Hansard Transcript 1974-Oct-24 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Speaker, on May 21, 1974, I indicated to the hon. members of this Legislature that I had requested the staff of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to undertake a design review of the transit demonstration system guideway and station designs due to the fact that the costs of the civil engineering portion of the work had risen substantially from the previous estimates that had been provided to us.

This review was to be conducted in conjunction with Krauss-Maffei and the civil engineering design consultants. The review was carried out and during the latter part of September revised contracts were advertised for the civil engineering portion of the project. The first of the tenders for those contracts were received and opened at my ministry’s offices in Downsview yesterday.

The members will recall that the previous low bid for the guideway structure was $10,263,163. The results of the competition opened yesterday were as follows: The low bid was from KVN for $5,886,369. The other bids from C.A. Pitts Ltd. and Dufferin Construction were $7,255,195 and $8,894,705 respectively. The low bid is $4,376,791 lower than the previous low bid.

As the members will recall, I indicated that we would conduct a design review and re-tender all of the civil engineering contracts, including the station and maintenance buildings, and that upon completion of this re-tendering I would review the complete status of the cost of the GO Urban programme.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate today that I’m greatly encouraged by the sizable reduction in costs of that portion of the redesign now tendered. We have yet to receive the tenders for the various stations, the maintenance building and the command-and-control centre. These tenders are expected in the next few weeks. When they are received I will be able to complete my review of the costs of this project.

SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, I wish to announce major new policy initiatives for the reclamation of resources and the preservation and improvement of the quality of our environment. The measures being announced today constitute a co-ordinated and comprehensive package which will put Ontario well ahead of any jurisdiction in the world in resource reclamation and control of solid waste.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Who writes the minister’s stuff?

Hon. W. Newman: I did.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): What is the minister trying to tell us? There is a message there somewhere.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: Why is Arthur Wishart smiling under the gallery?

Hon. W. Newman: Because he likes it.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Because he is happy with the whole thing.

Hon. W. Newman: Historically, solid waste disposal has been a municipal responsibility met mainly by landfill sites. Just over three years ago, the province moved to control landfill sites and to set standards for their use. In 1971 there were over 2,100 such, sites, of which only 10 per cent were considered satisfactory; today there are 1,600 sites, of which over 65 per cent are considered satisfactory.

In large areas of the province sanitary landfill is not yet a problem, but in Metropolitan Toronto and a few other municipalities it is becoming a serious problem not only because of the loss of resources but because potential landfill sites can often be found only in rural areas.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): The government is encouraging more people to come all the time.

Hon. W. Newman: Naturally, there is an understandable reluctance for these areas to want to become the repository of other people’s garbage.

It is foolhardy to think that landfill sites can be eliminated completely. What we can do, however, is reduce the amount of waste per capita which needs to end up in these sites.

An hon. member: Waste not, want not.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Start by cancelling press releases like this one.

Hon. W. Newman: This is a vital objective of the programme being announced today. In our study of solid waste problems we have come to the following preliminary conclusions:

First, our own experience and that of other jurisdictions has convinced us that recycling and reclamation is basic to conserving resources and to reducing the dependence on landfill sites.

Mr. Lewis: Now, there is a discovery. That is quite a conclusion for a whole ministry to come to.

Hon. W. Newman: We have also concluded that effective solid waste disposal should be a co-operative effort combining the talent, experience and resources of the private sector -- both business and labour -- and government -- municipal, and provincial.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Does he know he is saying absolutely nothing? It is just words.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Wait for the climax.

Hon. W. Newman: It is on these principles, Mr. Speaker, that the following eight-part programme is based.

The Ontario government will lead and support the establishment of a comprehensive network of resource reclamation and waste processing plants throughout the major populated areas of Ontario, to be substantially completed over the next 15 years. Specifically, the province proposes to meet the critical needs of some of the major urban areas immediately.

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): How much money are you going to spend?

Hon. W. Newman: Six waste processing plants will be established as soon as possible, one each in London, Kingston, Sudbury, Peel-Halton, Metropolitan Toronto and the Peel-Metropolitan Toronto area.

We are ready to begin discussions with these municipalities immediately on the planning and development of the waste processing plants and systems to meet their particular needs. The plants will vary in capacity from 200 to 1,000 tons per day and initially will involve such primary processes as shredding of solid waste to uniform size, magnetic separation of metal objects and, in some cases, what is called “air classification” to separate the remaining wastes into two broad groups: (a) paper and light plastics, and (b) non-ferrous metals, glass, organic waste and plastics.

The estimated $17 million cost will be provided initially by the province with 50 per cent to be recovered from the municipalities over a 40-year period in addition to a standard “user charge” per ton of waste processed at the plants.

Since some of the plants, even initially, will serve more than one municipality, the province will retain ownership to ensure that their design and operation are compatible with the comprehensive provincial programme, and to facilitate the co-ordination and development of markets for reclaimed materials.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): More civil servants.

Hon. W. Newman: Between now and 1980, waste management systems will be improved by the systematic replacement of small landfill disposal sites with solid waste transfer stations.

Mr. Sargent: How about waste management in Queen’s Park?

Hon. W. Newman: In addition, a financial assistance programme to help small municipalities implement waste management improvements will be implemented through the Ministry of the Environment.

Between 1980 and 1985, a network of transfer stations and transportation facilities will be in place throughout much of the province and additional primary processing plants can then be established. Between 1985 and 1990 it will be possible to complete the programme by the installation of complete resource recovery processes, serving 90 per cent of the population of the province, and reducing our landfill requirements on a per capita basis by more than 80 per cent.

At municipal option, day-to-day operation of the plants will be provided by municipal employees or by the private sector under contract. In either event, management coordinating committees will be set up in each area which will include representatives of each municipality utilizing a plant.

Discussions will also be initiated with private waste management companies and with the recycling industry regarding their participation in this programme.

The province will establish within the coming weeks an Ontario Waste Management Advisory Board whose main responsibility will be to recommend ways to reduce the volume of waste and litter produced and, through packaging and product design improvement, to facilitate recycling and reclamation.

No other jurisdiction has yet approached the problem of solid waste management on the scale being proposed, although some have made partial forays to deal with specific aspects.

These then, Mr. Speaker, are the main elements of an imaginative and comprehensive programme for resource reclamation and solid waste control which I want to make known to the House. Other aspects will be announced as our plans develop in concert with interested parties.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): I would like to ask the Minister of the Environment, Mr. Speaker, why he didn’t append at least one paragraph to that statement which would indicate what the effect would be on Hope township and the other areas which are wondering what the government decision is going to be with regard to dumping solid waste on their properties? Maple is another area, and Pickering. There have been statements made during the recess of the House but none of them definitive. Is the minister now in a position to say that with these imaginative, brave initiatives those people are going to be relieved of the responsibility of being the receivers of Metro garbage?

Hon. W. Newman: At this point in time we are talking about various sites. As you know, the Liverpool Rd. site in Pickering has been approved by the ministry as a sanitary landfill site. Hope is still under discussion at this point in time, and, of course, the other applications the member is talking about are still not in the hands of the Environmental Hearing Board, I understand.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary --

Hon. W. Newman: May I finish answering the question? This process of garbage disposal will reduce it 20 per cent by weight and 40 per cent by volume. It will also mean that in the sanitary landfill sites we will have a product on which we will not need so much landfill daily, and that will extend the use of any sites that are now in existence once this process gets into being.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Specifically on the Hope township application by the CPR, Mr. Speaker, would the Minister tell us, since all the hearings have been held and the information has been before the minister and his advisers for months, why a decision couldn’t be made; particularly if he is prepared to go forward with this statement, which he considers to be an important one, leading, as it does, to the substantial reduction in the waste that many people thought would ultimately make the Hope township site a necessity?

Hon. W. Newman: Well as far as that site is concerned, as I said before we did some bore testing on the site and we still are evaluating that testing. Also, I believe negotiations are now going on between the municipalities down there themselves.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary; the hon. member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: I want to ask the minister, if in fact this process leads to a 40 per cent reduction in volume, and if it is staged in as he specifically described it today, what conceivable justification can he have, other than destruction of the environment and profit for the CPR, to approve or even contemplate further the Hope township site?

Hon. W. Newman: Maybe the member is not aware of the facts. As far as Metro is concerned, it is now producing about 1.7 million tons of garbage per year.

Mr. Lewis: And the Pickering site picks up the difference. They don’t need Hope township and the minister has indicated that today.

Hon. W. Newman: If these plants will be coming onstream, but it will mean a lot of negotiating with the municipalities to get them going, we hope we can get on with negotiations right away and get started in building these plants. But certainly it is going to take at least a year or more to get these plants into position.

Mr. Lewis: That’s fine.

Hon. W. Newman: So that in the meantime we still need sanitary landfill sites; the expected lifetime of the Liverpool site and the facilities Metro has now are limited.

Mr. Lewis: It is seven years minimum, 10 years probable.

Hon. W. Newman: That’s nonsense; pure and utter nonsense.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary; the hon. member for Downsview.

Mr. Lewis: Ten years, and look what is going to be done.

Mr. Speaker: Order please; the member for Downsview with a supplementary.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Would the minister care to hazard a guess as to how long this world-leading scheme will take to bring some relief to the Metropolitan Toronto garbage situation, where there are 1.7 million tons a year.

Hon. W. Newman: I didn’t hear what the member called the scheme, but I think it is a good one. I didn’t hear what he called it.

Mr. Singer: How long is it going to take until some change has been effected in Metropolitan Toronto so that Metropolitan Toronto can in some way count on this new plan to alleviate its present very serious problem?

Hon. W. Newman: Well, we will be having negotiations with Metro Toronto and with Halton-Peel. We will be starting negotiations with them very soon, for instance on the size of plant, the location of plant, what processes they want to put into the plant. We will be doing it by consultation with the municipality, and as soon as we have consummated some sort of an understanding with the municipalities, there is no reason why we can’t move ahead.

The process I am talking about here, the technology, is well known.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Give it to us in months.

Mr. Singer: How long is that going to be? Is it going to be 24 months, 36 months, 48 months?

Hon. W. Newman: I cannot tell the House how long negotiations will take, but from start to finish of building one of these plants, provided we can get the materials, we are talking about a year.

Mr. Singer: When is the minister going to start to build one in Metro?

Hon. W. Newman: As soon as we finish the negotiations.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Ottawa Centre with a supplementary.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Has the minister abandoned Ottawa to the federal government or is the government co-operating with federal plans to install a similar kind of reclamation park in downtown Ottawa?

Hon. W. Newman: I can assure the member the National Capital Commission has called for submissions in the Ottawa area; and as we get the various studies that we have going on in the Province of Ontario now -- we have 16 going on in various counties and regions -- as these come into place we will be silting down to discuss the best way to deal with their garbage problems.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville. This should be the last supplementary on this.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I am sure the minister is aware of Bill 48, which is an Act to establish an Ontario Waste Disposal and Reclamation Commission. Is the minister prepared to accept the principle of that bill?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I said we would have discussions with industry, and with government, municipal and provincial; we will be discussing the whole matter with them. We will be setting up a solid waste task force in the weeks ahead, but we will not have a special commission dealing with that now.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): We have done the minister’s work for him.

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

DAYCARE SERVICES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Provincial Secretary for Social Development if she can remove the confusion associated with government policy pertaining to daycare centres? Is she now prepared to say that since the regulations that were to be associated with her statement, indicating the policy was to reduce the standards for day care, have not been promulgated, that in fact the government, as a matter of policy, is not accepting the original statement, now some months old?

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): Mr. Speaker, through you to the Leader of the Opposition, the proposal that I suggested on June 4 indicated the intent of this government in the area of flexibility in the daycare proposals. It’s one thing to introduce an intent but another thing to translate that intent into government legislation. There is a lot of involvement. There is an advisory council that we are in direct confrontation with to get their feelings --

Mr. Lewis: Confrontation is the word all right. That’s a Freudian slip. It’s a very good word.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: -- and the regulations are being worked upon at the moment and they will be coming forward.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: As there is such widespread concern and statements made on behalf of the Ministry of Community and Social Services have indicated that the policy might in fact be changed and there are those who are indicating that the regulations were before cabinet and sent back by cabinet for review, why would not the minister be prepared to say that there would be at least a six-month delay before the implementation of this policy so that alternatives could be discussed from those groups which have professional and direct impact on it?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of where the Leader of the Opposition got his information. The regulations have not been before cabinet.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It was out of the newspaper.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: -- to cabinet and I’m rather surprised. Members like the member for Thunder Bay (Mr. Stokes), the member for Wentworth, the member for Yorkview (Mr. Young), the member for Grey-Bruce and many others in the opposition already have had proposals approved by the Ministry of Community and Social Services for daycare centres in their particular ridings. Their constituents apparently are very pleased with the proposals and have sent in applications.

Mr. Lewis: We are not talking about capital costs. What about the ratios?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We don’t want standards reduced.

Mr. Lewis: We are not talking about that. It’s the ratios we are talking about.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I take exception. I don’t feel that the standards are being reduced at all. It might be noted that this government does not consider numbers and does not equate numbers with quality.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: It certainly doesn’t.

Mr. Deans: That’s about the size of its majority.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary question: Can we have an undertaking from the Provincial Secretary for Social Development that the regulations will not be gazetted and will not take effect until they have been discussed and commented upon by the advisory council established by her colleague?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I think I have already indicated that there is a very good close relationship with the advisory council.

Mr. Lewis: The minister called it confrontation.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I didn’t mean that in that direct term.

Mr. Martel: It’s a Freudian slip.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Why bother having one?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I can’t take it upon myself to make any such promise but there is consultation between us.

Mr. Lewis: Then, by way of supplementary, why does the minister appoint an advisory council on daycare and refuse to permit it to deal with the single most controversial part of the regulations she has introduced? Is the advisory council irrelevant or is the minister going to give them a job that is important?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, the terms of reference for the advisory council are very broad. The advisory council is very pleased with the terms of reference. They realize that they have a job to do. They have been assigned the duties of monitoring the daycare programmes throughout this province --

Mr. Lewis: Monitoring?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: -- and bringing recommendations on future expansions of daycare facilities.

Mr. Lewis: So the minister is not going to let them discuss regulations.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: They have already been given several terms of reference with which they are very satisfied.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Would the minister be prepared to give an undertaking that when those regulations are prepared for gazetting they could be presented to the House for discussion and debate here, since they are as effective as any piece of legislation in changing the whole quality of daycare in the province?

Could they be accompanied, finally, by the material that was presented to the minister that led her to make this policy statement back in June?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out in the earlier session, it is not possible to present all of that material. The material that was possible to present was tabled in this House. As to bringing the regulations --

Mr. Cassidy: Why isn’t it possible?

Mr. Lewis: The minister is in retreat on this issue anyway.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I am not in retreat.

Mr. Lewis: She is.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I am not at all. I am not in retreat. I stand behind that policy 100 per cent. It is a good policy.

Mr. Lewis: The minister is backing away and she is right to back away.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I do not equate quality with numbers.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They just babble on and on and on over there.

Mr. Lewis: This was an issue in the by-election, as a matter of fact.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Oh, no it wasn’t. I do not equate quality with numbers. It might be noted, considering the size of the opposition party, I’m sure they wouldn’t like to equate quality with the numbers over there.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Leader of the Opposition have further questions?

CLOSING OF BURWASH CORRECTIONAL CENTRE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Minister of Correctional Services if he could give the House the information now that led him to decide to close the Burwash correctional facility after he and his predecessor had persuaded the Management Board and the Ministry of Government Services to undertake such an extensive expansion and renovations, some of which went on even after the announcement by the minister to close Burwash?

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): Mr. Speaker, at the time the announcement was made to close Burwash I explained the reasons for closing it. I don’t see any reason why I should go through that all again, unless the hon. member had difficulty understanding it.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Justify it.

Mr. Roy: We don’t want a statement, just an answer.

Hon. Mr. Potter: It certainly started back in 1971 or 1972 when one of my predecessors started a review of the programmes in correctional services and of the increasing costs of providing the services; a study was also started to see how more efficient programmes could be developed in a more economical manner. It started off with scrutiny of the training schools, and it was found that the success of programmes that were started there allowed us to close two training schools in the province. Then the studies got into the larger institutions, and it was found that it was not necessary to continue to operate both the Guelph institution and the one at Burwash.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The ministry is opening a new one down there.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Consideration was given to both institutions in terms of where the inmates came from, the cost of operation and so on; and because well over 90 per cent of all of the inmates were from this part of the province, it was decided to continue the operation of the facility at Guelph and to recommend to the government that we close the Burwash facility.

Some work did go on after the decision was made, but I am sure the hon. member will appreciate that this was work that had been contracted for and started some time before; and, of course, it must be completed in order to maintain the buildings in some kind of a state of repair so that they can be used for other purposes.

Mr. Martel: Like building a road?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I pointed out at that time that other ministers of government had visited the facility and that the government was working on details of making further use of these facilities. I am not prepared to state today what this use will be; that doesn’t fall within my jurisdiction. As far as I am concerned in the correctional services field, we have no use for the facility; it certainly would have been improper for me to recommend to government that we continue to operate it strictly to maintain a place of employment for those who were employed there.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Would the minister not agree that the concern here is not only to keep a basis of employment in the Burwash area, but also to get some accounting from the minister for the expenditure of public funds in the months almost immediately before the decision to close it was made? For example: aluminum siding on 60 houses in 1973-1974 -- cost unknown; we tried to find out the cost. And there have been expenditures totalling $1.6 million in the last few months, as far as we have been able to determine.

Will the minister table a complete tabulation of the expenditures that were undertaken for improvement, renovation and new development at Burwash in the last three years?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I would be delighted to because the hon. member, as he has in the past, again is trying to mislead this House by quoting figures that are not true. I have all the figures and I will see that they are properly tabled.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, let the minister give us the information.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary; the hon. member for Sudbury East.

Mr. Martel: A supplementary to the minister: In view of the fact that as early as 1972 the government was aware that its new policy would reduce the number of clientele in its institutions, why then in late 1973 did the government go ahead with the building of a new institution in southern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Speaker, the institution in southern Ontario is for an entirely different purpose. And, as I explained earlier, the institution in Sudbury, if it was to continue to operate for correctional purposes, would require in excess of another $2 million to bring it up to standard. For the last two years of full operation it has cost in the vicinity of $2.5 million to $3 million to operate; and believe me that’s a lot of money. There’s no reason why I should ask the taxpayers of Ontario to keep a facility open that’s no longer useful.

Mr. Speaker: Further supplementaries?

Mr. Martel: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: This will be the last supplementary.

Mr. Martel: In view of the fact that the government has spent about $4.5 million --

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. Martel: -- since 1970 in all kinds of foolish repairs, how can the minister justify his last statement?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Speaker, as I tried to say earlier, the repairs were not foolish repairs. Most of the repairs were necessary for --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They were just expensive ones.

Hon. Mr. Potter: -- any ongoing facility that was being used. And I must say, Mr. Speaker, that I’m very, very surprised --

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): He would rather spend his money in the south.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Potter: I must say I’m very surprised at the criticism from the hon. member.

I thought that he and his leader would have got together long before this, because back in 1969 his leader stated in this House that it was about time the government realized that this facility was obsolete and should, in fact, be closed out.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Does the member for Scarborough West remember that?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Is he talking about me?

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): The leader of the NDP better take that guy to the woodshed; he needs to be straightened out.

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

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: I’m sure I said it, if the minister says so. But I’m sure I must also have said that it should be used for something else, not just the money thrown away.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: He changed his mind.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker; on a point of privilege.

Mr. Breithaupt: A point of correction.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Why doesn’t he retire?

Mr. Lewis: I’d close down all the training schools if we had the chance and put them to another use.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That’s not a training school.

REPORTS ON LEAD POLLUTION

Mr. Lewis: A question, Mr. Speaker, first to the Minister of the Environment: In his new enthusiasm for cleaning up the environment, how is it that he has done absolutely nothing about the task force report on lead emissions in downtown Toronto, which indicated that the Ontario government take immediate action to toughen the controls on lead smelter and battery crushing plants to ensure the safety of persons living or working within 3,000 ft. of such plants? When is he going to act on the lead crisis in downtown Toronto?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, as far as the lead plants in Toronto and other areas of the province are concerned, we have had control orders on plants. We also are still continuing to work with these plants. I don’t have them all listed here in front of me, but we are still doing things in the plants and with the companies. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller) and myself made a joint announcement some two or three weeks ago that the working committee from the Roche Robertson report, as we call it, and the working group on lead committee, will be subject to an Environmental Hearing Board. This will be actually started, as I said at that time, in December.

Mr. Lewis: But by way of supplementary, how long is the minister willing to let it drag on when the report demonstrated that 16 per cent of those tested who have an excessive level of lead in the blood were children under seven, when the report demanded that he toughen and enforce emission control standards? How long does the minister play this life and death game with lead pollution in downtown Toronto?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, we are not playing -- we have controls on them. We are putting further controls on the companies right now.

Mr. Lewis: They are not observing the controls.

Hon. W. Newman: What I’m saying is that we’re going to look at the health situation and the working group on lead at the same time. And we’ll have experts there to present their advice.

Mr. Lewis: The minister has had report upon report.

Hon. W. Newman: But the other report is not out yet. It will be out very shortly.

Mr. Lewis: Thanks. How much evidence does the minister need?

Mr. Foulds: How long, though?

Hon. W. Newman: There will be a meeting at the end of November.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Grey-Bruce.

Mr. Lewis: One more supplementary, if I may, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. Lewis: What does the minister do when even this task force report urgently asks that the soil levels be changed and the board of health moves on it in Toronto, and the head of Canada Metals says, “They’re crazy. I have no intention of paying the cost, whatever it is. It’s not something they can make us do anyway. They don’t have the power.” Who has the power to bring these companies to heel, if not the government of Ontario?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It’s nuts.

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): Big, bad companies.

Hon. W. Newman: I didn’t say the Province of Ontario didn’t have the power to do some of these things.

Mr. Lewis: Well, do it!

Hon. W. Newman: And we are doing some of them now and we will continue. We want to get the health report, which will be out very shortly, too.

Mr. Breithaupt: The report on the report.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Grey-Bruce with the last supplementary.

Mr. Sargent: People are moving out of the area because they can’t stand these places. Why doesn’t the government quit all this nonsense and have the plants moved to an industrial area and protect the people? Why doesn’t the government do a simple thing like that?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Move to Owen Sound.

Hon. W. Newman: One thing about the hon. member for Grey-Bruce, he has a great simplification for everything.

Mr. Sargent: Supplementary: Does the minister mean to tell me he is going to allow that plant to stay there?

Mr. Speaker: Order please. That was the last supplementary. Does the member for Scarborough West have further questions?

Mr. Sargent: Is the minister going to allow the plant to stay there?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. That was the last supplementary. Does the member for Scarborough West have further questions?

Mr. Sargent: Is the minister going to allow the plant to stay there?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

MINE SAFETY INSPECTION

Mr. Lewis: A question, if I may, Mr. Speaker, of the Minister of Natural Resources.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Not him, not him.

Mr. Lewis: I am just practising so I turned around and looked at my colleague from Sudbury East.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Just a dry run.

Mr. Lewis: Right, right. One would call it a dress rehearsal.

May I ask the Minister of Natural Resources, how does the minister expect to introduce integrity and a feeling of reassurance into the mine safety inspections if he turns that operation in to an independent group called the Mine Safety Association, composed now entirely of company representatives?

How is the minister improving all the discomfort that all the miners and the unions feel about the possibility of collusion between inspection and company?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Re- sources): Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member well knows we are going into some very extensive studies and reviews of this entire question. Certainly I have made indications that we are going a different route. I think this has been accepted.

Mr. Martel: No, he is not. He is giving it back to the mining people.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We certainly await the recommendations and the report of the royal commission that has been established, but in the interim we are looking at a number of different ways, a number of different routes --

Mr. Ferrier: He hasn’t done anything yet.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- to go to bring back and to put credibility and reliability into these tests --

Mr. Martel: That’s putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Is the member for Sudbury East in charge?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- and this is just one of the main ones.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River with a supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: I have a supplementary, if I may, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry, the member for Scarborough West first then.

Mr. Lewis: That’s a fairly vivid description of what the minister is doing. If the minister is moving the inspection from the mines themselves to the mines association, can the minister give us a guarantee that the Mine Safety Association will have appointed to it a number of members from the work force equivalent to the number of members from the company?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I think I made that very, very clear in my public statements that if we did go this route -- and I am personally convinced that we should -- I have also made it clear that we would have members of labour involved.

Mr. Lewis: No, an equivalent number.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That’s something we can look into as the structure goes on, but they will be involved and I have made that commitment publicly.

Mr. Cassidy: Make a commitment. The mine owners aren’t underground, as the minister knows.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River for a last supplementary.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What does the minister intend to do about the mining section of his ministry, which, it has been admitted by his predecessors, has been the handmaiden of the mining industry rather than the province and the people as a whole? What is the minister going to do to clean up the mining section and make it an instrument to serve the public and the mining people instead of just the companies?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I certainly won’t comment on what my predecessor stated with regard to the mine safety division of my ministry.

As I pointed out we are taking a thrust to bring back credibility and to make sure that the mines of the province of Ontario are the safest mines not only in Canada, but indeed in the entire world and that’s the thrust we are taking.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Martel: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I announced that that would be the last supplementary. Time is passing quickly.

Mr. Martel: Would the --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Martel: One supplementary question?

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

Mr. Lewis: You are not allowing a supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: No, the time is running out.

ONTARIO CIVIL SERVICE GROWTH

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Chairman of Management Board: Is the freeze which the minister has applied to the Civil Service Association also going to apply to all those people who are on contract, people who are classified as professional or having special capacities who are working on non-recurring projects, all of them outside the scope of collective bargaining -- many of them we would classify as political appointments I suppose, in association to ministers, etc., and commissions and advisory councils, etc.? Is the same freeze to be applied to that group as to the formal civil service group?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, there is a complement control for the purpose of controlling the expansion of government in any area where such employees are concerned, whether they be full-time complement or unclassified, if I may put it that way.

Mr. Reid: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary; the member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: May I ask the minister why he did not consult or inform the CSAO when he decided to make this move? After all, they do represent the bulk of the employees of the civil service. Why weren’t they at least consulted or informed ahead of time? Why do they have to read about these things in the newspapers?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That last part of the member’s question is something that is very near and dear to me because many of the moves that the CSAO has made thus far we’ve had to read from the newspapers too.

Mr. Reid: They tried to meet with the government on various occasions, with the minister and the Premier (Mr. Davis).

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I want to tell the member this. The government is the employer and the policy will be established by the government and will be announced by the government.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, that’s what is called “entitled to every consideration.”

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: That’s good faith.

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

Mr. Lewis: No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kingston and the Islands.

Mr. C. J. S. Apps (Kingston and the Islands): I was going to ask a question of the Minister of the Environment but I’ll contact him after the question period.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Grey-Bruce.

BEEF PRICES

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture. In our area, many farmers are going to lose between $100 and $150 a head on their beef this fall. In Alberta and Saskatchewan -- what’s the Chairman of the Management Board laughing about? Is that not true? Does he know that? He should know that.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Why doesn’t the member talk to Whelan who ran up and down the country speaking on behalf of the farmers?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member has a question?

Mr. Sargent: Yes. That man is sick.

Mr. G. Nixon (Dovercourt): So is the member for Grey-Bruce.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Why does the member for Grey-Bruce say that about Whelan?

He’s not sick, he is just wrong.

Mr. Sargent: Alberta and Saskatchewan are offering up to $40 million interest-free loans, as he probably knows. Last week 2,000 Quebec producers threatened a boycott unless subsidies were immediately forthcoming. What plans does the Minister of Agriculture have in the hopper right now for Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I may have some further things to say about this within the next few days.

Mr. Lewis: By way of a supplementary, if I could, could the minister also comment --

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: -- on why beef farmers in Ontario are so often receiving 20 to 25 cents a pound now and received something between 60 and 70 cents a pound a year ago, while the prices in the supermarkets have remained approximately the same? What has happened to the difference?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Doesn’t the member for Scarborough West know the difference between a calf and a fat animal?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I would be very pleased to do that. My hon. friend, I’m sure, must appreciate the fact that the live beef selling at the prices he’s just quoted is really feeder cattle.

Mr. Lewis: I understand that. I’m asking about the quoted figures.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Oh, no, that’s not the case.

Mr. Lewis: I’m asking the minister to deal with the second part as well.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: The fat cattle are selling at approximately the same price today that they were a year ago today. That’s the fat beef that’s going into the supermarkets over the shelf.

Mr. Sargent: It’s 28 cents a pound on sale. The minister doesn’t know what is going on. Go out to the sale and see what is happening.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I know what’s going on, my friend. If the member for Grey-Bruce knew half as much, he would keep his mouth shut long enough to give his brains a chance to work, which he’s never really been able to do.

An hon. member: The minister is just trying to straighten the member out.

Mr. Sargent: Say it again. I can’t hear the minister.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: If he would just keep quiet long enough to give his brain a chance to work, he’d know that he didn’t know anything about the situation.

Mr. Roy: Make the minister withdraw that remark. It’s unparliamentary.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, if that’s unparliamentary, I apologize for it, but I’m tempted to say those kind of things.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I sympathize with the person who is selling feeder calves today at half or less than half what they were a year ago.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: But those cattle will not be on the market and those cattle do not represent the beef that’s being sold over the supermarket counters at all.

Mr. Lewis: But what happens to it?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That will go to the people who will be feeding those calves between now and this time next year and later.

The reason they’re selling at that price today is that the price of grain has escalated to such a degree that it’s virtually impossible to sell grain-fed cattle at today’s prices, unless those cattle can be bought in the initial stage -- that’s the feeder calf --

Mr. Haggerty: The minister sounds like Whelan now.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: -- or the yearling stage -- at a price that will allow them to make the difference up due to the high cost of feed between the date purchased and when they’re slaughtered. That’s the reason they’re selling less. That’s the reason many of the feed lots of western Canada are empty -- not a beast in them. We’re concerned, quite frankly, and the governments of western Canada are concerned. This is why the federal government, as I understand it, introduced the beef stabilization programme, which applies only on fat cattle and applies only from Aug. 1, 1974, to Aug. 1, 1975, to try to stabilize the fat market to help keep the breeding herd intact --

Mr. Sargent: Why is this government dragging its feet then?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: -- so that we will have a breeding herd to continue producing beef. If these present prices continue for feeder calves, I’m afraid the cow slaughter will take place to such an extent there will be no sources for beef for 1977-1978.

Mr. Lewis: So what does the province do?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That’s the thing we are considering right now. Just how we go about it is something I will have more to say in a day or so.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: This will be the last supplementary.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is the minister giving some concern to the views expressed by the Federation of Agriculture, particularly from Gordon Hill, the president, that a specific subsidy be used to maintain the cow herds under these particularly oppressive and unusual conditions? Is that what the minister is considering?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I met with the Federation of Agriculture and their proposal was simply that -- and I’m sure they made it in good faith -- the province pay a subsidy of $100 per cow to every beef farmer in Ontario who would agree to reduce his herd by 20 per cent. To my way of thinking that is not really in the best long-term interests of the beef industry and the consumer in this country.

Now, I can appreciate what the federation is trying to do. But to me we should try to keep those beef herds -- the breeding herds -- intact.

Mr. Sargent: Only six months they wanted.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I suggest, Mr. Speaker, with great respect, and I have publicly stated on many occasions that every breeding cow should be removed from the breeding herd. But keep the good young cows and replace them with the best young heifers that can be found now, so that by 1977-1978 we have a breeding programme in place that will keep the consumer supplied with beef at a stable price.

Mr. Lewis: Then the minister is going to have to save them in the next few months.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That is really what we are attempting to do. I think that when I pointed that out to the Federation of Agriculture they realize there was some wisdom, some logic in that way of thinking.

Mr. Lewis: There is logic in that.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: But we are considering a good many other ideas.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That is the difference between our Minister of Agriculture and the federal Minister of Agriculture. Our minister thinks of the consumer as well.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

LEASEBACK CONTRACTS FOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Government Services: Has the difficulty and frustration that his ministry has experienced in trying to persuade John H. McCormick Ltd. of Burlington to pay the subcontractors who have completed work on the provincial Thunder Bay courthouse caused him to examine the whole system of leaseback contracts for public buildings, where his ministry loses the direct financial responsibility of involvement? As he himself admitted in the letter which I received, and which was very thorough, it causes some besmirchment of the provincial government’s reputation. Has he considered the whole process of the leasebacks and the weaknesses there because of the situation?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, Mr. Speaker, we certainly have. In the past years we’ve made several changes in methods of leasebacks. We have two contracts for leaseback buildings in Thunder Bay, as the member well knows, whereby we called public tenders, advertised and had bidders. I think for the courthouse the member refers to there were 14 bids submitted; for the other building there were perhaps seven or eight. Unfortunately we have a problem with the courthouse contract. The contractor is not completing his obligations the way one would expect. Certainly he had not paid the subcontractors --

Mr. Roy: The minister is just repeating the question.

Hon. Mr. Snow: It is not a direct contract but a lease. Where we do not have a direct contract the Public Works Creditors Payment Act does not apply, but the Mechanics’ Lien Act does. The creditors in most cases, with perhaps the odd exception, have registered mechanics’ liens and at the present time these must be dealt with by the courts.

I’m certainly not happy with the progress of this building. I’m not happy with the completed product, though in general I’m happy with the completed product -- I’ve visited the building myself. There are a few minor items that the contractor has refused to complete. We have given him, his mortgage company, his lawyer and a trust company all notice by registered mail that if these are not completed in a certain length of time we will take action to complete them.

So I think we are doing everything possible at this time. But prior to the mechanics’ lien actions being dealt with in the court I can’t do any more there.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary, if I may, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Foulds: Has the minister consulted with his legal officials to see if any steps can be taken to protect those subcontractors who didn’t have the expertise to enter a mechanics’ lien, and is there no way, no power to avoid the 17 pending court cases? They are not only expensive, but they are an extra burden to the taxpayer because of the overloading on the courts. Is there no way to avoid that?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Well, there are two questions there, one referring to the tradesmen who have not registered mechanics’ liens. I think everyone in the construction business should understand the Mechanics’ Lien Act. It has been around for a great many years. I think it works very well and gives a great deal of protection. Unfortunately, as is the case with many other Acts of this or any other Legislature, if one doesn’t take the necessary action to avail himself of the benefits under those Acts, then there is not too much one can do.

Mr. Roy: If there is an ordinary Act involved.

Hon. Mr. Snow: If, of course, those people have not made their registration of lien -- and I think it was well known amongst the trades in Thunder Bay that there were problems with this contractor -- then I am surprised that those creditors who have perhaps missed the time limit for the liens have done so because it had been well known for some time. Of course, they still have a civil action against the contractor, but they don’t have the rights under the Mechanics’ Lien Act against the leasehold interest.

Now, what was the hon. member’s other question?

Mr. Foulds: It’s not worth it.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Huron-Bruce.

PULLET PRODUCTION

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. What is the minister prepared to do for the pullet growers in view of the fact that the conversion privilege no longer applies?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, that subject is under discussion now in the newly formed advisory committee, which had its first meeting on Tuesday of this week. It is an advisory committee comprising the egg producers, the pullet growers, the hatcheries, the processors and the egg breakers.

It’s a very difficult subject. I wish there was an easy answer for it, but there isn’t. Obviously everybody realizes that the facilities to produce eggs, chickens and pullets in the Province of Ontario are greatly over capacity and have been for some years. That means it’s a very difficult area. I hope they will be able to find a solution themselves.

Mr. Gaunt: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the Judge Ross report recommended that both egg production and pullet grower facilities be frozen, and since the government froze egg production facilities as of April 20, 1972, would the minister consider, as an alternative approach, freezing the pullet grower facilities as of now?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He did better than the federal Minister of Agriculture.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, that is an alternative that I understand the advisory committee has under consideration.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor West.

DISTILLERY WORKERS’ STRIKE

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): A question of the Minister of Labour, Mr. Speaker: Will he or a senior mediator now involve himself directly in the strike between the Hiram Walker distillery in Windsor and Local 1 of the Canadian Union of Distillery Workers, inasmuch as it has now gone on for 16 weeks, their wage demands at four percent, four per cent and three per cent over three years are as reasonable as I have ever heard, and their pension requests are no greater than those already granted in some other industrial jurisdictions?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I am sure that all of us are anxious to get them back into production as soon as possible.

An hon. member: Hear, hear.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: This week the parties are meeting at their own request without the help of our ministry, but if they don’t get results this week we will be asking them to meet with our mediation people next week. But they are meeting this week at their own request.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

ROYAL COMMISSION ON ALLEGATIONS OF POLICE BRUTALITY

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Solicitor General pertaining to his establishment of a royal commission under Mr. Justice Morand regarding the violence of the Toronto police.

Since the terms of reference apparently are wide enough to cover suggestions to other police forces across this province, are they wide enough that people who might have complaints in relation to other police forces could make these complaints to the commissioner?

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): No, Mr. Speaker. The allegations should be in respect to the conduct of a member of the Toronto police force. I think the terms are pretty well restricted to the Metropolitan Toronto force. As I have indicated before. The reason for this is that the inquiry was requested by the Metropolitan Board of Commissioners of Police. It has been indicated -- and I think the commissioners feel this way -- that the cases that will be dealt with by this inquiry are the type of incidents and situations that may well take place in other parts of the province.

I don’t think there is any particular type of incident that could be attributed to a certain part of the province, for example. So the type and the variety of incidents and allegations that will be considered by this commissioner would, in fact, depending on his recommendations, be something that would be something that would be helpful to and could be noted by all forces in the province.

Mr. Roy: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary, yes.

Mr. Roy: Just a short supplementary: If the terms of reference are wide enough to make recommendations to all police forces across the province, doesn’t the minister find it inconsistent that, having established this mechanism, people may well have complaints from other areas -- and I am not making this allegation; it’s just that they may well have -- so why doesn’t he allow them to make their allegations at that time before that commissioner? Surely this will not unduly lengthen the process?

Mr. Sargent: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: It seems to me that question was asked and answered.

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: This will be the last supplementary. The member for Grey-Bruce.

Mr. Sargent: As I read the terms of reference, I think the minister has made them so narrow that they are narrowed down to the 13 cases in the press. If that is not true, I would suggest that to --

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. Sargent: -- get a true picture of the magnitude of the situation, would he agree that he should advertise in the paper that citizens who have suffered police brutality could send in sworn statements so that we would really know what’s going on?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, the terms of reference are not narrow. They don’t apply just to the specific cases that are set out in the order in council. There is a provision that says, dealing with allegations, “of such other persons as the commissioner shall determine are necessary for the purpose of this inquiry.” So they will deal with other allegations that are made against the metropolitan forces

Mr. Roy: Is the minister going to advertise that?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: -- by anyone, depending on whether or not the commissioner feels that they are of some benefit to the inquiry.

Mr. Sargent: Will the minister say that he would welcome citizens sending in sworn statements? Would he welcome that?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: They should be sent to the commissioner, Mr. Speaker. He is running the inquiry. Certainly I would think that if somebody wants to make an allegation against a particular police officer, if he or she wrote to the commissioner the chances of being heard would be very good, depending on the circumstances.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has now expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Introduction of bills.

The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: I have two related bills, Mr. Speaker.

STATUTORY POWERS PROCEDURE ACT

Mr. Lewis moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, 1971.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

PLANNING ACT

Mr. Lewis moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Planning Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, the combined effects of these bills would mean in effect that unincorporated ratepayers’ or citizens’ groups all across the province would have the right to appeal before the Ontario Municipal Board, to place submissions on any planning matter in any given area of Ontario.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day are called, might I inquire of the government House leader if he is prepared to call motion No. 6 standing in the name of my leader, the confidence motion, on Monday next?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I thank the hon. member for his question and I am prepared to call that motion on Monday afternoon. I will confer with the other House leaders on what adjustments will take place, inasmuch as we had agreed on what the routine of estimates would be. If there is agreement in the House, we would transfer the private members’ hour to Tuesday.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The 17th order, House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL RELATIONS (CONTINUED)

Mr. Chairman: Is the hon. minister capable today -- in good shape?

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): You really know how to hurt a guy, don’t you?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I’m very grateful for the concern you’ve expressed as to my health, Mr. Chairman, and I’ll do the best I can under somewhat difficult conditions.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): We won’t talk too loudly.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Will you keep it down?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to make some brief remarks today, prior to the opening of my estimates, and with regard particularly to some of our current activities and some of those things which we hope to achieve in the months and years ahead.

As you’re aware, the activities of my ministry are very active, both in terms of its legislative programme and its day-to-day dealings with the consumer and business community. I hope the members opposite will appreciate what I believe has been a concerted effort to continue the high standard of service which my ministry has provided for the public, the members and their constituents over the past number of years.

There is no doubt the ministry will have to continue to be flexible and continually improve its organization, operations and personnel, if it is to effectively deal with the wide range of challenges which we face on a day-to-day basis.

Perhaps I might, Mr. Chairman, review briefly some of the matters which are being dealt with by the ministry through its various branches before we proceed into specific questions with regard to the fiscal operation of the ministry; and of course before we attempt in a very real way to respond to the many questions which I am sure the members will have.

May I say initially, Mr. Chairman, that we have attempted to co-operate closely with all members of the House and I certainly appreciate the response of the members opposite, as well as those in my own caucus, over the summer months when asked for discussion and comment of the bills currently before the House, in order that many of their concerns and perhaps technical questions with regard to the draftsmanship of the bills could be dealt with to expedite the business of this House.

I might say that before we proceed with second reading of these bills, which will be in the very near future, we anticipate providing each of the members with copies of any amendments we might propose as well as the reasoning for the proposed change, in the hope that the same type of consultative process can continue in the future.

Perhaps I might initially deal with the Ontario Securities Commission, which of course has before this Legislature the new Securities Act, which is a result of the tremendous amount of study, investigation and consultation, both with the industry and other authorities across the country. As you are aware, one of our major thrusts with this legislation has been to bring uniformity in all provincial jurisdictions and our bill will be an important cornerstone to the entire regulation of securities in Canada.

In addition, the Securities Commission, as well as its day to day surveillance of the securities market, is carrying out a study with regard to the need for regulation of commodities traders in trading within the province; hopefully that study will be completed in the near future in order that some discussions can take place with regard to the recommendations.

The superintendent of insurance of my ministry is continuing his study of a number of submissions which have been made concerning improvement of automobile insurance coverage in Ontario. I would personally rather err on the side of caution, rather than bring forward any changes which might appear to be in the consumers’ interest, but might have ramifications which might not be apparent on the surface.

I think we are anxious to bring about improvements to the present system; however, as a number of people have pointed out, such as Prof. Allan Linden, we have at the present time one of the best and most comprehensive systems in North America. We should be cautious before we make any adjustments which might detract from existing coverage. We are, however, continually looking for ways to improve and upgrade the current system.

In addition, Mr. Chairman, we have, of course, a study of insurance intermediaries being carried out by Mr. Douglas Carruthers, QC. He is well along the line with regard to his initial study covering the life insurance industry, which should ultimately result, after his recommendations are put forward, in the rewriting of that particular section of the legislation.

I think I can indicate quite clearly to you that hopefully over the next few years we will be rewriting the entire Insurance Act, section by section, to provide a comprehensive and perhaps more easily understandable piece of legislation, which I am sure will more than please Mr. Singer, who I know has been calling for this for some time.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): I am sorry, sir, I missed the sentence.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I will repeat that, because I think this will be enshrined in Hansard for ever and perhaps you might want to leave copies to your children.

Mr. Singer: With the minister’s autograph.

Hon. Mr. Clement: If we can get that many copies printed.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I will repeat that -- blew it again!

I repeat, I think I can indicate quite clearly to you that hopefully over the next few years we will be rewriting the entire Insurance Act, section by section, to provide a comprehensive and perhaps more easily understandable piece of legislation which I am sure will more than please Mr. Singer --

Mr. Singer: Right.

Hon. Mr. Clement: -- who I know has been calling for this for some time.

We anticipate a new Credit Unions Act, to be introduced for first reading later this session, which will implement many of the recommendations of the select committee; and hopefully, after a long period of consultation, we will have developed legislation which will meet the need of the credit unions, but at the same time providing protection for the individual depositor, which of course was one of the greatest concerns of the select committee.

The business practices division of my ministry has been extremely active over the past year and the funds which were available to the ministry in the area of information services were to a great extent spent in developing a new and comprehensive series of pamphlets outlining much of our consumer protection legislation, and to assist the consumer in dealing with a wide range of business practices.

The availability of these brochures and consumer information programmes was announced through the newspapers as well as radio and television and we have been more than pleased with the response, which has resulted in the reprinting of a number of brochures.

The Business Practices Act which is currently before the Legislature is a major programme for us and will result in the re-organization of that section of my ministry in order to enable it to be more responsive in dealing specifically with the elimination of unfair and deceptive practices, as opposed to its previous structure, which I think could be described as being one of a registrative nature.

In addition to this legislation, we will of course have legislation forthcoming in the near future as a result of the green paper on consumer product warranties, of which the members are aware. Hopefully early next year there will be an updating and revision of the Consumer Protection Act.

I should perhaps touch on the property rights division and the very real efforts which are being made to improve and update the land registration system in Ontario. I am not sure that too many people realize the tremendous task which the ministry has undertaken since this responsibility was assumed by the provincial government. However, I think that both the offices and the calibre of our personnel have been substantially upgraded and we will continue to proceed in this manner in the near future. Hopefully, with the close co-operation we have with those in the legal profession and others, we can develop new and more efficient ways of dealing with the subject of real estate registration and somehow speed up the ultimate conversion of the entire land registration system in Ontario to the Land Titles Act.

Mr. Singer: So it will be the greatest in the world?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Oh, probably.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Not quite.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The Ontario Racing Commission, of course, is a very active part of my ministry. I must say that the sire stakes programme which was implemented by the government for the standardbred industry has been to my mind quite an unqualified success and I believe has brought new vitality into that industry. It has reversed the major flow of investment that has been going out of the country and brought benefit to a great number of people, specifically in the rural areas of Ontario. The commission is discussing ways of improving the programmes we have at the present time for the thoroughbred industry. The horse racing industry employs about 17,000 people in this province and we, quite frankly, feel that we have one of the best racing commissions in North America.

The new vigour and direction with which they are pursuing their role as a catalyst for progress in the racing industry is an example, I am sure, that can be followed by many other branches of my ministry and the government.

I am sure, Mr. Chairman, I could go on talking extensively, about the technical standards division of my ministry, the pension commission, the office of the registrar general, the theatres branch and the companies division, all of which I can assure you in their own way are making my position a little easier by the efficient and co-operative way in which they handle their tasks.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, perhaps I can say that I believe my ministry has some of the most dedicated and most loyal public servants in the government who spend long hours listening to and dealing with the complaints of individual consumers of Ontario, and working with what we believe is a responsive business community to resolve those complaints. We are working with them and others to establish codes of conduct which will ensure that the Ontario consumer is indeed protected. There is no doubt that the task is not an easy one. However, I personally want to go on record as commending to the Legislature the efforts of these people in carrying out the performance of their various duties.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the dialogue which will take place during these estimates and welcome the questions of members opposite. I would like to personally assure them everything is in order; if they want to just approve it, I wouldn’t be offended.

Mr. Singer: Why doesn’t the minister just move that everything be approved and sit down? Instead of waiting until five or six days from now.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Perth.

Mr. H. Edighoffer (Perth): Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to be the spokesman for the official opposition. I have to say first of all that I enjoy the activities of this minister, particularly in the House, with his wit and humour. I think he is good for the Legislature and I’m glad to see he is in such good shape today. He doesn’t look too well roasted.

Having been associated with small business all my life, I may be a bit biased, but I realize that the need for assistance to maintain small business endeavours without undue government restrictions is important, because if business becomes too large there seems to be a need for more regulations. I think small business keeps that personal touch with consumers and, in turn, allows the consumers more access to those who make the decisions.

Now as this ministry is entitled Consumer and Commercial Relations, I hope that the minister continues to work more to that end in the future.

Looking over the estimates from last year, I notice at one point the minister remarked, when asked about the annual report for the ministry, that it would be out in four or five weeks. This was a year or year and a half ago. I was glad to receive on my desk just two days ago a copy of the statistical report of the ministry, so that I am glad that the minister finally made this report available.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The member wasn’t on our subscription list; I am sorry about that.

Mr. Edighoffer: I think it might be appropriate -- however, I see your parliamentary assistant isn’t here today.

Hon. Mr. Clement: He is, he helped this morning.

Mr. Edighoffer: Oh, he helped this morning.

Well I just wanted to say a word of congratulation to him. I hope he enjoys it and I hope that, of course, he can lighten your workload to some extent.

I think today I would just like to take a few minutes to talk particularly from the consumer’s point of view. We hear so much these days about the increase in prices at a rate never before encountered. We hear references made at the provincial and federal level which lead people to imagine that the government is doing something about it. We know that price and wage and rent controls are not the best way to control the spiralling costs of goods and services.

I just received the second food study report, so I got the former report out and compared it with the new one. I really wonder if this has any great positive benefits for consumers. I have heard on a number of occasions this report is considered a good public relations report, but in looking over both I notice the minister made a statement after the first report. I quote his statement: “It seems to me that the food company annual reports are written with too much emphasis on management accomplishments and too little accent on informing the public.”

Now, in the press release with this second report he makes no comment such as that. As I read the press release I felt he was trying to advise the consumers that possibly these profits would decrease considerably in the next six months or a year; even though on page 17 of the report, and I quote from the report that there is “No incentive to fight inflation. It is evident from the analysis that food companies have little difficulty passing on rising costs in the form of higher prices.”

Now in reference to these higher prices, I think the minister should instigate and press for a legislative price review committee. This has been recommended by the official opposition on many occasions, as I am sure he is aware.

I can see such a committee as being very useful. I think first it would assist in making companies or businesses take a closer look at increasing prices because of the possibility of being summoned before the committee to justify that increase.

Secondly, the committee would have the power to look into the price increases and recommend the government roll back prices.

And thirdly, I think it would also give the consumer a better insight into the reasons for the higher prices. In this way, I feel that the Legislature could play a most important and positive role on behalf of the consumers of Ontario.

I recall in the Legislature, in the spring I think, the minister was asked whether he would support the Ontario branch of the Canadian Consumers Association. They requested a grant of $25,000 I think, to continue their work. At that time I believe he said he wasn’t able to.

I would just like to say that I feel this amount of money would be of great benefit to the association and the consumers. In comparison to the amount that his ministry gives to the horses, I really think it would do a lot of good. I believe this request was made with good intentions and I think it would tie in with the feeling of most legislators that we must have grassroots participation. I hope the minister sees fit to make such a grant available.

Mr. Chairman, in this ministry there are so many areas, really, to cover, I know I can’t cover them all in the lead off. We will have ample time vote by vote, but I would like to just say a word or two about credit buying.

Statistics on credit buying are available and they are somewhat alarming. I noticed in one of the minister’s speeches, to the Canadian Consumer Loan Association in Jasper, Alta., on July 3, he made this statement, and I quote:

“The unnecessary use of credit has implications for individuals as well as the economy as a whole. I am told that once a family reaches a certain level of indebtedness to a financial institution, it is rarely able to free itself. This kind of credit addiction is surely worth examination.”

In your ministry’s publication, “Using Credit Wisely,” I note that you were very careful to list seven advantages and seven disadvantages, and 1 hope this means that you are just not sort of sitting on the fence talking about credit. When we refer to credit, I had the matter of credit cards brought to my attention by a commercial teacher in the Stratford Central Secondary School. This teacher and a number of students wrote to me and stated that they felt credit cards are creating a higher cost for goods and services. Being a businessman, I am afraid I am involved in this sort of thing. I feel, personally, that I use it as a means of reducing bad debts, along with other things. A report in the Financial Post -- I think it was in February, 1974 -- stated that there were 3.8 million Chargex cards and 600,000 Master Charge cards in the hands of consumers in Canada. That means there’s a two to six per cent service charge that could have a great bearing on the increased cost of goods.

I just wondered, Mr. Minister, if you had ever considered legislation, or recommending to the federal government that legislation is necessary, to have the consumers pay the service charge or receive the goods at less cost for cash? I understand that now in Quebec they are starting to use these credit cards in grocery stores, and if this trend continues it could be another burden to many of the consumers, not only in Ontario but all of Canada.

I would like to hear, Mr. Minister, what your comments are in regard to the credit card system as it is today.

I will just say a word about lotteries. Lotteries seem to be important in the minds of many people and there certainly seems to be a tremendous amount of money being put into lotteries. It’s difficult to get exact figures on how much people in Ontario spend in licensed games of chance, but I have read figures such as they spend $160 million to win $50 million in prizes. It has also been suggested that $30 million leaves Ontario in support of lotteries operated outside Ontario.

There was an editorial in the London Free Press which was most informative and which in the end suggested that lotteries should be considered with caution. I recall mention in this House some time ago that a study was under way as to whether or not we would have a provincial lottery. I hope that study will be made available shortly so that we can examine the possibilities of a provincial lottery or its other various alternatives.

Because of the amount of money involved, I hope that the minister just isn’t holding this off until the great magnificent sports complex is going to be announced or opened, in the Bronte Creek Provincial Park I believe it is.

In another area in your ministry -- the Liquor Licence Board, the Liquor Control Board -- many aspects really could be discussed. It’s most alarming that the latest figures from the Addiction Research Foundation show that in 1971 there were about 286,000 people in Ontario who consumed a hazardous amount of alcohol. This, of course, means that there have been considerable health and social costs related to this.

I just make reference to my leader’s statement on May 7, 1974, when he called for a ban on liquor and beer advertising because of the increasing consumption and the increase in the incidence of alcoholism. I agree with my leader’s statement.

I realize that at the time the minister stated that he would consider a proposal calling for liquor companies to match their advertising expenditures with money to cope with the social problems created by liquor. Looking over the advertising budgets of some of these companies, it would be quite a sizable amount.

The last figures I have been able to obtain for 1973 show the following expenditures: Molson’s a little over $4 million; Carling O’Keefe, almost $4 million; Labatt’s Breweries, $3.5 million; Seagram, a little over $3 million; Gilbey, a little over $2 million; Formosa Spring Brewery, $2 million; Hiram Walker, just about $2 million. These figures, when they are added together, give us a total of over $20 million. So if these companies were to supply the same amount of money for health and social costs, it would be of great assistance to the people in the province. I am wondering if the Minister is considering a suggestion in reply to my leader’s request.

It seems that many times when a person picks up a newspaper he reads something about the travel industry. I could say that in many cases we feel sorry that the people who have planned trips or vacations have been unable to complete these travel plans. I noticed in the press not too long ago that your new parliamentary assistant is working diligently and has made some suggestions that legislation will be prepared for this session. But I would like just to put on the record part of this editorial from the Toronto Star of September 12, which says:

“The government has also had for months the report of an auditor appointed to look into the affairs of an earlier bankrupted travel firm. He recommended all travel agents should be required to keep customer’s trust payments in a fund separate from general operating funds, and should carry insurance covering at least 75 per cent of the average amount in the trust fund during the year.

“Agents should be licensed by the provincial government. The licences would be renewed each year when the agent would be required to supply an audited financial statement and proof of his trust position in insurance.

“Summarizing, the auditor noted that travel agents operate in a position of public trust and added: ‘The international nature of the travel agency requires that strong provincial legislation be enacted to protect the public.’ While the travel agents themselves may not go wholeheartedly along with that, they agree that the reputation of the industry is jeopardized by a few bad apples. The only one apparently unconvinced of the need for urgent action is the Ontario government.”

Need I say more, other than that I hope the parliamentary assistant’s comments in the press mean that we will see something to assist these people who have had difficulty in travelling in the past.

I have met on a number of occasions, Mr. Speaker, with members of the Ontario Retail Gasoline and Automotive Service Association. I have covered a number of subjects with them, but there is one in particular that I believe is most important. I have talked to a number of these operators who are lessees of premises from oil companies; I’ve looked over their leases and I find that these leases are very binding for the company. In a number of cases there is no assurance for the lessee that the lease is valid or will be renewed even if his ability to operate is satisfactory.

I know that this ministry has been working on lease guidelines for some time, and I refer to the question my colleague, the member for York Centre (Mr. Deacon) asked in the Legislature on May 27. He asked about the status of a fair leasing policy or programme, and the minister’s reply at the time was:

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

That’s the end of the quote. Then I received in the mail a copy of a letter written by the association’s manager, Mr. Coates, dated June 13, and addressed to the minister. Referring to some letters he had written to the minister, he said:

“You will quickly see that this association has never accepted certain segments of the guidelines as proposed by your ministry, and we have never met with the Petroleum Association. They have always refused to meet with us.”

In reference to these lease guidelines, I feel it’s most important that something must be done to ensure the motoring public that the best of service is available at all times. I would appreciate the minister’s comments on whether he feels he can iron out this matter through his ministry or whether he anticipates legislation or regulations to set out definite lease guidelines.

Further, I feel quite strongly about another problem that is facing these dealers; that is the subject of gas bar operations. In doing a little research on this matter, I recently read an editorial in the Oakville Daily Journal-Record in reply to a letter from the minister. I would like to just put it on the record, because I feel this is a matter that should be considered. I know it’s being considered but I think it should be considered further, to make certain that public safety is considered to the fullest. I would just like to put this editorial on the record.

“It is comforting indeed that the Ontario government has recognized the potential dangers of the self-serve gas bar, but it is not comforting at all that, having recognized them, the province has chosen to do precious little to protect us from them.

“Queen’s Park, in the person of one John Clement -- Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations -- undoubtedly would find that conclusion hard to swallow and wonder why this newspaper seems bent on making such ado about nothing.

“Clement, if you’ll recall, recently went to all the trouble of writing to us to calm our fears that the ‘pump-it-yourself’ facility is really a potential neighbourhood inferno in disguise. He assured us that the self-serve gas bar’s record of safety speaks for itself, that constant surveillance by municipal fire officials and inspectors from his ministry’s energy branch has led to a marked reduction in gasoline spillage during refuelling and a co-operative spirit on the part of the motoring public that has been simply super; that a complex network of fail-safe mechanisms would allow for immediate shutdown should anything go wrong; that there are hazards wherever highly volatile fuel is handled and that we shouldn’t worry about staggering drunks igniting themselves and everything around because they probably couldn’t even find the gas station (a nice touch of graveyard humour, that).

“In short, the minister was pleased to inform us that Queen’s Park has proved to its own satisfaction, and, if we’d be at all reasonable about it, to ours, that the self-serve gas bar is safe, harmless and an all-around good idea.

“Sorry to appear unreasonable, Mr. Minister, but we’re not satisfied.

“We’re not satisfied because your argument, for all its surface appeal, boils down in the final analysis to the single questionable premise that because nothing has happened so far, nothing will. And apart from its dubious logic, we’re not satisfied because your argument, well-meaning though it no doubt is, ignores both the little-known eccentricities of pumping gasoline and the unfortunate, if understandable, frailties of the average motorist, no matter how co-operative and conscientious he may be.

“It is a fact that the deceptively simple act of pumping gas can take months to master, and remain even then a risky business. It is a fact that service station employees are so cautious that they don’t wear shoes with nailed-on soles, just for fear a clicking up a spark. It is a fact that gas vapours building in a near-empty tank whoosh to the top the second the gas cap is released with enough force to splash fuel on even the most seasoned attendant. It is a fact that not merely a dangling cigarette, but a wayward ash and even a spark tossed off by a passing truck could result in disaster.

“Facts known well by veteran gas dealers, who know, too, that they can’t always prevent things from happening -- they can only hope to cope with them once they do, relying on years of experience. The average motorist, though, is aware of few of these things, and sorely ill-equipped either by experience or calling to cope with them once they happen, as undoubtedly they will at the self-serve gas bar.

“And then there’s the not-so-average motorist, the drunk -- the staggering, bleary-eyed fellow you dismiss so glibly. Our mistake, that, for portraying him so graphically; but your mistake, too, for making a joke of it. For you know as well as we that it takes only a few beers or a couple of highballs to dull the senses, dull them just enough, perhaps, for that fatal careless mistake -- and how is the gas bar attendant to know, until it’s too late?

“And as for the co-operative spirit of the motoring public you were so quick to extol, the holiday highway death list is proof enough of just how co-operative we really are.

“No, Mr. Minister, we’re not satisfied. Nor should you be. For you see, by taking the gas pump out of the hands of professionals and putting it into the hands of amateurs, you’ve provided us with just one more way of killing each other. And for what? A few pennies, no more. Of course, you don’t see. And you probably won’t until some self-serve gas bar some where, some day becomes the inferno we fear.

“And by then, it won’t matter.”

That was a fairly lengthy editorial, but I thought it was worth putting on record, particularly when he said “and for what -- a few pennies more.” Because when you look at the price of gas, the saving of gas, and you do a little figuring, you’ll note that if you drive a car 10,000 miles a year and if you save seven cents a gallon, assuming you get 30 miles per gallon in your car, you will save $23.31 in a year.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Who gets 30 miles per gallon?

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Not in a government limousine, I can tell you.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Some cars do.

Mr. Edighoffer: I think saving is important, but you are in trouble if you run out of oil on the highway because you filled your own tank and you haven’t checked your oil. I don’t think it’s really much of a saving. So I ask you, Mr. Minister, are you really concerned that self-service gas bars are 90, 95 or 100 per cent safe for the motoring public?

I guess, Mr. Chairman, there are many other areas I could cover, but I’ll just leave that for the vote by vote, and thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Riverdale -- oh, I am sorry, the Leader of the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Chairman, I specifically asked to have the opportunity to lead off, because I wasn’t invited last night.

Hon. Mr. Clement: You were, but your cheque bounced.

Mr. Lewis: No, don’t slander me, my friend -- $10 I can afford. Had it been double that, the minister might be right.

Mr. Breithaupt: Just as long as there is the limousine to get back and forth.

Mr. Lewis: I must say that I would have loved to be there. In fact, I had rehearsed while I was on the road a number of one-liners that would have endeared me even to some of the Tories, and certainly to the minister.

He is a man of extraordinary vitality and wit. He is the Puck of the Legislature, as it were.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Is that what it is?

Mr. Lewis: Some of us won’t misinterpret it. I am really pleased that his colleagues paid him the homage they did, because I am one of the people who thinks it was much merited.

I wanted to take the opportunity on behalf of the NDP caucus to put again, I suppose, the kinds of propositions which we have been putting several times in this House about the role of the minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations in a broader sense. And I also wanted to do it because I’m one of those eccentrics who reads some of your reports fairly carefully, particularly your study on the profitability of food companies. I wanted to have something to say, not so much about the part one, but a little bit about the part two in the context of some overall observations.

Let me try to make them relatively quickly so that I don’t bear unduly on the time of the House. Mr. Chairman, we would wish that this ministry be completely transformed, or perhaps that this minister be given powers extended beyond those which he now has, to make him and to make of his ministry the consumer champions for the province.

I think there is a desperate need for that in Ontario, I think there should be some ministry in this cabinet -- and this is the ministry, and in a very real sense, this is the minister; although I must say I find it a little ominous that he is sitting in the seat he is now occupying, because I have no doubt he will be Treasurer before the fall of 1975. But I worry about what happens to this portfolio when he inherits the mantle which is --

Hon. Mr. Clement: Keep talking like that and I might be out of work, too.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, I thought if I complimented him strongly enough he would be demoted quickly.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Why is the leader of the NDP so nice to him?

Mr. Lewis: Why am I so nice to him? I like him. Is that all right? I think he is able. He has some flexibility and a social philosophy as intractable as hell; but that’s all right, at least it is real. It is a social philosophy with which one deals. He is one of the more lovable neanderthals in the House -- and that doesn’t happen very often, does it? No; so one cherishes those moments, passing through these extraordinary chambers.

I would truly like to see -- all of us would like to see -- the whole ministry revised so that the ombudsman feature of it, the consumer protection feature of it, consisted of something rather more than a creative Business Practices Act; consisted of a championing which moved into the field of profits and prices. In other words, precisely into the field where our social philosophies perhaps clash.

Maybe the social philosophies don’t just clash. Maybe the views of jurisdiction clash as well, because when we forever ask the question -- repeating the refrain until the minister finds it unbearable -- of who protects the consumers of Ontario, there is a tendency to feel that’s the job of the federal government and that, in fact, inflation being what it is and the cost of living being what it is, that it’s impossible for Ontario to fulfil any role other than to monitor what is occurring and to express cries of enthusiasm or gloom, depending on the situation.

Mr. Chairman, everyone in this House accepts the phenomenon of world-wide inflation. Everybody accepts the effects on Canada’s economy of the European Common Market and of the United States and the facts of national inflationary trends. But we argue, in a way in which the government refuses to argue, that there is some very major provincial responsibility.

Look at this sticker. Would you believe that? I’ll take it off when I’m finished. As a matter of fact, when I’m finished you’ll walk across the floor and take it off me yourself, okay?

Mr. Givens: He may walk across the floor and kiss you.

Mr. Lewis: No, just a second. You’re really a little worried, are you?

Mr. Givens: You’ve got a passion for the guy.

Mr. Lewis: What have you got?

Mr. Givens: Listen to yourself.

Mr. Lewis: Look, you have your own psychoanalytic views.

Mr. Givens: I’ve never heard you like that.

Hon. Mr. Clement: He is a very nice guy.

Mr. Givens: You may live to regret what you’re saying.

Mr. Lewis: I won’t live to regret what I’m saying at all. I refuse to be abused because I finally identified one Tory in that entire mass for whom I can have some affection. That’s a matter which --

Hon. Mr. Clement: That is the kiss of death.

Mr. Lewis: Of course it’s a kiss of death for you. What do you think this is? It’s not a Machiavellian scheme on my part. Do you believe that I’m expressing sentiments which are real? This isn’t the most manipulative speech I’ve ever made in this House and I’m hoping that it’s noted sufficiently so that you won’t be in your seat for another 24 hours.

I know that we have a very basic difference and I want to itemize it just a little. If we’re going to transform the whole ministry into a kind of consumer-protection, consumer-champion, consumer-ombudsman ministry, then the minister and his civil servants have to see their whole role in a different way; and the entire cabinet has to redefine the role of the minister in a slightly different way. We accept the influences within the country and abroad for inflation. We refuse to accept what we regard as the provincial cop-out. We refuse to accept that it is necessary for the provincial government to surrender entirely its public responsibility of protecting the consumer.

I cannot imagine a government in this country, I know not one where on every single important price issue -- whether it’s food, automobile insurance, oil and gas, automobile production itself or rents -- I cannot think of another jurisdiction in this country where a provincial government has completely abdicated its responsibilities to defend the public.

From British Columbia, where they are monitoring the changes in food prices across the province, through to Nova Scotia, where the Public Utilities Commission has now given itself authority to roll back illegitimate fuel increases, right across Canada there is a sense that a government must protect its consumers, except in Ontario where this government has entered into the most unlovely relationship with every corporate area imaginable to acquiesce in the illegitimate price-setting of unreasonable prices for consumers in the province; and it has to come to an end.

Your ministry is the only ministry that makes sense. As a matter of fact, the Premier (Mr. Davis) is, in a sense, constantly, deferring to you. He is constantly indicating in his responses to questions that this is your ministry’s responsibility. He talks about his colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations taking responsibility for this field, and in the sense that you have done the food profitability studies you have already indicated yourself that this is an area where you should have some primary interest.

Let me just itemize the field. You could do it in two ways; you can do it indirectly or you can do it quite directly.

Indirectly, you should be saying to bodies like the Ontario Energy Board, and therefore to your cabinet mates: “We want to give to the Ontario Energy Board the full power to roll prices back.”

When we talked to the Premier about rolling back oil and gas prices in Ontario, the Premier said to us that this was a jurisdictional matter and he wasn’t at all sure that the province could handle it. Then the Province of Nova Scotia gave, as I said, to the Public Utilities Commission the right to roll prices back. They moved on Gulf, Shell and Esso. They dealt with bunker fuel and home fuel oil. The oil companies were so mad they took it to the court. The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia ruled, less than a month ago, that the Public Utilities Commission of Nova Scotia had the right, and now those companies retroactively have to return to the consumers the amount of money they took from them unreasonably.

Now, if that is possible in the Province of Nova Scotia, why isn’t it possible in the Province of Ontario? The Province of Ontario was traduced more effectively by the oil companies in the federal-provincial conference than was any other province in Canada. The Province of Ontario has suffered more from the stored-up inventories of the oil companies, on which they are receiving exorbitant returns, than any other province in Canada. Imperial Oil has registered a nine-month net profit of $252 million, an almost astronomic increase over last year, which was an astronomic increase over the previous year. That is almost $1 million a day net profit.

I don’t know what it is philosophically about you people that allows the oil companies to get away with that kind of price manipulation in Ontario. You don’t have any compunction about Ontario Hydro; you make them come before the Ontario Energy Board. You don’t have any compunction about consumers or unions; you make them come before the Ontario Energy Board. But where the oil companies are concerned you say Ontario is the mat on which they walk without violation.

What we are saying is that this minister and this ministry should give protection to the consumer in that sense, should be the champion of the proposition both in cabinet and out, that fuel and gasoline price increases are now so essential, given the energy situation, that the Energy Board should have the right to roll it back. That is number one.

We also think that, again in an indirect way, your ministry has to have something to say about the impossible situation in rental housing and that it cannot be allowed to continue. If the cabinet is so intractible that it cannot bring itself to rent control, at least it can bring itself to rent review. Without it you are literally destroying the lives of families in economic terms, because they cannot afford the rent increases.

My colleague from Wentworth is going to have more to say about that role of your ministry as well, spelling it out in specific terms, because we have thought it through fairly carefully.

Your ministry, also has, however, very direct functions. One of the direct functions is the area of automobile insurance, and I am going to avoid the philosophic debate with you about public automobile insurance and private automobile insurance, because the endless comparisons which we would get into would serve neither of us. We would both be right and we would both be as self-righteous as can be, absolutely certain of our own virtue and argument. So why the devil enter into it if it is unnecessary?

But let me challenge the minister on another front. Let me say to the minister that if he insists on private automobile insurance, if the minister insists that that must be the form in Ontario, then again something has to be done to protect the consumers of this province. When we raised with you some months ago the abrupt increase in automobile insurance rates in the Province of Ontario, you were a little defensive but you said that you had your superintendent of insurance, who looked at the figures and who approved them and then the rates were applied.

I pick up the paper -- I guess I remember it because I remember that it was the Thursday before election day in Cornwall, and I was speaking to a group of students at a collegiate who had seen the increase and asked about it, so it must have been somewhere around Oct. 10, which isn’t very long ago -- at any rate, I noted that the automobile insurance industry announced that we were going to have another 15 per cent increase entirely possible in automobile insurance rates. Now I say to you, on what basis do they have the right to make that kind of determination? They are subject to no one’s scrutiny. It is quite incredible.

The superintendent of insurance plays the role of that person who sees that the arithmetic is right. But the superintendent of insurance doesn’t challenge the calculations. The superintendent of insurance doesn’t demand that all the books be opened. The superintendent of insurance doesn’t look back on return on investment. The superintendent of insurance doesn’t see what portion of the business is automobile insurance and other aspects of the insurance industry.

There is no public accountability. What right do the insurance companies of Ontario and of Canada have to hold the public to ransom while everybody capitulates in the government.

A 19 per cent increment at the beginning of the year; another 15 per cent now. For what? To fatten the coffers of the insurance companies in Canada. Absurdity! Who protects the consumer of Ontario? Not this minister, directly or indirectly.

There must be a publicly accountable forum. The Liberals have suggested a select committee of the House, or a standing committee of members. That has never appealed to us very much. The capacity for expertise among members of the House is okay in a one-issue situation like the Ontario Hydro building, but I am not sure that it would work in terms of a constant examination of price increases. What you need, and what I will come to, is some kind of overall price review tribunal which has responsibility for everything from food to rents, even though there may be some specific agencies like the Ontario Energy Board, or a rate review board which works under that authority.

You also have the responsibility, albeit indirectly perhaps again, to deal with interest rates, to deal with increases in the costs of automobiles, to deal with the increase in bank rates.

You have a responsibility, somehow, to champion the consumer interest. When it comes to the cost of living the Tory party might as well not exist, and you think that somehow its a federal responsibility. Will you forgive my gratuitous political observations for a moment? When you knock on doors anywhere in the province now, in one of the two by-elections that are taking place, -- I don’t extrapolate from the by- elections; I have understood since a long time ago that one by-election doesn’t make a general election -- when you knock on doors now in the Province of Ontario and people say that they are anti-government, it’s a kind of amorphous sentiment. It’s never defined very specifically. You have to push a little bit, talk to them personally, if you want a definition of what the objectionability consists. And when you push a little bit, when you talk to voters, as is now being done by everybody in Carleton East and was done recently in Stormont, prices always emerge as the central reality.

There is another reality. It’s the personalizing of the resentment, but I’ll leave that aside. The issue reality tends to be prices. And no one out there, quite rightly, has any sense at all that the government of Ontario is concerned about prices. You see, federally, even though Pierre Trudeau couldn’t handle inflation adequately -- and even though people voted against Bob Stanfield because of the prices and wages freeze -- there was some vague sense in the electorate that inflation was tough, yes, but Pierre Trudeau was at least trying, and there were some interventions by way of subsidy and there was some kind of bench mark that suggested an interest.

But in the Province of Ontario there’s no interest at all. There isn’t a single initiative on any front which suggests the slightest concern about protecting the consumer of this province; not a single initiative -- not in any area about which people are exorcised. And I think that’s what’s causing tremendous political alienation and hostility all over the province.

Now you’ll make your decision as to how you’ll handle it, obviously. But I know from experience now, and I think it is generally being conceded, that if you don’t act on oil and gasoline and if you don’t act on milk and if you don’t act on food prices generally, and if you don’t act on insurance premiums and if you don’t act on rents, and if you don’t act on bank rates and you don’t act on interest rates, then it begins to come clear to Ontario that the Conservatives don’t give a damn about the cost of living.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): And it’s true.

Mr. Lewis: Forgive the language. It is, of course, true. Because if you were --

Mr. Stokes: You haven’t taken one initiative.

Mr. Lewis: Does the member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. R. G. Hodgson) want to interject?

You show me the initiative. We will respect them when they occur. But there hasn’t been a single initiative of this kind; not one. And that’s why we wanted to focus it around this minister, because this is where the crux comes.

Now this minister, who’s had to answer the outrage of the opposition from time to time, at least felt serious enough about it to enter into the food profitability surveys. Everybody in Ontario understands the question of food and food costs. And you undertook two surveys of 16 companies to see whether there was any profitability or not. The first survey was 1968 to 1973; it was survey, part one.

Now I’m not going to say anything about that survey in specific terms, except to assert, Mr. Chairman, however unfriendly it may be, that that survey was designed in advance to demonstrate that excess profits were not possible. That survey was pre-determined. That survey was, in fact, intellectually dishonest; and I don’t say that kind of thing about that kind of document very often.

Now, I’m not at all sure that was a deliberate or conscious intellectual dishonesty. That was the quality of the survey.

When we looked at it in our research department we looked at the kind of economic analysis which was undertaken in that survey and realized that the economic formula which was fashioned meant that it was impossible to find an excess profit. The formula did not permit an excess of profit. What you were doing was simply serving the food industry in showing to the public what they had been arguing all along.

As a matter of fact, I was so intrigued by the economic calculation, Mr. Minister, that we set it all out. We set it all out on paper -- where A equals and B equals and X, Y and Z equals -- and I have the entire formula. As a matter of fact, it is our intention at some point in the near future just to release it, so that at least the gallery, the media and the House can chortle about the way in which the first profitability survey deliberately set out to demonstrate that an excess profit was not possible. You get zeros on both sides of the equal sign.

Now, the second survey is rather different I wondered why the second survey was not ready by the end of June, 1974, when the minister had indicated it would be. I think he felt initially it would be ready around the third week of June, 1974. And it kept on being delayed.

The second survey has a much more sophisticated rationalization for the food industry. The second survey is much more subtle, and, in its own way, acute. I would make no demeaning remarks about the quality of the second survey. I’m going to differ with its content, but I understand that rather more care in terms of analysis went into the second survey than went into the first.

This second survey is just out. It is entitled “A Study of Profitability for 16 Canadian Food Companies, Part Two: 1973-1974.” The survey adds up to an apologia on the part of the ministry for the food industry.

I want to deal with just a number of specific items in the survey and then bring this to an end. On page 2, section II, in reviewing the background to this study, it says in paragraph 3: “Several questions naturally arose: Have food industry profits been a major contributor to this food price inflation?”

Mr. Minister, that question having been asked, it was never answered. At no point in that entire survey was that question ever answered. They asked it and they dropped it -- and it’s a pretty critical question. Interestingly enough, Beryl Plumptre tried to answer it -- and I’ll come to that in a few minutes -- but the people who were involved in the survey, some of whom were from the ministry and some from outside, never tried to answer the question as to whether or not food industry profits had been a major contributor to this food price inflation. They just let that go entirely and moved on to the other factors, the fundamental factors: “Have food companies taken advantage of price instability to make excessive profits?”

Then, as one moves through the survey, dealing with the key parts, it says about the scope of this study:

“No attempt was made to conduct interviews with the companies to obtain additional information.” Everything that was used was based on the annual financial reports of the companies -- that’s all -- released to the public under provincial disclosure requirements. There are a great many questions that could have been asked, had this been a rather more serious study.

The outcome of that refusal to acquire information beyond the financial reports is contained in the first sentence of paragraph 3 of page 4: “The part two analysis is not based upon the 16 companies in part one.” In other words, the comparisons are dubious.

There were at least four companies in the second study from whom they couldn’t even get annual reports or statistical material in time. And so they were necessarily limited in the kind of analysis they could do because they were not able or did not require the information from those companies.

But that’s just by way of background. Let me go to page 9, “General Analysis: What is profiteering?” This is what the report says:

“Two assumptions have been made in the attempt to define and isolate profiteering.

“Profiteering stems from a conscious and deliberate decision to take advantage of a period of scarcity or market confusion by changing pricing policies such as percentage markups. Maintaining the same pricing policies in differing market conditions is not considered to be profiteering.

“Profiteering will be observable in that a profiteering company will have financial data substantially different from the industry as a whole. The assumption is that profiteering would take place on a company basis rather than industry-wide.”

An hon. member: Balderdash.

Mr. Lewis: What right has any economist to make the assumption that profiteering would take place in the financial statements or behaviour of a company rather than industry-wide?

The report also says: “The ministry is not in a position to challenge this assumption.” What does the report mean when it says the ministry is not in a position to challenge this assumption? It’s not up to this government to abdicate to the federal government the right to determine.

If I was making an assumption about the supermarket industry, and I sat in the House and heard the prices quoted by my colleague from Wentworth for half a dozen supermarkets in the Hamilton area over an extended period of time, my assumption would be that profiteering is industry-wide. That would be the assumption I’d start from, because there’s a lot more evidence to suggest that than there is evidence to suggest that it’s confined to an individual company.

The analysis was prejudiced from the outset by that assumption. Profiteering in the supermarket industry, if it exists anywhere, is industry-wide. There are no great variations for the individual companies of a kind that would give validity to this assumption; and this assumption prejudices the study.

The report goes on to make other assumptions about the whole role of the markup, which absolutely flummoxes me; I really don’t know how it’s arrived at or how it’s justified or legitimized.

You say on page 17:

“The standard percentage markup still common in most industries serves to magnify the impact of higher costs and prices and to increase profits without necessarily providing more or better products or services and is therefore also a contributing factor to inflation. It was not within the scope of this study nor do we have the necessary information to make recommendations on food product markups. Nonetheless, the industry, in concert if possible, should undertake its own review of the percentage markup system.”

What you argued in your press release which accompanied the document was that the percentage markup system was simply the pattern in the food industry and that that didn’t amount to profiteering.

Look, Mr. Chairman, I think this document proves profiteering in the supermarket industry. Let me put it in simple dollars and cents terms. If you have a product that sells for 50 cents at the wholesale level and your markup is 10 per cent, it sells at 55 cents at the retail. That wholesale price goes up to 75 cents, let us say. The same 10 per cent markup is applied to the 75-cent figure and the product then becomes 82.5 cents, presumably 83 cents.

In other words, by using the percentage markup as the basis for supermarket price costing, you increase substantially the amount that is charged the consumer without any additional operating costs, without any additional labour, and without any additional overhead. It is a straight addition of profit tacked on at the end for no reason at all, and that’s called profiteering. That’s what it is called.

Your ministry and the people who did this study were sufficiently anxious about it that they suggested maybe the markup provision should have a sliding scale and they suggested that maybe the company should undertake an internal review; because you knew, as we know, that the practice is obscene. When you have an inflationary situation, when the prices are escalating beyond control and you provide the same percentage application to an increased wholesale price and you add it on in the supermarket, what you are doing is gouging the consumer, what you are doing is profiteering. It is not just the normal application of the markup that has been used for years and generations in the industry. It is, to use the phrase of the report: “A conscious and deliberate use of pricing policy to profiteer.”

That is just unconscionable. It’s just indefensible. I think that the implications of this document -- as a matter of fact, one of your statements in the press release which you appended to it was really revealing -- and what is clear in this document is that your people established profiteering in the supermarket industry in Ontario and you didn’t want to say so; you established it in the markup policies of the supermarkets and you didn’t want to say so.

Sure, there may be increased labour costs. Sure, there may be increased operating costs or replacement costs for the company. I don’t deny that. But that doesn’t give them the right to provide the same percentage mark-up at the retail side as at the wholesale, just as though it was right across the board.

That’s profiteering. That’s what it is all about. That’s why the returns on investment were what they were in 1973. That’s why the net worth is what it is in 1973, because the companies profiteered.

Your statement said they weren’t profiteering because you couldn’t deal with the markup, and the press picked it up. It’s one of the endless and inconsolable things about it. You put out a statement like this, a summary is read, your press release which accompanies it is read, and then it is trotted out in the press as though it were holy writ.

This document shows profiteering in the supermarket industry, and all around the province the word was “no profiteering” in the chain stores, in the food stores. Now you are letting them handle that percentage markup as though you don’t care about it.

But it isn’t outside your jurisdiction! That again demonstrates the absence of consumer protection in the government of Ontario.

The minister was so concerned about it that he put out a release asking the supermarkets to engage in an internal review and perhaps look at a sliding scale. Why do you want the supermarkets to do that? Because you see that the consumers are being ripped off in an inflationary period by an inappropriate use of percentage markups. Then if you see that and you believe in defending the consumer, how come you relinquish the right for internal review to the supermarkets?

Finally, after God knows how many years, you are now talking about the police, investigate the police. How come are you letting the supermarkets review the supermarkets? What kind of defence of the consumer do you think that will be?

You are really tied in with those supermarkets. The whole cabinet, in conspiratorial terms, is as one with the food industry. They can do no wrong for the Tories in Ontario. You can document their wrongs yourself in your own reports and then refuse to see the implications.

As a matter of fact, it goes even further than that, because when you looked at your own report, you went further. The report itself said you agreed. Point 4 on page 17 refers to “no incentive to fight inflation.” Look at what the report says.

“It is evident from the analysis that food companies have little difficulty passing on rising costs in the form of higher prices. A marketing system which makes this possible may have some desirable quantities from the corporate financial point of view, but it does not provide much incentive to companies to hold the line on costs.”

Well, what provides an incentive to the companies, if not the government of Ontario? Is it your job to allow pricing policies which encourage corporate profits that don’t hold the line on costs? Is that the policy of the government?

Hey people, come on in, the market is yours; charge what it will bear, no intervention from the Province of Ontario. You have got it all before you, it is set out in black and white.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria Haliburton): Just found your vocation!

Mr. Lewis: Do you want to enter the debate?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: No. But I said you just found your vocation in life as a side-show barker.

Mr. Lewis: Fine, good, okay. Thank you for the contribution.

If you want seriously to do something about it, if you have this kind of report, then you simply intervene. I guess I am speaking out of a certain bewilderment about it, because you have taken a document and a study which shows profiteering in the food companies and you have so artfully twisted it around that you end up in a little cabal with the companies to protect their profits and to protect their pricing policies. Every day it continues you gouge the consumer yet again, and it has to come to an end.

The report shows more than that. The report shows net returns on investment and annual profits so high that the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations felt it necessary to make a statement in his press release which appears nowhere in the report. I was really fascinated by that. Nowhere in the report does it appear, but in your press release it does. In your press release, on page 3 you say:

“The study shows some of the companies are receiving fairly high rates of return. Further profit increases on the scale of 1973 don’t appear to be necessary for these companies because they are already sufficiently profitable to do whatever they have to do.”

That’s not in the report. Those are your words, John Clement’s words. You uttered them because you looked at table 1 and saw those returns on investment -- 11.9, 10.6, 10.9, 18.6, 17.4, 13.8, 12.4, 16. You couldn’t believe it. You saw the returns, you saw the profits; and you could hardly believe it. Realizing the implications of this kind of document, you appended the sentence which said the profit levels were so high in 1973 they really don’t have to go up any more.

Well if you don’t really think they have to go up any more, what are you going to do if they do go up? What do your words mean, Mr. Minister? You say in black and white:

“Further profit increases on the scale of 1973 don’t appear to be necessary for these companies because they are already sufficiently profitable.”

What now do you do? Do you allow them to increase their profit beyond the scale of 1973, which even you recognize as sufficient? What do you do in the case of Maple Leaf Mills, which was part of your study, for which the profits in 1972-1973 were 49.5 per cent and whose profits for the first six months of 1974 are 68.9 per cent. What do you do with that?

You say in your report that they have already a high enough profit that they don’t need any more. In the first six months of 1974 they are significantly ahead of what you have listed in table 1 for 1972-1973 at 49.5. What are you going to do about that? Do you not call that gouging? You’ve set your own definition.

What do you do about Canada Safeway Ltd. For the 1972-1973 period the total profit increase was 9.2 per cent; for the 24 weeks ended June 15, 1974, it is 41.1 per cent. What are you going to do about them? They are exceeding the profit level which you thought adequate. Are you going to do anything about them?

What are you going to do about Dominion Stores and Burns Food; and I could name several of the others whose profit levels in 1974 are almost identical to the profit levels of 1973 already, for this part of the year. What do you do with those companies, which are clearly in violation of the principles that you have now set out on the basis of your own report?

Are you aware that in the major Financial Post analysis of food companies, of eight companies surveyed sales were up 24.9 per cent over the first half of 1973 while profits increased a dramatic 55.1 per cent? You say that the profits in 1973 were already high enough. You have documentation that they are up by 55 per cent in the first half of 1974. I am asking you, what are you going to do about it?

Who protects the consumer of Ontario? You put out a report showing markups which amount to profiteering by use of the percentage application. You put out a report which said that 1973 is high enough for the return on investment. You then have evidence that they continued to go up beyond 1973. Who protects the consumers of Ontario? No one in the Conservative government. It is a complete and total abdication of responsibility, and on the basis of your own figures.

When you look at the food companies overall, and when you look at the ways in which food profits are measured -- and there are three ways; the net income on net sales, the return on invested capital and the return on common equity -- let me give you, from a sample of the major sectors of the economy, beverages, food processing, and so on, what the increase has been for these companies in the last year in terms of these indices. As a matter of fact, let me confine myself purely to food processing, since that is the important one.

The increase in 1973 over the previous 10 years for net income on sales is five per cent. The increase in return on invested capital is 53 per cent and the increase in return on common equity is 61 per cent.

That is just for the year 1973 over and above the average for the previous 10 years; and the average for the previous 10 years in terms of return on investment is not too bad on balance. Even the Financial Post admits it is not too bad on balance.

All of that, which is contained now more particularly in your new profitability study, being turned into a modest return by the company in 1974, and there is no protection for the consumer from any flank of the government of Ontario.

I get worried about using all of the figures, but it has always seemed to us that it should be possible to keep the food industry at a fair rate of return on investment. I think it seems reasonable to the minister, because he has indicated most of them don’t need profits beyond the levels of 1973.

Leave them at a reasonable net return on investment, and what would that mean to the consumer? It would mean an enormous saving to the consumer.

The first question in this study: “What do food profits have to do with food prices?” -- which was never answered -- was answered by Beryl Plumptre. What her survey pointed out was that if you kept the net return at the same level for two or three years, the savings to the consumer were enormous.

Food companies could have shaved 1.6 percentage points off the 18.8 per cent rise in food prices last year if they had held their profit growth to a normal rate, the Food Prices Review Board reports. It would have meant a saving of $160 million last year for consumers. That’s not to be laughed at. And because some of the rates of return are already too high, and might be lowered a little, the savings for Ontario would be enormous.

What we are saying in the NDP caucus is that this ministry has to be transformed The whole ministry is behaving like a bunch of pantywaists when it deals with consumer protection. They simply copped out; they don’t care. They play musical chairs with the supermarket industry; they consort with them willingly. And they laugh and fob people off. All the ministry remind me of Marc Lalonde, with his impecunious income, telling people to buy powdered milk rather than real milk, because it is too costly. Every strategy in the world is devised except that of protecting the consumer by intervening with the corporate sector. And that has to come to an end.

A suggestion has been made recently by the Leader of the Opposition -- and it has been made many times -- that comparison shopping might be done by the Ontario Food Council under this minister’s aegis. It is not a bad idea -- but he’ll probably never get around to it.

I was kind of heartened by Beryl Plumptre’s announcement today that they were thinking of moving the food survey out of Ottawa-Hull and into other parts of the country, perhaps into other parts of Ontario. Does the minister know that two months after the food surveys began in Ottawa-Hull the price of food in certain of the supermarkets dropped 4.4 per cent? That’s called protecting the consumer. What happens in the case of the Ontario government, which won’t intervene?

We in the New Democratic caucus would like to go even further. We would like to ask the Ontario Food Council to monitor, in major supermarket chains, in all geographical areas of the province, twice a month, the prices paid from the farm gate to the checkout counter, and publish them publicly. If the changes in price, markup and inflationary point are monitored every step of the way, that will have a more dramatic effect in bringing down prices generally than anything other than legislation, which we think a prices review tribunal should have the power to exact.

In other words, we don’t care what initiative it is -- well, we do; we have our own priorities -- we just say to the government that it has to do something about inflation and the cost of living in Ontario.

This ministry is called the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, right? It deals with the stock exchange, with liquor, with insurance, with vital statistics, with fair business practices; it deals with everything but what is central to the life of Ontario, namely the championing of the consumer interest -- and that has to come from someone in the cabinet, it has to come from some ministry.

Was there ever a greater chronicle or litany of failure than that facing the ministry over the last year and half to two years?

Gasoline prices at the pump -- failure; home fuel oil prices -- failure; milk prices -- failure; food prices generally -- failure; auto insurance premiums, failure; costs of automobiles themselves -- Ford, Chrysler, GM -- failure; interest rates -- failure.

You name it, the government fails.

Rent control or rent review in the staggering housing market -- failure. Every single thing that involves consumer protection, this government has failed. Failed to intervene, failed to roll back, failed to take action.

My colleague from Wentworth says “lots of studies”, and that’s entirely true. You’ve had some studies and without impugning the work of the second, they are essentially bogus studies. The interpretation of the studies isn’t what they say.

This document shows profiteering, and the document shows illegitimate profits and the document shows excessive rates of return on investment; and your accompanying release and observation demonstrates it, but you still won’t move.

What does it take, another demonstration on the steps of Queen’s Park? Two by-elections? The loss of power? What does it take to bring the Conservative government to its senses?

Testimonial dinners are not enough. They’re fun. They’re interludes. But they’re not enough. Now what we are asking of you as a caucus, as a party, is to set up a major prices review tribunal, which has a number of arms. It has the Ontario Food Council to do comparison shopping and monitoring of everything from the farm gate to the cash register. It has the Ontario Energy Board. These are all things which now exist. It has the Ontario Energy Board to make sure that oil and gasoline prices are brought into account.

It has, in other words, mechanisms now extant which it supervises. It has one new direct function, and that is in the area of food and the supermarket industry. Presumably the kind of rent review which now exists, or the rental complaints or whatever which now exist, in I guess the A.G.’s department, can be expanded to handle the rent proposition. In other words, we’re saying to you the mechanisms are there. Now it requires an act of government policy.

I don’t know when it’s going to come, but it has to come, because the consumers of Ontario are totally helpless at the hands of this government. When it comes to the crunch, this government sides with the corporations every time -- mindlessly, obediently and in a way which is quite unlovely in its consequences.

The consumers are paying too much. They have no protection. They have no champions. They have no ombudsman. They have nothing in Ontario. And this is the ministry where it should all happen, and this is the minister who has to instruct its occurring. And this is the government, however under siege it may feel, which has to recognize that the cost of living is not a joke; it’s the most serious thing that faces people in the province and you must intervene!

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Mr. Chairman, I want to pick up where my leader has finished, and indicate to the minister that in addition to the kind of council that the lealer of this party has spoken about for the protection of the consumer, there has got to be the reserve power within the government to control the prices of commodities.

I want to try for a very few minutes to lay to rest the suggestion that somehow or other this is an insoluble problem which constitutionally this government can pretend falls in the lap of the federal government. I want to spell it out just as clearly as 1 can, because when the honourable Herb Gray, the then Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs in Ottawa, established the Food Prices Review Board by order in council on May 25, 1973, in the area of federal responsibility, when he made the statement about the establishment of that board, he stated quite categorically that the federal government does not have the legislative authority to roll back or control specific prices.

I don’t think there is a proposition of constitutional law more clear than that statement. And it was not made lightly or inadvisedly, because it is a fact under the constitution.

We have no other example in recent years of the way in which commodity prices could be controlled and the responsibility of the provincial governments under the constitution to have the reserve power, and where necessary to exercise it.

The example which I want to put on the record is in some specific detail just as to what exactly the government of Nova Scotia did when it was faced with this particular problem.

In relation to petroleum products in the Province of Nova Scotia, they amended their Gasoline Licensing Act. They did it in very clear, concise terms. They amended it at the end of 1973. And it is that decision of an appeal taken from the public utilities commissioners in Nova Scotia, to which my leader referred, which was upheld by the unanimous opinion and decision of the appeal division of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.

I had occasion to speak to the registrar of that court to find out whether or not there was going to be any appeal from that decision by Imperial Oil. His answer to me was, “no,” there is going to be no appeal; and “yes,” it was the unanimous decision.

I am suggesting to the minister that on the specific Act which they passed related to petroleum products that there is simply no reason why a generalized Act with respect to commodity price control in the Province of Ontario -- to be exercised by the kind of council to which my leader has referred -- could not be passed by this Legislature to provide the kind of reserve power which could be used in the kind of specific instance which the leader of the party has outlined in the course of his dissertation upon the food industry’s report.

I’m not talking about the particular kind of problem, I’m talking about the kind of legislation, which in generalized form not only could be passed by the Province of Ontario, but under the constitution -- if you are concerned about prices, concerned about the position of the consumer -- you must of necessity draft and enact for the protection of the consumers in the Province of Ontario.

What they did was very simple. They, of course, amended the definition of the Act in order to include fuel oil, because it didn’t happen to be included at that particular time. But there was a provision in the Act which stated what its purpose was, and that was section 13 of what was then the Gasoline Licensing Act and it said:

“This Act shall be interpreted and construed liberally in order to accomplish the purpose of regulating the distribution and sales of gasoline within Nova Scotia for use within the province.”

They amended that by adding to it. And this is the kind of language which this government must adopt in the kind of commodities pricing control legislation which must be enacted in the province in the exercise of its constitutional duty and in order to establish the reserve powers which will show the government is seriously concerned and interested in the level of consumer prices in the Province of Ontario. They simply added on these words:

“And to ensure at all times a just and reasonable price, or change in price of gasoline or fuel oil to consumers within the province and in particular, without limiting the generality of the foregoing:

“(a) To protect the consumer from an unjust and unreasonable change in price of gasoline and fuel oil;

“(b) To ensure that a licensee shall receive a just and reasonable price for gasoline or fuel oil sold to a consumer;

“(c) To ensure that the price of gasoline or fuel oil reflects any subsidy or reimbursement that may be paid by Her Majesty, the Queen, in right of Canada with respect to the importing, refining, transportation, distributing or marketing of crude oil, gasoline or fuel oil;

“(d) To enable the board to obtain information respecting the purposes of this section and the provisions of this Act.”

All right. I’m not going to go on at any great length. The rest of the statute is available to the minister. Indeed, the news report coming out of Halifax and reported by the Southam News Service was to the tenor that the Province of Ontario was looking at legislation such as this but was awaiting the result of the appeal to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Well, that result is now out, and I do hope that there was some accuracy in the statement which was made that the government was considering such legislation.

The power under that Act as amended is vested in the Board of Public Utilities Commissioners. They exercised their power. Their power to do so was upheld unanimously by the court in Nova Scotia. The particular bill was Bill 46, which was an Act to amend chapter 177 of the Revised Statutes, 1967, the Gasoline and Fuel Oil Licensing Act of the Province of Nova Scotia.

Strangely enough -- it was reported in the press, but it is worth commenting upon -- when they initially responded in the Legislature in Nova Scotia to the problem in December, 1973, by enacting legislation which would give them the power to deal with increases in prices of gasoline and fuel oil, the principal witness on behalf of Imperial Oil, brought before the Board of Public Utilities Commissioners, made a couple of statements. He said that the price wasn’t set for gasoline by any competitive mechanism, but was set by something called the “tone of the market.” And he also said, of course, that should the Province of Nova Scotia dare to intrude on Imperial Oil -- he hastily withdrew any implication that he was making a threat, but the inference was quite clear -- they would divert the supplies elsewhere.

The government of Nova Scotia responded very, very quickly. It passed another bill, Bill 140, to provide an allocation scheme for the kind of refined petroleum products which were generated within the Province of Nova Scotia in order to provide a method by which they would prevent the diversion of the supplies available in Nova Scotia elsewhere outside the province, and they quickly amended the bill to which I referred, the Gasoline and Fuel Oil Licensing Act, to provide even sterner and tougher powers for the Board of Public Utilities Commissioners.

The minister, in a speech of his made not so many months ago prided the government of the Province of Ontario on their ability to respond to felt needs of the people in the community of the Province of Ontario. Well, the government of Nova Scotia responded emphatically and in no uncertain terms to the implicit threat put forward by the spokesman for Imperial Oil.

Probably the reason why no appeal was taken from the old legislation is because it was superseded by legislation which is even more constitutional in its implications and more within the purview of the Legislature of the Province of Nova Scotia than the previous legislation was. It requires antecedent review now of any proposed price increase, rather than allowing the industry to increase the prices as it did under the previous Act, and then provides for an application to refund and roll back the price retrospectively or retroactively, whichever is the proper term.

I want to leave that particular bill. I emphasize what I said -- that our purpose was to illustrate that there is such a bill in existence in Nova Scotia which can be generalized to cover all commodities. I now want to take the liberty, because it is somewhat technical, of putting on the record the exact constitutional position and responsibility of the government of the Province of Ontario in this field of fixing commodity prices within the Province of Ontario.

I had occasion to consider this matter because it has been of great concern within our caucus. I want to put these particular statements clearly on the record, and I know, Mr. Chairman, you will permit me the luxury of reading them, because I want them to be precisely accurate so that there will be no misunderstanding about exactly the constitutional position of this government, its constitutional responsibility, and why it should do what we are asking that the government now do.

The Ontario Legislature can enact legislation fixing the prices of these commodities. In this particular instance I was also referring to gasoline and heating oil but I am speaking now of any commodity. The Ontario Legislature can enact legislation fixing the price of these commodities to the consumer in Ontario and legislation for this purpose could include provision for public review of the pricing policies of the oil companies in fixing consumer prices.

The constitutional statutory authority for this proposition is section 92, head 13, and when I refer in these particular comments to that Act, I am of course referring to the British North America Act, sections 91 and 92. These provide for the division of legislative, and therefore, by necessary consequence executive authority, flowing from the exercise of that legislative power between the federal government on the one hand and the Province of Ontario -- and of course the other provinces -- on the other hand.

Section 92, head 13, confers exclusive jurisdiction on the Ontario Legislature to pass laws relating to “property and civil rights” within the province. This phrase includes the power to legislate about domestic Ontario trade contracts, that is, contracts between parties in Ontario about commodities in Ontario to be supplied in Ontario.

There have been a series of constitutional cases which support this proposition. For the purpose of this memorandum, the following quotation is both succinct and authoritative, and I quote from the case of Shannon versus the Lower Mainland Dairy Pro- ducts Board (1938) an appeal case which was in the Privy Council in England:

“It is now well settled that the enumeration in section 91 of [the federal government’s power of] ‘the regulation of trade and commerce’ as a class of subject over which the Dominion has exclusive legislative powers does not give the power to regulate for legitimate provincial purposes particular trades or businesses so far as the trade or business is confined to the province ... and it follows that to the extent that the Dominion is forbidden to regulate within the province, the province itself has the right under its legislative powers over property and civil rights within the province.”

While Ontario legislation can deal with domestic trade in gasoline and heating oil, it cannot, of course, deal with the export from Ontario or the import into Ontario of gasoline or heating oil, either by way of foreign trade or interprovincial trade.

The federal Parliament has exclusive jurisdiction under section 91(2) -- the regulation of trade and commerce -- to regulate foreign trade and interprovincial trade. This distinction between domestic trade being within the legislative competence of the Ontario Legislature and foreign trade and inter-provincial trade being within the legislative competence of the federal Parliament may mean that control over the petroleum industry and the major oil companies may require federal and provincial legislation on a co-ordinated and co-operative basis. The best statement of this problem of divided and, in a sense, competing jurisdiction, is in the Board of Commerce case -- in re the Board of Commerce Act and the Combines and Fair Prices Act, 1919 -- which went to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1920 and to the Privy Council in 1922. I quote the judgement of the Privy Council in that case:

“It may be conceded that while section 18 [being that section of the Board of Commerce Act which was declared to be unconstitutional for the federal Parliament and which gave authority to fix prices] could in its very terms be validly enacted by a provincial legislature, the authority reposed in a commission created by such a legislature would not of course extend beyond the ambit of authority committed to the legislature itself and consequently such a commission would not acquire power to deal with matters belonging to the subjects of foreign trade, interprovincial trade, and the regulating of the management of Dominion undertakings and beyond the legitimate scope of the legislative activities of the province; but it does not follow because the Dominion could alone deal with these last-mentioned matters, it is itself authorized to enter upon fields exclusively reserved for the provinces, in order to carry out a legislative design necessarily incomplete without legislation on matters so exclusively reserved. Co-operation between the Dominion and the provinces may be necessary to attain the ends desired by the legislators and such co-operation is, of course, not unknown and has indeed in some cases been expressly provided for in Dominion legislation.”

That ends the quotation from the Board of Commerce case.

While legislative co-operation may be necessary to bring about overall legislative control of the petroleum industry, it does not, however, affect the proposition stated originally in these remarks, namely that the Ontario Legislature has the power now to legislate unilaterally to fix domestic prices of gasoline and heating oil to Ontario consumers.

Co-operative legislation may be the only way ultimately to control the petroleum industry. There is, however, a possible constitutional opening for the federal government to take the initiative alone.

Bora Laskin, now Chief Justice of Canada, has a note on this question in his book on Canadian constitutional law. He comments that the historical legal arguments about the scope of the federal trade and commerce power led to a substantial inflexibility from which, in Laskin’s opinion, there has been a retreat which is still in progress. In his note he attempts to chart the path of the retreat and he tries to make some assessment of its consequences. His view is that:

“The need to reconcile the power of the federal Parliament to make laws in relation to the regulation of trade and commerce, with the powers reposed in the provinces, cannot be lastingly met by imprisoning either the former or the latter within predetermined limits which take no account of social and economic change.”

Laskin quotes, approvingly I think, a remark by Lord Porter in an Australian constitutional case in reference to an issue of validity raised by competing claims of legislative power that “the problem to be solved will often not be so much legal as political, social or economic yet it must be solved ultimately by a court of law.”

In commenting further with reference to the reference re the Farm Products Marketing Act of Ontario in the Supreme Court of Canada in 1957, Laskin goes on to say that the court stirred itself on a central issue that was all but ignored in the Shannon case -- what is meant by an “intraprovincial transaction.”

“Reflection on this matter was important for two reasons: first because it related to the limits of provincial economic regulation in a more sophisticated sense than had been previously appreciated; and secondly, because the Supreme Court, following one or two suggestions in earlier decisions, was at last beginning to see that recognition of an appropriate scope for provincial regulation was not incompatible with a paramount federal policy in matters that in their totality transcend provincial management.”

In this second respect there was an augury for an enlarged affirmative scope for the federal trade and commerce power.

Laskin concludes his note by saying:

“If the present trend continues, it should result in an approach to economic issues that will permit discussion of their ramifications and consequences without anterior limitations based on rigid preconceptions of what the words of section 91(2) [the trade and commerce power] mean.”

I simply want to conclude this comment by saying that it remains to be seen whether the government of Canada will take the initiative indicated by this trend and whether the Supreme Court of Canada will uphold such an exercise by the federal government of an extension of constitutional power in this method.

But I want to say that in the long run this may be the only way to control the petroleum industry, particularly because of the extent to which it is controlled in Canada by multinational corporations.

Again, what may happen legislatively in the future does not affect the accuracy of the original proposition which I made in these remarks, that it is now within the legislative competence of the Province of Ontario, of this Legislature, to enact the kind of reserve legislation to provide for the control of commodity prices being supplied by people in Ontario to people in Ontario, for consumption and use in the Province of Ontario.

We’ll put it on the record so that there will be no question about it that you have the constitutional obligation; that you don’t share it with the federal government; that if anything is to be done by laws of this assembly in terms of legal protection of the consumer population of the Province of Ontario, of which we are all participants, then you cannot escape your responsibility to carry out that particular exercise of your constitutional legislative responsibility.

I emphasize that it is within the framework of the kind of review council that the leader of this party has referred to, that if the determination of the government is to be shown adequately and effectively, that council must be in a position to have that kind of reserve backup legislation. That can be extended, as the minister well knows, to cover a great many of the service fields as well as the commodity fields to which the leader of the party referred in his opening remarks in this particular Legislature.

I want to turn now to another element of that question of the constitutional responsibility of the government of the Province of Ontario, assuming for a moment that I can find the correspondence which deals with it. I want to deal with a matter which I raised with the minister a year ago. I have had no response from him since that time of any kind. That is the question of unit pricing.

I sometimes, in a fit of exasperation, wish that the federal government had stayed out of the field of consumer protection because it constantly allows gaps in the kind of consumer protection laws that we must have. On many occasions the government of the Province of Ontario willingly enlarges the gap and willingly uses the federal government as a scapegoat for not taking its particular constitutional responsibilities seriously.

If, in fact, you are going to control consumer prices in the Province of Ontario in commodities and, particularly, in food commodities or commodities which are sold in chain stores of one kind or another, you cannot possibly do it unless you provide a unit pricing system that will permit the consumer, when he does the shopping, to make the comparison. I defy anyone to take the regular weekly shopping list for a family of three, four or five people, go into a single supermarket and compare the prices of the various brands in the course of one day’s shopping, let alone in the limited amount of time which most people have to carry out their weekly shopping these days. You can’t do it, and I insist again this year -- and I’m very disappointed that apparently no progress has been made -- that the question is one of constitutional responsibility.

I wrote to the minister a little over a year ago on this matter and I stated to him:

“It is my understanding that the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act passed in 1971 by the federal government authorized the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to carry out a continuing research on the subject of unit pricing in grocery stores. In 1972 this report was issued and I understand it made certain points:

“1. That unit pricing is essentially a system by which retailers indicate not only the total price of an article but also its cost in some standard units such as ounces or pounds, enabling easier price comparison between brands and sizes;

“2. That unit pricing is here to stay;

“3. That there is a large body of opinion favouring unit pricing as an aid to shopping;

“4. That it is an important part of convenient customer protection [and I emphasize not only the customer protection but the convenience customer protection];

“5. That because of computerization it is easier for supermarkets to adopt unit pricing;

“6. The reason for my letter -- that the report apparently concludes that legislation for mandatory unit pricing is not appropriate at the federal level and in any case such legislation would be difficult to draft and administer, which of course I discard as an excuse which no government can accept.

“I do not think that the difficulty of drafting and administering such legislation should deter the province from its constitutional authority to deal with this matter of mandatory unit pricing.”

In any event, you responded to my letter. You said:

“I’m interested in your indication that the federal government does not have the constitutional authority to deal with this matter, and can assure you that we will look at it very closely to find out if, indeed, it has the impact which you have indicated. We will discuss the matter with both the Consumers’ Association and the industry to find out if there is any reason why it could not be easily and economically implemented.”

I have said what I wanted to say, as an addendum to what the leader of this party had to say in his remarks in opening these estimates, so that the record at least will clearly show that incontrovertedly you not only have the legislative authority, but you have in the situation as it exists today in the Province of Ontario the responsibility as a government to carry it out.

Some of us might on occasion be fooled by the rhetoric which even the minister uses when he speaks in public places. It’s a little while ago, but I kept what the minister said --

Mr. Lewis: We keep all your speeches.

Mr. Renwick: -- because he gave an address to the Peel South Progressive Conservative Association.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Which one?

Mr. Renwick: Peel South.

Mr. Stokes: That was speech 17 R.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Two years ago.

Mr. Renwick: Yes, and you made a couple of statements in it which -- well, many of your statements, like Holy Writ, are worth preserving for even more than two years.

Mr. Lewis: I said we keep all your speeches.

Mr. Renwick: He said:

“There will no doubt be people in the New Democratic Party who will be unable to understand how the ‘big blue machine’ and its bias toward big business could possibly create the most progressive consumer legislation in Canada.”

Mr. Lewis: Did you use “big blue machine” in a speech?

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, I don’t think so.

Mr. Lewis: Do you think the “big blue machine” has become a steam roller?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I would be too frightened; that must be wrong.

Mr. Stokes: Your speech was misquoted.

Mr. Renwick: All I want to say to the minister is that yes, there are people in the New Democratic Party and, indeed, an increasing number of people throughout the Province of Ontario who are unable to understand how the “big blue machine” and its bias toward big business could possibly create the most progressive consumer legislation in Canada.

The minister went on to say: “The fact is we are the only party in this province that can work with business to achieve the common good’.” That’s a relatively sophisticated version of the statement about General Motors.

You are the party that works with business, and you confuse the common good with the ends and the aims of the business community. As a matter of fact, the end is worth quoting.

Mr. Lewis: I would think so.

Mr. Renwick: He said:

“There is no doubt in my mind that this kind of response to real situations is not built upon the endless verbal tirades of the opposition or the studies in statistics of our civil servants. It is fashioned by a man like Doug Kennedy, who really represents the people that elect him.”

Mr. Lewis: That will be news to the member for Peel South (Mr. Kennedy), I’ll tell you. He’ll be surprised, if no one else is,

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): I am going over to my seat.

Mr. Renwick: Again, when I looked at the estimates, as set out in volume 2 of the justice policy field for the year 1974-1975, at the heading “Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations” and read in detail throughout the estimate of the whole department, the word “consumer” is never again referred to in those estimates. There was a time when there used to be a sub-heading called “The Consumer Protection Branch” but even that’s now disappeared. I know that the consumer protection branch exists somewhere in limbo over at 555 Yonge St. I know that. But it is so minuscule in its operations, it has such limited authority, and it has no capacity to provide the kind of protection that the consumer needs in the Province of Ontario, that I can well understand that the combination of the Tory government, the “big blue machine” and big business means that, in this day and age, in the estimates of a minister called the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, the word “consumer” is not used, including in the descriptive note at the head of each vote which refers to the programme which the vote is designed to implement and provide for.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the other remarks I will deal with as we come to the points in the various stages of the estimates, but I want to clear up a few matters to set the kind of context in which we’re going to continue this particular debate.

I would like the assurance from the minister that at the end of his estimates we will be dealing with the Liquor Licence Board of the Province of Ontario and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario which were transferred to the jurisdiction of this minister I think about two years ago now. I want to know whether or not we are going to deal with those two boards immediately following the minister’s estimates.

Secondly, I want to say to the minister I do not intend, apart from perhaps one or two marginal matters, to touch upon matters relating to the Securities Commission in these estimates. It seems to me concerning the Securities Act, 1974, Bill 75, which stands in the minister’s name on the order paper, that with the draft Act, the regulations and the numerous submissions that have been made to the government, there is no point in us duplicating in this minister’s estimate matters that can be dealt with in depth and in committee about that Securities Act. I’m quite certain that that’s the proper place, with perhaps one or two exceptions, to deal with that matter.

I want also to make the same comment with respect to the Unfair Sales Practices Act, Bill 55. I want to make the same comments as far as I’m concerned, not so far as my colleagues, of course, are concerned with respect to the Condominium Act. I intend to take the same attitude on the question of loan and trust corporations because my colleague from Lakeshore (Mr. Lawlor) and myself sit on the select committee which is dealing with the questions of loan and trust corporations.

It may well be that perhaps the minister could make a brief statement about what his intentions are about the warranty legislation and when it might be brought before the assembly, whether it will be introduced at this session or whether it will be introduced at the next session, because there is a crying need to get that legislation on the books of the province and enacted before this parliament is dissolved, sometime during the coming year.

I would like to know the minister’s intention with respect to whether or not that study which he referred to in 1973 about the Franchising Act is going to be proceeded with, whether any legislation is going to be forthcoming about that. I heard the minister refer to the Credit Union Act. We still have not got it on the order paper, that I know of, and I don’t think it has ever seen the light of day, and the select committee report was made a number of years ago.

What we are really saying to the minister is that within certain limits, to the extent that matters can more eloquently and effectively be dealt with in the debates on second reading and in committees outside this House concerning legislation of significance to him, we will do our best to curtail our remarks at this time and deal only with those matters in his estimates which are of a more general nature. Any further remarks of mine, Mr. Chairman, can await the specific items to be dealt with.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Mr. Chairman, on a point of clarification, if I may? At J25 of these estimates what specific activities have been transferred to the Ministry of the Attorney General that you previously had?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Pardon me, Mr. Chairman, are we into these estimates now starting with the first vote?

Mr. Chairman: I understand we are in opening statements. Now we have the minister’s reply.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, I would like to deal with certain things that I think we could clear out of the way that have been raised by some of your colleagues and by the hon. member for Perth (Mr. Edighoffer) if I may. Perhaps we can get into these various items.

The comments of the various speakers this afternoon have been rather interesting in some degree. I’ve been the victim of certain remarks which have been touched on rather lightly by some of the members in the House here today and I was really getting to believe it. But, however, in hearing some of the remarks that have come across the floor and the criticism of some of the policies or lack of same, I am back down to size and I think things are pretty well back to normal.

Mr. Lewis: You feel better. Maybe even the member for York-Forest Hill (Mr. Givens) would feel reassured.

Hon. Mr. Clement: That’s right. The hon. member for Perth directed some of his remarks toward a price review commission, committee or board, and we’ve heard further discussion from the member of the New Democratic Party in this connection. I’ll deal with this a little later on in my remarks, if I may.

There was concern expressed by the hon. member for Perth for small business people and I share that concern. I made it my business this summer to spend several days, perhaps eight or 10 days, in Perth conferring with small businessmen and women across, mainly, the Niagara area -- it wasn’t necessarily in my riding -- just to find out where they were and what they felt about all levels of government and in particular their feelings toward their own particular business.

There was a message that came through very loud and clear, and it’s not unique and I’m sure it’s been shared by each member of this House. There’s the feeling on the one hand that there’s too much government intervention in the business world, and there’s the feeling that that government intervention is being promoted or encouraged or enlarged as a result of certain requirements for statistical data that’s required by various levels of government.

In attempting to get them to zap in on really what their concerns were and which forms gave them the worst difficulty, it was very hard for them to identify it. In the main, the involvement with those forms was being completed by someone on their staff and they really didn’t know what forms gave them the most difficulty. But it seemed the common thread of complaint was “Leave us alone to run our own show.”

You can’t do this all the time, nor do we intend to. You have to regulate in the case of failure of businesses to operate properly. You have to intervene -- pass legislation -- and that’s the purpose of it.

I was really concerned about this and I’ve talked to people who run small law practices and complain very loudly. This is particularly so where you have a small staff -- where the bookkeeper, for example, fills a multitude of functions within the office. She not only keeps the books, but perhaps she’s your receptionist and telephone answerer and so on.

This whole process is interrupted as the government inspectors from one level of government or another -- municipal, provincial or federal -- come in to do their inspections.

They come in to look at the unemployment insurance records, because it might be a small staff of two or three girls working there and they want to look at these records. This girl is then taken out of commission. She can’t answer the phone or greet the clients or whoever is coming through the door be- cause she is involved with the production of these documents to whoever the inspector happens to be. Or she is taking the assessor through the office if he happens to be doing an inspection under that particular --

Mr. Singer: Much worse than all that is all the forms that you fellows require us to have. How many forms do you need on deeds? --

Mr. Chairman: Order, please! Continue.

Mr. Singer: I will allow him, but he is overemphasizing the wrong thing.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I use this as one example. I don’t practise law any more --

Mr. Singer: The minister hasn’t seen a deed?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I haven’t seen one. I signed all mine away some time ago in cleansing myself to assume the role which I now hold in this government. I sold my cemetery plot at that time because I knew I would live forever.

I am trying to be sympathetic with the member for Perth who did demonstrate some concern and I just want him to know that I am concerned about the role of government and this government too. I am not going to point the finger at the federal government or the municipal government -- I am concerned about the role of all levels of governments in our very lives.

He then touched on the Consumers’ Association of Canada, and yes we did get approval of a $25,000 grant to the Consumers’ Association of Ontario -- I should say, not of Canada. This was the amount re- quested and the purpose for that grant was to establish a full-time office to carry on certain of its intended projects. I did get approval of that from Management Board conditional on those moneys being taken out from something else within our ministerial budget. We intend to advance that money to that association over a two-year period in sums of $12,500 each six months.

We had some very interesting meetings with that particular association. It certainly doesn’t speak for every consumer in the province, but it speaks for a number of consumers in the province. For those present who have an interest in this type of thing, as I understand it from the Consumer Association of Ontario their budget is in excess of $25,000.00. It is not the sole support, but this was the deficit they required in order to establish this type of office here in Ontario.

With credit buying, I have made some speeches lately about credit buying and the concerns better expressed by the member for Perth have been certainly echoed by me or else he is echoing mine -- in terms of credit buying, spending over the next three years what we want to take home with us today.

I noted with interest his comments dealing with the travel industry. The travel problems which have come to the surface, particularly in the last six months or a year, are perhaps in many instances indications of credit buying, I don’t know. I have talked to a number of agents over the past few months who have caused me some concern in terms of people travelling today and paying later.

I tell you it is an extensive business -- it involves millions of dollars annually. We are concerned about charter operators and tour operators. We are in the process right now, and hope to introduce this session, legislation to regulate this industry.

Mr. Singer: Ah, the ministry can do it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Oh, it is not very easily done.

Mr. Singer: The minister told us at the beginning he couldn’t do it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: It is not very easily done. When we get into the discussions of that legislation, I think you will find it a rather interesting concept that we have devised. We hope to put it before the House this session so that we can maybe close the doors.

I noted with interest the remarks of the member for Perth. I think he was quoting from an editorial, or was reading an article dealing with trust money -- that not enough moneys are held in trust. I share that concern because our concern is that in very few instances are any of these moneys held in trust. This is causing us some difficulty in just how you regulate an industry which has developed patterns apparently over a number of years in the handling of its funds.

I recognize that there is a need; I recognize that it just has to be corrected. It is a very complex thing and you just can’t go and get a bond and that’s the end of it. We will get into that in the discussions when we introduce the legislation.

Now on your remarks dealing with the Ontario Petroleum Association and ORGA -- the Ontario Retail Gasoline Association. My ministry became involved in discussions with those two bodies in an effort to assist them to develop guidelines that were mutually acceptable to ORGA, representing some dealers, and the petroleum association. It was our advice that initially the Ontario Retail Gasoline Association did, in fact, approve those guidelines, but they did communicate with us some time later that they were withdrawing that approval.

Several other organizations claiming to represent a certain segment of gasoline and petroleum dealers in this province have come forward. They won’t accept those items which are acceptable to ORGA or its members and there just seems to be a complete lack of consensus between these various associations as to really what their priorities are. My staff will be trying again very shortly to co-ordinate and carry out a liaison with these people and see if we can develop a consensus that is not only acceptable but practical to all concerned.

Self-service gas bars we certainly don’t regard very lightly. The advice which I have received from my technical standards people is that the possibility of every foreseeable hazard has, in the opinion of my officials, been protected against; that is, the required devices and so an are there, the procedures are there. I have read with interest an article -- I think within the last 24 hours or perhaps the day before that -- which would lead me, as a reader, to believe that perhaps all is not well in that particular area. But I have directed my people to look into that and I believe it was an article referring to the fact that an operator at one of these self-service outlets didn’t know how to shut off a valve or a key. So I am looking into that.

I can’t guarantee that there will never be an accident in any self-service outlet; I can’t guarantee that in any standard outlet as we know them. But we do have standards.

I can’t write off the fact that savings are minimal. I don’t wish to get into that right now, but obviously it has an appeal to a large number of the motoring public. I think that the motoring public would be pretty careful in putting gas in their own cars --traditionally, when we are discussing matters like this there is always the picture painted of a person putting the gas in with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He has a vested interest in making sure that there is no accident.

Perhaps there is room for improvement in this area. I don’t deny that; I don’t know. I am not admitting it or denying it, I just don’t know. But if there is room for improvement we will certainly move in that direction.

I then was the recipient of some very, very, very charitable comments from the leader of the New Democratic Party. I wish that you had a pin, sir, that I could wear today because I would wear it out of deference to you.

Mr. Lewis: My party wouldn’t think of making such pins for me.

Hon. Mr. Clement: They wouldn’t make pins for you, is that right?

Mr. Lewis: No, they wouldn’t, but if they did they would make another category.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Great. Well, I wish I could wear that pin but we will defer that till later on.

The thrust of the remarks of the member for Scarborough West, the initial comments as I recollect them from mv very brief notes, is really a philosophical difference in what he views the role of my ministry and what, in fact, has been described in existing legislation for the role of the ministry. He stressed the ombudsman approach in the interests of the consumer and dealt with certain price problems.

He suggested, and I’m just paraphrasing from mv recollection of his comments, that really, I should be vested, or my ministry should be vested, with the economic management, from the consumer’s point of view, of this province. Now, I don’t have that legislative authority now. I can’t deal with many economic things in the province, as he well knows, in terms of economic management, because I don’t have the legislation.

He’s not suggesting I do, as I understand his comments. He is suggesting, very positively, that if we don’t have it, we should go ahead and develop it and his colleague for Riverdale takes the position that, constitutionally, we have that right to develop that type of legislation. I’m not prepared to argue it on the basis of constitutional items, I’m just not that knowledgeable and I defer to the interesting remarks offered by the member for Riverdale as to his studies on the constitutionality of whether we do have the right to move in or out of economic management provincially.

The part that really concerns me, and I must take umbrage with the leader of the New Democratic Party who says, and said very, very carefully and many times, that the consumer has no protection, and he was talking in terms of economic things. It’s trite to recognize he has protection under certain legislation in the Consumer Protection Act but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about economic protection in the broad sense. I think that the consumer does have some economic protection -- not all; perhaps there isn’t enough, perhaps there’s too much, I don’t know -- but I say that he has economic protection on the basis of the competition of the marketplace and that he must exercise some degree of control. He may take the view that his purchase or lack of same isn’t going to make a difference. On the other hand, it may make a difference.

Mr. Stokes: You’ve got to be kidding.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, I’m not kidding. I’m not. Listen, you’ve got to have people -- are they going to go forward today and say there’s something wrong with the world? The beef prices in this province, as I understand it, hit an all-time high a year ago August and the volume of beef sales was never higher. Now, this doesn’t indicate to me a general concern, and I’m talking in generalities because there are many people in different spectrums of the economic scale who can’t afford beef and others who buy it all the time, but people went out and bought more of it. By the wav, freezer sales were never greater than at that particular period of time.

Mr. Renwick: Of course, because they were frightened about scarcity.

Hon. Mr. Clement: But it didn’t become scarce, did it?

Mr. Renwick: No, it didn’t.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, it didn’t become scarce, but you see the emotionalism that becomes created in the minds of many consumers, certainly not all. There’s no restraint practised by a number of consumers in this province.

Mr. Renwick: But in a world where food is scarce there is a concern.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I would be inclined to believe that this province, from some of the remarks which were made, is the only province that has any economic difficulties in terms of inflationary problems, certainly in this country at this time, and that simply isn’t correct. We’re dealing here, and I’m not minimizing it or ridiculing it because I agree with many things that the leader of the NDP said and, particularly, that this is probably the most pressing social problem in this country today and in this province is inflation. I agree with that. It’s a horrendous situation and, unfortunately, it spreads across most of the free world.

I am not taking the view that it’s worse in western Europe than it is here, so therefore we’re okay. I don’t take that view at all because I don’t believe that, but I think that we must look at the situation in terms of economics across the entire country and even beyond its borders. We’ve all read articles dealing with international marketplaces and international and world prices. Many of these are very, very valid and, in fact, are part of the problem itself.

I must take umbrage with the leader of the New Democratic Party’s remarks saying that part 2 of the food study was a bogus study. He disagrees with some of the conclusions that are derived or projected from that study and that, of course, is his very right. I hope when he says bogus, he is not suggesting that there was in any way any conspiracy between my staff or myself and any of the food people.

Mr. Lewis: No, not at all, not for a moment. It was the conclusions I don’t agree with.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, that is a fair enough proposition isn’t it?

Mr. Lewis: I think that is really the way I want it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Okay, well fine, I just wanted to make that clear.

Mr. Singer: You’ll have to destroy two pages of your notes.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No. I really wonder if somewhere my friend from Scarborough West and I may have a basic disagreement. I don’t know that it’s a sin or a crime to make a profit if you’re in business today. Many people are suggesting that perhaps it is.

Mr. Stokes: He was quoting you in that regard.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes. Then we get into the next step. If it’s consistent with social order and social responsibility, how much profit can an industry reasonably earn in social conscience? And, of course, you’re going to get as many varieties and opinions as you have members of this House. You’re going to get it from the one end of this axis or scale to the other.

I think this is where the competitiveness of the marketplace comes into play. I think that it is incumbent upon some agency, be it provincial, federal or otherwise, to make available to the public certain facts that are available so that the public can make some kind of a value judgement.

The problem, as I understand it, -- and he referred to this -- with the 4.4 per cent reduction in prices in the Ottawa area as a result of the federal review study there was that they published the items which were priced. I cannot help but think that the sellers of those items would react very quickly to reduce those prices and perhaps recover that loss, if I can use that phrase, or lower profit on other items. I really question whether the overall costs did drop on all items offered by supermarkets, which I usually number between 6,000 and 7,000. Those 30 or 50 items dropped 4.4 per cent.

Mr. Lewis: What you are saying is that supermarkets are basically dishonest.

Hon. Mr. Clement: That is not what I am saying.

Mr. Renwick: They are dishonest and manipulative.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I am not saying that they are basically dishonest at all. There may be some that are. I don’t know them.

Mr. Renwick: They respond to that information just the way they respond to increases, if they can get away with it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I say this, that if I am a businessman and you’re across the street and you’re selling widgets for 89 cents and I want somebody to buy my widgets, I’ll offer them for 88 cents. What I lose on the bananas, I’ll make up on the coconuts. That isn’t dishonest. That’s called being in the marketplace and being competitive.

Mr. Renwick: That is not being in the marketplace because that marketplace only exists in the Province of Ontario, and you know it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: That’s called being in business.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: My God, people have been running sales and everything for years. There is nothing unusual about that. This is part of the concept of selling. Public relations and advertising, for heaven’s sake, are an effort on behalf of an agency to encourage people to buy for some particular reason.

Mr. Renwick: The competition is only in the advertising and the services and not in the prices. You know as well as I do it is not, in the prices that competition takes place.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Where does it take place? That’s one item --

Mr. Renwick: It takes place in the advertising and all of the gimmicks that are used to persuade people to go into their stores.

Mr. Deans: By golly, the price is right for them.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Does the member for Riverdale advertise in any legal journals?

Mr. Renwick: We are not permitted to.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The Canadian Bar Review?

Mr. Renwick: As a matter of fact, my registration as a lawyer is about to expire.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The member for Riverdale made some mention about unit pricing, and I am grateful to him for reading that letter in the House to bring it back to my mind, because --

Mr. Renwick: It’s the second time I have read it in the House.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Well, the first time I wasn’t listening, you see; today I was. We like to have our memories refreshed; that was very helpful.

Mr. Renwick: Perhaps I can read it again next year.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The business practices division of my ministry has had some interest in this, as I have indicated. I understand one supermarket chain does have unit pricing, and the information available from that source has indicated that the consumers are not really that interested in it at this particular time. Perhaps that is because of the inability of the consumer to understand it, or perhaps there is an onus on somebody to educate the consumer about it --

Mr. Renwick: Perhaps there is an onus on the government to introduce legislation to provide unit pricing.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Well, we have another complication in connection with unit pricing -- and I’m not against it; I think it is all right -- and that is that when we get into the metric system, it is going to complicate it somewhat further. I think that eventually we are going to end up in it --

Mr. Renwick: It will be another 1,000 years, will it?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Well, I am encouraged by the change from the English system to the decimal system in Britain about three or four years ago. There were all kinds of articles about how people wouldn’t understand it. Even I didn’t understand it. I had to go over there and look at it, and convert it back to the old system, so I could understand it. They had menus with the prices in shillings, pence, halfpennies and so on on one side, and the decimal equivalents on the other. But now there is no problem; everybody accepts it.

Mr. Renwick: I always liked the length of the Lord Chancellor’s foot.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The member for Riverdale asked for certain information, I believe, so he could get his own legislative programme ready for this year.

Mr. Renwick: Next year we will do better.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I would like to point out to him, though, that the autumn and winter months are an excellent time to travel. And I would encourage him, if he wants to go away, by saying that we would look forward to his return perhaps in the warmer months.

I am going to introduce the new Credit Unions Act this session, and the Consumer Product Warranties Act. I hope to go with the Securities Act, about which I had some discussions with the member for Riverdale in a telephone conversation the other day; I would like to go ahead with that legislation in this session.

Mr. Renwick: Did the minister say he is going to introduce the Consumer Product Warnings Act this session?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, I hope to introduce it this session. But if we don’t get it on -- and we are in the process of drafting it now -- it will go on after the New Year. I also want to go ahead with the Fair Business Practices Act this session, as well as with the Ontario Building Code.

I do want to make this clear so that there is no misunderstanding: I can appreciate the workload and research that the member has to do in connection with this, but I am telling him what I would like to go ahead with and what has been cleared by my government and by my colleagues. There is also the matter of priorities, I presume, because I have colleagues who have other equally pressing matters that they would I like to proceed with. But these are the things I would like to go ahead with.

Mr. Renwick: I understand.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I think those are the only remarks I have to make at this time, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to engaging with the members of both parties in our estimates -- unless, of course, in the light of my remarks, they find them perfectly in order.

On vote 1301:

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Chairman, on the first ad- ministration vote with which we are dealing, I would like to take five or six minutes to respond very briefly to the minister.

John Clement, you are an old fashioned free enterprise man from away back. Perhaps I am not allowed to personalize you in the House -- the member from Niagara Falls, the minister. You are one of those sublime tinkerers. You like to tinker at the edges of the social and economic system. It does your heart good to introduce some changes in warranty legislation. It does your heart good to deal with a Fair Business Practices Act. It does your heart good to alter the securities legislation now and again. You play at the edges. You are a tinkerer. I am surprised you don’t have little steel balls that you hold in your hand like Queeg and rim them through from time to time, not so much because you are nervous, not so much because you are tapped off, but because you tinker.

Mr. Stokes: He carries a worrystone in his hand.

Mr. Lewis: Right, right. But what we are talking about is something fundamental. We are not talking about tinkering. We are talking about the need to intervene in the marketplace to protect people who are largely defenceless against the behaviour and activities of the corporations.

You say in one of the most charming but reckless old fashioned statements that the marketplace should govern itself. Even Tories have abandoned that by and large. You have taken over the marketplace in the generation of electric power because you don’t believe that that should be available for private enterprise. You are buying land all over Ontario to provide houses or to protect agricultural production because you don’t believe that that should be left to the private sector any more. There are lots of places where you bring yourself to intervene in the economy.

It’s always a matter with you of crisis intervention, but we are suggesting that there are moments when you intervene in advance before things get completely out of hand. My colleague from Thunder Bay said you have to be kidding because it’s a bit much in the fall of 1974 to be saying to the consumers of Ontario “You decide how to shop. You know it is your responsibility when you are buying a car to take on Ford, GM and Chrysler. It’s your responsibility when you are buying gas to take on Esso, Shell and Gulf. It’s your responsibility to take on Dominion, Loblaws and Steinberg’s.”

It’s not. It’s the minister’s responsibility. It’s your responsibility if they are untoward or out of whack with prices or profit policies that are reasonable. It’s your responsibility to intervene to defend the consumer. God knows the consumer has enough to do now and that is where it is illegitimate, then you should intervene. In that there’s no difference between us.

Socialists the world over understand that we live in a mixed economy in the Free World -- capital “F”, capital “W” -- that all you Tories conjure up for the rest of the world. In the Free World it’s all a mixed economy. Even in Sweden, only 10 per cent of the economy is publicly or cooperatively owned. The other 90 per cent of the economy is in private hands. We understand the North American economy will always be dominated in business terms by the private sector. Therefore, we understand and concede that the private sector has a right to make a profit and has a right to a reasonable return on investment. What we won’t concede and what you concede to is that they don’t deserve an excess profit or an unreasonable return on investment.

Then you smile benignly and say to me “How do you establish a reasonable profit and a fair return on investment?” I think it’s probably possible to establish a rate of return which most would agree on, in various sectors of the economy. In terms of a reasonable profit, I can do no better than to quote the words of the oracle, of the legislative guru, John Clement, who said that further profits on the scale of 1973 don’t appear to be necessary.

What better voice than John Clement? Who else would I quote, Jim Renwick? You’re the minister with the power. I know what Jim Renwick thinks -- but you are saying further profit increases on the scale of 1973 don’t appear to be necessary. Don’t tell us that we don’t accept a profit. You have to understand what extravagant, unsupportable profits -- insupportable profits -- mean. Illegitimate, unreasonable -- I don’t know whether it’s “un” or “in” as a prefix. I shall ask my wife, she will know.

I want to tell you that it’s time that you acted on the words which you yourself spoke and that’s what the New Democratic caucus is saying to you. My colleague from Riverdale demonstrates that it is obviously constitutional and within your prerogative.

You have said the profits are too high. We are saying act on it. Don’t be such a free enterpriser; don’t be such a fundamentalist.

The incredible business about this House is that all the fanaticism is over there, not over here. Over here there is flexibility and conciliation. Over there there is fanaticism and compensation. You have to divest yourself of these fundamentalist views. You have very doctrinaire views. And even though your own studies show that the profits are too great, the rates of return are too high, you still haven’t got the flexibility to act on that.

In the name of the Ontario consumers we are asking you for some flexibility. You don’t have to nationalize Loblaws in order to do it. You just have to selectively roll back prices that are out of whack. You don’t have to take over Esso’s refineries. You just have to protect citizens here the way they are doing in Nova Scotia.

Nobody’s asking you to dismantle capitalism. We are just asking you to civilize it. There is nothing wrong with that.

That’s where we differ; because in a funny way you are even a greater fundamentalist than so-called people of the left. That is a philosophic difference. It is a rather interesting difference and I must say that it is not out of character; but I’m surprised, and I urge you to leave the tinkering behind and enter the fray, socially useful.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Chairman, I have sat and listened to most of this discussion this afternoon and I’ve rather enjoyed the remarks of the leader of the NDP. But I think he has missed the boat. What the minister has been trying to tell us is that he has no power.

Mr. Lewis: No, he says he does not want the power.

Mr. Singer: No, he has no power except to nibble at the edges; no, he hasn’t got power.

Mr. Stokes: It is a philosophical difference, he says.

Mr. Singer: He made one statement that struck home with me, and that was when we come to talk about economics the minister really had very little to say or to do about it. The fellow we should have been after, the fellow we are going after Monday after- noon about economics is the leader of the government (Mr. Davis) and the Treasurer; (Mr. White) who has Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs.

But I don’t think we can expect this minister, nice fellow that he is, to start breaking brand new ground that is going to upset the economic world as determined by the Premier and the Treasurer. That’s where the fault is.

A little later on I’m going to try to convince him to do, as I’ve tried with him and his predecessor over a number of years, to do something about insurance rates. Maybe that’s within their concept. But both he and his predecessors have been able to successfully run around the problem.

Eventually we are going to get something that is going to say something about travel agents. It was difficult, we were told a few months ago. It was impossible. And I suspect, from all the advanced excuses that were built into the unveiling of this new legislation, that it’s not going to be very startling when it does come about.

So my small contribution to this debate and this point and this ministry, is that I’m afraid we are after the wrong minister. I don’t think that they will let him do what maybe he should do.

Mr. Lewis: That’s probably true.

Mr. Renwick: The Premier said he was responsible for the question of consumer prices.

Mr. Singer: Yes, except the Premier didn’t really mean that. He’s got a fellow as Treasurer who won’t yell; and the Premier himself won’t do it. I think it would be --

Hon. Mr. Clement: You guys have been picking on me all day.

Mr. Singer: -- The minister got fairly close to confessing a little while ago when he said, “Leave me alone fellows. I haven’t got the power because my leader and my Treasurer won’t give it to me.” I feel sorry for him.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I didn’t say that.

Mr. Singer: But he shouldn’t take so many titles unto himself and try to pretend he has such power.

Mr. Lewis: I didn’t hear him say that.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I didn’t say that.

Mr. Singer: That was my interpretation of what you did say.

Mr. Lewis: Wait until he is Treasurer.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Wentworth has the floor.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Chairman, I don’t much care whether he has the power or not. The fact of the matter is he is not likely to do very much, if you are going to gauge what his future efforts are going to be by his past efforts.

But I do want to talk to him about another area, directly related to cost of living, that he might be’ able to do something about but that he really doesn’t seem willing to do anything about, and I want to make a proposal to him that I hope he’ll at least give some consideration to. I draw to the attention of the minister that one of the major contributing factors to the rising cost of living has been the component of housing or accommodation, and that the cost of living has risen by leaps and bounds, but the accommodation component of the cost of living index has risen, in general terms, in excess of the overall and in the Province of Ontario, in Metropolitan Toronto in particular, is galloping along well ahead of the average cost of living increase.

I want to say to the minister that as the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations he surely must have a responsibility to protect the consumer against the unwarranted price increases in the general housing field, and in particular, in rental accommodation. I’ve asked a number of times in this House, in fact going all the way back to 1967, that the government pay particular attention to rental accommodation and the problems that confront people who are forced to find a place to live and are very much at the mercy of someone else to provide the actual accommodation itself.

We’ve spoken, I would guess, 20 or 30 times over that period of time about the ever-increasing costs and the difficulties that people are having in meeting those costs, and the results that come about from the non-housing policies of the government of Ontario. In spite of the fact that minister after minister who has been charged with housing has failed to produce an adequate number of units, the government keeps pointing the finger at its housing minister and says, “Don’t worry. In time we’ll correct the imbalance.” Just last Friday the new Minister of Housing (Mr. Irvine) issued his statement with regard to the numbers of houses that would be built in the Province of Ontario, pointing out that there were great new initiatives being undertaken, and that given a fair chance this could provide sufficient accommodation, that the pressure on rents would be automatically lessened, and that people wouldn’t be faced with the exorbitant rents that they’re currently paying.

Even if that were so, even if the statements of the minister were taken at face value, and even if what he said was correct, that within the next two years there would be a sufficient number of housing units built in the Province of Ontario in the major metropolitan areas to meet the tremendous pressure that’s been placed on accommodation, there is something called an interim period between now and two years from now that has to be faced.

There are people who are currently living in rental accommodation in the Province of Ontario who are paying 50 per cent more than it’s worth. There are people who are paying 60 and 70 per cent of their income just to provide themselves with accommodation, with shelter. This government has done virtually nothing to try to meet that problem. Now, it can’t be met in the short run by developing more apartments, because that all takes time. There have been adequate warnings, as the chairman well knows, over five or six years that we were moving into a crisis situation with regard to the availability of rental accommodation, and the government, even in spite of those warnings, failed to heed them and failed to take the necessary steps some years ago which might well have eased the pressure today.

A little publication that comes to everyone suggests that rent boosts of up to $60 a month are forecast for Metro. I want to tell the minister that that rent boost of up to $60 a month is not even uncommon over the course of the last year, if you look at Hamilton or Metropolitan Toronto or almost any metropolitan area, and I’m sure my colleague from Ottawa could cite you chapter and verse of the exorbitant rent increases that have taken place in the Ottawa area.

I can assure you that never a day goes by but I receive a communication or a telephone call from someone in my constituency, or from the general Hamilton area, bringing to my attention that yet another rent increase has taken place in yet another apartment building. It’s no longer uncommon to find that there are no leases being signed; that in fact rents are being increased one, two and perhaps even three times in one 12-month period, without any requirement for justification whatsoever; that there is no requirement on the owner or the landlord to justify what the rent increase is going to be or, for that matter, even to discuss what the rent increase is going to be; that there is no requirement on the part of the owner even to tell the tenant why rents are being increased at the rate they are being increased.

All we ever hear or all we ever read is the landlord association saying that costs are rising, that the cost of heating is going up or the cost of maintenance is going up, and that taxes are rising. But never is there any honest-to-God justification required. Never is there an attempt made to sit the landlord down and say: “Show me where it is that your costs have gone up to justify this kind of an increase in the accommodation that you are providing to these people.”

I want to tell you that in answer to my question the other day to the Premier, the Premier said that he didn’t want to get into the whole area of rent controls and that he saw a distinction between rent review and rent control. I concede to him that there is a distinction between rent review and rent control, but I think that it is about time that we recognized that if it is going to be left up to the private entrepreneur to provide accommodation, and if he is going to be left with all the tools at his disposal to charge whatever the traffic will bear and more, and if he is always going to have available the opportunity to evict the tenant simply because that tenant doesn’t have the necessary financial backing to meet the exorbitant demands, then we are always going to be faced with people who will be paying considerably more for this essential part of life than they can afford.

Now, let me try something on with you for a moment, because I happen to think that there is a way to review rents without getting into overall control, without getting involved in a blanket control in the Province of Ontario or, for that matter, even a blanket control in Metropolitan Toronto. I do think that this ministry, if it were interested in protecting the consumer in the area of rentals, could set up the mechanisms required to do what I think might well work.

To begin with. I think it is time that we did say that it is necessary for persons in the field of providing rental accommodation to justify changes in the rent just as they justify changes in price, in oil, in natural gas, in hydro -- things that are recognized as being necessities of life -- just as we are asking that the same kind of justification be provided in the area of foodstuffs. In the area of rental accommodation, initially, we are going to have to require justification.

I want to suggest that if we were to use as the basis the existing mechanism of the landlord-tenant review procedure, which hasn’t worked very well because it hasn’t had any real power, and if we were to empower them to require that there be a justification for any rent increase, then we could do this: we could set it up so that the tribunal could, upon an application from a tenant, require that justification be made for a rental increase. But it is important that we don’t give the tribunal the power to vary it, that the application for the rent increase be for whatever that rent increase is and that the tribunal not be permitted, for example, to say that rather than give permission for a $25 increase it would be prepared to give permission for a $15 increase. The reason that I say this is because that would simply mean that when the justification was being made, there would be a padding operation that takes place, not unlike that which happens in many other sectors, in order to try to reach a saw-off, something that would be satisfactory.

I suggest to you that if a tenant were to appear before the bureau and to ask that justification be given for the rent increase which is being asked, and then if the landlord were required to provide that justification and the justification did, in fact, show that the rental increase requested was justified on the basis of additional costs, the power would be there to grant it. If it showed that it was not justified on the basis of actual additional costs, then the power would be there not to grant it. Opportunity would then be available for the landlord to reapply with notification going to the original applicant, for something other than what was asked for in the first place.

It is 6 o’clock and I will carry on after 8.

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

October 24, 1974

CNE TRANSIT DEMONSTRATION SYSTEM

SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

DAYCARE SERVICES

CLOSING OF BURWASH CORRECTIONAL CENTRE

REPORTS ON LEAD POLLUTION

MINE SAFETY INSPECTION

ONTARIO CIVIL SERVICE GROWTH

BEEF PRICES

LEASEBACK CONTRACTS FOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS

PULLET PRODUCTION

DISTILLERY WORKERS’ STRIKE

ROYAL COMMISSION ON ALLEGATIONS OF POLICE BRUTALITY

STATUTORY POWERS PROCEDURE ACT

PLANNING ACT

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL RELATIONS (CONTINUED)