Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure that the House will wish to welcome the 1974 parliamentary interns, who are sitting in my gallery. The interns work with members of the House of Commons of Canada for a period of one year under a programme financed by a group of Canadian insurance companies and supported by the Canadian Political Science Association. I am grateful to those hon. members of our Legislature who have met with the interns during this week, and I am sure all hon. members will join with me in wishing them a pleasant and interesting stay at Queen’s Park.

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce to the House, and have the House welcome, 30 members of the Chartland Community School Association from Agincourt who are sitting in the west gallery.

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

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker: Within the Ministry of Government Services is a department, one of whose functions is to fix tickets for diplomatic personnel. Last week I received a complaint that persons other than diplomats had availed themselves of this service. In order to determine the truth of this allegation, I requested a list of those persons who had had tickets fixed by the ministry this year. Yesterday, sir, I was phoned by Mr. Borosa of the ministry’s office and told that this list was privileged and would not be given out.

I submit to you, sir, that if this government maintains a department to fix tickets for anyone, diplomats or others, the details of who is benefiting cannot be kept secret, and this attempt to do so is a breach of privilege.

Mr. J. H. Jessiman: Turned him down again.

Mr. Speaker: I am not sure what kind of tickets the member was referring to, and I am not sure that any privilege of members of this House, either individually or collectively have been trespassed, but I will consider the matter and report back.

The member for St. George.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce to the members of this House a group of Grade 12 students from Jarvis Collegiate, who are studying world politics. They are here with their teacher, Mrs. M. Harrison, and I would ask you to join with me in welcoming them to this House.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

POLICY ON RECREATIONAL TRAILS AND SNOWMOBILE REGULATION

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Mr. Speaker, I would like to announce a major government policy of direct interest to the people of Ontario who enjoy such outdoor sports and recreational activities as snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, horseback riding, hiking and trailbike riding.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): How about mercury pollution? Isn’t the minister going to make a statement about that?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The government will establish an extensive network of recreational trails throughout the province. In some cases, these trails will be restricted to a specific use -- to separate snowmobiling from cross-country skiing, for example, or hiking from bike riding. In other cases, trails will be identified for multiple use where the enjoyment of these lands by different groups is compatible.

The government will also establish a trails council to assist in the development of a complete trails system. This council will consist of representatives from various recreational organizations, outdoor sports groups, conservationists, farmers and other interested bodies.

The trails council will report to the Minister of Natural Resources. The initial task of the council will be an inventory of existing trails and recommendations on the development of a broader trail network. The council will also be asked to make proposals on how it believes our trails policy should be embodied in appropriate legislation.

There are many other responsibilities that will be, or could be, assigned to the trails council, such as advising the minister on the needs of those enjoying the trail system and those who may be concerned about possible adverse effects of new trails. This, I might add Mr. Speaker, is why the presence of farmers and conservationists is important on the council’s membership. The trails council will also have an opportunity to advise financing the maintenance and enlargement of the trails programme -- through, for example, grants, user-fees, private donations and other means of generating capital and operating funds.

The proposed trails council will not, unfortunately, be in a position to make recommendations on the establishment of snowmobile trails for this winter. However, Mr. Speaker, the government does intend to start work immediately on this urgent aspect of the trails programme.

The Ministry of Natural Resources, through its 48 district offices, is now drawing up a complete inventory of existing snowmobile trails throughout Ontario. The ministry will map trail routes and, during the winter, will identify and help maintain such routes by packing the snow with grooming machines. It is hoped, Mr. Speaker, that snowmobile clubs will be able to assist the ministry in this work. We actively seek their co-operation and I invite interested groups to contact the nearest district office of the ministry.

In proceeding with this task, we also intend to protect the rights of farmers and other property owners who have, in past winters, complained about irresponsible snowmobilers trespassing on and damaging their property. Consequently, this session the government will introduce amendments to the Motorized Snow Vehicles Act dealing with trespass and liability.

First, sir, let me deal briefly with the issue of trespassing. The government has reviewed the recommendations made by the select committee on motorized snow vehicles and all-terrain vehicles. In this respect, we will implement recommendations 33 to 35 of that interim report. This legislation will require the operator of a snowmobile to obtain written permission from the owner or occupier of private property before he enters that property. Failure to obtain written permission will represent a provincial offence of trespass in the absence of any lawful excuse. Upon the request of the property owner or occupier, the snowmobile operator will be required to stop, identify himself and produce the written permission to cross that property. Where a complaint of trespass is made, the Crown will assume responsibility for investigation and prosecution.

We are also concerned about the issue of liability where a trespassing snowmobile operator causes damage to private property or sustains injury. Following the Supreme Court of Canada decision on the Veinot vs. Kerr-Addison Mines Ltd. case, we have received many requests for clarification on the responsibilities of private property owners and occupiers. I’m sure, sir, hon. members will agree that a property owner should not be liable for injuries sustained by a trespasser, provided, of course, the property owner does not wilfully or maliciously plan to injure the trespasser. Therefore, legislation will be enacted which will ensure that the property owner or occupier is not liable for injury to a snowmobiler who is a trespasser, except for wilful or malicious injury.

In addition, we will enact legislation in accordance with recommendations 36 and 37 of the select committee report. This will ensure that, where the property owner or occupier has given written permission to the snowmobiler to be on the property, the property owner or occupier would be liable only if wilful or malicious harm can be established. It will also ensure that the owner and operator of a snowmobile both will be liable for damage resulting from the operation of a snowmobile; except in the event that the operator uses the snowmobile without the owner’s consent, when only the operator is liable.

Mr. Speaker, the emphasis on winter trails by no means represents the government’s complete response to the select committee’s recommendations. We are only dealing with snowmobiles and the related matters of trespass and occupier liability at this time. The trails programme represents a major government initiative that will bring considerable benefits to the thousands of Ontarians who enjoy outdoor activities in all seasons. Once the trails council has been appointed and has had an opportunity to make further recommendations, appropriate omnibus legislation will be brought before this House to refine and expand the complete trails programme.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

ELIGIBILITY OF TEACHERS TO SERVE ON MUNICIPAL COUNCILS

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, it has been drawn to my attention that there are concerns by some teachers respecting the application of section 36 of the Municipal Act as it applies to teachers and school board employees and their right to run for and sit on municipal councils. I would just like to say, Mr. Speaker, that it was and is the intention of the government that teachers should be free to run for office and sit as members of municipal councils without resigning their positions as teachers. This was the intention and, in view of the concern now expressed, and I might say some legal opinions that suggest the contrary to this policy, the government will introduce an amendment to section 36 of the Municipal Act to make it absolutely clear that a teacher may sit on a municipal council without having to resign or without having to take leave of absence. This will be made retroactive to reassure those who have already undertaken this public responsibility.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Back as far as 1967?

HIGHWAY 404

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Speaker, in April, 1973, the ministry announced its intention to construct Highway 404 as an extension of the Don Valley Parkway from Sheppard Ave. to Newmarket by constructing the first stage of an ultimate freeway as a four-lane arterial road within Metropolitan Toronto northerly to Steeles Ave., reducing to two lanes on the Highway 404 alignment to Newmarket.

Subsequently, design plans were developed with advice and co-operation from the regional municipality of York, Metropolitan Toronto and the borough of North York. While the first stage of construction was based upon the need to provide much-needed early relief to traffic problems within the financial constraints and priorities existing at that time, subsequent analysis has shown that appropriate relief to the growing traffic in this corridor can only be met by a major upgrading of the staging proposals.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Oh dear. Fascinating how it can be done in the east side and not the west side.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: In light of the current and anticipated rate of development and resulting revised traffic demands, it is now the ministry’s intention to construct a six-lane freeway within Metropolitan Toronto from Sheppard Ave. to Steeles Ave., reducing to four lanes on the Highway 404 alignment between Steeles Ave. and Newmarket. While it is realized that about one year of delay will now be experienced in the start of construction, this decision will, I am sure, be to the benefit of present and future residents of the area.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): How come the minister’s announcements parallel those of the redistribution commission?

Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. members please restrain themselves? Order please. The hon. Treasurer has a statement.

ONTARIO LAND CORP.

Hon. J. White (Treasurer, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time in today’s proceedings, I shall introduce a bill to establish the Ontario Land Corp.

An hon. member: About time.

Hon. Mr. White: Because the success of this new agency will be reflected in the development of our province in the years ahead, I should like to tell the House how it will be organized and what it will do.

Members will recall that the OLC originated with the budget last spring. Since then, it has been examined in detail by several of my colleagues and the staff of the ministries which will participate in it.

To consider some choices for the financing, corporate structure and the role of OLC, I met last June with the Investment Dealers’ Association of Canada and representatives of financial institutions with development experience. I asked them for comments and suggestions, and I am grateful for the great amount of thought and effort they gave to this project.

I also discussed the OLC idea in detail with municipal representatives at our last two meetings with the Municipal Liaison Committee. Such consultation, Mr. Speaker, was not only useful but essential from our standpoint, because the success of the Ontario Land Corp. will depend in large measure on the support and co-operation of the municipalities in which it will be operating.

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): This is the La Scala restaurant report.

Hon. Mr. White: No, in fact it isn’t.

As members will see from the bill, the Ontario Land Corp. will have three principal functions. It will finance the assembly of land for new towns and industrial parks, and it will finance certain forms of government accommodation involving leasebacks. But the OLC will not develop or hold in perpetuity the land it assembles. Instead, it will turn the assembled land over to a special project corporation, which in each case will report to the appropriate ministry. For instance, land for a new residential town would likely be turned over to a special project corporation reporting to the Ministry of Housing, land for a new industrial park would be turned over to a special project corporation reporting to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, and so on.

Each project corporation will be set up to manage the development of a specific project and the private sector will participate fully in every phase including the planning, development and construction as well as in the ownership, rental and leasing of the developed properties.

I must emphasize that the relationship between these government agencies, municipalities and the private sector will be one of co-operation. The OLC will initiate new towns and industrial parks in parts of the province where the private sector is unlikely to venture on its own. These projects will also involve financial commitments of such size and duration that the private sector would probably find them unattractive.

Members from eastern, northeastern and northwestern Ontario will be particularly interested to know that the OLC will lend money to municipalities or their agencies to jointly develop provincial-municipal industrial parks to help attract industry in parts of Ontario where additional economic growth is desired.

At the same time we will ensure that the corporation takes special measures to ensure that all usable farmland which it holds is kept in continuous food production as long as possible. My colleague, the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart), will be assisting the corporation to do this.

Initially, the OLC will be financed by the province, but will borrow on its own account as soon as the necessary arrangements are concluded. There will be no equity shares. In return for the lands it turns over to project corporations, the OLC will take back mortgages.

The OLC will not hold land in perpetuity and will therefore not duplicate or intrude upon the functions of such land-holding ministries as Transportation and Communications, and Natural Resources.

As a corporation, the OLC will combine government backing with private-sector initiative. The OLC’s board of directors may include one or more persons from the government, but most if not all of the corporation’s directors will be drawn from the private sector, as will the management and staff. In this way the OLC will have flexibility enabling it to expand or decrease its staff, as its needs vary.

Mr. Speaker, those are the features of the Ontario Land Corp. which I thought would be of interest to the members at this time.

The Ontario Land Corp. has great potential to carry forward the government’s long-range plans for the social and economic development of Ontario, and I am confident that it will have the enthusiastic support of all members of the House.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

MERCURY POLLUTION

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask of the Premier if he has informed himself as to the situation alleged in a CBC programme last night, known as “As It Happens,” which stated that certain reports, federal and provincial, pertaining to mercury pollution problems in the Grassy Narrows-Whitedog Indian reserve areas of northwestern Ontario have not been made public and, in fact, information from this province has unaccountably been incomplete in this regard?

Can he give any further information to the House in this extremely serious matter pertaining to the health and livelihood of these communities?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of it, but I would suggest that if the Leader of the Opposition might like to ask the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier), the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman) they may have replies.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Precisely what I have in mind.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Having spoken to the head of the government, I would now ask of the Minister of Health if he is aware of any reports that have not been made public which have a bearing on the allegations made in this programme? They were very serious allegations, which indicate that the health and the welfare of the Indian communities at Whitedog and Grassy Narrows have not been properly looked after by this ministry and others.

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, to the best of my knowledge there may be a federal report that’s not public. I have the latest provincial report, which was issued, I think, by my predecessor and released in the House April 18, 1973 -- the fourth report of the mercury task force, with a summary of previous reports.

Now there were no other formal reports. There are working documents within ministries, I assume, but I know of no working document that even specifically relates to that area. I know of at least one that relates to health problems related to mercury, for example, but not one that deals with the Wabigoon or English River type of system.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Is the minister, then, unable to indicate to the House why this programme and the researchers reporting through it, would indicate that information from Ontario was unaccountably impeded?

Mr. L. C. Henderson (Lambton): Bunch of Liberals!

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Almost everybody is.

Hon. Mr. Miller: As a matter of fact, I have a letter, Mr. Speaker --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have a letter from the federal people saying just the opposite; that in fact they appreciated the co-operation of my ministry in handing them information.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Would you permit a further supplementary, Mr. Speaker? Can the minister then assure the House that the implications in the programme, which indicate there is a serious and continuing threat to the health of the Indian communities, are in error?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, Mr. Speaker, I wouldn’t go so far, because I am concerned and we have been concerned about the threat to the health of the Indian people from mercury.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In two years what has the government done?

Hon. Mr. Miller: We have done quite a bit.

We have had three different test surveys done of blood mercury levels and hair mercury levels of residents in that area. The fourth will be underway as soon as we can get permission, because we have to have the permission of the Indians involved. The health of those people has been accepted as a responsibility of the federal government by the federal government.

Mr. Henderson: How about that?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Who was responsible for the mercury?

Hon. Mr. Miller: In spite of that responsibility, we volunteered; we didn’t even wait for the Indians to ask us. We have asked them for permission to carry on with our surveys. The Grassy Narrows group have given us that permission. The Whitedog groups have not, to this point in time, given it to us. I can read the member reports of the last three surveys if he wishes, but the basis --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We’d like them tabled by the minister.

Mr. Henderson: The Leader of the Opposition will get them.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Has the member for Lambton been out to lunch again?

Hon. Mr. Miller: But the basis is this: That we have set, arbitrarily, 100 parts per billion as the maximum level of methyl mercury we would like to have in the blood of a human being. That’s based on this assumption: The lowest level that we’ve ever been able to assume affected the health of a human being was 200 parts per billion of methyl mercury. That was found in one person in Japan, by what we call extrapolation, not by actual tests, at a time when testing procedures were not particularly accurate for methyl mercury. They are now much more accurate, they now have a plus or minus five accuracy, I’m told.

However, records show that even four to five times our standard are still safe levels. Nevertheless, if we find somebody with 100 parts per billion we refer them to the federal health agencies for treatment or examination. The last time we carried out a survey, six people, I understand, were found to be in excess of this 100. They were all Indians, I am told. They were taken to Winnipeg by the federal people, thoroughly tested and returned; it was stated that there was no clinical evidence of any illness.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Scar- borough West have a supplementary?

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: May I ask the Minister of Health, does he or does he not have in his possession a report dated Feb. 18, 1972, and entitled, “The Public Health Significance of Methyl Mercury,” put out by the environmental health services branch, public health division, Ministry of Health, which contains the observation that mercury levels of fish in the Wabigoon and English River systems are the highest recorded in North America and comparable to Japan? If there is such a report, why is that report not a public document?

Hon. Mr. Miller: First of all, that is the working document I referred to, and I said there were some working documents in my possession.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: A working document? I see. Everything is suppressed around here under the title of working documents.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It was not suppressed in any sense at all.

Mr. Lewis: It wasn’t? Where is it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have it right here in my hand at this moment.

Mr. Singer: Will the minister table it?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I see no reason why this can’t be tabled.

Mr. Lewis: Put it on the table in this House.

Mr. Singer: Put it on the table now.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I will, without any question, because I don’t see any incriminating evidence in here of the indication --

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Why not tell the people of Grassy Narrows that?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): They have been told.

Hon. Mr. Miller: We have been telling them that -- and the hon. member knows that.

An hon. member: The minister is desperate.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary: When the minister has a document that contains that kind of information which relates directly to the actual or potential health hazards of all of those who consume fish in the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog reserve areas, how dare he not bring it to public attention for more than 2 1/2 years?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: No, seriously, how does he keep it in hiding for 2 1/2 years?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: The hon. member knows that kind of implication is incorrect.

Mr. Lewis: The task force report didn’t give the working papers.

Hon. Mr. Miller: That was the purpose of that report the member got in April.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would ask the hon. members to please refrain from interjecting when somebody is talking. A final supplementary by the hon. member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Could the minister advise whether any testing has been done, particularly on younger persons, to ascertain tunnel vision, deafness and the other classic symptoms of mercury poisoning; the extent to which those statistics have been gathered; and whether the minister is aware of the fact that the mercury poisoning incident in Japan has caused at least 100 deaths up to this point?

Hon. Mr. Miller: First of all, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what we do with the people whose mercury levels are found to be high. They have been tested by the federal people at that point. Our function, and I would say our duty has been to assist in the testing programme. However, we have been told that it is a federal responsibility to look after the health of those people. We have been told that.

Mr. Lewis: It’s nice that health is jurisdictional!

Hon. Mr. Miller: Look, I don’t agree that it should be jurisdictional, and I happen to be telling the federal government that.

An hon. member: Do something!

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: But the fact remains --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. minister will please reply to the supplementary and not to further interjections.

Hon. Mr. Miller: We have been told, “Thanks, but no thanks. If you tell us they are high, we will look after them.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have a further supplementary.

Mr. Stokes: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: No. There have been enough supplementaries.

Mr. Stokes: This is a very important matter. You are going to hog-tie us by not allowing us to bring information before the House. You are stifling the House.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. It is rapidly developing into a debate. To even the thing up, I will allow one more supplementary by the hon. member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is the Minister of Health aware that there was a recommendation from a coroner’s jury that a post-mortem should be carried out in any case of death in the Whitedog and Grassy Narrows area where there is any indication of depression? What happened to that recommendation, which his ministry should be so concerned about?

Hon. Mr. Miller: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of that coroner’s recommendation. I will look into it. I can only tell the hon. member I am basing these facts not on findings made by doctors whom he might claim were under the control of the Ministry of Health of Ontario, but on findings of doctors who work under the control of the federal government, who have assured us there were no symptoms in the people they have tested.

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

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have a question of the Minister of Health on a similar subject. How can the minister tell the House that in his opinion certain federal documents might not have been made public, but the Province of Ontario has made public all the information, when in the next breath he refers to a special working document which is not made public --

Mr. Lewis: And he wouldn’t have.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- and which contains the incriminating information that was referred to in that report?

Mr. Lewis: And he didn’t intend to make it public.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: How dare he treat the House that way?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, the way the ministers of the government behave in this Legislature is one of the reasons they are losing Carleton East today. It is the arrogant way they deal with these problems.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): We will see about that tomorrow morning.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Order, please. The hon. Leader of the Opposition will please refrain --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. May I remind the members this is a question period. An editorial comment is not really in order. Does the hon. minister have an answer?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Perhaps not a reply, but I have a pill for the red colour of the member’s face which will cut down his blood pressure.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I hope that round of applause from the minister’s sycophantic supporters is sufficient to run him through the day.

Interjections by hon. members.

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

Mr. Lewis: The minister is contaminating everybody around here. That is pollution.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I would ask you to please respect the request for order from the Chair. Does the hon. Leader of the Opposition have a further question?

KRAUSS-MAFFEI SYSTEM

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Transportation and Communications. Would he report to the House on the status of the Krauss-Maffei project? Are the problems with getting that train to go around a curve simply superficial -- similar to the blowing of a fuse, I think was the phrase used by one of his officials -- or does it have any far-reaching implications, with the expenditure of the $30 million already committed, for running the test train on the test track in time for the test election?

Hon. Mr. Davis: It will be a test election.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That is tonight.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, first of all, as to the comparison with the blowing of the tires to the blowing of a fuse, it seems to me there seem to be some fuses blown over there in the last few minutes.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Boy, is the minister in trouble! Maybe he can run the Krauss-Maffei in a straight line.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, my information is, I think, the same as the hon. member has. It is identical to that which I provided the House in answer to a question from the Leader of the Opposition as to why the trip had been cancelled for local people, local politicians and reporters, to go over to view this. I am not going to pretend to go into the technical problems because I’m not competent to talk about them technically.

I can only say my information is that there is a problem with the magnet, that there is a sensor that is giving problems and that in order to make sure this is working properly there will be more testing done in an attempt to overcome that particular problem.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That’s why there’s a test.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I think the hon. Leader of the Opposition fully realizes, and has realized from the very beginning, that this is a research and development programme. It’s innovative. It’s brand new. These sorts of problems are bound to develop and will have to be overcome by the engineers who are working on them.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Is the minister aware of a report -- I think it was in the Financial Post in the second to last issue -- that indicated that the Krauss-Maffei test trains are all going to have to have wheels on them, except for the one developed for Ontario because we’ve got so much power here that we are not going to need any wheels on our trains?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I don’t read the Financial Post very often because I have given up any holdings I might have had; so I have no interest in it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister should.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I’m aware of that particular article. What I can say to the member is that I think it’s common knowledge around the world that the Krauss-Maffei company have been making wheel trains for years. That’s been their major project. Whether they’re putting wheels on this one or not, I don’t know.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Is the minister giving any consideration to stopping further expenditure until the test train over in Germany can at least go around a curve?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat what I have said earlier in this House and outside of this House.

Mr. Lewis: It will go around the track even if the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development has to pull it.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): It will then be called the mule train.

Mr. Lewis: The donkey express, I imagine.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I have said all along that I was reviewing all expenditures. I will continue to do so and I will be prepared to have a total assessment of that project when the final tenders have to be called, which will be for the maintenance building on the TDS. I said all along that I would report back with complete information on the project.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sandwich-Riverside has a supplementary.

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, a supplementary: In view of the continuing difficulties that the Leader of the Opposition has referred to, will the ministry now fulfill its promise of about a year and a half ago to visit inventor Kenneth Crowder of Pontiac, Mich. and take a really good look at the much less expensive Insta Glide monorail system?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I did not make such a commitment, but I agree the ministry may have made one. I can only say to the member that I would hope we would investigate all possible modes of intermediate capacity. I think the people who have been working on these various projects and looking into the various developments are aware of the capabilities and the possibilities of the monorail systems. I’m not specifically aware of the one from Pontiac, Mich., but there are at least two companies in Canada which have been promoting the use of monorails. So we could certainly, I would hope, look at all of the possible modes.

Mr. Burr: And would the minister look into the price?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They had trouble with curves.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. We are getting well away from the original question.

The Leader of the Opposition obviously has no more questions. The hon. member for Scarborough West.

MERCURY POLLUTION

Mr. Lewis: That is not obvious at all. May I ask a question of the Minister of the Environment? On Oct. 22 last, in the estimates, he indicated there was more recent data on the levels of mercury content contamination in fish, and there has been no data published by the Province of Ontario since “Mercury in Fish,” January, 1972. Is he now prepared to table the data in the House this afternoon?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, if the member had listened the other day, I did give some of that information in answer to a question, I believe, last week. But I’m quite prepared to give all that data both on the Wabigoon system and on the St. Clair River system. We have it all and we’ll be glad to provide it. The 1974 tabulation on the St. Clair River system is just being tabulated, but we have all the others. All the indicators are that the mercury level in fish is going down. Now, the Wabigoon system is basically being tested by the federal Ministry of the Environment in co-operation with our ministry. We are doing the testing on the St. Clair River system as far as the mercury levels in fish are concerned.

Mr. Lewis: I appreciate the information on the Lake St. Clair system, but that wasn’t what I asked for. Is the minister prepared to take all the data concerning the Wabigoon and the English River systems to demonstrate what difference, if any, there now exists in levels of mercury contamination; and should we not have that information available to us immediately? Where is it, in other words?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I have some of it with me right now and would be glad to read it to the member right now.

Mr. Lewis: It is a working paper, is it?

Hon. W. Newman: No, it’s just a few facts and figures on the Wabigoon system. I have details of the various fish tested and the various lakes tested. I only have a very few examples here of exactly what’s happening. If the member would like to hear about those --

Mr. Lewis: I would like to hear about all the lakes, and so many species above the accepted level.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): All the in- formation, all at once.

Hon. W. Newman: Would the members like what I have here today?

Mr. Renwick: No, we want the report.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t want to hear the PR people’s selection.

Hon. W. Newman: I don’t have the report per se; I have the figures.

Mr. Renwick: We want all the information tabled today.

Mr. Singer: Supplementary: Can the minister tell us what steps are being taken in any of the polluted areas to try and stop people from eating the fish that have a high, dangerous mercury content; particularly in the vicinity of Minaki Lodge, which is government-owned and government-sponsored and with large government investment in it?

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Does the hon. member have a question?

Mr. Singer: What steps are being taken and why have the signs “Fish for Fun” been taken down?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, the signs “Fish for Fun” were put up by one of the other ministries. As for the notification to the people on the English-Wabigoon River system, I would think that question would be more correctly directed to the Minister of Health.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions by the member for Scarborough West?

Mr. Lewis: Yes, I have a question of the Solicitor General, if I may. When the Solicitor General was Minister of the Environment he issued instructions to the chief coroner, as indicated by my colleague from Thunder Bay, that an autopsy should be effected in all deaths where severe alcoholism or emotional stress appear to have been the major contributing factor, after the incident that occurred where over 200 parts per million of mercury were found in the death of the one Indian man. Now, has that been done? If not, why not?

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): Mr. Speaker, as far as I’m concerned there has been no countermand or change in that particular instruction or direction. I don’t know, for example, if there have been any more incidents of people dying as a result of that degree of mercury contamination. I haven’t heard any more information to the effect that there has been another death as a result of that, similar to the one to which the hon. member refers, but certainly there has been no countermand of that instruction. I think it would be almost routine that there would be an inquest in a situation like that.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary, if I may, of the Attorney General, if he could take his seat.

Is the CBC programme “As It Happens” right in saying that there were no further autopsies performed after that done on Thomas Strong in 1972, and if not, why not? And now that there is reason to believe there is a correlation between violent death and mercury contamination, a correlation derived from examples in Japan -- and recalling to the minister’s mind the extraordinary report on 189 violent deaths in the northwest, of which 70 per cent or more were as a result of or associated with alcoholism; whose symptoms now appear to be parallel to those which might be attributable to mercury poisoning -- can he set out a fiat to instruct that all autopsies be performed in such instances, and inquire why that has not happened for the last two years?

Hon. R. Welch (Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General): Mr. Speaker, I’ll take that question as notice, because it requires a lot of information. But I would tell the hon. member that the operation of coroners comes under the jurisdiction of the Solicitor General. However, I’ll take the question as notice.

Mr. Lewis: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Since most of the testing is done by his ministry, is it possible to have tabled every single report which has been done, and all the results of the tests which have been performed over the last two years, particularly on the Grassy Narrows Reserve and the Whitedog-Islington Reserve, in an effort to get some sense of whether or not there is any urgency about the potential health hazards or actual health hazards to those Indians who have been continually eating contaminated fish?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, it is my information that all the information available to my ministry has been made public. As it has been pointed out, the Minister of the Environment will be tabling further information, but I will examine this further to see if there is anything within my ministry, and if there is we will certainly make it available.

Mr. Singer: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: All right. The hon. member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Could the minister advise if his department is taking any steps to attempt to stop the consumption of mercury-polluted fish by natives, tourists or other people in the polluted areas? What steps are being taken?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I would refer that particular question to the Minister of Health because it was that ministry which informed --

Mr. Renwick: The Minister of Health doesn’t want it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Wait a minute, this is a serious situation.

Mr. Singer: Darned right it is.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That’s right. It was that ministry --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They call us glib and those fellows are laughing.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- which placed public notices in every newspaper in northwestern Ontario surrounding that particular area, and members must realize it’s over 200 miles long. It’s a huge area, really; it’s long and very slender. They also sent individual letters to each householder in the area; so they have done an excellent job of warning the public.

Mr. Lewis: The letters were in English.

I have one last question on this; of the Premier, if I may. Since the Premier apparently had a working document in his possession describing the correlation between levels of mercury contamination in northwestern Ontario with those in Japan, and now that he knows --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: The Solicitor General said it was a lie in 1970 and he’s been proved wrong, so I wouldn’t interject now. I wouldn’t interject now.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Would the member get to his question?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, I think somebody on this side of the House should say that there was nothing in today’s article or the CBC documentary, that I am aware of, that said the level of mercury contamination in northwestern Ontario is the same as it was in Japan. Until we have those statistics I think we should be careful how we pose the questions.

Mr. Lewis: I suppose it is.

Mr. Singer: Did the minister hear the programme? Does he have the transcript of it, or has he heard it?

Mr. Sargent: It’s a good reason for a trip.

Mr. Lewis: Since the Premier apparently had in his possession as far back as February, 1972, a document showing levels comparable to those in Japan -- and this was asserted in the document, whether or not the Solicitor General knew -- given what we have now, and warned about the consequences to human health in those communities of Japan where comparable levels exist, can the Premier intervene with a sense of urgency on the part of all his ministers, either to conduct an exhaustive study or have a major commission of inquiry or provide for the Indians in the northwest an alternative to the present dependence on mercury-contaminated fish as the primary food source?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, the leader of the New Democratic Party is, of course, making some assumptions which may or may not be valid. The first assumption is that I have in my possession a report. I just have to inform the hon. member, I don’t have in my possession a report.

Mr. Lewis: His ministry then.

Hon. Mr. Davis: That’s fine, but I do not. If the member for Scarborough West wants to ask whether one of the ministers may or may not have a report, that’s fine.

Mr. Deans: It was a cabinet document. It went to cabinet.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Not necessarily; not necessarily at all. And the member for Wentworth very well knows it.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Everybody’s passing the buck.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would say, Mr. Speaker, with respect, if the leader of the New Democratic Party wants to assume that I have all of these reports in my possession, he is just totally wrong. I don’t.

Mr. Lewis: I never said the Premier did.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would say, Mr. Speaker, the leader of the New Democratic Party should refer these questions properly to the responsible ministers.

Mr. Deans: We are trying.

Mr. Lewis: But the Premier is the head of government. He is trying to duck that, but he is the head of government.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I happen to have complete confidence in their ability to deal with these very complex issues in the way they discharge their responsibilities; they do it right.

Mr. Lewis: The Premier prefers it not be known as the Davis government, I take it?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The member for Grey-Bruce.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): The Premier is accepting his pay under false pretences.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I work a little harder for mine than the member does.

Mr. Foulds: I doubt that.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The member for Grey-Bruce.

Mr. Sargent: The Premier shouldn’t be taking a junket to Japan, then.

An hon. member: Is he going to Japan?

An hon. member: When did that start?

Mr. Speaker: Would the member for Grey-Bruce please ask his question?

LOAN TO ST. CATHARINES MOTEL

Mr. Sargent: A question of the Minister of Industry and Tourism, the artful dodger: With regard to a news report of a small business loan of $400,000 --

An hon. member: What’s the question?

An hon. member: Question!

Mr. Sargent: Take your time, we’ll get there -- made in St. Catharines to the campaign manager for the member for Lincoln (Mr. Welch), Mr. Archie Katzman, who was also a member of the Niagara Parks Commission --

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Sargent: Come on, what’s going on?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Sargent: They can do anything they want down there.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The editorial comments are not necessary. Will you please ask the question directly?

An hon. member: One has to put it in its proper context.

Mr. N. G. Leluk (Humber): Don’t make a speech.

An hon. member: Carry on, Eddie.

Mr. Sargent: I’d like to ask the minister, in view of this fact, does he call this a small business loan of $400,000 to the campaign manager of the member for Lincoln who is also a member of the Niagara Parks Commission, and who is the owner of the Parkway Hotel? In view of the fact that this money is an ODC tourist loan, the main requirement for which is that institutional or other sources of money such as banks, are not available, and this is only as a last resort, how does the minister justify this loan going to this lackey of the party? That is my first question.

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): Mr. Speaker, we did process a loan for a particular operator in St. Catharines. First of all, may I correct one remark and say that the applicant is not a member of the Niagara Parks Commission.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): A successful operator.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Secondly, sir, a tourist loan programme --

Mr. Sargent: But he was a member.

Hon. Mr. Welch: The member should get his facts straight.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): At least be honest about it.

An hon. member: He was a member.

Mr. Sargent: I was right, then. He was a member, was he?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Interjections by hon. members.

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

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please, the minister is giving his answer.

Mr. Sargent: But he is not doing a very good job.

An hon. member: How can he, with the member yakking over there?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: With the interference coming from the member for Grey-Bruce, it is just about impossible.

We processed the application and we had a reference report from the tourism people and from the board of directors of the development corporation. They had reviewed the financial position and the documents put before them by the applicant, indicating clearly that he could not secure the source of finance at an interest rate that was realistic in keeping with the development, design and advancement of his operation.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: The loan was granted based upon the facts and figures that were presented.

Mr. Sargent: What is the rate of interest?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, I’d have to take that under advisement because I do not have the actual file before me.

Mr. Sargent: Supplementary: I would suggest to the minister that it would cost him about six per cent; it would cost a man who cannot afford it eight per cent.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. That’s not a supplementary question.

Mr. Sargent: Supplementary then, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. Sargent: In view of the fact, Mr. Speaker, that only 10 per cent of the minister’s estimates were covered the other night, that there are hundreds of cases where we want to question him --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. That question is not supplementary to the original question.

Mr. Sargent: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: What is your point of privilege?

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Speaker, as critic of this ministry, we spent hundreds of hours on our estimates.

An hon. member: What’s your privilege?

Mr. Sargent: I have got a pile that high of questions we could not ask them in the estimates.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. member hasn’t a point of privilege. He is away off his original question.

Mr. Sargent: I want to ask you, Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege --

An hon. member: Throw him out.

Mr. Speaker: If the member has a point of privilege, he should please state it.

Mr. Sargent: I want to ask a supplementary question of the minister.

Mr. Speaker: The member asked a question which was not a supplementary question and I rule the member out of order.

The member for Windsor West has the floor.

WINDSOR AREA ROADS

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications, Mr. Speaker. Will the minister make available a citizens’ consultant to the citizens of south Windsor, particularly the South Windsor Expressway Action Committee, to aid them in evaluating the impact on the community of phase 1(c) of the E. C. Row Expressway and to help them to identify the various alternatives and to make the best possible recommendations?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, if that particular association will contact me and specifically put that request before me, I will give it consideration.

Mr. Bounsall: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary.

Mr. Bounsall: Will the minister endeavour to provide the consultant as soon as possible upon request, so that some of the immediate concerns be dealt with, such as the prohibiting of the four lanes at Dominion Blvd., the reopening of the east end of Grand Marais, the time phasing of traffic lights on Huron Line and the establishment of an advanced green signal at Huron Line and Grand Marais? I can send the minister some 1,600 signatures of adult residents in the area to whom these are immediate concerns.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the hon. member might have done that and saved some time. I am not familiar with these complaints and I have no way of knowing what they are unless they contact me. If they will do so and send me that particular petition we certainly will give every consideration to their requests.

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

MUNICIPAL INDUSTRIAL PARKS

Mr. C. J. S. Apps (Kingston and the Islands): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Treasurer in connection with his statement today, but perhaps the Minister of Industry and Tourism might be able to answer it, so I think I will direct the question to the Minister of Industry and Tourism.

In relation to the financing of the assembly of industrial parks, how are these areas chosen where land assembly will be financed by the province for industrial parks? Second, where the province will co-operate with municipalities to develop provincial-municipal industrial parks where additional economic growth is desired, who determines what the area is where additional economic activity is desired? Perhaps the Minister of Industry and Tourism might be able to answer those questions.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: First of all, Mr. Speaker, the plan of which the member speaks is not part of policy at the moment. I indicated to this House last week when presenting our estimates for Industry and Tourism that we are looking at a scheme that would allow our ministry to support municipally-owned industrial parks with sufficient funds for infrastructure and that it would come under the land corporation the Treasurer spoke of today. The ministry would not take part in the capitalizing of land purchases but our policy would relate to the infrastructure requirements to put those lands on the open market fully serviced.

As to the selection of areas, the rules and regulations will come down with the amendments that we will be making in regard to the loan programme.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York Centre.

HYDRO TRANSMISSION LINE DIVERSION

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): A question of the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development: In connection with the proposed transmission line from the Bruce nuclear generating station through East Garafraxa and Erin townships, why is a $9 million diversion proposed to avoid lands owned by Lloyd Lang, the reeve of Erin and warden of the county, Donald Matheson, a township councillor; Harry Hindmarsh, secretary of the Toronto Star; and the family of the member for Wellington-Dufferin (Mr. Root)? Would the minister have any explanation for this diversion, which is so obvious on the map?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t have any information on that particular diversion, nor of course do I have any information on the owners of various properties involved. I would recommend the hon. member direct that question to the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough). It’s just as well anyway, that I was given the advance notice, because obviously the minister wouldn’t be able to answer that off the top of his head. This will give him an opportunity to get the information; I promise to direct the question to the Minister of Energy.

Mr. Deacon: Supplementary to that: In connection with the environmental hearings, which will no doubt be held in connection with that line, will the member for Wellington-Dufferin be a member of the board hearing the proposals for that area?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I will direct that question to the minister, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sudbury East.

CLOSING OF BURWASH CORRECTIONAL CENTRE

Mr. Martel: A question of the Minister of Correctional Services: In view of the closure of Burwash and the principle behind it that prisoners be rehabilitated near their homes, what are the plans of the ministry for rehabilitation of prisoners from the Sudbury area?

An hon. member: Do we have any up there?

An hon. member: I didn’t think we had any up there.

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): Mr. Speaker, we still have a couple of facilities in the northern part of the province, and as I explained to the hon. members previously --

Mr. Martel: Two hundred and --

Hon. Mr. Potter: -- well over 90 per cent of the inmates of the Burwash facility were from the southern part of the province, and the inmates would be transferred accordingly.

Mr. Martel: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: In view of the policy of keeping prisoners near their homes, why is the ministry sending prisoners some 600 miles to Thunder Bay for rehabilitation? That certainly isn’t in keeping with his announced policy.

Mr. Lewis: Yes. He shouldn’t be so stupid.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Once again, Mr. Speaker, every prisoner is treated as an individual and it depends upon the type of facility that is required in his specific case. After the proper investigation is done, the decision is made where that individual will be sent.

Mr. Martel: Further supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: The Provincial Secretary for Resources Development has the answer to a question.

Mr. Martel: Further supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: We’ve just about run out of time; so I think we should get on to more members.

Mr. Martel: Well, he doesn’t have a policy.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. provincial secretary have an answer to a question?

Mr. Martel: It only works for people from southern Ontario.

FUTURE OF BLIND RIVER

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the hon. member for Scarborough West asked me what government resources have been mobilized to see what could be done for the community of Blind River, which is facing difficulties because the principal employer, Champlain Forest Products Ltd., which is owned by Richmond Plywood Ltd., of Richmond, British Columbia, is in receivership.

The company runs a veneer plant employing 80 people at Blind River. The company’s plywood operation at North Bay, which uses the veneer produced at Blind River, is continuing to operate at a reduced rate to convert the existing stock into completed inventory. Thirty of 100 people originally employed at North Bay are still working.

The hon. member for Algoma (Mr. Gilbertson) has discussed the problem with the Minister of Natural Resources and myself to see what can be done on behalf of the local people and those with an interest in the company. As well as the possible loss of employment to 80 people at the plant in Blind River, a number of subcontractors who supplied wood to Champlain are facing difficulty, both because of the loss of a possible market for their logs and because they, along with other creditors, are owed money for logs already delivered.

As an immediate step to alleviate the situation, my colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources, has granted timber cutting rights to one of the subcontractors, thus allowing him to keep his work force of approximately 11 people employed.

The employment adjustment service and the employment standards branch of the Ministry of Labour are deeply involved. The employment standards branch is investigating the shut down of the plant to ensure that the appropriate provisions of the Employment Standards Act have been adhered to with respect to back wages, vacation pay and payment in lieu of notice. The employment adjustment service is also watching the situation very closely. Hopefully, the receiver will find a buyer for the plant, thus eliminating the need for people to move to new jobs.

The Ministry of Industry and Tourism is also working actively to solve this problem. They have approached the present owners to explore alternatives for saving the 80 jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. members that we will assist the receiver in every possible way in its efforts to sell the company as a going concern, and will pursue every avenue possible to keep the people employed and protect their interests in every way.

Mr. Germa: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker; supplementary question.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Germa: I wonder if the minister is aware that one of the main reasons for closure of the Champlain Forest Products plant was a lack of heat in the form of natural gas? What does this government plan to do to bring some natural gas along the north shore?

Mr. Bounsall: Good question.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: My information is that that had nothing to do with the difficulties.

Mr. Speaker: That was a new question completely.

The hon. member for Waterloo North.

VINYL CHLORIDE

Mr. Good: A question of the Minister of Labour, if he would) take his seat please. How long has the Minister of Labour had the recommendations of the occupational health branch, under the Ministry of Health, that the allowable limits of vinyl chloride should be reduced to 10 parts per million from the present 200 parts per million? And does he plan to act on this recommendation from the occupational health branch?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, if there is any recommendation from the Minister of Health, certainly we will act upon it. The member asked me how long we have had the report. I am not even sure that we have it now; but I can make inquiries and find out when we received it, if we have done so.

Mr. Good: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: Isn’t it already done?

Mr. Good: The allowable limits have been reduced, according to newspaper reports and --

Mr. Speaker: Your question? Order, please. Do you have a question based upon the answer?

Mr. Good: Yes. The question is simply this: How could it possibly be -- when officials of the Ministry of Health informed me at noon that the Minister of Labour was given a recommendation -- how could it possibly be that his ministry is not carrying it out?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I would not agree that my ministry is not carrying out any recommendations made by the Ministry of Health. All of these matters don’t cross my desk. They go directly, in many cases, to the officials involved. The member is asking me about something which I don’t believe has crossed my desk and I would hope that it wouldn’t need to. I hope when there is a recommendation in regard to this sort of thing that it would go into action immediately that information is available.

The hon. member asked me if we had received such a report. I will get that information. As to what we are doing about it, I hope if there are any recommendations that we are carrying them out. I will make certain that they do, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Cochrane South.

UNCOMPLETED HOMES IN TIMMINS

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): I have a question of the Minister of Housing, Mr. Speaker. Is the minister aware of the number of HOME lots in Timmins where houses were promised to people by Aug. 1 by Pro Investments but the firm has not completed these houses yet? They keep delaying completion so that the people are not able to move in and have to have other housing arrangements, which is causing hardship and confusion. If the minister isn’t aware, will he make himself aware of it? What can he do about it to get these houses finished so that the people can move in?

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, I will look into the matter for the hon. member and report to him.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Downsview.

MERCURY POLLUTION

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Health. Could the Minister of Health tell us what steps his department is taking to try to prevent the consumption of mercury-polluted fish by the people who live in the mercury-polluted areas, with particular reference to the removal of the signs, “Fish for Fun,” and with particular reference to the consumption of polluted fish by the residents, staff and guests of Minaki Lodge, a government-sponsored and government-financed tourist operation?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, we took a concentrated series of steps during, I think May and June of 1973 was the initial point in time. This little brochure that I have with me was made available through all the tourist outfitters in the area. Another message was attached, I understand, to all fishing licences in the area, warning about the dangers of eating fish with mercury in them. Letters were sent to all the doctors in the area, the tourist operators in the area and the individuals in the area, signed by the Minister of Health, outlining the problems and recommending that fish in that particular river should not be eaten.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Nickel Belt.

Mr. Singer: By way of further supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: We hardly have time for a supplementary, and the question has been asked several times by various people.

Mr. Singer: Well not quite, because it has been asked but not answered.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Nickel Belt.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Singer: Did you say I could or couldn’t?

Mr. Speaker: No.

Mr. Singer: All right, fine.

GOGAMA WATER SUPPLY

Mr. Laughren: I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. In view of the fact that in the small town of Gogama, more than 50 per cent of the wells have been polluted with an unacceptably high level of nitrate, and the ministry has been aware of this for about a year now; and in view of the fact that the former Minister without Portfolio (Mr. Irvine) announced that legislation would give those communities a voice in community councils will not take effect for at least a year, will the minister consider moving in and giving assistance to provide a communal water supply now, not in 1976, so that in the meantime the people are not drinking polluted water?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, in answer to the member, we have some problems like this in unorganized areas of the Province of Ontario. As he said, the minister has said there will be legislation, but I don’t know when the legislation will be passed. We are aware of the problems that many areas in the province are faced with. I believe this came up when we were discussing it in the estimates. At this point in time, we have no vehicle through which to deal directly with the people of Gogama.

Mr. Laughren: He is not doing anything with the people of Gogama. He hasn’t even got out of the report that he promised seven months ago.

Mr. Lewis: Between Environment and Natural Resources, they will bring the government down.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The Minister of Transportation and Communications has the answer to a question asked previously.

BIUNGUAL PERMITS AND LICENCES

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, on Nov. 1 the hon. member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy) asked the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development the following question:

“Is the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development aware of the fact that Ontario drivers’ licences, motor vehicle permits and trailer permits are issued only in English? And, as a matter of policy, what plans does the government have for making those bilingual?”

Mr. Speaker, the ministry is certainly well aware that drivers’ licences, motor vehicle and trailer permits are printed only in English. It is, and continues to be, our policy that wherever feasible we will produce documents and material in French and English.

We further subscribe to, and have implemented, a programme to ensure that bilingual driver examination personnel and bilingual clerical support staff are located in all areas of the province, having a significant French-speaking population.

The booklet, “Could You Pass an Ontario Driver’s Examination?” which is a driver educational tool, is published in French and English, as are all driver examination test papers. The ministry also provides special training aids in French to assist teachers in conducting traffic safety education projects for francophone students. Materials in French include posters, traffic safety rules, take-home folder for parental information, etc. There are 30 bilingual driver examiners providing services to 21 communities on a full-time basis and to 44 other communities on a regularly scheduled part-time basis. It should also be noted that many other communities are provided a multilingual service.

Driver licence and vehicle registration documents are designed to be wallet size, and to include all information now contained on these documents in two languages would require that they be much larger in size than the present wallet size of licences and permits, and would be a very considerable expenditure at this time.

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

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Snow presented the financial statement of the Ontario Universities Capital Air Corp. for the year ending March 31, 1974.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes presented the 1973 annual report of the Ontario Telephone Service Commission.

Mr. Speaker: Motions?

Introduction of bills.

ONTARIO UNIVERSITIES CAPITAL AID CORP. ACT

Hon. Mr. White moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Ontario Universities Capital Aid Corp. Act.

Motion agreed to, first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. White: Mr. Speaker, this bill adds the Ontario College of Art to the list of institutions from which bonds or debentures may be purchased by the corporation.

ONTARIO LAND CORP. ACT

Hon. Mr. White moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to establish the Ontario Land Corp.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS ACT

Hon. Mr. MacBeth moves first reading of bill intituled, The Employment Standards Act, 1974.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, the bill updates and revises present legislation governing employment standards. Amongst other things it provides for equal benefits for employees irrespective of sex or marital status under pension and insurance plans. Other changes concern pregnancy leave, night transportation and administration.

Mr. Lewis: What about bankruptcies and receiverships?

MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ACT

Hon. Mr. Auld moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.

Motion agreed to: first reading of the bill.

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, the bill to amend the Ontario Universities Capital Aid Corp. Act adds the Ontario College of Art as an institution whose bonds or debentures may be purchased by the Ontario Universities Capital Aid Corp. This complementary bill empowers the Minister of Colleges and Universities to determine the amount of any capital expenditure for the Ontario College of Art that may be financed through the Ontario Universities Capital Aid Corp.

Mr. Apps: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day, I have an announcement to make that I think would be of interest to the members of the Legislature. I have been asked on occasions whether we couldn’t arrange to have some ice available for those who wish to play hockey and I would like to announce today that we have arranged with Maple Leaf Gardens to have ice available on Tuesday, Nov. 19 from 1 till about 1:45 and on Wednesday, Nov. 27 --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member is finally going to make the Gardens.

Mr. Apps: -- from 1 till 1:45. The members will be getting official notices of this and we hope that as many as possible will turn out to these practices. I might add that the McMurtry rules will not necessarily apply.

Mr. Deans: Is that a.m.?

Mr. Apps: No, p.m.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman; Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Treasurer (Mr. White), I have no other option but to call the committee of supply.

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

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Minister.

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Yes, Mr. Chairman, in presenting the estimates of the Ministry of Education for the fiscal year 1974-1975, I am pleased to be able to report continued improvement in many aspects of our public and separate school systems in this province. I would like to comment briefly on some of the tangible achievements of the past year -- and in a sense present a progress report on Ontario education, however necessarily superficial it may be this afternoon because of its brevity.

Education, of course, Mr. Chairman, continues to be a principal priority of this government. Including post-secondary, it is the largest single component of the 1974-1975 Ontario budget, accounting for 29 per cent of the total provincial spending.

The estimates which I am presenting today for the Ministry of Education are for $1,496,896,000. The major portion of this, 89 per cent, is turned over directly to local school boards in grants to assist them in operating their schools. This represents 60 per cent of the total costs of elementary education in Ontario. The remaining amount, of course, is raised by school boards through property taxes in individual municipalities.

Mr. Chairman, of the remaining 11 per cent of the amount of money in these estimates, 7.3 per cent is for transfer and statutory payments made directly to other educational agencies and programmes, such as the teachers’ superannuation fund, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, and research and other educational grants.

The final 3.7 per cent of these estimates is for the direct operating expenditures of the Ministry of Education, which not only include administration and support services, but also the schools operated directly by us, such as those for the blind and the deaf, the Ontario Teacher Education College, and our extensive correspondence course programme.

These estimates for 1974-1975 represent an increase of 8.73 per cent over those of a year ago. During the past year one area that has been given top priority in the Ministry of Education is special education. This includes all programmes and services for exceptional children; that is, children who have learning disabilities and difficulties, as well as children who are gifted and talented.

To ensure that this highly specialized field of education receives renewed attention, we established a new special education branch, effective July 1, 1974. The overall goal of the branch is to develop policies and programmes designed to assist local school boards in providing appropriate educational opportunities of recognized quality of all exceptional children in Ontario.

The new branch is providing a very clear and identifiable point of focus within the ministry, so that our professionals in this field are easily accessible to all those who have problems and concerns related to special education. In addition to their responsibilities, the staff is performing an ombudsman type of role on behalf of the children with learning disabilities of all types.

The new branch has already strengthened a close liaison with other ministries, such as Health and Community and Social Services, in order to provide effective co-ordination among these ministries providing services for exceptional children.

Each of our nine regional offices will have one or more persons clearly identified as special educational officers. Their responsibilities will include getting out into the community to assist local school officials in assessing special education needs and policies in their areas, and to get involved with parents’ groups, providing information and assistance at all levels.

About a year ago, Mr. Chairman, I also appointed a minister’s advisory council on special education; already the council has had a considerable impact on our activities. Indeed, one of their recommendations was the establishment of the special education branch. The council represents parents, teachers and trustees, and there is no doubt at all that it is providing a continuing and strengthening of the liaison between the ministry and those we serve in helping to provide educational programmes and services for exceptional children.

We now have advisory councils for each of the provincial schools for the blind and the deaf, made up of parents, teachers, blind and deaf adults, and representatives of organizations of and for the blind and the deaf, labour and industry. These councils meet regularly to discuss and advise the ministry on those matters referring to the education, growth and development of blind and deaf children.

By any objective and honest comparison, progress in the past year has reconfirmed that today Ontario is second to few, if any, jurisdictions anywhere in terms of the services provided to exceptional children. Of course, we also believe there is much still to be done. And, Mr. Chairman, we continue to move ahead. We shall try to strengthen the partnership among parents, teachers, school administrators, trustees, representatives of interested associations and officials of the Ministry of Education, to this end.

Mr. Chairman, through 1974 there has been a great deal of forward movement related to the adoption of the metric system in Ontario education and, in fact, all across Canada. The ministers of education for all provinces are working toward the implementation of the metric system in our schools by 1978, on the premise that the federal government will follow through on the metrification time line that has been announced.

Of course, this has major implications everywhere, and most especially for our schools. The changeover to metric is more fundamental than it may appear on the surface. It involves looking at the process of quantification and measurement in ways that are quite different from those we have been accustomed to. It means changing textbooks and learning materials of all kinds. Many items of equipment will become obsolete and will have to be modified or replaced.

The phasing-in process in Ontario will require careful planning, and we are sparing no effort in this regard.

It will also involve extra expenditures by school boards. In order to ease the financial burden we anticipate providing special metrification grants over and above the regular legislative grants in 1975. I might point out that many boards of education, Mr. Chairman, have already established their priorities in this area and have begun the necessary planning and in-service teacher preparation.

Another area that has received top priority during 1974, and will receive top priority in the year ahead, is the teaching of French, both in English- and French-language schools. Last year we commissioned a ministerial committee on the teaching of French. Its report, known as the Gillin report after its chairman, is being seriously studied right now.

Mr. Chairman, new approaches will emerge in due course and all of those who have a particular feel for the importance of the French fact in Canada life should keep their spirits high, and also realistic. In this connection, we are also keeping close watch on a number of research studies presently being carried on, particularly in the Ottawa area. From the results of these and other studies, we hope to learn how we can build soundly and achieve our desired objectives of strengthening the teaching and learning of French throughout the province.

The government’s position on this matter I think, Mr. Chairman, is well known. We are in complete accord with a statement in the Gillin report that study of French brings “a healthy attitude toward French and a sympathetic understanding of the people who speak it ... Learning both the languages, French and English, encourages the growth of communication and respect, both of which are needed to bind this nation together ...”

That is a quote, Mr. Chairman, from the Gillin report which, as I say, we are in accord with. The report goes on to say, and again we support this most strongly:

“There is a growing feeling that Ontario, as Quebec’s nearest neighbour, should take the lead in promoting French rights and the French language. This province has the educational system, the wealth and the goodwill to ease some of the strains in the fabric of Confederation.”

Mr. Chairman, during 1974 we have been pleased to observe the appearance of some local committees to study the question of moral education. In large measure, this has resulted from an appeal I made earlier this year. It is a difficult area, fraught with potential misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

While it is clear that our public schools cannot promote the doctrines of any particular religious group, this does not mean that they should neglect the many ethical issues that confront young people of all religious persuasions. Our students should be prepared to make sound moral choices in dealing with many complex problems as they learn to function in the social, political and economic spheres.

This year, 1974, has seen a continued emphasis on elementary education in general. An example of this is the special committee that studied the differences between elementary and secondary ceilings. In its report, this committee observed:

“It is apparent that consideration should be given to increasing the funding for the early years of a child’s education. Children should be given as positive an initial school experience as possible.

“More emphasis on dealing with students’ individual problems in the early years could greatly reduce the self-selection process which causes those students with unattended problems to drop out.”

The government fully recognizes the importance of the early years of a child’s education. We recognize that today in Ontario a need is perceived for additional discretion under our ceilings policy to support and strengthen elementary school programmes and to ensure that our schools have the necessary resources to provide the kind of education which young children deserve and which parents rightfully expect.

As a result, Mr. Chairman, when the spending ceilings for 1975 were announced last month, school boards were given the added flexibility of being able to increase their spending by an additional $80 per elementary pupil over and above the basic 13 per cent increase in ceilings that was announced at that time.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): You narrowed the gap by a mere $12.

Hon. Mr. Wells: During the past year, Mr. Chairman, major work has been done on the new curriculum guidelines for the primary and junior divisions in a document that is commonly known as P(1)J(1). We’ve come a long way this year and we expect to see the fruits of these labours within the next two or three months. The new document, when it is published, will almost assuredly be a leader in pointing the direction to the future, insofar as the very important early years of a child’s formal education are concerned.

Among other things, the new official P(1)J(1) document will specify the particular skills and knowledge which children in the earlier grades should have an opportunity of attaining. As always, great stress will be laid upon the individual capabilities and differences among children.

While the new P(1)J(1) circular will clarify the provincial goals to be pursued and the ministry’s expectations for this programme, it will leave to the teacher’s discretion the specific methods to be applied and the illustrations to be used. Thus the teacher will continue to have full scope for adapting the programme to meet the individual student’s needs.

The official P(1)J(1) curriculum guideline will be backed up by a much lengthier publication, entitled “Education in tie Primary and Junior Divisions.” This will explore the objectives of the curriculum in much more detail, and explain what is known of the development process at this level. And it will help enlarge the teacher’s background of understanding so they will know why certain approaches are likely to be successful. Mr. Chairman, the third component of this comprehensive new curriculum package will be a battery of support documents which will give down-to-earth practical examples of how to go about achieving the provincial goals. These documents will be of considerable assistance to many teachers, especially inexperienced ones, in selecting and using content and materials.

The ministry’s regional staff will also be working with local supervisory officials and consultants to ensure that all teachers have a thorough working knowledge of the primary and junior programmes, as well as providing direct assistance where appropriate and when appropriate.

Mr. Chairman, the year 1974 has also seen major changes in teacher education in Ontario. There are about 5,600 teachers-in-training in the 11 faculties, schools and colleges of education this year. This is an increase of about 1,000 over last year. The supply of new teachers for the 1974-1975 year is about equal to the demand, with well over 90 per cent of our graduates obtaining positions.

But there were shortages in particular fields, such as technical, French language, and special education. Steps are being taken to increase the numbers in these particular fields, although the shortage of teachers in French-language schools and the teachers of French in English-language schools is likely to remain serious for some time.

The preparation of teachers for the school system, of course, is one of the basic responsibilities of the Minister of Education, and we have been moving ahead in this area as well during the past year.

In September, Sudbury Teachers’ College was integrated into the faculty of education of Laurentian University, and the Ottawa Teachers’ College became part of the faculty of education of the University of Ottawa.

This completed the policy of integrating teachers’ colleges with the faculties of education. However, instead of integrating all our institutions, the remaining teachers’ colleges in Hamilton and Ontario were organized into the Ontario Teacher Education College and retained as part of the Ministry of Education. Already, Mr. Chairman, it is very clear that this will ensure a healthy diversity in the ways in which teachers are educated in this province and it will enable the ministry to respond quickly and directly to emergencies and new needs.

One example of this was evident during this past summer, when the ministry offered a special programme for training native teachers for the province. There were 96 successful candidates in the course, which was held at the Hamilton campus. Most of these people are presently teaching or otherwise assisting in the education of native students in this province. The second phase of the training in this programme will be given next summer by the ministry.

This project has been an excellent example of close co-operation between this ministry, the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and organizations of native people, in providing improved programmes for our native people.

Mr. Chairman, when the establishment of the Ontario Teacher Education College was announced, we also indicated our intention to appoint a minister’s advisory committee for the college. This 12-member group will advise me on programme policy at the college and will assure that the college will be both innovative and sound in its offerings. The members of this committee will be announced in the very near future.

Mr. Chairman, the year 1974 has been a year of further consolidation and refinement at the secondary school level. The latest edition of circular HS (1) is for a two-year, rather than the traditional one-year period. Teachers and administrators thus will be able to plan with confidence for a longer period of time.

Mr. Foulds: They will have at least two years.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, that’s longer than one year.

Mr. Foulds: That is longer than they had before.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): It is a 100 per cent increase.

Hon. Mr. Wells: That’s right. It is a 100 per cent increase as the hon. member says.

There will be less reason for the --

Mr. Foulds: Less flexibility.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- criticism we have sometimes heard in the past that changes come in such quick succession that it is difficult to keep up with them. Mr. Chairman, our secondary schools are continuing to offer a balanced programme. Enrolment in such subjects as mathematics, English and the sciences continues to reflect a very high degree of interest in the traditional academic subjects on the part of our students. For many students, the vocationally oriented courses in secondary schools are offering new opportunities to enhance their ability to deal with the problems of everyday living.

The credit system has helped to break down the rigid barriers between programmes so that students can, for example, include one or more technical courses in a predominantly academic programme. Thus they can acquire a basis for the technological literacy that is so useful in our society.

Beginning this year, it has become mandatory that students earn four credits in English studies and two credits in Canadian studies before they can qualify for a secondary school graduation diploma. These new requirements will result in an increased emphasis on communication skills and a better knowledge and appreciation of our Canadian heritage and national identity. There are also many studies in the general area of the quality and protection of human life that are receiving increasing emphasis. Many of these programmes will involve close co-operation with ministries of the Ontario government other than Education -- for example, driver education which is now being studied by a joint task force made up of the officials of the ministries of Education and Transportation and Communications.

Preparation for effective living, Mr. Chairman, includes family studies, nutrition and physical activity. The health, growth and development of our children will be aided by enriched programmes in nutrition and physical activity that reflect our growing awareness of the physical fitness needs of our young people and children. This national priority will be given particular emphasis by my ministry in co-operation with related programmes in other ministries.

During 1974, we have been looking at ways in which activities carried out partly or entirely outside the school, which have a substantial educational component, can be recognized for credit toward a secondary school diploma. The activities being looked at are of three kinds: work experience, community service and the use of community resources for independent study or class purposes.

Part of the same process is the anticipated provision for certain young people to be excused from school attendance at the age of 14 or 15. Such students may find suitable employment or other opportunities for activities of an educational nature. They will be kept on the school rolls and under the broad supervision of the school to ensure that they are not being exploited. In this way, I think, Mr. Chairman, we are recognizing the small but significant number of individuals for whom school attendance is not the most constructive experience available.

In view of the increasing number of alternatives, dropping out does not have the same implication that it used to have. It is much less likely to signify the end of educational opportunities but may simply mean that education is being conducted in another form. It is interesting to note that the drop-in rate, that is, the rate of return to school after an interruption, has doubled in recent years.

To gain a better insight into the drop-out problem, research has been initiated in two areas. In the French-language schools, Mr. Chairman, the retention question has been under study by an OISE team, financed by a ministry grant in aid for the past three years. The ministry has also entered into a contract with OISE researchers to study the problem concerning drop-outs in the school system as a whole.

Mr. Foulds: How about a study to find out what is wrong with OISE?

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Yes.

Hon. Mr. Wells: There is nothing wrong with OISE. It is doing a good job now. I think my friend would agree to that. A good number of his friends are up there.

Mr. Foulds: That is true, but the teachers in the classrooms don’t agree with you.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, I think they are beginning to agree.

Another major area of activity during the past year has been the very important field of evaluation. As we are all aware, there has been considerable public demand for effective evaluation of our educational efforts. The cry is both for evaluation of individual students’ progress and for evaluation of educational systems.

To meet concerns related to assessment of individual student progress we have established a committee that has been at work during the past year studying evaluation of student achievement. We are optimistic that some very tangible and concrete results will emerge from this committee in the near future. I might say, Mr. Chairman, we view this as an extremely high priority matter.

Of course, the ministry has for some time been promoting the idea of evaluation as an integral part of the teaching-learning process. Thus there has been a move away from the long, formal examinations at the end of the year in favour of more short tests, class period tests, evaluation of daily performance and the like.

In order to improve the process of measurement and evaluation in the classroom, I believe teachers in training at colleges and faculties of education are receiving better preparation than ever before in this area. Additional help is also being made available in in-service programmes as well.

Mr. Chairman, further to the matter of evaluation in education, 1974 has seen major strides taken by our Educational Resources Allocation System project. This group has been developing a comprehensive and systematic approach to decision-making and the management of school systems. It is currently involved in 16 projects with school boards across the province.

The ERAS project, as it is known colloquially, deserves serious consideration by all those involved with education, particularly in the light of all our concerns about long-term planning for educational development and for effective management of our school systems.

Recognizing these principles, we have been encouraging school boards to use a new service initiated by the ministry which involves the co-operative evaluation of a school system. This service is set up at the request of a local board and includes both internal and external teams of evaluators.

The internal evaluation team is composed of teachers, parents, students, administrators and any other interested people in the community. They concentrate on examining the effectiveness of working relationships, but steer clear of assessing the performance of individuals. The external team includes educators from other systems outside the system being evaluated and is composed, say, of trustees, teachers and ministry officials.

After the internal and external teams have completed their independent assessments, they compare notes and report to the school board. This process focuses attention on the strengths and weaknesses of the system and provides a sound basis for educational improvements.

To date, four of these co-operative educational projects have been completed with the West Parry Sound Board of Education, the Dryden Board of Education, the Ottawa Separate School Board and the Department of National Defence Schools in Germany. Two or more projects are currently under way with the Manitoulin Island Board of Education and the Kirkland Lake Separate School Board. Five possible additional projects are now at the negotiation stage. We hope that increasing numbers of school boards will avail themselves of the opportunity of utilizing this co-operative evaluation service.

Mr. Chairman, one of the major steps taken just recently has been the development and announcement of a new ministry programme designed to substantially increase the interaction between local schools and community residents. We, of course, strongly support the idea of the local neighbourhood school serving as the catalyst toward developing a community identity, a community sense of involvement and spirit, and a place where men and women and young people can go freely, for whatever purpose, without feeling threatened or out of place.

To this end, we outlined a six-point programme, which the Ministry of Education will implement beginning immediately.

1. We will create a community schools unit within the ministry. There will be a small staff at the central office at Queen’s Park. In addition, a community education officer will be designated within all nine of our regional offices throughout the province.

The community schools unit will be backed up by an advisory committee, which will include representatives of provincial associations concerned with education, recreation and community affairs. The committee’s main purpose will be to ensure that we have first-hand knowledge and expertise at our disposal, and that co-operation, co-ordination and advice are at a maximum.

2. The ministry will provide backing to school boards who really want to get serious about community schools or to try the idea on for size. Boards of education and Roman Catholic separate school boards will be able to submit specific proposals for new or expanded programmes, including staff needs that might be involved. For the remainder of the present school year, 1974-1975, we will support boards to a maximum of $10,000 per approved project. We have already mailed details of this plan to school boards, Mr. Chairman, so that proposals can be submitted by the end of December. The same programme will be continued throughout the 1975-1976 school year.

3. We will soon initiate a project to produce a practical handbook of facts, ideas and examples related to community schools. This handbook will serve a dual function, hopefully, in serving to inform and stimulate both school principals and their staffs and interested citizens.

4. We will continue to allow school boards, if they wish, to classify their expenditures related to community use of school facilities as being outside the educational spending ceilings.

5. We will officially and strongly again support the idea of full community use of school facilities after regular school hours. As well, we support the community use of vacant school facilities during school hours where appropriate, provided that other school boards do not require this space. And we will do everything possible to facilitate arrangements to these ends.

6. We will officially and strongly urge school boards to examine their procedures and policies related to their liaison and co-operation with other agencies serving the community, with a view to improving the lines of communication between these agencies, which of course is a necessity if a community school in the truest sense is to be developed.

These are the six essential ingredients in this first phase of an active plan to encourage the development of the community school idea all across Ontario where it is not now presently operating, Mr. Chairman.

I have indicated today a number of the priority matters with which the Ministry of Education has concerned itself during the past year, and with which we will move forward during the coming year. There are, of course, many more that could be mentioned, but the essential message is that all of these and other activities are intended for one purpose and one purpose only -- to contribute ultimately to what goes on for each student in the classrooms of this province.

I think, Mr. Chairman, never should we forget that in education the priority that stands above all others is that we must continue to provide the kind of educational experiences that will best equip and prepare the young people of today to take their places as knowledgeable, sensitive and aware members of a society, a society that of course will soon be theirs to lead, and that will also prepare and equip and make them ready to participate in meeting and solving the problems of their community, their country and the world at large.

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

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We have just heard the minister’s comments for the last 32 minutes. I appreciate some of the comments that he did make. I see that he has listened to the select committee on the community use of schools. He has adopted some of their recommendations and it is fitting that there is that immediate action as a result of the hearings of that committee.

I think that the minister has taken the first step. I hope he just doesn’t stop there but that he continues to implement recommendations so that we really do have community schools in operation in the province.

I will probably return to the minister’s remarks a little later in my own comments, but at this time I would like, as the Liberal Party critic for this ministry, to bring to the ministry some of the impressions that I have received over the past year.

One year ago I made the following comments in my introductory remarks:

“Never, never before has any Ministry of Education been responsible for so much and utter disappointment for and to so many as this ministry has been for the past year.

“Never were so few responsible for so much chaos. Not only boards of education and parents, but also teachers and students have voiced their strong non-acceptance of the Davis government’s approach to the education of our most cherished resource, our children and our youth.”

In spite of what has taken place in the ensuing period, Mr. Chairman, I still think that the same uneasiness, the same discontent and the same disappointment is still prevalent in the educational system. As Minister of Education for the past 2 1/2 years, the minister has implemented a series of policies which resulted in the closure of every school in the province when 30,000 teachers protested in front of Queen’s Park just 11 months ago. It was the largest demonstration ever held and the degree to which teachers become politicized indicated how much many of them were totally dissatisfied with the policies of the minister. He undermined the autonomy of local school boards and he alienated 105,000 teachers across the province.

Mr. Chairman, the trouble began with the introduction of the legislation to nullify retroactively the clause in teachers’ contracts that permits them to resign at the end of the year. The purpose of his bill was to prevent 7,500 teachers from withdrawing their services as a bargaining tactic with their local boards. The result was that four times as many teachers left their classrooms to march on Queen’s Park alone and the whole provincial system was closed for one day.

Since the Teaching Profession Act was passed some 20 years ago, Ontario teachers have negotiated thousands of contracts with local schoolboards, but until the present minister took over the ministry I doubt if a single school district was closed by contract disputes.

When the minister introduced legislation to deny teachers the right to resign, negotiations had already been under way in 17 school districts, although many may have settled on their own if the minister hadn’t interfered with the collective bargaining process. However, the minister, in interfering, implied that teaching was an essential service. Notwithstanding the fact that it is an important profession, teaching is not an essential service.

In other words, the teachers’ strike did not endanger the life, health or safety of the people in the province and we in the Liberal Party believe that teachers should be allowed to go out on strike as a last resort, if negotiations break down completely.

We are waiting for the ministry to introduce legislation that will deal with teacher-school board negotiations. The Reville report has been out some two years now and the government still hasn’t acted on the recommendations of the report, nor has it rejected them. We would recommend that upcoming legislation include the right to withhold services.

I would be most anxious to hear from the minister what his feelings are, at the present time, on this issue. Has the fact that the teachers are more dissatisfied now than ever before, changed your mind on this point, Mr. Minister? After a meeting just two nights ago, the teachers in the city of Windsor -- some 700 -- threatened to walk out if negotiations with the local board cannot be resolved. The potential walkout would be on Tuesday, Nov. 12, so you have a weekend in which the two parties will have to get together in an attempt to resolve their issues. Now, their previous contract had expired at the end of August, and the teachers have been working without an agreement since then. Surely there should be some method of getting parties together, so that immediately after they terminate one contract, they can be working toward the resolution of their new contract.

A strike will most likely be called on Nov. 12. A Mr. O’Connor, the provincial secretary of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Association, said: “We have been forced into this by spending ceilings.” The provincial body and its mass of secondary-school teachers’ support was brought in mostly because we can’t negotiate from a position of no strength. The teachers made it clear that they will not submit to any form of arbitration or Ministry of Education intervention. They want to be able to resolve their difficulties between themselves and the local board. From what I understand, both sides are willing to negotiate practically around the clock in an attempt to resolve the problem.

However, Mr. Hawkins of the board made the following comment: “If they have decided not to settle” -- that’s referring to the teachers -- “unless the spending ceilings are broken, then we may never reach an agreement. I want to stress that we are prepared to continue negotiations.” However, the breakdown is a result of provincially imposed ceilings on education spending.

To give you a reason why the discontent remains among many of the teachers in the province, when one compares the salary grid of a teacher with others in the community, you find that it starts from $7,200 in category one, at a minimum, and it goes to a maximum of $17,600 in category four. Now, these are not new negotiated contract arrangements; these are the old grid figures. You can imagine an individual with four years of university education commanding such a low salary.

For example, policemen will start at $10,000 a year, and no one denies their right to be able to get and command such a salary. A lecturer at a university would start at $10,200. A public utilities service clerk would receive $11,350, going up to $12,300. A nurse would start at $11,350. Firefighters would receive $12,900 after 3 1/2 years of service.

You can see that the various individuals that I have mentioned start at salaries that are substantially higher than does the individual in whom we put all our trust and faith in providing a proper and substantial education to our own youth. I don’t under any circumstance attempt to demean them or to say that the individuals that I have mentioned are not worth the amount of money that they are receiving. They are worth that and maybe more, but in comparing what the teachers are receiving, it certainly does not speak well for the salary structure and the grid that has been set up for them.

In my estimation, requiring an individual to work for 14 years to reach a maximum salary is just not right in today’s economy. If those working for the civil service, fire and police can reach a maximum within five years, I think other segments of the economy should be treated in exactly that same fashion. I think the grid as developed by the teachers, probably, should be completely withdrawn, should be brought up to date, or it should be negotiated between the teachers and the boards to progressively reduce it so that the teachers will be able to reach a maximum salary in the same number of years as others in our society.

For example, I note that a journeyman plumber can receive as much as $18,320. No one denies him the right to earn all of that. Then you can look upon an individual who has devoted his whole life to the education of our youth working for 14 years and still not receiving that same type of salary. Yet the educational requirement of that plumber could be only grade 12 whereas the teacher at $17,000 would have to have a college education, plus some post-graduate courses.

I think the grid is going to have to be redrawn. There is no reason to require a teacher to take 14 years to reach his or her maximum when others reach their maximum in a much shorter period of time. To me, the Ministry of Education in the areas in which they negotiate with teachers should be the ones who set the example and substantially reduce that grid. I know this is a bargaining point between the two parties but I think the boards of education as well as the ministry shouldn’t wait to be approached but should lead and take the initiative to redraw the old-fashioned 14-year grid and make it a more realistic five-year period or some period of time agreed to by both parties.

As a result of some of these problems, the problem of attempting to obtain a decent standard of living does cause a lot of the discontent among teachers, so that in the process of their negotiation they find that, unless they take a very strong stand, their chance of being able to get their fair share of our economy is that much smaller. They have no teacher-board rules or regulations or no legislation by which they can bargain. One year ago when we were discussing legislation in the House here, the member for York Centre (Mr. Deacon) did make a suggestion. At the time when he made the suggestion, I can recall not only the ministry but others in this House scorned his suggestion. However, when one reads the press of late, one would find that the recommendation or the suggestion that he had made is being experimented with and is being used in negotiations between teachers and boards. That is the final offer selection.

In a recent meeting, reported in the Toronto Globe on Nov. 5, Charles M. Rehmus, co-ordinator of the Institute of Labour and Industrial Relations at the University of Michigan -- Wayne State, made mention that the final offer selection can be a creative and beneficial alternative to strikes or to the conventional third-party decision-making.

Even the Toronto Star has proposed final offer selection to its mechanical unions in the current bargaining procedures.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Final selection is a form of arbitration.

Mr. B. Newman: We would like to see the ministry not necessarily recommend it, because that has to be done by the two parties that are involved and I don’t think there should be dictation on their part. As I make these comments, I make them so that teachers and boards both can be looking into this in an attempt to resolve it.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I would be happy to have them use it in Windsor, if they’d like.

Mr. Foulds: I bet the minister would.

Mr. B. Newman: Well, I don’t mind leaving it here.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I said I would be happy to have them use it in Windsor. Why doesn’t the member use his good offices to encourage this in Windsor?

Mr. B. Newman: I hope by hearing this and -- maybe by reading the Globe that they too will look at the offer. I don’t think any method of resolving differences, simply because it might be innovative, should be discarded. I’m not saying, as the member for York North (Mr. W. Hodgson) did not say, either, that this was necessarily the final answer to the problem -- but it at least is an approach that has not been used and should be experimented with to a little greater degree.

The core of the final offer selection is that an arbitrator or selector makes a choice between the final offer of the union and the company. But there are several refinements and variations of the final-offer selection. The arbitrator can choose between a total package presented by the union and the employer or between the positions of the two sides on individual items, according to the ground rules that have been set up.

Even Manitoba’s labour management review committee on public-sector employer-employee relations has recommended the use of final-offer selection, with the arbitrator’s choice limited to either the employer’s or union’s full package.

Mr. Rehmus, in his comments, states he believes that the value of a flexible system under which the arbitrator can encourage the parties to change their positions before the “final, final” position. He said that in Michigan, where final-offer arbitration is required by law in impasses involving public safety employees, five out of six sets of negotiations end in a settlement without arbitration. And two-thirds of those that do go to arbitration reach a settlement in the course of proceedings without need for an award.

Mr. Foulds: That’s a higher average of arbitration than happens in Ontario.

Mr. B. Newman: Prof. Rehmus said that it is not reasonable either to employers or to employees that arbitration proceedings should be grossly inequitable. “Arbitration is not Russian roulette in which the loser should die.” For that reason, he disapproved of selection of an arbitrator of package offers rather than making decisions on individual items.

Prof. Rehmus said that final-offer arbitration, if flexible in nature, is a creative and beneficial alternative to strikes or to conventional third-party decision-making. He said:

“When used by sophisticated negotiators lit doesn’t harm and can genuinely support the collective bargaining system, which has become fundamental to so many employment relationships in North America.”

Now, I have also noted that in the Wentworth County Board of Education, the system was used and they did arrive at a settlement between the two parties, the teachers and the board. And Mr. Thomas Burton, a trustee and the board’s chief negotiator said:

“Final-offer selection is a much softer form of arbitration and I like that much better. I think it resulted in us being so close on the unresolved issues.

“It puts so much emphasis on both sides being reasonable in their demands and worked well in this situation.”

Both parties said that they would be willing, once again, to try final-offer selection.

I have also noted that in a publication from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, “Federation Update” of Oct. 21, 1974, that in a dispute in Sault Ste. Marie, final-offer selection was going to be the method of arbitration in that dispute between the board and the teachers.

Mr. Chairman, the problem in the negotiations between the two is essentially the imposition of ceilings, and trustees, if they are going to be bound by ceilings, find that they really have little that they can do. In fact, they become so frustrated that they can’t change the school year, they can’t buy or sell school sites, they can’t build new schools, they can’t exchange unused facilities, without prior approval from the Ministry of Education.

Now, they also state that most guidelines and curricula are established by the government. Their programmes are all virtually set. All financial authority rests with the government. The trustees are left with the task of most effectively dispersing the moneys allocated for specific projects. They end their comment by saying: “A good administrator could do the same thing, and no one would have to worry about him squandering the money because there isn’t any money to squander.” In other words, they infer that there really would be no need for having boards of education if you’re going to have them so constricted in their attempt to operate and run their schools.

In talking about ceilings, Mr. Chairman, the Bureau of Municipal Research wrote a paper last December and came to the following conclusions on provincial spending ceilings:

“While we sincerely appreciate the need for fiscal responsibility in education, we do not believe that restraints such as arbitrary budget ceilings represent a reasonable approach to this goal. Ceilings should be accomplished both by provincial guidelines for reductions and by a rationale for ceilings, including the projected impact on the quality of education ... As an apparent first step toward the total provincial takeover of education, financial ceilings offer a poor beginning and leave little hope that an innovative educational system will be forthcoming.”

The Bureau of Municipal Research went on to say:

“The ultimate responsibility for the development of our educational system must rest primarily with one recognizable body. It’s either going to be the province or the local school boards who call the shots, and while we feel the government closest to the people could do the better job, a decision one way or the other would help to clear up a lot of problems.”

The education policies of this government have created greated centralization of the control of finances of local school boards in spite of the fact that they have claimed to do the opposite. The imposition of spending ceilings has seriously eroded the autonomy of the local boards and it’s forcing them closer and closer to a provincial stereotype which fails to recognize differing needs across the province.

The imposition of ceilings has really meant that teachers -- and, I may say, teachers alone -- now have wage controls imposed upon them. No other segment of our society has wage controls imposed upon it but, through the imposition of ceilings, Mr. Minister, you and your party actually are saying just what your federal counterpart said, “We want wage controls. We will impose them.”

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): It is interesting how little interest the NDP is showing in this debate.

Mr. J. R. Smith (Hamilton Mountain): They have confidence in us.

Mr. B. Newman: We in the Liberal Party believe the government should relinquish its day-to-day budgetary control through its ceiling policy so that local autonomy of democratically elected school boards can be meaningful and effective. The remaining problem of equality of opportunity throughout the province can be fulfilled by the assumption, as a matter of provincial policy, of an average of 80 per cent of the cost of education at the provincial level rather than the 60 per cent that it is at the present time.

I bring to your attention, Mr. Minister, that your government has accepted the policy of 80 per cent of the cost of education being borne at the provincial level. You have done that in post-secondary education, where you are now paying 78 per cent of that cost. So all you have to do is transfer or transpose that policy into your responsibility and provide, over a phased-in period, 80 per cent of the cost of education, a policy that this party has been espousing for maybe 12 years now, Mr. Minister, that I am aware of.

When you look at the effects of ceilings and you get down to the local area, the Toronto school board, you see how hard it does hit a board, how it affects quality of education and really imposes a hardship on the citizens as well as on the consumers of the educational system. I could, Mr. Chairman, read the statistics concerning the Metro elementary budget -- how in two years it has only gone up from $195.7 million to $214.9 million in 1974; how the secondary school budget went up in 1972 from $172 million to $199 million; how the elementary per-pupil ceiling went up from $786 to $885; the secondary school pupil ceiling went up from $1,282 in 1972 to $1,429 in 1974; how the elementary school enrolment has dropped from 266,000 to 242,000; how the secondary school enrolment has almost remained stationary from 134,000 to 134,000 plus. Naturally when I am giving you enrolment figures for 1974 these are not actual figures, these are really estimated figures.

The number of teachers in the elementary school system has dropped from 12,000-and-some to 11,000-and-some. The number of secondary school teachers has dropped from 8,165 to 8,139. The overall elementary pupil-teacher ratio was decreased from 20.3 to 20.1, whereas the secondary school pupil-teacher ration went up from 16.3 to 16.4.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to make comments on some of this, but first I want to bring in the weighting factor in determining grants. Before determining what each board is to receive in grants weighting factors must be considered. These factors include such things as special education, compensatory education, age of school facilities, admissions, population density, and so forth.

The Metro Toronto board has consistently opposed the weighting factor ceiling technique for controlling the cost of education on the grounds that it is grossly inadequate in measuring the educational needs of individual school systems. Each year the board submits briefs to the ministry suggesting how the existing ceiling formula might be improved. For example, in special education; Metro’s percentage of pupils in special education is much higher than that in the rest of the provinces -- 3.3 per cent in Metro as compared to 1.6 per cent for the rest of the provinces.

The weighting factor is inadequate as far as special education is concerned. Thus funds for regular grade pupil must be cut somewhat in order to sustain special education programmes. Also the segregated method for the special education pupils -- that is, having these pupils in a special class all day long -- must be sacrificed for the resource or withdrawal approach. Pupils who need special education are in a regular class except for perhaps two or three periods when they go into a special education class. Class size and the regular programme has to be larger to accommodate the resource approach. In addition, whereas the regular grade student enrolment is declining, the special education enrolment is increasing.

At the secondary level, inner-city school operations are inseparable from the special education programmes. Again the problem is that the money provided under the ceilings, and the weighted factor doesn’t cover the expenses, and money must be taken from regular grade pupils. If the costs of special education for the year 1973-1974 are com- pared with the ceilings for 1974, one can see that the costs of special education were approximately $10.5 million in excess of the ceilings in elementary schools and $6 million in excess of the ceilings in the secondary schools. The differential would be even higher if the 1974 budget were compared with the 1974 ceilings. Even though this is the case at the present time, there are still several hundred students who have been tested and are waiting for placement in classes which are already filled to capacity.

As far as education of the deaf is concerned, the Metro Toronto board system operates the Metro Toronto School for the Deaf, which provides education for day students. To fund the school the taxpayers in Metro pay 93 per cent and seven per cent comes from provincial grants. Elsewhere, as is the case in the school for the deaf in Milton, also a day-school programme, there is 100 per cent funding by the province.

In a brief to the ministry dated on July 23, 1974, the Metro school board requested that the Ministry of Education provide 100 per cent of the funds needed to operate programmes for the deaf and the blind, on the basis that if accommodation were not provided for these students in Metro Toronto, they would be attending schools operated and paid for by the province.

As far as the schools for the retarded are concerned, the Metro school board is finding it increasingly difficult to keep within the 1974 ceilings and still provide the same level of operation. Factors making it difficult include: increased salaries to teachers; small class sizes, which must be maintained to provide for adequate instructions -- increased admission of children with multiple handicaps and a low functional level necessitates smaller class sizes; special programmes for non-verbal students; increased operating costs in the schools.

Now, the compensatory factor on the elementary level. Weighting factors are also considered for a compensatory education. Large metropolitan areas produce problems of their own, such as sound, air and visual pollution, immigration, public housing, welfare, socio-economic influences, and so forth. Metro Toronto is no exception to these problems.

The board has special programmes to tackle these problems. In the core area of Metro Toronto, inner-city and English-as-a-second-language programmes have been established. In most cases, special-education, inner-city and English-as-a-second-language oriented problems are intermingled. It is not unusual to find inner-city schools with substantial special-education programmes and English-as-a-second-language programmes as well. Of course, extra resources are needed to provide these programmes. Thus, weighting factors are introduced, but they are not adequate and money must again be channelled from the regular pupil programme. Again Toronto loses.

When one examines statistics on immigration, one sees that 35 per cent -- according to the 1974 figure -- of all immigration to Canada settles in Metro Toronto. The new immigrants also tend to settle in the core areas. Thus one can understand how important these programmes are in the assimilation of the immigrant student, but with the present ceilings, this must be done at the expense of the regular pupil.

Mr. Chairman, I doubt the city of Toronto will tolerate this much longer. In 1973 Metro’s density statistic was 13.7 persons per acre. Although this high density brings in higher commercial assessment and thus a favourable assessment per pupil, it also brings in its own special problems. The proximity of many schools to industrial and commercial properties requires organization and property-management approaches, different and more comprehensive than schools in residential areas with limited commercial assessment and lower density.

The effects of air and sound pollutants with respect to facilities management, large school populations on small school sites, the complexity created by multi-problem combinations of special-education, English-as-a-second-language and inner-city problems, inadequate parks, recreational facilities, areas of concentrated juvenile delinquency -- all are situations which have their foundations in an area of population density. In the density factor, Metro’s school system receives the maximum weighting factor of 10.5, even though Metro’s statistics exceed that 13.7 persons per acre. Mr. Chairman, this isn’t fair at all.

The rising costs: School boards are faced with rising and inflated costs, just as we are. In the year between July, 1973, and July, 1974, the national consumer price index increased by 11.4 per cent and the wholesale price index increased by 26 per cent. Fuel and utilities increased by 16 per cent. Thus you can see that the school boards feel the pinch on the money given to them under these ceilings.

Besides the rise in these indexes, the board must also contend with contracts which will give elementary school teachers an increase of 13.2 per cent over 1973-1974, and a contract with secondary schools providing for an increase of 11.7 per cent over the previous year. A contract with clerical and maintenance personnel will give them a 10 per cent increase in 1975. The increase in the price of fuel and utilities must also be provided for.

Even though the ministry will have difficulty in coping with the effects of inflation on their ceilings, they must realize that the penalty for an inadequate provision will likely be a further erosion in both the non-instructional and instructional areas of the budget.

As one can see by studying the enrolment figures for the last three years, it is evident that enrolment is declining. The 1974 ceiling provisions include a declining enrolment factor. But one must remember that when there is a decline in enrolment it normally is spread throughout all grades and courses. As a consequence, the saving in direct expenditures, such as teachers’ salaries and other supporting expenditures, are not directly proportional.

Fixed expenditures such as building maintenance, plant operation, computer services and administration can be adjusted downward in the long term, but, in the short term, reductions which are directly proportional to enrolment can seriously disrupt the ongoing essential services. Over the long term, schools can be closed when enrolment declines, but in the short term they still have to be maintained.

Mr. Chairman, I was going to bring in the increase in the grant structure to both elementary and secondary schools, but I’ll talk about that in another item in a short while.

Expenditures in the elementary schools will likely rise at a faster rate than those in secondary schools as a consequence of certain changing patterns in the elementary schools.

The upgrading of qualifications of elementary school teachers will continue to be a significant factor in higher costs. The students moving from the public school system to the separate school system tend to be primarily those in the regular grades, leaving the public school system with a proportionately higher percentage of students in special programmes designed to meet the needs of children with special problems.

Most educators share the view that more attention needs to be paid to the early childhood programmes, and lower pupil-teacher ratios in the early grades is a key strategy. The expansion of programmes of a remedial and specified nature all require increased expenditures. The movement toward shared use of facilities also impacts costs in the elementary panel.

The school board endorses the trend in recent years to reduce the gap between elementary and secondary school basic ceilings, not only on the basis of percentage but also on dollar differential. The school board would request and support a substantial improvement in 1975.

In the Nov. 1 issue of the Toronto Star this year, the subject of books and the school ceilings was discussed: “Metro education officials blame the provincial ceilings on education spending for making them” cut back school book budgets. For example, the Toronto Board of Education spent only $7.38 per pupil for library books and texts, although the spending per elementary pupil was $9.53. Salaries make up 85 to 90 per cent of the Toronto board’s budget, and “in this tight budget situation, we have to look at cutting things, not people,” so a comment is attributed to a board official.

David Logan, chairman of the North York board says: “Books have become so expensive that the board is considering making parents pay for them. So far, only grade 13 students pay for books at present. Since 1969, the Ministry of Education has provided grants to cover textbooks, but the grants don’t cover the costs,” David Logan said. “The publishers say boards are cutting the book budgets because that’s easier than cutting salaries or staff.” Publishers, especially Canadian ones, continue to suffer and will go under if more money isn’t allocated to books. The school board’s greatest concern is that rising costs and inadequacies in the weighting factor/ceiling technique will result in further erosion of the services in the Metro school system in 1975. The board is particularly concerned with the elementary school board, which required a loan from the Ministry of Education in 1973 in order to accommodate, to the ceilings, and which, by agreement must be repaid in 1975 and/or in 1976.

The teachers’ federation is very much concerned over the imposition of the ceilings because imposition of ceilings, as set out by this government, simply shows that this government has failed. They have admitted failure in the health field by abolishing ceilings; I think that the minister here should follow his colleague in the Ministry of Health, a portfolio which he once held, and likewise eliminate ceilings and allow local autonomy to decide as to the way the education dollar should be spent.

Quite often the escalating costs of education are blamed solely on teachers. However, they have found there are at least 22 factors outside the control of teachers that have raised total education spending significantly. Among them you have the introduction of regional school boards, the introduction of costly community colleges, the expansion of adult education programmes, the explosion of new optional courses, the expansion of ETV equipment and programmes. You can see there are other factors that have increased substantially the cost of education.

The next topic that I would like to touch on for a while, Mr. Chairman, is the disparity between the elementary and secondary school grants. Back in 1973 the elementary pupil received $630. In 1974 it went up to $683. Then it was revised in April by adding another $21 and it was brought up to $704. For 1975 it is proposed to give elementary schools $876. That is a substantial increase over the previous year; that’s an increase of $172.

But in the secondary level, the grant started in 1973 with $1,130 per pupil. It went up to $1,210 in 1974, an increase of $80. It was revised in April, 1974, and elevated to $1,231, an increase of $21. And for 1975, it is proposed to be $1,391, or an in- crease of $160.

When you look at the overall educational expenditure in the two levels, we find, as of 1975, according to the new ceilings, 61.4 per cent of the dollar will be going to the secondary level -- referring to just the elementary and secondary pupils -- and only 38.6 per cent, roughly, will go to the primary level.

That is the per-pupil grant. That differential is much too high. In 1973, the differential between elementary and secondary was $500. In 1974 it was raised to $527. Now, as a result of the $80 the ministry is going to add beyond the 13 per cent increase in 1975, the differential between the elementary and secondary grant is $515.

Mr. Chairman, the ministry is not closing the gap; we are not even where we were in 1973. The difference is far too great. Now that elementary school teachers are just as qualified academically as secondary school teachers to teach and to earn a good salary, more money must be provided to the elementary schools to cover teachers’ salaries and other necessary school programmes that may be needed as a result.

Further, greater emphasis must be placed on training in the primary years. It is far more important to have superior instruction in the lower grades, when children are learning life-long approaches to problem-solving. It is better to educate children properly when they are young so that remedial classes will not be needed in later years. It is better to identify those children with learning and other disabilities at an early age than to deny them special education classes and courses to minimize or overcome their learning difficulties. It is better to have a lower pupil-teacher ratio in the early development age of the young learner than to deny him or her quality education.

Mr. Chairman, the minister should follow the recommendation of the federation of women teachers. They agree with providing percentage increases, providing you give, as they recommend, a flat sum payment above ceilings and also flat sum increases on the two sets of ceilings -- elementary and secondary. In addition, they would like $80 a year until the grant structure between the two levels is identical. If we want quality education; if we want our youth educated better at lower ages, and if we want to avoid a lot of social problems, we are going to have to progressively reduce the difference between elementary and secondary grants, and not by lowering the secondary grant. The secondary grant must continue to increase according to the cost of living, but the elementary grant has to be increased substantially so that within four or five years there will be no gap between the two.

All this, Mr. Chairman, means that more financial resources will have to be funnelled into the lower end of the educational pyramid.

The minister recognized the fact that elementary and secondary school grants should become more comparable when he added that $80 for elementary students. This doesn’t go far enough. You have to continue giving that $80 a year until both are on a par. Only when both receive the same amount of money are we going to find many needed innovative programmes implemented by boards on the elementary level. But this will happen only if the grant structure takes into consideration the needs of elementary school teachers and does not deny secondary school teachers their right to the education tax dollar.

Mr. Chairman, I have a lengthy letter from a principal of the Reginal School in Ottawa concerning the need for the elimination of the differential. I am not going to read the whole letter because it would take a little too much time and I assume that the ministry has received it, but I am going to read the one paragraph. It refers to page 42 of the report of the provincial committee on aims and objectives of education in Ontario, and I am quoting:

“Seventeen per cent of the growth in school achievement will occur between the ages of four and six, with another 17 per cent taking place between six and nine. Thus, the most rapid period of growth in school achievement would appear to occur during the age span encompassed by nursery school, kindergarten and the primary years.”

That in itself is self-explanatory. It is certainly an indication of the need to increase the dollar expenditure on the elementary level so that we overcome or minimize a lot of the problems that our present young are confronted with.

I have another study from Great Britain that shows the difference with inner-city schools and schools on the fringes of a community and how students in the inner-city schools are generally discriminated against. I’m not saying that that takes place here, but I would say that the quality of education is in a lot of instances not up to par -- no, I shouldn’t say not up to par, but not as high as it is in the outer-city schools.

I have only one or two smaller topics that I wish to bring up to the ministry; the balance will come up when we discuss the individual estimates.

I brought it up with the minister in the other years the equality of educational opportunity as it affects the separate schools. Now the problem of equality of educational opportunity still hasn’t been resolved in the separate school system. Since the advent of the Ontario foundation tax plan of 1964, a progressive erosion of the financial inequality between the public and the public separate schools has narrowed the gap. However, I must point out to you, Mr. Minister, that the total revenue per pupil between the two systems still is not equal. Until equality is reached, you are discriminating against one of the two systems.

Mr. Minister, I think you have to strive for equality of educational opportunity as far as the elementary and secondary levels are concerned. I am referring to grades 9 and 10. I would think that could be reached to a certain degree if the grant structure to the elementary schools is exactly the same as the grant given the secondary schools. It makes no sense, Mr. Chairman, to be endowed with similar potential, then left without the means to realize that potential. A student who goes into a public Catholic school is being discriminated against and does not have the same educational opportunities because the grant structure is not the same as it would be in a public school.

Mr. Chairman, six years after the Hall-Dennis report, “Living and Learning,” which promised to liberate and enlighten our schools, controversy, backlash and resentment have sprung up as a result of changes in our school system. Many people now question the innovative open-school concept schools, freedom in subject choice, and the high school credit system.

Under the credit system introduced two years ago a student needed 27 credits to graduate. But he often wasn’t told which courses he should take, and quite often his parents didn’t know. You’ll say it’s the parents’ responsibility to find out, but it’s pretty hard for a parent who has worked eight, 10 or 12 hours in a day on a construction job, to have sufficient energies to go to the school to discuss the programme that his offspring should be taking. In addition to that, in a lot of the schools the number of guidance counsellors is extremely limited, so that the counselling to the youngster is not really what we would really like to see.

Since the introduction of the credit system in its original form, Mr. Minister, you have modified your position somewhat. Students who entered grade 9 in 1974 now have to take four credits in English and two in Canadian history before they graduate. However, Mr. Chairman, I believe that it’s essential that a core curriculum be established which will accept the concept that students graduating from our system will have an appreciation and a working knowledge of math, English language, English literature, French language, French literature, and a much better appreciation and understanding of the historical background of our own nation and its place in the world. When I say that you must include these subjects in a core curriculum, I don’t necessarily say that these subjects should be taken throughout the four years in the curriculum, but the students should be required to take these courses in an attempt to become that much more appreciative and more understanding of our background and our own nation.

Mr. Chairman, I also have another area that concerns me personally, and that is physical education. I believe that physical education must have a more important role in our school system.

It has been demonstrated that Canadians are among the most unfit people in the world. Federal government surveys show that 80 per cent of Canadians are completely inactive and that 50 per cent of Canadians are overweight. Children in particular show disturbing signs of being unfit.

Mr. Deacon: The chairman is rather upset by your comments.

Mr. B. Newman: No, I think the chairman does jog, but his jogging is done from a sitting position.

An hon. member: Too much maple syrup.

Mr. Chairman: The member may continue.

Mr. B. Newman: A researcher of children’s fitness said that in Canada a child’s fitness starts to decrease the first moment he or she enters school and sits down behind a desk. This should be the time to begin to teach individuals how to take care of their own bodies. We must not allow our children to get caught in the trap of sedentary living to which so many people in this province fall victim.

Physical education in our primary schools is often inadequate to meet the needs of the children. Qualified instructors are sadly lacking in the elementary schools, and it seems that most of the instructors qualified to teach physical education are engaged in secondary schools. There must be a shift in emphasis and an upgrading of physical education in the earlier grades, since this is the time when children’s bodies are growing and developing most.

When we talk about physical education, the minister thinks that physical education is gymnastics, doing push ups, or kicking a football. That’s part of physical education, but that isn’t physical education. As a phys-ed teacher for quite a few years, at no time was that part of my physical education programme. It was as varied as my ingenuity would permit me to vary it, and I attempted at least to ensure that the students who were under my responsibility, when they left a phys-ed class, enjoyed the phys-ed class and almost invariably needed a shower because they did exert some energy and burnt up a lot of excess energy that may have brought them into mischief in programmes later on in the day.

According to Marc Lalonde:

“Large numbers of elementary schools are still without adequate physical education instruction and where gym classes are being conducted, they are often so unimaginative and sterile that the children are turned off for the rest of their lives rather than emerging from the school system as healthy and activity-conscious citizens.”

Another problem, Mr. Chairman, is the content of the activities and the lack of carryover effect. It has been shown that a lot of the sports played in schools are not played after the age of 14. It would be better to replace sports like basketball with tennis, golf, swimming and calisthenics, which could be kept up not only throughout the school year, but also throughout life.

I don’t think we should replace them, but we should put more emphasis on these other programmes than on the traditional athletic teams that are the sole interest in some of the schools. I think you need athletic teams in schools because they help develop school spirit and they have a cohesive effect, but the programme itself should be more individual-oriented and oriented so that it has a carryover effect.

Another criticism of the gym programme is that a high percentage of the time is spent on the most athletic students. Programmes are often geared to those students who participate in the most competitive athletic sports. Unfortunately, they are not the ones who so desperately need the instructor’s time; it is the sedentary student who will probably never compete in athletic activities who needs help. In order to foster a change in attitudes, we should launch a massive educational programme to convince educational administrators of the importance of physical fitness and its contribution to health.

If we want to cut the health expenditures in the province we can only cut them substantially if we start with our youth and make them physically fit and keep them physically fit. It’s too late for some of us -- I’m talking about myself -- but at least we could start with the youngsters at the elementary level.

Mr. Deacon: The member for Kingston and the Islands (Mr. Apps) arranged our hockey games.

Mr. B. Newman: The member for Kingston and the Islands certainly would talk exactly the way I’m talking were he in the House. He was so concerned that he has arranged for hockey time so that those of us who are interested can at least get on the hockey cushion and enjoy a few moments of some physical activity.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Be careful. We don’t want any more by-elections.

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): We might have a few more by-elections.

Mr. B. Newman: I’ll have to repeat the last sentence, Mr. Chairman, so that everyone will get the drift of the balance of the paragraph.

In order to foster a change in attitudes, you should launch a massive educational programme to convince educational administrators of the importance of physical fitness and its contribution to health. This should be coupled with adequate governmental support for the continuing education of teachers responsible for physical education and health programmes, particularly in elementary schools. In addition, support should be made available to enrich the curriculum with physical fitness and balanced sports. Boards of education should be encouraged to increase their fitness activities and support to make these activities available to the community whenever possible.

You know, we’re only two years away from the Olympics programme, and certainly we should gear our programme into a concentrated effort to at least improve the physical fitness of our whole Canadian nation in the next two years so that we won’t be sorry examples in the eyes of the world. With the Olympics coming up in two years, it’s time we started paying more attention to the fitness of Ontario students.

There is an experimental programme that the North York board is carrying on and which is really worthy of mention. This programme started in 1972-1973 when there were five control groups and five research groups in the programme. Pupils were given some form of physical activity every day in order to see if it would help their ability to concentrate and do better in their schoolwork. Teachers noticed a real improvement in their pupils’ working attitude. So you can see that engaging in physical activity likewise developed the mental activity. The Turner Club, which is a gymnastic organization in the United States, always used the motto: “A sound mind in a sound body.” I think it’s very apropos, and we should certainly develop a sound body as well as a sound mind.

Right now the programme is being conducted on a volunteer basis. A great number of teachers and principals are being involved in the programme. Teachers are being asked to provide their students with up to a half-hour of physical activity every day in order to improve their pupil’s motor ability and ability to concentrate.

I notice that Saskatoon started with a programme known as “Participation.” They started in 1973 and I think it is the kind of a programme we could have in the Province of Ontario. It certainly wouldn’t hurt and could, if conducted properly, eventually end up in being a substantial financial savings to the taxpayers in the reduction of our health service bills.

While it is good to have fitness in the schools, Mr. Chairman, not only should we be concerned with fitness in our schools, but we should likewise be concerned with nutrition.

A Toronto-based weight reduction organization took a survey of the food served in 26 high school cafeterias and concluded that they dispensed foods which offer poor nutrition and contribute to obesity in later life. Its survey recommends government subsidies for school lunch programmes so that profitable but nutritionally detrimental foods can be eliminated from school cafeterias. Although teenagers may crave french fries, pastries, chocolate bars, and other so-called junk foods, menus should be expanded to include more nutritious foods.

I know that including these nutritious foods in menus doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to go ahead and purchase these types of foods, but at least if they are available it will be our attempt to see that the foods provided in a school lunch programme are nutritiously advantageous for the student.

The survey conducted by this group says that only seven per cent of the menus offered in schools are prepared under the recommendation of a nutritionist, and 30 per cent under a dietician. So, that you can see that from 70 to 93 per cent are just set up by the operator of the cafeteria or the lunch room himself without any concern as to the nutritional value of the food.

Greater emphasis should be placed in our curriculum on teaching students the basics of good nutrition. Now, a paper submitted by the National Council of Welfare, called “One Child, One Chance,” is a report on nutrition and does have some interesting facts on effects of poor nutrition on the individual.

I had originally intended to read about four pages of it; but I will read just a few paragraphs, or a few sentences.

The report says, “Poor nutrition affects learning in a variety of ways” -- so you can see that if we expect our students to be able to achieve in the school, we have got to be able to feed them properly. If you come from a poor and a disadvantaged family when foods are not available in the right quantity, or if proper foods aren’t available, then you are going to have children going to school who are either underfed or poorly fed, and as a result, you are not going to have the same alertness on the part of the student. The learning process is something that occurs in steps, and malnutrition interrupts this learning process I quote:

“The poorly nourished child has trouble paying attention, is more likely to fall asleep in class, is more restless, more irritable, less alert. And all of this contributes to how children learn.”

The poorly nourished child is very often “constantly sick, fatigued, hungry, badly clothed and not too clean,” and is easily distracted in school. They have become a problem for the teacher, they have a high absentee rate, their school progress is delayed, and all this as a result of poor nutrition.

So you can see, Mr. Chairman, not only should we attempt to concern ourselves with the physical fitness of the youth, but we should also attempt to concern ourselves with providing proper nutrition. I know you will say that is not the responsibility of the Minister of Education. Well, it can be the responsibility of the Minister of Education in setting up proper school lunch programmes, or maybe even subsidizing the disadvantaged and poor with a lunch programme in the schools. Japan, for example, provides nutritious meals to all its school children.

Mr. Chairman, there is one other topic that I wanted to make mention of, and that is the superannuation. I think it’s about time that the ministry cleaned up the position of the government in respect to the investment of funds being held by the superannuation commission. I think that this information should be provided to each of the federations as well as to the superannuated teachers of the province, so that once and for all they know just exactly the status of the fund and also know the explanation given by the government for the reason for not investing their funds at substantially higher rates of interest than they are being invested today.

The superannuated teachers make a very good plea when they say that their superannuation should be tied in to a cost of living. They’ve made that plea to the minister. They don’t want to see it tied in on an ad hoc arrangement to maybe two per cent one year or four per cent the next year. If it’s tied in directly to the cost of living or within some percentage points on the cost of living, then they know that they have at least constant dollars as far as their superannuation is concerned.

They have made a plea to you, and they have likewise talked to your leader. However, they don’t seem to be able to get you to listen in an attempt to resolve the problem. I hope you do pay attention to them.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Have you not read the Premier’s statement on this?

Mr. B. Newman: You haven’t tied up their superannuation to a cost of living factor, have you?

Hon. Mr. Wells: We have accepted it on principle. Did you read the statement?

Mr. B. Newman: Would you mind providing me with the statement then?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes.

Mr. B. Newman: All right. Do it after the supper break. If it has been tied to the cost of living, I think that that is the right approach used by the ministry.

Hon. Mr. Wells: It has not, but the principle has been accepted.

Mr. B. Newman: Well, accepting the principle of it but not putting it into dollars and cents doesn’t mean a thing.

Hon. Mr. Wells: There is a working group working out the details.

Mr. B. Newman: All right, if they are working out details, then I withdraw all my remarks and I would commend you if that is the way you are going to do it.

Mr. Foulds: Don’t do it. Don’t withdraw.

Mr. B. Newman: If they are going to hinge it into the cost of living, as the teachers want it. then I think that that’s the right approach.

The other topic that I wanted to bring up was one that I discussed with the minister the other day and is one I have discussed with his officials and that is the factor of the funds received by the ministry from the federal government concerning post-secondary education. I am referring to grade 13 students attending private schools, Catholic schools, Dutch-reformed or any other type of school. In my conversation with Mr. Tidbury back on Oct. 2, he made mention to me that the way the grants are obtained is that they take the figures from the tax-supported grade 13 schools and provide these by some indirect methods eventually to Ottawa. Then Ottawa pays 50 per cent of the approved expenditures for grade 13. They do not, as he said, take statistics and information from the non-tax-supported private schools.

Mi. Deacon: Has he supplied the evidence to that?

Mr. B. Newman: I hope that the minister will come along and provide us with all of the information on that so that, once and for all, there won’t be the concern of those who have the idea that Ontario is receiving funds from Ottawa for students enrolled in the private grade 13 programme and that those funds are not being funnelled down to the student and to the school system itself. Mr. Minister, I think you could clear the air on that.

You could likewise let us know if prior to 1971 you did receive funds. I think you should reply very clearly so that those who are concerned will know just exactly that the tax dollars are not forthcoming or are forthcoming from Ottawa and are or are not being funnelled down into the post-secondary schools conducted by private groups.

Mr. Chairman, I have a lot more comments that I could make but rather than make them now, I’ll make them in the individual votes later. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Port Arthur.

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I think, I’d like to start by welcoming Mr. Waldrum to his present position. I believe this is the first time in this position he’s had the estimates, and I hope that he enjoys them.

It’s the third time I’ve had the privilege of leading off as the spokesman for the New Democratic Party on the estimates for the Ministry of Education. In 1972 and 1973 we had lengthy and exhaustive examinations of this ministry’s spending. This year, because of the time constraints, we as legislators have the total time limit of about eight to 10 hours for this $1.5 billion budget. Therefore, our caucus strategy will be as follows:

We plan to debate our party’s well-known stance favouring full and free collective bargaining, including the right to strike for teachers at the appropriate time, when that particular legislation is presented to the House. If it ever is.

Two, we plan to take a broad, panoramic philosophic look at the direction, aims, objectives, purposes and structure of education during the debate on second reading of Bill 72, the Education Act, 1974, commonly referred to as the consolidation of the Schools Act.

This way we plan to save some time during the estimates debates. During these debates we plan to take specific aim on five major political and educational subjects of current concern and interest.

No doubt some of my colleagues will have a few individual matters of concern they wish to bring to the minister’s and to the ministry’s attention. We plan, therefore, to make our remarks as succinctly as possible.

We view education in a fundamentally different way than do Liberals and Conservatives.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): That’s for sure.

Mr. Foulds: The Liberals and Conservatives view education simply as a tool to reinforce the status quo. The New Democratic Party sees education as a means for social change.

We see education as a way for individuals to free themselves, their intelligence and their spirits in order to help their fellow students and their fellow men to do likewise.

In economic terms, Liberals and Conservatives are reluctantly committed to making poverty endurable. We in the New Democratic Party are committed to the eradication of poverty. In educational terms we are committed to the eradication of ignorance and prejudice. Because of our view of society, we feel that the provincial government’s spending priorities must be on services to people. We count education as the primary service to people.

We view education, not as the private preserve of the ministry and its educational bureaucrats, or of board administrators, or even of trustees. We view education as a partnership between those who serve and those who are served by our educational system. We, therefore, welcome the participation of the community, of parents, of students, of teachers in the formulation of educational aims and objectives, as well as in the formulation of educational policy.

For example, we believe that those who speak any language as their mother tongue have much to contribute to our society. Therefore, for non-English and non-French speaking students, academic instruction at the elementary level should be provided in their own language with a proportion of English and/ or French being increased over a period of years, so as to maintain their academic competence and their cultural integrity.

Where there is a sufficiently large ethnic minority, their language and its grammar, should be taught, along with their culture and history, as optional subjects for study later on in the curriculum. A competent translator should be made available through the school system to facilitate teacher-parent-child consultation where the parents do not speak the same language as the teacher.

A New Democratic Party government would take steps to reorganize financing of education in Ontario by the following means: The progressive removal of the education component of municipal property taxes. For example, we would fully compensate municipalities and boards which immediately remove the education property tax from those on fixed incomes, including pensioners. We would reorganize the financing of education in Ontario by using a progressive provincial income tax so that those who can afford to pay pay the greater share. We would reorganize the financing by applying educational taxes on to the corporate sector, including the resource sector, because so much of the training is going on in our school system directly benefits industry. We would reorganize the financing by allocating money on the basis of community need and school service rather than on the existing ceiling formula system.

I might add here, parenthetically, that we reject the Liberal policy of allowing a so-called local option to enable local boards to levy additional property taxes. Like the Treasurer’s (Mr. White) streaker budget of last spring, the Liberal policy is attractive at first glance, but does not bear close scrutiny.

What this policy would do is to balkanize our educational system. Those wealthy areas with a strong local property tax base would benefit enormously, while those areas with a low local property tax base would fall further and further behind.

Mr. Laughren: Terrible policy.

Mr. Foulds: Wealthy Forest Hill in Toronto would, therefore, probably have an excellent chance at an excellent educational system because of its local monetary base. Armstrong in Northern Ontario would have no such opportunity. Poverty breeds poverty in our educational financing. Our job is to equalize educational opportunity throughout the Province, not to increase the disparities. The Liberals seek to increase these disparities by their apparently attractive so-called local option.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, have through their ceiling system levelled down education throughout this Province of Ontario instead of levelling it up through a system of incentives based on need. For this reason, Mr. Chairman, I would like specifically to deal in this leadoff with the problem of ceilings and per-pupil grants, especially in view of the minister’s memorandum to chairmen of school boards re the 1975 expenditures ceilings. That memorandum is dated Oct. 4, 1974. We are now entering our fifth year of provincially imposed budget ceilings. The ceilings have been and continue to be a mechanistic response to the overexpansion of the physical apparatus of the Davis school system of the late 1960s.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): He created the monster.

Mr. Foulds: The ceilings have no doubt moderated educational expenditure to some degree, but they have done nothing to improve the quality of education. They have done nothing to alleviate the burden of the property tax on the pensioner nor have they encouraged the re-direction of educational spending on special education, on elementary education, or on language development. The educational ceilings have done nothing to maintain the level of basic skills taught in our schools.

Bluntly put, it is shocking that the minister only narrowed the gap in allowable per-pupil spending between elementary and secondary students by a paltry $12. Knowing the present anti-education bias of the government, I suppose we should be thankful that this tiny step was not achieved by cutting back on secondary spending.

Mr. Laughren: That’s right. Did the minister ever think of that?

Hon. Mr. Wells: We wouldn’t do that.

Mr. Martel: When are you going to get into the 20th century at the elementary level?

Mr. Chairman: Order, the hon. member for Port Arthur will continue.

Mr. Martel: The type of grants is a disgrace at the elementary level.

Mr. Foulds: However, if the government was genuinely sincere about giving a high priority to education and especially about increasing services to elementary school pupils, it should have taken the following steps: An immediate lump sum increase in the elementary per-pupil ceiling of $150; a commitment to raise this by $100 annually, as well as the general percentage increase of 13 per cent until the catch-up between elementary and secondary schools had been achieved; the general 13 per cent increase for elementary pupils should be calculated on a new base figure arrived at by including the 1974 limit, plus our proposed $150 flat increase; and the 13 per cent general increase for both secondary and elementary levels should be subject to quarterly adjustment to meet inflationary increases throughout the coming year.

These steps are entirely justifiable. The minister himself admits that more investment in primary education will reduce later drop-outs. He also says, in that memorandum, I believe, “One cannot over-emphasize the importance of the early years of a child’s education.” To give his words meaning he should emphasize them in a practical, monetary way. The purpose of these steps must be to reduce elementary class sizes dramatically as well as bringing elementary teachers up to the financial level of their secondary counterparts.

Mr. Martel: About 15 to one.

Mr. Foulds: Fifteen to 18 to one. Absolutely. Only if these kinds of measures are taken will the Minister of Education and the Conservative government demonstrate a commitment to the needs of our educational system, and especially to the all-important primary grades.

Mr. Laughren: You’ll have to wait for an NDP government.

Mr. Foulds: I want to emphasize that our party’s commitment to elementary education in no way diminishes our commitment to the other sectors. You don’t rob Peter to pay Peter, let alone rob Peter to pay Paul. The government must fundamentally re-order its priorities. It has to stop its obsession with Hydro head office buildings, with magnetic levitation transit systems where the magnets don’t work, with high-visibility projects of the Ministry of Natural Resources in an election year and with Coney Island tourist traps like Ontario Place. One simply does not deny secondary education its rightful share of the educational budget to improve elementary education. You deny, rather, the so-called high-visibility projects of doubtful merit which are seen as having a profitable political return in order to pay for social and human priorities such as education.

Education is pre-eminently a human activity. We learn because we see in others talents and greatness of mind and spirit which promise to give significance to our lives as well. The struggle to realize such fulfillment is the measure of man. The classroom teacher has a privileged position in this activity. His daily encounters with young people allow him the opportunity to inspire their interest. If he perseveres, he may be rewarded by seeing in the achievements of his students the healthy growth of human minds and personalities.

But this is not an easy task. Teaching is an art, and as such, is quickly influenced by surrounding conditions. The Schools Administration Act wisely emphasizes that the first duty of supervisory officers is “to bring about improvement in the work done in the classroom, by inspiring the teachers and pupils, and by sympathetically assisting the teachers to improve their practice.” Without inspired and inspiring teachers, the education of the young in our schools turns into an arid routine. The system may grind on but the spirit is gone.

Response To Change has become the slogan -- it is merely a slogan -- of Ontario’s ministry of education. The challenge to education in the past 10 years has been great. For example, secondary school enrolment has grown from 40 per cent of the eligible age group in 1950 to approximately 80 per cent of the eligible age group in 1970. This fact, tied to the post-war baby boom, has shaken the educational establishment of this province.

The list of consequences is startling. In the late 1950s, it began with three things: The provision of free textbooks; the end of extended lunch hours for the shortened period; the increase in busing of rural students.

The Sixties began with the Robarts plan which converted vocational schools to composite schools. The threat of Russian educational supremacy created a hardware explosion as learn-quick techniques became popular. The external examinations were dropped, and emphasis given over to the teacher- initiated programme. This made inspectors redundant and led to the opening of regional offices and the onset of the consultant.

Hall-Dennis appeared, and we peered cautiously around the corner of rote learning methods to glimpse a golden age.

“Course prescription” changed to “guidelines” which in turn became subject to “cyclical review,” now every two years instead of every year. Experimental programmes and options proliferated. Timetabling began to pulsate and traditional subject equilibrium spun awry.

Philosophical debate raged. OISE was stillborn to steady us with research and analysis, none of which has really filtered down to the classroom teacher. The computer arrived. Suddenly it was discovered, almost as if for the first time, that students had never been treated as individuals. HSI began mutating in 1969. “Social adjustment” was erroneously made the opponent to so-called “elitist excellence.”

And the credit system brought semestering.

Through all of this, educational costs increased dramatically. Then the reaction set in, as student enrolment dropped off. Ceilings brought matters to an abrupt halt. All those new schools began to bother the educational conscience as well as the public pocketbook. Therefore, the concept of the 12-month school year emerged.

The county and regional board system drew small boards into one system, or two boards into larger systems, and usually produced a new board office, and an enlarged administrative staff. This in turn, removed educational decision making from the classroom, and from the public.

What does all this mean? Excitement, and much agitation. But the fundamental reality of education remains; students and teachers engaged in the timeless activity of learning. But now there is a difference. The focus upon change disrupted the student-teacher relationship. It over-worked the already hard pressed classroom teacher, while downgrading his importance. Thus, the importance of the student diminished.

With change came the conviction, on the government’s part, that the system alone could solve the problem. But the key to education of young people is not individualized time-tabling, semestering, educational hardware, computer programming, improved school plans -- important as each of these may be. The key is still inspired and inspiring teachers working with eager and curious students. That is just what has suffered most. Whatever merits all the individual changes may have -- and each has its proponents -- the fact remains that anxiety has grown in the minds of teachers, uncertainty has grown in the minds of pupils, and doubt has grown in the minds of parents.

Less satisfaction is now derived from class room activity. System has triumphed, and the human spirit has been diminished.

I want to state clearly, Mr. Chairman, the desire of the New Democratic Party is to restructure the school system in a positive and fundamental way. We will stop the aimless drift and destruction that has taken place in education, especially during the past six years.

We will inspire parents, teachers, pupils, and, therefore, our society, with a new sense of purpose because we will actively involve them in the planning and running of our educational system.

Education under a New Democratic Party government will be creative. It will be tailored to suit a child’s individual needs. It will be challenging and it will teach basic skills. It will recognize the child as part of his family and his community.

We will make education the cornerstone of a truly creative learning society.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. minister wish to reply at this point?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, I think that in view of the fact that we are devoting a fairly limited time to the consideration of these estimates I will reserve the answers which I have noted during the course of the two speakers from the opposition parties, and deal with them as we come to those votes.

I have just two observations. I have been sitting here wondering if there is any particular significance in the fact that both my friend from Windsor and my friend from Thunder Bay are from two areas where grave teacher problems are on the verge of occurring. I don’t know whether that is because they are there, or in spite of the fact that they are there. Perhaps they can enlighten me.

Mr. Foulds: In spite of the fact.

Hon. Mr. Wells: In spite of the fact that they are there. I was sure that is what they would say.

There is only one other observation that I would make, and I make this with all sincerity to my friend from the official opposition.

He talked about finances. He indicated that there should be no ceilings, that his party would pay 80 per cent of an open-ended contract in fact, with complete local autonomy.

Mr. Deacon: You have to understand these things.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I do find it very difficult to understand, because also through my mind come ringing the words of your leader who time and time again goes around the province castigating this government for budget deficits. He says he is going to balance the budget, but yet is going to spend more and more money. And he suggests, here, 80 per cent of an open-ended contract. My friend said --

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): No, no.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- he wouldn’t have ceilings; he would allow complete local autonomy.

Mr. Deacon: Would you like us to explain it to you?

Hon. Mr. Wells: You will have a chance to explain it to me, because I must say that at this particular point in time I have to recognize the much more responsible approach. Although I disagree with a lot in the speech of my friend from the New Democratic Party, he at least acknowledged the fact that you cannot go back to the era of complete local autonomy where schoolboards in this province can spend any amount and tack it on the local mill rate. You will completely reverse the trend toward equalization of educational opportunities, something which I am sure the Liberal Party probably would like to do. I like people to be honest and credible and straightforward, and the leader --

Mr. Deacon: You certainly appreciate the fact that he is.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I appreciate the fact that my friend from Windsor is, but I don’t appreciate the fact that your leader is.

Mr. Foulds: Well, well.

Mr. Laughren: Boy oh boy. Is this the new Tom Wells?

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Chairman, it seems very difficult to get across to the minister the fact that the system of grants which is now prevailing is one that actually can encourage spending -- other than the fact that it has put in a ceiling. In a situation where there is, say, a 75 per cent grant prevailing because of the formula, it formerly cost the school board 25 cents to spend a dollar. No wonder you had to put in your ceilings. But the fact we are trying to bring to your attention is that on an unconditional grant basis where there is a specific amount worked out, it goes to the school boards. Anything they spend over and above that they have to raise one dollar for every dollar they spend. Then you have a different discipline imposed upon the school board. But your system used to be a straight percentage. And no wonder you had to put the ceilings in.

We believe in the autonomy and the accountability of the local board, and our system will provide for that because we will use your system of estimating the amount it should cost to educate a child in the primary or secondary system. We will have a formula that provides for the difference in availability of financial resources from one area to another. There are plenty of ways of estimating that which the ministry has already used. Then you work out, on the basis of that percentage, the amount of the unconditional grant that is available to that board.

That certainly doesn’t provide for discrepancy in availability of funds between one area and another, because it is already covered in the formula. It is completely out of keeping with this minister, who normally doesn’t go off the track, in suggesting that our leader isn’t being honest in the way he presented this case. He has presented it very honestly.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, my friend has still lost me. If what he says is so, he is talking about some form of control from here on expenditures, whereas he has been trying to give the impression that there are going to be no more ceilings; that everybody can do what they want at the local level, and we are going to pay 80 per cent of the cost. That’s exactly what I heard him say. Now he is saying there will be some way to estimate what it should cost at the local level and then we will --

Mr. Deacon: You have the estimated cost in your estimate.

Hon. Mr. Wells: All right. We’ve got our estimates, so all you are saying is that you are going to keep the same procedure we have, but will pay 80 per cent instead of 60 per cent. Don’t say that you are not going to have educational ceilings. They can do what they want at the local level.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Chairman, we are not going to penalize the members of the board when they go over that amount.

Mr. B. Newman: Raise the ceilings.

Mr. Deacon: Their own ratepayers will penalize them if they can’t keep within reasonable cost. That’s what we believe in. The idea of having a penalty if you go over the ceiling is crazy. You treat them like children.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I suggest that what is really going to happen is that the school boards of this province would get less money under your system and equality of educational opportunity would start to vanish.

Mr. Chairman: It seems to me we should be starting to deal with vote 2701 in its broad sense because it more or less covers a policy in administration. When we come to vote 2702 we could deal with it item by item. Is this agreed by the minister and the hon. members?

An hon. member: Right.

Mr. Chairman: We will deal with vote 2701. The hon. member for Sudbury East wants to comment.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Chairman, the minister submitted a letter to me on March 12, as a result of a letter I had written to him earlier suggesting that the whole furor surrounding superannuation should be sent to standing committee. On March 12, 1974, the minister agreed. I’ll just read him part of the letter.

“I can see no reason why the meeting which you suggest in your letter cannot be set up. As soon as it is possible for me to do so I will suggest a time and place for the meeting with the appropriate standing committee of the Legislature.”

I had requested that representatives from the teachers and the government be in attendance. Because we are limited in time -- only eight hours -- and because the minister has agreed to send it to a standing committee to review the whole superannuation situation, could the minister indicate if he intends to honour that commitment? If so, maybe we could alleviate the necessity of discussing it during these estimates.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, I’d be very pleased to honour that commitment. I find that I am not the one who can necessarily direct that standing committee to sit and hear those things. I’d be happy to sit down with the chairman and suggest this. I am sure that any member can do this.

I don’t think it’s a case of that committee reviewing the whole question; it’s a case of having the commission and ourselves there. The commission administers the Teacher’s Superannuation Commission Act. They don’t make the policy on it. The ministry is responsible for enacting amendments to that Act. We could have that group appear.

I have been faced with a time problem. We are going to go to standing committee very shortly with the consolidated education Act, which is going to take some time. But if it can be scheduled it is fine with me. I think it would be very helpful to have a good discussion about this because there has been great misinformation about this whole thing in the press recently which I think has done a disservice to the fund. It has caused the matter to be clouded in the eyes of a lot of teachers in this province. I think it would be very good to have this discussion.

Mr. Martel: The minister knows that is precisely why I asked him if he would arrange to send it to a standing committee, because of the confusion that surrounds the fund and so on. It seems to me that’s the only way we are going to clear the air. If we can have the government representatives on the commission and the teacher representatives from the commission, we can sit down and discuss it in a pretty frank manner, so that everyone is fully cognizant of where we are going with this. At the present time there is tremendous confusion amongst the teaching profession as to the pension fund and where it’s headed.

We won’t have time anyway now, but possibly the minister over the supper hour could have a discussion with the chairman of the appropriate standing committee and we could alleviate the necessity of discussing it during these estimates, so that we could spend the time on other things, knowing full well there will be another opportunity before the session ended to discuss the superannuation itself.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I just would like to say this, Mr. Chairman, there is only confusion about the fund in the minds of certain people. There is no confusion in our minds about the fund. There is no great confusion in the minds of the Ontario Teachers’ Federation about the operation of the fund.

I met with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation just yesterday and we discussed certain changes they would like to see in the legislation. We set up a mechanism whereby we could handle these changes. We are going to set up a working group from our ministry to meet with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation to discuss various changes in the fund that they might wish and that we might suggest.

This is exclusive of the matter of some formal arrangement to increase the pension to take care of changes in the cost of living each year which, as indicated in the statement I just sent you, has already been accepted in principle and is now being worked upon by a committee. This is also going on at the present time and the results of that will come forward in due course and again could lead to changes in the Act.

These things are happening. There is confusion in some sources but there isn’t in others. I realize, however, that we should allay the fears of all people about the fund and I would welcome a chance to do it. The reason the standing committee on social development is a good place is that we can then bring some of the members of the commission and the staff down and you can engage in a discussion with them. Naturally, as I’m sure my friend realizes, in order to get at some of the very detailed actuarial things that he may want to talk about we need the expert staff there, and we may as well talk with them in a committee.

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

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I brought up the issue the teachers’ superannuation specifically for the reason mentioned by the member for Sudbury East. There is so much confusion in the eyes of superannuated teachers and teachers, not as to the operation of the fund so much as the method and the types of investment that were practised by the teachers’ superannuation board. On the same item, I made mention to the minister about gearing superannuation payments to the cost of living. The press release that you gave me did not make mention of cost of living. It’s not cost of living in your release, that’s just a one time deal.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No.

Mr. B. Newman: What the teachers want and the superannuated teachers want is this to be an annual escalation in their superannuation and to hinge it right to the cost of living. You made an eight per cent contribution last year to some of them and the cost of living increase was substantially higher than eight per cent.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, first of all, I presume that my friend heard the statement that the Treasurer gave the other day about the investments. I think he explained it very well. He explained to you that probably the interest being paid on that fund at the present time is better than if that was operating all by itself, on its own as a pension plan away from the government and without the government guarantees. I don’t know whether he gave you some of the figures, but you should see some of the figures of the yield and returns on pension funds and so forth in the private sector at the present time.

Mr. Deacon: Yes, far worse than this.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Sure, far worse than this. They are not earning eight per cent on all their capital, or over eight per cent as this fund is.

Mr. Deacon: But there are a lot of funds doing far better.

Hon. Mr. Wells: There are not too many that are doing far better, not of this magnitude and this scope. You don’t take these huge sums of money and lend them out at 10 and 12 and 13 per cent.

Mr. Deacon: You can get good government at bonds at 9.75 per cent and there is nothing wrong with that.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I would suggest to you that when you consider the performance over the years and the guarantees that the government provides and all the other things connected with this fund, the arrangement is probably excellent. But anyway, that is something that can be talked about. Somebody can talk about that.

I think, though, that I want to just correct my friend if I can just read into the record two paragraphs from the Premier’s (Mr. Davis) statement of June 12.

The first part of the statement deals with the four per cent and the eight per cent.

The second part says:

“In deciding upon this latest increase in pension benefits the government has also reviewed the possibility of developing a programme of regular annual adjustments for pensioners qualified under the public service and teachers’ superannuation funds.”

Mr. B. Newman: Just “review” it though; it doesn’t say you adopted it.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Page 3 of the statement then says:

“It is our desire to institute a programme of this kind to the general benefit of those in receipt of pensions from the aforementioned fund as well as for present contributors who stand to benefit in the future. [Acceptance in principle.]

“For this reason I have asked the Minister of Education to initiate immediately discussions between appropriate government officials and representatives of the Ontario Teachers’ Federation in order to come to a common agreement on a plan, the costs of which would be shared equally between the employer and the contributors. This group has been meeting and further meetings of this group will be held in the very near future. They are working on this particular thing which has been accepted in principle.”

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Port Arthur.

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to expedite things as much as anyone in this House. I appreciate the efforts of my colleague from Sudbury East and the agreement of the minister to refer this to a standing committee, but as I understand it, the standing committee will deal only with the commission within the framework of the legislation. If I understand correctly, within the ministry there is, if you like, a committee set up reviewing various aspects of the legislation, according to the Premier’s statement. Is that correct? There is already a ministerial committee?

Hon. Mr. Wells: No. What I was indicating is that the commission is charged with the responsibility of operating the plan and of carrying out the legislation. They are not charged with developing new policies. The development of new policy falls upon the Minister of Education and the government to initiate changes through changing the legislation. Once that policy is changed in the legislation, then the commission carries out the new policy.

So if we are going to have a meaningful discussion about teachers’ superannuation and the fund and all those things surrounding it, we need both the members of the commission and the staff there to discuss things that are going on, and myself and members of my ministry to discuss policy -- that is, possible changes in policy, which really are not the concern of the members of the commission as they operate under the existing legislation.

Now what I indicated was that in the development of changes in legislation and policy, as a result of a meeting we had with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation yesterday we have agreed to set up a small working group, made up of some people in our ministry, some of whom are on the teachers’ superannuation commission but also in our ministry and some other government people to meet with people that the Ontario Teachers’ Federation will set up. We will discuss various things that they have talked about, that they wish amendments on or that they think we should consider, and some of the things that we think. So this will go on and we will talk about and consult on all the various changes that might be brought forward in the very near future.

The only thing that group is not dealing with is this other matter which I just read to my hon. friends from that other statement.

There is another group that has been meeting with people from the Ontario Teachers’ Federation about this matter of annual adjustments, if you will, to keep up with the cost of living. And that committee is still on-going and is still meeting.

Mr. Foulds: I think I must make a few suggestions to both those committees before they get it into the works. I therefore want to bring to the minister’s attention and to the committee’s attention a few basic, and I think indisputable rather than controversial, things.

First, the number of superannuated teachers, as of September, 1974, in class A, totalled 7,585 where age plus service equals 90. In class B, which is 30 years service, at age 55 minimum, the number was 2,147. The startling point is that the number of superannuated teachers are receiving less than $5,000 a year. In class A there were 1,225, in class B 352.

Almost 20 per cent of the teachers on full pension, or close to full pension, are receiving less than the poverty line. These facts should be considered in any reorganization or restructuring of the teachers’ superannuation fund, whatever the rights or wrongs of the present funding.

I want to bring to the minister’s attention three or four individual cases I have had to deal with in terms of the superannuation fund.

Case 1: This teacher’s age, plus service, equals 93 plus three to four months. She was six to seven months short of the 35 years service required for the full 70 per cent pension. She was short due to unemployment during the depression, caused by the low number of jobs available and family illness. The superannuation commission showed, in its response to this case, it is too rigid to allow individuals to pay into the fund later in life when there are extenuating circumstances.

Case 2: Several letters from Thunder Bay, dated June, 1974, pleaded for inclusion of a COLA clause. Most seemed to be grateful for the two per cent increase at that time, but really felt it was not a significant increase. It is worth noting that the people retiring now receive very little from the CPP.

Here are a number of items from those letters for some the price of food alone was “very frightening”; financial inability for one correspondent to visit his family and grandchildren; and the decision, on the part of one correspondent, to curtail volunteer activities in the community for financial reasons because of the high cost of gasoline.

The writers stressed the urgency of a true cost of living adjustment which will make the value of the pension stable. They are not asking for an increase. They are asking if the pension allotted in 1974 will be in the same number of dollars. They want to know if the value of the 1974 dollars will carry through.

Mr. B. Newman: Constant dollars?

Mr. Foulds: Constant dollars, right. The writers know Ontario is the wealthiest province in Canada. They know a few other provinces have better provisions, or appear to have better provisions. The annual report to contributors indicates to them that there are sufficient funds for a COLA clause.

I won’t get into the whole business of the allegations. However, one of the facts the government might consider seriously, is the failure of the government in 13 different years, to pay its contributing amount at the same time the teachers did. These payments might very well make the fund more actuarily sound. A COLA clause could then be easily included.

I want to mention some suggested improvements. It seems to me anybody in this province who has spent 30 to 35 years teaching the children of the province should receive a full pension. That pension should be no less than $5,000 a year because they have contributed to this society for 30 to 35 years.

It seems to me self-evident that the pension plan should include a COLA clause, providing for automatic escalation. This, I believe, is what my friend from Windsor-Walkerville was asking, rather than the annual review that you mention.

I would suggest that the Ontario government should pay its matching share of the fund on an annual basis equalling the amount of the teachers’ annual contributions. And it might consider the justification for paying what may appear to some people to be the amount of contributions in arrears.

I think it would be very helpful to teachers and to people in the province, as well as to us as legislators, that at regular intervals fully independent actuarial studies be carried out. As I understand it, the actuary at the present time is one of the government’s appointees to the commission. That causes, for whatever reasons, some concern.

It may be worth looking at -- I believe it’s at the 10 year contribution level -- I think at that point the government’s matching contributions plus the earned interest should be vested in the contributor. I don’t believe that happens now. The term vested or vesting is the term for entitlement to a benefit. Is he entitled to both his contribution --

Mr. Deacon: He’s always entitled to get that.

Mr. Foulds: But what I want to know is if he gets his, and the government’s contribution and the interest on both?

Mr. Martel: He doesn’t get the government’s contribution.

Hon. Mr. Wells: After 10 years, he is entitled to a pension.

Mr. Foulds: Yes, but is he entitled to his, the government’s contribution and the interest on those two contributions?

Mr. Martel: No. Only if he withdraws.

Hon. Mr. Wells: You do base the amount of the pension on the amount of the contributions.

Mr. Foulds: Is his contribution, then, based on the best five years, as the A and B pensions?

Mr. Martel: Best seven.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Best seven.

Mr. Foulds: Those are simply some suggestions I have before the committee goes into detailed study, and perhaps some of the areas of doubt we can examine in the standing committee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

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

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): On the same point, Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the committee is going to look at the fact that the percentage bonus is not the fairest method? For example, last year when you gave the eight per cent, a pensioner who had a $3,000 pension got $240 and --

Mr. Deacon: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Mr. Burr: -- a pensioner receiving $10,000 got $800. Which of the two, may I ask you, needed an increase more?

Hon. Mr. Wells: It depends what your status is. If they keep constant dollars or some percentage, each of them is entitled to the percentage.

Mr. Burr: Why could you not have taken the total amount that would result, eight per cent, and divide it equally; giving everybody approximately, say $500?

Hon. Mr. Wells: That wouldn’t even be a true kind of COLA clause or anything like that. That’s another method of adjusting, and I suppose anything can be considered. But even if it was felt unbalanced the way we did it, it was probably as fair as any.

I just want to say that certainly I share the concern of all the members of this House about the plight of all our senior citizens, whether they be superannuated teachers or superannuated public service employees or just members of the general public. I guess that’s really the problem that we all face here: During those periods when these people gave their service, the kind of pension funds that we all come to expect now just didn’t exist. And meagre as some of the teachers and public service pensions are, they’re better than a lot of other people who worked for many years and ended up with nothing.

So governments have to decide what can be done for the older citizens in our society as a whole. This government has embarked on a property tax credit programme, drugs for people on the GAINS programme, all kinds of programmes which take a huge amount of money, some of which comes from the federal government. And of course the federal government has pension programmes and so forth; and then we have the specific areas such as the teachers and public service employees, over whose pension plans we have control, and we have to be able to do as much as we can for them. But we have to balance that off against doing things for all people in those age categories that we find in society.

Mr. Foulds: With that answer you’re ministerial material; covering all sorts of things.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I just want to be very specific now on two areas that my friend raised. One is that while the standing committee will have a chance to go into a lot of the details, one of the fallacies that seems to be around is that the teachers contribute a lot more to the fund than the government. Now I just want to tell you that in the period Nov. 1, 1972, to Oct. 31, 1973, the teachers paid into the fund $60,438,000.00; and the government contribution, including interest payments, was $154,344,000.00.

Mr. Deacon: You don’t add the interest payments on that.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, the interest payment I have added on. If my friend realized how the fund operates, the fact is that there is an unfunded liability in the fund which the government pays the interest on, if you don’t put the interest in, we would be putting more money in, in a bulk sum payment.

Now there has been some discussion that the government hasn’t paid some of the unfunded liability. I want to tell my friend that that is all paid up. Any difference that there might have been about the amount of interest that should have been paid on that has all been paid up. The fund has all that money.

Mr. Foulds: But that is why you had such big mill rates for 1971-1973.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, that actually is not so. Some of those payments have been made only recently. If you look at the estimates that we have before us today, you find that the payments into the fund that we are voting here today are $102 million, and I venture to say that the teacher contributions for that particular period will be probably about $65 million.

I don’t know that this proves anything. It really doesn’t prove anything except that this myth seems to be around that somehow the teachers out there are paying more into the fund than the government is paying into the fund, which is really a myth.

Mr. Foulds: Last year or the year before you only paid $14 million, didn’t you?

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, we have always paid --

Mr. Martel: No. That is the carrot.

Hon. Mr. Wells: If you look, you will see that there are different payments. There is the statutory payment which shows here as the $66 million in these particular estimates. Now that’s the one that roughly balances off what the teachers pay us -- $66 million for each. But the government pays in the interest on the unfunded liability, which is about $16 million in these particular estimates; and there are the interest payments on debentures that have been included. I don’t know that this proves anything but it merely sets the record perhaps a little straight.

I am just going to say before my friend leaves that I will just read him the section out of the Act which says:

“All sums placed to the credit of the fund during a fiscal year, under section 22, shall be deemed to have been credited as of the first day of June in the preceding fiscal year, and the Treasurer shall pay interest thereon for the period between that day and the last day of the fiscal year in which the sum was actually received.”

So in actual fact, while the teachers’ contributions from the boards come in monthly to the fund, and the contribution from the government comes in once a year, this provides that you go back to the beginning of the fiscal year and pay interest on the period up until the time that payment has been made. Then, of course, once it is in the fund, it can be reinvested and is earning interest since then. So really, we have the same thing as if that money was being put in at the same time as the teachers’, monthly. You are not really losing anything by a bulk sum payment once a year for the government contribution.

Mr. B. Newman: How much is in the fund?

Mr. Martel: The province, it seems to me, has got to establish indexing which makes sense. The indexing the federal government is using now, which presumably Ontario will follow, doesn’t really make sense, because the indexing for people on fixed incomes is vastly different from the type we go by.

The indexing used is for the average person in Canada spending average numbers of dollars. It includes entertainment, car transportation and so on. But people on fixed incomes spend their money in a vastly different manner than the average Canadian resident who continues to work. The way we establish an index on how much the consumer price has gone up has no relevance for people on fixed incomes.

I have asked your colleague, the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle). It might mean a second type of indexing, but it would be more realistic for people on fixed incomes than for people who are still earning. We would find out what the real cost of living increases are for those on fixed incomes, because they spend a larger share on food than does someone with a much larger income.

If this is going to be studied by the superannuation commission and the government, they had better involve the Minister of Community and Social Services, who should be looking at indexing for those on fixed incomes as opposed to the average indexing across Canada.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I would be glad to pass this along to this committee.

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

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Chairman, I would be remiss if I did not add my voice to those who have spoken on the question of the plight of the teachers who have taken or had to take early retirement, for example, because of ill-health. I understand they are not receiving the consideration necessary for them to be able to manage. It seems sad to me that, having given long years to the teaching profession, but having achieved neither the number of years nor the age of retirement, they are in a serious position. I would like the comment of the minister on that issue because I understand they are not receiving the consideration some others are.

Also I have received a number of letters from teachers telling me they have had to curtail their very limited social pleasures because their superannuation is not sufficient for them to do even the most meagre things, other than providing necessities. I did not bring the letters because in some cases they could be identifiable. But I have them and will be happy to give them to you for your attention.

If this goes into committee, will we be at liberty to discuss in detail these various matters; or are we going to be confined to a discussion of the role of the commission, the situation with reference to the fund itself and this kind of thing? Since you make the policies and since in some cases the active teachers are perhaps not as concerned about some of these teachers as the superannuated teachers themselves have to be, could they be invited to the committee to give their input, as well as that of active teachers?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, I had thought this was the standing committee where the members would be talking to the commission. This is really what we need. The members can talk to the commission arid its staff; and find out for instance how they figure out disability pensions in the specific case you’ve indicated. I understand such people who are completely disabled are not reduced in pension, because of age. These are the kind of things you want to discuss with the officials.

We certainly are sympathetic to the plight of these people. I tried to put it in perspective with that of all our senior citizens in the province. I think you’ll find that since 1970 we have increased pensions, albeit on an ad hoc basis. We began with two per cent increases at a time when the cost-of-living increase was about 2.27 per cent. This year we made an adjustment of eight and four per cent on the pensions for 1973-1974, which has meant that everyone in the past four years has had his or her pension changed, on an ad hoc basis, to try and keep pace with the kind of things we find in our economy.

Mr. B. Newman: That is the point I was trying to make.

Mr. Chairman: Shall vote 2701 carry?

Some hon. members: No.

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