The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.
Mr. Speaker: The member for Etobicoke.
Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): Mr. Speaker, may I take this opportunity of introducing to the House a group of some 60 young people Who are Cubs, Girl Guides and Brownies from the Church of the Transfiguration in Etobicoke. They are the Sixth Humber West pack, and they are under the guidance of Mr. Budenz and other parents, Cub leaders and Girl Guide leaders. I would ask the House to join me in welcoming these young people here tonight.
MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ACT
Mr. Parrott, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Auld, moves second reading of Bill 68, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.
Mr. H. C. Parrott (Oxford): Mr. Speaker, may I indicate to the House at this time that when we move to committee I expect to move an amendment to delete section 2(4b).
Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Second thoughts, eh?
Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.
Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Mr. Speaker, this bill, which is to establish the Ontario Council on University Affairs, has been on the order paper for some time. Some indication has been given as to the composition of the Council on University Affairs, and the matter which seems to be the most controversial among people in the province is the composition of the council which will be set up. As the bill states, there will be 12 members, one of whom shall be a chairman, and six members will constitute a quorum.
We are all aware, of course, of the university community. My own community has two such institutions in its boundaries. To some extent a university does operate as a separate community within the municipality with its undergraduate students, grad students, faculty, administrative staff and the others who go to make up the persons at the university, and these, of course, are represented in one manner or another on the council. It has been drawn to my attention quite forcibly that the community in which the university exists also has an interest in the operation of that university, especially those who are taking part-time undergraduate studies at the university. It is this group which feels rather left out in that there is no representation on the council by the part-time students; they are not represented on this council. They rightly point out in their open letter to the minister that the community interest in the university should be considerably greater than it is.
We have spoken about it in our community at a committee called the town and gown committee, which would increase relationships between the university and the municipality. Those people within the community who take part-time courses at the university have a vital interest in the university. I think it would do a great deal to strengthen the relationship and communications between the people in the municipality and the university, if there was representation on this body by the part-time students who are taking undergraduate courses at the university.
I think, Mr. Speaker, the minister (Mr. Auld) did indicate the other day that he was still giving consideration to this question. I would ask his parliamentary assistant to indicate whether this somewhat large and important body of citizens within the province who are actually paying, according to the last figure I heard about 83 per cent of the costs of operating the university, while only about 17 per cent is home by the tuition fees of the students, whether this part-time group of students representing the community could not be represented on this advisory council.
Mr. Speaker: Does any, other hon. member wish to speak to this bill? The member for the Nickel Belt.
Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We in this party feel several concerns about this bill. One of them is the whole question of the timing. The government has decided to bring in legislation to create a Council on University Affairs, while ignoring many of the other recommendations of the Commission on Post-Secondary Education. I don’t think it is coincidental that it’s the university community to which the government has addressed itself first, as opposed to the community college for example.
Another concern, before the parliamentary assistant stood up, was the whole question of the right of the minister to collect information about those people in the university community. It was really remarkable, Mr. Speaker. If I might say to you, Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the select committee on economic and cultural nationalism, I would hope you had some influence on the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to have section 2, subsection 4b deleted, since it was the university community that refused to give your very select committee information concerning the makeup of the faculty of the various universities. It is strange indeed that the Ministry of Colleges and Universities has seen fit to back off at this point.
What I don’t understand about this bill is that they have retracted that part of the bill which would have given them the right to demand from the various institutions information which would lay out, for example, what the homeland of the faculty members of the institutions was. There is no reason why the ministry could not have safeguarded individual rights, while at the same time making it mandatory for the institutions to give information to the Legislature by the ministry. There’s no question but that the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations was right on when it said to the ministry that there were certain things that needed to be safeguarded in terms of individual rights. The ministry could have said: “Yes, you’re quite right. We will build those safeguards into the ministry while at the same time making it mandatory for those institutions to divulge that information.” They could have done that, but they didn’t. Instead of that they withdrew the whole section of the bill. There’s no justification for that.
What I’m concerned about is the individual institutions which to this day, in this era of massive public financing of the post-secondary institutions, still regard themselves as autonomous bodies, as though they were still living in the age when they received their financing from private donations or funding. That day is long gone. The No. 1 priority now in Ontario in post-secondary education is public responsibility and the requirement of the post-secondary institutions to answer to the public for the funds they spend. It is not autonomy of those institutions that should be uppermost in our minds but the accountability of those institutions to the public that finances them. Here we have the ministry withdrawing that part of the legislation which would have made it a requirement that the institutions would provide that information. It’s a little hard to understand. I would be very interested in hearing the parliamentary assistant’s response to that.
Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Dr. Evans got to them.
Mr. Laughren: The other question, which the member for Waterloo North touched on, was the composition of the Council of Ontario Universities. Out of 20 members, including the chairman, two are students. As the Ontario Federation of Students pointed out, there are three major segments of the student population. There are the undergraduate, the post-graduate and the part-time students. In view of the emphasis which the Commission on Post-Secondary Education placed on part-time students, it is hard to understand why the ministry has not seen fit to include part-time students on the council. I think that is the most reprehensible part of this legislation. If we really do believe that there is a new direction required in post-secondary education in Ontario, surely this is the direction which it’s going to take and it’s not even up to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to determine that direction. It’s predetermined.
The public at large in Ontario is going to demand more and more of a say in the financing of post-secondary education in Ontario. More and more people are going to take part in post-secondary education on a part-time basis, despite the discriminations of the ministry in terms of financing, loans and awards. It’s beyond me why the ministry would not see fit to include that particular part of the student body on the council. It is totally reprehensible. Also the students who are represented on the council, namely, the graduate students and the undergraduate students, were placed there at the whim of the ministry and not because of any representations by representative bodies of those groups, namely, the Ontario Federation of Students or the graduate student associations in Ontario.
I wonder why there is this disregard for students’ rights in the Province of Ontario. Is it because the ministry regards them as being incompetent? Is it because the ministry regards them as being transients in the university community? Well, that’s hard to believe, but every now and again there are pronouncements from the ministry which would lead us to believe this. One need only look at the college community, for example, to see the kind of contempt that the ministry has for students.
To this day, in this age of supposedly emphasis on participation by people, we have in the community college sector no representation whatsoever on the boards of governors of those institutions. If one calls representation on an observer level representation, I suppose there is. Also, the whole question of the appointments to the governing council of the University of Toronto indicates that the ministry really is not serious about giving students any kind of voice in the governing of those institutions. Surely students are a legitimate interest group and should have a say, and not a token kind of say. I’d like to quote from a brief that was prepared by a student -- the Ontario Federation of Students has made this submission to the government of Ontario -- this was by, I believe, a Carleton university student, who was talking about the frustration of being a token student on a governing body. This is what he says:
“To be a student here has no real content. These people are members of the student body in the same sense that anyone chosen at random is a member of the human race. The student body, and similarly the human race, is purely an abstraction. It has no prior organization, nor consciousness, nor power. Only by pure chance will a student representative speak or work toward a genuine student need, and even when he does he will have no way of proving it to the power controlling faculties. Without any attempt at the establishment and organization of what students do want, the student representative states and acts on merely his own subjective opinion. It has no necessary universality, no depth, no educative value, political or otherwise, for the students in general.”
Mr. Speaker, that indicates the sense of frustration felt by students who are appointed to a governing body but have no sense of mandate from the people they are supposed to represent.
Those students who are on the council are not appointed by bodies that represent students in the Province of Ontario. On the contrary, the Ontario Federation of Students, which as far as I know is the most representative body of students in Ontario, has no knowledge whatsoever of the appointments. Mind you, that shouldn’t surprise us. The labour appointments were made in the same kind of fashion and the labour bodies in the Province of Ontario, while they are happy with the person who was appointed from among the ranks of labour, were puzzled as to where the ministry got the name and how they appointed that particular person.
So I wonder what the ministry is trying to do; whether it is trying to create some kind of confusion or some kind of dissension within the representative student bodies. But there is really no logic to what they are trying to do. If they are going to appoint students to these governing bodies, such as the council, then let them do so through representative bodies of students, such as the Ontario Federation of Students.
The other thing that bothers me about this bill is the whole question of the role of the Ontario Council on University Affairs. Just what authority is going to be delegated to that council? Because the bill certainly doesn’t demonstrate that. If we look at the whole problem of post-secondary education in Ontario, we should go back to the Commission on Post-Secondary Education -- the so-called COPSE report or the Wright report -- and see what it was they were saying. It seems to me they were saying that there should be a new direction in post-secondary education in Ontario and that a body such as this council should act as a buffer between the post-secondary institutions and the government. Where in this bill do we see any indication of this council being a buffer? I see it nowhere at all. I really don’t see what the responsibilities of the council are, other than as an advisory body.
I wonder to what extent the ministry is finally going to say, “We recognize that people in the community out there” -- in this case it just happens to be the university community, but in other cases it could be miners or it could be housewives or it could be loggers -- “are going to have a say in those conditions that control their environment.” I think that is what’s very, very serious about the direction of this government.
I think the theme of the Commission on Post-Secondary Education was “directions for change.” I believe that was the theme of part two of their report, in which they said that there needs to be a change in direction in post-secondary education, and that we have to give a new opportunity for people in the province who heretofore had not had any kind of participation in post-secondary education -- such as native peoples, such as our Franco-Ontarians, such as people in remote communities, such as the labouring people in this province. Those are the people who should not only be able to partake of post-secondary education in numbers that so far have never been realized, but also should have a say in the direction of education in this province.
There is no indication in this bill that those people are going to have an increased say in the directors of post-secondary education. I don’t see any indication here that native peoples must be represented on the council, nor any indication here that people from the northern parts of our province must be represented on the council, nor any recommendation or requirement that Franco-Ontarians are guaranteed a certain voice on this council, or that the same would apply to trade unions.
What bothers me, Mr. Speaker, is something I see happening over and over again, and there is no better example than the Sudbury area, where working people in this province build our universities and our colleges, pay for our universities and our colleges -- and see them run by their employers. So it is a rather blatant example of the workers building and paying for the institutions, and seeing the bosses run them and their sons attend them. The whole thing, of course, is compounded by the whole system of tuition fees and the whole system of loans and grants that discriminate against people who cannot afford to attend these universities.
There is no requirement in this bill that women be given an increased say in the administration of post-secondary education. I suppose the parliamentary assistant will stand up and say there are three or four women represented on the council, but I would ask him whether those appointees were representatives of women’s committees in the Province of Ontario or whether they once again were at the whim of the powers that be in the Conservative Party in Ontario.
So I must say, Mr. Speaker, that while I recognize the need for a council on university affairs -- and I anticipate that there will be a council on college affairs and cultural affairs as well -- I’m disappointed by the lack of specifics in this bill. There very easily could have been all sorts of guarantees built into this legislation, which would have guaranteed a new role and a new hope for people in Ontario who previously had virtually no voice at all in governing or attending post-secondary educational institutions.
Despite the fact that I’ve perused this bill for an indication of a new attitude on the part of this government, I’m afraid they don’t realize the error of their ways; nor do they realize how they’ve alienated the post-secondary students in this province, as well as the post-secondary faculty and the disenfranchised groups in Ontario. They haven’t indicated that they have seen the error of their ways and are about to make changes.
I would urge the parliamentary assistant to reconsider some of these sections in this bill and build in some guarantees for these people who have not had the kind of say to which they are entitled because, in the final analysis, it is not the friends of the parliamentary assistant or the minister or other people in the Tory party who pay for post-secondary education in this province; it’s the taxation of the working people in this province that makes possible the kind of post-secondary education that’s available to everyone in Ontario. And while it’s not as democratic as we would like to see it, nevertheless what is there and what is available to them is made possible by working people in Ontario, and they are given short shrift when it comes to the governing councils of post-secondary education in Ontario.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener.
Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Speaker, I too am interested particularly in this bill, having had some involvement with a university board of governors over the last number of years.
It’s interesting to see that the point raised initially by the hon. member for Waterloo North and by the last speaker, concerning the matter of part-time student involvement, is one which apparently has not had much of an impression upon the ministry.
As you are perhaps aware, Mr. Speaker, the Council of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and the Council of the Canadian Association of University Teachers both agreed to a resolution on May 17 of this year, referring to section 4b which the parliamentary assistant now says is going to be deleted from the bill. That resolution, as I read it, did not particularly argue against the content of the section that now is to be deleted, wherein the collection and publishing of information and statistics was going to be attended to by the minister. What was objected to was the manner in which this whole matter was to be handled. The council of the faculty associations said in their resolution that this subsection perhaps had some merit if there were certain safeguards. I think it is worthwhile to repeat the safeguards as they saw them, Mr. Speaker.
“First, [they said] individuals in institutions receive statutory guarantees that, on written request, complete and accurate disclosure will be made of the nature and substance of all information in government files pertaining to the individual or institution at the time of the request.
“Second, corresponding disclosure of the sources of such information and the names of recipients of such information is secured by statute.
“Third, the statutory right to correct errors or omissions from such files is secured.
“Fourth, the publication of such information and/or statistics is statutorily circumscribed by restrictions analogous to those governing publication by Statistics Canada.”
These then were the four general parameters in which this association thought that section 4(b), as it was proposed, might be useful.
It would appear, though, that instead of attempting to make this item a better piece of legislation, what has happened is that the ministry has collapsed and the proposals that were in the draft bill which was introduced in the House on May 14 of this year are simply to be forgotten about.
It will be interesting to hear from the parliamentary assistant just what the reasons are for the deletion of this subsection. We would have thought it would have been beneficial to have the subsection in, if there were amendments brought in that would safeguard the various points of concern that were brought forward some five months ago by persons who were intimately involved with this particular interest.
However, in spite of those caveats which were brought in at the time by this resolution that has received wide circulation, the ministry now chooses to simply abandon this approach. As I have said, it will be interesting to hear just what we have in the way of an explanation for the expected actions of the ministry when we move to committee in order to delete this section 4b, as it was proposed to be.
The other point I would like to reinforce is the earlier comment with respect to part-time students. Surely there can be on a university council of this size a satisfactory requirement that there be three student representatives.
The part-time student is every bit as important a part of our educational programme at the post-secondary level as is the graduate student or the undergraduate student. Each category has a particular set of needs, a particular set of involvements, and really deals with a very clearly defined segment of the educational picture. I would suggest that the ministry reconsider this matter, so that when appointments are made, or at least at the first opportunity if a replacing appointment is required, consideration would be given to the proper and effective involvement of the part-time university students who are such a large number in our university populations.
I think, for example, Mr. Speaker, of the involvement that I have seen growing at what was Waterloo Lutheran University and is now Wilfrid Laurier University concerning the whole approach to part-time students. From a few hundred students, when I was first involved, far too many years ago, the university has grown and developed, particularly in the matter of adult education in the summer school programmes of upgrading and in the various interest courses that are run during the winter months.
These programmes are run not only in the city of Waterloo but also at Orillia where a sub-campus development has gone on over the years and where it is hoped some day a separate college may well be developed in the future. Throughout this programme, I am constantly impressed at even numbers of my friends from various areas of the community who every now and then appear at a graduation in order to receive their bachelor’s degree. They have progressed through a great involved series of courses over perhaps six or eight or 10 years. They have involved themselves, usually inconveniently, with attempts to study various programmes and subjects --
Mr. Martel: They pay the bills.
Mr. Breithaupt: -- when there are other involvements that they have in their day-to-day job. Yes, I might add they also pay the bills, not only as taxpayers but also in their own tuition. They are really there in order to better themselves and to develop as best they can a university experience without perhaps the full concentration of a full-time course. They are very proud of the degree that has taken them many years, usually, and much personal sacrifice to obtain.
I think as we go to an economy that is more based upon the encouragement of persons to come back to various forms of education, to upgrade themselves, and perhaps to complete a degree, if that is a goal which the person wants, we should as well realize that these persons have a great involved contribution to make as the whole programme of university development continues as we go through the Seventies and approach the 1980s. I suggest that a representative of these part-time undergraduates, who are usually much different from the usual graduate student or the usual undergraduate student, as I have said, involved on a council of this sort is something that should be encouraged and indeed presumed.
As a result, the ministry should reconsider this matter. If it is not practical at this point because of other appointments having been made, committed or indeed entered into, then surely at the first opportunity we should know by a statement in the House this evening that it is the intention of the ministry to appoint a representative of part-time undergraduate students. I think if this is done it will go a long way to building goodwill as this council embarks upon its new duties. I would commend that approach to the ministry.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sudbury East.
Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, I hadn’t intended to speak to this bill until the parliamentary assistant announced he was going to remove section 2. What the parliamentary assistant did was destroy the entire report of the select committee on university education on the way our universities are being run. What, in fact, the select committee recommended was a system of monitoring. It is going to be interesting, Mr. Speaker, when we take the vote in a while, because we will deliberately do that, to find out how the seven Conservative members who were on that select committee will vote. They signed a document saying that there should be accountability and there should be monitoring of what goes on in the universities. It is going to be interesting to see how they vote.
Mr. Laughren: Can’t lose them now.
Mr. Martel: It’s going to be interesting to see if Carlton Williams got to my friend from London North (Mr. Walker). You’ll recall, Mr. Speaker, your being chairman of that particular select committee, the problems we were confronted by as we did a year’s work in trying to get a handle on what was going on in the hiring practices of the universities in the province. You’ll recall, Mr. Speaker, the frustration we experienced, particularly when one Dr. Evans indicated he was going to go to the then Minister of Colleges and Universities, who was my friend from Hamilton West (Mr. McNie) who sits across the way.
Mr. Laughren: More power than the minister himself.
Mr. Martel: He was going to go even to the Premier (Mr. Davis) if need be, and I am convinced --
Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): I think he must have done it.
Mr. Laughren: He already has.
Mr. Martel: And that’s the point I am coming to, as suggested by my friend, the member for York Centre. That’s what I am coming to. It’s obvious that Evans got to the ministry people after all. When the parliamentary assistant got up tonight and announced the removal of that section, it becomes obvious --
Mr. Laughren: One phone call.
Mr. Martel: -- that Carlton Williams got to the member for London North, and he got to the Premier, and he obviously got to the former Minister of Colleges and Universities, as he promised he would do.
Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Probably using the government lines.
Mr. Laughren: That’s what he did.
Mr. Martel: I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s using the government lines to do it.
Mr. Speaker, you’ll recall that we went to the printers after a year of work --
Mr. Laughren: Black day.
Mr. Martel: -- on the hiring practices within the universities. At the end of a year we didn’t have the data that was necessary in order to have a fully comprehensive report, and there was the frustration that was experienced by that committee and the former minister when he was attempting to obtain information from the universities, as he went cap in hand -- and as the new Minister of Colleges and Universities goes cap in hand --
Mr. Laughren: On bended knee.
Mr. Martel: -- to scrape and bow on the floors. Some of them have no knees left in their pants from bowing and scraping in front of those people, but they are there.
An hon. member: Mine are all right. How about the others?
An hon. member: I’m all right, but I need a new suit.
Mr. Martel: And if the very people who were on that committee endorse the removal of that section, then I want to suggest to you as strongly as I can, Mr. Speaker, that this government never appoint another select committee in this province. Because we did the studying for over a year on that issue. We had cabinet ministers in and we had deputy ministers in, and they all experienced the same frustration. The universities -- in a kindly way; in a nice, gentlemanly way -- told us to go to hell.
You’ll recall, Mr. Speaker, that we even had to threaten. There was an effort, at one stage in the game, to issue a Speaker’s warrant to get the material from the universities. As I say, even after a year of work there and after five years of tremendous pressure in the province to hire Canadians who were fully qualified, as a select committee we found out that, despite all of that pressure, the hiring practices have not changed.
Consequently, rather than go to quotas, the committee tried to come up with a position that was a compromise, I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, by all the members to reach some type of agreement on monitoring. That monitoring was to be based on the next four or five years, and if the universities didn’t change then, in fact, we’d zap them.
That type of monitoring -- which all 11 members on that select committee agreed to -- we thought was in the Act. And in 30 seconds --
Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): He pulled the rug.
Mr. Martel: That’s right. In 30 seconds the parliamentary assistant said: “That’s it -- ballgame over.”
Mr. Laughren: John Evans runs the ministry.
Mr. Martel: Well, I am going to be interested to see where the member for Peel South (Mr. Kennedy) votes tonight on this bill.
Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): He’d better head for the boondocks.
Mr. Martel: It is going to be interesting to see where those two cabinet ministers vote -- the member for Ontario South (Mr. W. Newman) and the member for Carleton (Mr. Handleman) who advocated monitoring and having information; he didn’t say make it public. We also suggested that when you get down below three you have to keep that confidential, not to destroy the confidentiality or the individual in that group of three in any given university.
It is also going to be interesting to see where the member for Humber (Mr. Leluk) and the member for London North vote tonight. Mr. Speaker, it would be interesting to see you leave the chair and take your place and vote along with those of us who are on that select committee to make these birds answerable.
Mr. Lawlor: Throw your weight in the right direction.
Mr. Martel: Of course, the member for Hamilton West was faced with that embarrassment during that period of time and graciously came before the select committee to indicate he wouldn’t interfere, but he, too, is upset at the power demonstrated over in these august halls of learning.
Mr. Laughren: He ran the ministry.
Mr. Martel: Well, it is going to be interesting where he votes tonight, too. If there is any conviction among those seven Tory members on that select committee, they will oppose the removal of section 2 in this bill.
Mr. Lawlor: This is the night of embarrassment.
Mr. Martel: They will oppose it.
An hon. member: We are going to wait until we hear the good words of the parliamentary assistant.
Mr. Martel: Well, the member can hear the good words of the parliamentary assistant. The point is there was an entire year’s work, and out of that came a report insisting upon information with respect to what goes on in the universities, not a policy of what was being requested of the committee -- a quota of 85 per cent -- but a monitoring process which should start immediately. That’s what it said. It was very important that that start immediately and go back several years, because we had asked -- what’s that group in Ottawa? -- to gather all the information in. Information Canada?
Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Statistics.
Mr. Martel: We had asked Statistics Canada to provide us with all the data. We had a year’s data and part of a second year, and we suggested the next three years and then we would be in a position to determine whether in fact the universities were hiring qualified Canadians or not, and whether or not the old-boy network was still there, although well hidden.
Mr. Laughren: It’s still there.
Mr. Martel: Obviously there was no disagreement. Some of the praises came regarding that report in press releases and from people who were gratified to see at last someone was going to tackle the problem foursquare. We have the Casper Milquetoast minister back off and I can only say -- he’s not sitting there. Another member is sitting in his chair -- the member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Rhodes), to his left -- to my right, thank God.
Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communication): Everybody is to the right of that member.
Mr. Martel: I think I should move a motion, Mr. Speaker, and maybe you would second it. We could call this the Evans bill, or the Carlton Williams bill, for my friend from London North. We could call it the Carlton Williams bill because every time Carlton got to good old Gord, Gord changed his mind yet another time. It was whoever got to him last.
Mr. Laughren: He’s really tough-minded.
Mr. Martel: Well, I want to know why that whole select committee’s report has been virtually thrown out the window. I think this government has something to answer for, and I think there are at least eight Tories here tonight who had better show that they have a little bit of backbone and support us in our opposition to the removal of that section or, as I said earlier, the whole system of select committees and all that nonsense to study problems -- the whole select committee thing -- should go out the window.
Mr. Deacon: It’s not nonsense, it’s common sense.
Mr. Martel: It is common sense. I am just saying to my friend, what is the sense of having a select committee that does a year’s very careful research, with staff, research personnel and legal counsel, to have a bill introduced based on that report and then see the guts of that bill taken out because obviously somebody got to “Billy the Kid.”
Mr. Laughren: John Evans got to “Billy the Kid.”
Mr. Martel: It is obvious. It is so obvious it is perverse, and those Tory members who were on that committee should hang their heads in shame if they don’t oppose this tonight.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.
Mr. Roy: I just wanted to make a few comments on the bill. As you know, Mr. Speaker, in my riding I am fortunate enough to have one of the great universities of this province, and I thought that we should comment on this when we were discussing the bill.
It is interesting, in hearing the comments of the people who spoke ahead of me, in that I think they have raised two important points. I think the points raised in relation to the deletion of clause 4(b) and the exclusion of the part-time students on the council, are evidence -- in fact, just reading the whole bill is evidence -- that somehow the province here, which really foots the bill on the question of universities, is again reluctant to set the pattern.
We keep hearing all the time about the good intentions of government or the good intentions of individual ministers about doing such and such, Mr. Speaker, but usually the best evidence of good intention is when it is framed in legislation; when we have it right down here in legislation. After all, all of us here, elected by the people of this province, are the ones who are supposed to set the tone, and the tone and the policy should be reflected in the legislation.
It seems to me that when we are dealing, first of all, with the question of the members of this council, and when we talk of 12 members, surely there are minimum requirements that should be included in the question of members. We have done it before, for instance, in the Health Disciplines Act, where we established a health discipline committee, I think it was called, and it was stipulated in that that there should be lay people, or that all members of that particular committee should be lay people.
In other words, we have established for certain committees that we have formed, pursuant to legislation in this House, a minimum requirement. Yet in this legislation there are no minimum requirements at all. It is just left to the individual discretion of the minister who happens to be the minister at that time. How often have we seen policy vacillate from one minister to the next and, in fact, from one government to the next; although we have not had the opportunity in the last 31 years of seeing that, which hopefully we will see in the next few years. I see smiles on the other side when I say that, and I feel a certain amount of agreement, even coming from across the way.
The fact remains, Mr. Speaker, that the steadfastness and the intention of this parliament is expressed by legislation and this is the approach that this government should take. So I can’t understand why, when it said that there will be 12 members on the council, it didn’t mention the minimum requirement of having an undergraduate student or a graduate student. I understand they are on the council anyway. Why wouldn’t that be framed in the legislation? It may well be that the next minister who comes around -- depending on what sort of pressure is put on the individual who holds that office -- might change his mind and do away with that completely. I don’t see the minimum requirement even in this section, and of course, the obvious exclusion of not having a part-time student sit on the council, is again one that is blatant and seems to have no logic whatsoever.
Mr. Speaker, we have attempted in past years to open up our universities to the community, and the best evidence that we are doing that is, of course, the part-time student, who is an individual in the community, who is attempting to take a course on a part-time basis to try to keep his job. Very often these courses have much flexibility. I am happy to say that a large percentage of the University of Ottawa students are part-time students, and these people very often reflect more of the community than the students who are on a full-time basis. Why these students are not included on the council is something that I can’t understand. It’s something that is so obvious. If the minister is going to include any students at all, surely he should be looking to these students.
So, Mr. Speaker, I find it regrettable that this legislation does not have at least the minimum requirements in it -- when it talks about, not a quorum, but it says there will be 12 members -- that would say that so many members would be an undergraduate student, and there would be a graduate student and there would be a part-time student.
Mr. Speaker, the part I find ridiculous is that when you consider the object of the council, it says generally when you look at clause 7(b) subclause (iii) that it can make recommendations involving students, period. It involves, Mr. Speaker, all students -- not only full-time students, but all students. That being one of the requirements, or one of the powers of the council to make recommendations involving all these students, why don’t we include all the students on the council? Why are they now not all represented?
I trust, Mr. Speaker, that the parliamentary assistant will give some adequate explanation as to why that was not the case -- why we don’t have any legislation for these minimum requirements. If we mean something, the best way to express it, the best evidence that we are serious about a particular topic, is to put it into legislation and there it stays.
The other part that concerns me about the bill, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that although the council in section 8 “shall hold meetings open to the public at such time and place as it deems necessary,” I would have hoped that that section would have at least stated, as other legislation does, that again there must be a minimum requirement as to the number of meetings that it has per year. With every other council that has been established, whether it has been under the Health Disciplines Act or other legislation here, we have always established in the legislation that these people were to hold a minimum number of meetings per year.
Of course, if you are going to have public meetings there should be some requirement, in the legislation, Mr. Speaker, that the public meetings are advertised so that the public knows of these meetings. It seems to me not very sound to have, for instance, the requirement that the meetings be open and held in public, with no requirement whatsoever for advertising or advising the public by some means that in fact a meeting is taking place, or at least to let the public know that the council must hold an annual meeting. All we have here is the fact that the council shall hold these meetings from time to time or in such places as it deems necessary.
The final point I want to make, Mr. Speaker, is in relation to the member for Sudbury East having mentioned the question of disclosure and the question that the minister, in carrying out his duties and functions assigned to him under this Act, may collect such information and statistics as he considers necessary. I trust that previous members have sufficiently emphasized this section. I trust that the parliamentary assistant will have some explanation.
I think the point was well taken that, again, when you have a provincial government that is supposed to set policy, that is supposed to set the tone, that is supposed to have long-term planning in this field, and when that government is being confronted by certain individuals from the university, in fact it would appear that the member for Sudbury East was right when he said that in spite of the recommendations of the select committee, somehow, somebody seems to have got to either the parliamentary assistant to the previous minister or to the boss himself, the great Billy. So, Mr. Speaker, I trust that the parliamentary assistant will have some explanation.
I can’t help but remark, Mr. Speaker, that it is becoming exceedingly obvious that when legislation is brought into this House there seems to be a process of deterioration along the way. I don’t know if it is the caucus that gets to somebody, but time and time again we’ve seen legislation brought into this House, and then all at once, for some unknown reason, it’s either chopped up or retracted. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, the best evidence of that was the famous denturist legislation where at one time we thought we were supporting a piece of legislation which would allow them to practise directly to the public and, whoops! -- on second reading they couldn’t practise to the public, and that was forced down their throats, then the new minister came along and now they can deal directly with the public.
So government members wonder, across this province, why they lose some credibility; and they wonder why they might not do so well in certain by-elections and they’re extremely concerned about the next general election. They may well ask themselves what their credibility is like, just on the evidence that has been presented here tonight.
When somebody is approached, in dealing with legislation, it is evident first of all that the ministers don’t seem to know what they’re doing; and second their policies are so inconsistent their credibility is at an all time low.
I think the public is getting onto them, Mr. Speaker, so I trust the parliamentary assistant will have some explanation as to what is going on here.
Mr. Speaker: The member for Riverdale.
Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I’m constrained to vote against the bill. There have been a number of very cogent arguments made this evening, and when each of them is joined with all of the other arguments there seems to be no good reason why this House should support the bill at all.
I have the greatest respect for the member for Oxford, the parliamentary assistant, but I think there are occasions when bills are introduced into the assembly upon which it is incumbent for the minister to be present. I can’t tell whether he’s the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman) or the member for -- what is the minister’s riding?
Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Sudbury East probably.
Mr. Roy: Leeds.
Mr. Lawlor: Leeds.
Mr. Renwick: The member for Leeds (Mr. Auld) -- I can’t tell which one of them is going to outlast Anastas Mikoyan as the person who has the capacity to survive in the government of the Province of Ontario. One of the ways they survive is by not participating in any of the public business of the Legislature.
Mr. Laughren: John Evans is going to outlast them all.
Mr. Renwick: Sometime, somewhere, there’s going to have to be a Minister of Colleges and Universities who in fact stands up and comments about the legislation which is before the House.
Hon. J. McNie (Minister without Portfolio): Mr. Speaker, on a matter of personal privilege.
Mr. Laughren: We recognize the benevolent marshmallow from Hamilton.
Hon. Mr. McNie: I have listened to four members of the House opposite make references to myself and what they attribute to Dr. John Evans. Surely even the members opposite would recognize that this item 2(4b) would not have even appeared in this draft legislation if Dr. Evans had got to either myself or the Premier several months ago when the select committee was considering this matter.
Mr. Stokes: He was a little bit tardy.
Mr. Laughren: He was just a little late that’s all.
Mr. Speaker: The member for Riverdale.
Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): They may have missed the Minister without Portfolio but they got to his successor in Colleges and Universities.
Mr. Renwick: Whether it was or wasn’t a matter of privilege is irrelevant. It’s always nice to hear from the minister.
The concern which I have with the bill, and I won’t repeat everything which other members have said much better than I could possibly say it: Dealing with the composition of the council, dealing with the nature of the representation and dealing with some of the elements of one of the reports of the select committee on economic and cultural nationalism; those are not fields in which I feel competent or able to comment.
What I am concerned about, and what the parliamentary assistant perhaps could convey to the minister -- unless the minister is going to read the instant Hansard later tonight -- what I want him to understand is that I think there has been a council in existence and operating without any statutory authority and I would like to know whether that’s so. If that’s so, I’d like to know who the members of that council are.
The rather strange thing is that while this bill was introduced on May 14, it was on Nov. 18 of this year the minister stood in his place and indicated the extent to which the government of the Province of Ontario was going to provide financial support for the colleges and the universities in the Province of Ontario.
As I read this bill, one of the principal purposes of the council is to act as an advisory body to the minister and to the Lieutenant Governor in Council and to make recommendations to the minister on any matter that in the opinion of the council concerns one or more Ontario post-secondary, degree-granting institution.
If one will look at the Hansard -- which dealt with the minister’s statement on page 5370; good God, have we sat that long? -- of this assembly, he will find that what he has stated is that this council and the Council of Regents for practical purposes has no say in the decisions of the government with respect to the number of dollars which will be made available. After having stated the extent of the increases, Mr. Auld goes on to say:
“The matter of distribution will be determined on the advice of the Council of Regents for the colleges of applied arts and technology and of the Ontario Council on University Affairs after consulting with the institutions.
“In the guidelines I have given the two councils, I have indicated that there will be no increase in students’ tuition fees, that our policy of accessibility should be maintained, that institutional autonomy should be preserved and that the global sums I have mentioned should not be exceeded.”
If that’s the government’s conception of consultation with the colleges and the universities in the province, then we don’t need to have a Council of Regents and we don’t need to have a council for the universities, because they are not consulted about any matters of any significance. The only thing they are asked to do is to mediate the question of the distribution. Even then the minister set out for them the various options which should be considered in working out what that distribution will be.
One of the principal problems throughout the years in the assembly has been to try to indicate to the government that, as aver the period of time the grants made by the government to the universities and to the colleges have increased, they have become increasingly dependent upon government resources. That’s a trite statement and nobody complains about that. The correlative part of that obligation is that the institutions must be accountable. The institutions aren’t accountable. There is no method by which they can account. There’s no procedure by which they can account.
We have thought for a long time, since former Premier Leslie Frost established the Committee on University Affairs, that in some quiet, diplomatic way they provided the linkage for interchange between the universities, and subsequently the colleges, and the government for the purpose of consulting together to decide what can be done.
Whether or not that is true I can’t tell. That’s the assumption that we operated under, that it was an informal group of people who had the capacity and the ability to act as go-betweens, to mediate and to provide a method by which, in consultation with university representatives, government could come to some conclusions.
It is quite obvious from the statement of the minister in the House that no such prior consultation took place. It is equally obvious that the responses of the presidents of the universities in the province who have chosen to speak in response to this problem have clearly indicated that they weren’t consulted in any way about the question of the number of dollars which were to be made available for the universities and for the colleges of applied arts and technology. No such consultation has taken place.
We don’t need to read every word the former deputy treasurer of the province says on page 7 in the Globe and Mail to understand the response of the presidents of the universities throughout the province to the minister’s statement. The minister’s statement was to try to indicate that somehow or other the councils had a role to play. There is no conceivable way in which one can read the statement of the minister in the legislative debates on Nov. 18 and the comments of the presidents of the universities in response to that statement, and come to the conclusion that we should be asked to pass in this Legislature a bill which states:
“The objects of the council are, and it has power,
“(a) To act as an advisory body to the minister and to the Lieutenant Governor in Council;
“(b) To make recommendations to the minister on any matter that, in the opinion of the council, concerns (1) one or more Ontario post-secondary, degree-granting institution [etc.].”
If there were any suggestion that the body was to be of any significance, then I would suggest that we in this party would at least support that kind of a body. But we have been through this with the Council of Regents so far as the colleges of applied arts and technology are concerned; and we know, and everybody else knows, that despite the deception in the statements which were made at the time when the colleges of applied arts and technology were founded in this province, and the legislation was introduced for that purpose, that the Council of Regents has nothing to say.
What I am trying to put is the obverse side of the real argument that we have tried to put to the government, that the post-secondary educational institutions, particularly the universities, tied as they are to a feudal past, have got to be given the opportunity to be accountable for the use which they make of the funds which are provided through the government of the Province of Ontario. But accountability can’t even be begun for the universities or for the colleges, either through annual meetings with standing committees of the Legislature, through appearances before select committees of the Legislature, or through public meetings of the council with members of the government who are responsible for these matters. None of those things can be done if the government continues to dictate the fundamental financial resources on which these institutions depend.
Ultimately the government must make the decision, of course, because it has the responsibility for raising the funds which will support these institutions. But the government cannot do it without consultation; and obviously they have done it without consultation and in a way which now will provide that this particular governing council that we are asked to establish in this bill will be nothing but performing some kind of computerized technique of distributing the money amongst the various colleges in accordance with certain formulae.
Mr. Laughren: The minister is in contempt.
Mr. Renwick: If one reads what the minister says, that’s what he told them to do. He said: “I have suggested that the options to be considered include the following”; then he went on to talk about the typical jargon of those in the educational field, which I can’t possibly understand; I never have understood most of the jargon in the education field. But in any event, he lays down the guidelines of the way in which even the distribution is to be done.
I believe, as my friend the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Clement) has chided me with on occasion -- so long as the Tory government is in power -- in a certain conspiratorial atmosphere in which they operate. I do happen to subscribe to the telephone call theory about the section which the minister is going to delete. I happen to do that because every time the government appoints the board of governors of one of the universities, and they in turn go through the selective process to appoint a president of the university, what they are looking for and why there is such great difficulty is the fact that they have to have a combination of Dag Hammarskjold, Leslie Frost and Mackenzie King, because they are not talking about somebody to administer a university, they are talking about a person who will act as plenipotentiary from these minor vassal states to the government. And the role which they have to play is that role of the skilled diplomat; and it’s very difficult to find the skilled diplomats, you see, because none of them has ever had any political experience.
Interjections by hon. members.
Mr. Renwick: And we, as politicians, know that in order to be a diplomat you have to be a politician. The problem that we have in the appointment is that not only is the selective process difficult, but the moment the men are appointed as presidents of the universities throughout the Province of Ontario, they assume this semi-feudal diplomatic role as if they are coming to the Holy See. This is part of the feudal background. We’ve never ever been able to break it.
If you read -- charming and gracious and delightful as it is -- the account of Claude Bissell as president of the University of Toronto, you wonder what in God’s name it was all about. I thought he was administering a large financial institution with a dedication to the academic tradition of the universities. But that wasn’t it; it was all involved in this little polite game that was going on. It was a question of whether Eric Phillips was going to fire him every time he was called before the chairman of the board of governors; or whether diplomatically he could meet with so and so; or whether he could meet with so and so; and what influence he could bring and how skilfully he could manipulate the system.
I’m saying, Mr. Speaker -- and as I guess, perhaps, my colleagues in the assembly have realized -- that provided I have the support of the members of our caucus, I think we’ll vote against the bill.
Mr. Laughren: No problem, no problem.
Mr. Renwick: Because somehow or other there is something phoney --
Mr. Stokes: “Dr.” Grossman just came in.
Mr. Renwick: Anastas Mikoyan.
Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): If the member’s caucus supports him, he thinks he’ll vote against it.
Mr. Renwick: That’s right.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Riverdale has the floor.
Mr. Renwick: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Ferrier: He is making a wonderful speech.
Mr. Renwick: What I’m saying is that there is now something singularly wrong with the overall governance of the universities and the overall governance of the colleges of applied arts and technology.
Somehow we’re going to have to come to grips with the problems. Somehow we’re going to have to deal with the question of the adequacy of the representation on these various bodies. Somehow we’re going to have to deal with a government that insists on dictating to the universities, disguised as protecting their autonomy. Somehow we’re going to have to establish the methods by which, in a democratic society, they become accountable to other democratic institutions. Somehow we’re going to have to break the idea that every president of every university is some plenipotentiary who has a particular role to play in the diplomatic game that goes on with the government. We’re far beyond that.
When I listened to the suggestion that the response of even one president of a post-secondary educational institution to the decision of government that one of his options will be to restrict enrolment, then I say: That president is not wrong; what is wrong is the fact that the government has never consulted with the universities in any real sense to determine the number of dollars which will be available.
I’ve gone on long enough and the other points we can deal with at another time. But the point which my colleague from Sudbury East has made is incontrovertible. You don’t delete this section. Because what the ministry is really saying to us is: “We’ll delete this section because it’s caused a bit of a stir. But without the statutory authority we’ll go ahead and collect the information anyway.” That’s what they are really saying.
They weren’t prepared to put into statutory form their responsibility to collect the kind of information which would provide the basis upon which decisions could be made, subject to adequate safeguards to protect the privacy of the individuals within this very closed circuit of educational institutions.
How a government could arrive at a conclusion such as that they were going to delete the clause -- and the parliamentary assistant was very adroit to be on his feet right at the very beginning to tell us that he was going to do that, because he thought that that would mean the problem would disappear back under the rug.
There’s just no way, obviously Mr. Speaker, that either the members on this side of the House, or indeed I think even the government members, could support this bill. I think we will oppose it on second reading.
Mr. Speaker: Does any other hon. member wish to take part in the debate? The hon. member for Nipissing.
Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Yes Mr. Speaker, I have a few comments to make with regard to the deletion of section 2.
As a member of the select committee which has been referred to earlier tonight, perhaps I should go through the machinations that took place between that committee and the presidents of the universities across the province.
The committee felt at one time that it needed information in regard to the specific members of the faculties of the universities, and it distributed a letter asking that each university provide this information. For the longest time there was no reply. After a number of phone calls, etc., there was a reply from the council of presidents of the universities saying that they had decided they would gather the information from the individual universities, put it through a computer, send it down to Ottawa to Statistics Canada, put it through some other kind of process, then bring this information back and finally give it to the select committee. But, at the same time, they were going to protect what they considered to be the individual rights of the members of the faculties of the universities which was, as I understand it, their right to refuse to say whether they were Canadian citizens, American citizens, citizens of nowhere in the world or whether they were even alive or not.
That is exactly what the council of presidents of the universities came back and told our committee that they were going to provide us with. But they were going to protect that in some way; if there were fewer than three or four in an area, such as teaching sociology at Queen’s University, say, they would delete that because then there would be some method by which somebody might be able to find out that one of those professors was in fact a Canadian citizen. And it would be a terrible thing if somebody could find out that somebody was a Canadian citizen!
Mr. Breithaupt: Shocking.
Mr. R. S. Smith: Especially if he was living in Canada and being paid from the public purse through this province.
Mr. Martel: And got his degree in Canada.
Mr. R. S. Smith: Anyway, this is the thinking that went on within the universities. I don’t think anybody here will question that, including the parliamentary assistant, or the minister if he was here. I don’t think the minister, if he was here, would understand it at all --
An hon. member: No.
Mr. R. S. Smith: -- because he wasn’t affected by it, and he wasn’t involved in it at the time. But that’s part of the problem and it’s most likely part of the reason he’s not here tonight when this section is being deleted, because he doesn’t understand what it is all about.
The fact is that this is the answer that the committee got from the council of presidents of the universities after about four months. We waited then for about another three or four months. Finally, we started to get some information. It came in dribs and drabs, and much of it had to be put together by our own staff. We didn’t have much staff to work with, whereas the council of presidents of the universities had plenty of staff, besides a computer. But, in fact, they refused to give us the information in what could be considered a useful form for our purposes. Our staff had to put it together as best they could. And when they had finished putting this information together, they found that there were very large holes --
Mr. Martel: From John Evans.
Mr. R. S. Smith: Yes, just wait -- and when we started to look at the information, we could tell that the holes came from one university. When we went back to the president of the president of the college of university presidents -- that’s a pretty circuitous way to describe the fellow, but that’s what he is.
Mr. Deacon: Very circuitous.
Mr. R. S. Smith: Yes, everything is circuitous with that outfit anyway.
An hon. member: They are all going around in circles.
Mr. R. S. Smith: He said: “Well we are having trouble getting the information from one university.” We said: “Well, you indicated to us that you were to provide this information.”
“Yes, but we can’t understand it. We can’t get the information from this one university.”
We then made direct appeals to that university and to Mr. Evans, the president of the university. We were given undertakings that the material would be provided in a form that suited them best, regardless of whether it was useful for our purposes or not. In fact, after some two or three more months we did receive information through the council of presidents from the University of Toronto, which we then had to fit into the other information that we had received over a seven- or eight-month period. In order to get what ordinarily would take the average person about three weeks, it took the council of president well over a year and almost 15 months to provide us with some very simple straightforward information.
There are not that many university professors in this province that they could not all have been polled within a week and asked what their status was insofar as their citizenship was concerned. I think anybody on the telephone could have done it with the help of four or five other people in a week or 10 days. But it took the council of presidents 15 months, plus a very large cost of money to collect information that was only partially useful because of the limitations that they placed on what they considered to be the right of people to refuse to say or to be recognized as Canadian citizens or American citizens or British subjects or any other connotation that may be placed on a person insofar as his citizenship is concerned.
The whole thing was just a joke and the removal of this section from this bill tonight really completes the joke and shows that the ministry is a part of the joke. The parliamentary assistant is part of a farce. I am saying this to the person who is putting this bill through the House.
After having gone through that 15 months of frustration with the university people, for the minister to remove this section 2 from the bill is a real farce. I should think that the parliamentary assistant’s minister should be here to answer tonight and he shouldn’t have to be here having to answer for him, because the actions that this House has had to take through that committee from the council of presidents and which his ministry is now taking from the same council of presidents are an insult to both the ministry that he represents and to the House.
After all, the people of this province pay 90 per cent of the cost at that level and they should have 90 per cent of the say, or they should at least have the right to information that anybody else should be proud to give, except these people who feel they belong to another stratum of society which nobody else can understand.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. parliamentary assistant.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, perhaps in view of the request of the hon. member opposite, if the parliamentary assistant has no objections, and as I have been in at the beginning of this debate, perhaps the hon. member might care to adjourn the debate so that the minister would be here when the debate resumes on this.
Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Hasn’t the minister got enough members there?
Hon. Mr. Grossman: We’ve got members. Don’t worry about that.
An hon. member: Where are they?
Mr. R. Gisborn (Hamilton East): He should condemn the minister for not staying here.
Interjections by hon. members.
Mr. R. S. Smith: I don’t know what he rose on, whether it was a point of order or a point of privilege or a point of nothing. I really didn’t hear him say anything.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I am engaging in the debate. The hon. member made a request. He suggested that perhaps the minister should be here for the purpose of this debate.
Mr. R. S. Smith: He should be here.
Mrs. Campbell: He should be here to reply.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I was suggesting that perhaps as a matter of courtesy, if the hon. member opposite --
Mr. R. S. Smith: Because the party opposite has no members here.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- and perhaps some of his colleagues felt that way, perhaps it mightn’t be a bad idea if he would adjourn the debate and wait until the minister gets here.
Mr. R. S. Smith: I am prepared to adjourn the debate on this bill if the minister is prepared to call some other bills.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I’ll ask the parliamentary assistant. I don’t know what his plans are.
Mr. Speaker: The Chair would suggest, before there is any motion to adjourn the debate, that perhaps the parliamentary assistant might like to comment.
Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to this bill.
Mr. Speaker: All right, before the parliamentary assistant speaks, the hon. member for St. George would like to take part in the debate.
Mrs. Campbell: I am not going into the matters of the makeup of council. That has been covered by others far more able to discuss it than I am. I do want to address myself, however, to this situation where we have a bill which has been before us for some time. We have it put through by the parliamentary assistant, for whom, may I say, I have the greatest respect. I have found him to be the most helpful in many ways in this House so that it is in no way that I approach this in a derogatory fashion as far as he’s concerned. But for him to be placed in the position of stating that he will be moving, by way of amendment, the deletion of this one section is, Mr. Speaker, an insult, in my view, not only to the people in this Legislature but to the people of the Province of Ontario.
This government, in order to protect the taxpayers of the province, can delve into the most intimate details of the lives of people who have the misfortune to be on a government subsidy.
Mr. Deacon: Right.
Mrs. Campbell: And yet when it comes to a university, we are not able to obtain the information that we need to come to certain conclusions. It’s interesting, too, I have that university in my riding -- or I did have; I am not sure where it goes now, but I did have it the last time around -- the University of Toronto, and this is the one --
Hon. Mr. Grossman: In mine.
Mrs. Campbell: It is in the minister’s riding now? Well, that’s fine, he can just take care of it.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: It always has been.
Mrs. Campbell: No, sir, I am sorry. I had those students in my riding the last time.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Where were they last time?
Mrs. Campbell: I beg your pardon?
Hon. Mr. Grossman: They were in my riding the last I heard of them.
Mrs. Campbell: Well, they voted in my riding in the by-election. That is all I can tell the minister.
An hon. member: They voted for her, a goodly portion.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I would think the fact that my constituency extends to the east side of University Ave., there’s a fairly good reason for believing the University of Toronto is in my riding.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Will the hon. member for St. George return to the principle of the bill?
Mrs. Campbell: Perhaps the minister would look at Victoria College and take a real look at the situation.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I am not talking about just Victoria College.
Mrs. Campbell: Here is a question where the government can’t have the courage to try to ascertain the facts from universities which are becoming more and more foreign-dominated, paid by the taxpayers of this province. I really cannot understand why the minister has lacked the courage to come forward and give himself the power that he promised to us he would assume under this bill. What have they got on him that the government can’t get this kind of information out of them? They have denied it to the select committee and now they are going to get away with it.
I would assume that the NDP will probably have to come around to my point of view before this is though and join me in saying that while the minister regrets the whole idea of a quota system, that is the only way he is going to assure the people of this province that they get a fair shake at the university level and the faculty level.
As far as I am concerned, I have been discussing this matter with personnel at the university. There is some indication that they are interested in the position of the people of the province. And don’t ever mistake it, the people of this province want to have an opportunity for the university graduates of this province to have a position on faculty in the universities. Don’t ever think they don’t, they do. If the universities haven’t been able to turn out the calibre of person to take this kind of faculty position, then it is an indictment on them and not on the rest of us.
Mr. Speaker, I can’t speak more forcibly than I have. My view is that this cannot be deleted. We cannot subject ourselves like cringing people to the dictates of those who refuse to give information to the people of Ontario. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Does any other hon. member wish to take part in the debate? The hon. member for York Centre.
Mr. Deacon: I just want to add a word in support of my colleague from Nipissing that we want to see the recommendations of the select committee implemented, that we urge that this clause be not dropped, and that we will vote against it in that circumstance.
Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. parliamentary assistant wish to comment?
Mr. Parrott: Just to prove that I am a very reasonable-minded person, I am prepared to move the adjournment of the debate if that should meet the wishes of the House.
Mr. Laughren: Not really.
Mr. Ferrier: Oh, come on. Afraid to answer a question, eh?
Mr. Parrott: No, indeed I am not, and I stand very firmly on that. I think that --
Mr. Renwick: The motion to adjourn is not debatable, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Gisborn: What a klutz.
Mr. Speaker: The parliamentary assistant has already moved the adjournment of the debate.
The House divided on Mr. Parrott’s motion, which was approved on the following vote:
Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, the “ayes” are 35, the “nays” are 25.
Mr. Speaker: I declare the motion carried.
Motion agreed to.
Hon. Mr. McNie: Mr. Speaker, on Thursday we will debate the schedule of bills already agreed to.
Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Mr. Speaker, might I ask whether there is any indication of when the resources development committee will sit to hear the Workmen’s Compensation Board?
Mr. Roy: How come we don’t sit Wednesday?
Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Because we sit Monday and the member is never here.
Mr. Deans: When will it sit?
Hon. Mr. McNie: Mr. Speaker, the only information I have is that the House will consider Bills 131, 151, 118, 55 and 62.
Mr. Singer: Oh? In which order?
Hon. Mr. McNie moves the adjournment of the House.
Motion agreed to.
The House adjourned at 10:40 o’clock, p.m.