Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sarnia.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have the pleasure of introducing to you and those of our colleagues who are here, 40 grade 10 students from Northern Collegiate Institute and Vocational School in the city of Sarnia.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Speaker, in each of the east and west galleries are 25 students from William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute in the sovereign riding of Downsview. May I point out, sir, that this is the second visit within a week of students from William Lyon Mackenzie, and I am told there will be another large group of students coming down from that magnificent institution next week again.

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce to the Legislature some fine students from Denis O’Connor High School in Whitby, the greatest town in the Province of Ontario. I would like you to welcome the 60 students and Mr. Modeste, their teacher.

Mr. Speaker informed the House that the Clerk had received and laid upon the table the certificate of a by-election in the electoral district of Carleton East.

PROVINCE OF ONTARIO

This is to certify that in view of a Writ of Election dated the 30th day of September, 1974, issued by the Honourable Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Ontario, and addressed to Stanley A. Hicks, Esq., Returning Officer for the Electoral District of Carleton East, for the election of a Member to represent the said Electoral District of Carleton East in the Legislative Assembly of this Province in the room of A. B. R. Lawrence, Esq., who, since his election as representative of the said Electoral District of Carleton East, has resigned his seat, Paul Taylor, Esq., has been returned as duly elected as appears by the Return of the said Writ of Election, dated the 15th day of November 1974, which is now lodged of record in the office.

(Signed)

RODERICK LEWIS

Chief Election Officer

Toronto Nov. 18, 1974.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I would inform you that my colleague, the new member for Carleton East, will be joining us at approximately 3 o’clock at the termination of question period, as per the instructions from your office, sir.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): This is a bit premature, Mr. Speaker. You forgot the protocol.

Mr. Speaker: I guess I was a little anxious.

Mr. Lewis: The new member isn’t to be rushed into this madness.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Or out of it.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

NORONTAIR CONTRACTS

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce results of the tenders for the selection of air carriers to implement the expansion of norOntair to northwestern Ontario. Several private air carriers took the opportunity to bid for the norOntair contracts, hence the selection has taken place in a very competitive atmosphere. As a result, two carriers have been selected to operate this extended service.

Air-Dale Ltd. has been selected to operate one service between Thunder Bay, Wawa and Sault Ste. Marie. Operational and market considerations require an intermediate site between Wawa and Thunder Bay and intensive negotiations are under way to identify a site, one of which is Terrace Bay. It is hoped that the first norOntair service over this new route will take place in the summer of 1975. This, of course, is subject to the approval of the Canadian Transport Commission and the federal Ministry of Transport.

In the region north and west of Thunder Bay, the joint bid of On Air Ltd. and Canadian Voyageur Ltd. has been selected. Subject to the completion of detailed negotiations, these firms will provide norOntair service in the northwestern communities of Fort Frances, Dryden, Kenora, Atikokan, and Thunder Bay. The first stage will consist of service between Fort Frances, Dryden and Kenora in the spring of 1975. The second stage will provide service between Fort Frances, Atikokan and Thunder Bay, and will commence when the airport at Atikokan is completed. Once again, these provisions will be subject to the approval of the Canadian Transport Commission and the federal Ministry of Transport.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): That is a sad front row there.

ENFORCEMENT OF MORAL STANDARDS BY LIQUOR LICENCE BOARD

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’d like to ask a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, and things like that. In view of the decision by Mr. Justice Keith awarding an injunction in the matter that was raised in the Legislature and in the press a few days ago, is he now prepared to instruct the chairman of the Liquor Licence Board to desist from acting as censor on behalf of the authority that the minister has in these matters in the Province of Ontario? Is he going to indicate to the Liquor Licence Board that the judgement should not be appealed?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): No, sir. I had a brief conference earlier this afternoon with counsel who argued that case and he advised me that he was going to recommend to his senior in the Ministry of the Attorney General, for certain technical reasons with which I won’t bore the House now, that an appeal be launched. He takes a position that it is wrong in law, and I would rather not make any comment as a result of that because it is apparently still sub judice.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Since the matter is indicated to be sub judice, will the minister indicate to the chairman of the board that he should not act as censor until this matter is settled by the courts?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I believe that is the position the chairman has already indicated, that until the matter is clarified, it should not be the subject of any more controversy until it is decided one way or the other.

Mr. Bullbrook: By way of supplementary, would the minister not agree --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for High Park was on his feet first for one supplementary.

Mr. M. Shulman ( High Park ): In view of the judgement and the minister’s recent statement, will he countermand the instructions that were issued on Nov. 4, saying that any establishment that showed films would lose its licence?

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Shulman: He won’t?

Mr. Speaker: A final supplementary. The member for Sarnia.

Mr. Bullbrook: A supplementary: Would the minister not agree that the matter is not sub judice at the present time, since the appeal hasn’t been launched; and in view of those comments, would he not respond that this isn’t totally a matter of law, but a matter of policy direction from his responsibility?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I would take the position, in view of the advice of counsel given to me, that while technically it may not be sub judice, it may very well be within a very few hours.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary: Why would the minister hide behind legal technicalities --

Mr. Singer: Non-existent legal technicalities.

Mr. Lewis: -- on something that is essentially a social decision which he as minister must make?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Well, Mr. Speaker, perhaps the members opposite know -- if they don’t, I’ll refresh their memories -- that the board has taken a very positive view in these matters insofar as dining lounges only are concerned and not with regard to straight lounges. The reason it has taken this view, which the hon. members apparently feel is an infringement on, say, personal rights, is that people under the age of 18 are legally admitted into a dining lounge to eat; the board very properly, I suggest, has taken a tough view on these matters. Insofar as a straight lounge is concerned, to my knowledge the board has never made any such direction or request of any proprietor, this being a matter solely within the purview of the local police.

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

Mr. Shulman: May I ask a further supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: The final supplementary was asked two supplementaries ago, as I recall.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

LONDON YOUTH DETENTION CENTRE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to put a question to the Chairman of the Management Board in the absence of the Attorney General (Mr. Welch).

Does he recall approving an expenditure of public funds for the building of a new youth detention centre in London which would replace the present London Observation Home? Is he aware that although that approval was made many months ago, the building has not been constructed and the contract that was to have resulted in its construction has apparently lapsed? The result has been that the structure currently in use has been condemned by a grand jury and indicated to be a hazard to the life and safety of the occupants. This has led to the decision by the Attorney General to summarily take the young people out of that home and transfer them by paddywagon to a similar facility many miles away.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, it’s a difficult question for me to respond to positively, but if the hon. member would give me a very few minutes I’ll get him the answer. I think it has been approved.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: In the absence of a number of his colleagues pertaining to this important matter, would the minister look into the serious problems that have arisen from the delay in the building of this home, which has meant that 12 young people, I believe, were removed from that facility over the objections of a family court judge and without any assistance from the social agencies involved, certainly making the problems of these young people much more severe than they were even to begin with?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I am well aware of the dialogue that has taken place about the objections that have been made public. As I said, if the member would give me a very few minutes, I’ll get him definitive answer.

Mr. Singer: By way of supplementary, at the same time as the minister is doing his investigation, could he perhaps confer with his colleague from London North (Mr. Walker), who was reported to have said on television not too long ago that the new facility was not in this year’s estimates, probably wouldn’t be in next year’s estimates and he didn’t really know when it was going to be put back?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I haven’t heard that statement but I’ll have a look at it.

Mr. Singer: I would appreciate that.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

CSAO NEGOTIATIONS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have a further question of the Chairman of the Management Board. Is he correctly quoted in this morning’s Globe and Mail when he said a second offer to the Civil Service Association had been approved by the Management Board 10 days ago? If that is so, why didn’t he make the second offer in place of the first offer so that we might have had a better chance of the Civil Service Association approving the situation?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the hon. member is aware of the negotiation procedures and they were that the starting offer was -- exactly, as I believe the 61½ per cent was -- never ever meant to be a final point as far as the CSAO was concerned.

While the member has asked me that question --

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): While he is on his feet, he will read a couple of letters.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, no, I am not going to do that!

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): The minister can’t read.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): He is saying he never puts his best foot forward.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, that’s not right. But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Speaker, in this controversy --

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- that I cannot understand, is the report that appears in the Toronto Sun this morning. It is quoting Mr. Darrow saying, “I am confident that our negotiating team will be back at the bargaining table this week,” when in actual fact, as I have already stated, we did communicate with the headquarters of the CSAO and the answer that came back from that communication was they refused to deal with us until Dec. 2 or maybe 3.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Would the minister explain what he is talking about when he is quoted as saying, “I am going to give them one more chance to bargain in good faith, then I am going to the press”? Is the press going to settle this one? What is he talking about?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, that is not quite right. The Leader of the Opposition knows I don’t have to reiterate what programme was carried on in the press before we started to bargain insofar as the CSAO is concerned.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister means he is going to take --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, no, I’ll simply make the offer public.

Mr. Deans: Don’t do that.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Up to this particular point in time I have acted in what I have considered the very best of faith, but I am afraid we haven’t had the same co-operation.

Mr. Deans: Don’t do that.

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

Mr. Lewis: Is the minister saying that he has made a specific second offer to the bargaining committee of the Civil Service Association?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, I am not, because they haven’t come back to the table.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions by the Leader of the Opposition?

Will the member for Scarborough West ask his questions?

LAND SPECULATION TAX

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Chairman of the Management Board, in the absence of the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Meen); I think it should go here.

Is the minister aware that Finance Minister John Turner has finally and assertively said he will not accept the land speculation tax in Ontario as a deductible expense, and when will the government therefore bring in its legislation to amend the Act as it now stands?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am not aware of that but I’ll take the question as notice on behalf of the Minister of Revenue.

Mr. Roy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: I wonder if the minister might advise us when the people who have paid a 50 per cent rate can expect a refund? And, second, when is the government going to pay interest on the money which it has taken without legislative authority?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Those are answers too, Mr. Speaker, that must come from the Minister of Revenue.

Mr. Singer: Why wouldn’t the government accept our amendment?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

The member for Scarborough West.

FOOD COMPANY PROFITABILITY

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. The minister will recall his food study report comment that further profit increases on the scale of 1973 don’t appear to be necessary for the companies in the study; the George Weston profits having been reported substantially in excess of 1973, will he now meet with and report to the House on his discussions with the senior people in George Weston as he said he would do with Maple Leaf Mills?

Hon. Mr. Clement: At this stage I won’t undertake to meet with them. What I will do -- and I am prepared to do this -- is to communicate with that particular firm to ascertain if I might have a further breakdown and detail of it, because that might satisfy my inquiry. On the other hand if it doesn’t, then I would be prepared to meet with the senior executives of that particular firm, yes.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary: As these companies in the minister’s own food study one by one exceed the profit levels which he established as legitimate for 1973, how then does he intend to deal with them in toto as it emerges?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. I have no particular concept in mind. I want to know the breakdown; I want to know whether the increase is attributable to increased sales or sale of capital assets or any of those other components that go into a financial statement. If it is some of those and not relative to food cost increases then any inquiry or suggestion by me might well be improper.

On the other hand if it does relate to the sale of food, I think that we should know how this is allocated and derived and pass that on to the consumer, so that he and she might well make a considered choice in dealing with any particular firm.

LAND SPECULATION TAX

Mr. Lewis: May I, in effect, redirect to the Minister of Revenue, Mr. Speaker, and ask the Minister of Revenue, when does he intend to bring in the amending legislation to do with the Land Speculation Tax Act, which he said would never have to be done? How does he intend to compensate those who have already paid the existing moneys?

Mr. Roy: The member is encroaching on my question.

Mr. Lewis: I am encroaching but I think I can.

Hon. A. K. Meen (Minister of Revenue): Mr. Speaker, I don’t think I ever said that such an amendment would never be done.

Mr. Singer: The minister did.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The minister is answering.

Hon. Mr. Meen: I am advised that at an earlier time this afternoon someone made the statement in the House that the Minister of Finance has stated that the land speculation tax is not a deductible item. I wish he would show me where in the budget statement he saw it, because I haven’t found it yet. In any event, as to any amendments that would be forthcoming, I think we will have to consider that in due course.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: By way of supplementary, will the minister now choose to rephrase the comments he directed toward the amendment I moved, suggesting that the tax be adjusted and rebated, if and when the government of Canada decided it was not deductible? The minister may well remember those comments and, if he would like, I could refresh his memory.

An hon. member: Silent Art.

Mr. Roy: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Another supplementary; the member for Ottawa East.

Mr. Roy: Could the minister advise us what happened to the proud boast of the Treasurer (Mr. White) who said he was going to take the federal government to court? Secondly, when can people expect a refund and is he going to pay interest on that refund?

Hon. Mr. Meen: I will take those questions as notice.

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

FATHER-LED FAMILIES

Mr. Lewis: I would like to ask the Provincial Secretary for Social Development has her policy group met to discuss the increasing frequency of a very particular problem of father-led families, which fathers are not entitled to the same social allowances as single-parent mother-led families are entitled to, for the purpose of sustaining the children over a period of time until the father seeks further or other employment?

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): Mr. Speaker, as was reported in the press, this issue is under active study by the policy field. We do recognize that there is an inadequacy here, but rather than looking at this particular issue and three or four other such cases, we feel the whole policy should receive a very careful review and we are doing this at the moment.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary: While the minister is making a change in the policy to reflect current social attitudes, would it be possible to use the special right given in the General Welfare Assistance or Family Benefits Act in order to provide the four cases now actively before her -- one of them is my constituent, and there are three other fairly classic cases -- with some support until she makes her general policy provisions?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I understand that they are all being assessed very carefully individually.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

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

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mrs. Campbell: Would the minister not consider that at some point in these deliberations the welfare of the child or the children should take precedence over this kind of stereotyping in the ministry?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: That is perfectly legitimate, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Has the member for Scarborough West finished? The Minister of Transportation and Communications has an answer to a question.

GO-URBAN SYSTEM

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the hon. member for York-Forest Hill asked a question regarding the licence payments from the Ontario Transit Development Corp. to Krauss-Maffei. I am informed that the licence agreement called for two payments of $500,000 each from OTDC to Krauss-Maffei and, in return, two payments of $250,000 each from TUSCAN, which was Krauss-Maffei’s Canadian subsidiary, to OTDC for a sub-licence.

At the present time, OTDC has made one payment for $500,000. The second payment has not been made. On the other side of the ledger, OTDC has received two payments of $250,000 each from TUSCAN. At present then, there has been no cash flow from Ontario or OTDC to Krauss-Maffei that has not been recovered from the Krauss-Maffei company or its affiliated companies.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Supplementary: On the question of recoverable expenses, which flows from this answer, with respect to the very costly Scarborough corridor survey which cost many thousands of dollars and which will be attributable to the GO-Urban question, is that recoverable from Krauss-Maffei?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe I could answer that at this time. I would say, though, that surely the hon. member would accept the fact that a study of a corridor does not necessarily determine what particular mode will go in that corridor, and that surely if you are going to put in any type of transit system in any part of this municipality or anywhere in Metro, there would have to be corridor studies.

Mr. Singer: That means it is not recoverable.

PETERBOROUGH BYPASS

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I would be permitted one very short answer to a question from the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party, who yesterday requested information concerning the studies that were done as regards agricultural land when dealing with the corridor for the Peterborough bypass? I would like at this time to table this information for the hon. member and others who might be interested.

Mr. Singer: Will the minister show Ontario Housing how to do a survey?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River.

ACTIVITIES OF FUND-RAISING ORGANIZATIONS

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Has the minister had any complaints or reports to his office in regard to what are referred to in the press as boilermaker operations for raising funds for various charities?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, we have had those as long, I think Mr. Speaker, as the ministry has been in existence.

Mr. Reid: Does the minister intend to take any action to control these, as in the general view the public is losing all faith and credibility in some very legitimate charitable organizations because of the operations of these outfits?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I think there was a news release not too many weeks ago dealing with this very thing. The practice, of course, is usually to identify with a bona fide charity in a particular area and utilize the name of that charity for a small percentage of the moneys which are raised in this fashion. It seems to be a very popular thing during the Christmas season; orphans kind of spring to the forefront in November and December of each year although we hear very little about them in the other months.

There is legislation, Mr. Speaker, called the Charities Accounting Act, which is really a little-known piece of provincial legislation which provides that any person, as I recall the Act, who has any reason to believe that a charity, or an alleged charity, is not being used for a proper purpose, can apply and obtain an order for an accounting of the proceeds of that charity before a county court judge. We will eventually be proceeding with introduction of specific legislation dealing with this sort of thing.

When matters do come to our attention, Mr. Speaker, we invariably communicate very quickly with the local police force involved, I am pleased to say. In many instances they amount to an absolute fraud. These type of people, unfortunately, are always with us. It is not that type that I am specifically concerned about, but the type that is on the fringe of being quasi-legal is the one that causes me the concern.

Mr. Reid: A supplementary, if I may, Mr. Speaker: Are there any guidelines the minister can give the public to indicate which are legitimate charities and which aren’t, and how they should respond to these requests?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes; I believe it was two or three weeks ago -- I may be in error as to the time -- we published some guidelines to the public, I believe through a radio announcement, telling them to inquire of their better business bureau or chamber of commerce in their own community to ascertain if in fact this organization, the charity or the group, is known to that particular organization, be it the better business bureau or chamber of commerce, or to call our ministry or one of our local offices.

Telephone solicitations are usually the way they operate. I implored the public, in that particular news announcement, not to commit themselves as a result of any telephone canvass. Very often if the person will ask the canvasser to come around to the office and talk it over, he will just never see them again; because they don’t waste the time, they go on to the next name on the list. I would request the public not to respond; if they don’t respond these things will ultimately die.

Mr. Speaker: One more supplementary; the member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, the minister is still not able to control the professional fund-raising organizations. Is the minister prepared to accept legislation, such as I introduced and we discussed at some length during the private members’ hour not too long ago, in an attempt to license and control professional fund-raising groups?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I recall the member’s private bill; I remember reading it and I remember listening to him debate it some time ago. It is our hope that the business practices Act, which has already been introduced before this House, may well be the proper instrument not to license but to control the assertions, many of which are completely in error and false, made by those people when fund raising, usually by telephone solicitation. But I am prepared, if that Act does not meet the needs, to consider specific legislation along the lines recommended by the member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

THUNDER BAY TEACHERS’ DISPUTE

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Education. Can the minister report on his efforts at mediation in the Thunder Bay secondary school teachers’ dispute last week? Can he contradict the reports in Thunder Bay that such mediation talks were fruitless?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, I guess that in the context that the matter was not settled, they were fruitless. We met with the teachers and the board on Thursday evening and Friday. There were certain small movements on both sides. They didn’t, as I recall, ever get together across the table during those days, but there were communications that went back and forth on some positions. At about 5 o’clock last Friday it was decided that nothing more could be done here and both sides would go back to Thunder Bay.

The Ministry of Labour mediator told each side he stood ready to be of assistance if they wanted him again, and I impressed upon both sides, very clearly, that they had to solve this dispute themselves and they had to solve it by negotiating, so they had better not get into positions on either side where they were charging each other with bad faith and they had better keep talking. That’s the way it was left.

Mr. Foulds: A supplementary, if I might, Mr. Speaker: Can the minister take the House into his confidence enough to let us know if he impressed upon the Thunder Bay people the desirability of negotiating working conditions, including the class loading size and the grievance procedure? Did he come away with the impression that that was one item that would be negotiated or, at least, talked about across the table in the next few days?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I must say that I went away with the impression, if I can frankly share it with the member, that if the money matter could be solved the others would be able to be solved. That was the impression that I left with.

Mr. Speaker: One more supplementary will be allowed from the member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: In light of the inability of boards and teachers to get together to resolve their differences, as witnessed by the situation between the secondary school teachers and the Windsor Board of Education --

Mr. Speaker: That’s not supplementary to the original question.

Mr. B. Newman: -- would the minister consider changing the original legislation in an attempt to resolve such differences?

Mr. Speaker: Order please. That can be a new question later. The member for Downsview.

SOUTH MILTON DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Housing. In view of the fact that the minister told us last Thursday that in the middle of October, 1973, the value of the land in the South Milton area ranged from $6,000 to $8,000 an acre, could he explain the strange dealings with the lands owned by one John Ignatius Micaleff who entered into an agreement on Dec. 12, 1973, to sell it to one Smith? I’m talking about 100 acres at $3,300 an acre. Smith then agreed to sell it to Bonnydon, one of the companies we talked about; Bonnydon agreed to transfer it to Moccasin Trail and then, on Jan. 16, 1974, Moccasin Trail agreed to sell it to Gibson Willoughby Ltd., apparently nominees of the government, for $5,500 an acre.

An hon. member: They sure got on the trail, didn’t they?

Mr. Breithaupt: That’s free enterprise.

Hon. D. R. Irvine ( Minister of Housing ): Mr. Speaker, I have indicated to the House before that I will be tabling all related information in regard to this land transaction. If the hon. member for Downsview has some other facts which he could present to me, I would appreciate receiving them at the earliest possible moment in order that we can get our answer into the House.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Doesn’t the minister have that information?

Mr. Roy: Has the minister got time for it?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: We’re meeting with Gibson Willoughby today. If the member has other information I would certainly appreciate receiving it.

Mr. Singer: By way of a supplementary, is the minister not aware that our facilities are such that the only information we can get are by searches done in limited time by our limited research staff at the registry office at Milton?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I’m well aware that the official opposition does have some deficiencies --

Mr. Singer: Yes, in staff.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: -- but I’m hopeful that it won’t interfere with this particular transaction which we’re trying to resolve. I will look into it in every aspect possible. If the member can assist, again I would look forward to his co-operation.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Our facilities are not as good as the minister’s.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Thunder Bay.

WINTER MAINTENANCE ON HIGHWAY 11

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications. In view of the representations made to the minister about the atrocious condition of Highway 11 between Beardmore and Geraldton after the 12-in. snowfall last week, and in view of the serious accidents that occurred as a result of the road conditions, would the minister undertake to instruct his regional staff to give a higher level of maintenance, particularly with regard to winter conditions, on that stretch of highway?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I’m aware of that situation and I am hopeful that we can rectify it for him.

Mr. Breithaupt: It better not snow after Jan. 1.

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

OCU REPRESENTATION

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Colleges and Universities. Is he doing anything to satisfy the request of the part-time undergraduate students to be represented on the Ontario Council of Universities, according to the resolution which was presented to him some time ago?

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, I have the resolution, but I have not done anything about it yet. The purpose of the representation on the council is not to represent specific groups as such, but to represent the various aspects of post-secondary education in the university field. There are at present two students on the council. I would be the first to admit that there are different problems that the part-time university students have. I am giving it consideration, but I haven’t come up with a specific recommendation, although I may do so shortly.

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

ENFORCEMENT OF MORAL STANDARDS BY LIQUOR LICENCE BOARD

Mr. Shulman: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. What is the status of the North Finch Tavern and the other establishments in Downsview which were instructed as of this week they may not have entertainment of a somewhat topless nature?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is that only on one side?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: How can one be somewhat topless?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Doesn’t the member know the difference?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I must admit I’m somewhat confused by the nature of the question.

Mr. Foulds: That is not unusual.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I was under the impression that the member for High Park was qualified to practise medicine in this province, and he has led me to doubt very much whether perhaps his practice has been as successful in that area as I might have thought.

Mr. Breithaupt: Just somewhat.

Hon. Mr. Clement: As for the places named in the member’s question, as I understand the situation, they did have topless dancers fully exposed from the centre parts up. Most of them, as I understand it, were of the female sex.

They are dining lounges, which means that they are for the sale of food and of liquor with the purchase of meals. People under the age of 18 are allowed to attend these restaurants. The board made its recommendations some three weeks ago with notice to the operators involved. As far as I’m aware, that’s the situation at the present time. The order has not been amended or countermanded by the board, to my knowledge, since this matter was touched upon in the press some three or four weeks ago.

Mr. Shulman: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Shulman: Why one? In view of Mr. Justice Keith’s instructions or ruling that the board may not censor entertainment, is the minister not going to pass the word down to the boss down there that at least for the time being he should leave the girls alone? If I may sneak in a quick second supplementary, will the minister also stop his restrictions on the Ontario tender fruit industry?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Do they go together?

Mr. Breithaupt: Now he’s gone too far.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): A related question.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Is that the same bar?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, in the first place I don’t sneak the word in with the fellow downtown. We don’t politically interfere with the decision of any board. It makes its rulings and its policy on the basis of its experience in this type of situation. I would not sneak the word into the man downtown.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): The boss.

Hon. Mr. Clement: In view of the recent judicial decision, if those establishments decide to alter their present situation, I’m sure they’ll seek legal advice and act as they are advised.

Insofar as the tender fruit industry is concerned, Mr. Speaker, coming from the Niagara area, I am grateful for the question from the member. I think he refers to a young lady who was alleged to be dancing in Niagara-on-the-Lake with a cherry in her navel; that, Mr. Speaker, is part of a woman’s anatomy, I thought I would tell him because he wouldn’t know that.

Mr. Shulman: Which noun?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Now it seems a most peculiar place for that type of object, Mr. Speaker, but when I read that in the press I thought it was perhaps her way of paying tribute to the tender fruit industry. All that I can say in regard to that question, Mr. Speaker, is I am glad we don’t grow watermelons down in Niagara.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I wish the new member for Carleton East was here now.

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): Does the hon. member for High Park want to ask a supplementary?

Mr. Shulman: Not after that!

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That is a hard act to follow.

Mr. Roy: I am not going to try. I am going to stay off that stuff.

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): He can’t upstage that one.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

ACCESS OF ONTARIO WORKERS TO QUEBEC LABOUR MARKETS

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Labour, a question I have directed on a number of occasions to his predecessor:

Has the minister got together with the Quebec Minister of Labour to resolve the problem of free access to the labour markets of Ontario by Quebec workers, whereas Ontario workers cannot go across the river in Ottawa, for instance; they are prohibited from working on the other side and in fact they are sometimes mistreated in the Ottawa area, as well as in the Cornwall area and in the area of Prescott and Russell.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I was still recovering from the laughter from the last question and didn’t hear the first part of this question. But I gather that the hon. member is concerned about the fact that we are more lenient with Province of Quebec workers than they are with ours. My predecessor, as I understand it, raised this matter with the Minister of Labour in Quebec several times. In fairness, it has been a matter that my deputy has pressed me from time to time to raise with the present Minister of Labour in the Province of Quebec. For one reason or another -- no good reason, sir -- I haven’t yet done so, but I have been waiting a suitable opportunity and perhaps I should make that suitable opportunity.

Mr. Roy: Well, if I might ask a supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, does the minister not think it is time that he got tough with the Quebec Minister of Labour, in view of the fact that his predecessor’s attempted negotiations over quite a period of time met with no apparent success, as well as the fact that it is causing hardship not only to the workers in some of the border areas, but also to some of the construction companies there? Isn’t it time that we used a bit of reciprocity, in that if access is not given to Ontario workers in Quebec, we should do the same in relation to Quebec workers?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I agree it is high time that I did something about it and will undertake, with the hon. member’s prodding, to do something as soon as possible. I don’t think, however, that two wrongs make a right. I don’t think the treatment we are getting from Quebec on this matter is the right course. I think the treatment we are giving the Quebec labour workers, in terms of their access to the Ontario market, is best for national unity and actually is best for the people of Ontario as well.

As I say, I don’t think two wrongs make a right, but I will do my best immediately to see what persuasion I might have with the Minister of Labour in Quebec.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Stormont.

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): Could the Minister of Colleges and Universities look into the possibility of abuse regarding the issuing of temporary certificates and the possibility of adding more inspectors in eastern Ontario regarding the issuing of those certificates?

Hon. Mr. Auld: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. Would the hon. member repeat the question? I am afraid I didn’t get the first part.

Mr. Samis: Could the hon. minister check into the possibility of abuse in regard to the issuing of certificates to Quebec workers working in eastern Ontario and the possibility of increasing the number of inspectors who have control over this?

Mr. Lewis: Did my friend mean Labour?

Mr. Samis: Yes, Labour.

Mr. Lewis: He meant the Minister of Labour.

Mr. Speaker: Is this meant to be a supplementary question of the Minister of Labour?

Mr. Samis: Yes, it is.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I hesitate to ask the hon. member to repeat the question again -- I realize it is the third time -- but I thought I was off the hook on the last question. If he will repeat it again I will do my best to answer it.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Let the minister’s colleague answer it. He is from eastern Ontario.

Mr. Samis: I ask the minister if he would check into the possibility of abuses regarding the issuing of temporary certificates to Quebec workers coming into Ontario and also the possibility of expanding his staff, who are responsible for issuing these certificates in eastern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I don’t know whether there are abuses, but I will be glad to act on the member’s suggestion that there may be abuses, and I will include that in my investigation.

Mr. Speaker: The member from Windsor West has a question.

BIG BROTHERS OF METRO TORONTO

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Yes, a question of the Minister of Labour, Mr. Speaker: Is the minister not very concerned, and if he is, what is he doing about the strike of social workers at Big Brothers of Metro Toronto -- especially as the board rejected the memorandum of agreement negotiated by its own representative -- and that aspect of the bad faith bargaining involved, particularly as the agreement called for salary levels well below that recommended by the Ontario Association of Professional Social Workers -- salaries which are being met for social workers at other United Way agencies.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, yes, I am concerned. This is a matter where I believe the solicitor for management recommended, or at least signed an agreement in connection with it.

Mr. Lewis: Signed it?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: They have been on strike since Oct. 31. It was recommended to management, and management rejected it. I was speaking as recently as noon today to Mr. Dickie in regard to the matter. We are concerned, sir.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. House leader has an answer to a question which was posed earlier.

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: We are just about out of time for questions, so I think we should conclude. Well, one supplementary from the member for Parkdale.

Mr. Dukszta: I would like to ask the Minister of Labour whether Mr. Roy McMurtry, who is the present chairman of the Big Brothers and who is a great and good friend of the Premier (Mr. Davis), has any effect on the minister being maybe less than totally and realistically objective in this matter?

Mr. Speaker: The member seems to be straying from the original question.

Mr. Deans: It is a good question.

Mr. Lewis: Well, it says something about the social views of the chairman of the board, regardless of his influence.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. House leader now have his answer?

LONDON YOUTH DETENTION CENTRE

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, in responding to the Leader of the Opposition, I would like to inform him that the financial implications of the construction of the juvenile centre in London have in fact been approved.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I wonder if I might be permitted a supplementary. Can he tell me the date upon which that approval was granted by Management Board?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, I just accept the information as I have it.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville. I am sorry, the member for Nipissing was on his feet earlier. We will give him a chance.

NIPISSING SEPARATE SCHOOL BOARD

Mr. R. S. Smith: I have a question of the Minister of Education, Mr. Speaker. Since the Minister of Education appointed a special inquiry officer to look into the question of the number of native people who are registered as students under the Nipissing Separate School Board, and since he has in his hands receipt of the inquiry officer’s report, would he inform the House when he will make this report public, and what his intentions are after he has made the report public?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, in answer to that question, I think I would like to read into the record a letter which I wrote on Nov. 1 to the chairman of the Nipissing District Roman Catholic Separate School Board:

“Dear Mr. Klein:

“On Sept. 18, 1974, I appointed Mr. Glyn Lamprey, QC, as a commission to inquire into and to report to me on several aspects of the educational situation in the Nipissing area.

“Mr. Lamprey has now completed a very thorough study and has prepared for me a comprehensive report outlining his findings.

“According to his investigations, 103 Indian pupils were enrolled both on Sept. 4, 1973, and on Sept. 3, 1974.

“On the basis of this information, I would request that the Nipissing District Roman Catholic Separate School Board proceed immediately to appoint a representative of the Indian pupils.”

I might say that I have written similar letters several times before to that board.

“It is my understanding that Mr. Laurence McLeod, who was duly named by the band council as their representative, is now unable to serve. Therefore, I would recommend that the band be asked to submit another name and that the substitution of this name should in no way hold up the appointment of this representative.

“I would appreciate your immediate attention to this request and I would also like to be notified as soon as action has been taken.”

I just received today a letter back from the board saying that they again dispute the 103 pupils, and would like to see a copy of Mr. Lamprey’s report which he made to me. I am making arrangements to have the board receive that report.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: When will the report be made public?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I would like to show it to the board and then decide whether the board wishes to make it public.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa Centre.

LAND ASSEMBLY IN EDWARDSBURGH TOWNSHIP

Mr. Cassidy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A question of the Minister of Housing: Can he confirm that the province is, in fact, now considering acquiring the Edwardsburgh land assembly for industrial and agricultural purposes, as he was reported as confirming in the Ottawa Citizen last night?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I have no knowledge as to what the Ottawa Citizen said, so I certainly cannot confirm that it will be acquired by the government for any specific use, such as agriculture or industrial.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Housing has an answer to a previous question.

OBLIGATIONS OF H.O.M.E. BUILDER

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, on Nov. 15 the member for Wentworth asked me about a petition signed by persons who bought houses from Claran Homes under the HOME plan. The petitioners complained about building deficiencies and the member wanted to know if the minister would ensure that Claran Homes would rectify these faults before being allowed to build on 27 detached lots in Gourley Park which have been allocated to the firm in the current offering of Hamilton lots.

At that time I indicated to the hon. member that if any of the problems were related to OHC, I would ensure that they were corrected. OHC inspectors have visited the homes of these persons who signed the petition and their complaints were all noted. OHC officials met with the builder yesterday, Monday, Nov. 18, and he agreed to start work immediately on the replacement of roof shingles, one of the more common complaints. He also agreed to visit each homeowner to determine the nature of their complaints and to work out an agreement for rectifying any of the deficiencies that are his responsibility.

OHC inspectors will visit the site later this week to monitor the progress of the repairs being undertaken. I would like to point out to the hon. member, though, that the construction of these houses was financed by the Toronto-Dominion Bank and that the mortgaged loans were insured by Central Mortgage and Housing Corp., which was responsible for carrying out the inspection during the course of construction. Any decision on the future participation of this builder in the HOME plan will be based on the nature of the problems and his performance in fulfilling his obligations to the homeowners.

Mr. Deans: May I ask a supplementary question?

Mr. Speaker: If it is very short.

Mr. Deans: May I ask the minister whether he thinks it reasonable, considering the great number of homes that are about to be built under the HOME ownership programme in the total Hamilton area, that there be only one inspector to inspect all of the homes?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, knowing the number of homes that would be brought on the market, I would think one inspector is possibly not the number that should be used. I’ll check with my officials and determine whether or not there should be more. If there is a necessity for more inspectors, we’ll arrange for them.

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

STATUS OF MINISTERIAL FREEZE ORDERS

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Housing. In view of the difficulties which the ministry has had in regard to the freeze order in Goderich and Colborne townships and the reluctance of the government to test the validity of the freeze in the courts, what is the legal status of the other 80-odd freezes in the province?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: The ministerial orders that have been placed are legal if they were placed before any building permits were issued for a certain development. In certain cases, the building permits were issued by the municipality before the ministerial order was registered, and that has caused us a problem. We hope to ensure that we do not have the problem that the member is referring to happening throughout the rest of the province.

Mr. Gaunt: One final supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: No, the time has more than expired. The oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Auld presented the first annual report of the McMichael Canadian Collection for 1973-1974.

Mr. Carruthers, in the absence of Mr. McNeil, from the standing resources development committee reported the following resolution.

Resolved: That supply in the following amounts and to defray the expenses of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1975:

Ministry of Transportation and Communications

Ministry administration program......$33,830,000

Maintenance program.....................244,354,000

Construction program.....................474,135,000

Public operations program...............15,528,000

Safety and regulation programme....17,511,000

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

LOAN AND TRUST CORPORATIONS ACT

Hon. Mr. Clement moves the first reading of bill intituled An Act to amend the Loan and Trust Corporations Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Shulman: When is the minister going to bring in the new liquor Act he has promised for years?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: When is the member going to eliminate local option?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is as follows: to permit Ontario loan corporations and trust companies to increase their borrowing capacity, firstly, by permitting them to issue a new form of instrument known as a subordinated note; secondly, by increasing the present maximum limitations on borrowings of 20 times shareholders’ equity by allowing borrowings by loan and trust corporations in excess of the authorized statutory 20 times maximum, if the excess is invested in short-term liquid assets; and thirdly, to provide discretionary powers to enable subordinated notes to be considered as part of shareholders’ equity for borrowing purposes.

Also, Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is to redefine the definition of a loan corporation from that of a corporation that makes mortgage loans to that of a corporation that accepts deposits or issues debt instruments to the public and invests the proceeds in mortgage loans. This will free from the restriction of the Act those corporations that borrow from banks and issue debt instruments in excess of $100,000, and those that might be construed as investing in mortgages by reason of the issue of debentures secured on real estate.

Also, Mr. Speaker, an additional purpose of the amendment is to permit the board of directors of trust companies to delegate to the president of the trust company the exercise of discretionary powers as contained in any will or trust instrument on behalf of the trust company without derogating, of course, from the responsibility of the trust company for the exercise of its powers. The amendment also provides that all companies wheresoever incorporated, Mr. Speaker, and admitted to registration and licensing would be subject to the same restrictions as to capital and non-resident requirements as would an Ontario-incorporated company.

Certain other minor amendments are to clarify certain provisions of the Act, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Singer: It is fascinating that the minister is bringing that in while the select committee is still continuing its deliberations.

Mr. Speaker: We will now continue with the installation of a new member. The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry. Does the member have a bill?

Mr. Cassidy: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: Oh, I am sorry, yes. The member for Ottawa Centre.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS ACT

Mr. Cassidy moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act, 1972.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to repair an omission which was left by the government’s refusal to give legislative sanction to the city of Ottawa’s request to have the power to enforce spending limits on municipal candidates in the 1974 municipal elections. The request was put to Queen’s Park in due time but was rejected by the Treasurer, who said that spending limits should be used voluntarily.

Mr. Speaker: I think we are now debating the bill.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes. The purpose of this bill is to give the city of Ottawa or any other municipality in the province the power to set spending limits for candidates for municipal office and to enforce those spending limits by compelling any person who violates the limits to vacate his seat.

Mr. Speaker: Now we will continue with the -- I am sorry?

Mr. Deans: Just on a point of clarification before you introduce the new member, simply because everybody else will disappear, in order that we understand the ground rules for the debate this afternoon, I would like to bring to your attention that we have agreed on a 20-minute lead-off as opposed to 15, which you may have been informed about, but I would like to ask the House leader for the government if he would make it clear that the committee will not sit this afternoon -- assuming that that would lie the wish of the House -- but sits in the evening.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, we did communicate on this prior to the session and from my point of view I felt that the membership of the committee in general had agreed to sit, but certainly if it’s the wish of the people across the floor not to sit, I am prepared to agree. I recall that on the last occasion we made the same arrangements and very few people attended the House, which was rather sad because that time then is lost. But if it is the wish of the House, I will certainly ask the committee not to sit.

Mr. Speaker: Is this the wish of the House, that the committee not sit this afternoon?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: But it will sit this evening.

Hon. Mr. Meen: No, Mr. Speaker, it’s not possible for that committee to sit this evening.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: This is another one of those days!

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Well, we will try again. Now, can we continue with the installation of our new member?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present to you Mr. Paul Taylor, member-elect for the electoral district of Carleton East, who has taken the oath and signed the roll and now claims the right to take his seat.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Orders of the day.

NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 8

Clerk of the House: Private member’s motion No. 8 by Mr. Lewis.

Resolution: As a result of the collapse of Krauss-Maffei; as a result of this government’s preoccupation with magnetic levitation transportation systems at the expense of realistic alternatives; as a result of its assigning $1.3 billion to the implementation of such systems, thereby severely limiting capital for more conventional and immediately available systems; as a result of the consequent immobilization of transportation planning for all areas of Ontario, this government has lost the confidence of this House.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Mr. Speaker, I begin this no-confidence motion by welcoming the new member for Carleton East (Mr. P. Taylor) to our ranks -- to “the” ranks, in the generic then -- and it strikes me there has been more hearty applause in the last three weeks on this side of the House on at least a couple of occasions. I must say he has already expressed his views on the essential decorum and tranquillity of the chamber, and doubtless those views will be reinforced in the months to come.

Mr. Speaker, the time is limited. I have a number of specific things I would like to say about this no-confidence motion, and I shall proceed directly to the task.

I want to speak to the substance and generality of the motion rather than in terms that are legalistic, technical, contractual or financial as to details. I would like to make, if I could, an assessment of the factors which spawned and which shattered magnetic levitation for the Province of Ontario, and I would like to suggest what that implies for this province. Let me try to put it in context in a way in which we, at least in this caucus, see it; and I suspect that view is shared by the Liberal Party.

The basic problem of the government’s fundamental approach to mass urban transportation in Ontario, and more specifically in Metropolitan Toronto and other big city areas, is that it stems from a political motivation rather than an appreciation of the problems at work and the solutions which need be found. In fact, it speaks to the kind of internal malaise, which I think, has developed the growing sense of public lack of confidence in the Progressive Conservative Party. It speaks to that role of the Progressive Conservative Party, so well embodied in the big blue machine, as a manipulative group, a group where manipulation is more important than policy and where decisions are made for self-serving reasons rather than for the public interest.

I want to draw the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes) back for a moment to the sequence of events which fostered the ultimate collapse of Krauss-Maffei. It began, of course, with the supposedly heroic cancellation of Spadina, which was then an act of nobility but is now seen as an act of infamy, because none of the alternatives which were then promised or contemplated have ever appeared. Throughout the post-Spadina period the government was preoccupied with an approach to transportation which was largely expedient and opportunistic. Some of us who were engaged in the 1971 election campaign well remember the absurdity of the Buckminster Fuller proposals. That was followed by the famous announcement on Nov. 22, 1972, at the Science Centre, of the embracing of Krauss-Maffei and the magnetic levitation transportation alternative.

The Premier (Mr. Davis) at the time said that the old-fashioned transportation modes were no longer desirable, that they should do something which was realistic, immediately available, largely experimental and useful for Metropolitan Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa. He was wrong on all counts in his initial decision. Krauss-Maffei was, if you will forgive me, Mr. Speaker, bogus from the outset. It was a personal obsession rather than a serious practical response to a transportation problem. It reflected this tendency for self-infatuation on the part of the Conservative Party, and it reflected a tendency for political spectacles rather than practical solutions. That is why there was so much scepticism on all sides of the House about Krauss-Maffei from the outset. We knew the political opportunism involved and we found it suspect to begin with.

Now Mr. Speaker, the entire illusion, whatever it might have consisted of, is shattered. Krauss-Maffei lies in remnants of ingots and steel at the feet of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. It was never a real experiment in transportation; it was an experiment in political survival, and it failed.

What bothers us, in terms of the total context, is that the ministry absolutely refuses to let go of the Krauss-Maffei magnetic levitation absurdity. They insist, if I may put it this way, on flogging a dead train. They are determined to pursue this magnetic levitation system for several months more. They are not going to do the kinds of things, the kind of alternatives which should be done. In fact, the minister has not really been entirely straight with us. He has demonstrated more candour than his predecessor and the government, but there are still missing links in the whole collapse of Krauss-Maffei.

I kept on asking myself, and other members of the New Democratic Party have been asking themselves: “What is it really all about? Why did it all collapse? How did it all collapse? What explains it?” I sat through the discussion of the estimates of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and I couldn’t sort it out in my own mind, because the arguments given officially by the minister and the arguments allegedly given by the West German government just didn’t seem to ring true. So I’ll tell you what I did, Mr. Speaker. Being part of a democratic socialist movement which extends beyond provincial boundaries, I made some contacts in Germany. I decided, in personal terms, to try to find out what the devil was at the root of all this.

This morning, I had a reasonably lengthy conversation with the man who is Secretary of State for Transportation in the West German government; and what we could not understand in a conversation we had yesterday, and in a conversation we again had this morning, we did through an interpreter. I don’t think there is any more highly placed official than this fellow in terms of giving us the sense of what was involved. He said to me at one point in the conversation -- and I want to put the quote absolutely on the record, because I took it down very carefully and asked the interpreter to repeat it.

He said to me: “Technical development has clearly shown that no economic operation can be expected from the magnetic levitation technique when applied in the trans-urban system.” That is to say, in a rapid transportation system within a city.

I said to him, almost incredulous: “No economic operation? Do you mean no revenue system, such as we’ve been told about by the Minister of Transportation and Communications?” And he said: “No economic operation.”

“Specifically” -- and again I’m quoting -- “when small vehicles are used, and the distances are short and the speeds are relatively low, no economic operations can follow.”

I thought to myself, that’s one of the things which really hasn’t been said to us yet. We’ve been told that the West Germans cut back because of economic priorities. We’ve been told there were the occasional bugs and that Krauss-Maffei is being operated on the Transrapid system in the inter-city system, but there was no economic cost benefit value that we haven’t yet been told.

So I said to him -- his name is Mr. Heinz Ruhnau, and he is Secretary of State for Transportation -- I said to him: “What about the technical bugs which were inherent in the system?” He said he thought the technical problems might be overcome in time but that the costs associated with solving the technical problems were so high that it would make the whole system absolutely uneconomic. Then he raised with me matters of energy making it impossible for the system to be economic.

I thought to myself, one must be fair about it. This is the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Transportation in the West German government.

The minister here in Ontario has been dealing with Research and Technology. They were engaged in the funding for it. So, a little later this morning, I had another, even more lengthy conversation with Dr. Dietmar Frenzel. He is the head of the task force responsible for all of the funding and feasibility studies for magnetic levitation in West Germany.

What Dr. Frenzel said to me, I found rather difficult to believe. I’m just going to put it on the record, Mr. Speaker, and I’m absolutely confident of it because he is a man who happily speaks the English language pretty fluently. We understood each other. I know a little German, but Heinz Ruhnau and I needed an interpreter.

Dr. Frenzel was very fluent and very to the point. He said, to put it in his own perspective, that the west German government decided to take a look at magnetic levitation as a system which would be an alternative to the wheels-on-steel approach and that magnetic levitation might emerge where the velocities became so high that wheels-on-steel encountered an enormous number of problems. But they then decided to look at magnetic levitation in terms of mass rapid transit within cities themselves.

He said to me -- and again I quote directly:

“We went in deeper and deeper until we had a basis for determining cost effectiveness, until we could determine at what time it would have been possible for real urban transportation to occur. We learned that magnetic levitation has a severe drawback because it cannot overcome in economics the conventional light rail and railroad system. It is just too expensive at this time.”

So I asked him wherein lay the problems with overcoming the economics? Let me tell the government what they’ve discovered, since presumably they know it too; but we never shared it.

They discovered that it needs more room and installation than they previously thought; that there are serious safety problems which cannot now be overcome; that there are unpredictable energy costs; and that the electronic problems are so severe that it would take a minimum of five more years and $20 million to $25 million to make it even marginally competitive with wheels-on-steel, and then they couldn’t guarantee it.

They couldn’t get clear answers from Krauss-Maffei, so they said to themselves: “There is just no point in pursuing Krauss-Maffei for urban transportation means at all. We may think it has applicability for the transrapid system of 250 to 300 miles distance in velocities of over 300 kilometres an hour. But it makes no sense whatsoever for internal urban transportation.”

They looked at the cost effectiveness of all the alternatives and they came to the conclusion that there was no debate. Magnetic levitation was irrelevant, costly and insupportable now in technological terms, and the old-fashioned light rail and subway alternatives, in fact, made sense.

I said to him: “When did you learn all this as head of the task force?” He said: “We got our first intimations of it a year ago. Six months ago the pattern became clear and we then made the recommendations to the Ministry of Science and Technology in Bonn.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): The member for Armourdale (Mr. Carton) must have been having his doubts when he was minister.

Mr. Lewis: I’d like to know where was the ministry through this period of time, the two years that the government committed itself to magnetic levitation? There were these reports the minister kept on handing down on the perfection of Krauss-Maffei. Here we’ve got the head of the task force involved in looking at its feasibility and its funding, who indicates that on X number of counts, all of them itemized, it is insupportable. A month and a half ago the minister gave us in this Legislature, to the public at large, so he said in his estimates, a report which showed the value of the experiment. How come Ontario didn’t discover the drawbacks? How come we lost so much time and perhaps some money?

Mr. Speaker, I’ll tell you what we in this caucus tend to think. We in this caucus tend to think that what began as a piece of political opportunism, ended up with a sort of self-hypnosis on the part of the people who were involved. They forgot about its value in applying it to people and transportation systems. They didn’t look at the cost benefit analysis. They didn’t look at making it a serious revenue system, except in that kind of strange, beleagured obsession with the technological grandeur.

I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that you can’t get from Scarborough to Queen’s Park on grandeur. That’s where the whole system collapsed. What the German government found after such careful study was a completely irrelevant system for intra-city urban transportation, which is something we should have discovered some time ago and never have committed ourself to at the outset.

We say to the minister to call back his engineers, the five engineers he sent off to Munich yesterday at the expense of the taxpayers of Ontario. Let him call back whatever engineers he may have there. Maybe it’s at the expense of Krauss-Maffei, within the $10 million; I’ll believe it when I see it.

Sever the contract with McDonnell Douglas. The minister told us in his statement the other day that Ontario has exclusive rights for Canada for the $30 million worth of research and technology, and non-exclusive rights elsewhere. Our answer to the minister is: “It won’t fly, Orville.” The government has no exclusive rights to anything that is of value, because that technology as an intra-urban system for mass rapid transportation is absolutely dead as a doornail.

We should have been told that some days ago, rather than the kinds of statements which were made in the House by way of sort of official promulgations. That’s just not good enough. That’s the kind of backing and filling, and continuing commitment of Ontario dollars and Ontario expertise to a system which has finished.

The minister indicated in committee that he is going to spend another 120 to 150 days of first-phase analysis of further development of Krauss-Maffei. Throwing bad money after bad was never more apparent than in this instance. We urge the government to cut anchor, to sever it all. Now, what has been lost, Mr. Speaker, in very serious terms, is immensely valuable time; almost three years now. I recall -- and it relates to a question that was asked by the member for York-Forest Hill (Mr. Givens) during question period -- that in the spring of 1973, Mr. Soberman recommended a crash programme for light rapid transit to Scarborough. And this government’s response was a two-year study at the cost of $900,000. And why a two-year study? Because all of the eggs were in the GO-Urban basket.

The question of the need for the Queen St. subway line was severely delimited because of this obsession with the GO-Urban transit. GO Transit, the one system which is operating in this province, has been undermined by this government. In fact, its budget for 1974-1975 is one-third down from what it was in the previous year, as this government continues to emphasize its fixation with GO-Urban.

And it is building a new expressway, Highway 404, and pretending that it is to allow people to reach their cottages going north. In reality, it is bringing all of the people up and down the Richmond Hill-Newmarket line into the city, doing exactly to Metropolitan Toronto what it pretended it didn’t want done when it terminated the Spadina Expressway.

Since 1971 the average daily volumes for cars coming into Metro are up: On the QEW between Dixie Rd. and Highway 427 by 60 per cent; on Highway 400 from Highway 401 to Finch Ave. by 35 per cent; on Highway 401 from Warden Ave. to Victoria Park Ave. by 62 per cent. This government’s own studies show that the roads and the arteries will be clogged beyond repair by 1981, and all it could do over the last two years was to preoccupy itself with the supernatural fantasy of Krauss-Maffei; which never made any sense at all, except to serve the egos of the politicians involved.

So all in all, throughout Metro and elsewhere Mr. Speaker, transportation planning is in a shambles. It’s one of the greatest failures of this Premier’s years. This government is now planning a big sewer pipe to bring an additional 880,000 to 1.3 million people into the area by 1995, and it has no transportation plans to handle it. The government has got Malvern, the North Pickering community, the zoo and the airport in northeastern Metro; and no transportation mode yet on track. What are those people to do?

Northwestern Metro had the Spadina Expressway severed in 1971. What are those people now to do? All the alternatives were emasculated by the way in which the government leaped into an experiment which is now revealed as hollow in concept and totally without substance.

What this caucus says to the Premier is that not another penny should go down the drain of magnetic levitation. If the system is ever useful for inter-city ground transportation -- and I want to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that the men to whom I spoke this morning in the ministry of transportation in West Germany, and in the ministry of science and technology in West Germany, weren’t even sure that magnetic levitation would work inter-city; but they were sure that it would never work in economic terms within cities. We say not another penny to that experiment; let them have any rights to what they want.

The government should pull its money -- as much of that $1.3 billion as it can possibly pull together -- into light rail rapid transit on a crash basis, into the subway system on a crash basis, and provide for Metropolitan Toronto, for Hamilton, for Ottawa and for other cities in Ontario, the kind of transportation alternatives to which they are entitled.

Mr. Speaker, I take my seat simply by saying that for three smug and self-deluding years, the Province of Ontario allowed GO-Urban to dominate the entire transportation scene. It is a surreal experiment in transportation planning. It never went anywhere, and we now learned that it never could go anywhere. It bespeaks a failure on the part of the ministry, and it bespeaks a failure on the part of the government. It distorted all our priorities, it distorted all of the transportation planning through Metropolitan Toronto and in fact throughout the province.

It is simply time for the government to sever the connection, to start afresh and to begin now to give the people of southern Ontario, and indeed many of the northern communities the transportation systems to which they are entitled.

If there is ever a litany of failure, if there is ever a saga demonstrating the incapacity of the Tories to govern, it is this one; and if there is ever a non-confidence motion which deserves to be supported, it is this one.

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

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce to the Legislature a group of grade 7 and 8 students from Conestoga Public School with their principal, teachers and a group of parents.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York-Forest Hill.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Mr. Speaker, for those of us who are on this side of the House, participating in this motion of no confidence is like threshing old straw. Our position has been consistent with respect to this matter. We pointed out all the pitfalls with respect to this Krauss-Maffei matter right from the start, and we’re not drawing attention at the last minute to this particular issue, which has wound up so tragically.

It is at this point in time that we welcome the new member for Carleton East. This marks the end of an era and the beginning of another, and perhaps this is a propitious time for him to come in.

In a sense, participating in this debate on the vote of confidence is an exercise in futility, because all of us who are in this chamber know how this vote will wind up. I’m rather cynically amused at some of the media, in reading the columns where some of the columnists have been saying: “Isn’t it awful?”

You know, it is a funny thing with the columnists -- they either come at you with a meat cleaver or they pull out the crying towel. Now they’re saying: “Poor Bill Davis. We’re attacking him like jackals, but he’s such a nice guy. He tried hard and he meant well; unfortunately he took a gamble and it didn’t pay off.”

We’re not attacking him because he’s a nice guy, we’re not attacking him because he took a gamble on technology which didn’t pay off; we have a right to criticize a man who insists on playing with dynamite when he doesn’t know how to handle percussion caps. We insist on the right to criticize the man who doesn’t know the rudiments of how to put a business deal together properly.

Here is a man who comes along and unilaterally and deliberately shatters the transportation plans for the metropolitan corporation with the war cry: “Cities are for people!” This was a cry that shook the world and won him the election in 1971.

He had no alternative in mind when he left us with a ditch in my riding over there. It doesn’t improve with age; no grass grows, no weeds grow -- no nothing. He scuttled us without an expressway. Everybody in the outlying areas -- in Sudbury, Kirkland Lake, in Kakabeka Falls and I dare say Sault Ste Marie -- thought they would use the money saved on the Spadina Expressway to improve transportation conditions in their areas, but no such remedies were involved in these outlying areas, in the cities and in the towns. There is nothing for anybody else, there is nothing for us; and there the ditch lies. It’s demoralizing and it’s disillusioning for those who have to drive by there all the time and look at this, and the people in the area feel terrible about it.

Then he brought in his Buckminster Fuller report for about $30,000. It was an object of ridicule, it was laughed at and it was never considered seriously. We kept on asking questions about the Buckminster Fuller report, and the Premier kept on replying: “If Metro doesn’t use it, we will use it -- we will implement it.” Nothing has been done in 3½ years on the Buckminster Fuller report, because it is so ridiculous in its concept that it’s an object of ridicule.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It cost us $15,000.

Mr. Givens: And now the contractor, KVN (Kilmer Van Nostrand), puts up a sign. They’re going to build a subway 3½ years too late -- indeed 10 years too late. Under the circumstances, without the expressway, the subway is in the wrong place for the wrong reasons; because without the expressway, the subway makes no sense in that particular route.

Without the expressway, the government is putting the subway through in an area where the density of population is 35 people per acre, and there shouldn’t be a subway in an area that doesn’t have at least 350 people per acre. What it means is that there is going to have to be a whole movement to rezone the area for the purpose of highrise. Boy, that is going to be met with a volley of grape shot.

So the government refuses to reopen the question of the Spadina Expressway. I won’t get into whether it is right or wrong on that right now. It is going to persist on extending the Don Valley Expressway northwards to Newmarket when the expressway is already overloaded. Everybody says it is -- it has jammed up Metro Toronto. The government is choking Metro Toronto on the east but refuses to open the expressway on the west.

The Scarborough corridor is hung up in the air after a costly study, The dial-a-bus system flopped and they are trying to revive it. There is no alternative in sight.

And here the Premier comes along -- self-appointed, pre-eminent authority of public transit -- in November of 1972 with a fanfare at the Science Centre. He scared the living daylights out of us with the lights, the television cameras, the public relations programme and with the brochures -- one, two, three, four, five of them that I have here. Is he going to recover the thousands of dollars that it cost to print these?

He announced the GO-Urban system, the Krauss-Maffei system, and he made promises of dates when GO-Urban would go in and when it would be operating.

And we were tantalized with these world rights. We were going to sell these things. I think the minister’s predecessor said we were going to make $30 million out of the world rights, and when he was questioned by me in this Legislature he indicated that the city of Heidelberg was going to put in this system; because I was suspicious as to why the German government wasn’t putting in the GO-Urban system of magnetic levitation if this was such a hot-shot scheme.

Then the Premier went ahead and he grabbed the Transit Man of the Year award like a man grabs a hot stove with two hands. He didn’t renounce that award. He went down to Florida to collect it and he took all the bows and all the plaudits.

This is why we are criticizing him and this is the point on which I criticize him; this is why I criticize him. Here is a man who came along, the leader of the government, repudiated a contract which he made with another government, the Metropolitan corporation -- did so unilaterally -- and then becomes the victim of his own ploy when the West German government turns around and pulls the rug out from under a company with whom it has a contract.

One would have thought that after what the Premier did in his own country, in his own jurisdiction, he would have had enough intelligence to have gone to the Bonn government and said to them: “Look boys, I am making an investment of a zillion dollars here, you are underwriting the Krauss-Maffei firm. For God’s sake, will you tell me that you are going to stay in, because otherwise, if you withdraw your support, we are going to wind up with egg all over our faces.”

That is just how this government has wound up. This is the point of the whole thing. This is why we are criticizing him.

Any businessman who doesn’t understand that you go to a guarantor, you go to an underwriter, and you ask him for his support, you ask for his acquiescence specifically in writing, that he will continue his support of this scheme; this is what undermines our confidence. How can you Have confidence in a man who does business that way? It shows that he hasn’t got the basic conception of how to set up a business deal.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear. Right.

Mr. Givens: And this is the Premier of the Province of Ontario. This is the unpardonable sin, not that he gambled on technology that didn’t pay off. In fact, Krauss-Maffei is still being supported by the Bonn government. They have doubled the support. They have gone from 16 million deutsche marks to 32 million deutsche marks for their interurban system.

So it isn’t as if the West German government has withdrawn its complete support from Krauss-Maffei. That is not true. All this stuff that the hon. member for Scarborough West talked about may be ex post facto rationalization as they try to justify why they withdrew their support from the interurban scheme that they had supported up to that point. But we were giving information in this chamber from Prof. Eric Laithwaite and from Prof. Robertson and from others; we were indicating to the minister and to his predecessor that we had no confidence in this magnetic levitation system, and the linear induction motor for this particular purpose; especially when Montreal wouldn’t take it, when Edmonton wouldn’t take it, when Vancouver wouldn’t take it.

Then he started telling us about McDonnell Douglas and he started telling us about Alberta helping him. When he talked about BART -- the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco -- he scoffed; when we talked to him about the system failing in Morgan town, West Virginia, he scoffed; when we indicated to him that the US government was withdrawing its support from this sophisticated technology, he scoffed. He said that he could do better. He couldn’t hire engineers here, but he felt that he could do better.

Now he persists in hanging on -- and I agree with the member for Scarborough West -- the minister says he has a marketable commodity in this junkpile of technology. All he has here are the salvage rights to the Titanic.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Very well said.

Mr. Givens: The minister gets on television last Saturday night -- I heard him; he looked great. He’s a great broadcaster.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Thank you.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): He didn’t make any sense, but he looked great.

Mr. Givens: The minister didn’t tell the people the thing was scuttled, that it got derailed, that it hit a brick wall and that’s the end of it. He told them there would be a delay, as if he were announcing a delay on the air because he couldn’t get a squib on.

Mr. Foulds: “Please do not adjust your set.”

Mr. Givens: Yes: “Don’t adjust your set. There is a slight delay.” That’s what he told them.

But the minister shouldn’t feel bad. You know, they have figured out on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco that they could have furnished each of the people using that system with a Fleetwood Cadillac for what it has cost them to put that system into operation.

So the minister need not feel so bad, because the pulling out of the rug came now. He could have been opening the test track at the CNE next year, and the telegram could have come to him then. What would he have done?

So it’s goodbye magnetic levitation and back to the wheel. The phantasmagoria is over --

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Round or square wheels?

Mr. Givens: As I say, he’s lucky it didn’t happen next year.

The minister says it isn’t going to cost us anything, that we are getting all this for free, with 30 engineers for a whole year and the use of the test track.

If the test track is so valuable, I don’t know why we were going to build a new test track at the CNE. I could never understand that. And I wasn’t too clear about the minister’s answer this afternoon about the licensing question, as to whether we really saved that half a million bucks.

Here is the Scarborough study, about which the minister spoke this afternoon: “How can you expect Krauss-Maffei to return the money for a study that took place in Scarborough?” This study was for the purpose of determining the route where the government was going to shove GO-Urban, and the costs should be recoverable from Krauss-Maffei, because this is the money that the ministry spent to determine where it was going to put that system. And the same thing applies to the Eglinton study. With great respect, I suggest to the minister there are thousands of dollars that he spent in connection this this matter that will not be recovered from Krauss-Maffei.

The Metro transportation system is in a state of suspended animation, and the same is true for all the other cities, because Ottawa was promised relief and Hamilton was promised relief. On Saturday night the minister also said -- does he remember what he said to them in his closing lines? “Have you seen those bright new red shiny buses on your streets?” And the minister indicated to the people that the government was paying for them. I guess the province must be contributing 75 per cent to some of the newer buses that are coming out there and the government is sort of giving it to them as a consolation prize.

What about the Scarborough corridor? What is the minister going to do there? What is he going to do with respect to the new airport? What is he going to do about the increase in motor vehicle registration in this city now?

The traffic congestion is horrendous. I know the minister lives in the Soo, but he ought to stick around some time and ride up and down during the rush hour in the morning and in the afternoon to see what is going on in this metropolitan area -- as well as in Ottawa, Hamilton and Windsor; I am talking for the other cities as well.

We have had 3½ years of delay, and that’s an imponderable cross that the minister will never be able to figure out on his computer. This has been a psychological blow and a setback for public transportation, and it has caused a loss of confidence.

The minister indicated to us in the committee on estimates that he was going to stick with it for another 120 days. I suggest to him that even with that 120-day period, he is not going to be able to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again with the five engineers he sent over there yesterday. There is no way he can do that. As far as the minister’s man, Kirk Foley, is concerned, it’s wonderful. He is not an accountant; he is not an engineer; he is not a lawyer; he is not an economist. When you ask him a difficult question he gives a terrific answer with 6-ft.-long, sesquipedalian words that are absolutely brilliant. But when you ask him easy questions, such as, “How many $40,000-a-year engineers have you got? How many times did you go to Germany? What is the name of the PR firm that you used? How much did you pay to your PR firm?” Right away he is struck with amnesia; he doesn’t remember.

The government doesn’t have a vote of confidence here today. They are going to ring the bells and their people are going to come in for the vote from all the nooks and crannies where they secrete themselves --

Mr. Lewis: Secrete themselves -- not bad.

Mr. Givens: And they are going to win it. They are going to empty out of the bowels of the interstices of this building and they are going to come in here --

An hon. member: That’s the washrooms.

Mr. Givens: I am sure you must have seen last Saturday’s Star, Mr. Speaker, where there was a poll published on the front page. The headline says: “Poll Shows Support for Davis in Metro Down by Two-Thirds.” It quotes a Peter Regenstreif poll which shows that on a sample of 404 people the government is finished, that the Premier is down by two-thirds.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Givens: Do you know, Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe in polls or I don’t believe in these samples, because all of us at one time or another can point to a poll which was in our favour which was disproved; or which was against us and which was disproved.

Mr. Lewis: I can’t think of one that has ever been in our favour, as a matter of fact.

Mr. Givens: Well I can think of polls that were disproved. I have enough faith and confidence in the party opposite that with its bottomless money bag it can make a lot of adjustments between now and election day, whenever it may be, and that it will probably recover a lot of lost ground.

But I will tell you this, Mr. Speaker: I don’t have to take a sample of opinion. I get around in this town quite a lot and I have seen literally hundreds of people over the weekend, what with the Royal dinner and another dinner and a rally and everything else. I have talked to hundreds of people over the weekend. And do you know what. Mr. Speaker?

An hon. member: At least 404.

Mr. Givens: The government may win the vote today but I saw hundreds of people out there who were laughing at them. They have become an object of ridicule and derision. No matter how the vote of confidence goes this afternoon in this chamber, out there they are laughing at the government and that’s where the vote of confidence on this motion this afternoon is being decided -- out on the streets.

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

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to speak very briefly in this debate this afternoon. Amongst all the other considerations which I had and thoughts which I had in the last few days, and over the months previous with respect to the Krauss-Maffei system, there was one consideration that I must admit did occur to me amongst all the others; and that was, as an engineer I was a little bit disappointed at what is now clearly the collapse and the abandonment of a magnetic levitation transportation system became of the obvious technical difficulties.

As an engineer, I would have liked to have seen these technical difficulties surmounted even though they looked quite insurmountable. It was a pipedream right from the very start. The day the announcements were made about the magnetic levitation system there were two points that struck me. On the degree of development that had taken place up to that point, it would be almost impossible for it to be developed within the time frame needed and set forth by the government, that is, to have a model operating at the CNE grounds in the spring of 1975.

I wondered then just how many sorts of announcements we would go through of slight delays about the opening up and performance of this type of system before the government finally announced that on that short-term basis it wasn’t going to even come close to making it.

The second point of scepticism, again underlying the government opportunism throughout this whole thing, was the utterly preposterous proposal that it was going to run on Hydro rights of way, traversed by the high tension, high voltage Hydro lines. Irrespective of where else it might be applicable and might run at some time in the future, it sure as blazes was not going to run in the same vicinity as high tension, high voltage hydro lines which generate and create their own electrical and magnetic fields.

The inherent problems of having them run anywhere near that site, in the vicinity of Hydro lines, would be tremendously more difficult in comparison with getting them to run in the absence of those.

To think that this was one of the routes and one of the areas proposed as the possible use and application of this magnetic levitation system, to me at that time indicated that someone was doing a sell job on this province. If that wasn’t the case, then the government, in its vain hopes that this would be the one issue and the one thing which would pull them through this next election, was searching for something to be pulled over their eyes.

The scheme was one of political opportunism to me, right from the start. It was not based on sound scientific principles. If it was going to work, it certainly was not going to work in the short run. It would not be anywhere near operational by the spring of 1975. It was a great futuristic thrust that this government hoped it could come close to doing something about in time for the next election. In so doing, it neglected totally the transportation needs of the rest of this province.

Even so, irrespective of what happened to this, I was really concerned about the development of this type of transportation system which seemed to have such limited applicability. If one puts together the present and projected passenger densities and projected loads in the city of Toronto, it would fit very nicely on a couple of places only. When you take it to other cities, such as Hamilton and Ottawa, the two other cities mainly mentioned, it looked as if it wasn’t applicable at all.

An increase in the bus system and a couple of subways in Toronto, with its indicated need for a much higher density system, would have been the solution to the problem. One was going to have to fiddle and find routes search where this proposed population movement would, in fact, fit.

Having bought the principle, the government had to somehow twist the whole transportation system around in order that it could fit its system into it. It wasn’t a system designed, in fact, to meet the needs. When one got out into Hamilton and Ottawa, that particular problem became even more obvious in that one would have to really search for areas there that had suitable passenger demand and population densities for this particular intermediate range of transportation. It was completely non-applicable in the rest of the province.

In that period, other studies or other forms of transportation on other localities were completely neglected. The Windsor bus system has not materially improved over that time. Windsor has a crying need for an adequate bus system, an adequate transportation system. This is true of every city in the Province of Ontario. There are none really adequately serviced by transportation systems in the province.

But no, the government is going to let all those problems continue in all those other cities as the top priority is given to Metro Toronto. The government wanted to develop in Metro Toronto, for hopefully all the province to see, a particular system -- which I was really sceptical about working in the first place. Meanwhile, all the rest of the problems go unattended.

It was close to two years ago that, through my colleague the member for Sandwich-Riverside (Mr. Burr), an Instaglide system of lower density was brought to the attention of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. It has been brought to its attention more than once. It is a system which may be applicable in some of the smaller cities -- Ottawa, Hamilton, London and Windsor. There are cities in which the capacity is not quite up to the intermediate range transportation system proposed here. It is one which could take the pressure off the bus lines and could replace bus lines, and be both an adequate short-term and long-term solution.

That has never really been taken up. I gather that again today it was mentioned and there is some renewed interest being shown. But for two years the government went through a period of not even being willing to take a look at it, because all of the eggs were being put in the Krauss-Maffei carriage.

Mr. Speaker, I support this no-confidence motion relating to the collapse of Krauss-Maffei and criticizing the government for putting all of its eggs in the Krauss-Maffei basket. The ministry and this government, particularly the Premier, were planning this mode of transportation, not as a feasible technical solution to the transportation problems of this province, not as a feasible short-term or long-term solution, if you take into account the population ridership basis and the population density in this province; but because they pure and simply hoped -- vainly, as it is clear -- hoped that this would come in time to help them win the next election and they were unwilling to consider any other mode of transportation in this province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): None of the Tories are going to defend their minister or their government?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I think it is unfortunate that in a no-confidence debate of this or any other type we on this side, look across to one cabinet minister and five private members who are chatting among themselves about the news in their hometown weeklies --

Mr. Cassidy: When they let it drop they really let it drop.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- and four members of the rump, just in case they would feel that we hadn’t noticed them, sitting down there waiting to be called into some service.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): We are members of the Legislature.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, I can’t find it in my heart to feel sorry for the Minister of Transportation and Communications. I know that he has defended the indefensible as effectively probably as anybody could. To see him come forward a week ago, after a lengthy cabinet meeting that lasted right up to prayer time on the day of the session that the announcement was made, I would surmise that he perhaps, or some other wise person in the cabinet, had recommended to his colleagues that now they were in such serious far-reaching trouble with Krauss-Maffei, that the sharp knife should be drawn out, politics aside and, for the good of the taxpayers the programme be cut off and that was the statement that the minister should have made to the House a week ago.

We knew he was in serious trouble because of his moderate approach to the problem; he was prepared to answer questions without limits and people certainly appreciated that fact. We did feel however, that there was a division still in the cabinet and many people whose judgement probably had been different from the Premier’s on this matter for a number of months should have held the decision in their hands and the government should have announced a complete cancellation of the programme.

I, of course, remember the occasion on Nov. 22, 1972, when the original announcement was made. Certainly, this minister does not have to bear the blame for that decision nor do I believe does his predecessor, the member for Armourdale, (Mr. Carton). It was the Premier’s show; he had been concerned ever since his decision to stop the Spadina that the people, very properly in this community, were looking for the kind of leadership which would solve the transportation problems which had been further complicated by the new government policy to stop the expressway.

We were all familiar with the commitment of many millions of dollars to the expressway. We know about the most elaborate interchange -- the second most elaborate in North America, I’m told -- which leads from 401, not onto an expressway, but into Eatons and Simpsons, Yorkdale. We have seen the land that had been expropriated by the government; the houses were torn down, the bridges were built and then it was stopped.

Naturally the people in the northwest quadrant and elsewhere were looking for the magic answer that had been inherent in the Premier’s statement in 1971. With all of the panoply that unlimited funds can buy through the best public relations officers in this city and elsewhere, the statements were made up there at the Science Centre.

I remember the occasion. It was quite gala. It was just before the municipal elections that year. A chap named Rotenberg was there shaking hands with everybody; O’Donohue was there; a little short fellow standing off to the side named Crombie. I remember nobody seemed to be around him very much. I went over and chatted with him, as I did with others, about the upcoming election. But the announcement was made about the solution through technology -- magical technology is the way it appeared -- to the transportation problems that we faced.

Let no one make a mistake; it was the Premier’s personal commitment. Perhaps an overreaction to the problems he had experienced with the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway. Certainly his decision at that time was greeted with approval by many people, but it was predicated upon finding a solution -- short of freezing Toronto in amber and allowing no further growth -- that would solve the problems of transportation that have since remained unsolved.

Now, three years after the decision to stop the expressway programme, we find we are back at square one after a commitment of many millions of dollars -- certainly a continuing commitment, even though Krauss-Maffei has agreed to make a payment limited by the $10 million figure in the minister’s statement. We, too, urged -- and I would submit to you, Mr. Speaker, it came from my colleague who spoke just before me -- before anyone else had the temerity to indicate that the magic levitation was going to be unworkable, that we should be putting our precious dollars for transportation services into technology that had already been proved, something called a wheel --

Mr. Cassidy: I am sorry that is not true and the record shows it. See Hansard of April 24, 1973.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. Leader of the Opposition has just a few minutes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay, I just want that on the record, Mr. Speaker. The Liberals took over a year to catch up with this thinking that the government was wrong from the beginning.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Perhaps, in fact, I should withdraw what I said about my feeling that my colleague from York-Forest Hill was first in this, because I don’t think it’s that important. I don’t think this is a day to crow. Although I’ll tell you, with the panoply of the announcements and the irrational defences that have come from the minister and his predecessor, there should be something very close to a public apology by the minister, and more properly by the Premier of the province, for misleading the province, spending public funds, wasting three years in the development of this community and the communities that have been mentioned in this debate already.

I often wondered, Mr. Speaker, why the member for Armourdale left the cabinet just a few months ago. There were those, and I was among them, who felt that he had done a good job within the limitations that had been imposed upon him by the fact that his Premier, his chief, had decided that he was the expert in transportation and was imposing the terms of reference in which the minister had to act.

It could be that the member for Armourdale was the first one to come up to the emperor and bring the bad news that maybe magnetic levitation was not going to be as successful as we had been told in the press conference and the panoply at the Science Centre.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Like all messengers, did they chop his head off?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: This is the time, Mr. Speaker, when we must be concerned as taxpayers -- certainly as residents of the urban areas of this city -- that the government policy has been seen now to be a fiasco. There is still a remaining mistake and that is the announcement of its final end as far as magnetic levitation and linear induction are concerned. The government of West Germany, after the kind of survey that we should have taken long ago --

Mr. Lewis: Exactly.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- has taken this decision. I would be prepared to say that over many years that government and the people in that industrialized society have shown they are expert in development technology of this type; they took this decision and we should follow suit and stop sending good dollars after bad dollars and concentrate certainly on the development of technology already proved.

There is something good that has come out of this, surely -- that is, when the tremors of doubt began to be felt by the Premier and the ministers responsible to him. The establishment of the corporation dealing with urban transportation can yet be of value, not only to this jurisdiction but elsewhere. This is a corporation through which public dollars -- and private dollars as well -- might be channelled toward the development of technology that is already established for the specific uses that we need.

This is surely what the minister and what the government should do. The development Corporation has been substantially funded and the gem in their diadem has been the magnetic levitation train. I don’t think we should throw the whole concept of this development corporation out, but in fact we should stick with it so we can effectively make use of the dollars available through our commitment from this House and from other sources.

But as I say, Mr. Speaker, this is not a day to crow. It is a day for explanations from the government and to set a direction for the establishment of the kind of urban transportation policy that is going to make up as much as possible for the money and time wasted and for the commitment of the Premier -- a seriously faulty commitment in business judgement and in general judgement -- who authored the particular problem we face now.

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

Mr. Cassidy: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I can say briefly at the beginning that some of the comments I put on paper about the Krauss-Maffei system two years ago have proved to be so correct that I’m rather ashamed to get up in the House.

An hon. member: Don’t get up.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): I doubt that.

Mr. Roy: The member has been wrong before.

Mr. Cassidy: I am often wrong, but this time in fact I was dead right, as shown by articles in the Globe and Mail, and memorandums, and speeches in the Legislature.

I think it is worth pointing out for the record, Mr. Speaker, that from the beginning the New Democratic Party raised some very fundamental and cogent questions about the Krauss-Maffei system, and about what it indicated about the competence of the government, and about the government’s commitments to a workable, affordable system of rapid transit that could be quickly implemented in the major cities of this province.

Back on April 24, 1973, when the authority to give the minister the power to write the contract with Krauss-Maffei was being debated, was the first time in the Legislature that we had a serious debate about Krauss-Maffei. We laid the facts out on the record at that point, Mr. Speaker, including a number of facts which I would suggest should have brought pause to the ministry before it went ahead with its headlong rush in the direction of magnetic levitation.

They were summarized in the Globe and Mail about a week later in an article which also appeared in the magazine “City Hall.” At that time I have to regret to say the member for York-Forest Hill, while raising certain questions about what the government was doing, was doing it in the context that the Liberal Party, for which he was spokesman, wished to revive the dream of the Spadina Expressway and go back to an automobile-oriented type of transportation system, and nothing more.

Mr. Roy: The member for Ottawa Centre has been wrong before.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, there has been the most blinkered kind of headlong rush in the direction of this new technology by the ministry that one could ever conceive. It began as long as five years ago when the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, under Malcolm Armstrong, who has since departed to greener pastures, set out on a study of transit systems that might be considered by the province. That was the prelude to the eventual choice of Krauss-Maffei

At that time there was no serious consideration at all given to the light rail systems which were then in operation in, I think, either 15 or 20 European cities; in some cases they had been in operation for a decade or more. The minister knows the ones of which I talk -- systems that were intermediate in mode between subway systems and the streetcars which were so widely accepted here in Ontario.

Then the ministry and the government, I suppose because of an obsession with private enterprise or with high technology, refused to give any serious consideration to light rail; they would only look at systems that came in their entirety from a private developer, whereas light rail tended to be developed by putting components together. The ministry didn’t want that, and therefore when it got down to a final eight contenders, and then a final three contenders for the Krauss-Maffei contract, it did not look at light rail.

Oddly enough, it was able to get into the final three a proposal from the Ford Motor Co. for buses which had a maximum speed of 12 mph, regardless of the fact that the maximum speed laid out in the specifications was around 50 or 60 mph. It was able to make crashing mistakes like that, Mr. Speaker, but it was not able to give serious consideration to the light-rail alternative.

Somewhere in this pile of material I have the report that was eventually commissioned from the TTC, people who know their way around in this particular field, about light rail. That wasn’t received by the ministry until January, 1973 -- that is, at the time when the minister was at the penultimate stage of choosing between Hawker Siddeley, Krauss-Maffei and the US Ford Co. They were not deterred by what they heard; nor did the ministry ever look to see what was being done in other countries, and how that could be adapted to Ontario.

The ministry went to the TTC only because of pressure to look at light rail from people who were expert within the industry in transportation planning, and who said: “Look, if they are going to look at high technology, for God’s sake, transit technology tends to be conservative -- look at what you can do with the existing technology.”

I would wager, Mr. Speaker, that had the ministry begun in 1969 with a course of development that was more logical for the city of Toronto, in particular, than for any other City in North America -- that would have been the development of light rail -- we could today have a light rail system in operation, being inaugurated on Oct. 30, 1974, between the terminus at Warden of the Bloor subway line and Malvern, for example, so that all of that development in northeastern Metro could be oriented to a good sound rapid transit system at an affordable cost. We could now be laying the plans and getting property for a similar kind of light rail system in Ottawa and in the city of Hamilton, had the minister started five years ago on that particular direction.

One has to ask oneself why didn’t the ministry? After all, transit in Toronto was more healthy than in any city in the continent. The streetcar in North America lived almost alone in Toronto. It died out almost completely everywhere else. We lost them in Ottawa about 15 years ago. They vanished from most American cities 15 or 20 years ago under the pressure of the GM corporate lobby and all the rest of it. Now they are coming back.

We had the base to do this here. The logic, the sense, the dollars, and the economical kind of solution would have been in this particular direction but the ministry wouldn’t budge. They wanted a show. They spent $25,000 on a travelling road show with the Premier, the then minister (Mr. Carton) and other people and trotted around the province because they wanted a show. They invested tens of thousands of dollars in leaflets, in advertisements and in other things to convince the province that something was happening. They sent their experts out to make fancy speeches about the marvellous things that were happening.

Unfortunately, some of those speeches tended to trip them up, as, for example, when Mr. Armstrong said, “Look, we can do it for $5 million a mile and a nickel a ride.” By the time the province had hit on the Krauss-Maffei system, Mr. Speaker, the Krauss-Maffei experts were telling us that the cost per mile of transporting passengers along this system was a nickel a kilometre or about eight cents a mile under Canadian conditions -- 80 cents a ride between Scarborough and downtown Toronto without any allowance for inflation or the escalating cost of technology which, of course, is given in any development of this nature.

The ministry was still undeterred. A number of people, myself included, got up and said, “Look, your concepts are wrong. It’s crazy to put people in little 12-person cars because the costs are enormous. You’ll spend $100,000 per car when you can build streetcars for $125,000 or $150,000 and light rail vehicles that will carry 60 to 100 people for not much more. You’re crazy.”

The ministry and the government were, frankly, quite unwilling to take the balancing steps that were required, so that when they extended good new dual rail, light rail transit into the suburban areas, they would also take measures to actively discourage people in their Oldsmobiles with their eight-track stereo deck buzzing down the Don Valley Parkway. There was a concern about that, but the concern was misplaced because what the ministry was trying to do was devise a system which it could sell to the public as giving them eight-track stereo and motor car comfort and all the rest of it while they were riding in public transit. You simply can’t marry them in that particular direction, Mr. Speaker.

Not only that, but the ministry and government misread the temper of the Ontario public. Why is it that over the last three years since this programme began the number of transit passengers, not just in Toronto or Ottawa but in cities across Canada and across the United States has been rising steadily and rising absolutely? The number of transit trips that are taken by each individual living in a city has been rising in North American cities over that period of time as well. Why has that been happening after 25 years when transit was on the skids? Well, there has been a change in public attitudes and that was misread by the government.

So what do we have. We have a government which embarked on a piece of technological folly, of which it was warned; on a piece of financial folly, of which it was warned; on a piece of planning folly, of which it was warned.

We might as well mention too, Mr. Speaker, that as part of the PR show, this government gratuitously unveiled plans for new transit lines for Toronto, for Hamilton and for Ottawa without even a minute’s consultation with any of the responsible officials in those particular areas. The people of the TTC went up to the Science Centre to find 56 new miles of lines that had been created without a word of consultation. The people from the city of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission likewise were brought down here in order to view the spectacle, including about 2 miles of new transit lines on routes arbitrarily selected by the province for their particular city. And the people of Hamilton were told that they should find 25 per cent, or about $60 million or $70 million, in order to fund rapid transit along the provincial specifications for their particular city.

Mr. Speaker: I point out to the hon. member that his time has expired.

Mr. Cassidy: Fine. I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker.

In conclusion, I would say that that was pushing people around. The government has been defrauding them, it has been fooling them, it has been trying to bamboozle them, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

Mr. G. Nixon (Dovercourt): The member is all wrong.

Mr. Cassidy: That is certainly right. And if the member doesn’t think so --

Mr. G. Nixon: How would the member know? He is all mixed up. Everything he says is negative.

Mr. Cassidy: -- then I wish he would get up and defend this decision. Not a single Conservative has got up.

Mr. G. Nixon: Everything the member says is negative.

Mr. Cassidy: Not a single Conservative has got up to defend the government, to defend the Krauss-Maffei system, or to defend this fiasco into which the government has entered.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The time --

Mr. Cassidy: We have no confidence in this government, which has its transit priorities so mixed up that its back-benchers are even now deserting the sinking ship.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Boy, what a bunch of yahoos. Stand up.

Mr. Cassidy: Come on, let’s see a Tory get up. Who can defend the government?

An hon. member: The Tories are bankrupt.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: Which one of them will defend the Premier? Is there not one!

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): The member for Ottawa Centre is carried away with his own self-importance.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would remind the members that valuable time is being wasted.

Mr. Lewis: Is there a Conservative in the House, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Gilbertson: He did a good job in every department. The member for Ottawa Centre will never get the chance.

Mr. Lewis: Has the member for Algoma got nothing more to say? Let him go back to Blind River and do something for his community.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Etobicoke.

Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): Mr. Speaker, in speaking in support of this motion of want of confidence against the government --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order!

Mr. Lewis: Throw him out. That is, the member for Algoma.

An hon. member: He’ll have his turn.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): Has the member for Algoma been fermenting that maple syrup again?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Etobicoke.

Mr. Braithwaite: I want to say, first of all, that the government in wasting two or three years of planning time and huge sums of money with the Krauss-Maffei system, neglected and failed to provide for the wants and the needs of the people of Ontario.

Previous speakers have told the House that they warned the government. The public showed the government and told the government about its concern, but the government didn’t listen, Mr. Speaker. And to me that is an indication of the public-be-damned attitude of this government.

Mr. Roy: Right.

An hon. member: Right on.

Mr. Braithwaite: Mr. Speaker, that is why this government is going to lose the next election. They can change leaders --

Mr. Ruston: And they might do that too.

Mr. Braithwaite: They can come out with a tremendous advertising programme just before the next election --

Mr. Lewis: Not within the year.

Mr. Braithwaite: -- and they can open the bag of goodies. But I want to say here that it is my conviction, after having canvassed in the Carleton East constituency in aid of the new member --

Mr. Turner: The member was down there too, was he?

Mr. Braithwaite: Yes, I was.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Part of the big red machine?

Mr. Roy: I think the minister will make a very poor leader.

Mr. Good: He won’t even make a good opposition leader.

Mr. Braithwaite: The people of this province have finally understood that this government does not listen.

Mr. Speaker, my remarks are going to be confined to the transportation system in the Metropolitan Toronto area, in particular the northwest part of Metropolitan Toronto. To begin with, I would urge the Premier to complete the Spadina Expressway as quickly as possible. I can’t make it any more plain than that. People who live in the northwest area of Metropolitan Toronto, in Rexdale and in North York, should be able to make use of Wilson, Highway 401 and other routes and come down the Spadina Expressway quickly into the centre of the city and to go back at night without any concern.

If the Premier has not visited the Marlee area and the residential streets that are located around the Spadina ditch, I would urge him to do so at once. In fact, I was appalled to hear that he is holding firm in his decision not to complete the Spadina Expressway. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Premier lives in Brampton. If he lived in the Marlee area, that Spadina Expressway would have been completed a long time ago.

I had the misfortune to be caught in the general area of the Spadina Expressway one night around the closing time for most of the industries. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, the pollution from the cars that were stalled and couldn’t proceed because of the heavy traffic jams on the residential streets could be no worse than the pollution that might arise if the Spadina Expressway were completed. In fact, I think with the way things are now it is worse. If cities are for people, as the Premier says, then I think, and I know the rest of the members of my party think, that the expressway should be completed as quickly as possible.

Mr. Speaker, I want to mention that I sent out recently a questionnaire to 100 per cent of the households and businesses in my constituency. Without exception, the people who took the time to comment on the transportation situation asked that the GO station that was planned for northern Etobicoke should be completed as quickly as possible. Many others urged me to plead with this government to complete the Spadina Expressway so that they might more easily get into and out of the city, as may be required. Speaking of the proposed Kipling Ave. N. GO station, Mr. Speaker, I have continuously urged this government to complete same. Winter is now almost upon us and no GO station is in operation, and this has happened in spite of the many promises given to residents of the area.

I recall in the early summer, Mr. Speaker, the Premier and the mayor of Etobicoke coming down from Georgetown on the inaugural run of the GO system in that area, and the Premier making another grandstand show and stating that it won’t be long before a GO station was opened in Rexdale. In this House I asked him if that meant that one was going to be built there, because there had been some doubt about it, and the Premier said, yes, and that it should be by early fall. I want to remind the Premier, Mr. Speaker, that it is now early winter and that we should have a GO station in Rexdale by now.

Mr. Speaker, in fairness I should state that work is being carried on on what appears to be the location of a proposed GO station on the northeast corner of Belfield Ave. and Kipling Ave. in Rexdale. As far as the residents of the northwest part of Rexdale are concerned, this appears to be the wrong location. Most of the people who will be using this GO station will be coming from the area north and west of the station. Some will be coming south on Kipling Ave. from Albion Rd., and others will be coming down Highway 27 across Rexdale Blvd. and south on Kipling Ave. to Belfield Ave. All of these people, Mr. Speaker, will have to make a left-hand turn at Belfield Ave. They will have to cross Kipling Ave. and will then have to make another left-hand turn into the GO station. It appears that there will be chaos.

Mr. Speaker, one wonders why the GO station wasn’t built on the site of the existing Rexdale railway station, the CNR station that is no longer used. It has the name Rexdale and is located on the northwest corner of the intersection of Kipling and Belfield Ave. There is a parking lot already there. There is a Hydro right of way and, lastly, the station is already called Rexdale. I should point out, Mr. Speaker, that most of the residents of the northwest part of Rexdale are concerned that the government refuses to listen to them and it refuses to call the new station Rexdale. I would urge the government to reconsider because the postal station in that area is Rexdale, the general identity of the people who live there is Rexdale, and it makes no sense to call the proposed station Etobicoke North when it is built.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That is what the mayor wants.

Mr. Braithwaite: Having talked about the GO train system, I want to turn to the real needs of the people in northern Etobicoke for better transportation facilities. Buses are few and far apart and people who live in the general area have a very difficult time, particularly in the winter.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the average person who lives in the Rexdale area is in the middle- and lower-middle-income class, and this means that he or she must get to work by public transportation. I have already mentioned, Mr. Speaker, the difficulties that people have in getting to work. Time does not permit me to go into the problems that some of our senior citizens who live in the Rexdale area have in getting out to work, getting to church, or getting down into the centre of the city to see their relatives. There are several senior citizens’ homes in the extreme northwestern portion of Rexdale, Mr. Speaker, and these people could certainly use a better transportation system. The government could better have spent time planning for this type of system than on a pie in the sky with Krauss-Maffei.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I could never understand why the government has not --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member’s time has expired.

Mr. Braithwaite: I’ll close, Mr. Speaker. I could never understand why the government hasn’t extended the dial-a-bus system to Rexdale. Mr. Speaker, I can only say this. They put it into areas such as Baw where people have two and three cars. Working-class people --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Would you close off right away, please?

Mr. Braithwaite: I am closing off, Mr. Speaker. Working-class people in Rexdale could and would make such a system profitable. I urge the minister to consider extending it.

Now, in closing, Mr. Speaker, I want to say --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The member is well over his time.

An hon. member: He is just closing.

Mr. Braithwaite: I am closing, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Please close.

Mr. Braithwaite: All right. Now, all I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is this.

An hon. member: He is wrapping it up.

Mr. Braithwaite: This government has made it quite clear in its transportation planning that the needs of the people are not important; the wishes of the technocrats are.

Mr. Speaker: Order please --

Mr. Braithwaite: I want to say --

Mr. Speaker: The member is not doing as requested. Will he please take his seat? The next speaker is --

Mr. Braithwaite: In sitting down, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: -- the member for Sudbury.

Mr. Cassidy: We are waiting for a Conservative, Mr. Speaker, but they won’t defend the government.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to support this motion of no-confidence in the government, on account of the mishandling of public transportation development in the Province of Ontario. One would suspect that a person coming from northern Ontario would not be too concerned about such a concept, because I am sure the minister knows that we in northern Ontario, even if we live for another 50 years -- and let’s hope we don’t -- would never see such a concept in the northern part of the province.

I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, about the motivation behind the government, when in Nov., 1972, with great fanfare at the Ontario Science Centre the Premier, with visual aids and bands, lunches, and everything else going for it, announced this new concept in transportation. It is proven here today, I believe, that the thing was a politically motivated gimmick aimed at the 1975 provincial general election. Unfortunately, this is not to pass because we can see now that Krauss-Maffei is dead as a dodo bird. I have it on good authority that there were plans to paint the big train blue when they did pull it around the track in the fall of 1975.

Now, the government did try to justify their decision by technical means, but I think they failed in every count. The original concept of Krauss-Maffei was to fill a need for a transportation capacity of between 6,000 and 20,000 passengers per hour. If the thing had worked it possibly could have carried this number of people, but when you break down the facts and figures and see how many coaches, cars and trains you would need in order to reach the maximum upward limit of 20,000 passengers per hour in each direction, you would see that you would have to have 22-second headway limits on six-car trains and coaches costing -8 million per mile, Mr. Speaker.

The whole thing, even from its basic concept, was away off base, first of all, because there is no system in the world operating at a 22-second headway, let alone an unknown system of magnetic levitation.

It has also been proven to the government that there already was a mode of transport which could have been increased to capacities of 24,000 passengers per hour. That is the light rail system. My leader dwelt a bit on that and I would like to expand a little bit on what the government has missed in the past two years by not going for a concept which is already tried and proven and in place.

The government was given all this information in Nov., 1972, by the Streetcars for Toronto committee, which was formed when even the city of Toronto was considering downgrading the light rail transit system. The committee did a lot of work and they offered this work free to the government but, of course, it rejected that.

The Krauss-Maffei system had a basic and inherent weakness in that once it was in place its capacities could never be expanded beyond the 20,000 maximum, even after having used all these coaches and trains. The only way it could have been expanded was to put another rail right alongside. We all know that that would have been impractical, because I still don’t see why the government would want to elevate these things to everyone’s view. Regardless of how much time and money are spent trying to make an elevated rail aesthetically acceptable, you will never arrive at the optimum position where the thing is sightless. The higher you raise it the more people will see it and the more obscene it is on the landscape.

As for the capital cost, as I have said before, we can build streetcar lines now for about $3 million a mile. Yet our demonstration project here was going to cost us about $17 million a mile. Even financially the thing had no hope of survival. The capital cost involved was phenomenal. I from northern Ontario object vigorously, Mr. Speaker, to this kind of money being taken from the consolidated revenue’ fund of the Province of Ontario, first of all, to create a problem by telling us we have this great problem, and then trying to solve it with this Mickey Mouse outfit known as Krauss-Maffei. We in northern Ontario, as came out in the committee estimates, are sorely needing the fundamental modes of transportation, and we object strenuously to the government even thinking about putting $1.35 billion over a 10-year period into such a project, a project which never had a chance right from the beginning.

Another argument that the government used to adopt this kind of system is that operating costs could be reduced because of the reduction in manpower. It was supposed to be a computer-operated machine with no attendants or drivers. We all know what happened to the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. They built their coaches without a windshield; the system was designed for computer operation. What did they do a few months ago? They cut holes in the front of the coaches and there are still operators in those trains. With that evidence and that experience, because in this world we don’t live in isolation, the minister should have looked into what happened down at the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. They have been trying to get that thing off the ground for about three years and they can’t get any closer than about a five-minute headways and here we are telling the public we are going to run on 22-second headways. The whole thing was unthinkable. I as a layman can see through that kind of fog and I think we told you that earlier.

Also the performance and speed were cited. This thing was going to float along at a high rate of speed, and it is proven that light rail transit can operate at the same speeds as the magnetic levitation system was supposed to go. Its maximum top speed was going to be 55 mph provided we had our stations at one-mile intervals. We know that we’re not going to supply a service when we have stations at one-mile intervals, so the hope of this machine ever getting to 55 mph was a hopeless dream. Light rail transit on a private right of way can go at 55 mph, so there was no gain there for the added money which was going to be spent.

I’ve talked about the unacceptability of elevated guideways. There was no purpose in doing that. Something else came to me very early in the debate and I couldn’t find it in Hansard, but I did raise a question to the Minister of Transportation and Communications of the day. Shortly after the announcement was made I asked him about energy consumption. The question was posed in a fashion to ask him whether he had made some special deal with Ontario Hydro to subsidize the electrical costs which were going to occur in this kind of system. The minister told me that the energy costs were not going to be any higher than for a subway or a streetcar, per passenger mile. That has proved to be a falsehood. We already know -- and there are studies on the books which show this -- that the electrical costs alone per passenger mile are 4.46 times higher for Krauss-Maffei than they would be for a subway system. So, in this era of diminishing energy resources, it is important that we think of the energy costs when we’re designing an urban transit system.

Mr. Cassidy: And that’s where the minister fell down on the system.

Mr. Germa: We have the Ontario Transportation Development Corp. I think it’s a good concept. I spoke in the House when that legislation came through the House. But there are so many things on the ground which should be looked into. I’m going to ask the minister to respond.

Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. member conclude his remarks now please?

Mr. Germa: I’ll just ask this one question, Mr. Speaker: Would the minister ask the Ontario Transportation Development Corp. to investigate the feasibility of regenerating electricity through their braking system? Just the power developed in braking the subway cars could almost drive the subway itself.

There’s a simple project for the OTDC. If they can solve that problem and institute that in the machines that are already operating they could pay their wages for the next two years.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Roy: Oh boy. Hang on, hang on, here we go.

Mr. Cassidy: I’m glad somebody has confidence in the government.

Mr. Roy: Let’s go, hit it broadside.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): I have every confidence in the government. If was a member of what I was going to call later today the little pink popgun, I would be a little disturbed at bringing in a motion of want of confidence in this government.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Call it “red,” that’s what he wants to say.

Mr. Singer: That’s a good start.

Mr. Martel: He sounds like the Premier now.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would hope that when I am the subject of some rather rude and not very profound interjections you don’t take it away from my 10 minutes.

Mr. Speaker: No. Everything will go straight through for 10 minutes.

Mr. Roy: Sorry about that.

Mr. R. Gisborn (Hamilton East): Time’s up. Sit down.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk for a few moments in the context of the remarks that have been made this afternoon, first, that the transportation planning system and concepts in this province are in a shambles because of Tory infatuation with the Krauss-Maffei system and --

Mr. I. Deans (Went worth): True.

Mr. Drea: -- secondly, that this government is an object of ridicule and derision because of the events surrounding the West German government’s decision, and inevitably ours, to limit the developmental work on the Krauss-Maffei system.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk to you about the record of this government in the field of rapid transit and in transportation. According to the notice paper, this government, because it was preoccupied with a magnetic levitation transportation system, has “severely limited capital for more conventional and immediately available systems.”

Mr. Speaker, it is a matter of record that the bus, subway and streetcar riders of Metropolitan Toronto, during the time that this government was engaged in developmental work on the Krauss-Maffei system, the people in the suburbs had their fares cut in half by this government. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the fares of all transit riders of Metropolitan Toronto have not risen because this government has put a freeze on them, because we subsidize each and every one of the mass transit riders in Metropolitan Toronto who use the Toronto Transit Commission system.

Mr. Roy: Talk Krauss-Maffei.

Mr. Drea: Secondly, Mr. Speaker, during the time that the Krauss-Maffei system was undergoing developmental and technical evaluation in Germany, our transit developmental corporation was subsidizing and, indeed, introducing a great deal of new technology into the light rail streetcar. That, Mr. Speaker, is a matter of record.

Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, during that time there has been approval by the Metropolitan Toronto council for two new subways: One of them entirely new, the Spadina route; the second one much closer to home, the extension of the east-west subway from Warden Ave. to Kennedy Rd. Mr. Speaker, at all times this government has been prepared to pay 75 per cent of the cost of the land, the construction and the vehicles used on the routes.

Mr. Speaker, at the same time the GO-train service has been expanded from its original operations along the Lakeshore. Indeed, during the period when we were supposed to have done nothing except be infatuated with magnetic levitation, Mr. Speaker, we have brought in the GO-bus service to the north. Mr. Speaker, we have extended the GO service by bus to the east and to the west.

Mr. Martel: Dial-a-bus.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, we are now looking at two new GO-train routes. Mr. Speaker, this hardly speaks of a government so infatuated with a new mode of technology that it abandoned all efforts towards not only subsidizing, but, indeed, bringing into fruition conventional modes of transportation. When people talk about the rising number of transit riders, not only here but elsewhere --

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): He is off the track.

Mr. Drea: -- Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you if it wasn’t for this government, the fares on the TTC would be so high and the service so infrequent that, indeed, the trend would be the other way. Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you in the days when the fare used to go up, that every time there was a fare increase on the TTC, the number of riders went down; and that is a matter of record.

Mr. O. F. Villeneuve (Glengarry): He is telling the truth; the truth hurts.

Mr. Drea: The number of riders has only begun to rise in proportion to the population, and even above that, since this government began pouring millions of dollars into subsidies -- not only into the Toronto Transit Commission, but into every transit commission across this province. That is why the Premier of this province received the Transit Man of the Year award. This province is the envy of every jurisdiction in North America --

Mr. Roy: Is he going to give it back?

Mr. Drea: -- and it ill behoves a member from a place where there wouldn’t be even bus service if it wasn’t for our subsidies, to stand up and say we are infatuated.

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me there are four items that have been brought up. One, that the Krauss-Maffei was a waste of funds.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right -- it collapsed.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transportation and Communications and his predecessor, the member for Armourdale, are to be commended that the contract was so tightly written in a developmental field that we have received money back. I know of no other place where technology was being developed by someone for someone that when the technology for one reason or another was found wanting within the contract time, that there was money refunded.

Mr. Speaker, I suggest that you look at those over-aged, underdeveloped, non-working destroyer ships down in the Province of Quebec. What a monument to the federal party. Not a penny back. But in this one, the money is back.

Second, is it a waste of time? Mr. Speaker, I have outlined what we have done in this government in the last three years to not only popularize transit but to subsidize it and keep it within the means of the working men and women, whether they work for hourly wages or for very high salaries. We have kept it within their means, so that it is an effective competition against the automobile.

I suggest to you, sir, it ill behoves a member who may be a little upset today since he is going to nave to pay a tax on that high-powered energy vehicle that he wheels down in from the north, because his federal Minister of Finance has pulled the plug on his extravagant travel habits, to point the finger of derision at this government.

Mr. Roy: Who is driving a big car?

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, is it a waste of technology? No, I suggest to you, it is not a waste of technology. To not look at technology and to not look at the future is the only waste of technology.

Mr. Speaker, we now have the cheapest and best forms of transit and rapid transit on this continent. I suggest to you the only way we can make it cheaper is along conventional lines; and I am not talking about tight-rail streetcars, but our existing system.

They say, “Make it cheaper and better.” Well, we can use the pushers, the shovers and the kickers they use in Japan. They do get more people on and the trains do move faster. But I am not so sure our people want to do that.

Mr. Deans: We could use the secretary for --

Mr. Drea: Finally, Mr. Speaker, I think the time has come that the municipal councils have to stand up and say what they want. If they want light-rail streetcars, then fine --

Mr. Roy: The Premier told them what they are supposed to want.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Mr. Drea: That is not true.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Order please.

Mr. Turner: Does the member for Ottawa East want to make a speech?

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, now that I have been interrupted I think I should have the right to answer that. We have heard how the Scarborough corridor study was merely an excuse to bring in the GO-Urban system. That is a canard.

The Scarborough study was to see if indeed there should be a Scarborough Expressway, if there should be light-rail streetcars. Let the member read the report on it. They ask: Should there be an expressway? Should there be light-rail transit?

I suggest to some of those who are shrieking right now for light-rail transit to wait until it goes down the Gatineau power lines, through the backs of their ridings; then they will find out, all of a sudden that their constituents are not exactly enthralled. At that point we will be blamed for introducing light-rail transit.

Mr. Roy: The government can’t do anything right.

Mr. Drea: That, unfortunately, is the record of the two opposition parties, who so far this afternoon have not offered a single alternative, not a single hope, not a single anything except to say that this government has been found wanting.

Mr. Bullbrook: This fellow’s after the job of the Minister of Transportation and Communications.

Mr. Roy: If the minister keeps it up he is going to get it.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, in closing, on the basis of the record, I suggest to you that this government and its record are not only impressive, but indeed put the lie to the accusation that there is a want of confidence, not only in the government but in the Premier, and in my friend, the Minister of Transportation and Communications.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly was intrigued by the comments of the hon. member for Scarborough Centre. His imagination so often runs riot with him, as it did this afternoon, that he can’t tell the woods from the trees or even where the forest is. Unfortunately, he gets himself all mixed up.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Turner: The member had better open his eyes.

Mr. Singer: He talks about subsidization and says that had it not been for this great blue government in Ontario, the fares in Metropolitan Toronto would be double what they are.

Mr. Speaker, you yourself know, because you had great service for many years in the city of Toronto, that the TTC ran a pretty good ship for a long period of time --

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Without any help.

Mr. Singer: And they built their subways with their own money.

Mr. Givens: Out of the fare boxes.

Mrs. Campbell: That’s right.

Mr. Singer: This so-called saving to Toronto of half the fare, or the great giveaway that they gave by cutting the fare in half, just doesn’t display any understanding of what happened. Whose money is he talking about? He is talking about money of the taxpayers of the Province of Ontario, a little of which the government really had to give to help Metropolitan Toronto function.

Mr. Givens: We shared our beer with them first.

Mr. Singer: Yes, it is not as though they suddenly discovered nirvana. It isn’t as though they suddenly said, “Oh, that poor city of Toronto has to have something done for it so we’re going to cut their transit fares in half.” The member knows as well as I do -- and you perhaps better than both of us, Mr. Speaker -- how hard the taxpayers of the city of Toronto worked to develop a transit system that paid its own way. It only got into trouble when the government started to interfere, when the government began to ignore plans that had been made over many, many years.

It was too much for that fine man Charlie MacNaughton to sit in this House any longer, after he had been repudiated by his leader and forced to renounce contracts he himself had signed. Gordon Carton -- I’m sorry, the hon. member for Armourdale, he’s still a member -- couldn’t really take the kidding about the kiddy-car ride. He inherited that one day and he did his best, albeit that it wasn’t good enough to try and justify the imaginative scheme.

I can well remember the day in the House in June, 1971, when the Premier rose in his place and said, “We’re cancelling Spadina,” and the Tory benches applauded and the new world had come to Toronto. I can well remember that one of the first things they did was to employ a man named Buckminster Fuller who dragged off his shelf a whole series of pyramid drawings. He’d used them 21 times before but he was able to con the government into spending another $15,000 to have them adapted to the Spadina right of way.

I can well remember my Tory opponent in that election saying: “When Buckminster Fuller’s pyramids are built on Spadina, it will be the eighth wonder of the world. People are going to come as they do to see the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco or the pyramids in ancient Egypt. Those are the great things that the government does for us.” Her voice just broke. She got 14 per cent of the vote in Downsview, which was the smallest percentage of any Tory candidate in the whole Province of Ontario, so somehow the message that was being conveyed by the member for Scarborough Centre to the people of Ontario this afternoon seemed to fall on pretty deaf ears in the northwest segment of Metropolitan Toronto.

What has been done? I tell you there has been a betrayal of the people in the northwest segment.

Mr. Givens: Darn right there has been!

Mr. Singer: There was a cancellation of a plan that had been worked on by successive Metropolitan councils and local councils for years and years and years. Government cabinet ministers had put their signatures and their pledge and the pledge of government to a plan of future development. In one stroke of the pen -- and for nothing more than election advantage -- the Premier scrapped it in June, 1971. For what? Only for political advantage. Finally he had to come up with some other system. So off we went into GO-Urban, the intermediate capacity system of transport, Krauss-Maffei, kiddy-car rides at the exhibition, for $10 million, $15 million, $20 million. Who knew how much it was going to cost? Nobody knew how much it was going to cost.

The member for Scarborough Centre talked about the experiment that was going to be conducted in Scarborough and said it had nothing really to do with GO Transit. I wonder if he has seen this release that comes from the transit planners.

“Northeast Corridor GO-Urban Study Area First in Province: Northeast Metro Gets First GO-Urban Study.

“The first GO-Urban study in the province is taking place in the northeast corridor of Metropolitan Toronto. GO-Urban is the name of the new intermediate capacity transit system announced by Premier William Davis last November.”

What else can that mean except that was where it was designed to be put? So it is with tongue in cheek, or forked tongue, or however you want to put it, that the member for Scarborough Centre can get up and mouth the ridiculous statements that he tried to put forward this afternoon and expect that anyone really is going to believe it.

The unfortunate thing, Mr. Speaker, is that this government, for reasons of political expediency only, put all its eggs in one basket. Transit Man of the Year? There was a cartoon in the Sun not too long ago with himself ripping off his coat and underneath was a T-shirt with a big T on it -- “This is a job for Mr. Transitman.” You’ll never guess whose picture was depicted underneath that T-shirt. Well, if he is Mr. Transitman and if he is the Transit Man of the Year, why didn’t he do something to help the people of Metropolitan Toronto?

The record has been a sad one. Krauss-Maffei is a dismal failure. Whether we’ll ever find out how many hundreds of thousands or extra millions of dollars we wasted is perhaps questionable. But that’s gone. But the years that we’ve wasted because of Davis’ folly -- the kind of demonstrations that were put on, the pamphlets that were put forward, the best PR men in the world competing one with the other to come out with more glowing phrases, nicer pictures, fancier diagrams, greater routes, more conferences -- and the film, the film with the hon. member for Armourdale, I thought that was a beautiful touch; the one we saw at the Science Centre in November of 1972.

Mr. Sargent: That’s show business.

Mr. Singer: Oh, that was just beautiful. There he was, the then Minister of Transportation and Communications, pointing with pride at the mockup of the great Krauss-Maffei system that was going to invade and permeate the whole Province of Ontario.

Is the government going to get paid back for that film? That would be very interesting. But he looked very good. The hon. member for Armourdale is a good-looking man and he was really pointing with pride and beaming.

Mr. Roy: Then he took the show on the road.

Mr. Singer: To think he had to go all the way to Germany to get those pictures taken.

So that didn’t work. Then we had dial-a-bus. There are some wonderful phrases in here. I note the Premier in one of these great press releases was saying, “We are very sympathetic about their problems in the north-west sector because we did stop the Spadina and they really have no way of getting in and out, so we are going to do something for them; we are going to give them dial-a-bus. And dial-a-bus is going to be a great boon.” Well, they tried dial-a-bus for a while and nobody used it. They can’t give it away now.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Singer: It’s so expensive to run nobody wants it. The body collapses in a very short period of time and it has to be replaced. I’m told the transmission falls out of it. But the most important thing wrong with dial-a-bus is that nobody uses it.

I suggested here in the House, Mr. Speaker, that dial-a-bus sounded very interesting and might well work in the outlying communities, some considerable distance away from the urban centres. But when I asked how as a dial-a-bus going to get around on the already overcrowded streets of Metropolitan Toronto, how was it going to go out into a street like Bathurst St., or into a street like Dufferin St., or into a street like Keele St., or Lawrence or any one of those streets in the rush hour, and try to get people somewhere where they wanted to go when traffic couldn’t move there at the present time, there was no answer. Obviously the performance has indicated that the government reaches for any little bit of pie in the sky that it thinks might be appealing.

There was a poll that Peter Regenstreif did, that was reported in the Star on Saturday, which indicated that 61 per cent of the people want Spadina finished and that 15 per cent don’t think it’s such a good idea. You know, 61 to 15 is a pretty serious percentage, and surely there must be the odd politician over there who can recognize the significance of that kind of polling. Whether, as Diefenbaker once said, polls are for dogs or not, and whether one casually dismisses a poll because one doesn’t like it -- and I’ve been guilty of that on occasion myself -- when there appears to be such an overwhelming voice of the people in favour of something more and something now, how can the government fiddle around? How many more minutes have I got? One minute?

Mr. Speaker: Ten seconds.

Mr. Singer: Ten seconds? How can the government fiddle around any longer with schemes that don’t work, and waste time and waste the public money? Mr. Speaker, certainly this vote should be supported and I would hope that many members sitting on the government side -- including yourself, sir, if you are not occupying that chair at the time -- who know the problems of Metropolitan Toronto and how badly it has been treated by this government, will support this no-confidence motion.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Yorkview.

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this motion of no-confidence this afternoon, and in doing so I must say that I have been one of those in this House who have been extremely interested over the years in innovative modes of transportation, as many of us have been.

An hon. member: The record will bear that out.

Mr. Young: It was my privilege to be in Albany at the invitation of the then Sen. Spino when the first original concept of a safety car was unveiled, and then along with Heward Grafftey -- one of those perennials who seem to have survived in Quebec over the years -- in Washington for a couple of hearings where we testified about our interests, and we hoped the interests of our people in this part of the country, in the whole concept of better modes of transportation.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Some of the brighter Conservatives.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): The only ones.

Mr. Young: At that time, at my suggestion, the former Premier -- perhaps being a man of some vision -- invited Sen. Spino to talk to the Legislature about the whole concept of the safety car and safer transportation. That was good, but in that whole period I think the thing that some of us were trying to do was to point out to our people here in this Legislature, in the province, that very important experiments were going on in the whole field of transportation, experiments that we ought to be watching and perhaps participating in to some extent, but leaving it in a large measure to larger and stronger jurisdictions to carry out the actual experimentation.

During the 1960s we had an investigation carried out called the MTARTS study. I have cabinet drawers full of their reports, and these are just a couple of them. We had, I think, one of the most comprehensive studies of what might be done to meet the transportation needs of the whole Metropolitan Toronto area. They brought forward certain suggestions without coming down on any one particular side or without giving priority for one route against another, but they did outline the costs that might be involved in extending GO Transit into the periphery of Metropolitan Toronto. And there is much interest in that.

The strange thing is that the government sort of dragged its feet in the implementation of this report, and for a long time we saw very little results. The member for Scarborough Centre tries to tell us that this great government did this, that and the other thing in bringing about lower fares and bringing about new routes for GO, and all this. But let’s remember this, Mr. Speaker, that this was done reluctantly only after very terrific pressure on the part of local people and on the part of opposition members. It was a holding effort on their part, because by that time -- although we had not made a public announcement of it -- the ministry officials had been travelling to Germany and around the world, and had been looking at what they thought were more sophisticated transit modes, rather than steel wheels on steel rails. They were getting ready for something different and dramatic.

So MTARTS was put into the freezer for a while and the whole report downgraded until this tremendous announcement we had over at the Science Centre. About that time we began to realize the awful pressure and that GO-Urban couldn’t possibly be realized for some years. This government was reluctantly back into the situation where it had to grant more money for public transportation. It had to think in terms of moving the GO Transit lines out to the west to Georgetown and north to Richmond Hill. It just couldn’t wait for the new concept because of the pressure of the people; that’s what happened.

So we had this kind of situation that well after the need and under pressure, these things were done and done reluctantly, because the government seemed to feel that this new linear induction motor was going to solve the problem; and when it was solved a new day would dawn. I think many of us felt at that time that we were willing to listen to this sort of thing but we shouldn’t put, as so often has been said here this afternoon, all our eggs in the one small basket, because that’s not good enough. While we could watch and keep in close touch with these experiments that were going on across the world, we should have been looking at what is practised at the present time.

I have in my hand a report called “Tomorrow’s Transportation,” which came from Washington at about that time and it says these words, and I want to quote them:

“The profiles of urban change and some of the shortcomings of present urban transportation are delineated in the following pages as an introduction to what must be done to develop new transportation components and systems for the future.

“While new breakthroughs in transportation systems and services are the ultimate aim, the aim of research that’s going on a sound research and development programme must begin with present problems, available resources and current behaviour. Hence, a part of this report examines the promise of existing technologies to improve present transportation systems, but makes the recommendation that immediately the need must be met with current technology to move forward to transport our people.”

And then, after it has outlined the different systems, including the magnetic levitation system, it says:

“Each of these types of systems, in their present and projected states of development, has some major problems, however, compared to other systems examined. Until these problems are resolved, such systems appear to offer few salient advantages and would have relatively limited application for travel within urban areas.”

This was the situation while the United States was still moving forward with experimentation and while Germany was moving forward. We heard from the leader of this party this afternoon, in a good deal the same words, the results of what has happened over there.

In the United States at the present time, certain developments are taking place which I just want to mention. Trans-bus vehicles are being tested in a Phoenix, Ariz., test centre. Those are new types of transit vehicles which should help solve some of our problems. Undersecretary Barnum reported very recently on the state of commuter rail-cars, the all new advanced-concept train now under development. The advanced-concept train will be powered by a flywheel propulsion system designed to store and reuse electric power. That is an experiment that is going on.

We also have an all-time record -- it was announced on Aug. 16 -- for a steel-wheeled vehicle on steel rails of more than 250 miles per hour. It was set on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 1974, by the United States Department of Transportation’s linear induction motor research vehicle undergoing testing at Pueblo.

These are a few of the things going on. There is also something I mentioned in the estimates the other day concerning a Ford Motor Co. contract calling for a 16-month research effort to determine -- and these words are interesting -- “the feasibility of using magnetic fields on which a wheel-less vehicle could ride just above the ground at very high speeds.” That experiment is going on there, and the Germans are still doing it with the idea that something might emerge for long-distance travel. But as far as short-distance intercity work is concerned, this project is out the window.

While I think that we should always have our minds open to new ideas, I don’t think a jurisdiction of this size has any business experimenting when large nations with very much greater resources than we have are doing this experimentation. I think we can carry on watching this, participating as we might in a minor way, keeping in close touch, and when the time comes being able to use these innovative approaches.

Mr. Speaker, as my time is up, I would simply say that I support the motion. I believe that this government is condemned because of its all-out support of one mode of transportation in a world which needed far greater variety of development.

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

Mr. Roy: The member for St. George yields, Mr. Speaker. She is a very gracious lady for yielding to the very simple comments I want to make on this.

I think it is important, as one who represents a riding in the city of Ottawa and who I suppose represents people who have been seduced by this grandiose plan, to make a few comments in support of the motion.

I would like to say sincerely to the minister that the comments made by the Premier of the province about our cynical approach to the hearing of this news about the difficulties that were experienced with Krauss-Maffei were very understandable. Yes, we are deeply concerned, because had we felt that the system could work, it certainly would have been something to look towards in the distant future. But the point about which we were so cynical is that he has been so very political about it. It was to have been one of the cornerstones of his campaign for 1975.

The point is simply that when the Premier originally cancelled the Spadina Expressway, that again was done for political motives at the time. We can recall the surveys by the Detroit firm, saying in effect, “If you are going to win the election in 1971, you have got to blossom as a leader in this province. You have got to take some hard decisions.” That basically was the reason that the Spadina Expressway was cancelled. That was one of the hard decisions. The other hard decision, of course, was the question about the separate school boards. They were decisions to show that this man had leadership qualities.

But at the time he made the Spadina decision, the irresponsible part of it was that he had not proposed any alternative. So we waited, following the 1971 election, in which he was extremely successful, in which they sold the man as a leader. But he proposed no alternative for a period of approximately two years. We kept saying, “What is your alternative? It is all very well to spend $150 million in a ditch and then cancel it. What is your alternative?”

A number of my colleagues have mentioned some of the alternatives that were proposed by Buckminster Fuller for pyramids and so on in the ditch, but the point about the magnetic levitation system is that it was orchestrated for 1975. That is why the minister was so enthralled. The point has been made by my leader that the blame must rest on the shoulders of the Premier, not on the minister’s shoulders. I suppose if there is any blame to rest on the minister, it is for his doggedness or his partisan approach in defending a system which he knows will not work on a long-term basis. I suppose that the minister’s predecessor felt ill at ease, as I suggest the minister feels ill at ease, in considering the options that are now left after this system.

In any event, the great thing about the magnetic levitation system is that, first of all, the Premier grabbed the imagination of the public by pointing out that there were no wheels on this thing, that this was something they could look forward to in the future. It orchestrated well with this medal and the whole thing. It would have been beautiful to see the little trains going around overhead at the CNE. He could have pointed to them and said: “Look, in 1971 we blocked off Spadina. Now, in 1975, we have the system that is going to replace it. There you are, you lucky citizens. I’m Mr. Transportation Man of the Year, and this is how we are going to get into 1975. This is what all the shouting was about.”

Then the Premier went about the province, and again with a political approach. In other words, the Premier of this province took a risk, and it is backfiring. Mr. Speaker, you will recall the big spectacle at the Science Centre. I recall, for instance, the road show when it moved to Ottawa. This is somewhat humorous. All the ministers came down. The minister’s predecessor came down, and all the local Conservative people were there. I recall when the Premier went to Ottawa with the film, and so forth. He was so excited about the performance that he put on in the auditorium at Algonquin College. In fact, he introduced some of the opposition members who were there and he forgot to introduce the former member for Carleton East, Bert Lawrence, who was sitting next to him. In fact, he forget to introduce the former Minister of Housing. I could see the concern on their faces.

Of course, at that time I realized that the former member for Carleton East was in trouble because he was sitting right next to the Premier and he forgot to introduce him. He introduced everybody else. I recall he introduced the member for Ottawa Centre and myself, who were present at this extravaganza.

I can still see the Minister of Housing chasing him around at the back of the stage, pulling on his sleeve and saying: “Look, you’ve got some Tories in the place. Introduce us.” In any event, Mr. Speaker, this is one of the performances which we found extremely distasteful. This is what the government is facing now, because it has backfired.

My colleague has mentioned before the need for the track around the CNE. This is one of the points that was raised in the estimates. I think the minister has still not clarified the situation.

The track around the CNE was supposed to have been built because the facilities in Munich, or wherever the track is, were not adequate to properly test the train. The point I don’t understand is: If you’re really serious about continuing the programme, why would you cancel the programme at the CNE? If, apparently, you’re going to carry on with this thing, you’re going to have to build one there sometime anyway, or you’re going to have to build something in Munich so you can properly test the system. It’s an illogical approach the government is taking, now that the thing has backfired. It’s something it is going to possibly live to regret.

Mr. Speaker, I recall as well the embarrassment of the former minister about the approach taken by the Premier in this. I will get back to the point. It’s a small wonder that the Premier has been staying away since the news of the Krauss-Maffei system broke last week. It’s a small wonder that we don’t see him in the House; that we don’t see him posturing across the province. It is somewhat of an embarrassment. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, it is a blow to the 1975 election for the Conservatives, apart from the other blows that they’ve suffered on four different occasions, at least, since 1971. Of course, the polls in the Star again reveal what happens when a leader loses his credibility with the public in this province.

This is why, Mr. Speaker, we are so cynical about this. For instance, in the Ottawa area the dial-a-bus system works, and I suppose the light rail system would be something that would be practical because of the relatively light population in some of the city’s areas. But the magnetic levitation system has no useful purpose in an area like Ottawa. We even question the system working in the atmospheric conditions there. We have serious doubts about that.

Every second pamphlet we saw was changed about how the system was supposed to work in Ottawa. On one particular pamphlet it showed the system going on a particular right of way. On the next pamphlet the right of way was changed, with no consultation at all with the local authorities.

So, the government was political about this. The Premier of this province was political about this. I’m suggesting the minister, if he is to fulfil his duty -- and I can appreciate that he has to save face, but sooner or later he is going to have to face the music. Sooner or later he’s going to have to level with the public of this province. I suggested to the minister during the course of his estimates that he quit being political and say: “Look, we’re not spending another nickel on this system unless we can show that we can bring it to a fruitful conclusion -- that the system will work.”

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I said that.

Mr. Roy: The minister did not say that. He wants to go through another additional phase. He wants another 120 days.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No I don’t.

Mr. Roy: He wants about 120 days, some five months or so, to make up his mind. He is going to spend further sums. He wants to go through what he calls phase one. Mr. Speaker, he is going through phase one --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No, it isn’t.

Mr. Roy: -- Mr. Speaker, are you suggesting that I sit down?

Mr. Speaker: There is 15 seconds to go.

Mr. Roy: Fifteen seconds; that’s just about what I need to wrap this up.

He was suggesting, Mr. Speaker, that we have to go through another phase without knowing how much we’re going to spend.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Not correct.

Mr. Roy: -- how long it’s going to take, and what it’s going to cost. I say he should race the music now. The Premier has seduced the citizens of this province long enough. Let’s come out with the facts. Let’s be straight with them for a change.

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

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, it was not my intention to participate in this debate, but I’d like to offer some constructive suggestions --

Mr. N. G. Leluk (Humber): That would be nice for a change.

Mr. Turner: He is the only member who offers them.

An hon. member: The member is always constructive.

Mr. Burr: -- and perhaps a little advice to the minister. As the minister knows by now. I drew to the minister’s attention almost two years ago a concept of automatic mass rapid transit called Instaglide. It has several advantages. In the short time that I seem to have available, I might record a few of these. Instaglide can transport any required number of passengers in a community safely, cheaply, quickly and noiselessly. Because the track requires only a square yard of property every 60 ft or so, Instaglide uses very little earth space. Because it can he dismantled and moved to another street or another location very simply, it would never turn into a white elephant, as the University loop of the subway has done.

Installation takes a matter of months rather than years. Linear Air Motors Ltd. claims that it could install the system at the CNE for August -- and this letter was written in December of 1972. Because it is automatic it can run 24 hours a day, with operating costs of about 1½ cents per passenger mile. All of it can be built in Ontario now, except for the computer system. If demand increased, this could be developed in Canada also. Because the cars are very light in weight they can be moved off the track easily by two men using a wrench, if the need should arise. In a subway, one immobilized coach puts the whole system out of commission.

Because the Instaglide system cuts headway to one minute, about 300 cars can operate on a five-mile, two-way line. Because Instaglide is so flexible it can provide stations at or in highrise apartments, at or in commercial centres, in fact, wherever passenger density exists. The capital costs are relatively very low.

I recorded at that time the various features that had impressed me and I pointed out to the minister that one of my constituents who is a partner in this company had been trying for several months to reach someone in the federal government interested in transportation. Finally he was told that his only hope was to get a consulting firm to make a presentation and arrange contact for him. The consulting firm to which he was directed told him that it would need $25,000 to do this. He had slightly more success in Ontario, having reached various members of the ministry, but unfortunately, since the middle of October he hadn’t been able to reach anyone who could arrange for the inventor to make a presentation to the minister.

It was at that point that I came into the picture and was able to arrange a meeting with the then minister. However, the then minister had to leave the meeting early and it was agreed that the officials would go and look at this device in about six weeks time.

About six months later I found out that nothing had happened. I drew it to the attention of the then minister and he was also very surprised that nothing further had been done. In November, 1973, about six months after the proposed visit, I received another letter from my constituent, who said in part:

“In October, 1972, I spoke with officials of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications regarding the installation of Instaglide on the CNE grounds. At that time, I informed the Ontario ministry people that we had people in Toronto who would put up the money to build two miles of Instaglide on the CNE grounds. We would be responsible for taking the transit system down as well as putting it up. At the time, we felt we could charge a fee to the people riding the system and thereby recoup the money invested.

“This system would have given the public a chance to try out the transit system, and yet there would have been no burden whatsoever to the taxpayers. As usual, I heard no more, although I was told that the government was not in the habit of buying ideas from individuals and then promoting them on to the market. I am sure you can understand my astonishment when I learned that Premier Davis not only bought a system from Germany with intentions to manufacture the system from a government level, but also gave the Krauss-Maffei company $16 million to do what we proposed to do for nothing.”

That’s really the point I want to drive home, Mr. Speaker. This other option was available. At that time, for reasons that I have not yet been able to fathom, this offer was ignored and the other one, the disastrous one, was pursued. I think that is all I will say at this time, because I know that our present minister is aware of the situation now and he is going to give it consideration. This is all that anyone can ask, that it be given a fair consideration. Then if it lives up to the merits that are claimed for it, then, of course, we should take advantage of it. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, I did not really intend to involve myself in this debate. I felt that there were others far more capable in the field of transportation than I was. However, I listened with a great deal of interest to the remarks of the member for Scarborough Centre. I would like to say at the outset that I have never heard him make so fine a speech as he did today, and I congratulate him on it. However, I must point out that there are certain matters which were --

Mr. Deans: It doesn’t say much for his previous efforts, does it?

Mr. Drea: Take ’em when you get ’em.

Mrs. Campbell: That was not intended to be derogatory in any sense, Mr. Speaker. I meant what I said.

Mr. Deans: Well, neither was mine.

Mrs. Campbell: However, there are some things to which he made reference, which I am afraid I couldn’t allow to slip by. He spoke about the subsidies paid by this government to municipalities and, of course, he is correct. This government does grant subsidies in the area of municipal transportation.

Mr. Good: Finally.

Mrs. Campbell: May I say that for many years, as a member of the council of the city of Toronto, we begged for assistance which we could not get. Actually, it was only when it was finally brought home in a compelling way that the people of Toronto could no longer stay in the position of making all of their assets available for free to Metropolitan Toronto that we began to see a development in the subsidy field. It is interesting in relation to this that this government, with all of its great concerns, took all of the steps it could to try to make Toronto pay in order to protect the fare structure of metropolitan transportation.

May I say that it was this government which, despite the protests of the people of Toronto, decided to exempt from assessment for taxation much of the transportation property in the city of Toronto. Of course, when you do that you cannot expect that you won’t have to subsidize the transportation system in some other form. I think we have to keep that in mind when we consider the careful address of the member of Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Speaker, the municipalities over the years were the ones to give leadership in the development of transportation systems. I don’t think I need to go into the history of the way in which Toronto developed its system, but of course, the TTC of the day could not be expected to expand through its fare structure as rapidly as the requirements of Metropolitan Toronto demanded, which was what the TTCs plans indicated originally and the way in which we developed the first subway system in Toronto.

It was required to expand at a rate that they had not been able to provide for. This again points out something, or ought to point out something, to thoughtful members of the government, in the lack of bringing the municipalities along with them in the planning of transportation or any other system. This government has continually made decisions in these areas and revoked them. It has continually made policy without involving the municipalities so, of course, if it’s asked to subsidize there isn’t anything else it can do, if it expects the municipality to carry through with the obligations imposed upon it by the decisions of this government.

In reference to Krauss-Maffei I think all that can usefully be said has been said. The only thing that bothers me is that even at the end, or what appears to us to be the end, the minister was still talking about such things as the breakdown being something like a bad fuse or a flat tire. I could have wished, and I have spoken to him about it, that he had been a little more frank earlier than he was. However, he had to bear a burden which was not really his to bear.

I have congratulated him on the way in which he dealt with a very difficult situation, but it doesn’t absolve the government from a lack of concern for the people of this province in developing the necessary modes in order to help them to cope with problems which have been largely due to the lack of foresight in planning or the lack of implementing plans which have already been made.

Mr. Speaker, I join with the rest of my colleagues on this side of the House in supporting the motion. I trust that something will be said by the minister which will be enlightening to us, because at the moment I can only say that this has been a dismal failure and, like my leader, it isn’t a day for us to gloat. Thank you.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I think there is a minute left.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Peel South asked for three minutes.

Mr. Deans: Oh, then he will have to wait his turn.

Mr. Speaker: We will give him one minute.

Mr. Deans: Can I have one minute too? I will split the three minutes -- 1½ minute each.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Mr. Speaker. I just want to make a brief comment and at a later date perhaps I can speak more fully on transportation. I simply have to ask members to reject this motion for the simple reason that it was stated at one point in time all the eggs weren’t in one basket. I want to put some statistics on the record. For Metro since 1972 this government has given about $30 million toward transit deficit.

Mr. Foulds: Whoopee!

Mr. Kennedy: Capital: subway, $50 million; buses, over $12 million -- and $1.42 million of that went into Mississauga.

Mr. Foulds: Money can’t buy votes.

Mr. Kennedy: GO Transit, over $37 million. Mr. Speaker, in the whole operation of transit in this area, there has been no assistance from Ottawa except when they finally came to life and found there was a need and aided with the line to Richmond Hill.

Now, I know the minister wants some time to wind up --

Mr. Speaker: Yes, I think we should get the minister on now.

Mr. Kennedy: I won’t say more at this time, but I would urge members to join with us and reject that narrowly focused non-confidence motion, because it doesn’t warrant the effort that has been put forward in dealing with it this afternoon, in the light of the work that this government has done in the area of transit assistance.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of interest to many of the remarks and comments that have been made since the start of this debate some 2½ to three hours ago. I must say that some of it was most interesting to hear, but I think the part that probably intrigued me the most caused me at one time to pick up the order paper to see exactly what the notice of motion was. I thought perhaps I had misread it originally, because the notice of motion itself I had interpreted as dealing with the transportation policy of the government of Ontario, when in fact that is not what has been talked about here at all this afternoon.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Yes, it was.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: All afternoon I have heard speaker after speaker get up and tell me about the fallacy of the Krauss-Maffei contract and the fallacy of attempting to develop this new technology -- although I noticed a distinct turn around on the part of the hon. Leader of the Opposition and just recently the hon. member for St. George, by saying we are not here to chortle --

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): Where are they?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: They are not here to chortle today because they read in the paper that maybe it wasn’t such a good thing for them to be laughing at what in fact was a very unfortunate situation, that we were not able to continue on to develop this technology. I think they found out that maybe that wasn’t exactly the right thing to do, that it wasn’t a funny thing that had happened to us here. It wasn’t funny at all.

Mr. Foulds: Incompetence is never funny.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It was a very, very serious thing.

Let me say too that the leader of the NDP said in his opening remarks that he had made contacts with people in West Germany and had discussed with them some of the reasons for the withdrawal of support from the Krauss-Maffei project. Well, let me say at the outset that I was not a party to these conversations, obviously, and I was not able to discuss with -- or even talk to -- the same people as the hon. member did --

Mr. Lewis: I wasn’t a part of the minister’s conversations with Dr. Finke, but I took him at his word.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I don’t doubt the member’s word. So I cannot comment on what was said to him; nor can he comment on what was said to me.

However, I can only relate to this House and answer questions about those things which I have some knowledge of. I can only relate what I was told in my conversations, just as the hon. member has done. At no time was it suggested to me that there had been anything other than a very preliminary study made as to the capabilities of the Krauss-Maffei magnetic levitation system as it would apply to GO-Urban.

Mr. Lewis: The ministry has been working on it for two years.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: This is all I was told when I spoke to the West German people, when I asked them for their reasons for withdrawing their support of this particular project. And I’ll point out that in my conversations with Dr. Finke, who is the man I spoke to, and who I think is a deputy minister -- the secretary of state referred to is an elected member of the House; he’s a politician.

Mr. Lewis: No. The Secretary of State ranks as a deputy minister.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Well, there are two, then. There is one who is and one who isn’t. I don’t know which one the member spoke to by name but one of the secretaries of state is an elected member and the other is not.

Anyway, when I spoke to Dr. Finke, one of the things that he said to me was: “We want to withdraw from this sort of technology. We are going to continue with the Transrapid.” And he also said to me that he wasn’t willing to pay for the protection of the environment or a reduction of noise and vibration. He also said that he wasn’t prepared to pay for a lower land consumption. These are the things that he said to me.

Mr. Givens: A lower what?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: A lower land consumption, or a lower use of land in the development of any type of urban transportation system. In economic comparisons, I did not attempt to mislead the House at all at any time, despite the inference made by the member for Scarborough West at the very beginning that there were things that I knew that I didn’t tell the House.

Mr. Lewis: I didn’t say the minister misled the House.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That’s not correct.

Mr. Renwick: He didn’t say the minister misled the House.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: And I think Hansard will show that; I really do.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t think the minister understood.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: But what was said to me was: “We don’t think it’s economically feasible to apply this into municipalities of 50,000 people.” Well, we had never even considered putting this into areas of 50,000 people. Never even considered it.

Mr. Foulds: Then why did the government rush into it?

Mr. Lewis: They weren’t developing it for areas of that size?

Mr. Speaker: Order please; this is not a conversation. The minister has the floor.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: These were not compared with such applications in other cities in North America. I think it’s understandable that this government’s policy on transportation is what really has to be looked at here.

Mr. Lewis: He didn’t pour it in --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It’s not the question of the Krauss-Maffei system.

Mr. Lewis: That is the policy.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The policies of transportation for the Province of Ontario that are being developed by this government are so far ahead of any policy developed by any other jurisdiction in North America that there is no question in my mind that they are deserving of support.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Ask the people in northwest Metro.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: What this government has done is face up to the fact that there is a need in all of our municipalities for urban transit, and that there is a need for the type of modes that can move people around our large cities. That’s why we were looking at new technology.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: At no time has it ever shoved to one side the idea of developing the light rail programme -- not at all.

Mr. Lewis: Oh yes it has.

Mr. Cassidy: Oh, definitely.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Since 1967, this province has developed commuter rail services, when every other North American city was wiping them out; every other North American city.

Mr. Cassidy: That is not true, either.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We carried on with developing the GO system. Where do the members opposite think it started? When did the GO Transit system start? In 1967, it started; and that has been developed and increased.

Mr. Cassidy: That is not true either.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: You can look at the GO services that have been developed and increased in this area, and they certainly have proven their worth more than once.

Mr. Cassidy: I agree.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We are continuing with the programme to develop light rail.

Mr. Renwick: Nobody disagrees with that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The Ministry of Transportation and Communications --

Mr. Cassidy: The minister has only just begun that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- and the Ontario Transit Development Corp. has been carrying on continually looking at the development of light rail.

Mr. Lewis: This has just started.

Mr. Cassidy: It has just begun.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It has not just begun; it has been carried on all the way along.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: There is no question about it. To say that we have given up all the other modes is just factually not true.

Mr. Lewis: We didn’t say that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It is not true.

Mr. Renwick: The GO Transit system is way behind, and he knows it.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: To say that we have fallen behind over the last years is not true, and we are not --

Mr. Lewis: It is right. Look at --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Let’s keep in mind, we are talking about a transportation policy that applies across this whole province.

Mr. Lewis: That is right.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Policies have been developed to assist municipalities to increase their transit use. How can this possibly be faulted? Take my own community, which was referred to by the member for York-Forest Hill.

Mr. Renwick: The handing out of money is not the way to establish a policy.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: In my community transit usage has increased by 30 per cent. What brought that about? And that’s only one community. You could name others in this province. What brought it about? It was brought about because of the financial aid that was being supplied by this province to improve transit aid. They could buy new equipment --

Mr. Renwick: That is right; that is not a policy.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- they could increase the frequencies; they could provide a much better transit system throughout this province.

Mr. Cassidy: And the minister has just about driven transit into the ground.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: There isn’t only one area we have got to be concerned about; and we are concerned about Metropolitan Toronto. But whose responsibility is it to develop the plans -- whose responsibility? It is not the province’s responsibility -- and the members opposite recognize that.

Mr. Cassidy: We’ve done that for years in Ottawa.

Mr. Lewis: The government didn’t think that two years ago.

Mr. Renwick: It is always the municipality --

Mr. Speaker: Order. All the members have had an opportunity to speak and they should not be interfering with the minister’s valuable time. The hon. minister.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It would be interesting to note, if at any time there should happen to be a straw vote among all the members of this Legislature -- and I say all of them -- as to who is for and who is against Spadina.

Mr. Lewis: But this government stopped it.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The members opposite don’t know. They are not sure.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Lewis: This government stopped it.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resource Development): And the NDP supported it.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: What’s going on in the Spadina corridor right now?

Mr. Givens: Is that what changed the minister into a Conservative?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Already contracts have been called to build a subway, the Spadina subway. This was available in 1972.

Mr. Renwick: Already called? How many years ago was that?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: In 1972 it was available. It went through all kinds of hearings -- the OMB hearing, the disputes between Metro and the city --

Mr. Lewis: The government set it back three years. That is right.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- and they are still arguing about where the station locations could be. Do members want us to step in and say: “Never mind all of this public participation at OMB hearings. We are going to I am it down your throat anyway.”

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Who picked the corridors? Someone referred a little earlier to the fact that the Premier forced certain routes on people in November, 1972, when he made his announcement. Someone held up a map. I think it was the member for Downsview. Let me quote exactly what was said: “Our planners have identified five possible routes in which the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and the TTC may want to consider application of the new mode.” Nobody jammed it down anybody’s throat.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: They said, “If you are interested, there is a new mode.” There is nothing at all wrong in any policy to develop a new mode.

Mr. Cassidy: But the PR made it look as though the lines were almost installed.

An hon. member: Throw him out.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I sat through the speeches by the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party, the hon. Leader of the Opposition. the hon. member for York-Forest Hill and the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, east, west, north or south.

Interjections by hon. members,

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I did not interrupt and I respectfully request that the same courtesy be extended to me.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I think there have been four main themes brought here. One was that we have wasted time and that we have lost time developing alternative programmes.

Mr. Cassidy: He can’t stand the heat.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: What does the member mean by “He can’t stand the heat”?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, the only heat that would come from there would be the continuous hot breath that comes flowing out of the member for Ottawa Centre, word after word, hour after hour.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He is not even in the kitchen. He never gets into it. He is still in the bathroom.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We have not delayed anything. There is not a mile of track that hasn’t been laid; there is not a mile of subway that hasn’t been built; there is not a transit system anywhere in this province that has not received the okay and the approval and the financial assistance from this province, when any municipality anywhere in this province asked for it. To say that we are responsible for delaying for two years is just so much malarkey. It just isn’t true.

Mr. Cassidy: Five years.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Any time any borough in Metropolitan Toronto wanted assistance to put in any type of transit it wanted, it was more than welcome to do so with our full support and subsidy.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, come on!

Mr. Cassidy: Oh, no!

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It is being suggested that we should stop the subsidy that we are now providing. It is being suggested that we should go back to the horse and buggy days referred to by the minister for Downsview.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He is going to be minister next year.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member for Downsview. He suggested that all of this was being done out of the pockets of the taxpayers of Metropolitan Toronto. One can’t go back to that time and the hon. member for York-Forest Hill well knows it too. The subsidy programmes being provided by this province are the best anywhere in Canada and I suggest perhaps better than most states of the United States to get transit going.

Mr. Good: The minister missed the whole point of the argument.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The whole point was that members opposite were all roaring and ranting about Krauss-Maffei when really it’s a matter of transportation policy.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister should be humble. He is in a mess.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I have heard a lot said this afternoon about the application of light rail, that light rail is the answer, the wheel on the rail.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: All right, fine. There is no question in our minds that that can be provided.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: What we were looking for was something that perhaps would be a little more environmentally acceptable --

Mr. Lewis: The government was looking for a political stunt.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- that would make less noise, that would provide something different and unique.

I recall one remark the hon. member for Scarborough West made to me. He said: “Orville, it won’t fly.” Somebody told Orville that one day too; and by God he flew it anyway and it is still flying.

Mr. Lewis: The minister will announce its cancellation again 20 days from now.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I read recently in the paper that someone said the hon. member had a relative back in time who objected to the wheel. I read that in the Globe this morning. I thought I would pass that along.

Mr. Foulds: If this had wheels, it might just roll.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I have said before and I say again that we know there are corridors, in the Scarborough area, for example. I wish the hon. member who represents part of that would tell us what he wants.

Mr. Lewis: They wanted light rail and the government stalled it with a two-year study on GO-Urban.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: If he wants light rail, then we can put light rail in and we can have a revenue system operating in that corridor in Scarborough in the same timeframe as they would have had the GO-Urban. It can be there. We know we can put it in there. Physically we can put that in and it can be put in financially.

Mr. Cassidy: They could have had it three years ago.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It can be done. All we need is to have it asked for by the municipality. If they say put it in, we go ahead and we finance putting it in. But we have not had that reaction; certainly not from the borough of Scarborough.

I was surprised that the mayor of Scarborough has finally said he thinks maybe light rail might be all right after all. That’s great. We will be glad to go along with that, but that’s a complete turnabout. We will go ahead and support that and they can have it in within the same time. Tell me where we lost our time, if we can put in an intermediate capacity system, albeit light rail, within the same timeframe that they would have had GO-Urban? Where have we lost the time?

Mr. Lewis: It is needed now.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I have not heard a policy on transit for this province brought forth from either of the opposition parties, not one.

An hon. member: And he never will.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Not one policy has been brought forth; not one.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They want expressways.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The policies that have been brought forth by the Province of Ontario are the policies that are providing increasing use of transit across this province; in every municipality, not only in Metropolitan Toronto but in Ottawa. Some of the policies of the government have been applied in Ottawa -- the new busing system, the dial-a-buses are very successful there, the staggered hours that were instigated as part of that thing; it is all working in Ottawa today.

Mr. Cassidy: Sure, it is working beautifully.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Look, we are the first ones to say that dial-a-bus in Metropolitan Toronto as an experiment did not succeed. We admitted that a long time ago, but it is working in Ottawa and it is working in other centres. The whole world is not here. We have to look beyond Metropolitan Toronto, and that’s what we are doing.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right, and it was distortion here that affected the province.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I completely disagree.

Mr. Cassidy: And the centrepiece of his policy is in tatters.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The need for intermediate, environmentally sensitive transit still exists and that has been our goal all along.

Mr. Lewis: Light rail is a good answer.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: And if light rail can be applied, then we are prepared to do that, because we have the technology. We don’t need anything new. We don’t need anything new at all. A municipality that has --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I have asked the hon. members to refrain from too many interjections. They are continuing to do so. Now I ask once more. The hon. minister has just a few more minutes to go.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, the member for --

Mr. Cassidy: It doesn’t stop the minister seeking support from his people.

Some hon. members: Throw him out.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hereby name the member for Ottawa Centre. Will he please leave? The hon. minister has two minutes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He has just provoked the Speaker. He had to be thrown out.

Mr. Lawlor: Sure makes an impact on this House.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Now let’s hear these pearls.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, there is no transit programme that has been delayed in this area or anywhere in this province because of GO-Urban. I can point out, to members the things that I mentioned a little earlier, such as the extension of our GO-Transit system, the planning that is going on now for the increased capacity and the capability of that.

I cannot accept at all that criticism, and I don’t think the people of this province are going to buy it either. The Metro Toronto plan review has not even been completed as yet, so how are we supposed to be able to go ahead and put in all these transit facilities when we really don’t know what the Metropolitan Toronto area wants as yet?

There is no way members can accuse us of delaying the transit systems in this province; no way at all. I know there are several members opposite who would like nothing better than to see us start building Spadina, but they have only backed up the building of Spadina for their own political reasons in their own particular little ridings --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Narrow political reasons.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- with no consideration for the rest of Metropolitan Toronto at all.

Do they want Spadina? Would they also support the Scarborough Expressway? How many other expressways would they support throughout the province? How many others?

It is obvious to us that they really don’t want to take a stand on anything but that which is purely political in their own ridings. They accused us of being political, and it is a beautiful thing to watch. Politics all over the place has been pretty obvious, and especially I think from the Leader of the Opposition, who found it such a joy when we announced here earlier that we had to discontinue with our TDS. I don’t think it was really a joyful day for him at all, any more than it was for us.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It was a great victory for the minister.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: But I think he has enjoyed it.

Mr. Lewis: Come on now, name him. On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, if you are going to employ the rules fairly you should eject the leader of the official opposition.

Mr. Renwick: Stop playing favourites.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure the hon. member doesn’t mean that.

Mr. Lewis: Stop being so hypocritical about it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: This concludes the debate on this particular order.

The House divided on the Lewis’s motion, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes

Nays

Braithwaite Breithaupt Bullbrook Burr Campbell Davison Deacon Deans Dukszta Edighoffer Foulds Gaunt Germa Gisborn Givens Good Haggerty Lawlor Martel Newman (Windsor-Walkerville) Nixon (Brant) Reid Renwick Roy Ruston Samis Singer Smith (Nipissing) Spence Stokes Taylor (Carleton East) Worton Young -- 35.

Allan Apps Beckett Belanger Bennett Birch Carruthers Clement Downer Drea Eaton Evans Ewen Gilbertson Grossman Hamilton Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton) Hodgson (York North) Irvine Johnston Kennedy Kerr Lane Leluk MacBeth McIlveen McKeough McNeil Meen Miller Morningstar Morrow Newman (Ontario South) Nixon (Dovercourt) Nuttall Parrott Potter Rhodes Rollins Root Scrivener Smith (Hamilton Mountain) Snow Stewart Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox) Timbrell Turner Villeneuve Walker Wardle Wells Winkler Wiseman Yaremko -- 56.

Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, the “ayes” are 35; the “nays” 56.

Mr. Speaker: I declare the motion lost.

Order please, just before we rise I’d like to make a comment on the incident that happened a few moments ago. A very reasonable request has been made to Mr. Speaker that perhaps I may have been a little hasty. Be that as it may --

Some hon. members: No, you were not.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Throw them all out.

Mr. Speaker: I think I have made the point that when Mr. Speaker calls for order, it should be order, and the interjections should stop when that request has been made.

I am prepared on this occasion to relent. Even though the orders say the named person shall be out for the rest of the sitting, which means the rest of the day, I am prepared to allow the hon. member for Ottawa Centre to return to his seat when we return after 8 o’clock, because I understand he has a particular interest in certain of the legislation which will be discussed.

But I would just like to remind everyone that this is not to be a precedent. I think that in strength, when a person has the authority along with responsibilities, he can afford to be generous for once. So if the hon. House leader or the hon. leader of his party will convey the message to the member, he may return at 8 o’clock.

Some hon. members: Well done.

It being 6:10 o’clock, p.m., the House took recess.