Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

ESTIMATES, PROVINCIAL SECRETARY FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. minister have an opening statement?

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): You want to believe it!

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): She better have.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce the estimates of the Secretariat for Social Development with just a short review of some of the activities of the past year.

Mr. Martel: We’d be better off if you hadn’t had any.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I would like to start by noting the welcome addition to the Social Development field of the Secretariat for Manpower, which is headed by my colleague, the Minister without Portfolio (Mr. McNie).

The Manpower Secretariat is an outgrowth of the work within my secretariat, which indicated the need for closer liaison among ministries regarding manpower policy. Some time ago, it became evident that there are special problems in co-ordinating requirements for skills with the effort of our education ministries and with the responsiveness of the labour market to changing circumstances.

An example of the requirements for improved co-ordination in the manpower field is career guidance in the schools. Another example of concern by the Manpower Secretariat is the Nanticoke development and its requirements for skilled labour.

Because of the importance of these and a host of related manpower issues, each of which involves a number of ministries, Mr. McNie was given the responsibility for the co-ordination of manpower policy and has joined both Resources and Social Development policy fields.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Where is he?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I am aware that you have asked my colleague, the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development (Mr. Grossman) just what a policy field does. The coordinating role is primary and it is perhaps best illustrated with the system used for dealing with priorities for expenditures --

Mr. Renwick: We didn’t ask him, he told us.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: -- a system which is called multiple-year planning. The traditional philosophy of expenditure is that government operates on a cash basis for one year at a time. But if planning is just for one year at a time we involve ourselves, really, in misleading planning. And so, the social policy field ministers and senior staff spend many hours at meetings where we sort out our priorities --

Mr. Stokes: I trust they’ll be dropping in later tonight.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: -- not only in terms of this year, but for the next few years.

Let me give you an example. If a hospital is to be built there’s hardly any money spent in the first year, except perhaps for structural plans. Two or three years later the project is under way and there are heavy construction costs. But the main recurrence and actual consequences of the decision to build are only felt four or five years after commencement of the project. MYP gives us the opportunity to see what happens down the road a bit.

While he served as Provincial Secretary for Social Development, my colleague, the Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General (Mr. Welch) announced the formation of the Ontario Council on the Status of Women and the Advisory Council on Multiculturalism.

It was my great pleasure last April to announce the formation of the Ontario Advisory Council on Senior Citizens, with a chairman and 18 members.

Mr. Stokes: We haven’t seen them since.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I have. That committee has proceeded with great enthusiasm, and recommendations have started to flow across my desk which are being forwarded to the appropriate ministries for their consideration.

The Council on Multi-culturalism and the Status of Women council will soon be forwarding their first annual reports and I am looking forward to them, knowing that they have both worked very hard to improve the lot of those they represent.

It is with great satisfaction that I have watched the progress made on behalf of the women in this province which has emanated from the green paper on equal opportunities for women which was fostered by the Secretariat for Social Development. The paper brought the entire matter into sharp focus and led to not just the advisory council but to the appointment of Ethel McLellan as the executive co-ordinator of women’s programmes and a new emphasis on equal opportunity for women within the Ontario government.

The work of the policy field is not always so evident; a co-ordinating role seldom is. We deal with matters that transcend the responsibility of individual operating ministries by providing the forum for discussion and decisions.

Mr. Stokes: A kind of a low profile.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Chairman, that is all I have to say by way of introduction, but I will be happy to answer questions from the members. Thank you.

Mr. Stokes: Margaret, you disappoint me -- six minutes.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for St. George.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Mr. Chairman, I am saddened in standing here today to have to be one who is critical of this ministry. I must confess that I had hoped, because it is a ministry led by the only female cabinet minister, that I would be able to point with pride.

However, I would like to break down my remarks into three areas to indicate what to me has been a very sad situation.

Mr. Stokes: I’m glad the member for St. George showed up. There would have been nobody else from the social development field. I am awfully glad she showed up.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mrs. Campbell: The minister has referred to the matter of the status of women. I recall with interest one of her first statements with reference to this matter, and I believe it was that she favoured removing from women the protection they presently had in jobs which caused them to have to work nights. It seemed to me that perhaps that was somewhere the wrong end of the stick at which to start if you have a concern for women.

I was present at the conference on the status of women over the weekend, and I would like to say that apart from the somewhat party partisan chairmanship of the seminars I think the seminars themselves were very useful. However, when it came to the plenary session most of the women -- certainly the ones with whom I spoke, and there were a number of them -- felt that once again they had been herded into a position from which, by the very rules of the conference -- and I don’t know who made those rules -- there were inescapable conclusions.

I don’t know, for instance, who developed the questionnaire for that particular convention, but unfortunately it was couched in such a way that it itself led to assumptions which became almost inescapable in the development of the resolutions which caused so much concern; at least on Sunday morning, which is the period that I was able to attend on resolutions.

For example, if I may -- and this is important, it seems to me, if my guidance came from this ministry -- it’s interesting that the first question on the questionnaire was: Should the matrimonial home receive special consideration? Then everything flowed from an assumption that would be answered in the affirmative. In one seminar or workshop, at least, they did not feel that it should have special consideration except perhaps where there were dependent children. So they felt they were bringing in, or trying to struggle to bring in, the family concept in this barren property rights discussion.

However, that didn’t come forward, as I understand, and so all the resolutions in the morning were geared to what should happen to the matrimonial home.

This is the kind of manipulation of a meeting which made it very difficult for so many who were there. I would like to know who prepared the questionnaire and how it was made functional through this changing in the resolution period.

On the general question of the status of women for which this secretariat has such responsibility, I would like to ask her if she is aware of the fact that from 1967 to 1972 the percentage of families headed by men living below the poverty line -- this is from Statistics Canada -- decreased from 17.2 per cent to 10.7 per cent. In the same period the percentage of families headed by women living below the poverty line increased from 35.6 per cent to 45.5 per cent. I should like very much to hear what Manpower or what her ministry or what somebody is doing with those sorts of statistics staring us, as it were, in the face.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): The member was awarding alimony during most of that time.

Mrs. Campbell: I did not have occasion to award alimony at any time.

Mr. Drea: You were awarding the payments.

Mrs. Campbell: That may be true.

Mr. Drea: That’s right.

Mrs. Campbell: Quite true, and if you had ever been in that court --

Mr. Drea: I was in that court.

Mrs. Campbell: -- you might understand something of the problems related thereto.

Mr. Drea: I always wondered about the alimony you awarded.

Mr. Chairman: Order please. The hon. member for St. George has the floor.

Mrs. Campbell: But at no time did I have any occasion to award alimony, so let’s get that straight.

Mr. Drea: You were awarding family payments, Margaret.

Mr. Chairman: Order please. The hon. member for St. George has the floor.

Mrs. Campbell: I would very much like to get into that discussion, but since we’re limited to two-and-a-half hours and others may want to speak, perhaps I could continue to enlighten the member for Scarborough Centre as to that role at a later time.

Mr. Martel: I doubt it.

Mr. Drea: You were awarding payments.

Mrs. Campbell: In any event, these are some of the statistics that seem to me to be very important.

Again, it seems to me there hasn’t been very much effect on the status of women, even within the ministry. For example, what has been done about pensions in Colleges and Universities? That’s a part of the status of women and within the ministry for which this minister has some area of responsibility. That is one area of her concern.

Secondly, we have heard about the senior citizens. I don’t know whether the minister has had the opportunity to read this report called “Beyond Shelter,” but it was this report which was the basis for the conference on homes for the elderly which took place on Thursday and Friday of last week. There is no doubt, if one reads this report carefully, that Ontario’s place is not among the highest by any means in the services to the elderly. It was interesting that the Deputy Minister of Housing did manage to get to the conference for lunch and he did say that you were beginning to look at a co-ordination of Community and Social services, Housing and Health.

But there was nothing to indicate how far you had gone, how preliminary in fact this was. I am most anxious indeed to know how far you have gone in implementing such an interrelation so that we may all be more aware of just how our concerns are for the senior citizen in housing.

It is of particular interest to me, because having regard to housing in the metropolitan area, we find most of our senior citizen housing is developed by Metropolitan Toronto.

We still seem to preserve that fiction, that myth, that OHC doesn’t house senior citizens. And of course they do. But the only services in my area for these people are funded by those dreadful, contemptible New Horizon grants and LIP grants that this minister wants to see abolished. So at the one moment when she wants to conserve money out of the provincial treasury she wants to cut off services to these people, which they can get and are getting under those despicable grants of which she has had so much to say.

I may say that at that meeting the Identified Homemaker Services -- one of the most important services for the elderly -- the homemakers in the metropolitan area of Toronto receive $2.85 an hour and out of that must pay their own transportation. I suppose it isn’t, therefore, unreasonable to expect that the result is, as they reported at the meeting, it is difficult to get women to go into that kind of service. They can earn that kind of money in a service which doesn’t cause them quite as much wear and tear as it does in the kinds of service they are asked to contribute to homemaking to the senior citizen.

One of the other things that was identified as important was the Meals on Wheels programme. I thought that it was important that we look at the fact that in St. George in the summertime they get, if they are lucky, one meal a week because of the way in which the service functions.

So much then for this matter of this ministry and the way it functions to co-ordinate services to the elderly. The minister has spoken about this item. I just have to make my observations based on the actual report of the concerned citizens who are seniors.

Now I must get to that matter which is of tremendous controversy and concern. That is the minister’s approach to the matter of the provision of day care.

The minister did indicate in her June statement that this was a service for children of low-income families. I would like the minister to tell us how many children are supported by family benefit and general welfare assistance programmes, since apparently there isn’t any other ministry that can give us those figures.

I would also like to know if she can tell me -- since I can’t get it from one of the subject ministries -- under the income maintenance programme for 1974-1975 how much would go to families with dependent children and how much to singles or families without dependent children? In this way, perhaps we can check how many children are going to be children of low-income families accommodated under the expanded day care programme.

I do want to say that I do have a sympathy with this minister in her desire to expand day care. I want to make that abundantly clear. It is a very needed service and it is one which ought to be expanded.

Again, I would like to try to appeal to her to understand at least some of my concerns. She is now engaged in this sort of forecasting on a general level of services. She has given us the hospital as an example; but let us look and see if there is any way in which she, in conjunction with some of the other provincial secretariats, could view the costs in interrelation.

If we cut back on the ratios or increase them -- whichever way you want to view it -- so that there are fewer people looking after more children, I wonder if we can find out, for example, just what the effects are. We have all heard something of what the effects are; I would like to know what study the minister has given to it.

I would also like to know what qualifications she specifically has in mind for the teachers in charge of the children. Apparently the person who is looking after them in one of the profit schools is paid at the minimum wage. This would presumably indicate no great priority for those who are charged with this responsibility.

One of the things which also gives me concern was raised in communicating with members of the operating ministry -- if I may call it that. And I have been seeking a letter, and if I can find it before I’m through, I shall be happy to give a copy to the minister. One of the staff of the ministry pointed out that in a school lodging, say, 100 children, it is very difficult to supervise the operation. So of course the thing to do is set up a school with the largest number of children, and then we won’t have to worry about regulations at all.

Surely if we want to protect children, what we have presently, unless the other regulations have somehow gone into effect, and I would like to know the status of the new regulations, is not really quality day care. It is simply an acceptable minimum standard. And I, for one, can’t support a reduction of that standard, and for these reasons.

There is a growing feeling among the poor that the whole structure of our society and the establishment which is represented by the Davis government in Ontario are to ensure that those children shall not have opportunities. That is what they believe. If you look at their need for some programme which can give them an opportunity to learn, then surely that is one way to bring them out of the poverty cycle.

We have to remember that for the most part these are children of single-parent families. These are children who have many emotional hurdles. When I hear the minister speak of her own family and having brought up her own family, and I’m sure she did a very good job of it -- there’s no question; I too, have brought up a family and like to think that I have succeeded as well. But I would also hope that her children were not faced with the type of emotional problems these children have to face.

We need the best possible teachers. Every report that you get these days indicates that the most important period of a child’s life is up to the age of five years. Yet we feel somehow or other, with these new regulations, that you can throw these reports out the window, that a grandmother can look after these children. Grandmothers, and I am one of them, are not really trained to spot the problems of children at this age with the kinds of disadvantages they have to start with.

Reference was made to my work in the courts. I wish the minister could have been in the courts to see the children who were there and to recognize the cost factor in dollars as well as the sociological costs of children who have not been given a chance. I wish she could study the cost in the education budget of children whose problems have not been spotted early enough. It is suggested by every report which I have been able to read that some of these conditions may be reversible if they are caught in time, but that by school age, basically, many of them appear to be irreversible. If they are irreversible or if they require costly educational dollars, what are we saving by making the standards of the teacher so low at this level?

These children are in the courts because in many cases they have severe problems. Very often it means they are forced to be placed in expensive institutional care, be it correctional or some other form of care.

Is the minister able to tell us what the comparisons are in costs? If she can’t, will she investigate that aspect of this supposedly cost-saving device?

Right across this province, as she well knows, people are up in arms. I have before me the report of Metropolitan Toronto, and I have also read where the minister concludes that these are vested interest people who are stirring up strife over the new regulations. You know, I think she’s right, because a parent is a vested-interest person in concern for his or her own children. Grandparents have a vested interest, I suppose, in their concern for their grandchildren in these places of care. And so, I suppose, have the profit-making daycare people a vested interest in the new regulations, which believe me they’re flouting now and will continue to flout anyway. Is this the kind of care we’re concerned about?

I really don’t believe the minister believes this. I don’t see how she could.

There isn’t much more to be said about that controversy. We have all taken our positions. We’ve all made them clear. But the reaction of the poor, believe me, is that this minister has said: “There is no way we can give the poor quality day care.” And if the minister were present on Sunday, she would say that there’s no way the poor can be heard on the status of women conference because we have no property rights; but they do have children.

I really don’t know how to get through to the minister, but I will say that on the basis of the three areas on which I’ve touched, I can see no useful purpose being served by this secretariat -- no useful purpose at all. To me, if we want to cut the costs of government -- and I say it again, not sarcastically, but I mean it with the greatest reluctance -- this ministry and its cost could go to a straight delivery of service to poor people and we could cut out the administrative costs and use that money at least for a more useful purpose than is being served by it today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Sudbury East.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Chairman, I have to agree with the hon. member for St. George.

I want to congratulate the minister. She’s been in office now about a year, a year and a half, and I want to congratulate her. She’s dissembled about the LIP grants. She was the hatchet person for the Tory Party on LIP funding. For someone who is supposed to be interested in delivering services to people, she made sure that a whole series of volunteer programmes went down the drain. They won’t be replaced.

She is now engaged in yet another area of desperate need. She is engaged in a position which she refuses to defend because she refuses to present the documentation on which the decisions were made.

I want to congratulate her because she is doing a good job. I hope she keeps it up. I really do. She has managed to alienate more people in a year and a half than most Tory cabinet ministers have done in their whole career over on that side.

So I just hope she continues along her merry way. Because the programme I want to talk about -- I only want to talk about one -- is day care.

We talk about women gaining their individuality, coming to their full potential. The one area that will allow it is day care. That is because these people can get out of the homes and into the work force.

Many of them need to, although many of them don’t want to. But the Premier (Mr. Davis) doesn’t do much about inflation, so more and more young people are forced, both husband and wife, to work just to keep the bread and butter on the table.

This minister comes along and instead of reinforcing and increasing the sense of assuredness that the children are being looked after, in that glowing statement on June 4 she destroyed it all.

The Tory government has never been strong in the field of Community and Social Services. If one were to look at this field in particular, one realizes that the weakest minister always gets it, that most cabinet ministers don’t want it, that it is the ministry that is groping the most for funding, because most Tory back-benchers don’t believe in the field of social services for people. That’s a reality. I’ll quote from a document which supports that position:

“The federal and provincial spending in all social services in Ontario from 1946 to 1971 increased only from 0.3 per cent to 0.9 per cent of the gross provincial budget.”

The source is “The Service State Emerges in Ontario, The Ontario Economic Council of January 1974.”

This ministry and the delivery ministry of social services have always been behind. It’s never had priority. It never will have priority because the Tories don’t place much priority in the field where most could be done for the deprived.

I want to go on:

“This compares with increases in treatment ... and post-secondary education spending ranges from five times to 17 times the 1946 level. Lumping social service expenditure with health and education spending distorts the province’s lack of financial commitment to the social service field.” Distorts it!

“The province’s 1974-1975 budget for Community and Social Services through which day care is funded is approximately $650 million out of the total budget of nearly $8 billion. The province is currently spending only seven to eight cents out of the provincial tax dollar for social services to Indians, supportive municipal recreation programmes, services to the mentally retarded, day care and so on.” The groups that need it most.

And just to support that, it is estimated or guesstimated that we need at least 300,000 placements in Canada, probably 150,000 in Ontario. That’s the very minimum, maybe 300,000. In Ontario, until a year ago, I think we have had 37,000 placements, of which 12,000 were funded’ for financial assistance -- 12,000 received some type of financial assistance to ensure day care.

And now we have another $15 million. Well, $10 million is for capital, $5 million for care for children. In fact we are talking, what, another 3,500 placements maybe? We might reach 16,000 if we are lucky; and we will reach it, of course, by several gimmicks which I will come to in a few moments.

The people were supposed to be impressed by that $15 million, and they were supposed to forget the rest of the minister’s statement. But when one looks at what the Ministry of Community and Social Services and this ministry announce over and over again, one starts to look at the announcements very carefully -- and the public are becoming concerned.

I think of drugs in that plan under GAINS, with 1,200 drugs being available. I don’t know if the rest of the members are like me, but I have had simply hundreds of calls because people are not getting the drugs they need. But it sounded great you know -- we rule by headlines. If one looks at the raises in FBA and GWA, that very carefully worded statement by the minister about a month ago said 15 per cent -- but it wasn’t 15 per cent. It was 15 per cent if you could have a job and were allowed to retain it and if you were on general welfare. But many of the communities don’t allow general welfare recipients to keep the money. If you put it all together it could be 15 per cent, but if it was nine per cent across the board we would have been lucky. It looked good until someone started to tear it apart very carefully.

There was the announcement a year ago of a five per cent increase in September; but it wasn’t five per cent across the board; it was only five per cent of what the province was paying -- and if they had a Workmen’s Compensation pension they didn’t get five per cent.

Everything you touch on that side of the House that has to do with the field of Community and Social Services is perverse, absolutely perverse. I can think of no other word to describe it. It’s never factual. It’s never on the line. It’s never enough. More important, it’s never directed at prevention, but just to hold the line.

I will illustrate some types of prevention in a few moments, but our efforts are never directed at prevention, they never deal with the total family needs. We dissect a family in Ontario; as we used to do it in biology class, that’s what we do in Ontario. If there is a problem with a child in the courts, the Attorney General’s department or Correctional Services looks after that. If there’s also a labour problem involved in the same family, that’s Labour. If your ministry were going to do something useful, and nothing else, it would start a delivery system that dealt with the total family and its needs.

I think of day care, and I say everything that comes out of that ministry is perverse. Do you recall the 1971 election? Ten million dollars for day care, and we are just getting started. More funding for homes for the aged, and we are just getting started in that. It was downhill after 1971.

Finally, with enough pressure, we have $15 million more. Well hurrah. We are going to create 3,500 more placements. There must be an election in the offing.

As I said, I want to congratulate the minister. The examples I have cited show how this ministry and its delivery partner, Community and Social Services, really respond to the needs of people.

This government has done a good job. You alienated teachers last Christmas. Civil servants are down your back now. TTC workers got their fill this summer. And those involved in day care are now joining the list.

The timing of the minister’s statement was just great. The minister made a statement. But the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle) wouldn’t answer a question in committee, not one. He sat there immobile for days as we talked about this particular expenditure. As we tried to elicit the answers from him, he sat there in horror and refused to answer anything.

Yet the policy minister is making all kinds of new utterings. It’s obvious Brunelle didn’t know what was going on. I think the minister was hoping that over the summer months, of course, the flak would die. Things last a month or so and then they go away; the heat’s off. But it didn’t work that way. It hasn’t worked that way at all. In fact the opposition to the minister’s position is mounting. It is not subsiding at all. And no one is getting a satisfactory answer from the minister at all.

Various groups, and I’m going to list them in a few moments, are opposed to the ministry’s policy. In fact, it’s such a long list one could almost go on all night. The real question I’m going to come to is: Who supports the minister in her position? And they centre around two issues: Ratios -- the minister wants to increase the ratios and thus improve day care, I guess; and the relaxation of formal training for teachers and supervisors.

What does the minister want to do with ratios? The present ratio requirements for under-18 months are one staff to 3⅓ children, roughly. The minister’s first announcement was one to six. I think she’s now backed off and suggesting one to four, but no one believes her.

The Canadian Council on Social Development says there shouldn’t be more than one to four. The minister will save 20 per cent per child if her one to six holds. For 18 months to two years, one to 4⅔; and as they call it here the Birch proposal, one to nine.

I wonder if the minister knows anything about children. I really do. And I wonder about the people who served on that committee, that in fact she refuses to identify. I wonder what they know about children. I’ve had some experience as a principal of an elementary school. I think I know a little about children. I want to know who it was who suggested that having nine two-year-olds under one supervisor could possibly do the job. You don’t even get to be a good babysitter with that number, let alone meet the real aims of a day nursery.

Doesn’t the minister understand that? In kindergarten we don’t allow that many. The interesting thing about our whole education system is it’s topsy turvy. As an elementary school principal I always objected that we had the highest student-teacher ratios. When you got up to the high school it was lower and when you got to university it got lower yet.

At elementary level they don’t know anything. One suspects that by the time they reach university they know something and the ratios could be higher. It should be reversed so that children get off on the right foot in the beginning. But the Ontario government has never recognized that. Ratios are the highest at the elementary level.

Now we see it where we want to get children started properly, at two to four, the learning years, the formative years, and we increase it one to nine. And from two to four, one to 14, up from one to eight for full day care. The suggestion by the Canadian Council on Social Development is one to nine. So the minister can save some money here by increasing the ratios on the average 30 per cent per child at that level. Five years old: For half day it’s one to 22 and full day one to 11⅔. The minister proposes one to 22 all day. That’s a good ratio.

That’s one of the problems, ratios. As the minister knows, she has refused steadfastly, for I guess four months at least, to present to this House the committee report on which she made, or intends to make, the alterations in the regulations. She won’t show that and I am sure it is because she is embarrassed by it.

The other one is relaxation of formal training. Let me just list some of the groups that I or members of this party have had representation from who oppose both these proposals by the ministry, and then we will ask the question: “Who is left?”

Community Day Care Coalition of Metro Toronto; Action Committee on Day Care; Ontario Welfare Council -- I understand in a discussion with the Hon. Rene Brunelle that the ministry paid great attention to what the Ontario Welfare Council had to say; well I hope they are in this instance -- Association for Early Childhood Education, Ontario branch -- another local group which I think knows something about children too.

Peel Day Care Action Committee; Cradleship Crèche, Toronto; Family Daycare Services, Toronto; Victoria Day Care Services, Toronto; Early Childhood Education Committee of the Ontario Teachers Federation -- now there is a group I think that knows something about children, the Teachers Federation I think they know just a little -- YMCA, Willowdale; Canadian Mothercraft Society; Ontario Association for the Mentally Retarded; Ontario Society for Crippled Children -- I have an inkling or a bit of a suspicion that they, too, know something about kids -- Village Day Care Centre, Ottawa; Chatham Maycourt Day Care Centre; Kingston Day Care Centre; St. Mary du Luce Day Care; Metro Social Planning Council; Mental Health-Ontario; Director, Metro Toronto Children’s Aid Society -- you would think they know something about it, they might have a smattering of knowledge about children -- directors for social services for Peel, Toronto, and other centres; representatives for various agencies in the alliance of provincial voluntary agencies involved in services towards children; Ontario Public School Men Teachers Federation.

Who in God’s name supports you -- who knows something about children? I don’t know anyone. I haven’t seen a person come to the minister’s defence, except the odd Tory back-bencher. I listened to them during the estimates of Community and Social Services, and the knowledge of most of them that spoke of what daycare centres were about was nil. If you don’t believe me, go back and check the Hansards.

Let’s look at what some of the people had to say. The Ontario Public School Men Teachers Federation -- I am just going to take brief extracts from some of the material that they submitted.

“Day care is not a babysitting service. It is a vital part of the responsibility of our society to establish an atmosphere in which the best possible environment for our children is established during their formative years. The school system attempts to provide such an environment for children of a school age, but these extremely important pre-school years merit even greater attention. We would urge you, therefore, to reconsider the introduction of any legislation that would lower the quality of day care in Ontario.

“Specifically, we cannot accept any reduction in the professional standards for adult personnel in daycare centres. Because of the importance of the programmes, only highly qualified staff should be employed.

“Also, we must oppose any alteration in the ratio of staff to children. Our experience as teachers indicates that frequent attention on a one-to-one basis with the children in our care is absolutely essential.”

And on a one-to-nine basis, how much individual attention do you give to a two-year-old or that group from age two to four? That letter was directed to the minister. I’m not sure what she’s responded to it but, as I say, in later days even more people are coming forward in opposition.

Early Childhood Education; they have submitted a brief to the minister as well. All of these briefs deal with two topics primarily; ratios and qualifications.

The Canadian Council on Social Development published in July, 1973, national guidelines for the development of daycare services for children. These guidelines were prepared through consultation with various knowledgeable individuals, community groups, social service agencies and professional organizations under the national welfare grants programme of Health and Welfare Canada. Recommendations concerning staff-child ratio states:

“The primary staff-child ratio should be calculated in such a way as to maintain:

“1. Adequate physical protection and well-being of all the children.

“2. The probability of strong attachments developing between individual children and staff members.

“3. The possibility of achieving specific programme requirement.

“While these ratios will differ from facility to facility depending on the combination of factors mentioned above, the committee recommends the following ratios as minimum guidelines: For infants, a ratio of one primary staff person to every four children; for toddlers, approximately 15 months to 30 months, a ratio of one primary staff person to every five children; for children 2⅓ years to 4, nine.”

And what do they say on the second point?

“Qualifications of staff. The staff in the day care centre is the most significant factor in determining the quality of a child’s experience there. In a study by Bloom it was shown that 50 per cent of all the factors that determine intellectual functioning are formulated by age four, and that we would expect the variations in the environment to have relatively little effect on the IQ after age eight; but we would expect the greatest effect likely to take place between the ages of one to five.”

The standards which we have had go out the window as the minister gropes desperately to try and provide 3,500 possible new placements; you know, with no infusion of real money.

The Community Day Care Correlation in Metro Toronto talks about a study on ratios and also presents a study which was done in New York which makes a comparison of quality-type ratios and those for expediency’s sake to try and find babysitting institutions.

“A recent study conducted by the Day Care Council of New York City on graduates of daycare programmes is instructive. Sixty-six graduates from licensed programmes were compared to graduates from unlicensed programmes. Licensed programmes had professionally-trained staff working with children in the ratio of one to three for three-year-olds, and one to seven for five-year-olds. Unlicensed programmes were characterized by teachers without formal training and with ratios approaching one to 15.”

The characteristics of the unlicensed groups closely corresponded to the conditions which the government’s proposals would create for daycare programmes in Ontario. And the result:

“Children from the licensed programmes were observed to have increased attention span in school, demonstrated a higher participation rate in class, were at a far more advanced reading level for their grade, weighed more in their first grade. Overall, the children from licensed programmes were apparently better prepared for the social demands of school; that is working in a group with other children and responding to the expectation of that environment.”

Also, there’s an interesting one submitted to me by the Association of Early Childhood Education, London, Ontario. I’m only going to read the first sentence. It’s rather intriguing in view of the fact that I spent about 2½ years on a select committee with this fellow. It says: “In considering the meeting of Friday last, I thought that you were definitely not communicating with Gordon Walker.”

That would be easy to understand, Dick, would it not?

Hon. D. R. Timbrell (Minister without Portfolio): Yes.

Mr. Martel: “It appears that the definite block of understanding lies in his and other people’s ignorance as to what a trained person does in comparison to an untrained person.”

I think that speaks loads for Gordon.

Then there are the myths the minister talks about. In a letter to me, the Social Planning Council of Ottawa was a little upset by some of the minister’s statements. She has a faculty for making statements. Too bad she wouldn’t take time later on to explain them.

“We take great exception to the allegation on page 13 that the small child-staff ratios are a major piece of social service folklore.”

Maybe the minister will dispel my fears tonight and she will present or table the report on which she made her decisions, because I think the folklore at the present time rests with the minister totally.

I want, and I intend to pursue it, some answers to some substantial questions that have to be responded to. Before I raise those questions, I want to just present the Ontario Welfare Council Action Committee on Daycare, just briefly, on a couple of comments they made.

“While we support the goals outlined in the June, 1974” -- you see I’m being fair to you -- “daycare service for children statement to the Legislature by the Provincial Secretary for Social Development to make supervised day care more adequately available throughout the province ... ” Commendable. “To ensure the maintenance of quality care ... ” Great. “To provide Ontario’s parents with greater choice regarding the type of daycare ... ” No one argues with that. No one argues; commendable.

I hope the minister never gets involved in reading another diatribe like that was. Whoever prepared that for her had to be -- I think unstable might be the kindest way of saying it. That was a statement like I’ve never heard in this Legislature in seven years. What was said in that diatribe could have been said in two pages and it ran on for hours.

But the real criticism comes down to how you intend to implement those wonderful recommendations. Let’s see what they say:

“The addition of $15 million to the 1974-1975 provincial daycare budget and the proposed one to two per cent rate of growth in this budget over the coming year will not be sufficient to ensure an adequate rate of growth in supervised quality daycare programmes in Ontario. A number of the specific economy-oriented changes in licensing criteria for Ontario daycare centres discussed in this statement will, if implemented, seriously lower the quality of day care received by children throughout the province. Daycare choice for parents can only become real when various types of quality daycare programmes are available at reasonable cost at the community level.”

I want to just mention the folklore again, because I want to come back to that folklore bit. As I said, I think it’s the minister, and I want answers to specific questions.

Who made up the committee? Whose recommendations were accepted by the minister and ultimately the government?

I don’t blame this minister entirely, because all of this has to have cabinet approval. If the ministry has got to be blamed I don’t think it is ultimately one minister that bears the responsibility. They might have done that to Fred Cass a number of years ago when they put the sad news to old Freddy. But the government, which is the entire cabinet, agreed with the minister and they ultimately must share the responsibility.

I want to know who is on that committee. I want to know their background. I want to know what their experience is.

I’ve heard rumours that Bob Sirman was on that group. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I can recall spending a delightful evening with him. I think my friend from Nipissing was with me on that evening when we spent an enjoyable evening at the Sutton Place with Bob Sirman a couple of years ago. He was then an expert, I believe, on culture, was it not?

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Culture, yes.

Mr. Martel: Yes, culture. He was an expert in those days, on culture. I don’t know if he has now become an expert in the field of day care. If he is not on the committee I apologize. I’m told he was, and it is sometimes called the Sirman report.

He confused me that night. I checked with one of the Conservative members who served on the committee with me, and he confused him too. If you would ask my two friends from the Liberal Party who were on that committee with us, they were confused as well. Maybe that’s why, if he was on it, we have such a confusing situation tonight. If I’m maligning him unjustly, I will apologize.

I want the backgrounds of the various people who served on that little committee. I want to know what they based their decision on also. Everything I’ve looked at, whether it be teachers who are heavily involved in children, whether it be coalitions for day care, whether it be social planning councils or whether it be the federal agencies; everyone disagrees with the position taken by the ministry. I want to know what they based that decision on.

By the way, I did have someone go through that pile of material which was presented back in June, and they searched desperately to see on what the minister based her decisions.

That’s been kept back. Obviously the reason it has been kept back is that the people, even those in the Ministry of Community and Social Services responsible for day care, were not involved. Miss Stapleford was left out in left field by herself. She is only the director for daycare services in the province. One certainly wouldn’t involve her! I mean the last person you’d go to is the director of day care for the province. It is actually incredible. Why won’t the minister release the report to us?

I understand, and it is just rumour, that the minister, in fact, is getting some advice, and following that advice, on the Montessori system. I must confess I know little about it.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): It’s not bad.

Mr. Martel: It’s not bad if the staff, I’m told, is well qualified.

Mr. Lewis: That’s true.

Mr. Martel: And if the children are well prepared for the system. That’s what I’m told by the experts in the field. I don’t profess to be an expert.

These questions hopefully the minister will answer. As a critic for Community and Social Services I’ve always found this an intriguing field. I think if there is one ministry that should, in fact, place first in priority in the province it should be Community and Social Services, because that’s where we would see our moneys having the greatest effect in the province.

We would see the most benefits in the most tangible fashion possible. Yet every Tory shies away from that ministry like it had the plague, because each Tory knows that when they go before Treasury board they are going to get shot down. Tom Eberlee didn’t leave the province for nothing.

Mr. Lewis: He left it with nothing.

Mr. Martel: He got frustrated trying to get moneys for the groups that need it most.

I want to come back to something I mentioned earlier. In a society where there are tremendous pressures, many parents must both work -- not because they both want to but just to survive. We must increase the funding so they can be assured their children are looked after properly -- not just in a babysitting situation but in an educational and informative way.

If this ministry is going to serve a function -- I am talking about some of the stuff you outlined in your opening remarks -- why don’t you get involved? Why don’t you try and get involved in trying to devise a system that deals with the total need of a family? I am so fed up watching families being destroyed because of the bureaucracy and the red tape as we run them from pillar to post.

As I said earlier, if you have got a family on welfare, you usually have got six or seven problems, and in this province we deal with the six or seven problems in isolation. We never put it together to deal with it as though it were a family. You people have so successfully cut it up that you save no one.

I have been asking the Ministry of Community and Social Services in the three years I have been critic to develop a system for the total delivery of services to the family as a family unit -- not in isolation, not running the children down to the Children’s Aid Society and off to the courts; with the father looking for some assistance to find a new job or to be retrained; and when OHIP runs out and they run to the health department -- it just goes on and on and on. If you wanted to provide one function out of that ministry it would be to co-ordinate the delivery of services to the most needy groups in this province; and we can’t get that either.

You might be serving a useful function if you can get Rene Brunelle to introduce a nutrition programme. It’s indicated that the cost in the United States for children born where malnutrition was a problem is $3 billion a year for special education, for special treatment in homes, in clinics, in institutions. If one takes that Canada has a tenth of the population of the United States and we have roughly the same number of people in the poverty line proportionately, we are talking about $300 million a year in Canada. You might do something about that to ensure that poverty-stricken women during pregnancy eat adequately so that the children have a chance of being born normal. This is if you want to do something useful; because obviously Community and Social Services aren’t too interested.

Let me just finish off, Mr. Chairman, just to substantiate that final statement -- on the brief prepared by the Community Daycare Coalition of Metro Toronto dealing particularly with that:

“We would advise the taxpayers of Ontario to think carefully about what the government has promised to save money.

“Young children with special needs who receive inferior quality service in their critical early years of development can become a more substantial expense for taxpayers in their later years, either through expensive remedial educational programmes, mental health care programmes or through a variety of other child adjustment and health services.

“For example, the cost to the taxpayers of placing a troubled child in a residential mental health care centre can vary up to $21,000 a year in a group home, and to over $40,000 a year per child in an institutional setting.”

If this government doesn’t wake up some day to the need to move in a direction which is preventive in nature, we’ll never deliver the systems that are necessary and we’ll bankrupt the province.

Mr. Chairman: Would the hon. minister like to reply to any remarks?

Mr. Lewis: You can reply now.

Mr. Chairman: Not now?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: When they’re finished.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Nipissing.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Generally the minister replies to the two leadoff speeches and then we go on from there.

Mr. Chairman: She doesn’t care to. If you want the floor, why you’ve got it.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Are we not going to get any replies to all these accusations?

Mr. R. S. Smith: We’re going to have the most silent minister in the history of the Legislature!

Mr. Shulman: How can we have a debate if she won’t make a reply now? If she waits till the end there can be no debate.

Mr. R. S. Smith: With this kind of debate we might as well all go home.

Mr. G. Nixon (Dovercourt): Well you might get through the estimates.

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. member for Nipissing want the floor at this time --

Mr. Martel: She’s supposed to be replying. That’s what the estimates are about.

Mr. Chairman: Because the hon. member for Scarborough West wants it if he doesn’t.

Mr. Shulman: That is a complete abdication.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I will reply.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I have some specific questions to ask the minister. Is she prepared to reply now?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I have the questions here. I will reply to them after.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Oh, we may not have the time.

Mrs. Campbell: What happens if we run out of time?

Mr. R. S. Smith: What happens if we run out of time? Do we not get replies?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I will see that you get your answers.

Mr. Lewis: You’ll probably write the answers.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I have some comments to make in regard to this --

Mr. Lewis: I wouldn’t settle for that. It’s ridiculous.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Well what can I do? I’m not a dentist, I can’t pull it out of her. Well, it’s her prerogative. If the minister chooses not to reply, I suppose it’s --

Mr. Lewis: No, it’s not the minister’s prerogative to destroy debate in the House. She has heard two leadoff speakers.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I know, but under the rules -- well, that’s fine.

Mr. Chairman: Will the hon. member for Nipissing go ahead with his comments at this time please.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I’m prepared to go ahead, regardless of whether the minister wants to reply or not. I have some specific questions --

Mr. Martel: Her silence is an indication.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I have some specific questions that I want to ask about the function of this ministry, where they’re going and what they’re doing in some specific areas.

If you look at the total of the funds for which there is overall responsibility in this ministry, it comes to $5.5 billion, which is 70 per cent of the total provincial budget. I’m sure that when we look at the people who are involved within this policy development field, there is no way that these people are able to co-ordinate the expenditures of $5.5 billion, let alone co-ordinate the policies under which these expenditures are made.

As I see it, in the past 18 months the ministry has dealt with perhaps three areas-- maybe four at the most -- one being day care, which has been adequately covered by the previous two speakers. They’ve dabbled in the whole area of social planning.

I see in the estimates this year that there is an amount of $444,000 for the development of social development councils. I presume that these are to be developed along the same lines as the health councils that are to be set up across the province -- the minister shakes her head to indicate that’s not right.

Well, I would think that’s a new programme and that she would have explained it in her opening remarks, because nobody has ever heard of it before. I’ve heard of it before because one person from Community and Social Services has come and interviewed me as to my ideas on what a social development council should be. But there has never been a public statement from you or any other minister under your aegis in regard to what social development councils are to be.

I think it’s about time that you told us what you’re doing, and perhaps told the other ministries as well what you’re doing.

I have an idea of what social development councils should be. I think they should be on a local level where the local people involved in social development are allowed to get together and set the priority needs in that area, whether they be elderly, middle-aged or young; and I would include in that the needs of the area insofar as daycare and old-age centres are concerned. So it has to cover the whole broad area of social development, as well as the health services that are being provided to those people.

So I think that with regard to social development councils and health councils it’s going to be very difficult to draw a line as to who has responsibility for what. Perhaps the minister could explain to us tonight exactly what she means by that, because I cannot see us voting that type of money for a programme we have never even heard of, and nobody else in the province has heard of.

There are a couple of other areas I want to discuss. One area where I suppose there was work for the Social Development policy field in the past year was the area of the GAINS programme, because it did cover more than one ministry; although as it turned out there is one ministry that is not included in your area that is carrying a major part of the GAINS programme and that is the part that is to do with the elderly. It has nothing to do with any of the ministries that is covered by your area as far as I can see.

Then, of course, there was the drug programme which was referred to earlier by the member for Sudbury East. Some of the things that have been left out of the development of that programme have been very difficult to understand.

After a month’s operation the ministry has become very intransigent in its approach to any change. There will be no change at all, even though there are some very serious omissions and errors in that programme, until January when they come out with a new formula, which will then be gospel for the next six months and from which there will be no variation whatsoever again.

This I have dealt with on a number of occasions with people within that ministry responsible. But there are two basic things in that programme that must be changed between now and January. The first is the fact that, come February, for all the prescriptions that are being provided to the people under the different programmes, a written order from the doctor is going to have to be necessary.

This is, in my opinion, going to bring chaos into the whole procedure -- as if we haven’t got chaos there now. I think if you ask most of the practitioners, some of them on your own side, if they are going to be willing to write a prescription every 30 days for each of their patients who come under this programme, you are going to find they are going to revolt against that, when in fact there are simpler and easier means of doing it that have been carried on over the last 50 or 60 years.

What it does, in fact, is say to the pharmacists of this province: “We don’t trust you.” That is what your ministry is saying to them under that programme. “We want you to have a signed prescription before we make payment to you.”

You don’t say to the doctor: “We want you to have a signed statement from the patient that you provided those services before we will pay you.” But you are saying that in the case of the pharmacists.

To make that programme work, you have to have the trust of the pharmacists, and you are not going to have the trust of the pharmacists if you say to them right off the start: “We don’t trust you.” That is going to be their reaction with you and you are going to encourage a game with them in that programme, where they are going to try and beat you just as you are going to try and beat them.

Mr. Shulman: It costs them so much more because the people go to the doctors unnecessarily.

Mr. R. S. Smith: That’s right. Every time they have to go to get a prescription written out. I don’t think you expect the medical profession to write out a prescription without a fee, and that’s going to add additionally to the cost.

Mr. Shulman: Six dollars and seventy cents every time a prescription is written out is such a waste.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Yes. That’s right.

Mr. Shulman: More than the prescription is worth.

Mr. R. S. Smith: More than a prescription is worth.

So you have two things: First of all you have the additional costs from the medical profession, plus the fact that you are saying to the pharmacist that we don’t trust you. That is just what you are saying to him. He is not going to sit back and take that. If he does -- well, that is a profession which I belong to, but I would not have much use for them if they accept that proposition.

The other part is the fact that you have limited the amount of drugs that can be provided under any prescription to a 30-day supply. In most cases this may be good. It may be good in medicine and it may be good in law. But there are many cases where people are going to be on prescriptions for long periods of time, and it would be much less costly for the government if they provided a 90-day supply and marked in their formula those drugs to which they would allow a 90-day supply to be dispensed at once, with one dispensing fee. Don’t forget that every time they dispense it is costing you $2.10 or $2.15, plus the fact that you are going to have the doctor’s $6.70 bill coming in; so that is what it is costing.

There are two things in that plan that really have to be worked over or the whole thing is going to be chaotic come February when that part of the procedure is put into practice. It is not in practice now, but the ministry is intransigent on it. They say: “we are not changing and that is it.”

Mr. Shulman: They are now.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I know, but if they don’t change that it is going to be even worse.

There are a couple of other areas I’d like to cover with the ministry, one of which is a guaranteed annual income. I suppose this is the area that we should be looking at that, although I see no evidence that your policy field has had anything to do with guaranteed annual income whatsoever, except insofar as the input into the GAINS programme is concerned. Apparently that has been dropped to the Treasurer (Mr. White) because he is the only one we ever hear talk about negative income tax or --

Mr. Shulman: Cash in and cash out.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Cash in and cash out. Yes, but he also refers now and again to guaranteed annual income. He claims that the GAINS programme and the other rebate programme for the old aged and to low-income people are the beginnings of his type of guaranteed annual income.

It is really a hodge-podge of programmes that you put together. You come out with assistances to low income groups, but you can hardly call it anywhere near a guaranteed annual income. If we talk about that, we get back to whether or not the federal government is prepared to move in that direction and what the provincial input will be.

I believe this is the area where this policy development field should be looking for most of their activities. It is obvious that if we are going to have that type of programme, it has got to come at the federal level and it has to be worked in co-operation with the provinces. Each province should have its own programme which dovetails into the federal programme.

In other words, we have priorities set by the federal government, but each province should have some say in the way that the federal government distributes those funds throughout the country to provide a guaranteed annual income eventually. The federal government tried to do that with the FISP programme in 1970 and 1971, and it failed because of lack of input of this government at the Victoria conference where the FISP programme became the key to whether we repatriated the constitution or not.

It is very difficult to understand how a programme like that had so much to do with whether we repatriated the constitution or not, but that is what it came down to. The minister from Quebec at that time held that he would not agree to repatriation through the formula that was provided unless there was agreement that the provincial governments would be given the responsibilities in the social welfare expenditures that were made in their provinces by the federal government.

Our Premier, Mr. Chairman, attended that conference. It was just prior to a provincial election in this province and for political reasons only he was not going to ally himself with Quebec because that would have looked bad and might have cost him a few votes. So he said nothing and did nothing at that conference, just as he has done at most other federal-provincial conferences since then. Actually, English-speaking Canada has lost its leadership at those conferences because of our Premier.

But to get back to the guaranteed annual income, of which this is all part: The fact is, it is time that this government was developing a programme to put all these things together so that when the federal government is prepared to move -- and I believe it will be within the next four to five years -- the province is prepared to say what its priorities are, and to work with the federal government so that we have a programme that dovetails and so that we have a programme that has provincial input.

I don’t think the guaranteed annual income in Newfoundland should necessarily be the same as it is in Ontario. I’m not saying that in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of ratios -- and this has been the case as’ far as Family Allowance payments are concerned. It is different in different provinces. Of course, Ontario took the easiest way out and didn’t even consider providing low-income families with more money. They just provided everybody with the same and said to the federal government, “Get us more back in taxation in that way.” And that was in the interest of the government; but not of benefit for those who were going to receive it -- and particularly the low-income families. I feel that this ministry failed in its input into that programme.

There are a number of other areas that are more specific that I would like to cover, but perhaps if I did that we would never get any answers. So I think I will just wait for some answers on those questions; and I have some others if there are answers forthcoming.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: I guess we will have to alternate it. The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Shulman: Is there going to be no debate at all -- a series of speeches and no replies?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I just want to give everyone a chance to comment.

Mr. Lewis: If we ended up around 10 o’clock, you would have time to make replies. It is a peculiar way of doing things but --

Mrs. Campbell: It’s done all the time around here.

Mr. Lewis: No. Most ministers positively hurtle into the fray after the lead-offs.

Mrs. Campbell: Not if they are in trouble.

Mr. Lewis: The member for St. George led off, as I understand it. I even had a full written report on what you said, Margaret, just to show how carefully I like to keep track of your speeches; forgive the first name observation. And there was my colleague from Sudbury East. I gather they both said some pretty straightforward things.

I’ll tell you why I am on my feet, Mr. Chairman. I’m on my feet because I couldn’t possibly sort of survive if I didn’t say something to you about the whole daycare business. I couldn’t make it through the day if I didn’t have something to say.

I just want to say in passing that I don’t really want to deal with anything else. I think the ministry is completely irrelevant, totally and completely irrelevant. I see no purpose for it, no reason for it, except sheer perversity on the part of the government.

I understand you do some co-ordinating things. I’m sure you generate the occasional useful idea. I have not yet observed one, but I am sure that happens. But that can be done by a good, competent senior civil servant -- and you have many good, competent senior civil servants on your staff. It doesn’t take a complete budget.

It doesn’t take a complete ministry. As a matter of fact, I know a number of fairly bright undergraduates who could do the whole blessed job that the entire ministry is now doing, because the basic on-line decisions are being made by the ministries within the Social Development apparatus. While they appreciate the conceptual possibilities of sitting down and chewing things over at a table and trying to integrate social welfare, health and whatever else it is -- it impresses me not at all.

My colleague from Sudbury East chronicled some of the approaches of the minister and the ministry. I won’t enter that fray. I want to say some words about day care. I want to start with a small personal anecdote.

During the course of the Stormont by-election, as I tramped around with our candidate, I had occasion to spend one of the more fascinating hours I’ve spent in the last number of months visiting the Richelieu daycare centre in Cornwall. I really enjoyed that. It’s an absolutely splendid daycare centre. The setting is bright, fully equipped and very, very attractive. It is very, very attractive for any child who would wander through the door. It’s built on a variety of levels with enormous ingenuity, so that in most instances by using different levels the staff is on an eye-to-eye basis with the child rather than forever towering above the child. I thought that took a nice architectural touch and showed a certain sensitivity. It is, as I said, very well equipped. The staff struck me as entirely dedicated. They moved easily. They related easily. It was a pleasure.

We walked through one of the doors into the nursery area and there were three kids -- infants, I suppose, is the more appropriate term -- between six months and 18 months. Two of them were in cribs. One of them was in the arms of the staff member and all of them were crying simultaneously. All three of them were crying simultaneously. I looked at the staff member who was frazzled beyond belief.

I want to make it clear that I really liked the Richelieu daycare centre. If I was living in Cornwall with a municipal daycare nursery of that kind, I would send a child there without the slightest hesitation because I am sure it’s the best daycare setting for miles around.

I looked at that young staff member holding this frantically bawling infant in her arms, while the other two chorused their recognition in the cribs which, as you know, infants invariably do, and I thought to myself that the whole daycare proposals from the government are madness. Here’s a staff member with that kind of limited ratio, before you have inserted your new ratios, who couldn’t possibly cope. I have twin sisters. I have learned in life to handle two but I couldn’t rock three. I want you to know that. I defy you to show me a staff member who could.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): You can rock a lot more than that.

Mr. Lewis: You, I would like to rock in a different fashion, but I won’t allow myself to be diverted.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Have you got a brother?

Mr. Lewis: It never fails. You put the Chairman of the Management Board and the member for Oshawa together, and look what happens.

Mr. C. E. McIlveen (Oshawa): Just look at you.

Mr. Lewis: You smell authority, don’t you? You are starting to interject, hoping that they will make you a cabinet minister. That’s not the way to the top. All right, let me say to the minister, Mr. Chairman --

Mr. Martel: The Chairman of the Management Board wants to watch his job.

Mr. Lewis: -- that what I observed in that little setting was a child-care relationship incomplete, because the staffing was inadequate, but that staffing is even higher at all the age levels now than it will be when your regulations come in.

I must say, Mr. Chairman, it’s easy for me to talk about it and about the Richelieu daycare centre, standing snugly in the legislative club on a Monday evening. But the fact of the matter is that there were two infant kids who desperately needed adult attention and couldn’t have it, because no individual adult is capable of handling all the demands in that kind of setting simultaneously, and what you are going to do is dilute that relationship further.

May I say to the minister that I am no expert on it. I understand a little about child care. I have spent some years of my life involved in child care, but the thought that the ministry introduces this kind of thing is a type of sickness.

There are three things about child care. There are three things that are absolutely essential, that have to be dealt with. First is the enormous anxiety of the child. For an 18-month-old child, the separation anxiety is incalculable. That an 18-month-old child should be left crying for 10 minutes without an adult response is inevitably damaging to the child -- marginally perhaps, fractionally perhaps, compensated perhaps in all kinds of loving home environments; but it’s wrong. It should not happen.

Then there’s the tremendous anxiety of the parent. I don’t care for what reason a mother goes out to work -- by choice, by necessity, or whatever, I have yet to meet a mother who doesn’t feel a certain guilt about leaving the child in the care of some kind of daycare apparatus. It’s absolutely intrinsic to human functioning that that should be the case. The mother too will experience anxiety. You don’t raise the levels of anxiety by diluting the staff content. That’s just wrong.

The third thing, in addition to the anxiety of the child and the anxiety of the parent, is the possibilities that are inherent in a childcare relationship, in a childcare arrangement, for the proper development of the child. It’s a very exciting thing to see what can be done in appropriate childcare for kids who are six months, one year, two years, three years, four years of age. It’s a very exciting thing to witness. And when they have the appropriate kinds of support, when they have the appropriate kind of staffing, a great many important things can happen to their own growth and development.

All of that will not be possible in the kinds of ratios that you intend to introduce, because the essential truth about childcare is summed up on the one hand by relationship and on the other hand by communication. That’s what it’s all about. And the capacity to communicate and the capacity to relate depends on the numbers in considerable measure, as close to one to one as it is humanly possible for society to order.

But in the minister’s present circumstances, in the present circumstances of the ministry in terms of what you’re doing, you’re again diluting what is absolutely central to appropriate childcare.

Now, I don’t understand why. I think the regulations are destructive as hell. I can’t believe they’re being introduced; I don’t know what it is that grabs the government about doing this kind of thing in the childcare field.

There was all the talk about the private sector. Well maybe that’s true, I don’t know. I don’t know whether it had anything to do with increasing the profits of the private sector, although that is apparently one of the consequences of raising the ratio.

I do know that I got a letter from the head of Mini-Skools, I forget his name, but it was a fellow who is based in Georgia, or Alabama or wherever. He invited me to come and view the Mini-Skools because of the tremendous commitment they had to “the childcare industry.” Well, when a man writes me a letter as head of a childcare agency and talks about the childcare industry, I want to tell you I know everything I want to know about Mini-Skools. More than that, I know everything I have to know about Mini-Skools.

Mrs. Campbell: It is called: “Children the master”.

Mr. Lewis: Because when you talk about a childcare industry, it’s so berserk, it reveals so much about the nature of relationships and about the way in which they view their apparatus, that I don’t want to know any more about it. It sends chills up and down my spine anyway and I prefer not to watch it in operation. As much as the staff and others may feel that that’s really important, obviously it then becomes a profit-making agency, obviously that’s what it’s all about. You don’t talk about children in an industry unless you see industry as part of corporate profits.

I’ve not heard, you know in the whole apparatus of mental health, working with emotionally disturbed children, dealing with children generally, I have never heard the childcare industry phrase used in that fashion when talking about the needs and caring features of infants and pre-schoolers.

I mean, you have to have a certain twist of mind which is socially destructive in order to put it that way, let me assure you.

I think, unlike other people, that what really happened -- and I might as well say it in the Legislature -- what really happened -- is that daycare has always been at the bottom of the list for this government, always been at the bottom of the list. It’s never been taken very seriously. It’s always been seen as an appendage of women’s rights, and women’s rights have never been taken very seriously.

Until Margaret Birch and Margaret Scrivener and Margaret Campbell entered this Legislature, the place year after year was filled with male-jock, locker-room humour every time we talked about women. You don’t have to tell me, I sat here and listened. For nearly a decade I listened. Every time you came to the estimates, where women were involved, in any facet of government, that’s what we heard, that’s what we were subjected to.

Now it’s a little less explicit now, a little less overt; there’s a certain self-consciousness, there are women present. But that’s really what accounts for what has happened to day care in the history of this government in this province.

Nobody took it seriously because; (a) it was a social service; and (b) it involved women and therefore it was inconsequential. But then the women’s movement began to flex its muscles; then women’s rights forces began to gather and make an impact on the government and the government felt it had to respond.

So you peel off $15 million to create a few thousand more places, feeling that that might appease the antagonisms out there. And in the process you dilute the ratios so you can create a few more spaces, a few more thousand spaces, without any further investment of money.

I gather my colleague from Sudbury East said 16,000 more places, $15 million more; he wondered whether it was worth it -- and I wonder whether it is worth it too.

I laughed, as all of us laughed, when you elevated your great red herring in your remarks of June 4 about universal day care. How dare the government talk about universal day care as though it was some kind of reality lurching its way into the public domain of Ontario. You are going to have between 30,000 and 40,000 places in a province which needs 300,000 minimum.

How do you talk about universal day care? Merely to talk about it is to laugh. It was never a consequence. You don’t have to raise it as a red herring. You don’t have to terrify us by billion dollar extravaganzas.

We are nowhere near universal day care in Ontario. We are so far from it, it isn’t even worth discussing.

Mr. Martel: Only 12,000 get help now.

Mr. Lewis: The reality is, of course, that day care is impugned on every front; and these regulations have dealt a body blow to quality day care in Ontario.

I want to say to the minister, through the chairman, and I mean it not at all in a personal sense, that the minister has uttered on behalf of her government some dreadfully reactionary statements. I’ve seen reaction; I’ve lived with reaction in this place for 11 years. I’ve seen prepalaeolithic specimens over there out of the prehistoric period. I can bring my children here rather than to the dinosaur exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum -- and they’ll learn a lot more, let me tell you.

Mr. McIlveen: Sure will.

Mr. Lewis: But you have uttered some reactionary statements which boggle the mind.

I might say, I know the member for Peterborough is chuckling, because he identifies.

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): You are the one who is doing the chuckling, not John Turner.

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Like a broken record, same old sound.

Mr. Lewis: I must say that the whole Social Development secretariat, therefore, worries us. If your views are so reactionary on something like LIP or day care, then what are the views on other things that are essentially human and social and fundamental. I can’t believe it.

Do you recall the things you said about day care? You impugned the whole daycare movement within days of making your statement, because it was said it was the product of the early childhood education association.

Do you remember your statements trying to fob us off with the proposition that only this one traumatic, militant little group with an axe to grind was behind the daycare movement? Did you listen to the list of people and groups my colleague from Sudbury East read off?

The daycare movement has the support of every single, enlightened body dealing in child care in the Province of Ontario. You can’t pretend in some reactionary outburst that it is one little group manipulating the rest.

When we were in Scarborough, our home community -- the soul of progessivity -- you saw those women who gathered outside the doorstep in the new Town Centre, or wherever the meeting was taking place. You told them they were elitists because they were requiring certain kinds of child care. You know when you become an elitist and ask for day care? It’s when you’ve got 320,000 places for a 300,000 demand. That’s when you have elitism. You don’t have elitism when you’ve got 30,000 or 40,000 places for a 300,000 demand.

A charge of elitism is so nuts; why make it? It is a terribly reactionary view of the world. There are such desperate needs in these fields. To label it in that way is again to engage in the effort of isolating a group for the sake of focussing public resentment against them.

How many groups can you isolate in Ontario at the same time? You are doing very well as a government. You’ve got them all -- farmers, teachers, hospital workers, civil servants, daycare people. One day all of those groups will find something in common; and then all of you will have something in common as well -- you’ll be unemployed.

But until that time there is a great deal of damage being done, and it’s being done in the whole daycare apparatus.

What about this advisory committee? Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the advisory committee? We are sitting there in the estimates and Elie Martel is launched into flight in one of those magnificent speeches of his, which get better and better and better in this field, as you saw this evening, because there are few people --

Mr. Havrot: Like a broken record; same old sound.

Mr. Lewis: Your speeches consist of interjections and that exhausts you, a word at a time; the only walking monosyllable I know.

Mr. Havrot: See what all your speeches do here.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Why don’t you try it sometime?

Mr. Havrot: You are going to be looking for a job just like your father after the next election.

Mr. Lewis: My father found a very good job; I should be so lucky.

Mr. Chairman, you set up an advisory committee of your --

Mr. Havrot: All you do is talk.

Mr. Lawlor: We’ll turf you out from up where you are.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order please.

Mr. Lewis: I am glad we have engaged a part of you in this debate. I am not sure which part, but I appreciate your involvement.

Mr. Havrot: Yes, yes; you are a great debater.

Mr. Lawlor: His intelligent part is a silence act.

Mr. Havrot: I get a big kick out of you scholastics.

An hon. member: Shut up.

Mr. Chairman: Order please. The member for Scarborough West has the floor.

Mr. Havrot: As long as he doesn’t dirty it.

Mr. Martel: Is he for real, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman: Order please. Let the member for Scarborough West carry on.

Mr. Lewis: What has happened to the advisory committee? When Elie Martel was debating, as was the member for St. George, with the Minister of Community and Social Services in the estimates dealing with matters of day care, the minister suddenly looked up his sleeve and pulled out an advisory committee in order to take off the heat, and he quickly named the people involved. I was kind of sorry that they all agreed to participate, frankly, because there is a certain co-option involved, although you merely agree to participate. But all right, they did, and I presume in good faith.

So what happened to that committee? You have emasculated that committee. That committee has not yet discussed and reported on the more controversial parts of your daycare regulations. According to Anne Barstow, in a quote I got from the Globe and Mail in the past 24 hours, you have not yet had a serious and lengthy discussion with that committee about the controversial aspects of your daycare regulations.

Now the question is, when is the committee going to pass judgement on the regulations, and what happens if the committee says the regulations are unacceptable? I know none of that is going to happen. What you are going to do is Gazette the regulations and then allow the committee to monitor what the government has established, monitor a fait accompli.

I hope they all resign on you. I have no guarantee that they will and I suspect they won’t, but it would serve the government right, because you are playing the committee for a patsy role, and self-respecting people shouldn’t put themselves in that role. That’s right, because these people know what quality day care is about, and you are destroying quality day care in Ontario.

You talk to me about quality not relating to numbers, in answer to a question a little earlier this week. Quality and numbers are directly related. To have good quality you have to have high staff ratios. That is what good quality is all about. I don’t like this lending of credence to perverse or bad social policy, but it has happened. You will deal with the advisory committee. So be it.

I don’t want to take any more time, but I guess what bothers me about it -- I guess what bothers all members of the opposition about it, and I presume some members of the government -- is the way in which you invite so much social dislocation and social deprivation by building inequality in at the earliest ages. That is what is so crazy about it.

We spend all our time as a society of adult legislators bemoaning the fact that kids, when they reach the age of adolescence, or immediate pre-adolescence, are in terrible trouble, and the world is filled with chronicles of the Derek Halanens, who at the age of 15, one never knows whether they threw themselves out of a window and committed suicide or whether they fell accidentally from great heights. All that one knows is that for the previous two years they passed through six institutions in the Province of Ontario with no one keeping track of what was happening to them. And when you visit the Children’s Aid Society anywhere across the province today what they talk to you about is the opting out, unmanageable, profoundly disturbed adolescent. Where does it all begin? We all know where it all begins. The greatest single contribution one could make to diminishing the consequences in adolescence is to build a powerful daycare apparatus at the earliest ages. That means staffing, that means qualifications and that means quality. Nothing we can say to you seems to get that point through, because the ministry is obsessed with numbers and with dollars and with buildings, but never with human realities. I just can’t believe it.

My mind forever rivets back to the scene of three infants crying simultaneously in a nursery, with all that that means, without the adequate staffing arrangements that should be, and knowing that your regulations will make it even worse. Well, we object to it. We repudiate it on every ground. Whether you recognize it or not, you are destroying the apparatus of day care in Ontario.

I don t care what sophistry all your advisers and supporters engage in, the human reality for the kids involved is a serious diminution in the quality of relationship they’re receiving. You don’t just play around with children that way. You just don’t toy with them that way.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: I’m putting it to you as strongly as that, because we spend all our time in Ontario picking up the pieces. We deal with the wreckage, estimate after estimate. We’re going to be dealing with the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller). You watch how long we spend on mental health dealing with the wreckage of the adolescent community.

We have a tremendous opportunity to do something about kids and what do we do? We take several steps back. I can plead with you to reverse it. I know it won’t happen, but I do know that the daycare movement is continuing to fight. They’re not going to stop. They’re going to be around for the next several months, right down to the election. They’re very, very serious about their cause. They’ll go on as long as they have to and they understand, because they’re on the front line every day. I want to know who in the front line gave you the recommendations to do the destructive things which your ministry is now engaged in doing.

Mr. Havrot: Shakespeare awaits you.

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

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As this is the policy secretariat dealing with social development, I wanted to bring a few problems to the attention of the minister and hope that she may develop policy that would relieve the anxieties and the difficulties of one or two segments of our society.

At the outset, I would like to state that, having sat on the select committee with the hon. minister, I am aware of her concern and her dedication. However, I also know that she is being hamstrung by her cabinet colleagues when it comes to fighting for issues that are of social concern. I hope that the ministry does take a more firm stand in dealing with the Treasury Board and does come down with sufficient funds to alleviate a lot of the problems that we’ve mentioned here this evening.

The first problem that I want to bring to the minister’s attention, Mr. Chairman, is that of housing. Housing is an essential to the betterment of our society. I think that the provision of housing, whether it be the actual construction of the facility or the providing of financial assistance to the individual, is of paramount concern. I’m going to refer specifically to the senior citizens. You have, Mr. Chairman, through the policies of this ministry, created two classes of senior citizen. You have the one senior citizen who, by means of either fortune or some other way, is able to obtain geared-to-income housing in one of the Ontario Housing projects. Then you have the other senior citizen who is not that fortunate or who, because of restrictions in a community as a result of which sufficient senior citizen accommodation has not been constructed, has to go into the commercial market to obtain senior citizen’s housing.

The individual who does live in geared-to-income housing, I understand, is subsidized to the extent of approximately $75 a month. That individual now, as a result of that, has a $75 a month greater income than does the individual who lives and rents in the commercial market. The answer to the problem, Mr. Chairman, is that this ministry should study a rent supplement programme and seriously consider a rent supplement programme, so that all senior citizens, regardless as to whether they live in senior citizen geared-to-income housing or live in the commercial market, are on the same base, that is, that both have exactly the same amount of income on which to survive.

I am telling you, Mr. Chairman, that there should be a supplement provided to senior citizens who have the old age security and the guaranteed income supplement plus the GAINS programme. Both senior citizens, one living in geared-to-income housing and the other living in the commercial market, should be on the same basis. There should be no differential between income for the two. One gets the subsidy as a result of living in geared-to-income housing. The other is deprived of that subsidy and, as a result, has to use, quite often, the funds that he may have for general living to pay for the rent charges in the commercial market.

Mr. Chairman, the ministry should study a vastly expanded supplement programme for senior citizens who cannot obtain geared-to-income housing in the government-subsidized programme. I know, Mr. Chairman, you may say that is the responsibility of the Ministry of Housing, as we are dealing with social development. Social development policy has to be developed in this ministry to overcome that type of difficulty. All senior citizens, if they are receiving only old age security and supplement and the GAINS programme and have no other income, should be treated alike.

Another problem about which I would like the ministry to look into the development of policy, is when it comes to those who have retired from employment -- be it in the civil service, municipal, provincial and/or any other type of civil service -- especially the retiree who has retired several years ago and is living on a fixed retirement income. There is no way where that senior citizen or that retiree is able to bargain for a better retirement income.

When you look at the auto worker and see what’ the Ford, Chrysler and General Motors auto workers unions have done for their retirees, I think they have set an idea that should, and in my estimation will, expand to all other segments of society. When Ford, Chrysler or General Motors workers bargain for wage increases they bargain at the same time for pension increases for their retirees, regardless of how long ago they did retire.

The civil servant, the policemen, the firemen and even probably the provincial civil servants, plus many in other categories, not civil servants, have no voice, no one speaking for them when it comes to bettering their pension benefits. I think the ministry has to look at some type of policy where this type of problem can be overcome.

As far as municipal civil servants are concerned I understand amendments to the Municipal Act, amendments to the OMERS Act and amendments to the Fire and Police Act could enable municipal civil servants some bargaining rights so that they could have their union fight for better pension benefits and increased pension benefits as inflation continues and eats away at their pensions. In some instances, if the individual has been pensioned 10 or 15 years ago and still manages to survive, he is practically living at a poverty level.

Mr. Chairman, I wanted also to bring to the attention of the ministry the problems that are associated with the drug programme. Other members have made mention of this earlier in the comments. I wanted to bring to the attention of the ministry a press release concerning the Ontario drug benefit programme, received in my office on Oct. 11. Under “No Substitute Prescription” the following is mentioned:

“If a physician determines that one drug in the formulary listing should be prescribed, rather than the less expensive one, he may identify his choice by writing ‘no substitution’ on the prescription. In this case, the drug benefit will pay the higher-priced drug, rather than the interchangeable lower-priced item.”

That is all well and good, but if the item is not on the formulary, then the individual is in extreme difficulty. The drug benefit programme also allows the physician, if he feels that his patient’s needs cannot be met by prescribing a drug on the formulary, to make a special request to the minister for an exemption to permit payment for the drug he wishes to prescribe.

I don’t see any need for the writing of the letter on the part of the doctor. Surely in municipalities where you have Ministry of Community and Social Services officers, it should be sufficient for one of the employees of the ministry to go and visit the patient, get a statement or have that patient sign some statement and allow that individual to get the drug immediately, instead of waiting for it to go through the whole bureaucracy here in Toronto, and then eventually funnel back to the individual. By the time the individual would get approval for the use of the drug not on the formulary, that individual may not survive.

I bring this to the attention of the ministry because of a problem that I had with an individual in my riding. It hurts me very much when I hear that a man who had two heart attacks and two strokes has to beg to get some of his prescription drugs paid for. I have approached the local office of the Community and Social Services, and they say, “Well, this is a government programme. We can’t do anything.”

That person has to have the doctor write to Toronto and get the approval before the drugs prescribed by the doctor are going to be paid for. I don’t think the writing of the letter is necessary in municipalities where you have an office of Community and Social Services or even an office of the Ministry of Health. Let’s get rid of some of the red tape. Let’s make it easier for those whose days, quite often, are very numbered to get the prescription drugs that are necessary, even if they are not in the formulary. If the doctor prescribes it, surely we should take the doctor’s word for it and accept it and provide the drugs needed by the individual.

The other item that I want to make mention of is concerning the GAINS programme. In a married couple where the one individual is on a disability programme and, in some instance, completely disabled, where the wife cannot go out to employment but has to spend 24 hours of the day taking care of her mate, there is no reason why both shouldn’t qualify for the full GAINS programme. Why shouldn’t the wife be getting the same amount as her husband is getting, that is, the $216.67 a month, or a little more if it has been increased as of Oct. 1?

They should both be getting the complete GAINS programme. You should not discriminate against the wife. She would just love to be able to go into the work force and try to supplement income, but she can’t. She has to take care of her husband 24 hours a day. This is the same individual I make mention of who is having difficulty getting drugs. It is heartless, it is cruel, it is inane on the part of government to put a person in that type of a circumstance. There can be and there should be a resolution to a problem like that, and it is very simple if you give authority to the Ministry of Community and Social Services -- that is, to the individuals in the various communities to use their own discretion in a situation such as I make mention of.

I would be remiss if I didn’t likewise bring to the attention of the ministry that back in my own community we are also very, very much concerned about the daycare programme. We are concerned from the fact that the ratios are going to be increased and we are also concerned about the qualifications of the individuals involved in providing the services.

As a former athletic coach, I know that the quality depends on numbers. As one who has coached an exotic type of sport, one that requires a tremendous amount of skill on the part of an individual -- it isn’t a team sport -- I know that the individuals partaking in the sport get better coaching when you have fewer numbers. If you are going to increase the number of individuals that the person providing the daycare services has to take care of, you are not going to provide quality day care.

I will try to complete my remarks within the next five minutes, hoping that I can bring to the attention of the ministry the concern expressed by individuals and organizations back in my own community. Immediately after the ministry made the statement on June 4, the president of the Association for Early Childhood Education in Windsor and Essex counties sent the following telegram to the ministry: “Strongly opposed to Margaret Birch’s statement on day care. Don’t jeopardize the well-being of Ontario’s children.” That was signed by Donna Morrow.

That’s just one of a few that I am going to read. I am not going to read all that have been received because others have put the case strongly enough. Here is one from Pre-School Teachers, City of Windsor Day Nursery:

WE WISH TO MAKE KNOWN TO YOU OUR CONCERN REGARDING THAT PORTION OF YOUR STATEMENT TO THE LEGISLATURE THAT DEALS WITH CHILD-TO-STAFF RATIO. SHOULD REVISED REGULATIONS PERMIT A 12-TO-1 RATIO FOR CHILDREN TWO TO FOUR YEARS OF AGE IN A DAYCARE PROGRAMME AND SHOULD DAYCARE HOURS EXTEND FROM 7:30 A.M. TO 5:30 P.M., IT IS CONCEIVABLE THAT A CENTRE COULD HAVE 36 CHILDREN IN ATTENDANCE WITH ONLY ONE TEACHER FOR TWO HOURS OF EVERY DAY. FOR EXAMPLE, ONE STAFF 7:30 TO 3:30; ONE STAFF 8:30 TO 4:30; ONE STAFF 9:30 TO 5:30. THAT PERIOD FROM 7:30 TO 8:30 AND FROM 4:30 TO 5:30 COULD HAVE 36 CHILDREN WITH ONLY ONE STAFF MEMBER. AT LUNCHTIME, IF STAFF STAGGERED, HALF-HOUR LUNCH PERIODS COULD RESULT IN ONE STAFF MEMBER FOR EVERY 18 CHILDREN FOR 1½ HOURS. PLEASE RECONSIDER.

Mr. Chairman, Maureen Mooney, back in my own community, likewise made a very emotional appeal for reconsideration of child/teacher ratios as well as raising qualification standards rather than lowering them. The City of Sarnia and District Association for Early Childhood Education voted unanimously to oppose the minister’s recommendations. This letter, Mr. Chairman, I would like to read into the record because I think it sums up the whole approach to daycare centres that the ministry has taken and probably does give some of the answers. This is from Mrs. David S. Cassidy to the Windsor Star back in September of this year. It is headlined “Birch Report Fails to Recognize Needs”:

“Sir:

“I want to express my deep concern and dissatisfaction with the policy statement by Mrs. Margaret Birch regarding changes in daycare as reported in the Windsor Star Aug, 31.

“Most of us, I believe, are aware of the great strides that have been made in recent times in the area of preschool education and day-nursery care. These advances are the result of in-depth research into the emotional, social and intellectual growth and development of children from birth to five years.

“The implementation of her recommendations, I submit, would most certainly destroy the tremendous efforts of the many who have dedicated themselves to early childhood education and would thrust the concept of day nurseries back into the stone age.

“It is eminently clear that much of what Mrs. Birch suggests runs counter to what is in the best interests of the child. Unhappily, as is all too often the case in education, persons in a position of policy formulation are out of tune with the realities of modern educational process. Hence, the children suffer a loss which may never be restored and the community ultimately loses its greatest natural resource.

“The major thrust of our proposals focus on two key areas: one, larger child/staff ratio; two, easing of staff qualifications. It requires little pedagogical skill to recognize the immediate negative effect on the child when the pupil/teacher ratio is increased in the very critical stage in the development of a child when it is vital to have an adult enter into a loving relationship with him. Mrs. Birch would reduce the concept of daycare to nothing more than a second-rate custodial service.

“The recommendations to ease staff qualifications ought to be particularly distressing to parents. The very suggestions reflect a failure to recognize that even tiny tots are unique individuals with concerns that must be dealt with and resolved in a skilful way. In addition, it is at the pre-school level where the early identification of learning disabilities must be made. The need for well-trained and highly specialized persons is quite evident.

“It is my view that Mrs. Birch has made some very serious judgemental errors in her proposals. It is my hope that the Minister of Community and Social Services, Mr. Brunelle, seriously consider the implementations of her proposals. It is my prayer that carefully and uniquely formulated preschool programmes consistent with good mental health practices may be soon accessible to all children in the Province of Ontario.”

Mr. Chairman, as I have made mention, I intended to complete at quarter after, I am one minute overtime. I have other comments that I could make, but for the sake of expediency I will complete my remarks here. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Any other questions or comments? The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, I think I would be remiss if I didn’t ask the minister for a few moments to deal with the problem of native people in the Province of Ontario. I am not only speaking of the social problems that she was made aware of when she took her social development policy field to the northwestern part of the province. According to the news reports, she said to the media that she was appalled that conditions had degenerated to the state in which she found them and she was coming back to Toronto to come up with solutions and answers to the problems that she found.

Through the Indian community branch of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, she has had many of the economic problems brought to her attention, which can only be resolved in terms of this government’s action through that Indian community secretariat. As I said when I stood up, I think I would be remiss if I didn’t provide the minister with an opportunity to say at least a few brief words about how she sees the various ministries within her policy field approaching some of those problems and assisting our first citizens to help themselves.

I would like at least a brief comment from the minister on those two very important problems.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Victoria-Haliburton.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister to comment upon the situation with regard to the social and family services in day care because the staff, which are very dedicated in my opinion, have been below complement. There is need for more. I might suggest to the minister where she might pick up some people that I think could serve in this field. They would have to be out of the regional offices of education, which I believe could well devote some staff to place attention in this field.

It seems to me that with an expanding need, there is need for additional people in the field to get into the business of training staff on the right direction. There also is a possibility that we should have one or two community colleges doing more courses for training of daycare teachers.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. minister.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Well, Mr. Chairman, I have a great number of questions here to answer, and if I may I will begin with the first one Mrs. Campbell directed to me, when she questioned the Status of Women conference that was held this weekend, and made some comments about the questionnaire and who in the secretariat had devised that particular questionnaire. I would like to assure the member that the whole conference was developed by the Status of Women Council. The secretariat had no connection with it other than providing the provision for financing it. It was entirely in the hands of the Status of Women Council.

There have been a lot of questions this evening directed to the daycare proposal. So if I may I shall take the time that I have to try to answer some of those questions. The daycare proposal grew out of a concern that this government has for the thousands of children who are not receiving day care, or who are receiving care, in many instances, in questionable homes. Many parents are denied the right to go out and earn a living because there is no daycare facility available in their community.

It’s all well and good to speak about the ideal -- I think we would all like to have that ideal -- but it isn’t practical. It isn’t reasonable to expect that we can provide that. So, after a very careful study this proposal was announced in June, with the hope that we would be able to provide more day care across this province.

We’ve had a very positive response. We’ve had over 200 applications.

Mr. Lewis: That’s for your capital funding.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: And for the operation of the daycare centres.

Mr. Lewis: You’ve had no positive response to your ratios.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Oh, yes. We have had many.

Mr. Lewis: Well, show us.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. Allow the hon. minister to continue.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Now, I recognize that there are two areas of concern, and I would like to, if I can, just speak to the ratios and to speak to the qualifications.

Unfortunately, I think there’s been a great deal of misleading information about the whole proposal. It’s permissive. We have not said to any daycare centre that it must adhere to these minimum ratios. We have not said that it cannot have a kitchen. We have made it possible for those daycare centres who perhaps feel that a kitchen is not necessary to provide catering services. Surely in this day and age there are excellent catering services. We have maintained that the nutritional standards must be observed.

In the area of ratios, as I’ve pointed out, they are minimum. But we all know the complexities of ratios. We know the abuse that many have given the ratios. We know that in many instances daycare-centre operators have used the cook, the cleaner and the secretary as part of the ratio.

Mr. Martel: Imagine what they’ll use now.

Mr. Lewis: You’ve made it even worse, then.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I don’t believe that that should be permitted. I think the ratio should be determined from the staff looking after those children.

Again, as we all know, most daycare centres have an intermix of age groups within the centre. So, based on the minimum regulations, that would have to be taken into consideration. Also the hours that the centre was in operation would have a bearing on the ratios. The intermix of perhaps handicapped children -- and I might add, the hon. member for Sudbury East mentioned the concerns of those in the mentally retarded association and the crippled children about the new ratios. The new ratios do not affect those children at all. There’s no changes in the ratios for handicapped children. But in determining the ratios for a particular daycare centre with some of the problems that I’ve outlined, it almost would appear that they would have to be assessed on an individual basis to come up with the proper ratios.

Mr. Lewis: Then why set out your regulations?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Because we have to have a minimum base.

Mr. Lewis: Your minimum becomes the prevailing factor.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: But again it’s permissive. We have not said that they must adhere to these regulations.

Mr. Martel: It is a red herring.

Mr. Lewis: But everybody will. The minimum regulations that come from government, permissive or not, become the regulations.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Well, we don’t feel that they will. There will be many people who are prepared to pay the higher cost of a higher ratio and we’re quite prepared to say, if the parents in that particular area are prepared to pay for it, and if the municipality wants to pay for it, then that’s fine.

Mrs. Campbell: Aha, so you’re not funding the municipalities that want a decent standard!

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Oh, yes, we are funding the municipalities.

Mrs. Campbell: To the fullest extent of the standards?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: To the extent of our standards they will be funded, but it will be up to the municipality. So we feel that we are not deteriorating. This government feels that we are providing very badly needed daycare facilities across this province to handicapped children, children of low-income families and many of the native children.

Mr. Martel: No, you are not.

Mr. Lewis: Well, answer some of the other questions.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I would like to get to the advisory council and I know some comments the leader of the NDP has made in regard to my involvement with the advisory council.

Mr. Lewis: That was Anne Barstow’s comments.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: The advisory council was named by the Minister of Community and Social Services. It reports to him and I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. R. F. Nixon) would be the first one to complain if he felt that I was directing the advisory committee.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He would want you to meet with them.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I met with the chairman of the advisory committee soon after she was named. We had a conversation of an hour and a half. We talked in generalities about day care and I feel that that is the extent of my involvement with the advisory council. They have been given very broad terms of reference. They are at liberty to make any recommendations that they so desire. They have the proposal in front of them and we are just waiting for their report.

Mr. Lewis: That’s interesting. I am glad that’s on Hansard.

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

Hon. Mrs. Birch: The member for Sudbury East has asked repeatedly about the people who were involved in making up the task force report which was brought to the policy field. Now, I am not going to name the individuals but I will name the offices they represent.

Mr. Lewis: We have the names of the individuals.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Chief education officer, planning research branch, Ministry of Education; professor from York University --

Mr. Lewis: That’s Bonham, eh?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: -- a deputy minister, Ministry of Community and Social Services.

Mr. Lewis: That’s McLellan.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: A second deputy minister of the Ministry of Community and Social Services; the Deputy Minister of Health, a graduate of philosophy, politics and economics; executive director of social services division, Ministry of Community and Social Services; another person from the Ministry of Community and Social Services; Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities --

Mr. Lewis: Why are you hiding them? What have they got to fear?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I don’t think they have anything to fear.

Mr. Lewis: They are civil servants.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Is it all right to read the names?

Mr. Lewis: What do you mean, is it all right? You are the minister. Who is running this bloody ministry?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: All right. Mr. Glen Bonham, the Ministry of Education; Dr. John Butterick, York University; Miss D. Crittenden; Mr. Tom Eberlee; Mr. Stanley Martin; Mr. Steve McIntyre; Mr. Gordon McLellan; Mrs. Judy Palmer; Dr. Gordon Parr; Mr. George Podrebarac; Dr. Naomi Rae-Grant; Mr. Robert Sirman; Miss Elsie Stapleford; Dr. E. E. Stewart; Mr. William Wolfson; and Dr. D. T. Wright.

Mr. Martel: She said she wasn’t on the committee.

Mr. Lewis: That committee meets on day care?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: This was the task force that put together the report for the --

Mr. Lewis: Well, that is very interesting. Dr. Naomi Rae-Grant was on that task force?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: Elsie Stapleford in the estimates made it quite clear she wasn’t on that committee.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Well, her name is on the list.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, her name is on the list. So was Naomi Rae-Grant’s.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: And they were both on the task force.

Mr. Lewis: How about tabling this magnificent report?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I was just coming to that.

Mr. Chairman: The minister has about two minutes.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: I would like to make a quote from Gordon Robertson. I am sure you are aware of who he is. He’s secretary to the privy council and he’s speaking on the confidentiality of a report to cabinet. If I may, I would like to read this into the record.

“It is obvious that what a minister may have recommended in a confidential cabinet document must be as fully protected as his comments in the council chamber, for it may or may not be what emerged as a decision. To disclose the document would be to disclose a personal view and thus pierce the veil of privacy on which collective responsibility depends.

“In short, the collective executive that is the heart of our parliamentary system must have secrecy. It cannot work without it and that secrecy is not just a secrecy of oral discussion around the table. It includes the secrecy of the documents that provide much of the argument and basis for the discussion.

“To suggest, as some have, the documents can become public, once a decision has been taken, is to fail to appreciate their nature. They must list alternatives, their purpose, and the relevance of their confidentiality to the central principle of the collective executive and of the joint responsibility.

“[To go on:] Task forces are informal, administrative aids to the executive and, unlike royal commissions, are not required by statute or convention to publish their reports or to make accessible the research studies on which their recommendations are based.”

Mr. Chairman: Shall vote 240 carry?

Mr. Lewis: No, it is not carried. I would like to ask the minister, in view of that last statement, it is a wonderful bureaucratic piece of verbiage.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

Report agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, I would like to say that now we will deal with the estimates of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. On Wednesday we will deal with the estimates of the Ministry of Health, on Thursday with the same ministry, and on Friday, in accordance with my commitment to the Opposition, we will be on the budget debate.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Mr. Speaker, may I point out to the House leader that we haven’t completed these estimates yet. When will these estimates be completed?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I think, Mr. Speaker, I can only refer the hon. member to his House leader and he can make that arrangement or understand what has taken place.

Mr. R. S. Smith: The vote hasn’t carried yet.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am well aware of that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): The minister must have had a nice dinner.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: It wasn’t bad. I intend to go back.

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

Motion agreed to.

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