Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

POINT OF PRIVILEGE

Hon. J. White (Treasurer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Mr. Speaker, I rise on a matter of personal privilege. For the first time since being elected to the Legislature in 1959, I feel compelled to take this step because of a clear case of suppression of information which is unique in my experience. The essence of my complaint is summarized in the following telegram which I sent to Mr. Pierre Juneau, chairman of the Canadian Radio-Television Commission yesterday, Sunday:

“DEAR SIR: I HEREBY REQUEST THE CRTC TO CARRY OUT AN IMMEDIATE PUBLIC INVESTIGA- TION OF THE CANCELLATION WITHOUT NOTICE OF THE PROGRAMME CALLED PROVINCIAL AFFAIRS SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY NIGHT, MAY 25, WHICH WAS RECORDED BY ME THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 23. SINCERELY, JOHN WHITE [etc.]”

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): What was the quality of the programme?

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): I did a Provincial Affairs programme during the federal campaign.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Was the Treasurer using four-letter words?

Hon. Mr. White: Having cancelled my comments on public spending, the CBC enabled the Minister without Portfolio (Mr. Timbrell) to record a broadcast on the subject of youth on Saturday morning, and this was broadcast over part of the Ontario system that evening. This obvious control over programme content on a free-time political broadcast is intolerable in a democratic society.

So that hon. members will have available to them the information contained in the cancelled broadcast, I am tabling the script which is also being made available to each member of the Legislature and the press gallery. The principal point, it will be noted, is that federal expenditures, which are increasing this year by at least 22 per cent, are a most important cause of inflation. What is not mentioned is that the CBC budgetary --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, well, this is a Provincial Affairs broadcast. The Treasurer should learn to be a little more scrupulous. He was wrong essentially but it was a public contribution.

Hon. Mr. White: -- estimate is increased by 25.1 per cent over last year.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Shame!

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Further to the point of order made by the Treasurer, I presume it’s a point of order --

Mr. Speaker: It is not a point of order. I must point out that the hon. Treasurer had risen on what he termed a point of personal privilege.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh well, if it is personal privilege, then I won’t involve myself.

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the hon. members are aware that the city of Winnipeg is in the midst of celebrating its centennial celebrations, and I know that they would want to join me in welcoming 41 students from three public schools in the city of Winnipeg, Cecil Rhodes School, General Wolfe School, and J. B. Mitchell Public School. They are sitting in the west gallery. They chose a visit to Toronto as their centennial project because it has so many cultural interests. I would point out to the hon. members that the funds for this very long and very expensive trip were raised solely by the members of the class themselves.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): They come from a good NDP province.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Mr. Speaker, it’s my privilege this afternoon to introduce to the House some 23 students from St. Mary’s School in Fort Frances in the great riding of Rainy River. I might say, Mr. Speaker, that they travelled farther to get here than you would travel if you went to Halifax on the east coast. I would like you to join me, sir, in extending a very warm welcome to them this afternoon.

POINT OF ORDER

Mr. Shulman: On a point of order, sir, now that the federal writ has been issued, can you tell me if it is proper or possible for an announced candidate in the federal election to sit in this House?

Mr. Raid: We don’t blame him for leaving the ship.

An hon. member: Why, does the hon. member want to join him?

Mr. Speaker: To the best of my knowledge there is no reason why the hon. member cannot sit in this House at this time.

POINT OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to raise a point of personal privilege -- well, perhaps I should say a point of privilege. I bring to your attention, sir, that on Friday last the Minister of Housing was asked a direct question on housing policy, which he refused to answer on the basis that a full statement would be made in the House today concerning the housing action programme and its implications and applications. He then apparently left the House, and in answering questions put to him by a Globe and Mail reporter, gave just the information that would have been of pertinent application to the discussion of the time.

An hon. member: Shame.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I put to you, Mr. Speaker, surely it is the minister’s responsibility to respond as best he can in this House to questions directed to him personally as the minister, rather than to refuse to answer and then to give the information outside the House to the press. I would like to put to you, sir, that surely this is a breach of our privileges here as members.

Some hon. members: Right.

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, may I respond to the hon. member’s point of privilege? First of all, I want to say quite clearly that the only reason the Globe and Mail reporter was able to get me was because I was in the process of providing information to the hon. member which he had requested concerning the Nappan Island subdivision, and I happened to be in the lounge. I did not divulge any figures whatsoever to the Globe and Mail reporter; those figures had been obtained by the Globe and Mail reporter prior to his encounter with me.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Lewis: That’s even more shocking.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Further to the point of order, I wonder if the minister then can account for his reported statement that he had co-operation from the other ministers, such as the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman), to lower the water quality in those areas subject to so-called housing action so that higher counts or lower qualities would be acceptable under those circumstances. Surely that’s a specific piece of information that would concern us here.

Mr. Speaker: It seems to me that to permit this to continue in any way would simply constitute a debate. Perhaps the information sought by the hon. member might be better placed as an oral question during the question period. I don’t really see that there is any point of privilege, nor was there a point of order, in connection with the hon. minister’s refusal to answer a question. The statutory provisions of the standing orders do not indicate that the minister must answer. He may or may not answer.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: On the point of order, Mr. Speaker, surely it is my right and, in fact, my responsibility, to bring to your attention, sir, in case you missed it, the fact that the minister refused to answer questions in the House and then went out and answered questions to the press in the hall --

Mr. Lewis: That’s not entirely true.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- and I feel this is an abdication of his responsibility.

Mr. Lewis: What is at stake here is the methods of the Globe and Mail.

Mr. Speaker: Of course, I am not responsible for the action of the ministers of this House.

Statements by the ministry.

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I am today tabling Housing Ontario/74, a comprehensive statement of the policies, programmes and partnerships that my ministry has developed in response to the housing needs of the people of this province.

Mr. Cassidy: Especially if they earn more than $20,000 a year.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: In addition to statements of policy and descriptions of programmes, it analyses in considerable detail the nature of the present housing situation as perceived by the ministry. It is my hope that a clearer appreciation of the nature of the problem will lead to a greater understanding of the steps being taken to implement effective solutions. Our initial housing policy and programmes will obviously undergo changes in emphasis and direction as conditions change.

Mr. Speaker, we accept that adequate housing at affordable prices is a basic right of all residents of Ontario.

Mr. Lewis: Not all residents.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We will not be satisfied until that goal has been achieved.

Mr. Lewis: Housing for the rich is the government’s policy.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It will not be achieved with one magic programme and it cannot be achieved by the government of Ontario alone. That basic fact should be understood.

Mr. Cassidy: But it has the key responsibility.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Our housing goal can only be achieved with the co-operation and involvement of our major partners -- regional and area municipalities; the federal government; the building industry; and the public at large.

Each of these partners has a vital role to play and the role of each is described in this statement. For example, we are asking our regional and municipal partners to:

1. Prepare and submit to the Ministry of Housing annual statements of housing policy which include specific objectives, production targets. and financial arrangements;

2. Accept housing as a high-priority matter and especially to accept a reasonable share of the additional housing required to accommodate people of low and moderate incomes;

Mr. Lewis: Pretty earth-shattering so far.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Three. Work with the province in cutting red tape by simplifying and speeding the plans approval process.

Mr. Shulman: We’ve heard that somewhere before.

Mr. Lewis: Quite a housing policy.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Four. Participate with the province in defining realistic servicing, developmental and occupancy standards and in removing restrictive regulations;

5. Implement the uniform building code when passed by the Legislature.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): When passed by the Legislature.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Six. Mount strong new initiatives which will take full advantage of the programmes available to rehabilitate older housing and to renew deteriorating neighbourhoods;

7. Foster actively the development of non-profit community-sponsored housing.

8. Investigate and initiate, if feasible, land assembly programmes which will ensure an orderly flow of developed land in the years ahead.

To assist local governments in discharging these responsibilities and to ensure that they do not incur unwarranted financial burdens as a result of accelerated housing production, the government of Ontario has increased its financial aid to municipalities through a number of channels.

This year’s budget, for example, increased per capita grants to regional governments by 12.5 per cent; total direct transfers to local governments were increased by 12 per cent and grant enrichments of $124 million will hold local property tax increases to an average of 3.2 per cent, instead of the 10 per cent that would otherwise have occurred.

My ministry has moved even more directly to provide housing-related financial assistance, including: At least $20 million in the facilitating fund of the housing action programme, which will be distributed as unconditional per-unit grants and as interest-free loans to cover capital costs of new infrastructure to those regions and municipalities that accept housing action areas.

Mr. Lewis: That is old.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: And $10 million in grants to municipalities participating in the Ontario home renewal programme.

Mr. Lewis: That is old, too.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: As well as $75 million in new low-interest funds for the Ontario Mortgage Corp. --

Mr. Lewis: That is in the estimates.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- bringing our total mortgage portfolio to more than $300 million.

Four million dollars in support funds for community-sponsored housing.

Mr. Cassidy: That should solve the housing crisis overnight!

Hon. Mr. Handleman: As a further assistance, I am today announcing a $1 million policy development fund to assist local governments to prepare positive statements of housing policy and to strengthen and develop official plans and zoning bylaws in ways that will facilitate the housing production process.

Mr. Deans: We don’t need any more statements. We need houses. Let’s have a new minister. It is about time for a new minister.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, these are new funds. Added to the many millions of dollars --

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Why doesn’t the member listen and learn something?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- earmarked under existing programmes, such as the HOME programme --

Mr. Lewis: Learn what? This was all in the Comay report eight months ago.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- rent supplement and others, they constitute a substantial new thrust toward achieving our objective.

For our part, Mr. Speaker, my ministry has already taken steps to speed the administrative and approval processes that will give force to municipal policies and programmes for housing.

The plans administration division, in the first four months of the existence of the Ministry of Housing, reduced by up to 30 days its average time for processing and approving subdivision plans, zoning by-laws, severances, official plans and other matters of that nature.

Mr. Singer: Who believes that?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: In the first quarter of this year, the division released more than 23,000 housing units for registration --

Mr. Singer: Nobody who has had to push the pieces of paper.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- compared with about 11,750 units released in the first quarter of last year.

Mr. Deans: That just goes to prove they were inefficient last year.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: When added to the lots draft-approved last year, there are 80,000 housing units draft-approved in Ontario but not yet registered. In summary, subdivision applications are being made at a record level and the approval process is producing commitments to approve twice as many residential units as are being used for development and doing so without a reduction in planning standards.

Mr. Cassidy: The number of starts is declining because of the mortgage situation.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I have touched on only a few of the highlights contained in this statement.

While the document is comprehensive, it cannot deal with everything related to housing. For example, we are now engaged in a number of imaginative programmes involving tenants more fully in the management of major public housing communities and actively seeking their advice on a broad range of housing issues.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, you will see from the document that the Ontario government will have a direct involvement in some 31,000 of the anticipated 100,000 to 110,000 new housing starts for 1974. As significant as this is, the impact will be even greater next year when some of the newer programmes come fully into force.

I urge all members to study this document closely and to accept their share of the responsibility that we have to provide adequate housing for all residents of Ontario at prices they can afford. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Lewis: That is a complete cop-out. There is no housing policy.

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Housing if, in fact, his statement with the programme appended to it -- the programme that we have not yet had a chance to read, but which we read about over the weekend -- will do anything to the housing starts in this province, other than maintain the figure at something close to what it might have been if, in fact, the government had not meddled with the housing policies at all?

Is it not true that the expenditures referred to in this statement -- and there is only $1 million referred to that hasn’t been referred to previously in the government statements -- will not even balance the confusion that has been introduced into the housing market and the servicing of land by new legislation that has been brought before the House and is still being debated here?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, we thought it would be constructive and helpful to the members to gather together all of the programmes which have been announced over the past several months to show the members exactly what this province was doing --

Mr. Singer: Well, they could have got that on the CBC programme.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: If the hon. members have been doing their reading over the weekend and last week they would have found that the Province of Ontario is more deeply involved in the housing programme in its jurisdiction than any other jurisdiction in Canada and probably in North America.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: How can the minister square his statement on page 6 where he says, “and doing so without a reduction in planning standards ... ” with the quote in the Globe and Mail where the minister, with pleasure, says: “The Ministry of the Environment has been particularly helpful by allowing temporary sewage plant overloading, allowing a lowering of water quality.” Surely the minister can’t be proud of that method in allowing the approvals to go forward?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe I spoke about water quality. I did say that some of the standards had been relaxed temporarily to permit us to take care of what is a more urgent priority at this time without any lasting damage to the ecology. There is no way this government, having set those standards in the first place, is about to turn its back on the establishment and the maintenance of high standards of planning, environmental protection and all the other things that many members have been complaining about as slowing up the process.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Would the minister say, since he is relaxing water quality standards, that the standards were too high in the first place? The Minister of Housing is moaning, but it is he who said that he is relaxing water quality standards.

Mr. Lewis: He is in pain -- intellectual pain. He has been thinking.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I didn’t say anything about relaxing water quality standards. I did say that certain temporary overloading of plants might be allowed by the Ministry of the Environment in order to expedite a higher priority at this time.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): What does the minister call that except lowering?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: There is no statement, whatsoever, Mr. Speaker, that we are about to lower standards. All we are saying is that there are certain priorities that have to take effect now --

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): They shouldn’t overload them.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- and that the standards which have been established by the Ministry of the Environment are being looked at with the possibility --

Mr. Breithaupt: It is of negative benefit.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- of assisting people to enjoy the basic right, which we say is theirs in this statement.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, may I ask if the minister is aware that six weeks after the introduction of the speculative land tax Act in this province, for the first 25 days in May the average house sale price in Metropolitan Toronto, including the lower priced condominiums, was $58,437 per unit, representing a jump of 8 per cent in one month? And how does that square with the 60 per cent of the OHAP units, which the minister is going to make available at the average price, namely $58,437? And who is going to buy them?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, first of all the land speculation tax is tied almost irretrievably into house prices by the hon. member. We have said that it has been one of the factors which have had an effect on housing markets.

Mr. Deans: That was the minister’s idea.

Mr. Lewis: That was the minister’s argument.

Mr. Deans: That is why the minister brought it in.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: However, the member’s misunderstanding of the OHAP again surfaces by saying that 60 per cent of the units -- and I almost lost him completely -- would be sold at an average price. We have made it quite clear, Mr. Speaker, that we are embarking on agreements with the developers which would result in concessions to the consumers of housing in Ontario. As soon as those agreements are signed, we will be bringing it before the House in a major announcement.

Mr. Deans: When?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Downsview is next.

Mr. Singer: In view of the fact the minister states on page 52 of his document, Housing Ontario/74: “In reality this document is an initial statement of policy of action and will be overtaken by new and expanded policies and programmes reflecting new needs,” can the minister tell us when we are going to get a programme that will really produce housing at prices the people can afford to pay?

Mr. Breithaupt: It will be overtaken by the passage of time.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, that is one of those questions the hon. member is prone to make.

Mr. Singer: No, the minister made it. I read his statement.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: In fact, the programmes which have been announced, which we are embarking on and which we are continuing, have done what the housing action programme or what the rest of these --

Mr. Singer: Oh, come on!

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- programmes is intended to do, which is to meet the needs and to satisfy that basic right of the people of Ontario. Of course, this government will always be embarking on new programmes as the need arises.

Mr. Breithaupt: Or announcing them.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Nobody can afford the government’s programmes.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: In view of the fact that according to the minister’s own statistics four-fifths of the families in Ontario earn less than $15,000 a year, what proportion of the lots and other programmes being made available by the ministry are going to be directed to that group and what proportion of general housing starts will be directed to people earning less than $15,000?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, we have explained time and time again that the Province of Ontario has an involvement in approximately 30 to 35 per cent of the anticipated starts and that our involvement is entirely dedicated to those who are in the low- and moderate-income groups.

I would quarrel with the hon. member’s assumption that, because in the programmes which we have announced today in this statement there is a certain percentage devoted to the low-income group, the others will not benefit by the expedition of starts. There will be new housing coming on to the market which would not otherwise have come on without this province’s involvement and everyone in the province will benefit, including the 80 per cent who are in the low- to moderate-income area.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: There have now been five supplementaries. I am sure the hon. members will agree that’s reasonable. Does the hon. Leader of the Opposition have further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I was just going to ask about development in the Waterloo region, in the 3,000 acres right in Mr. Speaker’s backyard.

Mr. Speaker: In that case, I think it would be in order.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a further supplementary, I would like to ask the Minister of Housing if in Housing Ontario/74 there is any plan to take the land in the landbank in the Waterloo region, amounting to 3,000 acres in the backyard of the Speaker himself, to service that land and make it available for utilization by the expanding community there, along with the 1,000 acres in Brantford and certain other large areas in the landbank across the province?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, Housing Ontario/74 is a statement of the ministry’s programmes and policies for 1974. As I have already told the hon. member, we do have long-range landbank facilities and investments in the province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We need it now.

Mr. Cassidy: But there is no new commitment in this statement.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We are certainly in- tending to expedite them as quickly as possibly. However, major servicing is not done overnight. The hon. member knows that as well as anybody in this House.

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

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister can’t do it overnight but he has to start.

Interjections by hon. members.

ASSISTANCE FOR FLOOD VICTIMS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Chairman of the Management Board, in the absence of the policy secretary who made the announcement on the funding of flood relief. Can he inform the House what funds are going to be made available for flood relief by the Management Board -- at least what is budgeted? Is he speaking for the government in this regard, still convinced that a dollar-for-dollar matching policy is going anywhere to meet the need of the flood ravaged area of the Grand Valley, where the damage is expected to exceed $10 million, and one estimate is as high as $15 million?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, the request or the funding on it to be implemented has not yet been placed before Management Board. I, therefore, cannot answer the question in regard to dollars.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary -- and I know the minister will like this: Since there is some confusion as to the application of federal funds and the only statement that we have had from the ministry is a request that the federal government involve itself in this assistance, would the minister either make a statement himself sometime this week or have one of his colleagues make a statement, indicating just what the total available funding programme will be, since there is a great deal of confusion, certainly in the Grand Valley connected with this, and the confusion and criticism are directed against both senior levels of government for not treating the matter as seriously as it obviously is to those citizens who have suffered the damage?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I deny that we are not treating the matter seriously. When the options have been considered and when the policy is at hand, we will announce it.

UNION GAS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have a question of the Minister of Labour.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Minister emeritus.

Mr. Breithaupt: Pro tem.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Pro tem or ex.

By the way, can he tell us how the Union Gas negotiations are proceeding? I am informed that many of the gas heating facilities that were flooded just a week ago are still not started up because of the Union Gas strike and the situation there; and it is really contributing greatly to the hardship in the area.

Hon. F. Guindon (Minister of Labour): Of course the hon. member knows, Mr. Speaker, that talks have been going on for 11 straight days between the parties. I can inform the hon. member that another meeting has been set up for tomorrow, and I can go so far as to say that the climate around the bargaining table is good.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The what?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: The climate.

Mr. Breithaupt: The climate.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The climate; oh, well.

Mr. Lewis: It is the ambiance that is friendly; there’s a nuance there. They are drinking together.

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

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, a further question of the Minister of Housing: How does he take any pride at all in a statement which admits categorically, for the first time I must say, that the housing starts in Ontario in 1974 will be significantly fewer than the number of housing starts in Ontario in 1973? And this, as I understand it, means that all of the programmes this minister has concocted and manufactured cannot maintain pace with last year.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Mr. Havrot: You asked that same question last week.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think there’s any admission anywhere that the number of housing starts will be significantly lower.

Mr. MacDonald: The facts speak for themselves.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: By the intervention of the government of Ontario, in fact, housing starts will be maintained at their previous record high level; and we have shown that this is in fact in excess of the need caused by immigration and new family formations; therefore there is no admission of any kind in the statement,

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, does the minister not recall -- I think it’s on page 35, it’s hard to read and absorb immediately -- that he says there will be 100,000 to 110,000 housing starts in Ontario in 1974? If memory serves me last year there were 110,573; and if memory serves me further, knowing these pronouncements he will fall significantly short, by five to 10 per cent, of production last year.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: Now how is it that all these programmes can’t maintain the level of last year?

Mr. Havrot: Well have you lick the problem.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t accept the 500. If we wanted to round it out I suppose we could say we’re exactly in line with last year’s record starts.

Mr. Lewis: It will be 100,000 or less next year.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: In fact last year’s record starts were in excess of new family formations and immigration, and therefore in excess of the new population.

Mr. Lewis: Well so what? The government is way behind.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Surely the minister would agree that with the funds he’s been talking about and the concern in the Legislature and across the community, attempting to simply meet the record last year is inadequate? He’s supposed to be aiming well above that in order to bring some relief to a situation which is a crisis.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: No, Mr. Speaker, we don’t consider it to be inadequate. What we say is that there has to be a better mix of housing to meet the needs in a greater measure of those in the low and moderate income groups. If we meet last year’s record and change the mix of housing we will in fact be meeting the needs of those who were left wanting last year.

Mr. Lewis: What does the minister mean by mix?

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for High Park was up first; a supplementary.

Mr. Shulman: Can the minister explain why for the first three weeks in May the number of real estate transactions signed in southern Ontario is down by 72 per cent from the equivalent period last May?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Well perhaps, Mr. Speaker, we could again do a little bit of breast beating, which we’ve been castigated for by the hon. member for Scarborough West, and say we should be hanging our heads instead. What’s happened in fact is there are far more listings than people can sell, and as a result prices are starting to drop.

Mr. Shulman: But nothing is selling.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Nothing is selling, that’s right.

Mr. Lewis: The prices went up $4,000 per house.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, the buyers have slowed their buying; and thank goodness for that, because if that type of inflationary spiral had kept going prices would have zoomed out of sight.

Mr. Renwick: There are fewer houses available at higher prices.

Mr. Lewis: The minister is putting his head in the sand. They’re going up $5,000 a month.

An hon. member: Who is advising the minister?

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

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: The minister has spoken about improving the mix of housing. Is he aware that half of the people in Ontario’s major cities are tenants; and can he explain why his housing policy has said nothing about improving the supply of housing to people on moderate incomes who are tenants, thereby easing the financial squeeze? Particularly when his own documents indicate that 73 per cent of people earning under $5,000 pay more than a quarter of income for shelter; and that 50 per cent of those earning up to $8,000 and 25 per cent of those earning up to $11,000, pay more than 25 per cent of their income for shelter; why is there not a single word in this whole document about that problem? And why have the family housing starts under OHC dropped to an all-time low of 2,000, the lowest in almost a decade?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Well Mr. Speaker, many of those who are now tenants in Ontario, of course, will be benefiting by the expanded Ontario HOME programme. And of course if we increase the supply of housing, period, we will obviously have more housing for people to move into.

Our view is that if you expand the supply of housing over the measurable needs of the people of Ontario, that those who are tenants will benefit directly.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary: Does the minister have any programmes --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Cassidy: -- to benefit tenants who are now paying such a --

Mr. Speaker: Order. We alternate the supplementaries. The member for York Centre.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): A supplementary: I cannot find anywhere in the minister’s programme a measure to prevent an added tax burden being imposed wherever low and moderate income housing is approved by a municipality. Why does the minister not persuade regional municipal governments to adopt or to approve such a kind of housing by the practical method of creating a tax support to ensure they don’t have to pay additional taxes?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I can hardly criticize the hon. member for not having had time to read this and digest it, but certainly in the statement there is an outline of the financial measures which we are taking to stabilize the taxes in those municipalities which do, in fact, accept housing action.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: There have been five supplementaries, which I believe is reasonable. The hon. member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, this mountain has produced such a mouse in this statement, I want to pursue it further.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I just suggested that five supplementaries was sufficient.

Mr. Lewis: Well, I am asking a new question, Mr. Speaker, although it is related. It is on housing, I quite concede.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure the hon. member will find a way to make it a new question.

Mr. Renwick: It’s not very difficult at this point in time.

Mr. Havrot: He is an expert on that.

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Mr. Lewis: I want to ask the minister how it is that he can bring in a programme -- which he describes as being for low-and middle-income families -- which will eliminate from eligibility virtually 1.3 million families in Ontario, whose incomes lie below $15,000 a year -- 1,288,000 families to be exact -- and whose proportion of the total housing market will not increase substantially since the total number will not increase at all?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t quite follow the hon. member’s question.

There is certainly no suggestion anywhere in this statement that we are eliminating those under $15,000. In fact, the entire thrust of the programme is designed to benefit those people who are under $18,000, including those under $15,000 and down to as low as $8,000 and $9,000.

Our other programmes, of course, are designed to take care of those who are below the economic housing limit, but I certainly don’t see that we have eliminated the people under $15,000.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, surely the minister recognizes that if his total housing stock remains around 100,000 units and he is altering the mix only marginally, then the 1.3 million families in Ontario who earn less than $15,000 a year -- 1973 figures -- by and large will have no new market from which to buy; they will be as excluded in 1974 as they were in 1973.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t accept that this is a marginal change in the mix. When a government involves itself in 30 to 35 per cent of the total supply, I think it is much more than marginal. Obviously this is going to have an effect right through the income spectrum.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Apart from 1,100 rent supplement units and 2,000 rent-geared-to-income family units, what other steps is the minister taking in order to help those people who are tenants, who cannot afford to buy, and the 60 per cent of families which earn less than $11,000 or $12,000 a year?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, we are rapidly embarking on an expansion of our integrated community programme, our rent assistance programme. We are certainly not heedless of the needs of the people in the lower income groups.

Mr. Lewis: Yes they are.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: This government has always been most active in that area.

Mr. Lewis: The government has done nothing.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We are now looking at an expanded supply and in our view the expansion of supply will benefit everyone.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: There is no use expanding the supply of houses without covering the areas of greatest need.

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

Mr. Lewis: Yes. It should be called Mishap, not OHAP, and the minister knows that.

ALLEGED AIR POLLUTION FROM METAL COMPANIES

Mr. Lewis: Can I ask of the Minister of the Environment what is he going to do with the lead pollution in downtown Toronto now that there is yet another child admitted to the Sick Children’s Hospital with a blood level well above the tolerable point?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): As the hon. member knows we are doing the monitoring down at Canada Metal right now --

Mr. Lewis: I am sorry, I cannot hear the minister.

Hon. W. Newman: We are doing considerable monitoring down there. We have the subcommittee of medical people working on it, and we also have the other committee that has been appointed under the Ministry of Health to study effects of lead on children. We anticipate the latter committee will report to us the third week in June.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, does it not worry the minister, bother him, concern him, that children should be admitted to the Sick Children’s Hospital regularly, intermittently, while his tests continue, because he has set a tolerable level of lead emission which is clearly above the danger point? Would it not be possible for him to lower it now, arbitrarily, to remove eventual hazards while he is deciding on his programme?

Hon. W. Newman: Our emission level at this point in time, Mr. Speaker, is five milligrams per cubic millimetre of air, and we feel this standard is satisfactory. Our monitor reading in areas outside of the plant area is above this at the present time. We are aware of that. The equipment has been put in, and we have studied it very carefully. In the last month there has been a very minor decrease in the reading since the abatement equipment has gone in.

When those cases have been brought to our attention, we have also worked with the Ministry of Housing, through the Ontario Housing Corp., to try to offer alternative accommodation to those families.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary question of the minister: Does the minister say that the lead in the ambient air, or whatever the phrase is, was higher than his ministry’s standards at the present time?

Hon. Mr. Newman: I said that now that the abatement equipment is in place at Canada Metal, our readings over the past month have decreased slightly from what they were before; there has been just a very slight decrease, and it is going to take a little more monitoring before we can get a true reading. This committee is also studying this as well as the other reports.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: If he will permit another supplementary, just before the matter that the minister clarified, which I did understand, did he not say that the level was higher than the level set by regulation by the Ministry of the Environment?

Hon. W. Newman: The monitors outside of the plant area are, yes; the readings are slightly higher, depending on the wind, the dust factor and the other factors in the area. But, as far as we know, the actual emissions from the stack within the plant come within our criteria.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Would it then not be permissible for the minister to do what his predecessor tried and failed to do, that is, shut down the operation until he can be assured that the levels are within the limits he set himself?

Hon. W. Newman: There is no way we can shut down the plant at this point in time until we have some more statistical information. We’re waiting for this committee to report in the third week of June.

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

HOSPITAL WAGE CEILINGS

Mr. Lewis: Does the Minister of Health have anything to report on the Woodstock General Hospital situation or related hospitals in southwestern Ontario?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, perhaps the question would be better asked of the Minister of Labour because I understand there are some steps being taken through his ministry to assist in getting the workers back on the job in Woodstock.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, is the minister aware that when definition is sought from hospitals -- I have two here, the Oshawa General Hospital and the Memorial Hospital in Bowmanville -- as to where they stand on contracts with their workers, the answer invariably is that they’re waiting to hear from the government about the explicit interpretation of what was done in Toronto? Has his ministry indicated to each individual hospital what it is it would wish?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, if there was a general solution that could be applied to all hospitals, I think the letter we sent to all hospitals would have implied this. Of course, this is not so, because the contracts of hospitals are at different levels and in different states.

We sent out a letter, immediately following the Toronto settlement, indicating to hospitals that they did have a right to look at all aspects of cost, including labour, and to discuss changes with us, and that we were willing to entertain changes in their budgets based on reasonable demands. This is in the process of happening right now. We’re trying to leave these decisions, as they properly should be left, with the hospital boards involved, rather than with our ministry.

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

Mr. Lewis: Only if the Minister of Labour wishes to add anything.

Mr. Speaker: Before I call on the hon. member for Rainy River, the Minister of Colleges and Universities has the answers to questions asked previously.

NORTHERN ONTARIO MEDICAL STUDENTS

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, on May 17 the hon. member for York-Forest Hill asked me to explain the chronic dearth of educational facilities, particularly pertaining to medical facilities, and I indicated I would get the figures.

In 1966-1967 there were 293 first-year places in medicine in the various medical faculties around the province. In 1973-1974 there were 575 places, which is an increase of 95 per cent. By 1980 it is planned to have a further increase to 670 first-year places.

Tying in with that same question of medical facilities, the hon. member for Cochrane South (Mr. Ferrier), again on May 17, asked if the government would adopt a policy of establishing a medical school in northern Ontario. At the time I said this was a very costly undertaking and I would get the figures. It would appear that a bare minimum of 64 students is required to establish a medical faculty. The cost of this is approximately $85 million in terms of 1973-1974 dollars and the annual operating costs of a new medical school would be about one-third of that, which would be about $25 million to $30 million.

REPORT ON CONESTOGA COLLEGE

Hon. Mr. Auld: Again on May 17, the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) asked me what has happened at Conestoga College after the inquiry about the internal operations. I am informed the board of governors has studied the Porter report and that now a member of the faculty, a student and a member of the support staff attend meetings of the board of governors. Steps are being taken to develop a president’s council, composed of students and staff, for keeping the board of governors in contact with the college community.

The board has held one meeting to receive presentations from interested groups in the college on Dr. Porter’s proposals and probably implementation will await selection of a new president. The search committee, composed of students, staff and board members, has gone over a list of about 115 applications for the presidency and a select list of eight are to be interviewed; scheduling of interviews is now under way.

The board is satisfied it has heard all sides of the dismissal of two staff members and has rejected Dr. Porter’s recommendation they be reinstated.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River is next.

MINIMUM WAGE RATES

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Labour.

I don’t blame him for leaving a leaking ship but I’d like to know what is going to happen to his proposals that he was to take to cabinet in regard to increasing the minimum wage, increasing Workmen’s Compensation pensions and other matters relating to the labour scene?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, this work has been done and there should be a statement made within days.

Mr. Reid: This week?

Mr. Singer: By whom?

Mr. Reid: By the minister?

Mr. Singer: By somebody? Yes.

Mr. Deans: A supplementary, for clarification: Is the minister saying there will be a statement on both of these matters within days?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Yes.

Mr. Deans: On both the minimum wage and the Workmen’s Compensation benefit review? Will there be a statement on both matters within days?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: No, I was referring to the minimum wage, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Deans: Yes, I thought he was. A supplementary question: When will there be a statement with regard to the much-needed increase for Workmen’s Compensation recipients? Why doesn’t the minister do it now and use it as an election gimmick?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I don’t operate the way my hon. friends do.

Mr. Deans: Oh, no?

An hon. member: No, he doesn’t!

Mr. Deans: Why doesn’t he just do it?

Mr. Cassidy: Hasn’t he read the Treasurer’s broadcast?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: No, I have done all the homework and it’s a matter of government policy. Whenever this decision has been made by government, I am sure the minister will inform the House.

Mr. Speaker: The member for High Park.

DUFFERIN MALL LIQUOR STORE

Mr. Shulman: A question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, Mr. Speaker.

Has his ministry yet solved the mystery of the several cases of empties which one of the inspectors discovered a week ago last Saturday --

Mr. G. Nixon (Dovercourt): Come on, get off that!

Mr. Shulman: -- in the Dufferin Mall store? Can the minister explain how one of the employees, in his efforts, no doubt, to make sure the material being sold was of high quality, sampled so much in the same store that he became involved in a brawl with a customer and ejected him?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Which store was that? I want to get the right store. I wouldn’t want to give the member the wrong information.

Mr. Shulman: Dufferin Mall.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Which one? Dufferin Mall? I thought the member was going to ask about another store. I feel more relieved!

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: Where was he?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I wasn’t aware of this until it was drawn so forcibly to my attention by my friend from High Park but I’ll get into it and report back to him, Mr. Speaker. I just don’t know.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): The minister has to get into it?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Downsview.

POLICE RAID ON HOTEL

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Solicitor General.

Could the Solicitor General advise whether or not he has investigated the raid carried out by a combined force of 55 to 60 Niagara Regional Police officers and Fort Erie detachment RCMP at a hotel called the Landmark Hotel, located at the Queen Elizabeth Way and Netherby Rd., wherein, apparently, an undetermined number of both male and female patrons were taken to the washrooms where they were ordered to strip off their clothes in order that a physical search of their persons could be carried out by the police; when they were found to be clean they were ordered out of the hotel?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s “clean” in quotes.

Mr. Singer: Yes.

Mr. Breithaupt: What were they looking for?

Mr. Singer: Could the minister tell us if he has investigated that as well as the basis on which the raid was done, whether or not he feels the police activity should be investigated and what, in fact, he is doing about it?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Breithaupt: What can one do with a 40-ouncer?

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the incident. I didn’t think it was quite as notorious as indicated by the member but I have asked for a report.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary, since the event happened on May 11 and since the minister’s source of information apparently is a little better than mine -- I was reading from the Times-Review of May 15, 1974 -- could the minister tell us, since it is now May 27, how long it will be before he is able to make a full report to the House about what appears to be a most ludicrous and improper kind of police activity?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, the problem is to find out why the particular raid was carried out in the first place and why it involved so many different police forces. This is the reason. I’m trying to gather information from a number of sources.

Mr. Singer: How long will it take?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I hope I will have that for the hon. member this week.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth.

RESALE OF HOME PROGRAMME HOUSES

Mr. Deans: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Housing. When will the minister be able to reveal the results of the OPP investigation into a number of complaints with regard to the resale of Ontario Housing homes originally sold under the HOME programme?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, that report obviously will be made to the Attorney General (Mr. Welch) who will then decide whether or not there would be any prosecutions. There will be no report made to me.

Mr. Deans: A supplementary question: Can the minister ask the Attorney General in cabinet, if he attends there more regularly than he attends here --

Mr. Lewis: Yes, ask him to come occasionally.

Mr. Deans: -- what has been going on with regard to that investigation, since we can’t ask him as he is never here?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to commit myself to asking him, but not to telling the House.

Mr. Breithaupt: If the minister sees him.

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

MUNICIPAL AND SCHOOL TAX CREDIT ASSISTANCE

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the provincial Treasurer. Is the Treasurer aware of the resolution passed by the city of Brampton recently and endorsed by Windsor city council, requesting that the ministry amend the municipal and School Tax Credit Assistance Act to increase the limits of such credit provided thereunder to the lesser of $300 or 50 per cent of the assessed tax? Does the ministry intend to act on this resolution?

Hon. Mr. White: Mr. Speaker, I haven’t seen this resolution as yet, but certainly I will consider any recommendations from Brampton and even from Windsor.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Singer: It is nearly as good as the Middlesex resolution.

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

APPROVAL FOR BURN CENTRE AT WINDSOR METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Health. Does the minister recall that the Windsor firefighters are willing and ready to raise funds for a six-bed bum centre at Metropolitan Hospital in Windsor if approval from the ministry can be obtained? Has the minister a report on this matter?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact, the burn unit in that hospital has been approved.

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

FAIR LEASING POLICY FOR RETAIL GASOLINE STATIONS

Mr. Deacon: I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations: In view of the fact that with the recent price increase in gasoline the actual margin available to retailers has gone down because the percentage return or gross profit has gone down with the increase in price and because the independent dealers have been prevented from increasing their percentage margin to where it was before because of pressure by the oil companies through the increased number of their own stations, will the minister introduce now a fair leasing policy or programme whereby lessors of gasoline stations can be assured a fair basis of tenancy with their oil companies?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, the Ontario Petroleum Association, which is an association made up of major oil companies, and the Ontario Retail Gasoline Association together met with a member or two of my ministry present over a number of months from about last September or October until, I think, January or February of this year and those two associations between them developed a set of guidelines acceptable to both.

I will review those guidelines; I stress that I played no role in their development, other than to meet with the parties independently and provide them with some resource people from my ministry. I haven’t read them since January or February when the guidelines were reached. If it will serve any purpose, I will gladly re-read those series of guidelines developed by the two associations in an effort to answer the question directed to me here today.

Mr. Deacon: Will the minister introduce legislation to enforce such guidelines so that they are of some meaning?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I have no response to that at the present time; I would have to see the situation.

Mr. Deacon: I think it’s time the minister did.

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

SCARBOROUGH HOSPITAL EXPANSION

Mr. Shulman: A question of the Minister of Health, Mr. Speaker: Is it correct that he is going to allow Scarborough General Hospital to undertake a building programme at the same time that he is insisting that Mount Sinai and St. Michael’s and other hospitals keep wings shut?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t think that’s particularly true, Mr. Speaker. Just because I was speaking to one of the members for the Scarborough area it doesn’t mean that I’ve automatically approved a hospital wing for that area. I admit that’s what she was asking me.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Look at the smile on the member’s face.

Mr. Shulman: Is it true? They think it is true.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Hope springs eternal.

Mr. Shulman: A supplementary: Is the minister saying his ministry has not given approval to the hospital to go ahead?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, it is being a little confused. I’ll get my data later, thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener is next.

LAND SPECULATION TAX ACT

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Housing: In light of the reported statement by Robert Henry of the Ministry of Revenue as set out in yesterday’s issue of the Toronto Sun, that confusion caused by the land speculation tax has “slowed real estate transactions down to a crawl,” would the minister care to modify his statement, made to us on Friday, that there is no confusion surrounding the tax?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: I don’t care to modify it at all, Mr. Speaker. I just don’t happen to agree with the man who made that statement.

Mr. Reid: Talk to a real estate agent.

Mr. Singer: The 1,500 lawyers who went to the meeting of the Canadian Bar Association thought so.

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

HEALTH DISCIPLINES ACT

Mr. Shulman: A question of the Minister of Health: Why has the minister refused the representations of the dietitians to be included under the Health Disciplines Act?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, obviously this gentleman is not keeping up to date. I’ve not refused the dietitians. I’m very willing to consider their request that they be included.

Mr. Shulman: Are they to be included in the Health Disciplines Act?

Hon. Mr. Miller: There is no positive decision either way, because we haven’t as yet decided on all the disciplines. But I clearly told the dietitians that because I rate nutrition as one of the most important of the preventive measures within the health field. I’m very willing to consider the dietitians as a group being included within the Health Disciplines Act, providing in fact they can determine which members of their profession should be in the group that we recognize. In other words, some of these organizations, like the psychologists, the dietitians and so on, are in a number of various parts of the industrial, private and public sector. Not all of them wish to be members of a health discipline, and this gives their own organization certain difficulties in determining which one should be and which one shouldn’t be. So I’ve thrown the challenge back to them in a sense, to tell me how they would be organized if they came into the health disciplines.

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

COST DIFFERENTIAL BETWEEN SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN ONTARIO

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Will the minister table in the House a report that apparently is on his desk, and has been for some time, in regard to prices in northern Ontario, gathered by the northern affairs people?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I see no reason to table this particular information, but if the member wants it, I’ll be glad to send it to him. It’s information that the northern affairs branch gathered all across northern Ontario. If the member would like a copy I’d be glad to give it to him.

Mr. Reid: I appreciate that. A supplementary, if I may: Can the minister indicate if it showed that prices in northern Ontario were, in fact, around 10 to 15 per cent higher than they are in southern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I wouldn’t want to say it varied that much, I have not had an opportunity to go into it in extreme detail, but I will be doing that in the next few weeks.

Mr. Stokes: A supplementary: As a result of the information contained in that survey, does the minister think it reasonable to approach the federal government to bring some rationale to the freight rates in northern Ontario, so that we can enjoy a decent standard of living?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, that approach has already been made to the federal government and, regretfully, the Minister of Transport, Mr. Marchand, because he is involved in a certain event that is going to take place on July 8, could not see me.

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

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Mr. Cassidy: A question of the Minister of Housing: Can the minister explain why no details were given to the House today of the housing action programme, when he expects to give information about his agreements with the municipalities, and what proportion of the 12,000 lots will be made available to families earning, say, under $15,000 a year?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, of course I will release details of any agreements that are arrived at as soon as they are signed.

Mr. Lewis: Not an agreement arrived at yet? Not a one?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: There have been no agreements as of this date, except with some private people, and they cannot be released until the municipalities agree to them.

Mr. Cassidy: Wow. The minister has really been working, eh?

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: The member for Perth is next. Is it a supplementary?

Mr. H. Edighoffer (Perth): No.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary: This shabby digest of the Comay report aside, what about the interest rate factor which the minister was going to report on in the House and which relates directly to the Ontario housing action programme and whether or not any houses will flow from it at all?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t recall undertaking to report to the House. I did say we were reviewing the mortgage market as it exists at present and as it has been affected by recent moves of the Bank of Canada, and that we were assessing its impact on the housing market as a whole --

Mr. Singer: Come on.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- and the housing action programme.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Borrow money at nine per cent and give mortgages at six.

Mr. Renwick: The funds aren’t available and the minister knows it.

Mr. Cassidy: Can the minister reply to the other part of my question, Mr. Speaker, which is what proportion of the OHAP lots will be made available to people earning under $15,000 a year? For that matter, what proportion of houses built to sell will be made available in the coming year to people earning under $15,000?

Mr. Lewis: Earning under $15,000. There is a straight, very specific question.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I can’t answer the second part of that question obviously.

Mr. Lewis: Why not? It is the minister’s building programme.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: I have no control over the prices at which houses are offered.

Mr. Lewis: No? They are $58,000 on the average.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Under the housing action programme 10 per cent is our formula. That may not be the final agreement we reach with all developers.

Mr. Lewis: Ten per cent? One thousand two hundred homes?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: But 10 per cent of houses will be sold under the HOME programme.

Mr. Lewis: Ten per cent for 70 per cent of the population.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Thirty per cent will be sold to moderate income groups.

Mr. Cassidy: Moderate?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: And the remainder will have price rollbacks incorporated in the agreement.

Mr. Cassidy: Moderate is $15,000 to $18,000 a year?

Mr. Lewis: What does moderate mean, $15,000 to $18,000? Moderate is $15,000 to $18,000. Does the minister know that --

Mr. Speaker: The member for Perth.

Mr. Edighoffer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Mr. Lewis: -- that is 80 per cent of the families -- he should take that programme and burn it for all it’s worth.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Perth.

ONTARIO RACING COMMISSION

Mr. Edighoffer: A question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial relations regarding the Ontario Racing Commission.

Why is the commission still allowed to continue to hold its meetings behind closed doors? I thought this would have been changed with the new chairman of the commission. Also is the minister responsible for the appointment of Mr. James Coleman as a commissioner because he was a former employee of the Ontario Jockey Club? When did this appointment take place?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, the Ontario Racing Commission traditionally held its hearings in camera, as the member is well aware. This policy was reviewed by the entire commission last August or September, I believe, and resulted in the decision to hold all hearings in public, save and except certain of those which it felt, in the interests of racing and the public generally, could not be held in public.

I am not familiar with any particular hearing to which the member refers and perhaps he might assist me in that particular matter. I do know the commission has held hearings publicly over the past few weeks and has been very pleased with the public and media acceptance of that type of process.

Mr. Coleman was appointed to the Ontario Racing Commission, if I recollect, later on last year; I would say in about July or August, 1973, he was appointed to the Ontario Racing Commission.

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

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

ANSWER TO WRITTEN QUESTION

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I am tabling the answer to question No. 2 standing on the order paper. (Sessional paper No. 44.)

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is that the answer?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That is the answer.

Clerk of the House: The second order, House in committee of the whole House.

LAND SPECULATION TAX ACT (CONTINUED)

House in committee on Bill 25, An Act to impose Tax on Land in respect of Certain Speculative Transactions affecting the Control or Ownership of Land.

On section 5:

Mr. Chairman: May I remind the committee we are on section 5 and when we left off the other day, Mr. Singer had the following motion before the committee:

“Mr. Singer moves that the word ‘whether’ in the third last line and the words before ‘or’ in the second last line of section 5(1) be deleted.”

That is the motion now before the committee.

The member for Kitchener.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): There is one matter which could be raised with respect to the amendment and that is with respect to its wording. It would appear to me that if those words are removed, there is a minor change that should take place and that the word “whether,” in fact, should be changed to “where.” If the word “whether” is changed to “where,” and if the words “before or” are deleted, I think that is the sense of the member for Downsview’s amendment.

Mr. Chairman: Are the members ready for the question?

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): No.

Mr. Chairman: The member for High Park.

Mr. Shulman: Mr. Chairman, you will recall that we were fumbling through this section on Thursday, and the minister made certain comments to explain the way it was going to work -- and we have had a chance to digest those comments. I want to come back and ask him to re-comment on his comments, because his comments seemed a little un-commentable.

Specifically, he said that when a transaction is about to take place, he would feed the transaction into the computer and the computer would immediately spew back at him several similar transactions in similar areas so he would know whether the evaluation he is getting is correct. In a matter of seconds the computer could tell him whether the correct tax is being paid. Now, when are we going to have this magic computer, Mr. Minister?

Hon. A. K. Meen (Minister of Revenue): Mr. Chairman, the computer is expected to be in full operation by about the end of this year, with respect to residential properties, and roughly by this time next year with respect to all properties in Ontario.

Mr. Shulman: Well, I must take a specific example; because this bill falls down in specific examples. Let us suppose a year from today real estate has recovered from the shock that you have administered to it and we are back at our regular rate of transactions, which is 50,000 a week in this province; or 10,000 per working day. Let’s suppose I am selling a piece of land on Mississauga Rd., just north of Highway 401. And let’s suppose I am going to sell it for some ridiculously high figure -- let’s say $500,000 -- and I am trying to figure out what it was worth April 9, 1974.

I call in my cousin Stephen and he tells me it was worth a good half a million, so I really don’t have to pay any speculative land tax. I send the transaction into your computer and your computer spews it through. Unfortunately, because the computer has no past history to work upon, it will have no idea what the transactions were in the area of April 9, 1974; or what that land was really worth then. In effect, the computer, at least at the beginning, is not going to be of any value to you. Is it not correct that you are going to have to do an individual inquiry, or send someone out to that property? Is that not so?

Hon. Mr. Meen: It is possible in some instances we would have to have personal attendances, regardless, because there may have been improvements made which the vendor would want to include in his base price. But I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that we have every confidence that the computer will be able to give us comparative figures on an acreage basis of similar sales on or about April 9. If we are seeking to establish the April 9, 1974 evaluation, or comparable sales on an acreage basis if we are attempting to develop a fair market value as of whatever other date we are looking at, recognizing of course that if the property was acquired by the individual at a later date, that would be pretty cogent evidence of the acquisition value.

Mr. Shulman: I presume it is a new computer you are buying -- is it? How in the world is a computer going to know what went on in previous years? It can only know transactions from the time you set the computer up. Isn’t that true?

Hon. Mr. Meen: A computer has available to it the information on all sales of real estate, so that we would have that information available in the computer for retrieval purposes.

Mr. Shulman: It’s only a memory bank. It can only know what you feed into it. Aren’t you going to begin when you get it; feeding in all transactions as they occur? You are not going to attempt to go back into history, are you?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Yes, the information will be fed into it and will be available as of April 9, as I understand it, for all properties; and when a question comes up, we will be able to ascertain that on a fairly swift retrievable basis.

Mr. Shulman: Where is this information going to come from? Just a moment -- I think you misunderstand what your own ministry is doing, as I am told by officials in your ministry; and correct me it they are wrong. What the computer is going to do -- once you set it up -- is that every transaction that takes place in this province is going to be fed into it for future information. But they have no thought, or so they tell me, of feeding in past transactions. Now, are they wrong? Have I been misinformed by someone in your ministry? If so, correct me.

Hon. Mr. Meen: Mr. Chairman, so far as I am aware, we will be able to ascertain the fair market value of the property concerned, either on its basis on April 9 -- and it would be a highly unlikely case that it would have been traded on April 9 -- so that the chances are we would be looking at other properties of a like nature having been traded at or about that time from information that we would have available.

Mr. Shulman: I am trying -- before I get to the point of this whole thing -- I want to know from the minister as of what date are transactions in this province to be fed into that machine?

Hon. Mr. Meen: I wonder how many times I have to answer this. I will answer it another way. The ministry has been gathering market value assessment on all properties in this province for some years.

Mr. Shulman: You are going by assessment?

Hon. Mr. Meen: We are updating it and it would be the value that would be applied.

Mr. Shulman: Are we back to assessment? I thought we had abandoned that on Thursday. You are going to use the assessment value? That’s the word you used.

Hon. Mr. Meen: Assessment of market value.

Mr. Shulman: Assessment of market value. All right, I don’t think the minister and his officials are in agreement yet. They are looking anxiously at you. I wish you would inquire of them. But let’s suppose, even if it’s not correct, that as of April 9, 1974, every transaction in this province is fed into the computer. I don’t think you are going back, because nobody suggests you are going back before April 9, 1974.

Hon. Mr. Meen: No point.

Mr. Shulman: Okay, now let’s take a specific area. I confess I have invested in the stock market in the past and I am the owner of 75 shares of a company called Masg Entertainment, and they own a property on Mississauga Rd. I will take this specific example, because for the life of me nobody can figure out how it’s going to work. Let us suppose Jan. 1, 1975, this company decides to sell this piece of land -- and let me tell you what the piece of land is. It’s 68 acres; 60 acres of which are on the Credit River, and eight acres are up on high land. There is a house sitting on the property. There’s a separate garage and there are some separate out-buildings.

Suppose we are going to sell this on Jan. 1, 1975. Now, I can assure the minister that between April 9, 1974, and Jan. 1, 1975, there are going to be no other properties selling like that in the area. For that matter, if we take that whole immediate area -- let’s take the whole Huttonville area. The rate of turnover in that area is never high. Let’s suppose between now and the first of January, 1975, there are what -- two, three, four sales; all of which are unique properties.

What I am trying to get at -- if the minister may retain his patience -- is that there is no way that your computer can compare. There is not going to be comparative sales.

Five years from now this problem may work out, if either of us are around this funny world. But as at a year from now, you are not going to have comparative sales to compare with. So, as of Jan. 1, 1975, some 10,000 transactions a day are going to pour into your office. Your computer is just not going to have any way, with the vast majority of them, of telling whether or not the figures that you’re being given are fair figures.

What I’m trying to say to you, and I don’t think I’m getting through, is that each of these cases is going to have to be considered on its own merit, and you aren’t going to have the staff without having a one-year backlog. If you’ve got 10,000 cases a day to consider and you’ve got a staff of -- what, 100? -- that means that each one of your people is going to get 100 cases a day landing in his lap. I shudder to think, within a period of a month or two, of how big that backlog’s going to be.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Even if the information were helpful --

Mr. Shulman: Even if the information is absolutely correct you have no way of knowing if its correct. Your computer will be of absolutely no use to you, in the vast majority of cases, until the computer has had a history of a year or two or three or four or five. The year 1975 is going to go down in the history of this government as the year of the boondoggle because there’s going to be no way you can handle it. You’re going to have two choices. You’re either going to have to do what my Liberal friend suggested on Thursday -- rubber stamp it and hope for the best and send it back -- or you’re going to actually have to look at it, in which case the time lag is going to be horrendous.

Mr. Singer: You’re going to need evaluators.

Mr. Shulman: If you’ve got 10,000 coming in per day, and that’s the number you’re going to get -- 10,000 a day, no less, maybe more -- this is, of course, unless the complete stop in real estate sales continues forever; if we keep debating this until January, 1975, your nightmare may be postponed.

Hon. Mr. Meen: I thought by the hon. member’s own figures last week, he had figured out around 50,000 a year. Where does the hon. member get 1,000 a day or 10,000 a day?

Mr. Shulman: Fifty thousand a year was accepting your figure of 95 per cent not requiring any questioning. What I’m saying to you is, at the beginning they’re all going to require questioning. How can they not?

Let’s suppose I am a willing vendor and the member for Downsview is a willing buyer. With the best will in the world, in order to avoid the horror of subsections 4 and 5 of section 5 descending on my friend the member for Downsview, in order to avoid him having to pay a tax which I’m responsible for -- I’ll be in Switzerland by that time because you won’t get me -- in order for him to avoid having to pay that, he’s going to want to make sure that your department stamps it as okay.

What’s going to happen is, we’re going to make out all the papers, and I’m going to say this property was worth $500,000 back on April 9, 1974 -- I got my evaluation from my cousin Stephen, who happens to be a real estate agent, and he’s promised me he’ll give it to me; I’ve asked him already, and he agrees with me it’s really a great piece of property -- and it’s in a good area because it’s in the Premier’s (Mr. Davis) riding and that in itself gives it a certain added status.

Mr. Breithaupt: Six per cent a year.

Mr. Shulman: Added status I would say. We have good neighbours. We just look across the valley and there he is. So, in order to make sure I don’t stick him and I don’t want to do that; and in order for him to make sure he doesn’t get stuck by me, because he’s a little suspicious of me at the best of times, we’re going to send the papers in to your department, and one of those poor fellows sitting over there who’s now going to be the head of that huge department, with hundreds of clerks, will say, “Oh, my God, another one.” And he’s going to give this one to clerk A because he’s only got 400 waiting for him.

I tell you there is going to be 10,000 a day, 50,000 a week, because there is no way you can eliminate the 95 per cent. We accepted your figure of 95 per cent last week because we hadn’t had a chance to show it to our experts. But they have pointed out to us the flaw -- there is no way that any of it can go through because the only way the buyer can be certain is to have this bloody stamp of yours.

You’re either going to have to sort of abandon ship and send it all back by reverse mail, or else you’re actually going to have to look at it. In which case, 10,000 a day. Let’s suppose we expand your staff a

little bit; let’s hire an extra thousand for you. What’s a thousand? An extra thousand employees, the Treasurer (Mr. White) will be happy, it will help the unemployment figures; we can take them right off the welfare roles. So they’ll have only 10 a day to do. Do you really think they can do 10 a day if we get a thousand of them?

By the way, my son, who is 19, has asked me to put in a good word with you because you’re going to be needing a lot of evaluators who’ll be going around all summer looking at property. If you would like one, I would appreciate it if you would take him on. But in any case, you would need 10,000. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, but I thought I might as well get it on the record because Jeff is looking for a job for next summer.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): That’s nepotism.

Mr. Shulman: Oh, is that nepotism? Not if it’s done publicly.

Mr. Chairman: Order please.

Mr. Shulman: Well, I don’t think he’ll get the job.

Mr. Breithaupt: They will call you a thespian.

Mr. Shulman: Oh, I wouldn’t want to be called that.

In any case, let’s suppose you’re able to get the Treasurer to vote you enough money for an extra 10,000 employees. You’ll get Mr. Moog to build you a building somewhere to house all these people in. Let’s suppose with these 10,000 they each have to do only 10 a day. How can they do 10 a day? If they only have to go out to see one of those 10 that’s the day shot because, unfortunately, they’re not all too close to the comer of Bloor and Yonge. Perhaps we could build subsidiary buildings all over the province for you; put 100 here, 100 there, 100 in the other place.

What I’m trying to get through to the minister, Mr. Chairman, with some difficulty, is that it won’t work. It hasn’t been thought through. The implications haven’t been considered. In fact, if you attempt to make it work, you’re going to bring down the whole business because there isn’t going to be room for anything else. There isn’t going to be time for anything else. This is all presuming that nobody appeals and everything goes smoothly. If all goes well it will be disaster. If anything goes badly it will be a mean situation.

Meanwhile, I say to the minister, it really is an impossible situation. You can’t let this Act go through as it is. If you do you will succeed in your primary intention -- you have succeeded -- there has been a slight fall in some housing as a few speculators were forced to bale out. What, in effect, is happening is that it is finishing very rapidly: there’s a complete freeze in housing. Try it. You can’t sell, you can’t buy, regardless of the price, because nobody knows what they are doing. Nobody knows what the implications are. Nobody knows what taxes are involved and nobody knows how to go about it.

But if you think you’ve got trouble now -- and I think you’re getting the first inklings -- wait until a year from now. The early months of 1975 are going to be known as “nightmare alley” around the Ministry of Revenue.

I know you’re not listening to me. I know you’re not paying attention. I’m saying this only so that next year, in the Throne Speech debate I can read this out and say, “I said it to him.” I’ll say then to Mr. Speaker, as I say now to you, Mr. Chairman, “Here it is.” I’ll quote from Hansard. “I said it to him and he sat there and shook his head.”

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): You will have said it to the former minister by then.

Mr. Shulman: To the former minister who is not running for re-election because of certain circumstances which will develop in the next year. “I said it to him and he shook his head and he wouldn’t listen. He chewed gum and he kept looking over at his advisers and they kept looking worriedly at me and at him.”

Hon. Mr. Meen: I never chew gum.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): He was sucking a lollipop, as a matter of fact.

Mr. Renwick: Chewing Tums.

Mr. Shulman: I say, Mr. Minister, for the last time: I know you won’t listen but are you going to have trouble.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Yes, I was just about to look up in the phone book and see where the minister lives. Do you still live on Yorkminster?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Never have.

Mr. Singer: Never have? I was going to amaze you by quoting the street on which you live but supposing a house two doors away from you is sold. Somebody arrives at the registry office in an effort to determine whether or not there was a tax payable under this statute and we put it through the computer for size, I guess.

There have been three sales on that street in the last six months and we have the assessment records and market value assessment records. How does the computer tell whether the houses are the same? It may say that one house has 60 ft. frontage and the next one has 50 and the other one has 75 ft. There may be some base on which that could be equalized but suppose one has five bedrooms and the other has two bedrooms? Suppose one has a finished basement and the other one doesn’t? Or suppose, if you get into perhaps a more exclusive section where the minister might live one has an indoor swimming pool and the next one doesn’t. How is your computer possibly going to be able to figure that out?

What you get, when you get to that sort of situation which is going to be the norm and not the unusual, is going to be a problem not of sending out a clerk -- or even someone you might have in your department whom you might call an evaluator -- but of doing a proper and full evaluation of the particular house to determine value. How do you do that? Nothing the minister has said indicates to me how those figures are going to come out of the computer and be at all meaningful because you haven’t got the figures to feed into the computer.

How are you going to get at it? Are you going to work out these clearances? How are you going to get actual value? What is the mean? What is a willing buyer prepared to pay to a willing seller? Would the minister give us some light on this?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Mr. Chairman, I would like to touch briefly first, though, on the comment made by the member for High Park about his 70-acre parcel, or thereabouts, of which a couple of acres were valley land and the rest were up on the heights. Up on the heights there was a house, an attached garage, other outbuildings and the like. It might be, in that instance, that there was no particular parcel that compared with it; that there hadn’t been any sales along the river bank with which one could make a comparison. In that case, possibly some special attendance might be necessary, other than the one that is made annually to examine these properties under the current market value assessment programme that is ongoing.

This year, for example, that parcel to which he makes reference, if indeed it exists at all --

Mr. Shulman: Oh, it exists. I was there yesterday.

Hon. Mr. Meen: -- will have had an assessment made for it at market value, and the owner will have been appraised of that assessment. Now if he likes that assessment in its amount --

Mr. Shulman: Oh, I like it very much.

Hon. Mr. Meen: -- he may have two reasons for liking it. One is that if it’s too low, it may be he is intending to hold on to the house and so he will pay a lesser amount of taxes each year. If it’s higher than he thinks it’s worth, he may be flattered; he may then reflect on what he can get for it. But if that is the case, he probably won t appeal it either if he is contemplating selling.

So one way or the other, if properties are not properly assessed, owners in special cases may be on the horns of a dilemma as to whether to appeal the assessment or not. That procedure is available under the Assessment Act, of course.

If we have that figure available next January, 1975, when the member for High Park and his colleagues decide to sell that property, it is a fair base upon which to work in determining, when they have a sale price established between a willing vendor in their case and presumably a willing purchaser, whether there has been any gain on which the Land Speculation Tax Act would apply. I don’t see any real difficulties. In some instances, that may arise.

The vast majority of the transactions that go through the registry office every day are mortgage loans, sales of houses that are the principal residences of the vendors and that kind of thing. They are exemptions by the simple completion of the affidavit and never have to come to the attention of any official of my ministry in order to deal with them, rubber stamp or not; they are simply exempt by a provision of the Act and/or the regulations.

Mr. Shulman: Well, how many will have to come to the minister’s office?

Hon. Mr. Meen: My ministry would be dealing with a very small part of the total number of transactions that go through the registry office.

Mr. Shulman: How many?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Well, we talked about that last week --

Mr. Shulman: Yes, but the minister’s figures were phoney. He said 95 per cent wouldn’t come to his attention; that’s not true.

Hon. Mr. Meen: In any event, it would be a small percentage of the transactions that would require any attention.

Mr. Shulman: Has the minister sent anyone down to the registry office to see what it would be?

Hon. Mr. Meen: Now, the member for Downsview raises the question of the manner in which a market value might be established, via the computer, for a sale on Yorkminster, say, if he wants to use that example. Perhaps there had been only three sales on Yorkminster, which is a fairly long street -- and one would think there might have been a few more than that -- but if that were so and they weren’t comparable sizes of houses, one would look for sales of a house that had roughly the same size of lot. You certainly wouldn’t compare the sale price of a house that had five bedrooms with the sale price of a house that had two bedrooms in determining what was the fair value. You would also take a look at the terms of the sale. The computer prints all these out, I might add.

It would not be programmed for sales on that particular street, Mr. Chairman; it would be programmed to report back on sales in that particular area. So if there were sales on abutting Cotswold Cres., Lord Seaton Rd., Upper Canada Dr., or Normandale or any of the other streets in the district to which the member makes reference, in that case the computer would take a look at those sales in that area.

Mr. Shulman: Many abutting streets have entirely different values. Look at Ardwold Gate and Spadina Road.

Hon. Mr. Meen: It would be up to the person inquiring of the computer as to what characteristics he thought were appropriate -- size of lot, size of house, vintage, type, terms of sale and so on; whether all-cash or part-cash and part-mortgage, that sort of thing, which indeed can influence the total sale price. These would print out for the benefit of the person taking a look at what we would hope would be the fair market value.

As I indicated last week when we were talking about this, it would also be done within a span of weeks or months surrounding the date upon which the evaluations were being sought. This will be in place and it will be possible to do this on fairly short notice. I have seen the mechanism demonstrated. It took about two minutes to get a comparison back with a printout of something like 10 or 12 different house sales in a particular area in Metropolitan Toronto --

Mr. Shulman: What happens to the fellow who sells a house on Ardwold Gate?

Hon. Mr. Meen: -- in which sales were compared, and there was a price figure. There was how much the second mortgage was, how much was the first, the size of the lot, the number of bathrooms and the vintage of initial construction. It was extremely interesting actually to see the way in which that information feeds back.

Mr. Singer: I am sure it would be very interesting but not very helpful.

Hon. Mr. Meen: Indeed it is helpful because it gives an average figure one can look at. Out of those one might see there is a factor on one of those particular houses that puts it in a different category, and then one might take it out of that picture and use the others to determine what was the fair market value.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Chairman, I hate to belabour this point but I think the minister is caught up in the wonders of modern science. He really is suggesting that the computers are going to be able to replace the art of evaluation. I called his attention last Thursday to the fact that, to my knowledge, none of the courts that have been delegated either provincially or federally to determine values on expropriation, has up to this point set any store at all to the assessment value.

Hon. Mr. Meen: With respect, Mr. Chairman, I heard the hon. member when he made that comment last week. I recall thinking to myself that those courts would have been dealing with the old formula of assessment that came up with a quarter or a third or a fifth and sometimes as ridiculous an amount as a tenth of the fair market value. It has no relativity. It has no relationship whatever to the fair market value which was the question before the courts in those cases. In this instance what we are talking about, and I suppose the member for Downsview is going to have to wait until he sees it in place in 1977, is the establishment of a fair enough market value, not some artificial formula that determines an assessment based on what vintage of bathtub and the rest of it, according to the old Alf Gray formula which, as he and I both know and I’m sure most hon. members realize, was a very unrealistic and highly artificial method of coming up with an evaluation.

Mr. Singer: I agree. The minister may have been listening closely but he wasn’t listening awfully closely to my colleague from Waterloo, who has made a very intense study of this problem in his own constituency and has the assurance of the local assessment supervisor, that this market value assessment in Waterloo -- in any event, the new one that he is talking about -- is about 60 per cent of value. There is one of the first. We haven’t seen one in Metro yet. I don’t know what it is going to look like in Metro and whether the opinion is going to be 50 per cent or 60 per cent or 61.75 per cent. Nobody really knows, but I pay great store to the comments made by my colleague from Waterloo --

Hon. Mr. Meen: That is why we did it the way we did.

Mr. Singer: -- who is a student of these things and an intense student and a very responsible student of these matters. When he says that he has examined them and been in touch with his local assessment officials who are employees of your department and that they are of the opinion that the new assessments, which are supposed to reflect market value, are close to 60 per cent, then I believe him. I just don’t see why you are going to expect magic. It may be that you will have a more equal system of assessment for local tax purposes, but I don’t think that the insertion of the words, “actual value” or “market value” or any other similar set of phrases in your assessment Act is going, in fact, to make it so.

What the ministry is striving for, and I think it is worthwhile, is the equality of assessment so that the burden of municipal taxes will fall more equally than it presently does. That makes good sense. But to take the next jump and say that you are really going to reflect market value and you are going to use that for the implements of this tax, I think is just dreaming in Technicolor. I don’t think you are going to come close to that.

What I am really talking about, and what I think the member for High Park is talking about is that where you get into most of these cases where there is a dispute, you are not going to be able to resolve the dispute by pressing a number of buttons on a computer. You are going to have to send out trained and competent evaluators. They will have to prepare full and complete reports; pictures, descriptions of the buildings involved, with the size of the land and the specific location. There will be comparatives on the site, location, fuel, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, all that sort of thing.

I just don’t understand how you are going to get at these things by pressing a number of buttons on the computer. The computer is not going to replace the very fine art of evaluation; and unless you have some system of arriving at a reasonably comprehensive and reasonably believable evaluation, then this isn’t going to work.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Mr. Chairman, this section speaks more directly than many to the utter confusion that exists in the marketplace as a result of the introduction of the bill. I noticed with some bemusement in the Sunday Sun and in today’s Globe and Mail that the ministry is embarking on a project of 29 meetings across the province to explain to 8,000 bemused and bewildered lawyers what it is about this bill which makes it so noxious. As a matter of fact, if I remember the stories accurately, you are going to point out the dangers and the hazards in the bill.

Mr. Singer: Was it the ministry or the bar association that was to be involved?

Mr. Lewis: Well, I think the ministry was to be involved because the ministry was at the meeting of last Wednesday night.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Stephenson was there.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Stephenson was there. The ministry was exposing itself to a degree of public ridicule visited only upon the minister in these chambers; not as a rule in another public place. And this must surely be a matter of some artful, personal accomplishment that you have set a bill in motion that six weeks after it is introduced you have to have 29 major meetings around Ontario to explain the black magic contained in the clauses to the legal profession. Normally, not unlike the witches around the cauldron, they are able to create their own magic out of clauses without the help of the ministry.

And the shambles that exists within the ministry in response to questions is itself interesting. Now, I missed Thursday’s session; I was not able to be here. But I have a copy of a letter which was sent to the Hon. A.K. Meen by David H. Milman of the firm Milman and Valo, which speaks directly to the section we are now dealing with. It speaks to the lien clearance certificate pursuant to the bill. I don’t know -- did anyone put this on the record? I don’t believe so, Mr. Chairman. I would like to do it because it is such a perfect commentary on the present state of the ministry.

“Attention the Hon. A. K. Meen.

“Dear Sir:

“Re: Grgas and Tbljas sale to Gwendoline Usher, 32.6 acres, township of Eramosa, part lot 30, concession 5, parcel 7.

“I am enclosing herein a copy of an undertaking this firm was forced to give to your ministry in order to obtain a lien clearance certificate pursuant to Bill 25, which, as you are aware, at the date of the giving was still not in force.

“I am also enclosing herein a copy of the agreement of purchase and sale which was entered into on April 24, 1974, between the above parties. This writer received a copy of this agreement of purchase and sale on April 26, and in accordance with the proposed requirements of Bill 25, delivered to your ministry by hand a copy of the agreement with a request for clearance, with our opinion as to value, in order that a lien clearance certificate would be obtained prior to the closing date, namely May 15, 1974.

“On May 10, 1974, this writer contacted your department with reference to the letter forwarded on April 26, and spoke to a female clerk whose name was placed on the copy of our letter to you, who advised she would look into the matter and call the firm back.

“On May 13, the writer again contacted the clerk in question, and was again advised that she was still looking for our letter and would advise us in due course. Again, on May 14, 1974, this writer phoned the clerk in question and was again advised that she had not found our letter, but that on a personal attendance we could speak to any of the clerks at the counter who would provide the necessary clearance.

“On May 15, I therefore sent our student to your premises at 77 Grenville St., taking both the file wherein our client had purchased the subject property last year, together with our file on the sale to Usher, with instructions that he was to allow any- one from your department to peruse the contents of those files, to ensure that you had all the facts available to come to a conclusion with reference to whether any taxes might fall due.

“My student was given a flat rejection by your clerk and, in accordance with his instructions, contacted the writer by phone. I then requested to speak to the supervisor of the department but first had to explain to the clerk that, unless some special circumstance existed, the price of this property could not have risen from April 9, when Bill 25 was proposed, to the date upon which the agreement of purchase and sale was entered into two weeks later.

“Further, I advised the clerk that this property was listed for sale at $30,000 early in March, over a month prior to the announcement of the proposed Bill 25. As well, I pointed out that Minister of Housing and yourself were making statements in the newspapers that the effect of Bill 25 was to lower the price of real estate but, it would appear that your employees and staff are not aware of these statements. I would certainly think so.”

[I add, apart from the letter, a more absurd set of self-serving statements hasn’t been issued in a long time and it was indicated in this Housing Ontario/74 today.]

“The clerk advised he did not have the authority to make a decision and I further requested to speak to his supervisor. I was then turned over to a Mr. Walker, whose position was similar to the clerk, and advised that unless an appraisal was forwarded they would not give the clearance. I advised Mr. Walker that, in the event the Minister of Revenue failed to provide a clearance, the transaction would not close. The effect of your ministry’s actions would, in fact, make property unsalable as most vendors are unable to pay the tax in advance. The result is that a vendor is held up to blackmail as he is required to make a settlement in order to obtain the necessary clearance.

“Mr. Walker suggested that we enter into the undertaking and close. I then requested that he write out whatever necessary undertaking he wished and I would have my student execute it. I was then advised that he was too busy to write this out and that I would have to have my student write it out and, if it was not in the proper form as he had requested, the clearance would not be given.

“After this matter was settled, I then received a further phone call from our student advising that Mr. Walker required the copy of the agreement of purchase and sale which was in our file. I then advised that this was the only copy that we had and that we had forwarded one to your department in our letter dated April 26 and advised our student to show them a copy of our letter to you dated April 26. Without my knowledge, Mr. Walker removed the copy of our letter to your department, with which we forwarded a copy of the agreement of purchase and sale, and insisted on an undertaking that we forward another copy of the agreement immediately.

“While this writer, one of our students and two of your employees were negotiating the lien clearance” [I add, parenthetically, clearly taking up all the administrative and intellectual prowess of the entire ministry for some 48 to 72 hours,] “somewhere in your department our original letter dated April 26 was being answered: ‘I am enclosing herein a copy of the lien clearance certificate forwarded by mail, postmarked on the 15th day of May, 1974, in accordance with file, etc., certifying that no lien arises under the Land Speculation Tax Act.’

“This was our original request; this clearance arrived on May 16. You will recall, of course, that the closing was May 15. Notwithstanding the issuance of your lien certificate prior to our entering into the undertaking enclosed, I am enclosing: (a) a copy of the real estate appraisal of the subject property as of April 9, containing confirmation that the property was listed over a month prior to Bill 25 being proposed; (b), a further copy of the agreement of purchase and sale in this regard.

“I will assume that you are now satisfied that no lien has arisen under the enclosed agreement of purchase and sale and unless I hear to the contrary within 10 days of the date of this letter, I will be releasing the balance of the funds held in my trust account to my client.

“Since the writing of this letter I attended a seminar of the Canadian Bar Association on the Land Speculation Tax Act and listened to Mr. Isaac Stephenson advise that your ministry and its employees were being as co-operative and efficient as a government department could be. In this regard I think the contents of this letter speak for them- selves.

“It certainly appears from the content of the Act that what the government of Ontario is attempting to do is far beyond the controlling of land speculation which can be achieved in a very simple way without affecting and hurting all of the people that you are presently hurting.

“Yours truly, David Milman”.

I’m not one given to reading lengthy documents into the record, as the minister will know, but I thought the letter was so peculiarly apt to this section that it should go on the record. The letter says a number of simple things. No. 1: That not just the real estate market but the internal operations of your ministry have been reduced to an authoritarian shambles by the introduction of this Act. I use the word “authoritarian” advisedly, because there is nothing more objectionable than the capricious and arbitrary behaviour of clerks under pressure, when no one gives them direction, when they are left to their own devices, and when it is impossible to clear this peculiar matter up by some clarity, some direction, some indication of what this scrambled piece of legislation means. They may think they are acting in good faith but they are so harassed, they are so nonplussed, they are so uninformed, they are beating such an administrative retreat that their contact with the public is arbitrary. The other lawyers who met in the Royal York gave testament to that, as well as Mr. Milman.

Secondly, this Land Speculation Tax Act is acting directly in this way, even dealing with something which is supposed to facilitate it, like the lien clearance certificate, it is acting directly to slow down real estate transactions. My colleague from High Park asked a very important question today at question period, which the Minister of Housing (Mr. Handleman) simply sloughed off. There are more listings on the Toronto real estate market, for example, but the number of sales is declining.

I had a real estate agent bring to my office this morning the actual sales that had occurred for every day of the first 25 days of May as they are listed in the Toronto Real Estate Board transaction sheet, and it’s discernible to the naked eye, let me tell you, the gradual decline in the number of sales as you proceed through the month of May, because this piece, of legislation, along with the interest rates, is serving to choke the housing market.

Now the third point this letter makes, which is a perfectly valid one, is that the Land Speculation Act is throwing a net so wide that it is hurting, and I like the use of the word “hurting” because it’s a flavoured and descriptive word. It is hurting people who have never in their lives contemplated speculation or who have not now entered into speculative transactions. With this clause, as well as the others, you have in one fell swoop managed to bring within your ken all of the people in the province who might want to enter into innocent real estate transactions and are now, by the devices of your ministry, reduced to the suspicion of speculators. They resent it, and on their behalf we resent it.

From nursing home residents to farmers, to the aged who have an apartment and now want to sell their home, you have made speculators of the population of Ontario and the only people who will escape are the large corporations who can use your exemptions and loopholes to avoid the payment of the tax. It is a bill of such inspired perversity, you have raised the punishment of Ontario to an electoral principle in this bill, and you are punishing so many people by the introduction of this statute that it would be hard to name them all.

But most important, Mr. Chairman, this letter and the certificate which relates to liens show that you are effectively ending housing in the province. Mr. Chairman, this is becoming an incredibly frustrating process these weeks. I will grant the minister that the interest rates are the primary cause of the deceleration of real estate transactions. Okay? I’ll grant you that the announcement of 11.75 per cent on Friday, which means effectively 12 per cent -- by the way, on an average house in Metropolitan Toronto now, $58,450 in the 25 days in May, a 12 per cent mortgage amortized over 35 years leads to a total cost of $210,000-plus on the lifetime of that mortgage. You tell me who, other than members of the Legislature, or the 18 per cent of Ontario families who earn more than $18,000 a year, can afford to pay out $210,000 in order to buy a house whose actual price is $58,000? But that is what you are doing.

The interest rates, bad as they were, have been complicated fatally by this Land Speculation Tax Act. The interest rates, you see, are manageable; while they are objectionable, they can be coped with be- cause we understand them.

But the bill, as the 1,450 lawyers gathered at the Royal York Hotel pointed out, and as the 29 meetings will show over the next number of weeks, is indigestible and absolutely incomprehensible. I sit with the finest legal minds in Ontario on this side of the House Mr. Chairman -- the member for Lake- shore (Mr. Lawlor), the member for Riverdale have no peers in the legal profession. On the Liberal benches are other distinguished lawyers, working hard to grasp the meaning of the bill -- not quite as accomplished as those of socialist divination; nonetheless working at it. I have noticed an improvement in capacity over struggling with this bill.

The factor remains that whether it is the coterie of lawyers in the NDP caucus, or the positive plenitude of lawyers in the Liberal caucus, none can understand it. I may say, Mr. Chairman, I have had six months at a pre-law school, and I can’t understand it.

Mr. Chairman: Order please. I wonder if I could say to the hon. member for Scarborough West that --

Mr. Lewis: You think I am straying?

Mr. Chairman: Yes. You were right on the bill at the beginning, but I am afraid you are straying. I wonder if you would come back to section 5.

Mr. Cassidy: Not very far, Mr. Chairman, not very far.

Mr. Lewis: I think I strayed a little, I concede that and that’s why I am coming right back to the clause as I was at the beginning.

Mr. Cassidy: It is your impatience that is to blame for that.

Mr. Lewis: What I am saying to you -- I guess we are not getting through to the minister, but as I stand here we are getting through to the public. The public of Ontario knows that the constructions in this clause are so complicated the lawyers are in rebellion. The public of Ontario knows that this bill is having a disastrous effect. The public of Ontario knows that if you bullheadedly push forward with this, you will have to repeal it several months from now because it will be an unmitigated disaster for you. There is no escape for you.

I put this letter on the record, Mr. Chairman, as one small example of the immense frustration which the legal profession is now feeling in dealing with the minister. Can you imagine what this man Milman now says to his clients who want to engage in real estate transactions? He obviously can’t deal with them expeditiously; he obviously can’t promise them an answer in a matter of days; he obviously can’t promise them co-operation from the minister. I don’t know what madness possesses the members over there to pursue this piece of legislation, but in every clause it is so faulty as to be fatal. My colleague from Riverdale was saying that he expects it will be repealed within the year; my colleague from High Park thinks it may be repealed earlier than that. Some of us think it may never be proclaimed, although obviously it has to be because it was announced on April 9. Jericho is caving in around the hon. minister. He is sitting not on his seat, but in rubble. He doesn’t understand it, and we are trying very hard to explain it to him.

Mr. Chairman: We have the amendment of Mr. Singer -- the member for Riverdale?

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, just before we leave that point, I think the crux of the problem as was so ably stated by the leader of the New Democratic Party is very simple. This bill has made the minister a party to every single real estate transaction in the Province of Ontario. That’s the sum and substance of the procedural hassle which he has developed for himself. I cannot conceive of any real estate transaction going through in the Province of Ontario which will not be subject to the condition that a certificate of the minister be obtained.

The other clause providing for an affidavit is not going to be used in the way in which the minister thinks it is going to be used. Every time that a transfer of land takes place in Ontario he is going to have to okay it. I have heard the government on occasion say to this party, “You believe in government intrusion into private business transactions.” We have never seen an example of the intrusion of government such as this.

The crux of it is exactly that -- you are now a party to every real estate transaction in the Province of Ontario, and you haven’t got the machinery, the knowledge, the capacities or the information on which you can now act. I cannot conceive that even Mr. Milman, with the obvious knowledge of real estate transactions which he has -- which far exceeds any knowledge I may have about it -- can believe for one moment that the certificate which he has now received is of any use whatsoever. He is now dependent upon your validating that certificate because there is no way in which that certificate is binding on the minister at a subsequent date.

The bill at the present time has ground the real estate market to a halt and will continue to do so. I suggest to the minister that we hear, at odd times, talk about the sort of ideas which the Treasurer of Ontario has from time to time. For reasons which we can’t understand, the government seems to buy the one so-called bright idea of the Treasurer every time he opens his mouth. It was only because he wasn’t Treasurer but merely chairman of the select committee on taxation that we escaped from the imposition of the retail sales tax on food.

Last year the people of the Province of Ontario, aided and abetted by us, forced the repeal of the other bright idea about the retail sales tax on fuel oil. This is another one of his bright ideas. It is not thought through; it is not subject to the government scrutiny involved with the imposition of a tax simply because under budgetary procedures nobody could think it through and nobody had any advance knowledge of what was required.

Mr. Minister, I don’t know how it is going to work out. I appear to have been the optimist on this side of the House thinking it would be about a year before it’s repealed. But other people, much more knowledgeable than I am in this field, are now satisfied that it is so unworkable you are going to have to recall the bill within a much shorter period of time and that, in fact, it will not see the light of day as a continuing piece of the legislation of the Province of Ontario.

The reason I say you have made yourself a party to every single transaction in the Province of Ontario is that in subsection 2 of this bill the certificate, to be of any value, must be dated on the date of the closing of the transaction. It is no good the day afterward. If the transaction is closed the day after the date of the certificate, my reading of subsection 2 says that does not remove the lien. The lien exists and there is no way in which you are going to be able to operate it so that you can place in the hands of every solicitor who is closing any real estate transaction, in all the land office across the city of Toronto, a certificate dated that day.

The minister shakes his head, but I’d certainly call in aid my legal colleagues on the opposition benches of both parties. The section says, “but the giving of the certificate does not destroy the special lien for tax resulting from any disposition of designated land occurring after the date as of which the certificate is given.” I take that to mean that if the certificate is dated May 27 and the closing of the transaction takes place --

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member -- order please.

Mr. Renwick: -- on May 28, for practical purposes the lien attaches to that date.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mr. Renwick: I ask my colleagues to consider that because we’ll be coming to that clause very soon.

Mr. Chairman: We are on section 1 now.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman is now calling me to order because we’re on subsection 1.

Mr. Chairman: Right.

Hon. Mr. Meen: If we can come back to subsection 1, I’ll deal with the as-of-which when we get to subsection 2. Mr. Chairman, I just observe that if the Milman letter is accurate -- I have not seen it; I gather it was delivered to the member for Scarborough West before it was delivered to me. In any event, I have not seen it.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, there are no grounds for that at all. The letter is dated May 22; it is addressed to the minister, with a copy to the leader of the New Democratic Party and, presumably, a copy to the leader of the Liberal Party.

Hon. Mr. Meen: All right, I am not quarrelling with that. I am just saying I haven’t seen it yet.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay, that’s your problem, not ours.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): You don’t have to tell us.

Mr. Renwick: We read our mail.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mr. Lawlor: It speaks for itself.

Hon. Mr. Meen: I would concede that certainly the mechanism in my ministry is not handling these applications with the degree of efficacy which I feel should be accorded to them --

Mr. Renwick: But you can’t blame your ministry. You are competent to do it.

Hon. Mr. Meen: -- albeit members of the legal profession don’t have available to them a bill which is law, a bill which incorporates the amendments and a bill which they know isn’t about to be changed with some other amendments that may come along from time to time.

One of their big difficulties last week presumably was that many of them had not had a chance to examine the bill as reprinted for the benefit of the members of this committee in this current debate.

Mr. Lawlor: Wait until they do.

Hon. Mr. Meen: Of course, another difficulty is that they are dealing with a new piece of legislation, and that is bound to take them some time. It is regrettable that it had to be at a time of year when every law office is as busy, I guess, as it is at any time of the year, if not busier. That just happens to be the way it is.

I think that as soon as this bill can be law and copies of the bill as proclaimed then distributed to every member of the legal profession, just as we did with the Land Transfer Tax Amendment Act this year, those members would be able to come to grips with the Act and understand what they should be doing and what they need not do.

That covers my comments on subsection 1, Mr. Chairman. There are others when we get to subsection 2, but I think you did wish to deal with subsection 1 first.

Mr. Singer: Okay, let’s vote.

Mr. Chairman: Those in favour of Mr. Singer’s amendment please say “aye.”

Those opposed please say “nay.”

In my opinion the “nays” have it.

Shall this be stacked?

Mr. Singer: No stacking; no stacking in this statute at all.

Mr. Chairman: Call in the members.

The committee divided on Mr. Singer’s motion to amend section 5(1) which was negatived on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 27, the “nays” 44.

Mr. Chairman: I declare the motion lost and the subsection carried.

Mr. Singer: Section 5(2), Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Section 5(2). The member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Chairman, I am very unhappy about section 5(2) for a variety of reasons.

An hon. member: So am I.

Mr. Singer: The first point that occurs to me is the ability -- I suggest we wait and get the minister with me -- to issue these certificates presently with a variety of people who are signing them and to make the validity of the signatures retroactive. To satisfy my curiosity I made reference to the Department of Revenue Act, now called the Ministry of Revenue Act. Section 9 of that statute says:

“The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations authorizing or requiring the Deputy Minister of Revenue or any officer of the department to exercise any power or perform any duty conferred or imposed upon the minister by this or any other Act.”

I don’t know who the people are who are signing these clearances. It isn’t the minister because I have a few in my office at the moment. It isn’t the deputy minister and I don’t recognize really the signature of the person who signs them. Are the people who sign them officers?

Even if they are, I wonder when you turn to section 23 whether the retroactivity attempted to be enacted by section 23 is sufficient to cover this kind of an action.

Section 23 says:

“Upon receiving royal assent, this Act shall be deemed to come into force on April 9, 1974, and to apply to every disposition made, tax imposed and everything that may be required to be done under this Act that is made, imposed or done after April 9, 1974.”

I think it is going to be a very, very important legal question as to whether or not a certificate signed by somebody in the department who may or may not be an officer today or the day on which he signs it, and I suspect that you haven’t designated the signing people -- I don’t know how many you have as officers -- on April 10 or any day after and including April 10 is, in fact, remediable by the passing of a regulation whenever, if, as and when, this statute comes into force. So I have really grave doubts in my mind as to whether or not the certificate which says there is no lien, is, in fact, going to have any validity.

I understand that this point -- and the second phase of it that I’m going to come to in a moment -- was raised rather vociferously and laboured quite extensively at the meeting that took place at the Royal York Hotel last Wednesday. If my information is further correct, Mr. Stephenson, who was representing the government, indicated that, in his mind, the granting of these certificates had grave legal doubts surrounding it and very possibly, or even probably, the certificates were no good for that reason.

There is another point insofar as these certificates are concerned. It says in subsection 2:

“The giving of the certificate does not destroy the special lien for tax resulting from any disposition of the designated land occurring after the date as at which the certificate is given, and the giving of the certificate does not impair or relieve the transferor from his responsibility to pay any tax imposed by this Act.”

Now, if the certificate is given -- and as I say, I have a few in my office now -- in advance of the closing of a particular transaction, and a solicitor is reasonably careful about trying to get his papers in order in advance, perhaps even several weeks in advance, and then tenders the certificate at the time of closing several weeks after it has been dated, it would seem to me as I read those last few lines, that the certificate is invalid.

Or, another case: What happens if the particular transaction is a two-way or three-way transaction, so that the land goes from purchaser A, who becomes vendor A, to purchaser B? Or it’s a three-way or a four-way transaction, and it’s covered by one certificate -- or should it be covered by two certificates, or three certificates, or four certificates? And if the coincidence of dates is not exact, then is there any validity to the certificate?

You see, Mr. Chairman, what puzzles me, and what puzzles so many lawyers who have tried to sort this thing out -- and who have tried to act in the best interests of their clients -- even when you get the piece of paper what, in fact, does the piece of paper mean?

Let me review just very briefly. Is there a power, either under section 9 of the Ministry of Revenue Act, and under the retroactivity section of this statute, section 23, to allow persons who are not officers to issue these certificates and then regularize them at some later date by passing of an order-in-council? I have grave, grave doubts about that.

The second point is, if the coincidence of dates isn’t such as I’ve tried to very briefly outline, is the certificate any good at all; or is it just a piece of paper that you wave around and then argue about it at a later time?

What comes to mind, Mr. Chairman -- and it was cleared up eventually by the Supreme Court of Canada -- there used to be a practice of obtaining an opinion from the income tax people in Ottawa about whether a particular transaction was taxable.

And before we had a capital gains tax the arguments usually revolved around whether or not the transaction was an ordinary business transaction, or whether it was a capital gains type of transaction. Several years ago the department used to send out letters saying, “In our opinion” -- or in the opinion of the person who signed the letter -- “this transaction is a capital type transaction and therefore it’s not taxable.”

And then what happened, on several occasions, was that somebody else in the department reviewed the transaction and came to the conclusion that the original person who signed the letter had no real authority to sign the letter. He gave his opinion, and people acted on that opinion. But the Supreme Court of Canada came to the conclusion that unless that letter had been signed in accordance with the provisions of the Income Tax Act, then the opinion of an official really was meaningless, and that if the transaction was, in fact, an income type of transaction, then, notwithstanding the fact that there was a letter from a senior official of the department, the whole transaction was taxable. That’s what bothers me very much about the unusual wording of this, about the retroactivity and about the fact that there is nothing apparent at this moment as to who can sign these clearances. We were touching on it, I suppose, in 5(1).

How many clearances are you issuing a day? I don’t know that the suggestions put forward by the member for High Park were accurate, but if there are 10,000 transactions going on a day or a week, how many certificates are you issuing? How many people are signing them? Are all these people going to be officers of the department? Are you going to make them all officers? How are you going to do it?

When are they officers and do they have power to sign these clearance certificates? Even if you can do it retroactively and you have an order in council with 100 names on it appointing all of these clerks as officers of the department, can you really bring that within the provisions both of section 9 of the department’s Act and section 23 of this Act?

In other words, even if we accept what the minister is trying to do, and we have been trying very hard to accept it, surely we must have something more than a dozen lines in subsection (2) of section 5 which is going to indicate that these certificates are valid once obtained. There must be some finality to the transaction and those responsible for advising Ontario people about the validity of a real estate transaction can advise them with some certainty. Section 5(2) is far, far less than certain.

I am impressed with the reports that I obtained from that Canadian bar meeting and also from the comments, and I didn’t hear them, attributed to Mr. Stephenson who apparently shares my doubts and apparently shares the doubts of those lawyers who raised it at some substantial length at that meeting. I think it’s up to the minister to resolve those doubts in a forceful manner and to indicate to us how we are going to be able to establish, or how anyone who has to deal with this Act is going to be able to establish, that once they have received a certificate, that it is, in fact, valid; that it is valid even if there are one or two or three or half a dozen transactions emerging on the same day; that it applies to all of them; and that the person signing has the kind of authority which he should sign.

It seems to be 5 of the clock, Mr. Chairman, and it is my understanding of the rules that we get into another order of business at this time. It may be at 8 o’clock that I might have some more words to say on section 5(2).

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

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of the whole House reports progress and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ HOUR

NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 4

Clerk of the House: Notice of motion No. 4, by Mr. Drea.

Resolution: That the government of Ontario through the Minister of Transportation and Communications review its present policy of granting exclusive licences for the sale of gasoline products and maintenance of restaurant facilities on the province’s controlled access interurban highways.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): Mr. Speaker, I move resolution No. 4.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough Centre moves resolution No. 4.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this resolution is to have the Ministry of Transportation and Communications take a long look at the service facilities that are being offered to the public -- particularly the food facilities that are offered to the travelling public after Labour Day and before May 24. It seems to me, as a person who uses Highways 401 and 400 particularly, that while the quality of service and the quality of food does not match the top dollar prices being charged in the summer months or in the peak travel months, the service disintegrates, particularly in regard to quality, once the summer tourism ends.

I suppose there is a reason for that, Mr. Speaker, because the volume of traffic obviously does go down once the summer months are ended. However these facilities, when they were allowed to be erected, represented a fundamental change in government policy, particularly on Highway 401.

If you recall in the beginning, as Highway 401 was built, the policy was that we would erect signs at the appropriate cloverleaf so that people would be able to go off of the highway for their food and for gasoline and service to their automobiles. Then, Mr. Speaker, we turned full about and we set up rather permanent leases right on Highway 401. Mind you, we have never really sifted out exactly what we wanted to do because we still have the signs offering, food, fuel and accommodation at the particular cloverleafs. But nonetheless, for the tourists and for the salesmen or the truck driver or those who are using cars in the wintertime, we have the sole and exclusive institutions on the highway.

Quite frankly, sir, I personally regard the quality of service, and particularly the quality of the food in respect to the prices that are being charged, an affront to the travelling public. I think the time has come for the government to get out of the food business. The truth of the matter is it is as much our fault as that of the private proprietors that this situation has developed.

I think the time has come for us to get out of the food business, out of the gasoline business, out of the service business. Because the responsibility for the quality of food is ours. If you read through the leases that are offered to the oil companies, we say that 40 cents on the dollar out of the restaurant facilities must come from food. That is an extremely high amount. Consequently it leads to inflated food prices.

Secondly, because of the fact that the service centres have to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the gasoline costs more. I suppose that on the basis of the money they have to pay us through the tender, on the basis of having help around the clock, on the basis of other costs, particularly in the winter months, they feel justified in getting a premium price -- not only for premium gasoline but for the regular gasoline. Because of this, Mr. Speaker, the travelling public -- not only as tourists in the summertime, but in the wintertime as people who are by necessity using Highway 401, in particular, as the main thoroughfare of the province -- is literally being held up to ransom.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to say that people who travel by automobile in other jurisdictions will find the same thing occurring on the older American toll roads where they do have sole and exclusive licences. I think if you try to match the quality of food or service on the New York Thruway, where they do have this system, against the quality of food, the price, the opportunity for choice, and the price of gasoline on the Interstate highways in the United States, where they do not have the leasehold centre on the highways but where instead it is located at the cloverleafs, there is a vast difference where local enterprise, local people, usually through the franchise system operated by the oil companies, do have the ability to compete for the dollar of the travelling public. For those who are used to travelling the Interstate highways in the United States, at virtually every cloverleaf there is the choice of at least two facilities and very often four.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that competition rather than exclusive leaseholds, does provide -- at least in the only comparable jurisdiction that we can look at -- a far better deal for the travelling public.

We have 19 service centres on Highway 401 and all 19 are engaged very actively in skimming. They make their maximum dollar in the summertime and once the heavy tourist season is over the customer is virtually on his own. It is virtually impossible to get food service, even in the better ones, because most of them resort to cafeterias in the wintertime since that eliminates the need for help. In other words, you are still paying top dollar and you are serving yourself while they avoid the labour costs.

I think it is very interesting that in the leases it says you will have a restaurant facility capable of holding 150 persons and then it puts in brackets “cafeteria optional or supplementary.” Mr. Speaker, they’ve gone to cafeterias, at least the ones that I’ve been in, because it is much cheaper to operate in the wintertime, because you avoid the help.

Looking through the leases, we have looked at everything from the quality of water, from how they have to sand the highway or the entrances into them, to the illumination, to the grading, to what happens to the top soil, to the building itself -- it has to be designed in such and such a way -- as I have said, the question of the eating area capable of seating not less than 150 people. We even give them a traffic survey as to how many cars are going by now on the average, how many will be going by in the 1980’s.

We regulate the service prices. We tell them that without our permission they can’t sell anything that other restaurants do not sell -- I don’t know what that would be -- but none the less, we go to great lengths on this. We even make them refrigerate their garbage. We say that all refuse must be refrigerated, presumably in some kind of cold storage, until it can be removed. We go to great lengths that way.

Then we come down to the only thing we care about with the food, it must be of high quality, particularly in light of the debate in the committee of the whole on the land speculation tax, high quality as a standard does not impress me as something that can be enforced very readily. Indeed, who is to enforce it? We also get to the point where anything on the menu, both in terms of its quality and its cost, must be approved by the ministry.

Mr. Speaker, when we are in the position that these people are tendering large amounts of money -- and we’ve seen the example where one perfectly good restaurant facility on Highway 400 is being demolished and a new one being built because the competing oil company has offered a higher price in return for a long-term lease -- when we see things like that, it seems to me that the travelling public does have the right to expect a little bit more than it is getting now.

First of all, I fail to see why we have devised such a system and such a payment of leases that it is virtually impossible to get table service eight or nine months of the year at centres that are located not for the convenience of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications but for the convenience of the people who are driving. I fail to see why, in most of them, it is impossible to get a cup of coffee or some light meal for eight or nine months of the year.

Granted, on the basis of their projections and their tenders, I expect that they are going to do the bulk of their business in the summertime. But, Mr. Speaker, we have allowed them to have a sole and exclusive licence, not just for June, July, August and part of September; but 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

These leases are for 25 years. It doesn’t say anything in them that there will be one standard during the warm weather, and during the rest of the year, let the motorist beware. They are supposed to maintain the same standard.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that under the present tendering arrangements, the present lease arrangements and the present entire inspection system, these service centres have turned into a rather intriguing product of the bureaucratic mind; and the persons who pay the most -- the motorist and his passengers, because they’re having to pay for it -- are the last people to be considered.

As I say, if you look through these leases you will see that great attention is paid to the water supply, to the sewage disposal system and to a great many other things. They may be very necessary for the community; they may be very necessary for the proper maintenance of the highway. But there are pages and pages and pages of convenience to the ministry, and very few lines of convenience to the travelling public.

Mr. Speaker, we should look at the fact that in the tourist months these service centres are the first and, I am rather afraid, the last particular piece of Ontario observed by visitors from other provinces or particularly from the United States. Frankly, if I was a tourist from the United States and hit one of the service centres on Highway 401 as my introduction to Ontario, I rather suspect that the memory might stay with me for a long time.

Since tourism is an integral part of the economy of this province, it seems to me that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has to come up with a better way of supplying more than the essentials -- because gasoline, oil, towing and all the things that go with the car certainly are essential on a controlled-access highway. But certainly since we have entered into the time when we say there also must be something of convenience -- because these aren’t just centres to merchandise petroleum and ancillary products; there are very large dining rooms and other facilities there -- if we are really interested in building up tourism and in encouraging people to travel, then we’ll have to take a long look at what we have created by these long-term leases and at what we have created by this 40 cents on the dollar coming from food. People in the restaurant business will tell you that 30 cents on the dollar for food is getting high, 35 cents on the dollar is getting very high, and that you really have to charge if you are in the 40-cent category.

Granted, almost all of the restaurants are captives of the major oil companies. I think that is another reason that we should have a little look. I have very little confidence in the ability of the American oil companies -- because all of them are American -- I have very little regard for them when they become concerned about the convenience of Canadian drivers. After all, they’re the same oil companies that just jacked the price by 10 cents a gallon. They are the same oil companies whose corporate responsibility extends to the point where some of them have ceased their drilling and exploration because they feel that the future of Canada is rather uncertain.

I think that to leave the fate of the travelling public to that kind of corporate decision-maker is really asking for it, despite the fact that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has tried, in its own way, to set up leases that will do something for the public.

Mr. Speaker, I think we should also realize that once you are on Highway 401, and because of the nature of the economics of the petroleum industry in the way that they service people, you are almost a captive of your credit card. When you are a captive of your credit card for the petroleum products for your car, you are almost a captive of whatever restaurant facilities have been supplied by your particular oil company.

I realize that you can go another 45 or 54 miles down the road and that may be convenient in the tourist season. But I suggest that in the winter months, during the fall months or in the spring months, the people who drive the highway by necessity for business are trying to get from point A to point B in the shortest period of time, you don’t want to be in a position where you have to buy gasoline at one place, but because you know the quality of food is bad there you’re going to have to stop at the next one to eat. I think that in terms of convenience to the motoring public that is asking a bit much.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, in the United States when the controlled access road began, it was a toll road and the leaseholds were prevalent. When the Interstate highways came in -- they are not toll roads -- the decision was made that they would not have the service centres on them. Highway 401 with its cutoffs and its cloverleafs, lends itself admirably to a system whereby the food, the fuel, and, as the sign says, the accommodation can be built off our highways

Granted the same oil companies would still have a big say, because they determine the location of stations. But nonetheless they would be competing across the road from each other and this is a big difference than competing 45 or 55 miles down the highway. It would also be a significant departure because once you are off the highway there are other competing places as well, if you want to go a little bit further. You are talking about a mile or two perhaps instead of those 45 miles.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t fault the ministry, when it was the Ministry of Highways, for introducing the leasehold on Highway 401. I think in some regard they were influenced by the fact that the two leaseholds on Highway 400 at that time were working, and working much better than what has since been the result on Highway 401. But just because something was entered into a few years ago does not mean that we cannot terminate it. It might cost us funds and in fact it would cost us funds, but I suggest those funds would be very wisely spent. If we have a tourist budget and all we can offer as a first impression and perhaps a last impression of this province are the service centres on Highway 401, then I suggest we are undercutting our whole tourist programme.

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t asked that the programme and the leaseholds be terminated. I have asked that they be reviewed. There may be steps that the ministry can take in a new policy that would make the service centre really operate -- where the key word was service, where you would have to pay a dollar, but in return you would get your dollar’s worth.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that unless and until the ministry officials move in, not only the tourist but the person who uses that road for the purpose for which it was built, which was to facilitate industry and business in this province, is being very badly victimized by a system that apparently cannot work -- and apparently no one cares to see if improvements or changes can be made to see that it does become a service and convenience to the motorist.

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to take part in this debate on the resolution of the hon. member for Scarborough Centre. I find it very interesting that a government member would raise a question of reviewing the government policy of granting exclusive licences for the sale of gasoline products and the maintenance of restaurant facilities on Ontario’s controlled access interurban highways. Had the government listened to the members of the opposition back in 1962, they would not have initiated their present policy in the first place. At that time, as today, we frequently had the occasion to express our grave concern about the government’s lack of planning.

First of all, they said no outlets would be permitted on these expressways in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. R. Gisborn (Hamilton East): Let the member tell him; we told the government what he said years ago. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.

Mr. Drea: No, but they listened.

Mr. D. A. Paterson (Essex South): Is the member for Scarborough Centre going to be Minister of Labour?

Mr. Spence: This led a number of businessmen to establish service facilities at what is known as strategic points of access to this expressway. Later the government announced its decision to purchase the right of way to permit the installation of service outlets -- outlets actually on the main road.

Whether the government did, in fact, change its point of view on this question at that time, or whether the right of way was planned from the outset and this was concealed by the government for reasons of its own, is still a debatable point in the minds of many. The fact remains that a number of taxpayers invested considerable money in establishing service stations off the main highways, which were doomed to failure once the service outlets were permitted on the right of way. However, we could hardly expect the government to be concerned about the taxpayers’ money, unless there is a possibility of the government finding a method of spending more of it.

The then Minister of Highways stalled, as usual, when the opposition asked if tenders had been called for service stations, either by invitation to the general public or general advertising, or whether a selective group of people had been invited to tender. My hon. friend from Downsview at that time asked if tenders had been limited to oil companies or whether the individual would be successful if he made an application. When pressed by the opposition at that time, the minister finally admitted that public tenders had not been called for. In fact, only major oil companies had been given the opportunity. He did have the grace to admit that this had perhaps been an error of judgement -- “perhaps,” he said at that time -- but made the excuse that the government hoped in this way to obtain the best possible service facilities to the travelling public that used these expressways. However, I might say, I can remember delegations coming and protesting these service centres being located in different areas along the expressway.

We proposed at that time the idea of the government giving consideration to building these service centres and leasing them on an open competitive bidding basis, but the minister could see no advantage in using public funds for this purpose when private enterprise was prepared to build and operate these facilities. The government acknowledged it had no control over prices to be charged at these service stations, expressing the opinion that the oil companies are responsible people in business in a big way in this province.

There is no question that the oil companies are in business in a big way in this province and certainly they are responsible -- responsible for making a profit; responsible to their shareholders; responsible to their boards of directors. The government is responsible, too -- responsible to the taxpayers of Ontario because, in a way, every taxpayer in this province is a shareholder in this government, would like to think that the government takes its responsibility for its shareholders as seriously as the oil companies take their responsibilities for their shareholders.

As to the Minister of Highways not wishing to utilize public funds, in providing the lighting at these service stations and in paying for the paving of the approaches to these service centres -- the government owns the land on which the service centre is located -- indirectly the taxpayers of this province are helping to subsidize very profitable operations for the oil companies, which could hardly be regarded as eligible for public assistance.

Mr. Speaker, when the estimates of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications were before the committee at the last session, we asked the minister what was the revenue derived by the government from all these service centres on our expressways. He informed us the government would receive $2.5 million last year, which is a lot of money for the government.

However, I might say that the travelling public’s view is changing today in regard to vacationing. We know that the vacationer is tenting. He uses a camper; he uses a trailer and he has different ideas. I go right along with the member for Scarborough Centre on reviewing the leases of the gas companies, because I think times change and the government must change with the times. I agree with the member for Scarborough Centre. I think the government should review these leases because I think some changes could be made.

In the past 10 years or so, it has become very obvious that these service outlets on our highways are very well patronized and are very profitable, I would think, for the oil companies. Some travellers have expressed the opinion that the restaurant facilities are quite expensive and I am particularly concerned that the quality of the food and beverages sold leaves a great deal to be desired in some instances.

These service outlets attract not only Canadian travellers but tourists visiting this country, particularly from the United States, and it is important that the operation of these facilities is of the highest possible standard. I am aware, of course, that certain basic standards of safety and hygiene have to be observed by law. Something more than this is necessary when one considers that these service outlets are frequently the only facility available to travellers on our expressways across the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Bennett) spends considerable money each year encouraging people to visit Ontario. It seems very foolish to allow visitors to think that the food and services offered in parts of Ontario at these service centres are expensive and inferior, simply because the government does not exercise more control over the service outlets and adjacent restaurant facilities. There is another reason why I say these leases should be reviewed. I think about two years ago the food industry in this province was going through difficult financial times. I brought it to the attention of the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) and asked him to look into the possibilities to see if fruit stands could be located at these service centres across the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Paterson: A good idea.

Mr. Spence: This would not only be of benefit to the travelling public, but it would be of great benefit to the fruit growers across the province.

Mr. Speaker: I must say the hon. member’s time has now been completed.

Mr. Spence: I’m sorry. I would just close by saying I think the whole question of licensing the service outlets should be reviewed without delay. For this reason, I would like to express my support for the resolution put forward by the hon. member for Scarborough Centre.

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

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Thank you Mr. Speaker. I listened with interest to the remarks of the mover of the resolution in order to see behind the resolution as written what his detailed thinking was. Certainly an uncomplicated, surface glance at the resolution on the order paper is one that we over here could support.

We could support it from the aspect of the exclusive licences section in it, because we are against monopolies of any kind. Exclusive licences are one form of it. We are against monopolies in all other areas, including the food area. Here there are the supermarket areas, and the large companies such as Kraft cornering or almost cornering large sections of particular food products, and so on. So because we are unhappy with exclusive licences, long-term as they are, in context of the way the resolution is written, we could support the resolution.

We certainly are suspicious, as I’m sure the general public are, with exclusive contracts and how they are arrived at and so on. The situation as it exists on Highway 401 -- I’m very familiar with the Windsor to Toronto stretch of 401 -- is very unfortunate in at least two aspects.

One is that the government having set up this type of arrangement the public should be able to expect service at these service centres, be it oil products, mechanical repairs or food. I am sure we have all experienced -- at least those of us who have travel- led 401 to any degree -- developing some car trouble, going into one of these service centres and finding that our car will have to be towed to the nearest town in order that 15 minutes of mechanical work can be done on it. This was all because there was no pretence even of providing a mechanic at these so-called service centres in the car repair area.

If you wanted to buy a whole range of gasoline or car-related products they were there. But mechanical service was absolutely non-existent.

I can give you two instances. Both, I must admit, were after 7 o’clock at night, and maybe there is a cutoff time for service -- but there shouldn’t be. Both instances occurred in well-travelled seasons of the year and there was no licensed mechanic or anybody experienced much beyond putting the gas in your tank at service centres between Windsor and Toronto. Both cases resulted in having to be towed to the nearest town for what turned out to be rather uncomplicated adjustments. But they were ones which I wasn’t capable of making myself, nor was there anyone there who would even look at it to attempt to do it. That’s the kind of service, or lack of it, which should not be allowed to occur on these exclusive premises. It was a decision on the part of the government to have them there.

In the area of food, having travelled the Windsor to Toronto route very often I know at which overpasses to turn off to attend restaurants which I have found to be of decent quality with a large range on the menu. I am particularly disturbed -- not so much because of some of the individual items on the service centre menu, some of which are very good -- but because of the limitations of the menu. Again, not all of the service centre restaurant facilities have converted to self-service, although most have done so that I have encountered. When they convert to self-service, their menus become contracted. And it is almost an unappetizing experience to walk into the self-serve food centres that have grown up.

I am not sure what our policy should be at this point. The member for Scarborough Centre came close -- I am not sure whether he did or not do so completely -- but he came close to saying we should abandon the whole policy of these restaurants and remove them from the highways. Perhaps we are a little late to do that now. The mistake was made in the very beginning in allowing it.

However, looking at the situation, I rather fear what could grow up, which is four service stations at each turn-off. That to me is less aesthetically pleasing, certainly, than the service centres we have on the highway, which for all their lack of service in a mechanical or food line, at least are rather presentable looking.

Many of them it seems, have gone out of their way -- I don’t know whether it is a Transportation regulation or not -- to provide picnic areas at which anyone can pull in and eat his entire lunch or dinner should he have it with him. Is that a regulation? That’s a requirement. I am glad to see, at least, that requirement is stipulated.

I certainly agree with the member for Scarborough Centre that if these service centres are allowed to continue, there should be much tighter regulations and higher standards which they are required to live up to. I was quite intrigued by the comment of the member for Scarborough Centre, in reading from the regulations, that every improvement on the menu has to be approved by the minister. I would think it should read the reverse, to the effect that there should be very high standards and anything dropped from the menu must be approved by the minister.

I can see restaurant operators worrying about the bureaucracy involved in adding to or upgrading something in the menus of their restaurants. But certainly it should be the reverse situation with worry and concern when something is dropped from their menus.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t like the idea of these exclusive licences. I regret that we got into them in the first place. If they are to be continued I would hope that they would be of short term and not be of 25 years duration for either the service stations or the restaurants, and that they all be tendered, in fact, separately for a period of no more than perhaps three to five years. Certainly suggestions that other products be added to these sites, such as fruit stands in the appropriate season, provided they were again kept in good repair and appearance, would be an advantage.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Durham.

Mr. A. Carruthers (Durham): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share in this discussion, and in reading the resolution of the member for Scarborough Centre, I do not find it too difficult for any one to support a review by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications of its present policy and, no doubt, this policy is being reviewed at all times.

I think before we can really pass judgement on the present policy or ask for a special review, we should understand the present policy and the reason for its adoption. Under the present policy, of course, the government chooses the sites, and I think wisely so, Mr. Speaker, because this protects the local municipalities. I have two on-highway centres in my riding and four off-highway centres on the same Highway 401, but none of them really interfere with local service stations in the towns. In Bowmanville they are located fairly close, but the Flying Dutchman outlet has always been providing this service so the competition is keen but not too severe.

On the other hand, I do know that if you allowed service centres at every intersection you could make it very difficult for operators to do business economically. I think we have to protect these people from themselves to a degree. I have had a number of requests from private individuals to get into this field but, Mr. Speaker, it involves a capital outlay of between $3 and $4 million, and I don’t know how many individuals are in a position to invest that amount of risk capital in that type of a venture. That is one of the reasons, I believe, behind the ministry’s policy of inviting tenders for these centres. I think these centres were established -- perhaps there was a change of policy -- but I think they were established as a result of public demand.

I am just back from a 6,500-mile tour of the western part of the United States and the central states, and I have never found any centres that can compare with the service centres on Highway 401. I think we should be very proud of the service we are providing. Certainly it may not be up to the highest of standards, but on Highway 80 west from Chicago right through to the west coast you have to get well off the highway before you can find suitable restaurant facilities.

The government in choosing the sites must ensure that there are good sewage and water facilities available and this requires a great deal of research. Certainly regardless of who chooses that site there are going to have to be controls. The oil company or whoever undertakes the construction of one of these centres is responsible for all the construction. They are responsible for all the services and subject to government inspection and government control and I think that is good. We have to maintain our standards and I think that those centres, two of them in my own riding, set the standard for the other outlets at various other intersections.

These facilities are leased on a 25-year basis. I think it should be noted, Mr. Speaker, and it wasn’t pointed out before, that after the 25-year lease term is up these facilities become the property of the ministry or the government of the Province of Ontario. In that respect, as was pointed out by the member for Kent, the public is protected to a major degree.

The site having been chosen, the present policy is to invite tenders from the major oil companies because these are the people who, apparently up to this time, have the capital and are particularly interested in the field. They sublet the restaurant facilities to private operators. They are tendered on a percentage basis, with the government getting a percentage of the revenue. The highest tender on a percentage basis -- which is going to provide the greatest revenue to the government -- will no doubt get favourable consideration. That seems to be a sound policy to follow.

As I stated before the capital investment is between $3 and $4 million. Regardless of who operates these facilities, certainly they are going to have to be inspected and kept under government control at all times. No doubt the present policy adopted is due in no small part to the fact of inviting tenders. These are the only people who are in a position to invest that amount of capital. I would certainly, in any review of the present policy, suggest that some of the larger motel owners -- say Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson, I’m just talking off the top of my head now -- these people might also be interested in providing tenders. We might go as far as opening it up wide to the public, although I don’t know that the response from the general public would be very great. No doubt the thinking of the ministry from the time of the inception of this policy has been that it’s practical to invite tenders from those in the best position to provide capital.

I agree with the member for Scarborough Centre that perhaps the time is opportune for a review of the policy. As far as food is concerned -- and the member pointed this out -- 40 cents out of every dollar of the total revenue of each of these restaurants must be represented in food content. While he says this representation is fairly high, they still appear to be able to operate economically and make a profit. On that percentage basis, the food standards should be very high.

If we open the tenders to the general public those tenders are going to have to be examined carefully by some government body. Otherwise, we could have a great number of failures. I am of the firm opinion, that while the present policy appears to be adequate -- certainly it’s always open for review -- but in order to ensure financial responsibility and that experience and ability to operate these centres is available and in order to provide a high standard of service, government must play an important role in the operation of these outlets.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Mr. Speaker, I have a few brief remarks to make with regard to this resolution. In the last year’s estimates of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications we did discuss some matters with regard to service centres at that time.

I will not repeat that discussion at this time, Mr. Speaker. I am interested in the subject. And, of course, travelling a lot on Highway 401, I have had occasion when I’ve had to use the services of these centres. I did hear someone a few minutes ago mention that the service work done on a car was not too good. I’ve had only a couple of occasions when I’ve had to have tires and water hose replaced and had it done efficiently and I didn’t have any particular complaint about that. I would question whether you could have a licensed mechanic on duty 24 hours a day and whether the cost would merit it, I’m not sure -- maybe there would be some objection to the number of garages in any particular area. I would question whether that would be a good idea.

What I am concerned about is that we have service centres varying from 40 to 50 miles apart. Of course, in a number of other areas you’ll see signs for food and accommodation and so forth. One day I got a letter from the ministry with regard to having a food and fuel sign in one of the towns in my area. The guidelines the ministry used for it read like this:

“Our accommodations, food and fuel sign is erected when accommodations, and at least one of the other two services, are available in sufficient quantities, and the legend ‘accommodations’ is used where there are two or more enterprises offering overnight accommodations and where there are at least a total of 12 units available.”

And also gas must be available. So those signs are restricted to services of that type.

What I am concerned about is that I’ve had people say -- and one person in particular told me he was stopped on Highway 401 for 1 1/2 hours and couldn’t get anybody to stop. He stood beside his car for that length of time. Now, I’ve noticed in the US, in the State of Michigan, that in between cutoffs, gas stations, and so forth, they have what they call rest centres. I would think that we should have rest centres in between the present service centres. And I would class a rest centre as a place where you can drive in, get a drink of water, which has washroom facilities, perhaps a picnic table and a place to park your car. I noticed in Michigan a number of truckers would stop in there and maybe have a snooze for an hour or so. I was only in Michigan during the summer months when I stopped at some of these centres. I assume they are only open probably from May 1 to Oct. 1. They also have a telephone, so I think that would be an added service we could give to the travelling public.

It is pretty frustrating to be out on 401 when cars are going by you at 75 miles an hour, and no one wants to stop, to know just what to do. If you can have some other facilities a little closer together, even if there is only a telephone available, or something like that, or where somebody else might be stopped resting, you could get some assistance.

I think that is something we should be looking at, rather than having everything all at the one place, like now where the campgrounds and everything are all with the service centre. I would think that a campground should be built in between each service centre, so you wouldn’t have much more than 20 or 25 miles to go between each point in case you had some need to stop.

As far as food quality goes, I believe there is room for improvement in some of the centres, although coming in today I stopped -- and I suppose it depends on what is on the menu, but I got a bowl of soup, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, and it was $1.25, which would seem to me about the going rate of charge. And I might say it was very tasty.

Of course, at this time of the year, when there is more business, the centre is much more likely to have fresh supplies, so naturally the food is better. The problem is in the wintertime, about January, when there is only the odd car stopping. Maybe on the midnight shift I would think -- and I have never run a restaurant -- but it seems to me you would have to use frozen food and such things as that in order to be able to supply a meal. I don’t think you could keep fresh food. There is a disadvantage, when you have 24-hour service the year around, in operating these.

But what bothers me some is what perhaps we should have done in the first place. The government should have built the buildings and leased them out on a five-year basis, and then if we found that the lessees were not doing a good job, we could then cancel their lease and get someone else in. That is the advantage in owning it yourself. It would have meant some capital outlay, but I don’t know, when we have the highway there, it seems to me that we could have afforded to put in the buildings and provided the facilities, and then leased them out or rented them out.

I might say on these points that I have been discussing locating half-way between service centres, rest centres, these might be the ideal places for vegetable and fruit stands to be put in. It wouldn’t interfere then with the general business of the other centres.

In order to allow some other member to speak, Mr. Speaker, I will withdraw now.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Yorkview.

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Mr. Speaker, I too feel that the resolution is drawn in such a way that it is like motherhood, everyone is in favour of it. Certainly in a review of any policy anywhere there is always good and I think all of us agree that any government policy or any policy of any private company or anything of this nature would, or should, come in for periodic review. So that we are not going to quarrel, any of us I think, with the general attitude that that review should take place.

I would like to say this: In the travelling that I have done, and I used to do much more than I do now, I have found these centres along the highway a very great convenience. I think the second last member who spoke also expressed that fact. I think this is something which we ought to emphasize, even though we criticize some aspects of the operations. I think we have to recognize that it was good, sensible policy to put the service complexes along the high- way where people could simply pull off and get the kind of servicing, for motor car and for themselves, that they desire. That part of it I think is good -- that whole situation.

Perhaps the whole idea of getting the ideas of what each oil company might do, then in a sense, giving the highest bidder, the contract for building and operating these centres for a period of 25 years, was where we made a fundamental error. We were building highways and spending many millions of dollars per mile on these highways, and it seems to me there is no reason why we shouldn’t have had the foresight to incorporate these centres as a fundamental part of that highway. It just meant that instead of building 100 miles of highway, we were building 102 or 103 miles of highway, in terms of cost. Then our own department could have operated these service centres, and seen to it that provincial standards were maintained.

As far as winter service is concerned, I have had some quarrel with some of the centres -- but not all. One doesn’t expect the same kind of food service in the wintertime, although perhaps it should be quicker than in the summer, when there are great crowds coming and food can be bought in larger quantities and disposed of more quickly.

However, it seems to me that something might be done here in the way of signing at these service centres, simply telling people that the service is limited during the winter months, and if they want full hotel accommodation and meals in fancy restaurants, they simply drive on three or four miles and turn west or east, whatever it may be, off a certain highway to a small town and they will find hotel facilities there.

But I have also found that even the smaller hotels, the kind you find in the great many of the smaller towns, don’t have the winter service that they have in the summer, because they don’t have the same crowds coming through. This is not an easy answer to give. But the answer suggested by the hon. member who introduced the resolution, to perhaps do away with these and locate the service centres at the cloverleaf and to let private enterprise take them over entirely, seems to me to be a fallacy. Because I have not found that the service in those particular types of restaurants or service stations in the United States was at all superior to our own.

More than that, if we are going to locate two or three of these at a cloverleaf, then, in the wintertime particularly, the small number of customers will be divided two and three ways and the service probably will be at a lower level of efficiency than if all the customers had to come through the one gate and through the one service centre.

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the province itself can do a great deal in the future, as leases run out and as these come back into the property of the province, to do the kinds of things which some of us have outlined by the province itself taking over the operation of the facilities which are there and which will be in the public domain. More than that, as we plan new ones, I think we should integrate them into the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and make them part of the highways run by that ministry. I believe that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, in spite of all the propaganda, can do an efficient job in its own field and in this field too.

Mr. Speaker: The private members’ hour is now concluded.

Clerk of the House: Second order, House in committee of the whole.

LAND SPECULATION TAX ACT (CONTINUED)

House in committee on Bill 25, An Act to impose a Tax on Land in respect of certain speculative Transactions affecting the Control or Ownership of Land.

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