his position as Treasurer is so ineffectual in assisting the consumers and the economy of this province, why doesn’t he resign his seat and run in the London East federal constituency, which is surely his responsibility, since he’s got such a commitment to federal politics?

Hon. Mr. White: I don’t think it is ineffectual at all.

An hon. member: Come on now.

Mr. Lewis: He will lose if he runs.

Hon. Mr. White: We are taking in $336 million more than we are spending this year, in contrast to the federal government which is taking in $2.3 billion less than it is spending.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Compare the deficits.

Hon. Mr. White: Even so, sir --

Mr. Lewis: This is not the federal House, this is provincial.

Hon. Mr. White: Even so, sir, we are transferring tens of millions of dollars to the less prosperous classes in society. We have doubled the property credit; we’ve introduced GAINS. We’ve done several things for small Canadian businesses.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: The government has done nothing for the consumers, and it is going to go down because of it.

Hon. Mr. White: I’m going to send this copy of our budget over to the Leader of the Opposition. I know he hasn’t read the document or, if he has read it, I know he hasn’t understood it because he is going all over this province misinforming the citizens about the state of our finances.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. White: This is the best anti-inflationary budget in this country. John Turner’s is the worst.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please; order!

Mr. Lewis: Does the Treasurer know that Imperial Oil’s chairmanship is vacant? It’s vacant.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: It’s vacant. Why doesn’t he apply for the chairmanship of Imperial Oil?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: This government has no policies of its own.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth has the floor.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Deans: Doesn’t the Treasurer recognize there is a vast difference between trying to control the price of butter and trying to control the price of basic steel? The price of basic steel obviously has a much greater ripple effect on the price of all commodities across the province, as well as across the Dominion of Canada; and since that industry is primarily located in Ontario this government has a responsibility to do something about it.

Mr. Speaker: Is this a question or a statement?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Doesn’t the minister think?

Hon. Mr. White: Yes.

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

GASOLINE PRICES

Mr. Lewis: Another question of the provincial Treasurer: In view of the Premier of Ontario’s professed concern last night at the degree to which gasoline prices have risen, obviously beyond his expectations, has he instructed the Treasurer to indicate to the House that Ontario will do something in this area to protect the consumer, now?

Hon. Mr. White: Questions on that subject should be directed to the Minister of Energy.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary --

Mr. Deans: The Treasurer checked to make sure the Minister of Energy wasn’t here before he said that.

Mr. Cassidy: This minister is sloughing off more responsibilities every week.

Mr. Lewis: Does the Treasurer mean economic and fiscal policy is now out of his realm entirely? Is that what he is saying?

Hon. Mr. White: No; I mean all energy matters are the responsibility, funnily enough, of the Minister of Energy.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary: Has it not occurred to the Treasurer that the fiscal policy involved in cushioning the blow of the increased gasoline prices is squarely within his responsibility?

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: Will he exercise some responsibility to protect the consumers of Ontario?

Mr. Cassidy: Right.

Hon. Mr. White: Well sir, we have doubled the property credit from $90 to $180.

Mr. Lewis: Before the Treasurer knew what the government was negotiating.

Hon. Mr. White: That $90 increase contrasts with the average increase per household for heating costs of $70.

Mr. Lewis: What about gasoline?

Hon. Mr. White: We have at the same time made a number of other changes. Not only in the credit system, we have introduced new programmes; GAINS being the most noteworthy.

We have introduced a series of measures for small Canadian businesses. If there are further changes to be suggested or recommended, this may be done during the budget debate.

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

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Mr. Lewis: One last question of the Treasurer: Has he realized that the housing starts projected on the basis of production in April so far, will reach 100,100 units in 1974 according to CMHC figures, and that last year’s production was 110,536 units, so that the government is already running 10 per cent behind last year? How is his economic policy going to alter that?

Hon. Mr. White: Well sir, this should go to the Minister of Housing (Mr. Handleman). I’ll make a general comment, however.

Mr. Lewis: Surely this is an economic policy matter?

Hon. Mr. White: The federal government, with the support of the member’s daddy, has made it almost impossible for the average working man to get a mortgage anywhere in this country. Now that’s what they have done.

Mr. Cassidy: The Treasurer and his colleague have been running the housing policy of the province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Totally irrelevant.

Mr. Lewis: That’s personal. I won’t respond to that.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Scar- borough West have further questions?

The hon. Minister of Colleges and Universities has the answer to a question asked previously.

NORTHERN ONTARIO MEDICAL STUDENTS

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday the hon. member for Thunder Bay asked me about a preference for students from northern Ontario in medical schools. I have checked and I am informed, as I mentioned, it’s primarily academic standing which is considered by the university. In the case of

University of Toronto, they give some preference to students who have completed their high school studies in small Ontario communities, and this does in fact favour northern Ontario to a degree. McMaster also gives some added weight to applications from candidates in northwestern Ontario. At the University of Ottawa about five per cent of the applications in 1973-1974 were from northern Ontario and this year, of the applications accepted 10 students or 12 per cent were from northern Ontario.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Could the minister please explain to me why there is this chronic dearth, this chronic lack of educational facilities, particularly as it pertains to medical facilities? Over many years now one has had calls from parents of students who make applications to universities all over Ontario and cannot be admitted. Yet on the other hand we keep on hearing of doctors who are admitted to the profession, who come from universities with standards much lower than those prescribed by universities in Ontario. This matter has been going on for many years and I have never been able to get an explanation as to why this dearth persists.

Mr. Speaker: I think the member is now making a speech rather than asking a question.

Mr. Givens: Would the minister please explain this?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I will be delighted to get the figures -- I haven’t them in front of me -- of the increase in the number of places in the medical schools in the province over the last few years. Also, as the member is probably aware, there are incentives in the plans which are involved in the health resources programme, which is a pretty major one and which has been under way for some time. I will give the member that detail.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Does the minister not think that the needs of northern Ontario’s students to go to medical schools would be better served if the government would adopt a policy of establishing a medical school in northern Ontario? Wouldn’t this make it more likely that the students who would graduate from a northern Ontario medical school would practice in the north?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I couldn’t answer or speculate on the second part of the question.

As far as the first part of the question is concerned there are two matters. A medical school is a very large operation. It requires teaching hospitals in conjunction with it and requires a very large capital investment. It is not the kind of an operation, in my understanding, that you can deal with in terms of a relatively small number of students.

Knowing something of the problems of attracting enrolment in some of the universities in the province, including the north, I would have some hesitation in recommending such a course because I think the plans which have been worked out in conjunction with the federal and our own Ministry of Health and our ministry, in terms of the health resources fund, will look after the situation more effectively.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary from the hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: May I ask the minister if he is giving serious consideration to the establishment of another medical school in the Province of Ontario, one in the city of Windsor, which has been requested by the University of Windsor for quite some time now?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, it would not be the Minister of Colleges and Universities who would be doing so. It would be the Ministry of Health in conjunction with the health resources fund programme.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary?

Mr. Stokes: Yes, Mr. Speaker, a supplementary please. Will the minister assure those from northern Ontario, where there is a shortage, who are applying for medical school, that they will be given special consideration if they will guarantee to serve in unserviced or underserviced communities for a period of time?

Hon. Mr. Auld: I would think, Mr. Speaker, we would have to look at that pretty carefully and discuss it with the institutions involved. As the member knows, there is now a programme of assistance or encouragement to doctors to go to small communities and underserviced areas.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Huron.

CLOSING DATES FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A question of the Minister of Education. Is he aware that some school boards are permitting the secondary schools to close for the summer recess on June 7 while other school boards are living to the letter of the law and compelling their schools to remain open until June 14? Is the minister aware there is general concern on the part of parents and students over the discrimination against those students who have to stay until June 14 in the matter of seeking summer employment?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, under the modified school year plan, the time of closing for secondary schools becomes a matter which a board can set to some degree by adjusting the instructional days within the 197-day school year. I would venture to say it sounds to me that June 14 would be the more reasonable time for secondary schools to close rather than the earlier date.

I must tell my friend that it is up to the local school boards to adjust their school calendars, which they must have done. They must have been approved by the ministry. If they are somehow not living up to the letter of the law in the calendar they indicated they would use, then certainly the people from our regional office will have to look at that.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth.

AIR POLLUTION AT NIAGARA FALLS

Mr. Deans: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to put a question to the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development. I would rather put it to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman), but twice in a row he has walked out of the question period.

Is the provincial secretary familiar with the ministerial order which was issued by the former Minister of the Environment (Mr. Kerr) on Cyanamid of Niagara Falls? And can he assure the House that they will not be granted an additional five years -- which would take it from the year 1970 to the year 1979 -- before Cyanamid is required to reduce the emission of particulate matter?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Surely the hon. member knows the answer to that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Deans: But he is the policy minister, Mr. Speaker --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: What does that mean? Are we going into that again?

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): He has re- tired; he doesn’t know now.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Is the hon. member really suggesting in all seriousness that every time one of the ministers issues a stop order, I should be advised of it and know about it? The hon. member --

Mr. Ruston: The minister has been put out to pasture.

Mr. Deans: Let me put it another way --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The hon. member knows perfectly well that the answer he expected -- the only intelligent answer, the only, logical answer --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is, “I don’t know.”

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- is that I will draw it to the. attention of the minister. Obviously the question could have waited until Tuesday anyway, but I will see that it is drawn to the hon. minister’s attention.

Mr. Breithaupt: The provincial secretary is here and the minister isn’t.

Mr. Deans: Well, let me try to put it into a context which the provincial secretary might be able to answer. Is it the policy of his resources policy area to permit the continued emission of particulate matter for nine years after the issuance of a ministerial order to stop it?

Mr. Shulman: Just answer yes.

Mr. Lewis: That is a policy matter.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It is the policy of this government, Mr. Speaker, to make sure that everything is done to protect the environment of this province.

Mr. Breithaupt: Haste makes waste.

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

STRIKE AGAINST MAPLE LEAF MILLS LTD.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Labour. Is his ministry aware of the present strike by the Canadian Food and Allied Workers, Local P-452, against Maple Leaf Mills Ltd. in Port Colbourne, and has an inquiry been made of his ministry by either party for the services of a mediator for a possible early settlement?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I am not personally involved, of course. However, I think I can assure my hon. friend that we do get in touch with both parties.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

POLICE ARRESTS ON SHOP PREMISES

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Provincial Secretary for Justice and the Attorney General of Ontario.

Mr. Breithaupt: He’s here!

Mr. Lewis: Good grief!

Mr. Lawlor: By what pretended or infernal authority do people like Dominion Stores and certain shopping malls in the city of Toronto, enlist the power of police arrest against people coming on their premises to picket, particularly with respect to the present grape boycott, place them under arrest and have them incarcerated? How does this happen under the provincial secretary’s jurisdiction?

Hon. R. Welch (Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General): In the first place, Mr. Speaker, if it’s happening, it’s not under my jurisdiction. It’s a question that obviously should be directed to the Solicitor General (Mr. Kerr), under whom law enforcement comes.

Mr. Breithaupt: One of those empty chairs down there.

Mr. Deans: That’s not really very funny now.

Mr. Lewis: It can’t go on forever.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Speaker, it is not the Solicitor General. Police are only carrying out a power that is conferred through the auspices of this minister.

Mr. Lewis: Of course.

Mr. Lawlor: How can store operators make a general invitation to the public for their own personal enrichment and then turn around and exclude customers? That’s what they are doing. Will the provincial secretary look into it?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

DENTURE THERAPISTS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have a question of the Attorney General. Can he say what the disposition will be of the charges that have been laid against at least one denturist, based on the bill in its former form? Actually in the form in which the hon. minister introduced it originally, the whole matter would never have come about. Has he received any indications from the Ministry of Health as to what the disposition of those charges should be?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, to answer the second question first, no. The charges have been laid, as the Leader of the Opposition knows. These charges will be proceeded with. If there are circumstances in which the new legislation should influence the actual outcome of those cases, we feel that is something which the judge hearing those cases can take into account.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Since the policy of the ministry has been completely reversed by the introduction of yesterday’s bill, would the minister not think it would be fair and, in fact, valid and supportable if, as the chief law officer of the Crown, he had those charges dismissed?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, I think perhaps we should review it this way: No. 1, it’s alleged that certain individuals conducting themselves in Ontario were doing so in contravention of a law which is still the law.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They certainly were. And if the Act is passed, the government is going to change it.

Hon. Mr. Welch: They were flouting the law and this matter can be adjudicated by the courts. No. 2, I think one should be very, very careful from a very legal and technical point of view to appreciate that, although the legislation introduced by the Minister of

Health (Mr. Miller) yesterday changes the principle with respect to supervision, the law is still the same with respect to the qualification that people must have in order to practise this particular activity. One has to be very careful in interpreting what was done yesterday in the light of what the law still is today. I feel it’s my responsibility to allow these matters to be settled in the courts where they are now.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: The minister then is taking no action. He’s leaving it entirely with the courts, which will be required to interpret the legislation as it is now, although it is the intention of the government and this House to change that policy. Surely wouldn’t the minister believe that, rather than this careful legal interpretation, he is the one, as the politician responsible, who should make a humane and fair interpretation?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, I am quite prepared to stand by what I said before, that the judge can take into account what the intention of the Legislature is, in view of the Act introduced by the Minister of Health yesterday.

Please be very careful in interpreting what we did yesterday. There are still some activities which are still not permitted without supervision and there are still some qualifications that are required of those who are going to conduct this particular activity. Un- der the circumstances charges have been laid. As the chief law officer of the Crown, I do have some responsibility to ensure that this matter is left for the courts to decide under these circumstances.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Could the minister say how many charges are pending?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Seven.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Nickel Belt.

REPORT ON CONESTOGA COLLEGE

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Colleges and Universities. In view of the fact that the inquiry into the operations of Conestoga College of Applied Arts and Technology in Kitchener was completed over three months ago and virtually nothing has been done yet, does the minister not agree that it’s time that an independent committee to implement those recommendations was established?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I don’t know exactly what has transpired because this is an internal matter, but I understand that some changes in the administration have taken place. I don’t know of any reason why there should be any further inquiry. The inquiry that did take place was done at the request of the board at the college. I’ll be glad to find out what the latest standing of the situation is.

Mr. Laughren: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Would the minister not agree as well that the very people who conducted the inquiry and have all the information concerning the internal operation of the college should be part of a consulting team that would help them implement the recommendations? Would he agree that as long as one doesn’t have an impartial body implementing those recommendations they’re not going to implement them at all?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I think the real question here is whether the ministry is going to run the college or the board of governors through the Council of Regents. I would say that we don’t propose to change the policy and that the Council of Regents and, primarily, the board of governors are the people responsible.

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

FLOODS IN MISSISSAUGA

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): In the absence of the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) I have a question of the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development. In the light of what appears to be significant damage due to the overnight flash floods in Mississauga, would the minister check into or advise if there is any contingency fund to deal with such situations? Secondly, over the weekend would his officials monitor this situation to see if it is as indicated just at this time? It’s a little early to know the full extent of the damage, but certainly the damage to some private residences appears to be significant.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I’m sure that the very able officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources have already alerted themselves to this. As to whether there is a fund, I believe there is a fund under the jurisdiction of Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs to handle situations like that.

Mr. Deans: It’s funny how the minister knows about that, isn’t it?

Mr. Lewis: It’s not a policy question, for heaven’s sake.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: What did I say? I said I was sure that the capable officials in Natural Resources had this in hand. That’s all I said.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): That’s all he said all right.

CROP INSURANCE

Mr. Ruston: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. It is near the end of the question period but I am sure he will answer it in time.

I am not sure if he will accept any responsibility for the heavy rainfalls -- it might be considered a federal responsibility -- but is the minister considering extending the planting date in the crop insurance plan for corn, soya beans, etc.?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, there is no planting date for those commodities because the planting date which previously had pertained was eliminated in the new plan application for this year which provides for the bare ground coverage. Thank goodness it is in this year because it looks as though it might be applicable.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is the minister holding any meetings with farmers in eastern Ontario in view of the fact that the apparent wet cycle has hit them for three springs in a row and may continue to do so? There should be an acceleration of tile drainage and other measures to protect those farmers against the problems they have been suffering.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, our agricultural representatives and extension engineers are available to discuss this and have. If my hon. friend knew anything about what is happening in eastern Ontario, he would know there has been a greater percentage of tile drainage used in eastern Ontario in the last five years than anywhere else in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Didn’t the member know that?

Mr. Breithaupt: They are building a dam, too.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wentworth.

HAMILTON TEACHERS’ COLLEGE

Mr. Deans: I have a question of the Minister of Colleges and Universities.

Can the minister indicate what is going to happen to the Hamilton Teachers’ College?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I think the member might direct his question to the Minister of Agriculture --

Mr. Deans: Agriculture? The minister should check and see who is in here before he says it.

Mr. MacDonald: There is a lot of tile drainage, in Hamilton, too.

Hon. Mr. Auld: There is a little confusion around here I would say.

The Hamilton Teachers’ College is at present, as several are, still under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Education.

Mr. Deans: Can the minister tell me what is going to happen to it?

Hon. Mr. Auld: I can but it is his bailiwick and he will be delighted to tell the member.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Windsor-Walkerville with a supplementary?

Mr. Breithaupt: I have a supplementary to that. Is the college simply to be transferred to this minister’s jurisdiction or is it to be closed?

Mr. Deans: He doesn’t know.

Hon. Mr. Auld: The Hamilton Teachers’ College? As I say there are three at present under the Ministry of Education -- Hamilton, Sudbury and Ottawa -- and I think the minister will be making an announcement about these very shortly.

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

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The 25th order, House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF GOVERNMENT SERVICES (CONCLUDED)

On vote 702:

Mr. Chairman: On vote 702, are there any further questions on this? Shall this vote carry? The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Is there any estimate in this vote, through you, Mr. Chairman, with regard to the new athletic complex in the Oakville area announced recently by the Premier (Mr. Davis)?

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): No, Mr. Chairman, there are no funds in these estimates for that complex.

Mr. Ruston: Then I imagine you have no architect’s plans at this time. Is that correct? Have you any drawings or anything of what you are proposing? Do you have any idea what there might be?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, no plans have been prepared. Certainly a lot of consideration has been given to the facilities that eventually will be built over several stages in the complex. At the present time we are doing an assessment of several possible sites in the general area. As soon as the final site is established, we will commence the planning of the first stage of the building programme.

Under normal circumstances, there would be no money or very little money expended in this fiscal year for any construction. We probably will be spending the rest of the year on the preparation of plans.

Mr. Ruston: Regarding your capital construction programme, I notice the estimated increase is more than $15 million. Is the reason for this the number of buildings that are being completed or have been planned over the past year, or is it because of proposed new buildings? What I’m getting at is, what does the $15-million increase cover, more or less?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I don’t think I’m able to say specifically what that covers, Mr. Chairman. It’s a multitude of things. As usual, the biggest portion of our cash flow for this particular fiscal year is for projects started last year. Then, of course, there are many new projects to be started this year, and some cash flow will be required for them.

For instance, we have the four new regional detention centres, which alone total some $50 million. Those four projects are all expected to go to tender in midsummer and perhaps should be under construction by Sept. 1. So we will have considerable cash flow on those four between Sept. 1 and the end of March. That will make up quite a bit of it.

Mr. Ruston: I take it then, on page 14 of your book of projects, that the amount of $13,960,000 for jobs at various locations probably would be included in that too. Is that right?

Mr. Chairman: Vote 702? The member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): On vote 702, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister about the plans for acquisition of lands on the parkway belt and the Niagara Escarpment --

Mr. Ruston: Mr. Chairman, the minister is checking on my question.

Mr. Chairman: Oh, I am sorry. I believe the minister did have a reply to the question of the member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. Ruston: Is the $13,960,000 more or less for projects to be completed this year?

Hon. Mr. Snow: That, Mr. Chairman, is an allowance for projects that are not as yet definitely approved for construction. It includes projects that are on the “A” list with an “A” priority but for which Management Board has not yet given final approval. They are projects listed in the “A” list section, which we anticipate will go to the construction stage this year.

Mr. Ruston: Are they kind of special projects?

Hon. Mr. Snow: If the member will look, Mr. Chairman, he will see that some of the projects in the “A” list have an asterisk beside them. Those are the projects which we anticipate will proceed to construction under that $14-million figure.

Mr. Ruston: Thank you.

Hon. Mr. Snow: If he looks at page 21, there’s the agricultural museum, the Barrie courthouse, the provincial courts building in Brockville -- projects with an asterisk beside them.

Mr. Ruston: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister about the acquisition of land on the parkway belt and the Niagara Escarpment. I seem to recall that when the plans for the escarpment and the parkway belt were introduced by the Treasurer (Mr. White), we were told the amounts of money required to protect the escarpment in perpetuity were simply astronomical. The Treasurer took an estimate that was grossly inflated; I think he tried to total it up as $3 billion or $4 billion.

Now we find that the minister is only going to spend $17 million on the parkway and on the escarpment. Can the minister give us details about that? How does it fit into the overall plan for protection of the escarpment? What kind of land is it intended to buy and how many acres will this cover?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, I am not able to give the member that information. We do have, in our estimates, $17 million for acquisition of some properties within either the parkway belt or the Niagara Escarpment. Also, Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) will have funds within his estimates for the acquisition of Niagara Escarpment land which we will buy directly for him. He will also have funds for the acquisition of Niagara Escarpment land by the conservation authorities, on which he subsidizes or pays 75 per cent of the cost. I can’t tell the member what the total funds in the budgets come to. We will be buying land in the Niagara Escarpment area for the Ministry of Natural Resources using his funds.

Mr. Cassidy: How much of the $17 million here will be reimbursed, if any, by the Minister of Natural Resources? How much of it is coming out of Government Services funds?

Hon. Mr. Snow: None of it will be reimbursed by Natural Resources; that’s why it’s in our budget.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay. Can the minister kindly tell us, rather than going on about Natural Resources -- I would like to have had an outline of the whole programme, but let’s talk about the minister’s own programme. How are you going to spend that $17 million? What kind of land or property do you intend to acquire? How much will be spent on the escarpment area and how much on the parkway belt? How much is under negotiation now?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, the acquisition programme for the parkway belt has not yet been started and probably will not start until after the parkway belt hearings are completed. However, these funds are included for this year to purchase land that we know basically has to be acquired for certain purposes, whether or not there is a parkway belt, and to give us funds to purchase land where owners or estates, because of particular circumstances, wish to sell their lands.

Mr. Cassidy: Is it a slush fund then or can the minister say what kind of land you are going to buy? You apparently have some idea --

Hon. Mr. Snow: We are going to buy solid land, that you walk on.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, but where? The minister says for various purposes. Is it for highway corridors? Is it for recreational purposes? Is it for housing? Is it for industrial use? Is it for landbanking? What is it the minister intends to acquire this land for?

Hon. Mr. Snow: It won’t be for housing. We don’t anticipate buying any property within the parkway belt for housing. But it could be land that will be designated for recreational use or for transportation corridors where the highways will be going through the parkway belt.

Mr. Cassidy: How many acres does the minister intend to acquire, approximately?

Hon. Mr. Snow: The amount of acres will be the amount of acres this amount will buy, based on the market value of the land.

Mr. Cassidy: What’s the current average value of lands being acquired by the ministry in the parkway and the escarpment?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I cannot give the member that. We have not bought any land in the parkway belt as yet. Figures are already in Hansard regarding land we have purchased on the Niagara Escarpment. To date we have bought 271 properties, 32,560 acres for $10,639,900, on the Niagara Escarpment. That was bought for the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Chairman, the point I want to make is simply that the minister is being very vague and indefinite in explaining what this $17 million is for. It does not appear that it is part of an overall programme; if it is the minister isn’t aware of it and he should be as the agent for buying land on behalf of the government. If there was any real credibility or any real determination by the government to ensure the escarpment is kept for public purposes rather than being despoiled in the way it has been over the last few years, there would be much more acquisition than there is right now.

Hon. Mr. Snow: The protection of the Niagara Escarpment has nothing to do with my ministry or funds in this vote. The protection of the Niagara Escarpment -- as the member should know, he’s been around here long enough -- is under the Niagara Escarpment Act, under the zoning controls and ministerial orders of the Treasurer, and under the controls of the Niagara Escarpment Commission. The Niagara Escarpment is not being destroyed in any way.

Mr. Cassidy: Isn’t it clear though, Mr. Chairman, that when a minister gets up and says: “That’s not my responsibility,” he is simply rejecting the whole concept of change in government which we thought had been accepted by the government as a result of the COGP? It was touted again and again that there would be integration and co-ordination and that kind of thing; and now we find a minister who simply says: “I am a hired gun.”

Hon. D. R. Timbrell (Minister without Portfolio): Absolute nonsense.

Mr. Cassidy: He says: “I simply do what I am told. If the Ministry of Natural Resources wants me to buy this land and if they don’t happen to have the funds, they will dip into my slush fund. If the Treasurer wants me to buy it, they will dip into my slush fund. If MTC wants me to buy it, they will dip into my slush fund.” It is $17 million, and he is simply not willing to say what it is all about.

That is not good enough. We had an example in the question period where the Treasurer is saying if it is housing it is the Minister of Housing (Mr. Handleman) or if it is energy it is the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough), despite the fiscal con- sequences.

This minister is the chief landowner in the government. He is the person who handles the acquisitions whether or not they happen to go on his particular account. If MTC or some other ministry requires an acquisition, it goes through the Ministry of Government Services. It seems to me, therefore, that the Government Services ministry should have a fair understanding of what land is being acquired, why it is being acquired and how the various pieces being assembled by this ministry fit together. There is no evidence of that at all in what the minister has given us in commenting on this $17 million today.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Obviously, Mr. Chairman, anything I would say to the hon. member will not change his opinion; so I don’t really know if there is any use in my commenting any further.

Mr. Cassidy: My opinion is solidly based on what the minister has said.

Hon. Mr. Snow: That is absolutely wrong; everything that the hon. member has said is absolutely wrong. Surely he understands the procedure of the Niagara Escarpment Commission which has been appointed and which is preparing a plan over a three-year period and will lay out the areas that will be acquired. The funds in this vote are set up to have funds available to acquire land when the decisions are made that these acquisitions should be made.

The hon. member is also wrong in saying the Ministry of Transportation and Communications calls on us to buy land. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications has its own property agents in a right of way branch who purchase rights of way for that ministry throughout the province. There will be certain rights of way that are within the parkway belt. When the hearings are completed and this is established they will be purchased by my ministry.

Mr. Cassidy: Somewhere within the government, Mr. Chairman, there should be some overview covering land that is owned by provincial government and by provincial agencies. The logical place is probably within this particular ministry. If it is somewhere else, then the ministry as a major agent of land acquisition for the province ought to be aware that land policy is being carried out and where the overview exists. To my knowledge, it doesn’t exist.

It seems to me this ministry should know why people are acquiring land; it should have an inventory of all lands owned by the Crown in right of Ontario, whether it be by Hydro or MTC, the Ministry of Housing, OHC, or Natural Resources or some other government ministry.

It should be able, among other things, to put needs for land together with some supply of land, because after all there are resources there which are probably being overlooked right now. Who is looking at it? When the Ministry of Housing wants some land, is it aware of the fact that MTC or some other ministry may have land holdings which could be suitable for the purposes of the Ministry of Housing? This has occurred at the federal level where it has found it has tens of thousands of acres in major cities of Canada which are now either underused or going to waste. I’m sure there is provincial land handled that way as well.

What overview has the ministry of provincial land holdings? And if the ministry has none, which ministry has?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, we in this ministry have the basic inventory of land. That is patented land; not Crown land. Crown land, under the Crown Lands Act, comes under the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I don’t think the member is suggesting, surely that I should be in control of all the timber lands and the Crown lands in the province?

Mr. Cassidy: No, except where there is Crown land in urban areas; that should be the ministry’s responsibility.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I’m not aware of any Crown land in urban areas.

Mr. Cassidy: Fine.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I can’t say there isn’t any. As far as patented land and surplus land which we hold is concerned, we certainly make the Minister of Housing aware of any lands declared surplus by our client ministries for which we are holding the land.

In several cases we have turned land over to Ontario Housing Corp. for housing developments. They know of land we have available. We sold a site in the city of Windsor to Ontario Housing for a senior citizens’ housing project. We sold a parcel of land in the town of Oakville for the same purpose. We sold 100 acres of surplus land at the Bowmanville Training School to Ontario Housing Corp. for housing development. We work very closely together.

It’s the same with Transportation and Communications. Any land or pieces of land they have surplus to their highway needs when they have completed an overpass, say, or a cloverleaf, and they end up with a parcel of land, we are aware of that. Quite often we obtain parcels of land from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications for our purposes. We have obtained parcels from them for tourist information sites and for correctional services sites.

In London, we have a major parcel of land we are using for a site for the new Transportation and Communications office; highways garages, workshops, testing laboratories and so on. On the same site is being constructed the London Correctional Centre or the London Detention Centre. This is all on a parcel of 100 or 150 acres of land which became surplus when Highway 401 and the cloverleafs were constructed.

We co-ordinate very well, I think, the land assets of the Province of Ontario. We certainly have them inventoried.

Mr. Cassidy: I will close off this line of questioning in a minute. What is the policy by which a government department declares a certain parcel of land as surplus? What does the minister do in order to encourage the provision of surplus land or its declaration as such?

Hon. Mr. Snow: First of all let’s look at the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Correctional Services, which are two of the ministries with the most surplus land because of changes in their programmes. When it changed its programme, the Ministry of Correctional Services’ farming operation ceased and these agricultural lands were declared surplus and turned over to our ministry to administer. In many cases, we are holding this land and leasing it to farmers in the local area. We have quite a bit of land leased out for agricultural purposes.

Again, as I’ve told the hon. member, we have some that we have sold to Ontario Housing. In the city of Guelph we have some 700 acres now. If the hon. member had been here the other night he would have heard me discussing this with the member for that area. We are working with the mayor and council and planning staff of the city of Guelph to work out a land use plan for the 700 acres of land we have there which became surplus at the Guelph Reformatory. All these uses are being investigated.

As far as encouraging the ministries to declare land surplus, we don’t go around shaking them by the scruff of the neck saying we want your land back. On the other hand, if we come up with a need for a particular piece of land, for instance, if we come up with a need for an Ontario Provincial Police site, we immediately look at any land we own in that town or township or whatever it might be. We look at any land that Transportation and Communications has. We look at any land that, say a psychiatric hospital or a correctional institution might be on. If we think there is a site available that we could use, even though it hasn’t been declared surplus we will approach that ministry and see if they can release to us sufficient land that we might use for this purpose without affecting the programme of that particular ministry. This has all worked out very well. The people in my property branch do an excellent job at it.

Mr. Cassidy: May I say as a final comment, Mr. Chairman, if a department has land it isn’t quite sure whether or not it needs, it will be a natural tendency of the ministry or of the particular agency or institution, like a provincial hospital or whatever, to hang onto that land just in case. When a provincial agency or ministry intends to go forward with a programme that requires land, it will have a natural tendency too to use its own land. With changing circumstances, with the rising values of land, with urbanization and so on, those uses may not be an appropriate use of that particular land or a reasonably effective or economic use.

It doesn’t make much sense, for example, to put up, say an MTC office in London where they are going to use 10 acres of land, when three or four acres would do or another alternate location on an industrial site would do and would allow that 10 acres to be allocated for some alternative uses like residential purposes.

It seems to me the ministries themselves, because of their own interests, are not the best place to make those decisions and that this Ministry of Government Services is probably better placed to keep an eye on the intended uses of that land, to shake free the surplus land and to twist the arms of the various ministry officials to make sure that land for which they don’t immediately have a need comes into the general landbank; which should then be administered by the Ministry of Government Services to ensure that any plans they have are not distorted because of the availability of land which was acquired cheaply a number of years ago and which has been held cheaply because the true costs are not reflected in their accounts.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, there is also another very important factor in the use of land in this province, and that happens to be requirements of the municipalities. Probably the hon. member wouldn’t recognize that.

Mr. Cassidy: Of course I would, I am a municipal critic.

Hon. Mr. Snow: We work very closely with the municipalities where this land is located. As I have stated we are working with the mayor of the city of Guelph and his planning staff. I have met with them personally for discussions on this land.

In the city of London, when we established this centre for the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the regional detention centre, this was all worked out with the planning board of the city of London. We advertised and held a public meeting to explain the project to the residents of that city. This was prior to making application for the rezoning that was required. Even though we are not required by law to rezone land for provincial use, we do so. We proceeded with a rezoning application for this project in the city of London which has just now been finalized. We do not allocate land for a specific use just because we happen to own that land if the use is not compatible with the area.

Mr. Cassidy: Oh no; but that is the tendency and the minister is the one that has got to stop it.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask the indulgence of the House, and you Mr. Chairman, for a moment. A school has come in; I am speaking on behalf of my colleague, the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel), who is away at another committee in this building, as you know. The school in question is l’École Notre Dame de la Merci of Coniston, with 39 students and four adults. Thank you.

Mr. Cassidy: Vous êtes le bienvenu.

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

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): I want to continue with the minister where the member for Essex-Kent left off on the matter of the athletic complex at Bronte. I want to ask the minister when the suggestion was first presented to him and by whom.

An hon. member: The Premier.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I don’t know of any specific date, Mr. Chairman. This is a matter of government policy. It has been under discussion for some period of time.

Mr. B. Newman: What do you mean by a period of time? Two months, a month, six months?

Hon. Mr. Snow: To my knowledge, it has been discussed for the last couple of years.

Mr. B. Newman: Is the minister aware that the select committee report on the problems of youth, about six or eight years ago, strongly recommended that the government should expand athletic facilities throughout the province, starting with the development of more leadership training facilities? We have them at Couchiching and Bark Lake, but they suggested this programme should be expanded on a regional basis.

That probably would make more sense than simply picking out one location in the province, such as you have done with Bronte. Not that there is anything wrong with putting it in Bronte, but there are other parts of the province that would like exactly the same type of treatment. They too would like to contribute to the general overall physical fitness and athletic excellence of their students and their youth.

I would like to know, is the minister using this as a pilot project or does he have in mind expanding such facilities to other parts of the province so we can treat all parts of the province in exactly the same fashion?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, I think the hon. member should discuss the athletic programme with the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle) when his estimates come up, next week, I believe since it is a programme of his ministry. My responsibility is obtaining the necessary sites and the building of such facilities.

Mr. B. Newman: I understand that very well, Mr. Chairman, and when the minister’s estimates come up I will do exactly the same thing, as I will do with the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) when his estimates come up. But I point out that a report was tabled in this Legislature by the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Mr. Apps); and I recall there was much concern at the time, which I recall, because I happened to be a member of that committee.

Since your ministry is responsible for the purchase of the property on which you are going to develop this facility, are you considering the purchase of other properties to develop similar athletic facilities in other areas?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, in the blue book, under the “A” list, on page 24, there is a reference to the Ontario athletic leadership camp at Longford Mills, where a project is being carried out for the Minister of Education this year.

I don’t want to get into discussing my colleagues’ programmes, but I am aware -- and I would have thought you would have been -- of other action that has been taken by the government on athletic facilities. And if you read the Premier’s speech announcing this project, I think you will see that he referred to other facilities that would be provincially assisted.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Chairman, I don’t want to prolong this, but I look upon this as simply trying to funnel a given facility into one given area for purposes that really don’t fit into the overall plan -- and that was the plan originally set up by the select committee on youth. I think once you set up something like that you should sort of more or less follow that system -- the least you can do really is regionalize such an athletic facility so that all parts of the province can be treated in the same fashion.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, one of the criteria in the selection of the site of this particular project was its ideal location as it related to a very major portion of the population of the Province of Ontario. Within a 50-mile radius of this site are four million people, or roughly 50 per cent of the population of this province; and it is served well by transportation -- by GO Transit, the GO bus service, the Queen Elizabeth Way. Many other considerations were involved in the selection of this site.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Minister, I won’t argue with that, but I will argue that you have more athletic facilities in this locality than you have in any other locality in the province. It’s not that I would like to prevent Bronte from having what has been proposed by the Premier, but I think you have to consider other parts of the province. Metro Toronto has a lot more than other areas in the province and we are going to have to seriously consider assisting the other areas in the same fashion as you are going to be doing in this instance.

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

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Yes, Mr. Chairman; I do argue with the selection they have made in Bronte. I argue because we are beginning to understand more clearly that if we continue to follow the principle of providing services where the people are, and always do that, we are going to have all the people in one spot.

We know what happens when that principle has been followed. There are examples of it right across the United States. Riot after riot has been caused by allowing this principle to be followed; concentrating people, piling them on top of each other. Surely this government will follow the principles it stated it believed in when it announced the Toronto-centred region plan; a plan, supposedly to de-centralize the opportunities around this province and not to have everything concentrated in one area.

When I look at this estimate of approved construction that is in this book and add up the total of the facilities being built, 50 per cent of the approved contracts are in the Toronto-centred region. What about the areas away from this part of Ontario? Why do we provide all the incentive for the opportunities that youth are seeking in the Toronto-centred region?

I live here. I was born in Toronto; I am proud of it. But by golly we are going to destroy the fine things we believe in unless we start changing our programmes.

When I heard that announcement about Bronte, I said: “Fine. Completely contrary to the basic principle the government stated when it announced a new project out in Pickering for housing, supposedly to disperse people to the east.”

You folks aren’t consistent. You are hypocritical and it is time you started to realize by the --

Hon. Mr. Snow: You are an expert at that, that’s for sure.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: You are great ones to talk about hypocrisy, in that party.

Mr. Deacon: I think this party tries consistently to be consistent in everything.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: It tries to be on both sides of every issue --

Hon. Mr. Snow: Tries consistently to have both feet in mid air.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- and to sit on the fence whenever possible.

Mr. Ruston: How about the fence you are on? You guys can’t make up your minds what you want.

Mr. Deacon: We have some youngsters here from Coniston today. Sudbury needs more opportunities for employment for youth.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: What are you afraid of? Showing them what you really stand for over there?

An hon. member: It is not in the Toronto- centred region.

Mr. Deacon: No, it is not in the Toronto-centred region. But I was talking to a youngster up in Timmins not too long ago and I asked why he was going to move to Toronto: “Do you like Toronto better? Is it because you don’t like Timmins?” He said: “I can find a job that I have been trained for in Toronto in 24 hours. I couldn’t get that job in 24 weeks or 24 months or 24 years probably in the Timmins area.” And the reason they don’t have job opportunities up there is because we are not dispersing our opportunities.

Some years ago, as a centennial programme, the bureau of municipal research in Toronto organized a study in 40 major cities of the world on the major problems they had. That was followed in 1972 by a conference of a major number of cities plagued with the problem of squatters, discussing how they deal with their squatter problem in Buenos Aires and Lima and places like that. The people were all coming in from the hinterland and the rural areas in an urban migration; and the problems were being caused by that. They found the only way to solve it was not to provide the services in the centre, as we are doing here, but to improve the opportunities in the hinterland. Not only was that a way to provide a happier climate for people to live in because they wouldn’t be piled on top of each other, but also it was at a cost far less, about 25 cents in the dollar, than the spending they would have to do to provide equivalent services in the cities.

What my colleague from Windsor-Walkerville says is absolutely true. A select committee recommended that the opportunities be placed regionally but the first thing we do is build another thing centrally. Toronto recognizes the threat it faces because of this continued centralization of opportunity in Toronto. Here we have, as I say, 50 per cent of the construction approved in this book in the Toronto-centred region. Can’t we change our thinking? Can’t this minister who is responsible for construction of government facilities, do something to persuade his colleagues to build developments in the hinterland?

There are plenty of attractive places in Ontario, other than in this region, which are dying for the opportunities, for the job opportunities, that this construction represents.

It’s time we recognized, in this age of technology and improved communications, when we’re seeing evidence of the problems of concentrating people, that we should follow the principles the government stated it had, by dispersing opportunities. Let’s change, for once. I’ll be delighted when this minister comes in with a programme which perhaps shows 20 per cent of the construction in the Toronto-centred region but not 50 per cent.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Now we know where you stand. Ignore the needs of the Metro people.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): That’s rubbish; you’re wrong.

Mr. Deacon: I am looking after the needs of the Metro people.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: If 50 per cent of the people are here, why not?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Snow: There’s no doubt, Mr. Chairman, that 50 per cent of the people are certainly within the Toronto-centred region.

Mr. Ruston: We’re going to secede, that’s all. We’ll fix you guys.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I think if you look carefully at the programme of this ministry, as far as construction is concerned, certainly we have spread into every municipality and every area of this province.

Mr. Deacon: Just piddles, little drops in the bucket.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Little drops in the bucket, right. We have a $7 million, $8 million or $9 million project in the planning stage for Sudbury. We have a new $3 million or $4 million office building in Windsor. We have a new $2 million or $3 million courthouse in Kitchener.

Mr. B. Newman: Do you know how long that Windsor building has been in the planning stages? It was promised in the 1959 election.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I didn’t interrupt you.

Mr. B. Newman: And you were going to have a dinosaur park there after that.

Hon. Mr. Snow: In Thunder Bay, we’ve got new facilities: there are two, three or four projects in Thunder Bay. In Fort Frances we’re designing a new project there now. A new office building in Timmins; a new office building in Dryden; a new courthouse in North Bay; new offices for the Ministry of Natural Resources in all the remote centres of Ontario, practically; new facilities for Transportation and Communications throughout. We have 29 projects, I think, on our “A” list this year for Transportation and Communications, and of those 29 projects I would say at least 20 of them are in the outlying areas of the province.

Sure, if you want to add up dollar volume as far as projects are concerned -- we have $25 million or $30 million for Metro Toronto in the two jails, the east and west detention centres. Are you suggesting those facilities are not required in the city of Toronto? Let’s be reasonable.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Chairman, the minister knows what I am suggesting. I’m saying that when we provide opportunities, a lot of opportunities are represented by the dollars invested in these buildings; the government job opportunities are very much represented. That complex we have lying to the east of us here, with all the various departments located in it; there’s no reason why those departments can’t be located in other centres of Ontario and linked together by the modem communications we have. There would certainly be as much personal communication as there is right now.

I could hardly believe what the member for Don Mills (Mr. Timbrell), the hon. minister --

An hon. member: Without.

Mr. Deacon: Yes, the hon. minister without.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I’m not without. I brought my portfolio this morning.

Mr. Breithaupt: It’s not a very big one.

Mr. Deacon: Now as to what the hon. minister had to say about us wanting to ignore the needs of Toronto. I think we recognize that the real needs of Toronto are to reduce the pressures now faced by this city because of continued proliferation of growth on growth, since this is where all the population is.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: But you don’t reduce pressures by ignoring real needs.

Mr. Deacon: You reduce pressures by recognizing the real need. The real need is caused by the destruction of neighbourhoods resulting from rising land prices. There is real need caused by the need for more services because more people are moving in; and more people are moving in because the job opportunities are here, not because they want to move here.

A lot are choosing to move back to where they came from because although they found some attractive employment opportunities here, the frustration of living where they had to travel long distances and things like that made them change their minds and go back. There are people who were born here who are moving away because of the change, because they’d like to live in quieter places. But the difficulty always is to find opportunities.

What I am trying to get through to the minister and his colleagues is that we should re-examine our priorities and stop following this idea that we have to be right in the centre of the market. We know the dangers that will lead us into -- the dangers that New York found, that Detroit found, that Los Angeles found -- and the rot and the riots start. And the costs are beyond comprehension -- not just economic costs but the costs in terms of destruction of human values.

So I urge the minister not to just say: “Where would you make the change?” I know that he and his government will make changes if they really follow what they say they believe and disperse opportunities around Ontario. I am sure the population will appreciate it, and it’ll be done at far lower cost in every sense than the policies we are now following.

Mr. Chairman: Shall vote 702 carry?

Vote 702 agreed to.

On vote 703:

Mr. Chairman: On vote 703, the hon. member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. Ruston: I gather this is for repairs, maintenance and so forth of buildings leased by your minister. Is that correct? Item 2, for instance, is for repairs, operations and maintenance, and tenant alterations. I take it these would be buildings you lease and fix up according to the wishes of the client ministry. Is that correct?

Hon. Mr. Snow: This is a different setup than we had in our estimates last year, Mr. Chairman. This used to be grouped in with our total provision of accommodation programme. We separated it this year to give a better idea to the members where the funds are being spent. This programme provides the upkeep of property owned or occupied by the ministry. It is for repairs and maintenance of buildings that we own, as well as buildings we may lease, although in most cases we are not required to maintain the leased buildings.

Mr. Ruston: But you may make alterations to them as far as office facilities are concerned. You may put --

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, during the term of a 10-year lease or something, we certainly may have to change partitions or, in some cases, we may be responsible for the redecorating and things of that type.

Mr. Ruston: In effect, then, I take it that the major part of the $37 million is for maintenance of buildings you own, while a small amount might be involved for alterations and so forth to buildings you lease. Is that correct?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, if you look at page G45, you’ll see it is pretty well broken down there. There are, for example, salaries and wages for our employees, employee benefits and services, which would cover materials purchased for alterations, repairs and the general maintenance of our property.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister if the ministry has ever arrived at some type of a formula where it could be said that it would be better to purchase or build, rather than to lease -- to do something other than leasing? I have noticed that for years in certain communities -- and I can relate to my own -- you have had offices scattered in, I think 12 different locations. I would have thought it would have been better in that instance to have provided a provincial building in the community, rather than having offices scattered all around and paying all of those rentals to 10 or 12 different landlords.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, the matter the hon. member is discussing was in the last vote pertaining to lease. This is only the upkeep of our own accommodation. We investigate very carefully the different needs or the purpose for which the space is being acquired. Obviously special purpose buildings, hospitals, institutions and correctional centres are not leased. They are built on a capital programme. Courthouses and many other special purpose buildings are built, but sometimes when you require one additional family courtroom, for instance, in a municipality, it doesn’t pay you to go out and build a courthouse to get maybe 4,000 or 5,000 square feet of space for a family court. It is much better to lease in that case.

In some cases, the ministry will have a requirement for space for only a short period of time. They will need a space for three years for a particular programme. It doesn’t pay to build a new building for that.

What we are doing, and I have explained this to the hon. member a dozen times, is in the major centres we are building Ontario government buildings -- some are completed, some are under construction and some are in the planning stages -- where we can bring together most of the offices, and I won’t say all of the offices, in those municipalities.

We are building in some expansion space, but at some stage that building is going to get full. I am not going to say we are going to go out and build another new building. When that building gets full and we need an extra 5,000 square feet of space, we are going to go to the market and lease that space. Perhaps in a number of years when we get a group of leases built up and need expansion space, the time will come to build a new building.

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you, Mr. Minister. What I was really referring to is where you have the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, the assessment office and all of these various ministries, Workmen’s Compensation and so forth, scattered throughout the community. To me it would have made good common sense to have all of those facilities concentrated or put into the one building.

Hon. Mr. Snow: How many times must I explain to the hon. member that that is exactly what we are doing?

Mr. B. Newman: Since 1960 in this House-

Hon. Mr. Snow: I wasn’t here in 1960.

Mr. B. Newman: -- we have been trying to explain to your government over there that this is what should have been going on. Isn’t it funny that it has taken 15 years for the government to wake up to that?

Mr. Chairman: I think we are getting a little off the subject. We are dealing with the upkeep of buildings.

Mr. B. Newman: I was dealing with leases.

Mr. Chairman: In the last vote we dealt with leasing and capital construction. Are there any further questions on vote 703 as far as upkeep is concerned?

Vote 703 agreed to.

On vote 704:

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Yorkview.

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): I presume we are taking this vote in total and we will discuss any points.

Mr. Chairman: It might be more practical and easier to deal with if we took it item by item.

Mr. Breithaupt: That is what I was going to suggest, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Does any hon. member wish to speak on item 1 of vote 704?

Item 1 is agreed to then. Any member wish to speak on any item before item 8?

Mr. Breithaupt: Item 5.

Mr. Ruston: Item 3.

Mr. Chairman: Which item is it?

Mr. Ruston: Item 3. Is this strictly Government Services? Would this have anything to do with doing any work for Industry and Tourism or any of those ministries?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, we would be doing some of the printing for Industry and Tourism. We do some of the printing for all the ministries really; we do all of the printing for some ministries. This is the operation of the Queen’s Printer office.

Mr. Young: Can I ask guidance of the chairman? I have an item in relation to visiting schools and services for visiting schools and I would like to know under which item this would naturally fall?

Hon. Mr. Snow: That would be item 9, legislative services.

Mr. Young: Item 9.

Mr. Chairman: Does item 3 carry? Does item 4 carry?

Mr. Ruston: What is special services? I have an item or two here to bring up and I am not sure what they come under. They have to do with the services when the Queen visited here, leasing and renting material for that occasion in front of the building. I am not sure if that would come under legislative services.

Mr. Chairman: I would say it would, wouldn’t you, Mr. Minister?

Mr. Ruston: I think it would.

Mr. Chairman: It would be item 9.

Mr. Ruston: Okay.

Mr. Chairman: Does item 4 carry then?

Item 5, the member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions to ask with respect to the translation services carried on by this ministry. It is interesting to note that in the 1972-1973 and 1973-1974 years, these estimates ranged from $250,000 to $280,000. We see in the current year the estimates are much less than half of what had earlier been planned for. Is that because some of these services have gone elsewhere or does it reflect a change in demand for the particular services?

Hon. Mr. Snow: If the member would look on page G-49 under translation services, he will see that the budget is $340,000, less recoveries from other ministries of $227,000 with a net cost to our ministry of $113,000.

Mr. Breithaupt: Does that mean you did not recover the amounts in earlier years but you are trying to balance this out among the users at the present time?

Hon. Mr. Snow: That’s right.

Mr. Breithaupt: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Item 5 carried. Is there anything before item 9?

Mr. Breithaupt: On item 6, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Item 6.

Mr. Breithaupt: There were some comments and questions asked in the House with respect to the clipping services. As I recall, the minister made a comment that not only was this staff being moved, I believe its total services are being decreased and services otherwise provided, more generally to the civil service or as I recall it to the press gallery, are now no longer available as they were before. As I recall what the minister said or what was said in answer to questions of the ministry, the service to continue to be provided would be for the members of the Legislature and directly to the ministries; is that correct? Perhaps the minister could tell us generally what is being done.

Hon. Mr. Snow: The previous press clipping service supplied a service right across government really -- to ministries, boards, commissions, members of the Legislature, the Premier’s office, the Lieutenant Governor’s office and so on.

We have done a considerable amount of research on this press clipping service in the last year or two, surveying all the client ministries on the use of this service, and it has been decided it is really not a necessary service for the ministries. Many of the ministries have other methods of obtaining their press clippings and it was decided to continue the service but decrease it to supplying only the members of the Legislature, the Speaker, the Lieutenant Governor, the Clerk and so on.

For the present time it would remain a part of my ministry, but depending upon what comes out of the Camp report No. 2 and the operation of the legislative library, it might be decided in the future that the press clipping service would be operated as a service for this building and the members through the legislative library.

Mr. Breithaupt: So, effectively then, this service is to be really a service to the Legislature as such, because the ministries presumably have their own sources of people who are taking care of press clippings that relate to their own interests?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, the ministries need such a diverse range of services. I think our press clipping service does a pretty good job. I know I get a number of clippings from them and I have never had any complaints about the service that I have received, other than they don’t clip the weekly newspapers. But it is always a few days after an article appears before you actually get the report. I think in some cases the ministries find they have ways and means of getting things quicker on certain items.

We were having a duplication of services and it was decided at the Management Board level that this action should be taken.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Yes, I must apologize, Mr. Chairman, I couldn’t get up from the committee on time. I understand that my friend from Kitchener raised the matter of translation services for members and it just passed. Could the minister elaborate on that and say what the status is on translation services for the members?

Hon. Mr. Snow: The status of the translation services is just as I explained to the hon. member before.

Under many of our programmes, the services supplied by my ministry are on a chargeback basis, where we carry out the service for all ministries but charge them for the service. The translation service is now one of the services that we charge back for.

We recover it from other ministries. As far as the translation service for members of the Legislature is concerned this will continue, and we have recommended that it be charged to the Speaker’s vote like other services we supply to members of the Legislature.

Mr. Stokes: So there will be no problem with that as far as the members are concerned?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No. It was never intended, Mr. Chairman, that there be any charge to the individual member. There was some consideration as to whether there should be a charge to the caucus offices, the way certain other services that my ministry supplies are charged to the caucus offices and come out of the allocation of funds to that particular caucus.

There are other services that come through the Speaker. The decision hasn’t been made on this yet, but our ministry’s recommendation is that the translation services for all members on all sides of the House be charged to the Speaker’s estimates.

Mr. Stokes: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Any further comment on item 6, vote 704?

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Just on a matter of clarification, Mr. Chairman; am I to understand from the minister’s comments, both to my colleague the member for Kitchener and during the question period, that the press clipping service is to remain intact insofar as the service to the Legislature is concerned -- to the ministries and to the members -- but that beyond that the minister is going to farm out the responsibility of the press clipping service to a private company?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, we have no intention of farming out the press clipping service to a private company. We are continuing to operate the press clipping service at a reduced scale. Certain other staff will be transferred to other duties within the ministry and we will continue to supply the service to the members of the Legislature.

But we found that we were duplicating a service to many of the ministries, boards and commissions, and there was no sense in doing this. After a survey of all the different users of the service, we found the members of the Legislature and the Premier’s office and the Lieutenant Governor’s office and what not, found the service to their satisfaction and very useful, and we are continuing the service in that area. Many of the ministries found they were not completely satisfied with the service or they were obtaining much the same service through some other route within their own ministry and were not prepared to go for this service if it was put on a chargeback basis. This was reported to Management Board, the decision was made to continue the service on a reduced scale for those who really found the service useful, and that is what we are doing.

Mr. Chairman: Is item 6 carried? Any comment on any of the items prior to item 9?

On item 7, the hon. member for Yorkview.

Mr. Young: On the matter of vehicle repair and trucking services; the figure given here is a net figure and the cost of the repairs that are being done is largely recovered from other departments. Could the minister tell us how extensive this repair service is? What proportion of the vehicles owned by government are in effect repaired by this service?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, one of the items that comes to my attention is the ambulance service of the Ministry of Health. Their ambulances are looked after at our facility at Mimico. When a new ambulance vehicle is purchased and new equipment has to go on to it and so on, that is where it is done. Of course, we have our own fleet of trucks -- for delivering the mail, the trucks that you see around this building ploughing the snow and delivering the flowers that the gardeners use, and so on. This is our own fleet.

We are not involved with Transportation and Communications’ fleet; they look after their own. We are not involved with the OPP; they have their own garage down on Lakeshore. It is basically our own trucks and vehicles, the vehicles for the ministries that have a small number of vehicles and the ambulances for Health.

Mr. Young: It simply means that the recovery is from the other ministries not related directly to Government Services?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Right.

Mr. Young: The proportion of vehicles operated by the province then would be pretty small; the vehicles involved here that is?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, I think that would be right.

Mr. Young: We have no estimate or percentages at all?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No; I mean the number of vehicles we have is very small compared to Transportation and Communications, for instance.

Mr. Young: Yes, but Transportation and Communications have their own repair service within their department?

Hon. Mr. Snow: They have them all over the province, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Young: Right. So they would have a mixture, I suppose, of self-repair and contracting-out repair, that sort of thing? But that doesn’t involve your estimates at all?

Hon. Mr. Snow: The OPP, for instance, have their own garage in Toronto, but if there is an OPP constable stationed at Hearst he doesn’t bring the car back to Toronto to get the tire changed or something, he gets it done at a local service station.

Mr. Young: Right.

Mr. Chairman: Item 7 carried?

Mr. B. Newman: May I ask the minister if in performing repairs on the vehicles the minister’s department insists on the pollution control devices being always in the maximum state of repair?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Oh I am sure they are, Mr. Chairman. In fact some of our own vehicles have been converted to propane gas. I don’t know what percentage of our vehicles are on propane, but certainly we are experimenting. I don’t know how many of them are still on propane or have been taken off, but we had a propane tank set up at our Mimico yard for filling the vehicles. We had some of the vehicles converted to propane experimentally as a pollution control measure.

Mr. B. Newman: Has the experiment proved to be very successful so that the ministry could recommend it to other ministries?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Apparently it worked out quite satisfactorily for short-range vehicles working locally, but for highway vehicles and vehicles that were all over the province it wasn’t that satisfactory.

Mr. Chairman: Items 7 and 8 carried? Okay.

Mr. Young: On item 9, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Yorkview.

Mr. Young: Mr. Chairman, the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick), who is otherwise engaged in House business this morning asked me to raise a matter with the minister in connection with the visiting schools and the information which is given to them. I might quote a few paragraphs from correspondence which took place between the hon. member for Riverdale and the ministry.

The correspondence was concerning the packet of information given out to the schools and the first letter from Mr. Renwick to the ministry was March 8, 1973. Part of the letter is this:

“While there are two brief references to the role of the opposition in the assembly, nevertheless I do not think the material which has been prepared conveys any sense of the basic ingredient of our parliamentary democratic system, and that is the public, open debate and discussion in a controversial forum of all public business. To me, the material conveys no sense of the vitality of the assembly as the public body in which, in public, openly and in a controversial sense, discusses public business in all its aspects.

“Believe me, I’m not making this suggestion with respect to the publicity attendant to the New Democratic Party as an opposition party but, because I am satisfied that is the essence of our system, to make students understand the vitality of a forum, namely the assembly, in which the business of the province is discussed and considered.

“I would therefore recommend that the descriptive material with respect to the processes of the House be rewritten to emphasize this aspect of government business.”

On March 26, the reply came to Mr. Renwick and part of the letter reads as follows:

“This booklet was intended to be a brief and simple first step in sketching the outline of how the government is organized and the way in which it functions. I think it fulfills this purpose very well, but is certainly only a first step. Your suggestion that the book fails to do justice to the assembly is quite true but I don’t think this is a subject that can properly be handled through a simple rewrite of part of this very modest volume. Rather, I hope to have developed within the next few months a piece that focuses on the vital processes of public debate and discussion which, as you point out, is the basic ingredient of our democratic system.”

The minister goes on to discuss what form this might take and I don’t think that I need to read these paragraphs. This is the final paragraph:

“I only mention this to indicate that we are giving the subject serious thought and I would appreciate any comments you may have on what sort of an approach we could take with the project.”

Mr. Renwick wrote again and said, “I have read with interest your plans and it may well be we could spend a useful few minutes during the course of your estimates on this very situation.”

These letters are from March and April, 1973. That is over a year ago and the member was rather concerned that so far we have had very little results from them.

I do want to commend the ministry on one of the problems I had some time ago. I brought to the attention of the minister that visiting schools had photographs taken only during the session. Many schools which came between sessions did not have pictures taken and they were very disappointed be- cause of this. In my own case we had large numbers of schools coming down between sessions. When I brought this to the attention of the present minister, he hadn’t been aware of this gap in the service and immediately that was rectified. I want to express my appreciation and my gratitude for that rectification because I think it’s very important that the children who come do have pictures to take back. They take great pride in these pictures and if there is no picture taken when they come there’s just a gap in this whole service. That has been rectified and, as I say, I want to express my appreciation.

On this other matter of the literature which is handed out, my colleague has been concerned about this, has written about it and has had some assurance that the minister is going to rectify that situation. There’s no question that his point is a very valid one. We should give to the young people who are coming here, particularly when they can’t get into the chamber -- as many of them can’t because of the time factor of their visit -- some sense of the cut and thrust of the debate, the part the opposition plays in this whole process and something of the vitality and the strength of the Legislature and the debates that occur here.

I would like the minister to comment on this correspondence, which is now over a year old and perhaps to give us some idea of the progress that is taking place in this review.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, I’ll have to look into that particular matter. I recall the correspondence with Mr. Renwick, and his point was rather well taken, although I thought one of the brochures that we had put in the kit did explain to some degree the parliamentary process that goes on in this chamber. I certainly wouldn’t want to put in all the things that go on in this chamber, because I don’t think it would be a good influence on our young people.

I was quite concerned, shortly after I became minister and responsible for this area, with the information that was being given to the children who visited us at the time. It was, as you all recall, a brown paper envelope, and it seemed to me to a great extent to be made up with any kind of a surplus piece of literature that any ministry or organization had left over. If they had surplus literature that was outdated or something, they would ship it over here and put it in the kids’ envelopes.

Mr. Young: This is better; this is okay.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I got one of the envelopes and looked at this stuff and I thought, my God! We have got to do something better than this. Immediately we started to prepare the different new documents that are in the brochure. There is a little plastic litter bag printed up and a little coin with the picture of the Parliament buildings on it as a sort of keepsake. I think really there has been a great improvement in the calibre of material we now give the visitors to the Legislature.

I am not saying this is all we can do. We can always improve. I have an idea that perhaps because of some change in staff this may not have been followed up the way it should have.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Parkdale would like to rise on a point of personal privilege for a minute.

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): Thank you. I would like to introduce to the House a school from Parkdale riding, the Holy Family School, with Mrs. Clach, the teacher. They are sitting in the east gallery.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Kitchener was on his feet.

Mr. Breithaupt: I have some questions to ask with respect to item 9, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. B. Newman: I wanted to talk on item 9.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Chairman, I have something with respect to legislative services.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Chairman: I wanted to commend the ministry for the change that has taken place. There can be more substantial changes made, but I can recall back last year and the year before levying strong criticism at the content. Just as the minister mentioned, they were the discards from the other ministries. In fact one of the circulars that was in there actually came from the Ministry of Health with the former Hon. Matthew Dymond as Minister of Health.

There has been a marked improvement, but there is still room for more improvement in the content of material. I think you should probably package it in two different ways, one that would be geared for the elementary school and then one that would be geared for secondary school students. It’s a big improvement and it is generally appreciated by the students who visit the Legislature.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore. Are you on item 9?

Mr. Lawlor: Yes. Has the minister control over any sort of library with respect to distribution and retention of movies made through the auspices of this government?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, this is a film library you are referring to, I believe. We have discussed the possibility of perhaps trying to bring together the films that are available throughout the different ministries. The Ministries of Industry and Tourism, Environment, Natural Resources and many others have films relating to their ministries. I personally would like to see these more available, but each ministry makes them available separately.

Mr. Breithaupt: Further to that point, Mr. Chairman, would it not be a reasonable idea to have at least an index of the current films that all the ministries have available in the legislative library? If that could be done, and I would think done quite simply in a loose-leaf form of book, then at least members would be aware of a source they could go to if they were asked to make films available to groups within their own ridings that had particular interests in certain specific projects or ministries of the government.

Hon. Mr. Snow: We were thinking, Mr. Chairman, of the possibility of having a film library through the Ontario government bookstore where all the films would be available in that way, but I forgot the complications that we ran into, partially due to space in the store I believe. As you know, we do have the index of government publications that I think comes out monthly and I think a similar index on films that are available would be very worthwhile. I’ll certainly investigate whether we can get the other ministries to co-operate on his.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lake- shore.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Chairman, I just want to have a private little tête-à-tête with you this morning.

As a neophyte around here, as a callow young member of the House, I was engaged some years ago, along with the member for Huron-Bruce I believe, and the member for York East -- who has gone on to better things -- on a committee to arrange a film showing and depicting the vitality in its extreme of the life of this Legislature. We spent many weeks and hours on it. I think we were so touched by megalomania in the process that each one of us -- Arthur Meen particularly -- felt that he had become a Cecil B. DeMille in genesis, so to speak, and we gave much of our time. We tried to hire Lister Sinclair; but he turned us down. Well, it went on apace.

Finally, after many revisions and destroying many directors, we got this film into operation. It started off at $27,000 and we ended up well within the budget at $33,000. And with that in mind, what happened to it? I never heard another word about the thing from that day to this.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, that is a simple enough thing -- the censor wouldn’t allow it.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I don’t know where the member has been. That film has been around for some time. I don’t know how many copies we have. I forget the title of the film, was it “Your Member of the Legislature”?

Mr. Breithaupt: I am sure the censor wouldn’t pass it.

Hon. Mr. Snow: In any case, I know we have copies available through my office, and I think through the caucus office; I was sure the opposition caucuses had them also.

Mr. Lawlor: Then you do keep some kind of library of some films?

Hon. Mr. Snow: This was a film that was produced for members of the Legislature to show in their ridings and I know we have copies of this particular film.

Mr. Lawlor: Did anybody ever use it?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Oh a great many times. Many of our members have taken it to show at schools in their ridings.

Mr. B. Newman: That’s the first time I have heard of that.

Mr. Lawlor: That’s very gratifying. I will shut up for the rest of the day.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Another thing that we implemented was this tape to the schools. I’m sure you are familiar with that. There was a letter sent out to every member. You can make out a tape and when one of your schools makes a booking to come to visit the Legislature; and a copy of this tape goes out with your 10-minute message explaining to the students what they can look forward to -- or whatever you want to say on it really -- when they come to the Legislature.

I think this has helped, because I know when students come in from my own riding they will arrive here and they will say they had a period ahead of time when they listened to the tape and so on. I think this has been a big improvement in communication with the students.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, following the comments from the member for Lakeshore, I think that strengthens my earlier request that some kind of a central index be at least available in the legislative library so the availability of gems such as the one in which the member participated could be more readily known to the other members.

I don’t think we require a central distribution or a central control, but if members knew where a film could be obtained, and there must be several hundred films I would think in various ministries, this would probably be a great help to our constituents.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Yorkview. Does the hon. member have a question on this?

Mr. Young: Mr. Chairman, I was just going to ask the minister if he had any estimate of the extent to which the pre-visit tapes are being used. I find it a very useful instrument and all the schools that come from my riding, as in the case of the minister’s, do get those tapes; but I wonder if that is widely used and whether it should have a bit more promotion, if necessary?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Certainly it is available to every member of the House, and when this programme was implemented I sent a letter out to every member. Maybe there should be a follow-up. Obviously some members have used it; others may have not bothered.

It is a small cassette. If you go down to the recording studio in this building the operators will make a master tape of your message and then they re-record off the master tape onto cassettes. Then a cassette is mailed out to the teacher or the party in charge of the school group that is coming in.

Of course every school has a cassette player and after it is sent out I presume it may be kept or it may be thrown away. It is a small cost and once you have made your master tape then as many cassettes as are necessary for the groups that come in can be taken off it.

Mr. Young: Yes; I was just wondering, Mr. Minister, with human memory being what it is and with the tendency of members to go through a lot of paper and discard it pretty quickly, whether a reminder of some of these things might be wise at certain intervals so that members will have their memories refreshed and so perhaps there will be a little more activity of this kind.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I assure the hon. member that I haven’t forgotten about it.

Mr. Young: Perhaps we should do it within our own caucuses, I don’t know.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Some members may have forgotten about it and we could easily send out a reminder, that would be very simple.

Mr. Young: I would undertake to do it within my own caucus and I think perhaps it should be done.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I think if the two opposition House leaders, or the hon. member on behalf of his party, were to remind their caucus at the next meeting that would be the best way of handling it.

Mr. Young: Right, fine.

Mr. Breithaupt: I am glad to undertake to do that.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. Ruston: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could ask a question under this vote regarding the official visit of the Queen here last year? A number of articles were put out in front of the Legislature -- platforms and so forth -- and I noticed an article in the Globe and Mail on April 27 about a carpet the Queen walked on. It has been cut in 200 pieces and the hon. member for Dovercourt (Mr. G. Nixon) presented one of the pieces to the opening of a new apartment in that area.

Mr. Chairman, I was under the impression that this carpet was rented, but apparently it was not, it was purchased. Where is the rest of this famous carpet now?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, the stand, the roof and all the regalia for the royal visit was rented, including the carpet. The carpet was new carpet that was put on the stand -- a red, shaggy carpet. The decision was made after the royal visit was over that this carpet should be kept.

As it had been rented, we obtained a price from the rental company to buy the carpet. The carpet was purchased I think something like $1,500 or $1,600. It covered a large area; all down the steps and so on was covered with this carpet. Through one of the community colleges this carpet was made into small pieces -- bathmats, that type of thing -- each with a label on the back. Well the pieces were about the size of a bathmat I would say; they were oval, and a label was put on the back stating that this was the carpet that was used by the royal visitor. I can’t tell you where they are at this time.

Mr. Ruston: You can’t tell me? Then who has the responsibility for this? If this was going to be cut into 200 different pieces, who has the responsibility? I see one was presented to a home for senior citizens to be hung up on the wall, but it seems to me we should know where this is and the purpose it is going to be used for.

Each member was to be given a portion of carpet, although I don’t know if that’s what they had in mind. Perhaps it is going to be used by the government members on special occasions. As the writer says in the Globe and Mail, it’s spreading political fertilizer; I guess that’s about what we are doing, but I am concerned about this matter.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Maybe it’s what you are doing, I don’t know.

Mr. Ruston: Pardon?

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): We have all got senior citizens’ units, you know.

Mr. Ruston: But you can’t tell us where the rest of this carpet is. Is that right?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, I can’t tell you the physical location or how many pieces of carpet have been presented to anyone. I know the idea was to have them made up as mementos of the royal visit for such things as senior citizens’ residences. Every new senior citizens’ building has a common room and card-playing room, usually with a TV, chesterfields and what not, and I know many of our senior citizens would very much value having one of those for such rooms.

Mr. Ruston: I don’t object to that, now that we have it and it’s been purchased. If we had had to rent it, it probably would have cost almost as much anyway. But I think we should know where it is and if the pieces are available for senior citizens units throughout Ontario. That’s all that concerns me now.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Well, the carpet was purchased through our ministry; it would be part of the total cost of the royal visit, because no doubt we got some credit for the rental of the carpet when we did buy it. To my understanding, one of the community colleges -- I am not just sure which one -- did the work as part of one of its programmes; they cut up the carpet and put the frills around it. The carpets, I understand, are stored in this building and are under the control of the Premier’s office.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, to follow up on these royal bathmats referred to by the minister, I wonder if we could find out just what the rules are for the provision of these items, or how they are available.

Is it the minister’s view that we should contact the Premier’s office with respect to this? One would think if the minister is going to be sending a reminder as to the use of the school tapes, which I think are most worthwhile and of which I took advantage, perhaps some information could come to us as well about this kind of an item, which I think would have interest in senior, citizens’ homes in particular.

I realize there’s no guarantee that Her Majesty or anyone else actually stepped on the corner that the senior citizens’ home might receive, but I think it is a souvenir, and as such is of interest to many of our people, and properly so. But I would hope that the minister could enlighten us as to what the terms and conditions are for the granting of this item of largesse or the making of it available to the members. If the minister wishes, of course, then we could inquire of the Premier’s office.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I think we can get that information. I can’t tell you at the moment what the process is for getting one, but the main purpose of them is something along that line.

Mr. Chairman: Shall item 9 carry?

Mr. Breithaupt: One other matter on item 9, Mr. Chairman, and it is rather a personal one. I don’t know whether the pigeons around this building are considered as legislative services, but it appears to me that we have spent a substantial amount of money on the renovation and restoration of the outside of this building. The building is indeed a very handsome one, and it is rather disappointing to go out to one’s car, or to look at the window sills and the various other parts of the building, and find that a certain amount of anointment has gone on from these pigeons.

I don’t expect that they come under legislative services, but I don’t know where else they might come or what responsibility the minister has --

Hon. Mr. Snow: It would be a natural resource.

Mr. Breithaupt: Well, perhaps pigeons could be considered a natural resource, but I am not being entirely facetious in this, Mr. Chairman. I think that the excellent work that was done on the outside of this building, the cleaning of it, the pointing of it and the making of it into a very attractive and handsome landmark is to be commended. It is even nice to see the ivy starting to climb up the walls again following the unfortunate but, of course necessary cutting off that had to be done a year or so ago.

It seems to me that perhaps some consideration could be given to some kind of a programme, short of a massacre, that would possibly deal with this particular problem. It is rather unsightly and I am sure the minister will agree it does take away from the aesthetic part of the building. I would appreciate it if the minister has any thoughts or if he knows what can be done to deal possibly with this minor nuisance.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I would suggest perhaps that we have pigeon pot pie as a special on the menu in the legislative dining room for a few days.

Mr. Breithaupt: Unless I get my car space moved, I would be glad to provide that item, perhaps. I think, Mr. Chairman, rather than go the distance of having Joe Dineley go after them, we could give some thought at least to some kind of a cleanup which would make the place look the way we all intended, I am certain, which is a nice clean landmark.

Hon. Mr. Snow: We have always had pigeons and I am pretty sure that, outside some drastic action, we always will have. I don’t think they are really doing any material damage at all to the building.

Mr. Breithaupt: No, I don’t think it is material damage but it is a bit unsightly, as I am sure you will agree, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman: Item 9 agreed to.

We interrupt for just a moment. The member for Windsor-Walkerville has an announcement.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Chairman, in the absence of the hon. member for Nipissing (Mr. R. S. Smith), I would like to bring to the attention of this legislative assembly that seated in both galleries, east and west, are some 100 students from North Bay. The school is the Cite des Jeunes School, and they have supervising them Sister Lise Denis and Mr. Simon Brisbois. I know the members of the legislative assembly cordially welcome them.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any questions or comments on item 10? Items 10 to 12 inclusive carried. On item 13?

Mr. Breithaupt: On item 13, Mr. Chairman, I would like to hear from the minister as to how the citizens’ inquiry branch is working out. I see we have an increase, of course, in the budget and the last two years have been the two years in which this has been operating.

I wonder if the minister can advise as to how he sees this programme and whether it is the intention of the ministry to continue it? I know various members have received copies of correspondence or inquiries which have been directed generally and have become the more particular interest of a member, depending upon the riding or depending upon the member’s interest if he or she had been involved earlier in the particular concern the constituent was bringing forward.

Are you satisfied with the operation and can you advise us if it is being well used and is a useful additional item to supplement the services which are given otherwise by the civil service, and more particularly, by the individual members?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think the citizens’ inquiry branch is working out very well. When we started this about two years ago, it was an experiment; it was something new. We said at that time that we were not going to set up another bureaucracy, another Information Canada, that probably cost the taxpayers a couple of hundred million dollars or some such ghastly figure to operate. Our budget has gone up from $143,000 to $167,000 but I think for that small amount of money we are getting a great service.

Just as an example, I would like to read a couple of paragraphs of a letter I got from someone whom I never knew or heard of before -- a Mr. Hunt -- who lives here in Toronto. This is dated May 7, 1974, so it was just received a week ago. He writes:

“Please allow me to congratulate you on the job done by your citizens’ inquiry branch. Not only does it do its job speedily and efficiently, but displays facts, courtesy and patience to boot. In these days of frustration and chaos for politicians and public alike, this sets an example which business and other governments and their departments would do well to emulate.”

I won’t go on. It is a page-and-a-half-long. But that is the tone of the letter and I think that speaks as well or better than I can for the branch. This is not the only such correspondence or feedback that I have had regarding the citizens’ inquiry branch.

Mr. Breithaupt: Can the minister advise us of the number of staff members in this inquiry branch and the number of inquiries which they handle on a monthly basis on average?

Hon. Mr. Snow: This has been answered two or three times. There is a complement of 10 I believe. The leader of your party wrote and got all the information. The member for Rainy River (Mr. Reid) has a question on the order paper that has been answered with all that information, plus every member of the House gets a monthly report on the number of inquiries.

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): No, not recently.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I am surprised you would ask the question.

Mr. Breithaupt: The question was asked because I wasn’t aware of the correspondence.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I am afraid you don’t read your mail very carefully.

Mr. Breithaupt: No, I wasn’t aware of the correspondence my leader may have had with you, but I was just interested generally. I think, as I have said, that the inquiry branch is providing a very useful function; that it is attracting requests for information from a person who might not know where else to go; and that indeed is a very commendable thing. The point of my question was only to get a general idea as to the volume. You have certainly answered the first part.

Hon. Mr. Snow: It is about 1,300 to 1,400 inquiries per month. I would point out that that complement of 10 is not all really with the branch, although we have put them under that group now. The group includes the girls at the information desk in the Whitney Block and Macdonald Block, but not the tour guides in this building, who are under legislative services. The information girls in the different office buildings are part of that complement and are under the supervision of the citizens’ inquiry branch.

Mr. Chairman: Anything further on this item?

The member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: Thank yon, Mr. Chairman. I wonder whether it would be possible, since we have been jumping around a bit this morning, to go back to questions about employee benefits which are also in this general vote. I would like to ask the minister what progress has been made --

Mr. Chairman: I understand, Mr. Cassidy, that this has passed.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, I know. But, Mr. Chairman, we have jumped back a couple of times I understand, and I imagine we could do that again.

Mr. Worton: No, we haven’t.

Mr. Chairman: It is item by item, I am told, on this vote.

Mr. Cassidy: I understand it was the member for Thunder Bay who came, requested and was granted permission to go back. Now that you have taken advice from the Clerk, I presume this is all right.

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask the minister for a statement on the present discussions with the CSAO concerning the benefits package and the tendering of it to groups other than the London Life consortium.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, this is under the jurisdiction of the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. Winkler).

Mr. Cassidy: It is under this particular minister’s spending though, is that not correct?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes.

Mr. Cassidy: Can you not give us some kind of a statement then? What do you do? Do you simply handle money for everybody else?

Hon. Mr. Snow: You come barging in here for two minutes and start making statements like that. I would like to know sometimes what you do.

Mr. Cassidy: I represent my people in Ottawa Centre and pick up for government members who don’t mind their people in eastern Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Snow: That’ll be the day!

Mr. Cassidy: You watch the next election and see what happens in eastern Ontario.

Mr. Chairman: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Snow: We do carry the funds in our budget to pay the money into the Public Service Superannuation Fund and the employee benefits package, the unemployment insurance, all these matters. But the responsibility for the settlement or the negotiations or the rates is not part of this ministry.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay, Mr. Chairman, I think it is curious that the minister can’t even comment on things that are in his estimates. However, we’ll raise it under Management Board when it comes.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I might also add that the funds that are paid into these areas under our vote are generally recovered from the operating ministries.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, it’s this mindless conduit function that one saw when we were discussing land. This seems to be the case in these benefits as well and that rather bothers me.

Mr. Chairman, returning to the vote that we are on right now --

Mr. Chairman: Item 13.

Mr. Cassidy: Item 13, that’s correct, yes. The juxtaposition with the telecommunications budget just previous to this is interesting, because I’d like to know from the ministry what steps the government has prepared in order to give access to government information, such as is provided by the citizens’ inquiry branch, for people who are not within the calling area of Metro Toronto?

Hon. Mr. Snow: If the member is referring to Zenith numbers, or something like this, we have not implemented this service at this moment.

Mr. Cassidy: Can the minister say then what are the government’s intentions, because I guess there are about three-quarters of the population of the province that cannot pick up the phone and call the citizens’ inquiry branch, from my riding in particular. It may be that it’s well served by my office and myself, but --

Hon. Mr. Snow: Ho, ho!

Mr. Ruston: Why not call the member?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: That’s why.

Mr. Cassidy: The record I have seen has indicated that in the last 2% years no more than about three or four inquiries from the riding of Ottawa Centre have reached the citizen inquiry branch. Now clearly, as far as my particular area is concerned, they might as well forget it. It is simply a waste of their money in terms of service to the people in Ottawa Centre. I am sure that is true of a number of other members who have ridings distant from Toronto, and yet they are citizens of the province like everybody else and they are entitled to information, not only from their member, but also from the government. I don’t dispute that particular position, but I do dispute that this service should only be freely accessible to 2 1/2 million of the eight million people in the province.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, an eight-cent stamp will get the message of anyone in Ontario, I believe, to the citizens’ inquiry branch. I would also point out that in many of the centres of northern Ontario there are the northern Ontario information offices, which do not come under this vote but are under the Ministry of Natural Resources. There are 20-odd of those offices spread through the communities of northern Ontario that basically give very much the same service as the citizens’ inquiry branch does here in Toronto. I would agree with some of your comments. It is very seldom that I would agree with anything that you would suggest, but --

Mr. Cassidy: I appreciate that, yes.

Hon. Mr. Snow: -- I would have to agree that in an outlying area where the member is well known there is not too much reason for someone to phone the citizens’ inquiry branch. In the last two years I also had only three or four inquiries from my riding come through the branch that I have been notified of, but this is not the case in the general Metro Toronto area.

Mr. Cassidy: Then it raises the question, should the minister and myself and other people who have seen only a few inquiries really flaunt ourselves, or shouldn’t we ask whether there is a serious problem in terms of the kinds of access?

One recalls, for example, the Legal Aid Plan and the discussion in this Legislature of the fact that Legal Aid had not advertised its services in all of its six or seven years, apart from the announcements at the very beginning of that particular programme. It doesn’t make sense to set up a programme which is designed to reach the people who have difficulty in understanding the way the government works, and then restrict it to only one part of the province and hide its light under a bushel, if you will, by only having it here.

If you are going to do it you should do it with a will and that means make it available in other parts of the province. We are not just talking about Deseronto and Mattawa and places like that; we are talking about places as large as the city of Ottawa or the city of Windsor, communities of 200,000 or 300,000 or 400,000 people, where there is no clearly identifiable place for people to call.

Would it be too much, to begin with, for the minister this year to adapt the direct line service which now exists within the province and put in a number for the citizens’ inquiry branch so that people within the Ottawa calling area, the Kingston calling area, the St. Catharines-Niagara calling area, Hamilton, London and Windsor, at the very least could pick up a phone and be connected with the citizens’ inquiry branch here in Toronto?

What would the cost of that be? I don’t think it would be substantial and I would suggest this would be part of a very desirable programme to make the services of the inquiry bureau available across the province. Perhaps you should do it also to begin with in Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and Thunder Bay. After that, the year following, you could go forward with a Zenith number or some other form of access so that every citizen in the remotest comer of the province would have that access to government information.

Hon. Mr. Snow: This, of course, could be done, Mr. Chairman. It is all a matter of priority and of cost. There was some consideration given to this type of service although there are government offices of some type in almost every area of the province. Of course, the service in Toronto is equally available to the people from Ottawa, Windsor or Thunder Bay except there is the cost involved of a telephone call.

Mr. Cassidy: No. The law says rich and poor alike cannot sleep under a bridge. It is not equally available because of the toll charges.

Hon. Mr. Snow: It is equally available to all the people in Ottawa; they would all pay the same toll charge to call Toronto.

Mr. Cassidy: It is not equally available if they have got to pay $1.

Hon. Mr. Snow: As I say, this is possible; it could be considered. The Minister of Revenue (Mr. Meen), I believe, for his tax credit programme had a special Zenith number set up so that people from all over the province could phone for information regarding that particular programme. I would like to investigate what that service cost and whether it could be tied into the citizens’ inquiry branch because I think the citizens’ inquiry branch is fulfilling a very useful purpose. I just don’t know what is the cost involvement or whether the usage we would get from it would warrant this tremendous expenditure but I will look into it.

Mr. Cassidy: What expenditure would be required? Has the minister made any studies?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I would say that if we were to put a special line in to all the centres as the member suggested it would be probably several hundred thousand dollars a year, but I am going to investigate and find out.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister doesn’t know. I am sorry but the minister’s arguments are really quite fatuous.

There are as many members per head of population in Toronto as there are in most other parts of the province. There are far more government offices in Toronto than in any other part of the province. Therefore, in his argument, the area that least needs the citizens’ inquiry branch is Metro Toronto yet that is the only area where the service is provided.

To say that somebody on a modest income in Ottawa has equal access to the service as somebody living in Toronto is ridiculous because they are not allowed to use the government phone.

Mr. Ruston: They have to go to their riding and get people to call, probably.

Mr. Cassidy: There are members in the Toronto ridings so why not scrap the service entirely on that particular argument? It may have escaped the minister’s attention but many people in the province cannot afford to pick up a telephone at a toll charge of $1 or $1.50 or $2.50 in order to call this particular branch. In areas such as Ottawa where there are other government offices they are confused.

Ottawa is particularly confusing because there are so many federal government offices as well as the provincial, regional, local and district offices of various governments and ministries. It just doesn’t wash.

The fact that the minister hasn’t investigated it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, is in a minor way a reflection of the whole concentration of this government on Metro Toronto. The minister, along with the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) has got himself a farm museum up at Milton, which I believe is in his riding.

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, it isn’t.

Mr. Cassidy: And he is fine. He has been doing very well, thank you very much.

Hon. Mr. Snow: On a point of order, it is not in my riding.

Mr. Cassidy: It is near your riding then.

Hon. Mr. Snow: If you knew a little bit about Ontario you would know that.

Mr. Cassidy: All right, it is in your county. I will be up there in a week’s time, and I’ll find out more about it then.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Oh, oh. Look out!

Mr. Cassidy: The minister has managed to get a farm museum for his particular county. There was no thought, apparently, to locating that farm museum in eastern Ontario or in western Ontario or in northern Ontario. Oh no, like Ontario Place and like the mini-trains and every thing else it all gets put into this general area.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Upper Canada Village is not.

Mr. Cassidy: What is it about the people in the rest of the province that you ignore their needs, that you feel that they can pay toll charges to call the government whereas the great city of Toronto, Metro Toronto, will have its citizens’ inquiry branch? Why is it that you feel absolutely no concern about this? Why weren’t you fighting the cabinet and trying to make it clear to them that you think the citizens’ inquiry branch should be available across the province or else on principle you simply can’t support its existing at all?

That is the position you should be taking if you really believe that this government should be accessible. But the government really believes that it should only serve the needs of Metro Toronto and the Toronto-centred region and then it will put a few crumbs off the table to the rest of the province -- in this particular case if, as and when they can afford the toll charges.

Mr. Ruston: Mr. Chairman, on this same subject, it seems to me, having been in the telephone business a few years ago, that the cost of putting in toll lines from all over Ontario, and I am sure the cost of the lines we have now, would be pretty high. It seems to me that we could have an agency in each major area of the government, and Community and Social Services would probably be the ideal ministry through which it should be done -- and the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle) is here. In my opinion most of the problems people have when they call have something to do with Community and Social Services generally. I would imagine that that ministry would be what the majority of the calls would concern. The government could then redirect these --

Hon. Mr. Snow: Most of the calls I get involve the Unemployment Insurance Commission.

Mr. B. Newman: I don’t get one.

Mr. Ruston: What I was going to say is that that ministry then could redirect these calls to whoever the callers should deal with, rather than have a network of telephone service over the whole Province of Ontario. In my own riding there are nine telephone exchanges, but any person in my riding calls me free because I have a Zenith telephone in every one of those exchanges. The constituent just calls the operator, says, “Zenith 80510” and is connected to me. I have a service there so I am not worrying about what you do. I am available to them free of charge. It doesn’t matter whether they live 50 miles from me or one mile, they all call me free.

But I would think that maybe what we should be looking at is a centre in each large area, every 50 miles or so -- and it might be at a different distance in the north, but I’m thinking of southern Ontario -- which perhaps should be directed through the Ministry of Community and Social Services -- that would be the ministry responsible for these centres. There would be somebody there responsible for redirecting all these calls -- for example, to the Workmen’s Compensation Board or whatever it was -- to see that they got into the right department. I think that would be more economical and the centres would be closer to where the people live. They could talk to someone close by.

Mr. Breithaupt: Just one further point on this item, Mr. Chairman. Can the minister advise us if there are facilities or there is an ability within the branch to deal with calls or correspondence in languages other than English and French? Do you have an ability in Metropolitan Toronto, for example, to deal with inquiries that might come from any one of our large number of citizens of Italian background who are particularly numerous in the Metropolitan Toronto area? How is that dealt with, just as a matter of information?

Hon. Mr. Snow: There is perhaps a limited degree of bilingualism within the small branch, but it would be dealt with like any other branch that would use the services of the translation branch.

Mr. Breithaupt: The translation branch to which we referred earlier has an ability to deal with other languages as well to resolve that particular problem, which no doubt is perhaps becoming a little more prevalent?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes. The translation branch deals with all languages. French is the most used but permanent staff within the translation branch are capable of handling most languages that would be used. As I understand it, if there is a particular language for which we may get a call for translation purposes for just the odd letter and we don’t have that capability, we have contacts through outside services to get that letter done. We just don’t keep a staff for every nationality.

Mr. Breithaupt: That is quite understandable.

Mr. Cassidy: One other final question: Do any of the staff of the citizens’ inquiry bureau speak French fluently?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, and Italian too.

Mr. Chairman: Items 13 and 14 agreed to. On item 15.

Mr. Breithaupt: I have just one question on item 15, Mr. Chairman. It has been, of course, the tradition of the government to be self-insuring. If there were particular losses, for example, in the unfortunate fire that took place in this building a week or so ago, these items were thought to be covered out of general provincial revenues, rather than paying an insurance premium that might be astronomic if all the assets of the government were to be insured in the usual sense. It is interesting to note that for the first time, at least certainly in these last three years that are set out in these estimates, we now have a certain estimate for insurance and risk management. I am wondering if the minister can advise us as to the reasoning behind the establishment of this particular item, so that we can inquire as to whether there has been a change in the government’s general policy dealing with self-insurance.

Hon. Mr. Snow: This is actually the implementation of the self-insurance, what we term our risk management branch. The insurance always was handled previously through the Ministry of the Treasurer. With the reorganization of government, this being a common service, we have assumed the responsibility for the administration of all government insurance. We self-insure for the normal perils of fire, hail, wind and this type of thing. We do not self-insure for liabilities. We carry liability insurance, for instance, on automobiles, on the GO trains, on norOntair and a general government-wide liability policy.

The duties of the risk manager of this small operation are to administer the policies of insurance that we do have and also to control the risk that we are leaving ourselves open to by being self-insured in this building, in other words, to make sure that proper precautions are taken to have the best type of fire protection equipment and to make sure that it is working and this type of thing.

Mr. Breithaupt: This is really a transfer rather than the implementation of anything that is new?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Well, to a stage it is a transfer. One or two persons in Treasury were doing this duty but it was just as a part of another operation. It wasn’t an operation that could be transferred. I think we inherited one person.

Mr. Cassidy: What services do you buy for $70,000 and from whom under this item?

Hon. Mr. Snow: The $70,000 would be insurance policies that we would pay for that we do not collect back from other ministries.

Mr. Cassidy: Can you tell us what those would be then?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Not immediately. I could get that information.

Mr. Cassidy: Are they policies for assets of the ministry itself? In other words, are you just simply charging it to yourself?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I have just said in the previous discussion with the hon. member for Kitchener that we do not insure assets. We insure against liabilities.

Mr. Cassidy: Well, could the minister table an answer at some time on that particular point?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, I can find out what policies are included, but we no longer carry fire insurance, wind insurance and so on. We are not insuring assets. With the broad amount of assets that we have throughout the province, we assume the risk and write it off against what it would cost us to insure. And I am sure we are saving millions of dollars.

Mr. Chairman: Shall item 15 carry?

Vote 704 agreed to.

On vote 705:

Mr. Breithaupt: Just a question or two on this particular vote, Mr. Chairman. I won’t be particularly long. I am particularly interested, of course, in the computer services.

As the minister may well be aware, over the years that I was chairman of the public accounts committee, there was a general interest in the committee to deal with a view of the computer services that are available to government. It is hoped indeed that the committee may get to the point where the Provincial Auditor will have the time avail- able to do a general review of the effective cost of computer services and the best manner in which those services should be provided to the government.

I notice with interest that this year the amount for these services is substantially larger than the moneys that were actually spent, either last year or the year before. Perhaps the minister could advise us as to why we have sort of a four-fold increase and whether the services now provided were provided in the budgets of other ministries, or whether this total is in fact a net increase?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Chairman, there has been a great change in the computer operations. Prior to April 1, 1973, there were four computer operations located in four different ministries -- Treasury, Education, Health and Transportation and Communications. Before that, there was the Hospital Services Commission and OHSIP before they were combined into Health.

As of April 1, 1973, my ministry took over the responsibility for the central computer service, the one operated previously by Treasury. The other three centres remained in the three other ministries. As of April 1, 1974, we assumed the responsibility of the other three services. So all four computer centres are the responsibility of this management and information services branch of my ministry.

This vote also includes, as shown in item 1, management consulting services; that is, our internal management consultants who do management consulting work for all the ministries within the government on a charge-back basis. Similarly, the two arms of the computer operation, the systems development branch and the computer services branch, both work basically on a charge-back basis, charging the client ministries for the work that we do for them. Of course, we do quite a bit of work for our own ministry, so we don’t recoup our total loss.

Mr. Chairman: Shall item 1 carry? Carried. Item 2? Carried. Item 3? Carried.

Vote 705 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: This completes the estimates of the Ministry of Government Services.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell moves that the committee rise and report.

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

CITY OF OTTAWA

Hon. Mr. Timbrell moves second reading of Bill Pr5, An Act respecting the City of Ottawa.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading upon motion.

Bill Pr5, An Act respecting the City of Ottawa.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 1 o’clock, p.m.