Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman: Yes. The member for Algoma.

Mr. Gilbertson: May I take the liberty to introduce a school from Wawa? There are 37 students from St. Joseph’s School in Wawa and Sister Anne Brotherton who is in charge -- also Mr. and Mrs. Rody and Frank Nicoletta, who are teachers, are with them.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS ACT, 1974 (CONCLUDED)

On section 38:

Mr. Chairman: At 6 o’clock, I believe section 38 was under discussion. Are there any further comments on that section? The member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Yes. I was asking the minister to explain what the timetable would be and when a person had to be resident in the municipality in order to qualify to vote in a new election or by-election which is referred to under this particular section.

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister without Portfolio): Mr. Chairman, the amendment before us is on a recommendation from the municipal liaison committee. It is to clarify the provisions related to the preparation of a voting list and the provision of the preliminary list of electors for a new election. The preliminary list must be subject to the provisions of the preparations of the list and other qualifications for regular elections.

We’re not making any changes or bringing in anything new in the way of elections, other than making sure that by-elections are subject to the qualifications of the regular election. We have now before us, in the Municipal Elections Act, a provision that unless a new preliminary list of electors has been furnished by the assessment commissioner prior to the holding of a new election, the polling list used at the last regular election shall be the preliminary list of electors to be used for the preparation of the polling list for a new election.

In addition to that, Mr. Chairman, the Act requires that such preliminary list of electors for a new election is to be subject to revision as if it were a preliminary list of electors under Section 24 of the Act. There is no provision to require a preliminary list of electors for a new election that is subject to all provisions of the Act concerning regular elections.

What we are trying to do is make sure that we have uniformity in regard to where you have a new election because of the death of a candidate. The qualification period at this time for an election would be the period of qualification for the last regular election, plus the period terminating or the Thursday after the polling day at which the new election was declared necessary owing to the shortage of candidates elected to office.

Under subclause 2 of the new subsection 4 of section 90 of the Act, for new elections to fill a vacancy resulting from a void election, the qualification period would be the period of qualification for the last regular election plus the period terminating on the date at which the court rules the election void.

Subclause 3 is for new elections or by-elections to fill other councils and school board vacancies. The qualification period would be the period of qualification for the last regular election plus the period terminating on the date of the passing of a bylaw requiring a by-election.

Subclause 4 for new elections held in the case of bylaws or questions submitted to the electors on the order of the OMB, the qualification period would be the qualification period for the last regular election plus the period terminating on the date that the OMB ordered.

Mr. Chairman, in answer to the member for Ottawa Centre, what we’re trying to do in this case is to ensure that the electors are aware that the same qualifications are necessary for a new election as applied to the regular elections. I believe this is a step in the right direction. It has been requested, as I mentioned, by the Municipal Liaison Committee plus the clerks, plus the people who administer the Act. I feel there is nothing out of order whatsoever, but if the member would like to enlarge on his views I would be happy to hear from him.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s fine. I appreciate the consultation that’s gone in. I trust the minister realizes that these things ultimately have to go through the scrutiny of the Legislature as well. They’re not a corporate kind of state yet --

Hon. Mr. Irvine: I hope not.

Mr. Cassidy: No, I hope not too. The last one of those that was in operation was in Italy back in 1943.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister how long -- in the case of a vacancy which occurs under the new subclause 3, which is the one which is probably best used as an example -- how long would it be between the date of the passing of the bylaw for an election and the actual holding of the election? What would be the period of delay or the period of interval in that case?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Chairman, I will have to ask my staff as to the actual time. I am not aware of it but I will find out for you. While we are doing that would you care to proceed?

Mr. Cassidy: Okay. Maybe we can get a figure in a minute. The reason I raised it once again, is that I am talking now for the record for the next revision of the Act, because I now know I have talked to deaf ears for this time.

If I can give an example of the ward that I used to represent in downtown Ottawa, the rate of turnover of people in that ward is anywhere between 20 to 35 per cent per annum; depending on the particular area of the ward one happens to be in. There is a very high level of transients, which is typical of areas of downtown Toronto as well.

It doesn’t mean that everybody there moves once every three years. It does mean, though, that there is a section of the population which is highly mobile. Often they move within a fairly limited area; that is they may come back three or four yeans later to the same street they lived on once before. But they do move from place to place.

In other cases they move into town and out of town; they have government jobs; they have foreign service jobs; their company sends them abroad; they go away to study; and that kind of thing. I have a suspicion that in this case in particular, the process of registering and to vote by certificate rather than putting them on the voters list through revisions, is going to be quite an inadequate one.

If you could imagine an election where people really got quite excited -- I know that doesn’t happen very often at by-elections -- but where people really wanted to get in to vote and where the by-election was held, say a year after the last municipal election, imagine the circumstances if in every poll as many as 20 per cent of those people voting were seeking to fill out the forms that were necessary and had to make their declaration in order to vote. The system would simply break down. Now I am really putting this on the record because I think the minister is going to have to change that at some future time. But perhaps his officials can give him that figure we are looking for as to the number of days which elapse between the calling of the by-election and the holding of the by-election. Have you got that now?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: We will endeavour to get that for you.

Mr. Cassidy: Pardon?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: We will endeavour to get that for you. I haven’t got it yet but they are working it out.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay. Can you give me an approximate time? Is it about 40 days or 45 days or 60 days?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: I would rather give you the figures exactly, if you don’t mind.

Mr. Cassidy: I see. Can they do an approximate figure then? I am not going to quibble over four or five days out of the way. I don’t really have any other questions about the procedure. Perhaps if the Chairman wants we could finish up the remaining sections.

Mr. Chairman: If the information requested isn’t vital to the amendments, we could probably pass them anyway.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 38, subject to that condition, stand as part of the bill?

Section 38 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any comments, questions or amendments on a later section of the bill?

If so which section?

Sections 39 to 43, inclusive, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Shall the bill as amended be reported.

Bill 65, as amended, reported.

Mr. Chairman: Now then, we’ll just get that bit of information.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Chairman, can we clarify something for myself and the staff? Are you talking about the time limits between the vacancy of an office and when it must be filled, or is the member talking about those who vote?

Mr. Cassidy: The Act refers in the new subclause 3 to the passing of the bylaw by the council. That is, as I recall, the bylaw declaring that the vacancy exists and calling the election.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: There is no time limit. I am sorry -- I misunderstood the member in the first instance. There is no time limit to that. The council can pass the bylaw when and if they see fit.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, but having passed the bylaw, how long does it then take to hold the election? What is the minimum time in which you can hold the election?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: I will have to get that. I have not got the Municipal Act with me and that is why I am asking my staff.

Mr. Chairman: Is that vital to this bill? Can the information be provided later to the hon. member? Will that suffice?

Mr. Cassidy: No, I am just putting this on the record for future reference, Mr. Chairman. But I would like to get the information and have it on the record before we close off on this bill.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: As the Municipal Act reads, Mr. Chairman, right now there is no specific day. It can be one month, two months, three months or more from the time of the bylaw, depending on each new municipality.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay, the point I want to make, simply then, is: Let’s assume that one month is about the minimum, I think that’s about the practical minimum that you can have given the fact that the nomination day is 21 days before election day. You obviously can be assured a period of 21 days if those provisions of the Act are to be followed.

The date for revision of the list is 31 days before the holding of the election; and you could theoretically have an election a year after the last election, using the preliminary list from the previous election and with no time permitted for revision at all.

In an area like mine, that would mean that 20 per cent or 25 per cent of the electorate would be effectively disfranchised, or have very great difficulty in getting the right to franchise because of the way in which the Act has been set up.

That’s the point I wanted to make on the record. I hope the minister and his staff look at that for the next time this bill comes forward, given the fact they refused to be at all flexible this time.

Hon. W. Newman moves the committee rise and report one bill with a certain amendment and ask for leave to sit again.

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: The committee begs to report one bill with a certain amendment and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

ONTARIO WATER RESOURCES ACT

Hon. Mr. W. Newman moves second reading of Bill 35, An Act to amend the Ontario Water Resources Act.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this bill carry? The hon. member for Waterloo North.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Not before we have a little discussion, Mr. Speaker.

This bill’s main purpose, of course, is to implement a transfer of responsibility from the ministry to the six regional offices across the province. In each of the six regional offices there shall be a director appointed by the minister. I suppose to simplify the explanation to some extent, we might consider there will be a “package unit” consisting of experts in all the environmental fields in each of the six regional offices.

Two of these offices, Mr. Speaker, are located in northern Ontario at Thunder Bay and Sudbury; there is one in eastern Ontario at Kingston; and the others are at Toronto, Hamilton and London.

As well as the six regional offices, at which location there will be a director in charge of the land, air and water aspects of environmental protection, there will be 23 district offices, I believe it is, located throughout the province, which I understand will have certain other provincial officers. I suppose some will be related to air management where the need is greatest for air management, some to water and some to land.

I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that great care has been taken to ensure a uniformity of enforcement by the six directors across the province, because the whole success of the enforcement of the Environmental Protection Act is going to bear very heavily upon the way in which the six directors look after their jobs across the province. The 23 district offices that will be established, I suppose, will supplement the work that’s done in the regional office.

I notice in my own region of west central Ontario that the main office will be in Hamilton, and there will be an office in Cambridge and another in Welland. I am not sure what aspects of environmental protection will be carried on in the smaller district offices, whether there will be air management personnel as well as water and waste management people, or whether it would just be air management in some. But it is interesting to note that the air management office is evidently going to be closed in the city of Waterloo and something opened in the city of Cambridge. We went through this a few years ago when the province took over assessment and moved the major assessment functions down to the city of Cambridge as well.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): What have they got that Kitchener hasn’t got?

Mr. Good: The responsibility given to these directors is very great, Mr. Speaker, and the powers the minister can give these directors are almost unlimited.

One thing that I don’t see mentioned in any of the Acts before us tonight -- although there are amendments in other Acts that deal with the same principle -- deals with decentralization. Perhaps there is provision in the long overdue and long awaited regulations under part 6 of the Environmental Protection Act.

Will the enforcement of noise regulations, if and when we ever get them, also be done on a district or regional basis? I would presume that eventually they will be, although up to now I can’t see anything in print that would indicate how this would be handled.

Some of the other matters dealt with in this bill, as well as the establishment of the directors in the six regions and the giving of powers to the directors, concern the method of financing. I understand that according to the bill there will be a change in the method of financing water and sewer projects across the province. It is a slightly different method from those works established before April 1, 1974, and those that would be established after April 1. New works will no longer be set up by borrowing on trust funds to be controlled as they were with the old OWRC. Everything will be handled through the Treasurer (Mr. White) and the consolidated revenue of the province. In other words, this one big pot of money which is controlled by the Treasurer with his unlimited borrowing powers through the Canada Pension Fund and all the other funds that we discussed last night under that bill, will now come into play; and the Treasurer will keep books for the financing of all the water and sewage projects across the province as well.

The employee liability is limited in another section of the bill, Mr. Speaker, so that while the liability of the Crown for acts done by the employees still exists, the employee himself is exempt from any legal liability if he has acted in good faith.

In that regard, provision is made to limit the liability of the minister when an employee in the course of his inspection or in the course of his duty causes damage. The bill previously provided that the Crown was liable for any damage or actual cost occasioned thereby. That’s the way the Environmental Protection Act read, and I presume the Water Resources Act was the same. Now that part is going to be eliminated so that the liability of the Crown for the acts of a provincial officer will revert to the liability that exists under the common law.

To me this would mean that as a person who has been affected by some act of a provincial officer, I would have to go through the proceedings of a suit against the Crown to be compensated for any damages. If that is the correct interpretation, I don’t think it is as good a system as we had before where the liability of the Crown was for any damages or actual costs occasioned by a provincial officer. I don’t think the onus should be on an individual to have to prove through a civil suit that he has received damages by an inspecting provincial officer. If my interpretation of that part is correct, I would be against that particular change.

Licensing will now be required for waterworks operators as well as sewage works operators. Mr. Speaker, there are also limited liabilities which come into effect where a minister or a director is subject to the liability of a false statement made by an employee. The offence is limited, so that it only applies to false statements knowingly made. That is fine, we accept that.

I am concerned about two things: First of all, that there should be a standardization of the functions of these six officers, because actually they are going to be responsible for the implementation of the Environmental Protection Act. We don’t want to see happen here what has happened across the province with the carrying out of the regulations under the private sewage section of the Environmental Protection Act. Up until now, and I hope the situation is being corrected, one medical officer of health has required what the medical officer in the next county wouldn’t allow. I would hope that there will be standardization of effectiveness across the province.

The minister must realize that he is still going to be responsible to answer to this Legislature for the way in which these directors carry out their duties in the various parts of the province. With that warning in mind, Mr. Speaker, we will support the bill as it reads and hope that the minister will answer the questions I put forward in my remarks.

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

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): We have examined the bill and find no objections, although the member for Riverdale has some comments to make on one point.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Mr. Speaker, I think I would prefer to make my comments by putting the bill into committee. I think this is the kind of bill where there are two or three matters, and one of particular interest to my colleague the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel), and that is the question that is raised by the immunity granted in section 30 of the bill, which, of course, is granted as well in a correlative section 27 of Bill 37, which we’ll undoubtedly be dealing with later on. I will ask when the bill is read the second time that it go into committee, and we will ask the two or three questions and deal with the questions arising under section 30 at that time.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any other members who wish to enter the debate? If not, the hon. minister.

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, regarding the uniformity of the organization, the whole idea of our decentralization of the ministry was to set up the regional offices on a standardized basis throughout the province. This is what we are heading for. Realizing, of course, that I have to answer for the regional offices throughout the province, we have had them in, we have discussed this, and we do have in each regional office an expert on air, water and soil who can be called upon so that we can get close to the people.

As far as the liability of the individual is concerned, we have had cases where individual inspectors have gone into plants to inspect them and there have been charges laid against them. So what we are doing in this bill, if I interpret it correctly, is we are taking the liability from an employee going into a plant, wherever it may be, and requesting it to shut down the particular operation for half an hour to take tests. We eliminate him from any liability but we don’t eliminate the Crown from the liability.

What we are really saying, in effect, is that some of our employees have had some very difficult times when they have gone into plants in the past and we want to make sure that they are properly protected so that they can go in without any fear of intimidation, and go in and do their job, as long as they do it in a proper manner and in accordance with the legislation.

I think that answers the two questions; and on the other questions that the member for Riverdale will raise, probably when we go into committee on it, he might want to raise some further items under certain sections.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: The bill, I understand, will go to committee of the whole? Committee of the whole House.

Agreed.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ACT

Hon. W. Newman moves second reading of Bill 37, An Act to amend the Environmental Protection Act, 1971.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

Mr. Good: This bill, Mr. Speaker, requires the same amendments to the Environmental Protection Act, so that the minister can set up the regional directors across the province, and many of the provisions are very similar, that is, dealing with the personal liability. This bill also contains a section which strikes out the words “and the Crown is liable for any damage or actual costs occasioned thereby,” and this relates to damage occasioned by a visit by a provincial officer to a plant.

Previously, the Crown was liable for any damage or actual costs occasioned by that particular officer’s actions within that plant. They want to strike that out and, according to the explanatory note in section 25, the only redress would be that it would revert to the liability that exists under common law, which I suppose could mean that damage would have to be proved and a civil suit would have to result. I suppose, first of all, you’d have to get permission to sue the Crown to recover damages. Previously, damages were automatically paid, under section 25, if they could be proved to have been incurred.

The other provisions, Mr. Speaker, are similar to the previous Act and we will support it. But I’d like to hear some further discussion on that particular aspect of this bill, which is section 25.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So far as this party is concerned, we have no intention of sending this bill into committee. That being the case, perhaps a little indulgence might be accorded with respect to several aspects that arise within the bill itself.

The appointment of the directors is reiterated in this far-flung piece of legislation. Subsection 2 of section 2 of the bill, though, would indicate that the minister is conferring upon himself the power to limit the authority of any particular director.

Is there any particular reason why that is embodied in the legislation? I would take it that the minister’s intention is to have precisely the same powers devolved upon each one of the directors, but has he perhaps some notion of what kind of limitations he might invoke in that particular section? Otherwise, why would you bring it into being at all, if they were to be all, pari passu, on an equal status?

The other area which I would like to mention -- and we’ll get into it far more deeply as we go through Bill 35 -- has to do with the personal liability sections -- no, I think on that particular one, Mr. Speaker, we probably can get the main points out as we go through on committee. This clause exactly duplicates the clause in the previous bill.

Turing to section 28 of this bill you say: “No person shall knowingly give false information in any application, return or statement made to the minister, a provincial officer or any employee of the ministry ... ”

That apparently wasn’t covered at a previous time. If the minister turns his attention to it in reply -- why did he feel that particular spelling out of what I thought was very well understood was needed? Why is that set out now in the legislation? Why does he feel it is so necessary?

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to participate? The hon. minister.

Hon. W. Newman: May I answer, in reverse order, the member for Lakeshore. Under section 28 we’ve added the word “knowingly” to the phrase “give false information,” because it is possible for someone to give a provincial officer wrong information --

Mr. Lawlor: Has it actually happened?

Hon. W. Newman: -- thinking it is correct. So we just said “knowingly” giving false information.

Mr. Lawlor: Has the ministry been given false information on some occasions?

Hon. W. Newman: As the courts will attest to, yes. So we said “knowingly give false information.”

The other part you asked about was section 2, subsection 2 -- limitation of authority of a director.

These limitations are on the region that he is in charge of. This is the limitation of the authority that we are referring to in section 2, subsection 2.

Mr. Lawlor: Is there different authority in different regions?

Hon. W. Newman: No. It is just to spell it out region by region.

The member for Waterloo North was asking about section 25 of the Act, and striking out “and the Crown is liable for any damage or actual costs occasioned thereby.” The reason for this being in here, although there has been some discussion about this, is that it may be necessary for one of our inspectors to go into some plant or industry and say: “I must shut down this part of your operation for an hour while we do some necessary testing.” It was possible, I suppose, that because we’ve shut them down for an hour, or half an hour, even in the line of duty, we could be sued. We feel that in order to do a fair job here in the Province of Ontario, we should be able to go into plants and deal with these particular problems. We don’t feel we should be liable when we need to do this for testing purposes.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 37. Shall the motion carry?

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

PESTICIDES ACT

Hon. W. Newman moves second reading of Bill 39, An Act to amend the Pesticides Act, 1973.

Mr. Good: Mr. Speaker, the provisions of the amendment to the Pesticides Act are similar to the provisions of the two previous bills. We have no additional comments and we will approve its passage.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: Yes, we simply wish to indicate to the House and to Hansard and to posterity, to all future generations, that we have read this particular bill, made note of it and find nothing that we wouldn’t have otherwise found objectionable in the previous bills.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. minister have any further comments?

Hon. W. Newman: No, no further comments. It’s pretty well self-explanatory.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 39, An Act to amend the Pesticides Act, 1973. Shall the motion carry?

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

THIRD READINGS

The following bills were given third reading upon motion:

Bill 37, An Act to amend the Environmental Protection Act, 1971.

Bill 39, An Act to amend the Pesticides Act, 1973.

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

ONTARIO WATER RESOURCES ACT

House in committee on Bill 35, An Act to amend the Ontario Water Resources Act.

Mr. Chairman: Any comments, questions or amendments on one of the sections before section 30?

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): The first section I would like to ask the minister to explain is section 1 of the bill and the redefinition of the term “cost,” as explained in the explanatory note, “to include financing charges after construction.”

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Certainly. Was the member asking me to explain the definition of cost?

Mr. Renwick: I would like an elaboration of the explanatory note which says “The definition of cost of a project under agreements entered into on or after April 1, 1974, is extended to include financing charges after construction.” I would like to know why the change is being made, what is the reason for it and any other information the minister can give us about it.

Hon. W. Newman: The reason for the change being made here, of course, is the reorganization. “The definition of cost of a project under agreements entered into or on after April 1, 1974, is extended to include financing charges after construction” -- and the financing charges will be blended in with the total capital cost of financing charges to be worked out on a quarterly payment.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): On a what? Quarterly?

Hon. W. Newman: The payments by the municipality, the financing charges and everything, will all be blended in together in one and will be payments made to the Treasurer (Mr. White), I think on a quarterly basis, as was the case before with the sinking fund procedure.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, it is not my intention to embarrass the minister and if he would rather write me the explanation at some future time, that would be fine. As I read the section, it doesn’t refer to financing charges after construction, it says: “The cost thereof as determined by the minister and includes interest during construction and such engineering fees and other charges and expenses in connection with construction as the minister may determine,” and then it goes on to explain about discounts, commissions and other charges and expenses.

This really is much more than the explanatory note states. It allows an enlargement of the cost to include whatever the minister determines can be included within the term “cost.” That seems to me to be a most unusual grant of authority and I don’t understand why the explanatory note refers to “financing charges after construction” when the definition of “cost” has no reference to financing charges after construction at all.

Hon. W. Newman: I think this definition gives more flexibility to the municipality and the ministry to work out whether the financing charges should or should not be included in the cost, but they can certainly, if so desired. This can be worked out between the municipality and the minister.

Mr. Good: I have one point, Mr. Chairman. Since all the financing is going to be done through the provincial Treasurer, what provision is made as to rate of interest? Before the fund was set up the claimants knew that it was going to take 40 years to retire the capital debt, after which the plant was supposedly written off and had fulfilled its usefulness over 40 years. It didn’t belong to the municipality effectively, because that was considered the life of the plant. But now that there is no formal agreement as far as setting up a sinking fund for retirement is concerned, what will be the actual financial procedure? Will it be figured out on an amortized capital cost arrangement? And how would the interest rate, for instance, be negotiated between the Treasurer and the municipality on entering into a capital project?

Hon. W. Newman: It is my understanding -- and I can be corrected on this -- we are using the provincial interest rate on these when we are building the project.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. W. Newman: At the time of negotiation with the municipality on the overall costing of it. We will be using the provincial rate of interest at that point in time.

Mr. Good: What does the minister mean? The rate that the government pays Canada Pension Plan funds or the rate paid to OMERS funds, or what is the provincial rate?

Hon. Mr. Newman: The rate we borrow money at. The rate that we pay for borrowing money.

Mr. Good: That is the point, the government pays different rates to different funds from which it borrows. It hasn’t done any public borrowing, but the rate at which you borrow from OMERS is different from the rates at which you borrow from the Canada Pension Plan fund. I’m just wondering how you establish it.

Hon. W. Newman: It’s the province’s average rate per calendar year.

Mr. Good: Average rate per calendar year. I see. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Shall this section stand as part of the bill then?

Section 1 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any comments, questions or amendments on a later section of the bill?

On section 5:

Mr. Renwick: On section 5, I know the minister has referred to the decentralization of the ministry and the appointment of directors in various areas. But of course that isn’t stated in section 5 of the bill, which enacts the new section 8 of the Act.

If there is a principle in the bill this is one of the major ones. The clause pretty much gives the minister the authority to do whatever he wants in respect of the appointment of directors, both in terms of geographical allocation and of duties and responsibilities with respect to the Act.

I would like the minister to tell me -- not his advisers -- how he sees the reorganization of the ministry to provide for the appointment of the various directors. Presumably they are all in effect already, so it’s a matter of describing them to us, because I notice that the last section of the Act but one, section 36, provides very clearly that whatever has been done since April 1, 1974, shall be deemed to have been done under this Act as amended.

Let me have a clear statement from the minister as to what he wants to achieve by this reorganization, given that the language of new section 8 is capable of interpretation of any kind. He can appoint one director. He can appoint 40 directors. He can limit them geographically. He can limit them in terms of their responsibilities and duties. He can do anything he wants.

We don’t mind granting such vast authority to a minister, particularly a minister such as himself with his immense integrity, but I think that the record should show a clear statement by him, as minister, of what he is trying to achieve by this section of the bill.

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Chairman, what we’re trying to achieve by this reorganization of the ministry into the various regions of the province is to have a regional director in each region who will have the authority to fully carry out the functions that were originally carried out here in Toronto. In other words, he will have experts in the field under his direction and they will be able, at that regional office, to carry out the same functions that were carried out in Toronto before.

Mr. Good: Pollution abatement programmes and stop orders?

Hon. W. Newman: That’s right. The regional director will have the right to move into an area where there are problems. Rather than to have to come back through Toronto, he will have the authority with his staff there. If there is an abatement programme needed in that region, he will have the authority to do it. He will have the authority to issue stop orders. He will have the overall authority to make sure that things are working well in that area.

When a problem arises -- and this is something we will be getting into later on in the year when we get out of here -- we want to acquaint the members with the regional offices -- not so much the ones in Toronto, since they know where they are, but the other regional offices -- so they will know exactly what facilities are there and available for them.

Each regional office really will be a self-contained unit that will be able to deal specifically with matters in that region and not have to be coming back here. Mind you, I will have the ultimate responsibility to answer for their actions, but in each region of the province the authority will be there to carry out all the programmes that are now being carried out within the ministry.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, I accept what the minister says at its face value. My only comment is that I really don’t understand why new section 8 of the Act doesn’t say that. There’s not one word about appointing regional directors. It means that the province is being divided up into various regions and the minister has a director for each region; the directors are then responsible to the minister and the minister accepts overall responsibility. The bill doesn’t say that.

Earlier this afternoon, we had the same kind of situation under the Municipal Elections Act, which referred to something called “gross and manifest errors”. The minister didn’t know what “gross and manifest errors” meant.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): He should. He perpetrates them every day.

Mr. Renwick: When we questioned him he explained to us what he intended and we thought it was within the bounds of the English language to describe accurately what you want.

The minister says you want to decentralize the ministry by appointing regional directors with authority and responsibility to deal with the problems subject to the overall responsibility of the minister. But we are asked to pass a bill which says:

“The minister shall appoint in writing such employees of the ministry as he considers necessary as directors in respect of such sections of this Act and in respect of such of the regulations or sections thereof as are set out in the appointments.

“(2) The minister, in an appointment pursuant to subsection 1, may limit the authority of a director in such manner as the minister considers necessary or advisable.”

I simply defy anybody reading that section of the bill to come to the conclusion that what the minister is doing is appointing regional directors. If some other member of the Legislature believes that’s what that section means, I would like him to explain it to me.

Mr. Good: They have already done it. That is the only section they can find. They have given --

Mr. Renwick: This is the section because all the explanatory note says is “Explanatory. Complementary to new section 8 of the Act.”

If you want to appoint regional directors why don’t you say that? Why don’t you say, “The minister shall appoint in writing such employees of the ministry as he considers necessary as regional directors with respect to the various regions of the province”? It defeats me how legislative draftsmen can come up with language such as that to reflect the very clear and simple statement which the minister made as to the purpose of the bill.

I’m just expressing my frustration and exasperation about the kind of legislation, the unclear kind of legislative draftsmanship, which we are being faced with in bill after bill in this assembly.

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your comments. Not being one of the legal profession myself I think I’ve spelled out clearly that we want some flexibility in the Act when dealing with the directors.

Mr. Renwick: I think as a lawyer, if I may say so, Mr. Minister, that you don’t have any authority to appoint regional directors under that section. I think it is that bad. I’m not taking it to court -- I’ve more to do with my time -- I simply say that a ministry such as yours can’t afford inaccuracy on what you are about.

We have enough trouble with the statutes of this minister already without being faced with perpetuating this kind of ambiguity in the statute.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 5 stand as part of the bill?

Mr. Good: One further question on that particular section: Can the minister tell me what authority the director would have in regard to his relationship with the medical officers of health responsible for the private sewage installations in the area with whom the ministry has made agreements to carry on the work, say, over a three- or five- or 10-year period? Will there be anything other than supervision or professional help? Or, under your agreements with the regional health officers, is their power supreme even over the director as it relates to private sewage?

Hon. W. Newman: We are talking now about part 7 of the Environmental Protection Act but I will be glad to answer your question. Part 7 of the Environmental Protection Act became --

Mr. Good: I’m talking about the directors. Do they have any power over them?

Hon. W. Newman: The regulations which have been passed throughout the Province of Ontario under part 7 of the Environmental Protection Act, of course, will be monitored by our regional and district staffs to make sure we have a standard arrangement. In the meantime, we have agreements with the health units to carry on the service under the regulations set out by the province under part 7.

Mr. Good: Would the minister answer my question directly? Will the regional directors have ultimate authority over the health officers in charge of carrying out part 7 of the Act?

Hon. W. Newman: Are you talking about long term?

Mr. Good: Yes.

Hon. W. Newman: Or short term? At the present time we have agreements with most of the health units in the Province of Ontario to carry on the service carried out under part 7 of the Act.

There are cases in which we have been offering a service from our regional offices to help them out with some of the problems they have. The one service the health units cannot carry out at this point of time and which must be done by our staff is the new aerobic system which was approved by the ministry, I believe, about a year and a half ago. We insist on looking at those installations until there is sufficient staff trained to deal with those particular systems.

Mr. Good: You still didn’t answer my question of whether the director has ultimate authority over the regional health officer. That’s what I want to know. Does he or doesn’t he?

Hon. W. Newman: Yes, under part 7 of the Act; they will be carrying out our part 7 of the Act. That is correct; the MOH will. If there is a problem I guess it will go to our regional district office to be dealt with.

Mr. Good: The regional director then would deal with complaints in various areas with the medical health officer?

Hon. W. Newman: Yes, and they do. We have been working and co-operating together very well.

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister a question with regard to issuing permits for septic tanks. Will that come under your director in the region in which he is located?

Hon. W. Newman: At the present time, we are asking the health units to carry on, on an interim basis. We are prepared to make long-term agreements with the health units or the county council, whichever they want to do. We feel that eventually -- and we are looking ahead perhaps three years -- it should be the responsibility of the elected representatives in the county or the region or whatever it may be. They should decide where they want this responsibility to lie, whether they take it on themselves, whether they want the health units to do it or whether they would like the Ministry of the Environment to do it.

But we are prepared to enter into agreements at the present time, and have been with various health units, to carry on the service for various periods of time. They are doing a good job and they are operating under our regulations.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 5 then stand as part of the bill?

Section 5 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any comments, questions or amendments on a later section?

Which section?

Mr. Lawlor: Section 9, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Anything before section 9? The member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask the hon. minister to perform a function that I am sure he has never in his born life performed before. I wish the minister to become the Ariadne to my Theseus. I would ask the --

Mr. Renwick: If there is one minister who understands that it is the Minister of the Environment.

Mr. Lawlor: As the Minister of the Environment well knows, Ariadne supplied a thread to Theseus in order to get out of the Minotaur’s clutches in the labyrinth in Crete several years ago. And I am in the same labyrinth --

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): This government was in power then too, wasn’t it?

Mr. Lawlor: We are as much in a labyrinth now as they were then.

Mr. Good: That is all a myth anyway.

Mr. Lawlor: I am so lost in the interstices of your precious legislation.

If you take 9 -- and it refers to subsection 1 of section 20 as amended. That’s probably the most labyrinthine, Minotaurish, purblind amendment that we’ve ever had. Take a look at it some day. Section 70 extends over half the Revised Statutes of Ontario in the year 1971. What I am trying to do is perhaps half a dozen things, but the first one is to locate where in the 1971 amendment under section 70, to which reference is made here --

Mr. Breithaupt: It is 1972.

Mr. Lawlor: As I read it in that particular legislation, subsection 3 of section 70 has nothing whatsoever to do with this -- there is no such wording. That’s No. 1. I’m sorry, I’ve got a different No. 1 now.

Mr. Breithaupt: Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, that is because the reference is to 1972 and not to 1971.

Mr. Lawlor: Well, that helps. I am dealing with 1972, if the hon. member would only listen --

Mr. Breithaupt: No, you said 1971.

Mr. Lawlor: -- to the roar of the --

Mr. Breithaupt: You referred to 1971.

Mr. Lawlor: It’s 1972 I am on. Let’s not get waylaid. No more Liberal tricks. No more double dealing. No more playing around in equivocations such as we have had to put up with --

Mr. Breithaupt: You have only got four members so you can’t force a vote.

Mr. Lawlor: -- since the inception of this House. You’ve been raising one nitpicking point after another, reversing yourself --

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): For Heaven’s sake, they never double deal. But I won’t talk about the bottom of the deck.

Mr. Lawlor: Your image, your credibility to the New Democratic Party is failing slightly. Maybe it will get out to the public of Ontario too. So --

Mr. Breithaupt: Not likely.

Mr. Lawlor: -- Breithaupt, don’t seek to correct me on these occasions. I know I am wrong.

An hon. member: He enjoys it.

Mr. Lawlor: Where in section 70 of the 1972 chapter 1 amendments does this clause appear? If you look at section 20 I can see no remote relationship to the factors involved here having to do with the common law -- the resort to the common law in order to take a petition of right proceeding against the Crown.

As I read section 20, beginning in the 1970 statutes -- ignoring for the moment the 1972; as I say, I can’t find its interrelationship -- it is simply a section that gives “the commission, its employees and agents” the right at any time for its purposes, and “without consent and without compensation,” to enter into lands and buildings. It is a search provision. In subsection 2 it says:

“The commission and its employees and agents may for its purposes, without consent and without compensation, lay, maintain, repair, alter or replace such pipes and appurtenances thereto.”

All these clauses have to do with entry upon lands and the safeguarding of the Crown, in this particular regard, from liability. And so, not to prolong the agony, I would ask the minister to precisely designate for me the justification for section 20.

Secondly, where is section 20 amended in the 1972 statute? I can see amendments to every other conceivable section all the way through, but I can see no reference at all to section 20, as amended. Where is this done?

Thirdly, if it is done, then does the clause in question, where some alteration is made, have a direct reference to subsection 3, as you set out here?

I have never caught out during the period of my time in this House, try as I may, the legislative draftsmen for the eternal references of this kind. Therefore, like banking, I find that my account is short. I say it simply must be me.

It is a sense of high maturity and responsibility when you go in and find your bank account short and know that it can’t possibly be anybody but yourself. To try and blame it on the bank by way of error, of course, would be quite beside the point. When I have ever attempted to do that, I have always found that I am wrong and they are right. No doubt Mr. Alcombrack and crew are right in this particular situation. But prove it to me, please.

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Chairman, you have left me somewhat confused here, but I am going to read this to you so that you will understand. I will read what is in the present Act and I am going to read what is in the revised Act, and my interpretation of it as given to me by legal experts. Under the present Act it says:

“The minister and his employees and agents may at any time for his purposes, without consent and without compensation, enter in the lands or buildings of the province or of any municipality or of any person, or into any highway or road under the jurisdiction and control of any public authority, or into any boat or ship to which the regulations under clause n of subsection 1 of section 62 apply, and may make such surveys, examinations, investigations, inspections or other arrangements as he considers necessary, and, except as provided in subsection 3, the Crown’s liability for any damage occasioned thereby. RSO 1970, chapter 332, section 20, subsection 1, 1972, clause 1, subsection 72 and 73.”

All we have changed in the revised Act is that we have crossed out the words: “and, except as provided in subsection 3, for the Crown’s liability for any damage occasioned thereby.”

Now, the explanation that I have for this, if I might just read it to you -- because I was a little bit confused -- is as follows:

“Section 20(1) in the Act authorizes the minister and his employees and agents to enter lands or buildings to make examinations and investigations. Under the amendment the liability of the Crown for the acts of the minister, his employees and agents will revert to the liability that exists under the common law [namely for trespass, negligence or exceeding authority]. Section 20(3) of the Act requires the restoration of any lands or buildings that are disturbed by the exercise of the powers in section 20(1) of the Act.”

What it means is that if we go in and do some work in an area, the way I understand it is that we must go back and restore it. If we have to dig up some property and do some restoration work, we must do it. But as to the first part, the liability of the Crown is under common law.

Mr. Lawlor: That is fairly helpful. Really, what the minister is saying, as I read it, is that the wording as amended by the Statutes of Ontario, 1972, chapter 1 section 70, is redundant because the draftsman has been putting that particular phrase or clause in all the way through the legislation. By way of repetition, his mind having got into a groove, hiccoughing at the same syllables, he puts it in here and it’s not necessary.

But if it isn’t necessary, why does he put in that wording at the end of section 9 in the amendment of 1972? Because I think he will agree with me that there is no reference in the amendments of 1972 to section 20, subsection 1 or 3 in regard to this particular legislation.

Isn’t he overdrafting, if we can put it that way? Again I’m back to my banker. One does this overdrafting once in a while, but it’s not very common to find it in legislation.

Hon. W. Newman: May I just find out what it is the member wants to know? Then I will be back on the last part of section 9 if the member wants to go on to another section for a moment.

Mr. Good: That will just add to the confusion, Pat.

Mr. Chairman: Is there any further information on section 9?

Hon. W. Newman: Apparently under the Government Reorganization Act the word “commission” has been removed and the word “ministry” has been put in its place. That’s my interpretation.

Mr. Lawlor: Oh, that is a horrendous thing.

Mr. Good: Government Reorganization Act?

Mr. Lawlor: Thanks, Ariadne. That’s very nice of you tonight.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 9 stand as part of the bill? Section 9 agreed to.

Mr. C. E. McIlveen (Oshawa): Where did the member get that Ariadne?

Mr. Lawlor: When I was at school there was a funny story about it.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any further comments, questions or amendments on a later section of the bill then?

Mr. Renwick: Section 21.

Mr. Chairman: Is there anything before 21?

The member for Riverdale on 21.

Sections 10 to 20, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 21:

Mr. Renwick: I take it that probably the conundrum of the redefinition of cost in section 1 which we dealt with a little while ago -- and which I didn’t understand despite the minister’s explanation -- is related to project agreements entered into after April 1, 1974, where section 21 deals with those project agreements entered into before April 1, 1974.

As I understand it, the financing of projects entered into before that date is restricted, so far as financing costs are concerned, to the question of whatever the sinking fund base is that is established by the debenture. The real change in the definition of costs relates to getting away from a sinking fund-only basis for debenture issue to other kinds of financing by way of debentures.

I don’t know whether I’m right and I don’t really know whether my thinking about it is all that important, but it does seem to me that section 21 and the correlative section, section 22, are related somehow or other to the kind of financing charges which can be charged in as costs of projects with respect to agreements entered into before April 1, 1974.

Hon. W. Newman: The way I understand section 21, the amendments limit the financing of projects under sinking fund methods to those prior to April 1, 1974. After April 1, it will be done on the other basis of the financing we were talking about earlier.

Mr. Renwick: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Does section 21 then stand as part of the bill?

Mr. Good: I have a question, Mr. Chairman. In the reorganization of the financing sections under this bill for water and sewer works, is there any change in government policy as it relates to the amount of the project that would be paid for by the government in the form of a grant? I believe the policy is now that the government would subsidize to the extent that no one would pay more than $120 a year for water, I think, and $130 for sewage; or something of that nature. Has there been any change in that principle of your financial arrangements?

Hon. W. Newman: No, the subsidy arrangements have not been changed. We still have up to a maximum of 75 per cent, or $120 for water and $130 for a sewer connection. There’s been no change in that.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 21 stand as part of the bill?

Section 21 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Did the hon. member for Riverdale mention 22?

Mr. Renwick: No, 25, 26 and 27.

Mr. Chairman: Anything before 25 then?

Sections 22 to 24, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 25:

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Riverdale.

Mr. Renwick: Would the minister let us have for the record the explanation given to him or available to him as to the significance of the accounting change, with respect to the consolidated revenue fund, reflected in section 25 and in the subsequent sections 26 and 27?

I don’t purport to understand them, but presumably certain reserve funds and debt retirement funds are going to be abolished and a newly designated reserve account in the consolidated revenue account is to be designated for the same purposes but to provide the minister with some considerable degree of authority as to how he allocates the moneys and the use of the moneys credited to that account.

Hon. W. Newman: Actually we will still keep the books in the ministry on what is owed and what is not owed. The payments will be made directly through the Treasurer and out of the treasury.

To explain section 25, the basis of this amendment is the principle that moneys received under project agreements for the purpose of reserve accounts shall be deposited in a consolidated account in the consolidated revenue fund with the Treasurer, rather than the minister, in a bank trust account. The Treasurer shall determine the interest, if applicable, to such consolidated account, which I touched on earlier. The minister shall continue to keep the accounts for the reserve account purpose so as to show all debits and credits in respect thereof.

The principle of these amendments is to set up a consolidated account in the consolidated revenue fund under the control of the Treasurer to replace the Ontario water resources debt retirement account which was under the control of an investment committee. The consolidated account is to be accredited with amounts received from the municipalities under project agreements entered into before April 1, 1974, on account of debt retirement and the interest. This will be transferred to the Treasurer.

Does that explain it to you?

Mr. Renwick: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Shall these sections then stand as part of the bill?

Sections 25 to 27, inclusive, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any further comment, question or amendment on any section?

Mr. Renwick: I would like an explanation of section 28.

Mr. Chairman: Section 28.

On section 28:

Mr. Renwick: The plumbing section.

Mr. Lawlor: What’s that plumbing section all about? We don’t want any plumbers in this province.

Hon. W. Newman: The explanation for section 28 of the bill is:

“The amendment provides that the minister will determine the changes that may be necessary in standards of the Canadian Standards Association with respect to plumbing when they are adopted in the regulations.”

The minister will be the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations with the change of the administration of plumbing to that ministry. He will actually be carrying out the enforcement of that work.

Does that explain it?

Mr. Chairman: Shall this section stand as part of the bill then?

Section 28 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Next section?

Section 29 agreed to.

On section 30:

Mr. Chairman: Section 30; all right, the hon. member for Riverdale.

Mr. Renwick: My remarks on section 30 will apply equally well -- or at least the explanation I obtain from the minister will apply equally well, I presume -- to section 27 of Bill 37, which has already passed third reading, but which restates this.

Up to now, of course, I’ve been speaking about matters of which I’m knowledgeable. I’m now going to speak on a matter about which I’m not knowledgeable because the only information I have about it is from my colleague, the hon. member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel), who is engaged this evening, in the standing committee on social development with the estimates of the Ministry of Community and Social Services and cannot be here.

He tells me he understands the reason for the amendment of this section is the Ross Mackenzie case, which was before the deputy minister for a hearing. There were various allegations made with respect to bribery, or alleged offers of bribes, in connection with certain functioning of the ministry. As I understand it, the basic allegation was that Mr. Belyea was asked to move and did move the testing point from Happy Valley further away to Valley East and upwind so that it was not possible to ever get a reading that would be adverse to the International Nickel Co. at that time. My colleague from Sudbury East tells me that to the extent that he knows about, a Mr. Gagnon is now the person who has replaced Ross Mackenzie. Mr. Gagnon, as is the custom of the ministry, had a former association with International Nickel Co.

I take the drift of what my colleague is saying to be that to the extent that you extend this kind of immunity, which is what it is in law, to employees and officers of your ministry, it will mean that a Ross Mackenzie situation can never ever happen again. I think my colleague’s concern is that perhaps the Ross Mackenzie situation indicated quite clearly that there should be some method by which this kind of behaviour by members of the ministry could be controlled. We could have some method to require them to be cautious and concerned about the way they exercise their authority, rather than to be given in advance this grant of immunity.

The grant of immunity is a fairly common term in the United States -- it’s not particularly common in Canada. To exonerate employees of the ministry in advance by this grant of immunity seemed to my colleague to run contrary to the public purpose that might very well have been served by the necessity of the charges which were laid. Whether they were supported or not raises very serious questions about the kind of hearing that was held within the ministry.

Will the minister advise me whether or not my colleague is correct in indicating that this change is because of that particular problem? If so, what is the explanation for bringing in this amendment at this time and what specifically does it accomplish?

Hon. W. Newman: May I assure you that my interpretation of it is that we are trying to protect our employees, wherever they may be working, from harassment. This can happen. They have been threatened many times and we want to protect our employees from harassment. As we say in the Act, they must still act in good faith in doing their job, and if they don’t they don’t get any immunity. If they are acting in good faith when they go into a plant and do their inspection work, this protects them.

The environmental hearing board protects employees of the ministry and Crown employees who act under direction from personal liability, which does not of course prevent actions against the Crown.

As long as they are acting in good faith, which it says earlier on in the Act, we are saying that our employees should not be harassed and should be allowed to go about doing their job within the various plants. We have had some experiences where staff have had a certain amount of harassment; I don’t think it’s fair to ask staff to go through that. I think if anybody had to answer for it, the liability is on the Crown and us at the ministry. But to my knowledge it was to stop any harassment of employees. This is the main purpose of this.

Mr. Renwick: Then has this anything to do with the Ross Mackenzie case?

Hon. W. Newman: No.

Mr. Renwick: Nothing whatsoever?

Hon. W. Newman: No.

Mr. Renwick: What was the specific situation which led you to bring it in at this particular point in time? Were there specific instances of harassment that led your ministry to believe they had to have this protection, or is it just some sort of generalized view that you have about it?

Hon. W. Newman: We actually had cases of charges being laid against some of our staff.

Mr. Renwick: Can you give us examples of the kind of charges which have been laid?

Hon. W. Newman: I can in a second, if you would just let me --

Mr. Renwick: We would like to have them.

Hon. W. Newman: I will give you a good example. The head of our waste management branch, Mr. Wes Williamson -- I am not sure I have got these just right, because I get legal terms that I am not that clear about -- because he issued a permit for a sanitary landfill site which really allowed garbage to go into the site, he was charged for issuing a permit for allowing a contaminate to go into a sanitary landfill site. That is one example; and I think we have one other example. Do you want the other example?

Mr. Renwick: If you could; I think it is interesting to have them available.

Hon. W. Newman: Sure, I think maybe I can get it for you here.

Mr. Renwick: Thank you.

Mr. Good: You guys are really grasping at straws.

Mr. Renwick: Pardon me. What did you say?

Hon. W. Newman: Apparently there is a letter from a company, and I wouldn’t like to mention the company, which inferred that there would be certain charges laid against certain employees if we did certain things. I am not just too sure of the details of it. The idea was to protect our employees. They have had some rough times in some of the plants, from time to time, when they go in.

Mr. Renwick: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Shall this section stand as part of the bill then; section 30?

Mr. Lawlor: I was wondering about your people who had been actually placed under the terms of the Petty Trespass Act, as a result of their going into plants, etc. You have given one instance. Have you any instances of the Criminal Code actually being utilized with respect to, say, trespass? Secondly, have you under civil law been actually sued in any court for any damages, such as for the loss of time or for the loss of material, or in any other way arising out of stopping certain operations?

Hon. W. Newman: I can’t actually tell the hon. member for Lakeshore for sure whether there were any bills sent to us for damages. I believe there have been, but I just can’t give you the specific instances where this has happened because we have walked in and suggested they shut down their plant for half an hour. Most industries co-operate. They have billed us but they haven’t sued us, I am told.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 30 --

Mr. Lawlor: I take it that the legislation is not retroactive, so that if they sue you tomorrow -- or perhaps in a day or two, after the proclamation of the legislation -- they will be just out of court.

I do believe you do need this clause in this kind of section in your legislation. I would just like to place on the record what you are actually trying to do, though. Under the general rule, if the servant of the Crown, either through malfeasance or misfeasance, performs an act, then that reflects back upon the Crown and is taken in an agency relation as the act of the Crown herself, or of the government itself, acting in a judicial capacity. And therefore they bear the full brunt.

In order to get around that -- and for many centuries you were not able to do that at all; you weren’t able to take an action against His or Her Majesty in the right of the province, or in any other right for that matter. Only by gradual accretions, and in the last 20 years mostly, has it been possible. Because up to that time if somebody petitioned to sue the Province of Ontario, the province had the right, the final authority, as to whether or not they wished to be sued or not in that particular context; and generally turned thumbs down upon any proceedings.

With the McRuer thing coming into effect, we have got a new piece of legislation onto the books which made the Crown as liable as anybody else, just like any other citizen, by and large, with respect to its various acts which caused harm in the community to other people. In order to take your servants of this particular ministry back out of the statute again, and so that their actions won’t reflect upon you to bear the full burden of those acts, you have had to make amendments in section 30, which are somewhat interesting.

In subsection 2 you do have to avert to section 5 of the Proceedings Against the Crown Act, which simply says in subsection 1: “That the Crown is subject to all liabilities in tort to which if it were a person of full age and capacity it would be subject: (a) In respect to ... ” -- and then a whole series of various. Then in subsection you say:

“No proceedings shall be brought against the Crown under clause (a) of subsection 1 in respect of an act or omission of a servant or agent of the Crown, unless proceedings in tort in respect of such act or omission may be brought against that servant or agent or his personal representative.”

In other words, the very act of the agent, performed in his personal capacity, must redound back upon the Crown. If he can be sued in his personal rights then also, and only also, can the Crown be sued. In this situation you say your agents are not to be the direct subject of either prosecution or of civil liability in tort. In this particular regard then, you have to circumvent the subsection which I just finished reading while at the same time retaining your own personal liability in right of the province. The same kind of thing, curiously, appears in subsection 4.

“In proceeding against the Crown under this section, an enactment that negatives or limits the liability of the servant of the Crown, [precisely what you are seeking to do in section 30] in respect of a tort committed by that servant, applies in relation to the Crown as it would have applied in relation to that servant, if the proceedings against the Crown had been proceedings against that servant.”

So the servant having been exculpated or rendered immunized, the negativity which is mentioned in the section -- the very word used -- would apply equally to the Crown, unless you came round by the back door and reimposed liability on the Crown in a different way.

That is fine. But I would like you to tie that in with section 9. Why, under that context then, do you have to revert to common law? Or do you, as somebody who has been injured in this particular regard wants you to take proceedings, not against the servant but against the Crown itself?

Mr. Chairman: Shall this section then stand as part of the bill?

Mr. Lawlor: I am waiting for an answer.

Hon. W. Newman: I’ll try to answer the hon. member for Lakeshore. Employees still, even though they have this immunity, must act in good faith when they go in or they don’t get this immunity. I think that was spelled out in the legislation earlier on. They must act in good faith when they go into the plant.

An hon. member: That’s right.

Mr. Lawlor: The question I asked was does this section mean that there is a reversion to common law liability under this section as well as section 9, or not?

Hon. Mr. Newman: No, it doesn’t under this section.

Mr. Lawlor: It is statutory liability; okay.

Mr. Chairman: Shall this section stand as part of the bill?

Section 30 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any comments, questions or amendments on any later section of the bill?

Sections 31 to 34, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 35:

Mr. Good: Under section 35, when a person or municipality is refused a licence or permit -- and in this case the refusal would be by the regional director -- and the appeal provides for a hearing before the environmental appeal board, and it then names the persons who can be party to the hearing, is this appeal procedure similar to what it was previously except that the director is substituted for the ministry?

Hon. W. Newman: Exactly the same as before, only it is crossing out the words “assistant deputy minister,” and putting the word “director” in; otherwise, exactly the same.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 35 then stand as part of the bill?

Sections 35 to 38, inclusive, agreed to.

Bill 35 reported.

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 begs to report one bill without amendment and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 35, An Act to amend the Ontario Water Resources Act.

Clerk of the House: The 22nd order; concurrence in supply for the Ministry of Natural Resources.

CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Resolution concurred in.

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 65, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act, 1972.

MILK ACT

Hon. Mr. Stewart moves second reading of Bill 6, An Act to amend the Milk Act.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Mr. Speaker, we support this bill. Actually, there are two principles, I guess, contained in the legislation. One deals with the right of the commission to collect on behalf of the farmer where a plant has underpaid.

As I understand it, back a while ago, there was some doubt as to whether the commission had the power to actually collect on behalf of a farmer. I think back in 1970 an amendment was made to the Act giving the commission the power to collect on behalf of the farmer without going to court. When the consolidation took place, this particular item was overlooked, and it ended up that the commission had no power to order payment on behalf of farmers, so this is re-establishing that power, as I understand it.

We would certainly support that concept. The other matter dealt with in the bill is that of bringing into line the powers of field men when the regulatory functions of the commission were transferred to the milk industry branch. It now means that the field man of the milk industry branch is on the same basis as a field man was when he was working for the commission. I think that is certainly sensible and good practice. The branch that licenses the plants should be able to inspect them in its own right. So we support the bill and the two principles contained therein.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Riverdale.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): My colleague, the member for York South (Mr. MacDonald), who is the critic of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, has advised us that in his view we should support the bill, and that --

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): He checked in by telegram.

Mr. Renwick: -- the amendments, particularly the amendment in section 2, is a necessary additional authority.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. minister have any comments?

The motion, then, is for second reading of Bill 6. Shall the motion carry?

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading upon motion.

Bill 6, An Act to amend the Milk Act.

HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Handleman moves second reading of Bill 63, An Act to amend the Housing Development Act.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) who is in committee, perhaps I could make a few brief remarks with respect to this bill.

Apparently our critic was of the view that section 4(9) of this bill does give the minister substantial powers where the Lieutenant Governor in Council can in effect authorize the power to expedite the development of various kinds of projects.

It is interesting to inquire of the minister as to whether or not citizens would have the right to appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board in the event that the municipality, with the approval of the province, decided to reduce, change or modify standards for sewage treatment, building or any of the other matters.

In that subsection, I wonder if the minister can advise whether the term “municipality” refers to a regional municipality or to a local municipality.

Another matter under that same subsection is that the word “near” is used in the second line. It is rather interesting that the Lieutenant Governor in Council may authorize any municipality “in or near which a housing project” etc. I wonder if the minister can advise us as to just what the word “near” means in this context? Are we to assume that this is a municipality adjacent to the one in which the project is located, or indeed one or two blocks away? Does it mean an adjoining municipality or indeed one farther away?

I hope that the minister might be able to give us some information with respect to those questions.

Under section 5, section 12 of the Act is repealed and a new section appears. Under the substituted provisions, municipalities are authorized to incorporate non-profit housing corporations. We certainly agree that that natural power should be given and encouraged by the Ministry of Housing. We are certain, of course, that the minister feels the same way. But in this section there are also a couple of points which I think should be considered.

For example, the section contains the words, “persons of low or modest income.” I think that phrase requires some definition, and I would appreciate hearing from the minister as to what he proposes that term to mean. What, in the view of the Minister of Housing, does the phrase “low or modest income” mean?

There is also the phrase, “current rental market.” I wonder how that “current rental market” will be determined and what principles the minister is going to use in that situation.

Finally, also in that section, the phrase “in the area” is used. Perhaps the minister would be good enough to define for us, if he is able to do so, just what that phrase is going to mean.

With respect to my comments on these two particular sections, Mr. Speaker, there would appear to be a serious requirement to define exactly the terms that are supposedly going to be beneficial to the citizens of the province by giving municipalities these particular responsibilities. The minister has dealt with them in a very general way by setting out the various phrases to which I have referred.

I hope that in his remarks, when the comments of other speakers are completed, the minister will be able to define the various phrases and terms which he has used so that the members of the Legislature will have some knowledge as to the real principles behind this and how he intends to implement it.

One other point I would refer to is the matter of the necessary liaison throughout this bill with the Provincial-Municipal Liaison Committee. It was my understanding that the amendment that appears here as section 7 of the bill was to have been discussed at the June meeting of the PMLC. Has that been done, or in fact am I incorrect when I presume that the next meeting of that committee is going to be on Friday?

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): On June 14.

Mr. Breithaupt: Therefore, unless the bill has been seen by the committee or discussed further, it is really being brought before us in advance of the views which the minister might choose to have from that committee. I don’t know whether the members of the committee have, in fact, received copies of this bill. But I would be interested to know if the commitment which was apparently made to the PMLC has been met by the minister before we have proceeded with the second reading of this bill.

I would presume that a bill like this might well proceed through the legislative stages this evening, whether or not it develops some debate if the bill goes to committee. I would think that the position we should take is to ensure that any commitment given by the minister has, or course, been honoured.

As I understand it, the position of the PMLC is that municipalities should have the right to bank land without ministerial approval, in the same manner as it is done for parks. I don’t know whether the minister agrees with that kind of proposal, but I would appreciate hearing from him on it. It is my understanding that the present Attorney General (Mr. Welch), when he was the Minister for Housing, had given a commitment to the PMLC that they would have this right, and I’d like to hear from the minister on that subject as well.

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

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Mr. Speaker, I have a number of things to say about this bill, including thanks to the minister for some co-operation in our comments before. I hope for a useful conspiracy in maybe making some useful changes to the bill when we get to the committee stage.

I think I should probably send over to the minister a copy of the New Democratic Party’s housing policy, which was adopted in our convention in December, 1972, and which I played some part in writing. Because it’s very interesting to see a prophecy turn into fact. It’s gratifying, may I say, to see that the government is gradually accepting the wisdom which has been expressed from this side of the House, and which was originally laid down in earlier policies of the NDP and in that particular policy.

Mr. Breithaupt: Careful, the member may break his arm.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It was independently arrived at.

Mr. Cassidy: Independently arrived at. It just shows then -- may I say this? -- that the government in the housing field has repeatedly tried to put faith in the private sector. That was shown at the conclusion of the Comay report, the belief that the private sector could probably handle it with a bit of help. The response to the Comay report was much the same thing.

When the Ministry of Housing was set up it was given all sorts of powers to look into things and to examine things and to analyze, but had no powers to do anything. We said from this side of the House, citing for example what had been done out in British Columbia, that the government would need those powers. And six months later under this minister, it took those powers in the recent amendments to the Ministry of Housing Act. Now, in the area of land, the government is also veering away from the reliance on the private sector, which was reflected in the announcement of the Ontario housing action programme, and which is reflected, dare I say it, in the report on Housing Ontario, which the minister tabled in the Legislature just the other day.

The doctrine, Mr. Speaker, is still reliance on the private sector. It’s fortunate, therefore, that in this bill a major reform has been made in order to permit municipalities who so wish to landbank on a very large scale. One hopes that the funds that are necessary to help them do that are going to be made available with the same free hand that the legislative powers appear to be given in this particular bill. Because I think that it’s safe to say the municipalities are closer to the problem and are readier to move into the field of landbanking or public land acquisition than is the government.

The government will give municipalities these powers to landbank, but there has been no consistent and coherent statement of policy or adoption of policy by the government on what it intends to do about urban land, both raw urban land and urban land which is built on, but is either under-utilized or misused and where a change in use is in order.

The minister is no doubt aware that as far as the New Democratic Party is concerned we believe public authorities -- municipal and provincial -- should control the urban land market. And that means the bulk of developable urban land, or land coming into development in urban areas, should be in public ownership. Rather than being sold, it should, in the main, be leased. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but if I can put these remarks down in Hansard in the hope that they, too, will soon be fulfilled in government policy, we have devised and adopted as government policy a Crownhold scheme of leasing, which is designed to ensure that over time the increases in value arising out of community decisions in urban growth accrue to the community and not to individuals.

I was interested while reading the other day to find out that the German town of Ulm, somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century, in its development of workers housing, put it out on a long-term lease system almost identical to the Crownhold system we propose within the New Democratic Party. The German scheme was to issue a repurchase option to the municipality, which would allow it to repurchase any home that a worker no longer wished to occupy at its original value, plus the worth of improvements, minus any serious deterioration in the value of the property.

Now, clearly, with the kind of inflationary problems we have today in the costs of construction, an inflationary element for the value of the dwelling needs to be considered as well. We have made allowance for that in the NDP scheme of Crownholding.

I recommend this system to the minister for publicly owned land, whether under the OHC, or, for that matter, under municipal ownership. And I recommend it to him, in addition, for commercial and industrial land, because I think that we will increasingly find -- whether it is out of principle as far as the NDP is concerned, or because it is driven to it, as far as the government is concerned -- that there will be pressure on the government to retain control of major parcels of urban land and to let them be developed on various forms of long-term lease.

In the case of rental property, whether it is commercial, industrial, or residential, we in the NDP have no particular objection to straight 60-year, self-liquidating leases, at the end of which time properties would revert to the public, lock, stock and barrel -- all the apartments, complete shopping centres, the whole bit. And I know that the minister will probably cringe, because he is such an advocate of free enterprise. But I say that lightly. This is a valid form of development.

The extra costs to the users -- shoppers and the consumers of industrial products, or tenants on an annual basis -- is minimal. The benefit to the public, obviously, is that over time it is acquiring an increasing stock of older property that will become quite substantial, either in terms of re-use of the land, recycling of the land, or in terms of rehabilitation of properties which have been in private hands for a fair period of time.

I am putting these ideas down as a series of forecasts, and also because in the rather calm environment we have this evening, it is possible to put a few suggestions before the minister and have them treated more receptively, Mr. Speaker, than they would be during the heat of the question period at 2 p.m., when the minister, for various reasons, is often under the gun.

I put them, too, because, if I can digress a bit, the minister has clearly been having some severe difficulties with the problems of the HOME plan, and the purchase option contained in it. The limits put on resales of homes and publicly-owned land just simply aren’t effective.

As he knows, people are acquiring lots after five years and turning around and selling them at profits of $10,000 and $15,000. Clearly, when they resell them, they are selling them to people of a different income group than those for whom the HOME homes were originally destined.

And that means that in the long term the HOME houses are not filtering or trickling down. They are not even passing on to people of the same relative income level, status, and station in life, and so on. They are trickling up to people of a higher socio-economic status because of the galloping inflation we have had throughout the province in the home market.

I would seriously suggest to the minister that, while we would take the credit, we would be pleased to see him adopt for HOME as an experiment, to begin with, the kind of Crownhold ownership that we recommend, which would involve lifetime tenure and, in fact, would even involve the right to pass a home on to one’s heirs, if one wished. It would, therefore, parallel what everybody experiences with freehold tenure but it would involve a repurchase option by the public authority at a price that was related to the original price of the land and the building, plus some reasonable allowance for any increases in construction costs that may have taken place over that period of time.

In other words, if the minister wanted he could actually sell the land to the owner of the home, although I don’t think he should allow for any inflationary element in the repurchase option on the land and, therefore, I would recommend against that. This is the kind of proposal I think he will find himself coming to if he continues to be propelled, as I think he will be, by the rather inexorable forces that have been unleashed in the housing market and by the fact that the only way to solve problems in the housing and land market is through public ownership.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to ask the minister whether he and the government intend to give to the municipalities real support in public land acquisition, which they are now permitted to do on a much more free basis than beforehand under section 7 of the amendments that we have before us tonight. As the minister knows -- and we were discussing it before this debate began -- a municipality previously could still acquire land with only 10 per cent down; 90 per cent of their financing came from Central Mortgage and Housing Corp. It could acquire land even outside of its own boundaries, which is not provided for in the amendments that we have here.

However, it couldn’t service the land. It couldn’t acquire land that had been developed, even if the buildings which stood on the land were in disuse or disrepair, or ought to have been cleared away, or were worthy of renovation. It couldn’t subdivide or service land in the same way as the powers that are given here allow it to. It was subject to the edicts of the Ontario Municipal Board as far as its debt capability in acquiring the land is concerned.

The OMB is a very fine body on some things. The minister was rather surprised, or maybe it was the member for Grenville-Dundas (Mr. Irvine), at some somewhat bitter comments I made about the OMB the other night. I am afraid many people who watch the OMB nowadays find that it has lost its backbone of principle and it has become inconsistent, if not incoherent, in many of its decisions since the departure of J. A. Kennedy as its chairman. In fact, what we really praised in the OMB was not its membership generally or the process generally, it was the kind of attitude that was brought to the overview of municipal activities by Mr. Kennedy himself. I think that probably many of us overlooked the fact that, while Mr. Kennedy was doing fine things in and around Metro Toronto where all the media were focused, there were some not badly disastrous decisions being taken in certain cases elsewhere.

At any rate, the OMB has had oversight and has been judging municipal plans for landbanking on the basis of their debt capability. Since many municipalities are awfully close to their debt limits as established by the OMB and since there was no declaration of policy by the government, by the Treasurer (Mr. White) or by the Minister without Portfolio for municipal affairs or anybody else as to how high municipal borrowing could go and for what purposes it could be allowed to stretch the limit, the municipalities were, therefore, bound under guidelines which related more to depression conditions and to fears of loss on such things as landbanking than to conditions in the real world, where for the last 25 years we have, like it or not, had varying degrees of inflation and varying degrees of augmentation of land prices and only temporary relapses in the increasing value of land.

The OMB’s dead hand is taken off and, for that, much welcome. The member for Kitchener commented on the Provincial Municipal Liaison Committee. It would be nice if they did have a chance to have a look at this before it was finally passed into law. However, if they don’t, I think that probably the municipal observers who are here -- it’s almost crowded tonight with so many people in the galleries -- would agree that the province has with some delays, followed pretty closely the brief that was put to it by the municipal group in the PMLC last September.

Let it go on the record that it’s as long ago as last September that the municipalities put forward a position, which it is fair to call quite radical, on municipal landbanking to the government and that at that time, according to my notes, because I was there, the province was very reluctant to agree with the thrust of their arguments. I don’t remember the conversation verbatim but my notes quote the Treasurer as noting the anti-private sector bias of the municipal position, suggesting that the municipal position was not particularly helpful and as saying that the government didn’t comprehend the financial implications of what the municipalities were suggesting but as saying that, apart from that, he had no particular objections.

The Treasurer promised a substantive response in October. That substantive response took much longer to come and, in fact, we asked the then Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mr. Welch) month after month wouldn’t he please do something. As far as I could gather, he was bottled up in some cabinet committee and he simply couldn’t get the troglodytes of the cabinet to agree. Troglodytes are reactionaries, by the way, and there are many in the cabinet. He couldn’t get the trogs in the cabinet to agree with whatever it was he was trying to get through. The Treasurer wasn’t convinced last September that the government could, in fact, market land more cheaper than developers. He was worried about the losses that might be made on municipal landbanking, but then said rather reluctantly that perhaps the government would try. I am glad to see that the government’s position has shifted since then and that it now has adopted at least the legislative powers that were recommended by the PMLC.

This brings me to the one suggestion made for amendment that I would make in this bill, which we will get to on committee, but which I have already raised privately with the minister and which I would put on the record at this time. In the guidelines that the PMLC put forward, they asked that municipal power to acquire land for housing and for integrated community development be clarified. They asked to be freed from the need for Ontario Municipal Board approvals because of the fact that landbanking is self-liquidating and that the land they acquire is also in the nature of a liquid asset. Unlike a sewer or a playground or an arena or something like that that you can’t turn back into cash, if the municipality happens to make a mistake, run short and need a bit of dough, it can always spin off a bit of land to a developer or to some other interested party. The way these things are going these days they can do pretty well at that too.

Recently, in Ottawa, the city sold a number of residential sites in the west end of the city -- 60 by 100 ft lots that are controlled -- for prices of up to $55,000 bid. The lowest bid, Mr. Speaker, was $19,000 and that indicates the kind of craziness we’ve got into in the land market and, for that matter, indicates the fact that municipalities are pretty well protected.

It’s a kind of a no-lose situation as far as the public is concerned. There is the prospect of benefitting the public in terms of a better mix of housing -- more social housing; better sites for non-profit, low-rental, limited dividend and public housing projects with better planning and all of these things. There is also the lower cost through the lower borrowing rates of municipalities when developers have got to pay 13 per cent or 15 per cent on the interim financing. Those are all the benefits you have. In the meantime, because the land market is so crazy right now, the prospect of a financial loss is negligible.

The municipalities asked for a co-operative approach to budgeting for public land acquisition. They wanted the power to go beyond housing projects, which have been mentioned in the Housing Development Act which is, of course, almost 20 or 25 years old, to mixed-use projects that would have an integration of various kinds of elements. From my discussions with the minister, I suspect it is more a matter that the words “housing project” were sort of overlooked. I know what it was the government meant; it meant the municipalities could landbank basically for housing since they already have the powers to acquire land for industrial development and things like that.

Ironically enough, in the city of Ottawa, for example, two or three years ago we were acquiring industrial land at $7,000 or $8,000 an acre, servicing it and selling it at cost -- the cost of acquisition plus servicing. We were doing 100 or 200 acres. Ottawa, like many other municipalities, freely felt it could engage in industrial landbanking and yet wasn’t involved in residential landbanking to any extent at all. That was certainly an inappropriate set of priorities.

As it happens the definition of building development is changed in the Act. It’s changed for a number of purposes. It’s changed in order to give the Lieutenant Governor in Council powers for grants and loans in the case of the Ontario Housing rehabilitation or repair programme. At any rate, the definition of “building development” involves the provision and repair and other things of “housing accommodation with or without public buildings, recreational facilities, industrial and commercial buildings or space appropriate therefor.” In other words, it is a broad enough definition that it would permit acquisition of land for mixed development.

One of the features of the landbanking power given to municipalities is it makes possible a project such as the project on Jarvis St., just east of the St. Lawrence Market, which was proposed for the city of Toronto. Land is to be banked for residential and other kinds of development on a site which is already developed but where the buildings are often over-aged or are industrial buildings which are antiquated and can usefully be replaced. The municipality didn’t have the powers to acquire that land before and now it can.

I know the minister wouldn’t argue that in rebuilding that area Toronto ought simply to put up highrise apartments and nothing else. That would be like duplicating Regents Park south, which is an area exclusively of housing and frankly we have gone a long way since that time. One recognizes as one goes through those very dense communities that other things could and should have been built into that community in order to give it more of a life.

To return to my own city of Ottawa, we are blessed with a number of little corner groceries and confectioneries and that kind of thing which sit in the midst of our residential development. Our zoning hasn’t caught up with what people did as a matter of common sense or practice back in the old days before zoning bylaws came into force on a universal basis in Ottawa after the war.

Most of the confectioneries and grocery stores are there because they are non-conforming uses which existed before the zoning bylaw. They wouldn’t be permitted to continue if the area was redeveloped on the existing zoning. There is a friendly corner grocer who knows the kids and keeps tabs on the one who tends to steal a bit and sends home the other one who tends to stay out too late and that kind of thing. This is a very useful social institution.

In New York, I am told, the corner grocer is as important to one as the policeman and the fireman, the banker and the psychiatrist. He probably fulfils many of the functions of all four of those people. He keeps his customer’s keys or receives their parcels; he lets in their friends, he keeps their lovers, their mistresses and their wives from seeing each other; all these functions are performed.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: The member can speak for himself.

Mr. Cassidy: It was more for the minister I was thinking. I am not sure how it is in Nepean but at any rate these are very important social functions which are achieved because of an integration of commercial and residential development. All the thinking of planners and people like that these days is for a much greater integration of various land uses.

Clearly you don’t put apartments on top of a steel plant but people are now talking, for example, in relation to the Metro centre project of putting flatted factories in there for such industries as the garment industry, boutiques, leatherworking, fine metalworking, plastics and that sort of thing. There is a whole range of light industry which could very usefully work in with a development like that.

There are other areas of craftsmen and other people who combine production and retail sales which can equally well integrate within a residential area.

The request that I would make to the minister would be that when he takes this bill back to his people -- I understand that he doesn’t intend to try and put it through committee tonight -- he take out the words “housing project” in section 7(a) and replace them by the words “building development”. I won’t pursue that point any longer because the minister might feel I was arguing too hard. But I hope he will agree that it is a useful amendment and not that unduly extends the powers of the municipality.

With some reluctance I would agree to a compromise position under which where land was to be used for non-housing purposes, there was a requirement that the minister be consulted or his approval sought. But I don’t think that municipalities are going to misuse their powers if they are allowed to landbank for purposes that include commercial and industrial, so long as it is very clear in the housing programmes that they put before the minister that the predominant purpose is for housing.

The next point I wanted to raise was to congratulate the minister again for adopting an item that I think we originally talked about in NDP policy, but which I am sure he has arrived at independently and not through anything that we necessarily proposed.

The requirement that is put in for municipalities landbanking, and to obtain this power that they will now acquire to subdivide and service land on their own, is that they have either a housing statement in their official plan or that they have a housing plan which is approved by the minister.

A number of people have pointed out that the municipal action plans ought to fit within the framework of a provincial housing strategy. I have commented at other points about the inadequacy of the provincial framework and about the problems when the minister really believes that people on low and moderate incomes earn between $14,500 and $20,000 a year, etc.

In the spirit of this evening’s debate, I don’t want to pursue that particular point. I think, though, that there could be a danger, because the province’s statements on housing have been flabby up until now and have been essentially directed to people on middle and upper incomes rather than people on low and modest incomes. As the province itself admits, only nine or 10 per cent of the senior citizens on very low incomes, of families around the average industrial wage of $8,500 a year, are handled by the social housing programmes of the province. You have got to do something for the rest of those people -- for people earning under $10,000, under $12,000; those in the lower three-fifths of the market.

Again in the spirit of the evening, I would just point out to the minister the number of units that he has been talking about to be provided for those lower income families in particular is quite inadequate in relation to their numbers. It also is inadequate in relation to the pent-up housing demands which have been accruing in those particular groups because of the housing crisis and the very rapid escalation in housing costs over the last few years.

What comes more dramatically to the minister’s attention are the cries of the adult sons and daughters of university professors, of MPPs and cabinet ministers, of business people and others like that. They have grown up in families where they were used to a home environment in a bungalow in the suburbs, or a house in Rosedale, or Manor Park or in Nepean or someplace like that; and where at the age of 24 or 25 they expect to get the same thing for themselves.

With a family income, with both of them working, of maybe $14,000, $16,000, $18,000, or even $20,000 a year -- it is their clamour to which the minister is responding. The fact is that in terms of any reasonable sense of priority, young people like that, young couples like that, even where there are one or two kids, can cope for themselves in the housing market as it stands; and they can cope far better than people of much lower income who are basically ignored in the minister’s proposal.

I confess that sometimes even we in the NDP tend to get sucked in by that when we talk about what about this poor couple that wants to buy a home, etc. And we are therefore, to some extent, condoning the kind of hedging carried out by young couples, who haven’t had their first baby, yet are buying a home with two or three extra rooms more than they need. They will be therefore over-housed for a period of years in anticipation of an increase in housing costs. Those people are clearly aggravating the kind of problem that the minister and everybody else concerned with housing is experiencing on the market.

Now the minister’s policies must be tougher about directing the provincial housing effort to families earning less than $12,000 or $13,000 a year; providing low-rise housing; providing housing close to the ground for families who now have got to be up on the 22nd floor of an OHC unit in St. James Town; providing some adequate access to green space for a mother-led family with two or three kids living on James St. or LeBretton St. in the heart or my riding; providing even an adequate upstairs duplex with parking all around and no green grass, just a park which may be five or six blocks away.

Those are the kind of priorities the minister ought to be stressing in his provincial housing policy. Now I would hope that when the housing statements start to come in from municipalities, that he would seek to ensure that we get tough about ensuring as much as possible that their housing efforts go to this group of people who are particularly under-housed, ill-housed or suffering because of the very high costs that they have to bear in today’s housing market.

There is a compelling case, for example, for social housing through housing allowances, shelter allowances, subsidized housing units or whatever you want, for people who are under $5,000 a year. Some 60 per cent of those people, if I recall the figures correctly earning under $5,000 a year, if they are tenants pay more than half of their income in rent; not a quarter of their income in rent, but half. Something like 90 or 95 per cent of tenants in the under $5,000 group pay more than a quarter of their income in rent.

Now the minister knows that even on his inflated salary as a minister, there isn’t that much left over for him at the end of the month by the time he takes into account his living expenses here and the family up there --

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Don’t feel sorry for me.

Mr. Cassidy: All right, I won’t feel too sorry for the minister. I am sure he makes the occasional contribution to his party and that kind of thing. But when you get down to somebody who has an income of $3,000 or $4,000 and they are paying $1,400 or $1,500 or $1,600 in order to get a place of their own to live in; and they have to survive, possibly with one or two dependants on the remainder, and suffer other insecurities that you get when you have tenants; you can see that there is a compelling need for action.

Yet there is not that kind of compelling attention given to those problems in the statement of housing policy proposed by the minister.

Likewise, without elaborating on it, there is not that kind of attention, say, for people who are tenants and who, if they have families, probably want to have a more secure form of tenure and are earning up to $11,000 or $12,000 a year. It is just either barely mentioned; or you say: “Well, the OHC rent to income programme will deal with it.”

Only 2,000 units doesn’t deal with it and I don’t need to go into that. The minister is aware that the lists in Toronto alone are five times as great as the number of family housing units proposed for OHC during the course of the current year. Now, if you are going to use the municipal landbanking powers effectively, it seems to me that you have got to toughen your policies and that the government can then in turn go to the municipalities and say: “We want to make sure that your housing programmes or policies that you put forward aren’t just a sop.”

Let’s say that 10 per cent of the units are going to be directed to people earning less than $11,000 or $12,000 a year, but that there is a real shift in your housing effort to make sure that we start to achieve some equity in housing opportunity for all income groups rather than constantly providing housing for the rich -- the very rich and the middle class -- as we so often tended to do, particularly in the last few years.

I’ve commented in this Legislature, and I was going to say a few words --

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Is the minister taking notes?

Mr. Cassidy: Well, I hope so.

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Notes on what?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It is the spirit of the evening.

Mr. Cassidy: I’ve commented, Mr. Speaker, on the need for a provincial approach to land. I hope that if the government has decided on decentralization of its policy, that it bears carefully in mind the position put before the Municipal Liaison Committee. This was that for the development of balanced and integrated communities, between a quarter and a third of all housing built annually should be on publicly-owned land.

There should be sufficient municipal land for that purpose. That means that the $100 million or $50 million a year coming from CMHC for municipal landbanking will be inadequate. I hope that the minister will urge the federal government to go far beyond that, whatever its stripe. I know that if a New Democratic government is elected federally they will be very receptive to that particular approach.

Mr. Havrot: That is the joke of the night.

Mr. Cassidy: I hope that if the federal government is not sufficiently receptive, that the minister then looks at the funding that is available to Ontario for landbanking and land acquisition through the funds that the Treasurer seems to have under his control.

The Treasurer keeps on telling us that he is reducing the public debt. Now, landbanking is a self-liquidating exercise. It pays for itself. There is no reason why Ontario shouldn’t use some of that borrowing capability that it has got in order to acquire much more public land, whether it be through the provincial level of government and the OHC or whether it be through the municipalities.

If anything, over the course of five or 10 years the housing minister would find that we would save the public an awful lot of money in land cost. The Dennis-Fish report suggested we could save something like $200 million or $300 million a year nationally -- $100 million for housing consumers in Ontario alone. A lot of that will come back into the public benefit because of the fact that socially-assisted housing will be cheaper if we do something to bring the costs of land under control for public acquisition.

I asked the minister, and he assures me that municipalities will have the power to expropriate land under this particular bill. I am glad to see that. I think the government ought also to look -- maybe in the next series of amendments, because it’s too complicated to put into these -- at powers under which the municipality or the province can make major land acquisitions without the distortions that would be created in the market if a municipality tried to acquire it in competition with private developers.

You know that if you have three or four landholders -- probably big developers who hold land -- and a fifth one comes into the market, that helps to drive land prices up generally. That’s one of the reasons the land transfer tax was raised to 20 per cent on foreign acquisition of land, in order to cool off some of those people who are competing for land around our major urban centres.

Again if I can quote NDP policy, we have said there should be a technique for government in Ontario to freeze land values for a temporary period of time -- six months or a year -- in a major area around a municipality. By a technique such as homologation -- that’s a Quebec technique with which the minister is apparently familiar -- having frozen those land values it is then possible to bring the public in for input to make decisions about where the housing action areas will be.

Then you acquire the housing action areas at the frozen price. This is far more economic for the public than acquiring those housing action areas after a process of public consultation while permitting the continuation of a free market in land.

If you simply leave the free market and decide to designate a particular area, then the speculative values in land migrate to the part of the land that you want to buy; whereas if you freeze the land values first, then you don’t have to pay that kind of price. That’s the problem the Treasurer got into, with the Townsend site I think it was, in Haldimand-Norfolk. Ultimately he was forced to accept the site which had been fixed up and optioned by private developers, because they had gone in and effectively gotten a frozen price over a period of six months or a year, long enough that the planning authorities in the county, along with the people up here at Queen’s Park --

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): A sharp move.

Mr. Cassidy: Pardon?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: A sharp move.

Mr. Cassidy: I am not going to comment, but we suggested it be looked at seriously --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You know it was --

Mr. Cassidy: -- despite our reticence about getting into bed with private developers.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Getting into bed.

Mr. Cassidy: At that point, though, getting into bed with the developers --

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We kick him out of bed.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, I know.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Come on.

Mr. Cassidy: The point I am making is that at that particular time it was to the public’s benefit to go in with the Cherkas group, and to give the Cherkas’ group its half million or million dollar finder’s fee, rather than pay the much more inflated prices that would have had to be paid.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, that’s not right.

Mr. Cassidy: I am suggesting there should be a legislative technique to cover a situation like the Haldimand-Norfolk one, or to cover other similar situations that may exist in urban areas. That should be a supplement to the techniques of expropriation, which are unwieldy and which often leave the public forced to pay the -- let’s see if I can put it into words -- pay top dollar for a site because of the fact that the speculative values will migrate to the site that is expropriated. Therefore you have got to pay the top value in the market, that was paid in the private market previously, for the site you want to acquire, rather than something approaching the average value.

Rather than paying a price which was related to the acquisition and carrying costs we need to get away, it seems to me, from this view that you always pay market value when the public is acquiring large areas of undeveloped land, because the market value on small tracts of land exchanged in speculative market will be far greater than what should be the true market value of one of those large tracts. Yet you can’t establish a market in the normal way and in the ways that are used by the land valuation tribunal.

I wanted to make two or three other brief comments on the bill, Mr. Speaker. The first is that we welcome with the clap of one hand the Ontario home repair programme.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: That is a silent clap if I ever heard one.

Mr. Cassidy: Pardon?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: That is a silent clap.

Mr. Cassidy: Well, with the muted clap of two hands, I think I would say. Possibly that is a bit stronger for the Minister of Housing.

It’s a programme worth about $10 million, and it’s covered under section 2, and I think sections 4 and 5 of the Act. The $10 million is not adequate, and there ought to be a major programme of renovation within the Province.

Once again we have suggested within the NDP that grants should be made available of up to about $3,000 for home renovation on a pretty general basis. As I recall, I think we suggested that this might be in return for Crown-hold agreements that might be such that a person on a low or modest income could have renovations made to his home for nothing in return for a Crown-hold agreement that would ultimately govern the disposition of his property and still retain life-time tenure on the property. That’s a pretty good deal. It seems to me that the public is becoming increasingly prepared to accept alternatives to the traditional kind of freehold tenure, and this would be involved in the proposal I have just made.

If they accept condominiums, if they accept them as enthusiastically as they do the HOME Plan, then they would accept this kind of proposal under which you can make generous renovation grants in return for a switch from freehold to leasehold tenure. But the funds that are involved here are not adequate to cover the large areas which will not be covered under the NIP and RAP plans, and yet where certain kinds of renovation and rehabilitation will be required and be beyond people’s means.

In echoing the member for Kitchener, I would welcome the power of municipalities to form non-profit housing corporations, but after the rather disastrous gaps made by the minister in defining moderate incomes as being between $14,500 and $20,000 a year, in his housing paper, I would like him to put on the record what he means this time by low or modest incomes.

Mr. Speaker, that’s a fairly long elaboration on a number of things that we would like to see done, in addition to what is put into this particular Act. As far as the Act is concerned, I hope that the minister accepts our suggestion to change the definition from housing projects to building developments. Otherwise we welcome the bill for going as far as it does.

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

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I want to make a few comments concerning Bill 63, and bring to the attention of the minister an organization or a group in my own community that is directly involved, as far as section 3 of this bill is concerned.

First, I want to bring to the attention of the minister problems that have arisen in the past with his ministry when it came to actual construction. I refer to a project known as Elizabeth Gardens in the city of Windsor in which construction was extremely faulty.

There was delay after delay, and probably the most important thing today, especially in phases 2 and 3 of that project, is that people at this date still have not received the deeds to their properties. I think some sort of legislation has to be passed to make sure that those who have purchased properties from the developer get it within a reasonable period of time.

My prime comments concern section 3. I am pleased that the minister is proceeding with the bill at this time. I would prefer that it had been discussed in the House earlier, so that the organization could have carried on, rather than suspend its operations for the short period of time for which it has suspended them.

I am referring to an organization, under the direction of Rev. Robert Warden, known as the Coalition for the Development. The organization’s prime function in the past has been to repair below-standard homes of needy owners. Not only are the projects and the organization extremely worthwhile, but the repairs that have been carried out have been to rehabilitate homes mostly located in the core of the community, but not necessarily. Wherever there happened to be needy senior citizens who otherwise could not have afforded to redevelop or rehabilitate their projects, this organization took over and did the job for them. It was so efficient that it was able to accomplish this work at 60 per cent of normal charges.

I speak on behalf of the people of this organization hoping that this legislation can be passed as quickly as possible so that they will have an opportunity to carry on the responsibilities they have undertaken, and provide rehabilitated properties to the many needy in the community.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, I have a question that I was going to ask of the minister last Thursday or Friday, but never had the opportunity. I was going to ask: Are you aware that the Coalition for Development Windsor group that repairs below-standard homes of needy owners and elderly persons will have to discontinue its home repair operations -- operations that were done for 60 per cent of what the cost would be at commercial rates? And I was going to ask: Will the minister consider provision of necessary funds so that the organization can continue to fulfil a definite void in home renewal on behalf of the elderly and needy?

I think that the minister is advancing funds to this organization so it can carry on its programme. If he is not, I certainly ask him to do so as quickly as possible so that this project can be carried on under section 3 of the bill which applies directly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Mr. Speaker, just a few comments with regard to that same item. I hope the minister will not get too involved in regulations in this matter. I think the pattern developed by the city of Toronto, with regard to the Niagara St. community, is probably one of the best models that could be followed where citizens decide the priorities and how a project is going to be carried out.

They actually volunteer their services to help in housing cases where insufficient people are available in a family to help with actual reconstruction work. One remarkable job at a cost of $400 a house was accomplished in the restoration of some 600 houses declared unfit for continued habitation. It shows that when you allow the people themselves to take control it certainly saves a great deal of money.

I am also concerned with another aspect in the Act and that is with regard to the acquiring of land. I hope we will not repeat what happened in Malvern. The cost of about $2,000 an acre for land, originally, to the province -- and I am sure development costs of not many more thousands per acre in addition to that -- has not meant any saving to the people at all. The price for the lots they are now selling to builders for development in that area works out to $240,000 per acre; and when you go from $2,000 an acre to $240,000 an acre on a landbank programme, it really isn’t doing much to lower the price of housing.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Speaker, the purport and tenor of this particular bill is simply to carry into effect what was set forth, probably more elaborately actually, in the budget of recent date of the Treasurer. By and large it is altogether commendable as far as it goes and long sought for in section after section.

My particular remarks on second reading have to do with the weight of demand since the government is so given over to supply-demand concepts instead of long-term planning, or even short-term for that matter. Where does and to what extent -- what impact this may be -- what representations -- where does the weight fall on the minister’s shoulders with respect to the several various types of entities and enterprises he has set out in the bill?

For instance, the joint housing project, where does that come from? Which municipality? Where is the clamour? What is the noise in his ears which brings this about? The non-profit housing corporation; to what extent does he envisage their launching and their being brought into effect? Where, again, is the weight to be brought there?

In section 7, that all-important section on land acquisition, landbanking by municipalities, it seems to me the minister in his own demesne does not supply the funds for that particular purpose; at least if one looks at the beginning of the bill, section 2, which elaborates upon the existing section 2 of the Housing Development Act. The existing section has five subsections giving the minister the various powers and authorities under which he acts in this particular regard. What he does is take section (e), alter it and add an (f). But where in all that, as I read it, does he supply funds for landbanking through the municipal setup? I quite recognize that the federal government does so and does so on some elaborate scale. It may be that his sole reliance is in that particular direction.

It seems to me in simplistic terms -- and that’s the way I think we are going to have to deal with housing for the nonce -- that the ministry, if it is going to alleviate it and make these things effective in the area of landbanking or otherwise, working through the municipality or in direct relation -- I think direct relation is going to be more and more in the present and more important as time goes on -- is going to have to turn to the satellite city concept.

The government has done it in a misbegotten way in Pickering. What the minister has to do is have it more far-flung, providing the transportation routes and picking up that raw land which is at minimal cost since it is sufficiently far away from the developers as things stand. If he had an elaborate policy and a visionary one, I think he would probably announce something like 32 or maybe 40 satellite towns for this province for the 1985-1990 years as he envisages this development.

They would be wholly done, in conjunction with the private sector, of course, under the elaborate supervision and planning of the government of Ontario -- and even in competition with the private sector in order to keep costs down. Certainly, with respect to services, they would be wholly the responsibility --

Mr. Speaker: I bring the hon. member’s attention to the time.

Mr. Lawlor: Since I may never speak on this subject again, may I ask to adjourn the debate?

Mr. Lawlor moves adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, I would like to say on Thursday we will proceed further with the bill presently under discussion, although not necessarily as the first order of business. I will also call, if members will mark the numbers, the items of business Nos. 8, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, and possibly 24.

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

Motion agreed to.

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