Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary of Social Development): Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce to you, and through you to the members of this House, 160 grade 9 students from Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute in Scarborough. Would you join with me in welcoming them, please?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman of Management Board): Mr. Speaker, we have a visitor with us under the gallery today in the person of Mr. Edward Minta, who is deputy minister of the Civil Service Commission in Ghana. He is doing a study of government machinery of different countries in the world.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): He has come to the wrong place.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): “The big blue machine,” eh?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: He has been to Sweden and Great Britain. He’s also been in Ottawa and he’s come to look at the ideal.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Let me tell the hon. minister, having tried both, Ghana is better.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: He’ll be with us for a few days, and I’m sure that all members of the House would want to greet him.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Maybe he could give the hon. minister a little advice on public employees.

Mr. Martel: What colour of machinery was the minister talking about?

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

COST OF LIVING PAYMENTS TO GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform the members that in keeping with the policy established earlier in the year, the government has advised the Civil Service Association that in recognition of the unusually rapid increases in the cost of living it is prepared to revise the second-year increase previously negotiated for the general services category.

Instead of the seven per cent increase which had been negotiated and accepted by these employees, the government believes a 12 per cent increase would be more appropriate. The revised increases will be implemented if and when the CSAO agrees to amend the current agreement and the increases would be effective from Jan. 1, 1975. In the meantime, the seven per cent previously negotiated will be implemented as scheduled.

It might also be noted, Mr. Speaker, that the current agreement with this category is subject to negotiation beginning in the month of September, 1975, at which time the salaries for all these classes will be open to full review with the bargaining agent.

The members will recall that similar adjustments were made earlier for employees in other categories whose contracts still had some months to run. This means, Mr. Speaker, the government has now honoured its commitment to review the second-year increases in all two-year contracts which had been negotiated before the beginning of the year.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Health.

CONCEPTION CONTROL AND FAMILY PLANNING

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I wish to announce important action we shall be taking, in conjunction with other ministries in the social development policy field, for the provision of conception control and family planning services.

Mr. Martel: Oh, hear, hear!

Hon. Mr. Miller: Before doing so, I would like to review briefly the main reasons why this has to be recognized as a pressing need.

First is the fact that sexual activity is occurring at earlier ages than previously, and, to a larger extent, without the formation of long-term relationships. In our society this increased sexual freedom makes the need for the exercise of individual responsibility a matter of public concern, as well as of concern to the individuals. The provision of conception control and family planning services is perceived as a means of promoting more responsible individual behaviour.

This is primarily a social concern, but there are specific implications affecting health care. One of these is the rapid rate at which therapeutic abortions are increasing. I will not speculate as to what proportion of these are unplanned pregnancies, or consider the question of the associated health care costs. The point I am making is that a potential health risk is incurred each time this procedure is undertaken.

There is also a major socio-economic aspect to the situation. We do not live in a land in which the population growth poses an immediate problem, but links can clearly be identified between high fertility and poverty, with its associated social ills. Consideration for the dignity and overall well-being of the people of Ontario points to the conclusion that a complete understanding of birth control should be made available to all.

It is for these reasons, Mr. Speaker, that it is felt necessary to establish a comprehensive programme designed to provide information, education and services readily available and easily accessible to individuals who wish assistance in conception control and family planning.

For this purpose, the Ministry of Health has been given prime responsibility for the programme and will be assisted by an inter-ministerial committee on family planning. This will be chaired by a representative from the Ministry of Health. Its membership will represent the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Youth Secretariat. No doubt other ministries, and perhaps outside agencies, will play a part in its functioning. By this broad representation, effective co-ordination to ensure adequate province-wide services will be possible, duplications in funding and services can be eliminated and all programmes can be properly monitored.

Local official health agencies will be made responsible for ensuring the provision of services in their own communities or areas. They can do so either directly or through agencies such as local hospitals, volunteer agencies and the like. Planning of services is to be done in consultation with the district health council, where one exists.

To avoid duplication of funding the Ministry of Health will act as the sole channel for all funds required for both clinical and counselling services. My ministry will also take responsibility for the preparation of guidelines to be met by those providing services and for preparing and launching a programme of public information.

This will be an ongoing service, Mr. Speaker. We plan to make an immediate start, but members can expect to see the programme coming into full-scale operation in the fiscal year 1975-1976 -- in other words, from April, 1975, onward.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY REGULATIONS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I’d like to put a question to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations pertaining to the passage of the travel industry Act this week. Has he responded to telegrams, no doubt received by him or his ministry, expressing concern on behalf of the industry that they were inadequately consulted and that -- according to them -- the undertakings by the minister had not been fulfilled before the bill was given three readings? If he feels the industry has a legitimate complaint -- and it appears that they have -- is he prepared to ask that royal assent or proclamation be held up, pending some further discussions with the industry?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of the particular telegram that I suspect the Leader of the Opposition is holding in his hand, but other members have spoken to me.

The travel association apparently sent out wires to travel operators and people in that type of business on Tuesday last, saying that the bill contained certain legislation dealing with bonding and this sort of thing and that they had had no consultation on that. That simply is not correct. We had many consultations with the industry over the past several months.

What they refer to will be contained in the regulations enacted under the Act. If the hon. member will refer back to, I believe one week ago today when I introduced the Act, I made express reference in that statement to the fact that before embarking on any field of regulations we would have further consultation with the industry. I have no reason to change that position, because it was a position we thought was completely clear at that time. I made a statement to that effect here one week ago today. We will dialogue with the industry, we must dialogue with the industry. I submit that the telegram that went out on Tuesday from certain industry people to other members of the industry was quite incorrect.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: I wonder if the minister could clarify then, whether the minister or a representative of the ministry undertook with the industry that the bill would go to a committee through which industry spokesmen could express their views? Of course this did not take place, but was such an undertaking entered into?

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Why the leak?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I can’t assert or deny that here, but I can find out very quickly. I did not have that discussion with the industry. Most of the discussions with the industry were conducted between my parliamentary assistant and staff members over the past many months.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That explains it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I can assure this House that we met over the past many months with substantial numbers of people within the industry.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener with a supplementary.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Since the bill has passed from introduction here to being ready for proclamation within five days, would the minister not think it a better way to order the business of the House to have a bill like this available in its printed form for dissemination among industry representatives before we put it through within a matter of a couple of days? Does the minister not think that even though negotiations may have gone forward, the industry itself and members of it would not realize all the bill might contain until they actually had the benefit of seeing the bill as introduced in the House?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, the whole matter might well resolve itself, because at 4 o’clock today I am meeting with members of the industry -- those who are responsible for the sending of that telegram, I understand -- to clarify that misconception and certain other misconceptions which presently are in their minds.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. Good: In view of the great concern by the industry about the legislation and their lack of a provincial organization, would the minister endeavour to have either himself, his parliamentary assistant or some representative present at their meeting on Sunday so that there can be, for the first time, dialogue between his ministry and a broad representation of Ontario travel agencies, and not just people at Sun tours?

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Will the minister guarantee it won’t be his parliamentary assistant?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, to the best of my knowledge to the present time, I have not been invited to attend the meeting. I am aware that one is being held.

Mr. Good: Did the minister not get an invitation?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I had hoped that today, following further consultation with certain members of the travel industry at 4 o’clock, many of these questions which are foremost in their minds will be resolved.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I foresee no real difficulty. I suggest there has been some misconception as to the bill. I want to clarify that. I made a public statement, through the media and here in this House last week, that there must be further dialogue with the industry before any regulations are introduced.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Why was the minister in such a hurry?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: And I intend to honour that commitment.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Reid: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: No, there have been three supplementaries from one party.

RESOURCE TAXATION

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I want to put a question to the Premier pertaining to the Ontario mining tax, which has been before us as a bill now for some months.

Does he intend to go forward with the tax as described in the budget some months ago, and as before us in this bill, particularly since the outcome of the discussion between our Treasurer (Mr. White) and the Minister of Finance and the other Treasurers doesn’t seem to have changed the federal position; or does he intend to leave it in abeyance until he gets an opportunity to meet with the other premiers and the Prime Minister to discuss it further?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, of course I think there is some difference between our bill and the discussions that went on between the Minister of Finance and the other provincial ministers. The main concern, as I understand the discussions, at least in Ottawa on Monday and Tuesday, related to the question of the deductibility of royalties as an expense.

I think it is fair to state that we are taking a different approach, in that the tax is on profits. This is why I think there is a distinction between the route we are going and the approach taken by one or two of our sister provinces.

I just can’t say, Mr. Speaker. The Treasurer will be here later on, and I’m sure would be delighted to inform the hon. member and perhaps give him some impression of the discussions, although I think they were fairly evident in the press. But I do suggest there is a distinction between the approach that we are suggesting here and what was, I think, the main topic of discussion on the resource tax at the finance ministers meeting.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: The Premier is then not prepared to say that we will be proceeding with the bill before a Christmas adjournment?

Hon. Mr. Davis: It is possible we may.

Mr. Roy: Could I ask a supplementary?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Sounds like a fair excuse.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Roy: To the Premier, Mr. Speaker: Have the Premier or the Treasurer received assurances from the federal Minister of Finance, that the scheme -- or maybe I shouldn’t call it a scheme because there is nothing insidious about it -- but that this government’s approach to taxation is acceptable to the federal government or the federal Minister of Finance?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can’t but get the impression that the member for Ottawa East thinks we have to see whether any Ontario tax scheme meets with the approval of the federal Minister of Finance.

Mr. Roy: The Premier should; he should have done so --

Hon. Mr. Davis: Quite frankly, that is not constitutionally --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He should have done it on the land speculation tax.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well all right, if the members opposite want to debate the land speculation tax, we think in terms of law they are wrong.

Mr. Roy: Why doesn’t this government take them to court?

Hon. Mr. Davis: And in terms of policy, without any question they are wrong.

Mr. Roy: Why doesn’t the Premier take them to court?

Hon. Mr. Davis: If the federal government really wanted to come to grips with land speculation right across this country, they should have the intestinal fortitude to impose their own tax. Why does the member keep apologizing for them?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The answer is I have had no communication from the federal Minister of Finance as it relates to our mining tax.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: At least this government is reducing its tax rate.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions -- the Leader of the Opposition.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The Leader of the Opposition has the floor.

LIQUOR LICENCES FOR OFFICE PARTIES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations can extricate himself from the friends of the travel agents who are surrounding him, I would like to ask: What is going on down at the Liquor Licence Board that they have decided not to issue the special permits needed for the yuletide office parties? Is it the policy of the government, in fact, to make all these parties illegal happenings; or does the minister think they are simply not going to be held this year?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry I hadn’t heard the question in the first instance. I was consulting with my spiritual adviser.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister needs a lot of them.

Mr. Roy: He needs all the help he can get.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Clement: And he has some identification with spirits in this province too, I might add.

Mr. Breithaupt: Both in this world and in the next.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s like having your cake and eating it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I can’t say that anything improper is going on down at the Liquor Licence Board. It has never been the policy, as far as I am aware, of the board to license office parties by special occasion permit unless it is in a facility that can accommodate the kind of activity that the member contemplates.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What type of facility would that be?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I don’t know. It all depends on what the member contemplates in the nature of his question.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): A two-hole privy.

Mr. Speaker: Order please; the minister is answering the question.

Mr. Breithaupt: Is this an all-purpose licence?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Offices per so are not licensed because they do not meet many of the criteria insofar as safety and fire regulations are concerned. They do not regulate them by issuing permits.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: There has been concern expressed publicly. We don’t worry about this because our party was licensed, as the minister knows, by special permit because we have all the facilities. Is there some indication that the policy is different this year from last year? Probably that’s the way to clear it up. If there is no change, I suppose these people are not going to be concerned.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, I am not aware there is any change whatsoever, Mr. Speaker. It may be that parties have been held in the past in offices. These parties, of course, would not be permitted under the Act. It may be that some concern has been demonstrated by the host, or proposed host of those parties and they have sought application to obtain a special occasion permit. But there has been no change in existing policy over a number of years insofar as office parties are concerned in office suites.

Mr. Stokes: Just a little tightening up.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: We are having a party tonight, to which the minister is not invited, and we are licensed.

Mr. Speaker: The member for High Park with a supplementary.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Shulman: Can the minister explain why premises which were licensed last Christmas are being refused this Christmas?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Perhaps the hon. member could assist me by identifying the premises. I don’t know of them all specifically. Is the member going to the party of the New Democratic Party tonight?

Mr. Stokes: He was invited.

Mr. Breithaupt: They won’t let him in.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Roy: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Final supplementary.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The member for Scarborough West should have invited me.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, we check them at the door.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The member for Ottawa East with a final supplementary.

Mr. Roy: Can the minister explain the distinction made by the chairman of the board who said that the cafeteria here at Queen’s Park apparently is a place that is --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. That is outside the original; that could be a new question.

Mr. Roy: No. I want to ask a supplementary. It’s within the area, it is; it’s a policy of --

Mr. Speaker: No, it has nothing to do with the original question. The member may ask it later if he wishes.

Mr. Roy: I won’t get a chance; you know that.

Mr. Speaker: Has the Leader of the Opposition further questions?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

OMB DECISION ON TORONTO HEIGHT BYLAW

Mr. Lewis: I have a question first of the Premier, if I may. Is the Premier prepared to reprimand the author of the Ontario Municipal Board report on the height bylaw in Toronto for the intemperate and non-judicial nature of the finding by himself and his colleagues, contrary to what is required of the Ontario Municipal Board; or indeed to redirect that the height bylaw be heard again before an expanded board or other members of the board so that a far more impartial and judicial decision can be given?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I am sure there are strong views in both directions as they relate to the board’s decision. I think that is only fair to assume. I find it unfortunate that the hon. member would suggest that those members of the board who heard the application were less than objective, because it suggests there was some bias in their minds.

Mr. Lewis: Just read their judgement.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I find that unacceptable.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Their report is intemperate.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think it’s a very unfortunate observation to make. From what the hon. member has said, Mr. Speaker, he is questioning, basically, the objectivity of the board.

Mr. Lewis: I said it is a non-judicious document.

Hon. Mr. Davis: No.

Mr. Lewis: Yes. I said it was an intemperate report. It was intemperate.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Let the member recall what he said. He is suggesting that the members of the board acted in a less than objective fashion.

Mr. Lewis: I think that is probably true.

Hon. Mr. Davis: All right, if the member says that, that’s fine. I am not prepared to accept that as far as they themselves as members of the board are concerned. I regret it.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): But the Premier does agree that it was intemperate and non-judicious.

Mr. Lewis: Intemperate and non-judicious in the extreme.

Hon. Mr. Davis: With respect, Mr. Speaker, to the phrasing in the judgement and the question of whether the government would redirect a hearing, certainly as I understand it from the media, and I have had no direct communication that I know of from the mayor or the municipality of the city of Toronto, there may or may not be an appeal to cabinet at which time that question will have to be resolved. As it relates to the language of the judgement, Mr. Speaker, I guess here again it’s a matter of judgement as to whether one would say it is intemperate. I gather the hon. member for Riverdale would use the term “less than judicious.”

Mr. Lewis: That’s what I used -- “intemperate and non-judicious.”

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well, the leader of the NDP also said it. I heard it from here.

Mr. Lewis: That is the implication.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would say, Mr. Speaker, that I am not prepared to make that sort of analysis as an individual without the total documentation and the transcript. I think we must recognize that the Ontario Municipal Board has been given very important responsibilities in this province --

Mr. Renwick: We know that.

Mr. Lewis: We know that.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- and I think that for the leader of the New Democratic Party -- and I am not saying that one can’t be critical of judgements, but I do find it most unfortunate that he would suggest that these members acted in a less than objective fashion. Certainly one can question their judgements, but I do --

Mr. Lewis: That’s what I’m doing.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- and I emphasize this -- I question his observation as to their objectivity.

Mr. Lewis: Okay, okay.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: The Premier doesn’t think that the intemperate attack on the planner in the city was a way of avoiding what the board should at least have had the honour to do -- which was to confront the politicians who had made the decision rather than to make the kind of decision they did in the fashion in which they articulated it? Surely the Premier can’t condone that kind of behaviour from the board? That’s not a judicial hearing or a judicious decision.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is trying to sort of skate around what he said earlier. I am not here --

Mr. Lewis: I am coming back to what I said earlier.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- to apologize or otherwise for the members of the Ontario Municipal Board. I think one has to sit there, be a part of the hearing and have the total evidence before one can make this sort of assessment. It’s fine to read the judgement and the phraseology, but with great respect, unless one was there, unless one had the transcript available to him, I question whether he could make that kind of assessment sitting here in this House.

Mr. Renwick: How is the Premier going to deal with the appeal? He wasn’t there.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I just say to the NDP leader that I wish he would take a look at what he said earlier --

Mr. Lewis: The Premier is going to have to deal with the appeal. He reviewed Spadina on the same basis from the same man; from the same man.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- because I will not sit here and have people question the objectivity of the board without registering some complaint.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary from the member for York-Forest Hill.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Mr. Speaker, arising out of the subject matter of the question, I would like to ask the Premier when he intends to implement the recommendations of the select committee on the Ontario Municipal Board which were tabled in this House on Nov. 21, 1972, which might have avoided some of the hassle that has occurred as a result of the last OMB hearing?

Mr. Roy: A good question; a good question.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, there is one aspect of the recommendations -- I think I have said this in the House and certainly I have said it outside the House -- that certainly in these circumstances has great appeal for me, and that is that there be some way found not to have appeals of this nature come to the cabinet of this province. But I say with great respect to the authors of the report -- and heaven knows we have looked at all of it and at that aspect very carefully -- we still have not determined a better way so that people who have appeared before the board, whether as individuals or municipalities, can have, as it relates to the kind of things that are appealable, some other form of recourse. As I say, I personally would be delighted not to have these appeals appear before cabinet, but as yet, Mr. Speaker, we haven’t found a viable alternative that in conscience we have been able to accept. We are still looking.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. Lewis: I want to pursue this, either by way of a separate question or a supplementary. Does the Premier recall that in the early part of this year his government, before the Provincial-Municipal Liaison Committee, said, and I quote:

“The government of Ontario views with favour the recommendations that follow from these principles. [The principles in the OMB select committee report.] 1. That the OMB be retained as an independent tribunal but that it no longer be put in a position of overruling the decisions of elected municipal councils.”

When is the Premier going to do something about that matter, to which he has publicly committed himself within the last year?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, of course, I don’t want to get into a lengthy legal discussion. I think there is a difference between the Ontario Municipal Board overruling in terms of policy, and also being responsible for some interpretation or some adjudication as it relates to certain laws that exist.

It’s fine to say they haven’t this right, but where do people go if they want to test the validity of an action by council, Mr. Speaker? Do they then go to the courts? And I say, with great respect to the Leader of the New Democratic Party, that that particular reference is not --

Mr. Deans: Go to the ballot box.

Mr. Givens: They go to the polls.

Mr. Deans: That’s what they do when they don’t like what the government does, they go to the polls.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, with great respect, when it comes to a determination of the law --

Mr. Lewis: The government has created a board which is unworkable --

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- you do not always go to the polls; you don’t.

Mr. Renwick: -- and subjected to the pressures of the developers.

Mr. Lewis: And subjected to the pressures of the developers, that’s right.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Sure, in some situations.

Mr. Renwick: That is all it is being used for.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. member for Scarborough West have further questions?

Mr. Lewis: One can give a good decision, but the intemperate ones bring the objectivity into question. That’s what is true of this one.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Further questions.

FEDERAL MORTGAGE SUBSIDY

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Housing, if I may, Mr. Speaker: Can the Minister of Housing do anything, in the mortgage subsidy programme announced by Mr. Danson, to prevent that $50 a month from being passed on, as it were, to the developers by a simple increase in rents?

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe I can be responsible for Mr. Danson. I would like to think that we can work together in regard to the assistance for housing.

I have not been contacted directly by Mr. Danson about the proposal which has been in the news media. I would think it would be incumbent upon Mr. Danson as the federal minister to relate more directly with the Minister of Housing for Ontario. When I have the chance, Mr. Speaker, I would like to see if the federal government would supplement mortgage funds by actual funds rather than coming out with a programme that does nothing whatsoever to improve the situation of mortgage funds in Ontario.

Mr. P. Taylor (Carleton East): Like servicing land?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: All they have done in this instance is spread their money out very thinly. They have not supplemented their funds for housing for next year.

Mr. Roy: They don’t dare give this government money any more, it wastes it.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: They had a budget of $1.3 billion supplemented by $100 million more for all of Canada. To me that is a very negligible amount.

Mr. Roy: They can’t trust this government with federal money, it’s wasting it.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary: Accepting that in many areas, particularly in the limited dividend housing, the money will go directly to the developers, where it is a rental subsidy of $50 a month can the minister not insist on provincial intervention that the rents be maintained at their present level so that they are not simply increased to absorb the federal subsidy?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I’m going to discuss this proposal with Mr. Danson to ensure what the end result will be. I’m not entirely sure that this programme as enunciated is going to be effective.

We are, as you know, with them on a limited dividend programme. We have $50 million; for Ontario they have $25 million. Their contribution so far has been very limited.

When the member referred to limited dividend and rent control on a 15-year basis, I think the programme is all right, but I want to make sure the end result is that those who are renting are the ones who get the greatest amount of relief from housing accommodation costs.

FAMILY PLANNING TASK FORCE

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Health, following his statement of today: Can he now table for the Legislature and the public the family planning task force material?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, it wasn’t my intention to table the material. It’s not secret; it simply is a working document on which we are basing these decisions. It’s available and I’m quite willing to make it available to the members. I just did not see that it was a tableable item.

Mr. Lewis: Well by way of supplementary then, if the minister will make it available to me, would he mind if I tabled it?

Does he not think that a document in a field of this kind, of any comparable kind, on which you’re basing some major decisions, should at least have public view and that it would be useful therefore to table it formally?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is probably one of the hardest questions to answer, Mr. Speaker, with great respect. It’s very difficult to know where to draw the line between tabling documents and not tabling them. There are often views expressed in private documents to ministers that can be misconstrued in public. I think we have to take out of those documents, which are prepared for our use, the conclusions we like and agree with, and sometimes we have to refuse to table the balance.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

The member for Welland South.

APPOINTMENT OF FIRE MARSHAL

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to direct a question to the Solicitor General. Can the minister indicate to the House when he will announce the appointment of a person to fill the vacancy that now exists in the chief office of the provincial Fire Marshal’s office?

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): I am sorry. I didn’t hear the last part of the question.

Mr. Roy: Is he still the minister?

Mr. Haggerty: Can the minister indicate to the House when he will announce the appointment of a person to fill the vacancy that now exists in the chief office of the provincial Fire Marshal’s office? In other words, is the minister going to appoint a Fire Marshal for the Province of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, an announcement was made earlier this week that Mr. Kendall is the new Fire Marshal.

An hon. member: Where has the hon. member been?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Roy: It was by way of secret document again, eh?

Mr. Deans: No, it was a public statement.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

INDUSTRY LOANS

Mr. Stokes: A question of the Minister of Industry and Tourism: Has the minister had an opportunity to assess the loans that were granted under ODC, NODC and EODC, and how does he explain that out of a total of $6.65 million that was handed out by way of loans to various corporations right across the province under a programme that was designed specifically to help slow-growth areas, 33.9 per cent of the total went to Metro, 8.4 per cent of the total went to the real north -- that is, north of the French River -- and 16.2 per cent of the total really went to eastern Ontario? And since when was Scarborough a part of eastern Ontario?

Mr. Roy: Did the member draw that up yesterday?

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): First of all, Mr. Speaker, if we take the loan programme as a blanket situation, we can distort the figures in any way, shape or form we wish. We must break down the loan programme -- and I have explained this before in the House -- we must very clearly break down the loan programme between export loans, which are to assist manufacturers across the Province of Ontario in penetrating foreign markets, and development and tourist loans.

I do not have the exact breakdown with me in the House today, but I would be pleased to get it for the member. Again though, I draw attention to the fact that a good number of loans that are made in central and southwestern Ontario fall under the export loan category.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Carleton East.

Mr. Stokes: A supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary then. The member who asked the question.

Mr. Stokes: Does the minister think that 8.4 per cent of the total, which is $6.6 million, is an adequate amount to be directing towards the fostering of economic development in northern Ontario, especially for a programme that was specifically designed to achieve that objective?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, first of all, let’s get it very clear that when we give out loans it is because of applications that are made to the development corporations.

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): He doesn’t understand that.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: We do not go out and suggest to each and every businessman to come in and we will give them this money from our development corporations, because we are the lender of last resort.

Mr. Roy: I thought they did.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: I would also inform the member that the greatest percentage of accepted applications are for northern Ontario, and not central or southwestern Ontario.

Mr. Stokes: Those are the minister’s figures.

Mr. Yakabuski: He is misleading the House again.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to table in this House, for the benefit of this member and others, the number of applications that are made to the Northern Ontario Development Corp. and the number we honour by allowing financing under the various programmes of that corporation.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Carleton East.

OHC LAND PURCHASES IN OTTAWA AREA

Mr. P. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A question of the Minister of Education. Is the minister now in a position to give this House an answer to the question I put to him on Monday with respect to whether or not guidelines exist for school boards with reference to the makeup of committees and avoiding conflict of interest in land and property transactions?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, I think my indication was that I would look into the matter which the hon. member asked me about, concerning a particular trustee of a particular board. I have asked the law officers of the Crown to prepare a report on that. I haven’t got it yet. When I have it I will be glad to read it to the hon. member.

Mr. P. Taylor: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. P. Taylor: I appreciate the answer the minister has just given, and I would ask him to completely hear the nature of the question. It is a question asking whether guidelines have been issued by his ministry, or by him, to boards of education pointing out the pitfalls that can arise in this type of activity. Has he issued such guidelines? If not, will he issue such guidelines?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I think that’s a new question. It’s not what the hon. member asked the other day.

The answer to that question is that the guidelines concerning all elected people at the municipal level are contained in the conflict-of-interest legislation which we passed in this House a short time ago. They are there, and all people elected to municipal bodies, including school boards, know they’re there and that they lay out the ground rules under which they must operate.

If some of the boards would like an interpretation of that particular statute we’ll be glad to get them an interpretation of it, but the legislation is there and they can read it. It’s not new; it’s been there for at least a year and a half now.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York South.

ATHABASCA TAR SANDS

Mr. MacDonald: In the absence of the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) may I ask the Premier a question? Is the Province of Ontario actively pursuing with the federal government, the government of Alberta, and conceivably other governments and public agencies, the possibility of developing a public consortium to replace the private consortia which are now collapsing in terms of the development of the Athabasca tar sands?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can’t say whether the Minister of Energy has had any discussions with the government of Alberta or the federal government. I know there have been conversations over the past number of months expressing an interest on the part of the Province of Ontario.

Of course, I can’t comment as to any formal discussions between the federal Minister of Energy and the government of Alberta. I only go on press reports in terms of the federal government’s interest in becoming involved in some financial commitment to the tar sands. I will ask the Minister of Energy and have an answer tomorrow morning.

Mr. MacDonald: By way of a supplementary: Since the federal Minister of Energy has indicated that a decision on this issue is going to be made within the next 30 days, would the Premier not agree that this is a critical time for Ontario to raise its voice if it feels it has a role to play in this kind of public development of such a great natural resource?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think, Mr. Speaker, that if Ontario has a role to play obviously this should be determined, probably within that time frame.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

GUIDELINES FOR OFF-DUTY POLICEMEN

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Solicitor General. Can he advise the House whether there are any guidelines about police officers across the province working on their off-duty time; and whether he’s aware, for instance, of a situation in Ottawa which was pictured on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen showing an off-duty Nepean township police officer in uniform with a loaded shotgun in one of the local banks at Bayshore Shopping Centre? Are there any guidelines for that?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has indicated that the off-duty policeman was in uniform in that particular store with a shotgun.

Mr. Roy: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Is he under contract working with somebody when he’s off duty.

Mr. Roy: Yes, he’s paid by the bank.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I am not aware of anything that prohibits that in legislation or in regulations, but certainly I will check that for the hon. member.

Mr. Roy: May I ask the minister a supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Roy: Just one supplementary, possibly by way of clarification: The off-duty police officer, according to the article, is being paid by the local bank. Does the minister not feel that if officers -- for instance Metro police officers -- are working off-duty they should not have the uniform of Metro police on? Secondly, does he not have some concern, for instance as shown here in the picture, that the officer is standing close to the public with a loaded shotgun in view?

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): How does the member know it is loaded?

Mr. Roy: It says so in the article, and I believe it.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Yes Mr. Speaker, I would be concerned that the off-duty policeman was wearing a uniform while he was under contract with some private company or private store.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): They do it all the time.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: On the second one, I’m not sure whether there is anything that would prevent that particular police officer, when acting as a security guard, from carrying a firearm of that kind.

Mr. Roy: No, I’m not objecting to that.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I’m not sure if there is any prohibition against that at all.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Stormont.

NOTICE OF LAYOFFS

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Labour: In view of the layoff announced yesterday of 1,500 employees at Domtar over the Christmas holidays, and in view of the fact that over 500 other employees are being laid off over the Christmas holidays, can the minister tell me how far in advance his ministry is informed of these layoffs by various companies?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I can’t tell the member the exact number of days. The Act sets out how many days’ notice must be given to these people and they generally send us copies of these notices; they are obliged to send us copies and I think most of them do. It varies with the number of employees and the amount of time, and they are laid off, but they are conforming with the Act.

Mr. Samis: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Samis: Would it be possible for the minister to consult with the companies in a community like Cornwall to possibly arrange some deferment or spacing of the layoffs to minimize the impact on the community?

Mr. L. C. Henderson (Lambton): Why doesn’t the member consult with them?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): It was a good question. These guys don’t care.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. minister.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, it may have been a good question, but my ears aren’t as sharp as the ones in the back row here and I missed it.

Mr. Speaker: Will you repeat the supplementary question?

Mr. Samis: Very simply is it possible for the Ministry of Labour to ask the companies to possibly space out these layoffs rather than concentrate them all in one month or a period of two weeks, to make some arrangements to minimize the impact on the community?

Mr. Henderson: What’s the difference?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I think these layoffs come in from the companies, not because they want to make them but with the falling off of business. Of course, we’d be happy if they wouldn’t make any layoffs at all, but I don’t think that they get notice from their customers or that there is any way that they can spread them out. In other words, if there is no work this is when they announce a layoff.

I think to a certain extent some of them are spreading these layoffs out. Sometimes when they do it the suggestion is that they are letting them off in small numbers from time to time so they won’t have to comply with the Act.

So the companies are criticized no matter how they do it. If they do spread them out then it is said they are doing it so they won’t have to comply with the Act, and if they lay a good number off at once then the request is that they should spread them out.

I say the companies are complying with the Act and as far as I know they don’t try to do any timing; they don’t want layoffs themselves, they do it as the demands of business dictate.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Minister of Colleges and Universities has the answer to a question asked previously.

GRANT TO TARRAGON THEATRE

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday the hon. member for Port Arthur asked me whether the Ontario Arts Council had made any approach to Tarragon Theatre in view of the financial difficulties they are experiencing.

The Ontario Arts Council tells me they have been in touch with the Tarragon Theatre --

Mr. Lewis: That is why we asked.

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- and that staff of the council will be meeting with the artistic director of the theatre on Dec. 27.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Rainy River.

SEAFARERS’ INTERNATIONAL UNION

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Solicitor General, if I can get his attention.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): If the Solicitor General can get the member’s colleague back in his seat.

Mr. P. Taylor: Let the member for Ottawa East help the Solicitor General with the answer.

Mr. Reid: I might get an answer if my colleague stays there.

Has the minister been able to ascertain the source of the leakage of information to the hon. member for High Park in relation to the SIU? Has he been able to ascertain whether it came from within his own department?

Mr. Henderson: Has the member for High Park got his gun with him today?

Mr. Martel: Did the hon. John Munro get the member for Rainy River to ask that question?

Mr. Yakabuski: Is the member trying for Munro?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, I’m satisfied that the leak didn’t come from within the ministry. However the investigation is continuing and I’m hoping to have a report, certainly before the end of the year.

Mr. Roy: It didn’t come from the Solicitor General?

Mr. Reid: One supplementary if I may, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Reid: I take it by now the deputy minister has sent a request for letters and information and evidence in regard to the SIU to Ottawa. Has the Solicitor General had a reply from them yet?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: No, Mr. Speaker, I have not had a reply from Ottawa.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sudbury.

SUNDAY TRUCKING OPERATIONS

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications: I would ask him how he responds to the statements by the Canadian and Ontario truckers associations where they say that a clampdown on Sunday trucking would cause a food and fuel shortage and also cause industrial chaos in the Metro area. Will these statements deter him from his stated goal to control Sunday trucking in the province?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think those statements will detract from the efforts that will be made to exercise some control on the movement of vehicles on our highways on Sundays. I can tell the hon. member that we haven’t backed off at all in our first position, which was to appeal the decision of the CTC in regard to the two trucking firms that received permission to come in from the west. I understand that is being dealt with in the courts. It may end today.

We are at the present time developing another approach that we think will solve this problem, or certainly go a long way toward solving the problem being created. We will not back off.

Mr. Deans: Good.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Downsview.

ARREST BY HALTON POLICE

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Solicitor General. Has the Solicitor General investigated the charge made, yesterday I believe it was, by Peter McWilliams, a prominent solicitor in Oakville who was a Tory candidate and a Crown attorney --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. That is not part of the question.

Mr. Singer: -- that the police in Halton arrested someone because he had given evidence against an accused?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, what I gather from the press report is that the person in question was called as a defence witness.

Mr. Singer: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: At that time there was an outstanding charge against that person by the Oakville police. After the trial was completed, he was then taken into custody as a result of that outstanding charge.

Mr. Singer: By way of supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Singer: Would the Solicitor General not agree that if a man as prominent and as well known in the legal profession as Mr. McWilliams --

Mr. Roy: He just wrote a book.

Mr. Singer: -- makes that kind of a charge, it warrants some kind of an investigation by the Solicitor General?

Mr. Roy: Especially if he is a Tory.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, after I read the article this morning, I did place a call to Mr. McWilliams. I haven’t been able to talk with him. I have asked the Halton region board of police commissioners to give me a report on it.

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

Mr. Singer: Is the minister going to table the report before the Legislature?

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

BIG BROTHERS OF METRO TORONTO

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Community and Social Services: In the light of the board of Big Brothers having twice now turned down their negotiators’ settlement with the striking social workers -- and we all hope that the Minister of Labour is very successful in bringing about a settlement there -- should all fail, would the minister consider channelling the funds provided by his ministry currently to Big Brothers to a new Big Brothers organization staffed by the striking social workers under a board representative of the entire community, a prospect which is now being considered?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): Mr. Speaker, I think that’s something we certainly would be prepared to look into. If negotiations fail, our office is always open to hear representations from any worthwhile organization.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Essex-Kent.

HYDRO RIGHT OF WAY

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. In his decision to overrule the inquiry officer as to a Hydro right of way in Kent county, is the minister satisfied that Ontario Hydro gave all the information pertaining to future use of that line?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): All I can go by, Mr. Speaker, is the evidence that is presented to me by the inquiry officer. I made my decision on the evidence that was presented to me on the expropriation of that line.

Mr. Roy: That’s the best answer all day.

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

POLYMER WALL SEALING FOR URANIUM MINES

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources regarding the application of polymer materials to the walls of uranium mines, a method of sealing radon gas into the rock and thereby reducing the harm to uranium miners by at least 60 per cent. My question is has the minister received no report on this method devised by the United States Bureau of Mines, despite the fact that his letter of July 23 told me that “our consultants have been advised to investigate this method thoroughly and inform us on its application as applied to our precambrian rocks”?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, our consultants, to my understanding, have contacted the US Bureau of Mines. I have not seen their report but I will get a copy of it and make sure the hon. member is made aware of the contents.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kent.

POSITION OF DEPUTY REEVES ON COUNTY COUNCILS

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): I have a question of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs or the provincial Treasurer.

Hon. J. White (Treasurer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Or both.

Mr. Spence: Or both, yes; could the minister inform us if it is true that a few days after the Dec. 2 municipal elections, a county council in the Province of Ontario voted on a resolution under section 27(a) of the Municipal Act to exclude deputy reeves elected at the Dec. 2 election from voting in county council during a term in which they were elected in that municipality?

Hon. Mr. White: Yes sir, that is true.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wentworth.

Mr. Spence: Supplementary: It seems very unusual that when the people vote a deputy reeve as a representative for the next two years, that he is excluded from what he is elected for.

Mr. Speaker: Is the member making that a supplementary question?

An hon. member: What is the Treasurer going to do about it?

Mr. Spence: Yes, what is he going to do?

Hon. Mr. White: The member for Lambton has expressed some interest and concern in this matter. We amended the legislation a couple of years ago to enable county councils to reduce their numbers by eliminating some or all deputy reeves in certain circumstances. The reason for that is that the old system, which gave no such latitude, was producing county councils with as many as 67 members; if I remember correctly. That was obviously unworkable. For that reason -- because we are attempting to hand down powers to the local level of government -- the Legislature permitted a county council to exclude deputy reeves when reason existed for so doing.

The change that was made in the area referred to on Dec. 4, two days after the election, was in a sense compatible with the intentions of the Legislature. I have some concern at the speed with which the resolution was introduced and carried, and I will be considering introducing an amendment which would provide for some space of time -- I don’t know if that means a few months or a year --

Mr. Good: When the new council takes over.

Hon. Mr. White: -- between the election of councillors and the restructuring of the council.

Now I have just learned about this in the last few days. I really don’t have any personal opinion to offer, but given the nature of representations from the member for Lambton, I certainly am taking the matter seriously and will consider it very carefully.

Mr. Roy: What about the member for Kent?

Mr. Ruston: The member for Kent brought it up.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table for the information of members the technical evaluation of Toronto Island Airport, based on a review of existing documentation by the joint committee for Toronto Island Airport.

And as well, Mr. Speaker, I would like to have delivered, as requested much earlier by the hon. member for St. George, and I believe the hon. Leader of the Opposition -- or, I am sorry, the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party --

Mr. Lewis: I accept either. It is like calling me David. Either one would do.

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: We know what happened to him.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: How about Harold? Will he take Harold too? In any event, copies of the background data are now available.

Mr. Lewis: Thanks very much.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member is welcome. I hope he has a good time.

Hon. Mr. Miller tabled the annual report of the Ministry of Health for the year ending March 31, 1974.

Hon. Mr. Bernier tabled the annual report of the Ministry of Natural Resources for the year ending March 31, 1974.

Mr. Speaker: Reports.

Mr. Renwick: Which day was that meeting?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: The member missed it.

Mr. J. A. Taylor from the administration of justice committee presented the committee’s report, as follows, and moved its adoption:

Your committee recommends that it be allowed to sit concurrently with the House for consideration of the following bills:

Bill 113, An Act to amend the Municipal Affairs Act.

Bill 118, An Act to amend the Condominium Act.

Bill 125, An Act to amend the Land Speculation Tax Act, 1974.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, before that motion is carried, could we have a commitment from the government back-bench members of that committee and from the members of the Liberal Party that whether the committee sits concurrently or otherwise, some members of those two parties will be present other than the chairman of the committee?

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid I can’t answer that question. It will be up to the chairman of the committee.

Report agreed to.

Mr. McNeil from the standing resources development committee presented the committee’s report, which was read as follows and adopted:

Your committee requests permission to sit concurrently with the House for its consideration of Bill 134, the Employment Standards Act, 1974.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

DISTRICT MUNICIPALITY OF MUSKOICA ACT

Hon. Mr. White moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the District Municipality of Muskoka Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. White: Mr. Speaker, at the request of the district council, the District Municipality of Muskoka Act is amended to place the responsibility for the provision and financing of water and sewage services with the district municipality. The bill also includes another important amendment, requested by the district council, to make the district municipality responsible for the preparation and adoption of official plans. The ability of the district municipality to charge fees for the disposal of different kinds of waste is also being clarified.

HERITAGE OF ONTARIO PROTECTION ACT

Hon. Mr. Auld moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to provide for the Conservation, Protection and Preservation of the Heritage of Ontario.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, by way of introduction, I should mention that my ministry has the principal responsibility within the government to ensure the conservation of Ontario’s historical heritage. This is the primary objective of this new and comprehensive legislation.

The essential elements within the bill provide for the continuation and expansion of the role of the Ontario Heritage Foundation; the conservation, protection and preservation of buildings of historical or architectural significance; and greatly increased protection for our remaining archaeological resources.

As I am sure many of the hon. members will agree, over the past 20 years or so there has been a rapidly increasing awareness among our citizens of Ontario’s historic past, and a wide measure of support from many different sections of the community expressed for overall and comprehensive legislation of this nature. This bill is designed to be a ready response to those desires and will enable us, Mr. Speaker, with a minimum of interference in the lives of our citizens, to achieve the conservation of our historical heritage and carry it out in a careful, responsible and responsive manner.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Does this include the Council of Regents?

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC ACT

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, this bill deals with nine subjects of legislation, four of which are of significant importance to the motoring public of this province. They are:

Amendments relating to the operation of school buses; mandatory driver’s-licence suspensions for conviction under the Criminal Code for offences involving the operation of a motor vehicle; delegation of powers to municipalities; and the regulation of motor-assisted bicycles.

The school-bus provisions are amended to require the school-bus stopping law to apply to all highways, regardless of speed limit. Under these new provisions there is an onus on the school-bus driver to activate the signals as prescribed. Motorists following a school bus must stop whenever school-bus signal lights are flashing, and motorists meeting the bus must similarly stop, except when on a highway divided by a physical barrier or an unpaved strip of ground. These provisions also prohibit the use of chrome yellow paint on buses other than school buses.

The driver’s-licence suspension provisions prescribe a mandatory three-month suspension for all first offences, and a mandatory six-month suspension for every subsequent conviction within a five-year period.

In furtherance of the policy of delegating greater powers to municipalities, the bill contains provisions which will eliminate the need for approval by the minister of municipal bylaws regulating and governing traffic, with the exception of those relating to connecting links and the installation of traffic lights. Provision is made for bylaws to be filed with the ministry and for the repeal of bylaws which are inconsistent with the Highway Traffic Act.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): That’s just the beginning for much-needed legislation dealing with automobiles.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Does the minister have another bill?

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS ACT

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Ministry of Transportation and Communications Act, 1971.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to set out the general functions of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the duties of the minister in the field of communications, and ministerial powers in carrying out his duties in the areas of both transportation and communications.

The existing ministry Act was introduced in 1971 to bring together the old departments of Highways and Transport. It does not contain a general statement of ministerial functions. It makes no reference to communications. It contains only marginal references to the standard powers that the minister may use in undertaking his duties.

The amendments I am introducing are intended to remedy these deficiencies and make the Ministry of Transportation and Communications Act more consistent with other ministry Acts.

CROWN EMPLOYEES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING ACT

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, 1972.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to amend the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, 1972, so as to recognize a number of changes suggested by the Civil Service Association and the other organizations that represent employees under the Act.

Of particular significance are the changes which provide for the reconstitution of the grievance board and the tribunal on partisan lines, the provision of ad hoc tripartite boards of arbitration, and the broadening of the scope of bargaining.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day, the Chairman of Management Board indicated to the House on Tuesday, I believe, that after the cabinet met on Wednesday he would give us some idea of what we are going to do between now and the end of this sitting, and when we will adjourn. I would like to know if the minister has arrived at the decision and if he intends to pass all these bills before that date.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I must say to the hon. member that we had such a busy and productive day yesterday in the nation’s capital that we didn’t get around to discussing that matter. Cabinet will be assembling in a very few minutes and I will be able to let him know.

Mr. Reid: I hope they don’t intend to pass all these bills.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

ONTARIO LAND CORP. ACT

Hon. Mr. White moves second reading of Bill 133, An Act to establish the Ontario Land Corp.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Does the minister have any further statement before the debate continues?

Hon. J. White (Treasurer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): I would be happy to make a speech right now if this is the wish of the Legislature. I did give a fairly extensive statement on first reading, so I will leave it in the hands of my hon. friends to decide the sequence of speakers.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I consider the bill before us to be one of the most important we have considered this session, certainly, and perhaps for a number of sessions before. My understanding is that its provisions will greatly enlarge the centralization of the planning concepts that have been so much a part of the policy of this Treasurer and his predecessors in the last six years.

He has made some substantial descriptions of the Ontario Land Corp. on first reading of the bill and elsewhere in the province, but I can say to you, sir, that I and my colleagues have a very deep concern as to its ramifications in the future development of this province, in the establishment of planning goals, in the sequestering of most of the developable land under governmental jurisdiction and, perhaps as important as anything else, in the continuation of the procedure of centralizing these responsibilities under the person who has been designated by statute the chief planner -- that is, the Treasurer. He is a very busy man indeed, and he more than anyone else would know this.

I simply want to say again, sir, that I have very deep misgivings --

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): I don’t think it says that in the bill. It doesn’t say that the Treasurer will be the minister under the bill, does it?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, it says that the Ontario Land Corp. would receive from time to time written instructions from the Lieutenant Governor in Council, presumably through the Treasury.

The concern that we have in the functioning of the bill, of course, has to do with what we have seen happening in the last few weeks -- specifically the Treasurer’s comments on the Ontario Land Corp.’s future. The government presently holds, through Ontario Housing Corp. approximately 18,000 acres, distributed across the province. I am very well aware, in my own community, of 1,000 acres held in the township of Brantford, which now for probably five to six years has dislocated the planning in the city of Brantford since Ontario Housing has refused to consider the development of those properties.

Another very large area of about 3,000 acres close to the city of Kitchener -- between Kitchener and Cambridge -- was acquired by Ontario Housing about four years ago and has not been further developed since that time. But there are these 18,000 acres that are held presently by Ontario Housing, and it might be expected that once the Ontario Land Corp. is established, if Bill 133 passes and is proclaimed, these acres would be allocated to their direction for their holding power and, of course, to provide collateral for them to raise funds.

More recently, under the Treasurer’s direction and under his specific authority, four substantial townsites or sites of property have been acquired, two of them in the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk. The first, in the former township of Townsend, amounting to some 14,000 acres, was acquired for $22 million, and just recently there has been a further acquisition not many miles away in the former county of Haldimand of a further 12,000 acres, which the Treasurer is very much enamoured of and which he feels will become one of the cities of the future. To hear him talk about it, he sounds, in the words of my colleague from Kitchener, like the wizard of Oz. He envisages the Emerald City rising on the banks of the Grand flowing with those clear waters.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Yellow brick roads in every direction.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It’s quite interesting to hear, in his enthusiasm in describing these matters to the council of the regional municipality and, I suppose, to those people representing the local municipalities as well, his concept that perhaps this city, when entered in world competition, once more will bring honour and fame, if not to himself and his government, at least to the community.

I really am most amazed at the way he is carried away with the sort of concepts of magnetic levitation applied to local planning and building. Somehow he can’t do anything small and somehow he can’t do anything right. There is this problem that he, as probably the main author of the political problems of the government, cannot escape.

I suppose the pedestrian is not for him, certainly not in the closing days of a career that he himself, in the past, has called glorious. We don’t know where the future lies for him but, certainly, I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the problems associated with the establishment of this corporation are going to be something less than the final crown in the Treasurer’s diadem as he approaches the last few months of his responsibility in this aspect of public life.

We are, obviously, very deeply concerned. The problems of land planning are substantial. The Treasurer announced some weeks ago that he was going to enunciate a general plan for the province in the Legislature this fall. It may not be possible to bring it down at this session but those were his predictions.

We would be very interested in this, of course. We, as the Liberal Party, certainly since I assumed the leadership in 1967, have been calling for a generalized plan for the whole of the Province of Ontario, particularly indicating where provincial initiatives are going to be established to further the growth of industry around which communities can expand so that the growth pressures can be removed from this specific part of Ontario, the “golden horseshoe.” So far, such a plan has not been enunciated.

We were present some years ago when the Toronto-centred region plan was unveiled with fanfare at the Queen Elizabeth Building. I can remember the darkened room and the spotlights from the back focusing on the flag of the province as the Premier (Mr. Davis) and the Treasurer walked on, not quite hand in hand, but almost like the prime act at Shea’s back in 1932.

There is something about the attraction for grandiose, theatrical presentation that the Treasurer and the Premier are enamoured of and I suppose it is, to some extent, a holdover from the election preparation days even as far back as 1967 and 1971. The public relations officers seem to get the attention of the politicians and this particular minister has now assumed, I suppose, the most important responsibility beyond all others and that is the chief politician of the Conservative Party.

Mr. Breithaupt: They are on a four-year cycle.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He’s already our chief accountant and, I suppose, we might call him an interpretative accountant since, in defending himself and his present budgetary position, he’s coined that phrase, “as long as money in equals money out we’re okay.” This interpretative style of accounting has set him somewhat apart from his predecessors.

We used to hear the justifications for deficits and the applause associated with surpluses. We haven’t heard of a surplus in this province since John Robarts gave up the direction of the government back in 1970.

Hon. Mr. White: We have a surplus.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, yes; by the Treasurer’s interpretative accounting we have. Yet it’s nice to know that when the Treasury, not the Treasurer, makes an accounting to the Legislature at least it still refers to it as a deficit, and the figure associated with it this year is $848 million.

He’s an accountant, sure. He’s also the planner; he’s the chief planner. I think it was his predecessor, Mr. MacNaughton, who finally enunciated the fact in a committee that I recall very well when he said, “Yes, I am the chief planner.” He took some very important decisions in those days.

One that I recall specifically was in connection with the problem enunciated by municipalities in the Grand Valley, that the time would come when water from Lake Erie would have to be supplied by pipeline. It was put by the opposition and by independent planners that as we had committed $800 million to the establishment of the electrical facility at Nanticoke, with all of the associated pumping, water intake and partial purification facilities, that was the time to make that intake oversize so that when a pipeline was required in the fullness of time at least we would have made the commitment and the planning to accommodate it.

When Mr. MacNaughton decided to do that he did so in his capacity as chief planner. I believe that it was a wise decision. Certainly it was one that had to be the responsibility of the government of the province rather than being left to the local municipality.

But since that time, the concept of being the chief planner for the province seems to have been enlarged, or inflated; it has become grandiose in the most frightening terms to the point that the present Treasurer, the present chief planner, feels he can pick up city sites without even consulting his cabinet colleagues. I even get the impression that when he brings them to the attention of the Premier, he is told: “Don’t bother me now. That’s your job, John. You go ahead.”

I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, this does concern me. I am not so much concerned that he consults his cabinet colleagues -- in the secrecy of cabinet, of course, we have no way of knowing how much consultation there is, but there should be consultation there -- but what does concern me is that the chief planner is not prepared in any way to consult with those people in the communities affected. Certainly he is not prepared to consult the community of Ontario in the broad sense and not, for example, the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk or the area surrounding Pickering about what led them to make those specific decisions, but simply to announce them in the Legislature.

Besides being our chief accountant and our chief planner, he’s our chief -- perhaps he’s not our chief economist, but let’s say he is our Minister of Economics. He might think of himself as our principal economist, but I simply cannot support him in that particular delusion.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): We cannot go quite that far.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: When the debates take place here he enjoys those aspects probably more than any other, and he probably harks back to his own lectures at the University of Western Ontario in drawing the significant conclusions from those pearls that he was casting in those days in his previous incarnation.

But I am concerned about the economy and about the economics of the decision he has made in involving the government in the acquisition of these tremendous tracts of land. He is aware that with the imposition of the land speculation tax, the government is really the only land buyer that a landholder can look at. If the government buys or acquires it by some procedure, the land speculation tax is not payable.

I had a visit from a farmer in the Haldimand area who has a pig farm right over the line fence from what I suppose will come to be called the Emerald City; that is, the new townsite about which the minister is so enamoured.

He said: “They passed me by, and I’m glad they did.” He happens to have a very prosperous hog operation. “But,” he said, “I’ve got this problem: Hog farming has certain community drawbacks, as anyone knows who lives close to a hog farm.

“A new city is going to be built over there,” he said, “and, frankly, I am prepared to expand. I’ve got plans for an $85,000 expansion, and I don’t know whether I can go forward with it or not. What do you think I should do?”

I said: “I think you should talk with the agricultural representative and the local planners. But if you can’t get any decision, go ahead anyway, because you were there before the city.”

Then he said: “Perhaps there are alternatives that I should consider. Perhaps I should move to an area where the government -- the taxpayers -- are not going to have to buy me out five years from now for peace, order and good government and freedom from offensive odour for those people who are going to live in this new city.

“But,” he said, “I cannot sell to my neighbours. The government bought this property at an average of $2,500 to $3,000 an acre. I bought it myself for $300 an acre about 11 years previous. No farmer can buy this property at those rates and farm on it. There is no way. Obviously the land speculation tax that I would have to pay, because of the escalation in those values since April 9, or whatever is the critical date, means simply that I can deal with only one buyer, and that’s the government.” I simply point this out as one area in which the land economy has been dislocated.

In thinking about this, I would say: “Well, I suppose it’s nice that the speculators are not in business down there the way they once were.”

On the other hand, we do believe in a free enterprise economy. And I frankly believe that the Treasurer, from time to time, thinks about that himself. But if there ever was an intrusion into the free-enterprise economy, it was certainly the procedures and the development based on the land speculation tax and the powers that the Treasurer has now -- and which evidently he intends to pass on to the land corporation.

I am very much concerned that as our chief planner, our chief economist, our chief official in municipal affairs as well, he has taken unto himself far too much personal authority. I mean the authority that has been taken on by John White, not by the Treasurer -- where somehow an overall personal plan for the development of the province seems to be evolving.

It leads him to commit the province -- well, what would it be now? If there were $22 million in Townsend -- I don’t believe we’ve had a definitive price before the Haldimand site -- and it’s 12,000 acres; not 14,000. But the price was about an average of $1,000 an acre more; so I would think there would be probably $25 million to $30 million -- is that a ball-park figure?

Hon. Mr. White: No, the price is a little less.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It’s a little less?

Hon. Mr. White: About $1,900, I believe.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And then there is the 18,000 acres that the Ontario Housing Corp. presently holds. The Pickering site was bought at such an inflated figure -- I’m not aware of what the most recent one is, but it must be between $180 million and $200 million. Then there is the site at Spencerville, which everyone protests they know nothing about -- that is, from the local area. The local member happens to be the Minister of Housing (Mr. Irvine).

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): The Treasurer was the only one who knew about it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The Housing minister at first protested that he knew nothing about it at all. Finally, some weeks later, when the Treasurer let him in on it, he simply said that it would be in the best interests of the local community.

The Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Bennett) stated very flatly that he knew nothing about that, and that it was not the government of Ontario that was involved in that. He, too, back-tracked in local statements, I am given to understand.

At least the Treasurer was honest enough, when questioned, simply to say, “No comment.”

But I get the impression that it wasn’t a decision entered into by the cabinet with the Treasurer, with the powers that have been given to him as the operational force. It was the minister building some sort of a developmental empire -- in the name of the people, certainly; and for the good of the taxpayers, we would hope -- but with a concept that seemed to have arrived full-blown from his own massive brow. It’s frightening.

It certainly concerns me that democracy in this province has moved to such a state where the Treasurer somehow has been able to buffalo everybody in the cabinet, from the boss on down to the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Potter), to establish this concept. There’s nobody else here that I can talk about. There is only one minister here; so I can’t really insult anybody directly -- and I don’t intend to. But, as I say, this is a concern of mine.

I hope that the Treasurer can give us an assurance that these acquisitions do fit into a plan for Ontario -- a plan which he has now promised us for some time, but which is not before us -- that they do fit into the concepts that were enunciated in the Toronto-centred region plan. That plan, as I understood is, called for a decentralization of growth, but that apparently is a concept which has been lost, since there has been the acquisition, or at least -- well, I suppose it’s the acquisition of federal funds of close to $200 million to build a big sewer pipe; which seems to change the whole idea of restricting growth in this area.

The Treasurer is the chief accountant, the chief planner, the chief economist -- and he is our chief municipal authority. I think he may enjoy that more than being even our chief delegate to federal-provincial conferences -- other than the Premier.

There must be a great feeling of power when the Treasurer goes down to talk to the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk. He looks at the chairman -- a man that he created; a man that he pays out of his own budget -- and he says: “Well, John, here we are to reason together.” Is that a phrase the Treasurer ever uses? Probably not.

Hon. Mr. White: No, I don’t use that phrase.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: However, he doesn’t use the phrase that John Robarts used to use; and that is: “We are here to continue a new partnership.” Because it isn’t a partnership. In Haldimand-Norfolk he created the chief. He created the ground rules, he made the municipality in an image which he saw fit, and he goes down there and says, “You have complete freedom here as far as planning is concerned, because you can choose one of four alternatives which I now present to you.” I was talking to a councillor in the city of Nanticoke -- members may have heard of the gentleman -- Harry Scott, a very able former mayor of Waterford and a very perspicacious gentleman. I hope sometime in the future we may hear from him even in this chamber. He’s a very able person indeed. He says the Treasurer talks as if the city of Nanticoke doesn’t exist; that this will contain entirely the new city on the Townsend site and, at the best, the city of Nanticoke would have one person on the so-called planning corporation that is envisaged and referred to by the Treasurer from time to time. I want to come back to that.

The Treasurer, as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, is also our chief spokesman, other than the Premier, in dealing with the government of Canada. I was in London yesterday and was as critical as I could be of him in that particular area. I was glad to read in the comments of one of the columnists today that he was at least the spokesman who wasn’t rattling the sabres and unpinning the grenades down there, but talking about reasoning together and working this out; as well he might, because whatever the deal on oil and energy it will be Ontario that pays.

Surely we are not in a position to take a stand that is going to exacerbate the problems that presently exist. But he is in a position to say to the government of Canada, “Please don’t give us grants, as far as housing programmes and land banking programmes are concerned, on a project basis; we want block grants.” That’s not the way he talks to the municipalities, mind you, but as the chief minister it is surely the point of his negotiations with the government of Canada to transfer as much money as possible -- and I don’t criticize him for that -- without any strings attached; and I don’t criticize him for that either, as long as he is prepared to apply the same criterion when he passes the money on to the municipalities.

But it will, in fact, enable him to set up in this land corporation a machine that is far bigger than that blue one. It is, in fact, a monster, the Ontario Land Corp., in a sense that I find frightening -- that it reports to the Legislature in no significant way; it does not have to ask the Treasurer to supply funds from the consolidated revenue fund so that it would therefore be debated in the estimates in this House. This particular corporation has the power, once the property is deeded over to it, to borrow on that collateral, to borrow on the credit of the province, to undertake the expansion of the planning authority that is presently in the hands of the Treasurer, and I would submit will stay there and be directed through this corporation.

This corporation is going to become enormously large. It’s going to be, by all odds, the largest land-dealing syndicate or land-dealing corporation in the province -- probably in North America -- and its funds will be internally generated to a great extent, since it can borrow on the credit of the province but without reference to this House.

Perhaps this concerns me more than anything else, because the Treasurer is also, as I said a few moments ago, our chief politician. He is concerned, I am sure, with the state of our budget at the present time. He has received a good deal of credit for saying to the farmers in Townsend, “We would be glad to lease you this property for farming purposes, and we can enter into quite long leases.” I would think that the land corporation would be able to say to a housing developer, “We will make this land available on a lease basis,” and after the payments are completed in 25, 30 or 40 years and the individual owns his house, the land corporation could still retain title to the property; certainly such would be the case in industrial developments.

It seems that this machine might, in fact, become the tail that wags the governmental dog if its revenue-producing capacity is allowed to go on the basis which it appears to be capable of in the bill that is before us. I do not believe that there are anywhere near sufficient control measures in that one section -- and I should be able to read it out directly -- which simply says that from time to time, in a written directive the Treasurer or the Lieutenant Governor in Council may establish certain policy areas.

It is not often that we complain about the lack of a regulations section but it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that in this instance there will be no regulations which then can be reviewed by a committee of this House, no regulations which, in fact, would be under the jurisdiction of this House at all, but simply a policy pronouncement from the government through the Treasurer -- and more properly just from the Treasurer through the Treasurer -- to the land corporation which is going to make it a monolithic economic force, a monolithic economic machine that is going to be active in this province to carry out the policy goals of the Treasurer and probably of the corporation itself.

I don’t often quote the McRuer report. I am aware of its traditions and how it came about. I have the greatest respect for the chief judge. I have felt that in the last few years his basic recommendations have not been looked on with the credit that they deserve. I believe the one that is quoted probably more frequently in this House than any other has important application now. I would like to read you about two paragraphs from vol. 1, pages 126 and 127, Mr. Speaker. This is from the report of the royal commission inquiry into civil rights by Chief Justice McRuer:

“The general principle that all governmental decisions on grounds of policy should be made by ministers or under the control and direction of ministers who are members of the Legislature renders all executive action accountable to and subject to the supervision of the Legislature. This doctrine is the mechanism by which the Legislature maintains its control.

“The consistent application of this principle requires that apparently independent officials, boards or commissions ought not to be set up to make administrative decisions when, in fact, their decisions are controlled politically. The objective often is to relieve the government of responsibility for policy decisions that may be embarrassing politically.

“The practice is undesirable on two grounds. If the official board or commission considers that the statute under which the power is conferred requires an independent decision, the decision may conflict with government policy. In such case, the government has abdicated one of its true functions to decide and control policy. If the exercise of the power is given the appearance of independence, but the power is exercised in consultation with or under the control of a minister, this appearance is a mere deceptive facade.”

This is one of my basic concerns. I don’t like the concepts of the powers that have been given to the Treasurer by the Legislature, often on division and with severe concern being expressed, but which do lie now in the hands of a person responsible to this House. I personally resent a large monolithic self-financing structure, which has some appearance of independence, to be established to carry out those powers without some more effective means of control by this Legislature. There is no financial control. There is no regulatory control. As a matter of fact, the only control is the powers that this House has on the Treasurer.

Those are minimal. Certainly the House doesn’t have much control on him. I don’t even feel the cabinet has much control on him.

Mr. Breithaupt: All that are here do.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, all that are here can effect that control. This is at least one of the specific areas of concern that I would like to bring to your attention, Mr. Speaker. More specifically, I read a report in the London Free Press, dated July 13, 1974, by Jim Sheppard, which truly concerned me. If the land corporation is some sort of a formal repository of title deeds and, in fact, the government though its policy announcements and after debate in the House is going to do certain things, well, I suppose we might give more consideration to accepting that concept. I quote from one paragraph in this article in the Free Press, July 13, 1974:

“Mr. White had said that in the early days of the community -- ”

I would interrupt and say he is referring to the new cities of the type that are going to be established in Haldimand-Norfolk and in Pickering. I go on quoting from the article:

“ -- a rudimentary form of council, probably a provincially appointed board of trustees, would govern the city or town. As soon as the population grew to a suitable size, formal elections for a council would be held. The council would gradually assume control of all municipal affairs until the land corporation was convinced it could take over complete control.”

Mr. Speaker, that concerns me. I think I made reference to this once before, but I must say again that the Treasurer may see himself as a commissar sitting in the Kremlin and saying: “The politburo has told me to build a new town in Siberia out on the steppes. It’s easy to do because they have given me the powers to control it, the money to put in the facilities and probably whatever is needed in Russia to persuade people to go and live there.” The easy thing is that there’s nothing there but permafrost, and maybe tundra, but that’s not the case in the city of Nanticoke.

The Treasurer himself was the author of the regional government bill. I can recall -- I certainly should have this quote before me, but I don’t -- him talking about the advantages of regional control and saying that they would in fact have the responsibility for their own development and their own planning, and that the small municipalities couldn’t do this any more, which was why regional government was necessary.

If I remember correctly -- the hon. member for Waterloo North (Mr. Good) could help me with this -- I believe there’s a special planning grant for regional governments that is not available to ordinary municipalities. In Haldimand-Norfolk they have a very effective planning group, and when I think of it, Haldimand-Norfolk specifically -- the area where this first new city may be built -- was designated by the Legislature the city of Nanticoke. It is not the steppes of Siberia, but on the other hand it is fairly open and good farmland, with a number of towns located within it such as Waterford and Port Dover, which the Treasurer considers his second home. That town is probably the cause of one of the good influences on some of the decisions he’s made in the past.

My point is that there are people there, there is an assessment capability, there are tax responsibilities, there is a planning board. As a matter of fact, there is a regional government and a newly elected council of something called the city of Nanticoke. Yet the Treasurer envisages something established under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Land Corp. which sounds to me very much like those old improvement district councils that the government used to set up in the north.

What was that famous one where the chap was designated the chairman of the improvement district and did all the planning his own way? He had the Shell station on the only corner in town -- that sort of small-time Tory involvement, which the Treasurer may recall.

It sounds as if he really wants to make “an improvement district” down in the middle of the city of Nanticoke. I believe that this is completely unacceptable. It flies in the face of all of the concepts that have been put forward by the Premier, the Treasurer and his predecessors -- as to the reason for regional government.

My own feeling is that if the government of Ontario must be involved in the development of a new city site or townsite, and obviously they will be, they should be subject to the municipal law and the planning law of the region or even the municipality concerned. I really feel that the government’s position should be as a developer, albeit a major developer with unlimited resources and with responsibilities that do transcend any specific municipal boundary. But if the government attempts to go in and build cities with the power of the Ontario Land Corp. behind it, with the attitude of a commissar establishing a new community where nothing already exists, then it is making a serious mistake -- not the least of which will be a serious political mistake.

The minister, in my view, has usurped the planning function of the local community. I felt that this was done in Pickering; it certainly has happened in Haldimand-Norfolk; and it appears to be happening in the Spencerville land assembly as well.

I know that one of the concepts that he has talked about frequently has been that the Ontario Land Corp. can take these properties and hold them for agricultural use in the future. That’s interesting; very valuable. They can make them available for the development of new communities -- obviously we need something like that for housing -- and they can be used for the development of industrial parks.

As far as housing is concerned, I really believe that while the idea of a new town is attractive, exciting, has political pizzazz, and is therefore an attractive concept for the Treasurer, who likes waving flags, climbing mountains, and other things like floating on magnetic waves, still he must be aware that there are communities in Ontario from Windsor through to Ottawa where there is all sorts of growth potential for the accommodation of at least a large percentage of the growth in population that has been predicted by the Treasurer, the Economic Council and demographic experts from all levels.

It appears we are looking at practically a doubling of our provincial population by the end of the century. I personally don’t think that is going to happen, but it might be my conservative tendencies. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I think of the requirements for housing and for the facilities to accept an expanded accommodation in population, in towns like Paris, Waterford, Simcoe, Port Dover, Dunnville, Cayuga -- you name them, Mr. Speaker -- in almost every community. They have been held up now for years by the planning red tape and bureaucracy which has been the direct responsibility of the Treasurer and his predecessor.

I think of my own small community of St. George, population 1,000. There hasn’t been a new house built there in five years, maybe longer. The young couples from the community who are looking for a place to live are, unfortunately, waiting for the old retired farmers to be planted up in the cemetery -- there is still room up there. Then they converge, and the price of these old clapboard homes, beautiful and attractive though they are, has escalated, Mr. Speaker, from a house that I bought in 1954 for $8,000 to probably an average of $50,000 for properties that don’t have any sewage disposal and that have very expensive taxes; without any facilities really at all, the taxes on an ordinary house are over $400.

I am just talking, Mr. Speaker, about the developmental potential of those towns right across the province. There is lots of room in our church; as a matter of fact there is even room in our arena. Our school has at least one major teaching area that is not in use.

In other words, the social capital has been invested, and we are kept by edict of the Treasury, or the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs -- I think he is wearing that cap when he does those things -- from expanding that growth at all. It is not frozen. There just isn’t any growth. And that’s the same in most other communities, certainly in my constituency and that whole part of southwestern Ontario.

I would simply say to you, Mr. Speaker, that the idea of a handful of new towns -- I think the government is talking about 10 of them by the year 2000 -- just smacks to me of grandiose bad judgement, a waste of public funds, intrusion into local autonomy. It is simply a half-baked, hare-brained approach to the problems of accommodating a growing community that on the one hand the government applies, without good sense or judgement, what amounts to a freeze on the growth of almost every community in southwestern Ontario; that by its own acts it has escalated the costs of serviced lots that are available beyond the reach of anybody on an ordinary income. Then it comes through with the great solution -- now towns on good farmland; the imposition of what is going to be a functional monster, the Ontario Land Corp. feeding on its own economic resources without the kind of democratic control that, in my view, is absolutely essential.

I’m almost working myself up to oppose the bill.

Mr. Renwick: We were just saying that to ourselves, sotto voce, over here. We have seldom found the member this vehement in the last analysis in supporting the government.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, right. I don’t know whether I can get my colleagues to go along or not. But the more I think about this, the more I find it completely nefarious.

Mr. Renwick: Does the member think it is flawed in principle?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’ve got some excellent notes here. One of the more interesting comparisons -- since the hon. member for Riverdale has interjected -- was a comparison of the Ontario Land Corp. with a similar emanation established by the government of British Columbia. It was established under the Land Commission Act passed April 18, 1973. I think the Treasurer is aware that it wasn’t sort of accepted in all parts of the Province of British Columbia as the most benign and useful emanation from that NDP administration.

In many respects there are comparisons. The BC commission, like the proposed OLC, is a corporation whose directors are appointed by Lieutenant Governor in Council. In BC there are only five directors; in Ontario it is proposed there will be 12. The Lieutenant Governor in Council designates a chairman in both cases. The BC legislation provides that:

“Among the objects of the land commission shall be: To preserve landbank land having desirable qualities for urban or industrial development; and to encourage the establishment and maintenance of land in a landbank land reserve for use compatible with the ultimate use for industrial and urban development.”

The objects of the proposed Ontario Land Corp. are “to assist in the promotion of community and industrial development of land in Ontario.”

But there are differences. The BC Land Commission is specifically prohibited from using expropriation to acquire land. The proposed Ontario corporation may, and I quote, “expropriate any land that is considered necessary for its own use or purposes.”

It is interesting. I suppose the Treasurer would be the expropriating minister in the cases of a hearing of necessity.

Mr. Breithaupt: He would be the chief expropriator.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It would be very difficult, surely, when the land is going to be gathered together -- like the properties in South Milton, where even the Minister of Housing who paid those extravagant, inflated prices for that property, could not tell us what the land was for. I believe the Treasurer is going to have substantial problems there. As my colleague has said, besides his other duties, the Treasurer would, of course, become the chief expropriator in the province.

Secondly, the activities of the BC Land Commission may be directed by the government of the day through regulations respecting any matter required for carrying out the purposes of the Act. The only legislative control over the activities of the proposed Ontario corporation is provided in section 9, which I wanted to quote a few minutes ago, and which I will quote now. It provides that:

“The board shall comply with any direction from time to time given to it in writing by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or the minister with respect to the exercise of its powers.”

That is the only segment whereby the Legislature intrudes on the activities of the corporation in any respect. In other words, the political direction of Ontario has no formal aspect, and it is secret, and is not subject to public or legislative scrutiny in any fair or obvious way.

There is also the third difference. The financing of the activities of the BC Land Commission remains under the direct control of the Legislature. In other words, it is funded through appropriations from the consolidated revenue fund and approved by an Act of the Legislature. The funding of this corporation -- as I’ve said twice now -- is entirely independent of the Legislature through its own general borrowing powers, which are subject only to the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

An argument can be made, I suppose, for establishing our land corporation with those independent fiscal powers. Because, I’ll tell you, there’s money to be made in land; particularly if you can buy it cheap and sell it dear; or particularly if you can buy it cheap and lease it dear and have the land maintained in ownership of the land corporation in perpetuity.

But, I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, if the Treasurer is thinking that his budgetary problems are going to be solved by going into the land business, it surely is a strange approach for any reasonable Treasurer, let alone a member of a Conservative administration. It seems to be a very strange proposal indeed.

I have put to you, Mr. Speaker, my concerns that the passage of this bill will establish not just another commission -- and Ontario is saddled with many of them -- but a commission which will rival Ontario Hydro with its impact on the economy and its independent powers in this province. I believe, more than anything else, that the planning authority must be subject to public scrutiny and essentially must be responsible to the wishes and requirements of the community to be served. In general terms, the community is the province, but in specific terms, in those areas where the land corporation will intrude itself most directly, it has usurped the governing powers of the municipalities and planning boards established previously by the Legislature.

I am deeply concerned about the ramifications of the bill that is before us. I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, it would be a serious matter if it were carried. I and my colleagues certainly are opposed to it and will divide the House in our opposition. We feel it is a serious mistake, with ramifications that will go on to the end of this century and beyond unless the bill is stopped or, which is more probable, the government is changed.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Riverdale.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I have a few things to say about the bill. A strange thing about the bill is that it really represents a very substantial come-down by the Treasurer from the grandiose plan which he had put forward when he had made his budget address earlier this year.

It’s rather interesting that the bogey that was conjured up by the Leader of the Opposition may have been marginally true had the minister followed through with the original plans relating to the Ontario Land Corp. But what we have today is a very small operation compared with what was originally envisaged. Indeed, when I was listening to the Leader of the Opposition it was almost as if he had built his whole speech on the one paragraph in the budget address of the Treasurer which related to the Ontario Land Corp., and from that day to this hadn’t given another moment’s thought to the structure of the corporation or what it was supposed to do.

The come-down of the minister is really quite fascinating. I think it also raises a number of questions which have not yet even been answered by the minister in any of the statements which he has made in the Legislature. Indeed, at one point he sent up his colleague, the Chairman of the Management Board (Mr. Winkler) to make an address to explain to the community the come-down that had taken place.

When the minister made his budget address he said:

“The new Ontario Land Corp. will have the power to acquire, service and develop land in the province for resale or leasing on a long-term basis -- the corporation would also be involved in the establishment of industrial parks to nurture development in certain parts of the province. It would also purchase and lease back lands and buildings to the Ministry of Government Services in competition with the private sector. It would acquire the assets of projects such as the North Pickering community development project and possibly other new towns.”

Then, in a typically grandiose, red-Tory statement of his government’s ability to deal with the financial community, he had one of the loveliest phrases I’ve ever heard in the later part of his remarks about the Ontario Land Corp.:

“I am inviting proposals from the investment community to form a new syndicate for the financing of this corporation, using imaginative debt instruments and introducing a new note of competition into the capital markets.”

Well, the minister went downtown and had his meeting with the financial investment community -- and they taught him a few lessons. As a result, he came back with a small shrunken, version of the original conception of the Ontario Land Corp.

As I said, he sent his colleague, the Chairman of the Management Board, up to the Inn on the Park on Nov. 19 to speak to the Property Forum ’74 about the nature of the Ontario Land Corp. Having quoted one portion of the Treasurer’s statement on the Ontario Land Corp., he referred to “a subsequent part” -- this is the part that I just quoted, but of course, the Chairman of the Management Board didn’t quote that part -- and he said:

“A subsequent part of the Treasurer’s statement described the corporation in terms that were reasonable at the time but which, in the light of subsequent developments, may well be modified. At that time the idea was only at the conceptual stage -- ”

That means the Treasurer just thought it up before the budget was introduced. That’s what they mean by conceptual.

Mr. Cassidy: He thought it up as he was speaking.

Mr. Renwick: He continues:

“ -- and any description of the corporation’s functions had to be couched in very general terms to allow for consideration of a range of optional structures and functions.”

Well, there wasn’t anything very general about the four points which I enumerated a few moments ago. They were extremely specific.

“Also, the government believed at that time that the corporation might usefully have a wider range of functions than those now assigned to it -- which are the financing and assembling of land for new towns and new industrial parks, and the financing of certain forms of government accommodation involving leasebacks.

“I am sure you will be interested to know that in refining the concept of this corporation to the point where it is now set out in a legislative bill, we were influenced in part [I’d say almost totally] by advice from the investment community and others from the private sector. I make no apology for that. The process that has taken place since last April has been an open, democratic process of consultation with individuals and organizations who were in the best position to provide the government with the advice it was seeking.”

Well, we know how open that June meeting with the Investment Dealers Association and representatives of the financial communities and the development companies was. That was not an open meeting.

Hon. Mr. White: There was an advertisement in the Globe and Mail.

Mr. Renwick: That was a closed meeting, and the only thing that might have been open about it would have been the discussions which took place behind closed doors with reference to the development of the conceptions of this corporation. And from that day on the ministry reviewed, refined, limited, confined the way in which this corporation was to operate. He invited his listeners to suggest what the corporation’s functions and limitations might be, how it would be financed, what its relationships would be, and so on and so forth. Then he invited submissions from the financial community, and they got a great number of those.

Mr. Cassidy: Twenty.

Mr. Renwick: Then, of course, the Chairman of the Management Board said:

“In the course of our deliberations, the government considered three possible models for the new corporation.

“The first was a purely financial corporation. That would have been solely a source of funds for the province’s land acquisitions.

“The second model was an omnibus corporation which would not only acquire the land but service it and develop it, though not hold the land in perpetuity. This one, in other words, would have been both a financial institution and an operating company, buying, developing and reselling and leasing real estate, both as housing and industrial sites.

“The third model was a combination of the first two. It would be a financial corporation which acquired land and then turned it over to its own operating subsidiaries.”

Well, in the deliberations they considered those three models, but then, of course:

“As it turned out, all three of these basic models were rejected in favour of a fourth model, which evolved from the first and third. As I have indicated, Ontario Land Corp. will raise money and assemble land but it will not develop the land. Instead, it will in each case turn the land over to a special project corporation which will operate under the jurisdiction of one provincial ministry or another.

“For instance, land for the residential portion of a new town would likely be turned over to a special project corporation reporting to the Ministry of Housing. Land for a new residential park would be turned over to a special project corporation reporting to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. Initially the corporation would be financed by the province, but it will be empowered to borrow money on its own account as new projects arise. There will be no equity shares. Having served as a source for funds for project corporation and having assembled land and turned it over to that corporation, the Ontario Land Corp. will recover its money as the project corporation develops the land and sells off or leases its holdings.

“At an early stage in any new venture, the project corporation [And this is what we need a very substantial explanation from the Treasurer about] will be anxious to involve companies and individuals from the private sectors as developers, owners and tenants.”

It goes on at considerable length. I am not going to read any further from the statement of the Chairman of the Management Board.

The point which I made when I originally stood on my feet was the nature of the substantial comedown and the unanswered questions with respect to the nature of the project corporations, and how they are going to be incorporated. Are they going to be incorporated by special bill brought into this assembly for debate? Are they going to be incorporated under the Business Corporations Act so that we won’t know about them? What is the relationship of the particular government ministry to be to the special project corporation? I assume, other than for the purpose of repaying money to the Ontario Land Corp. there is nothing in any statement that I have read about the Ontario Land Corp. that would indicate that the Ontario Land Corp. is going to participate in these project corporations.

There has just not been a definitive fundamental statement by the Treasurer of the nature of this decentralized operation which he has put before the assembly for debate today. There is very little that can be gleaned from the bill itself. We can debate that point when the bill is before the standing committee; I am certain the Treasurer will be sending it out to the standing committee, so that the representatives of the Investment Dealers Association and the developers whom he consulted in private will have an opportunity to meet with members of the assembly, so that the bill can be talked about in some substantial detail, so that we can have the benefit of the kind of informal discussion with the Treasurer which will be necessary, so that we can get some grasp of the kind of corporation and the kind of activities and the demarcation points between the land corporation, the special project corporations, the ministries to which they are related and the municipalities with which they will be involved because of the nature of the location of the special project corporations in those municipalities. We need a standing committee because the members of the provincial-municipal liaison committee or any of the municipalities who are interested in this project can come forward and speak to the members of the assembly about it.

Just to underline the limitations which are now imposed by this bill on the Ontario Land Corp., I refer to the objects clauses. There is no reference to developing land. There is no provision in here for putting serviced land at the disposal of Ontario Housing Corp. There is going to be no provision for this corporation putting serviced land at the disposal of some industrial park in co-operation with some municipality.

The section says:

“(a) The objects are to purchase, lease, take in exchange or otherwise acquire lands or interests therein, together with any buildings or structures on the lands [or, colloquially speaking, to buy land.]

“(b) To sell, lease, exchange, mortgage or otherwise dispose of the whole or any portion of the lands and all or any of the buildings or structures that are then or may after be erected upon the lands and to take such payments or security therefor as may be necessary or desirable.”

That object for practical purposes is to sell land. Then there is the further power to lend and invest money on security of real estate and then to subscribe for securities of any government or municipal corporation or of any corporations whose objects include the buying and selling of land.

For practical purposes the result is we have a corporation that in any real sense of the statements which were made by the Chairman of the Management Board and what the bill itself says is limited to the buying and selling of land. That’s what it’s involved in.

We have to have from the Treasurer at the end of this debate a very full, compendious, but laconic statement of just how he intends to have this operation carried on as distinct from the operation that was envisaged in the grandiose terms of the budget debate. Within those contexts, we will be very interested in what the minister has to say, Mr. Speaker, on this bill.

An hon. member: He says the right things.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to take part in this debate? The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry you call this a debate because one of the frustrating things about handling a bill like this in the Legislature -- one of the most important bills to come before us this session -- is the fact that there is no debate. The minister sits and listens while the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Riverdale and myself make some comments. He will make his remarks at the end of the date --

An hon member: And others.

Mr. Cassidy: Maybe others from the Liberal Party will take part. It would be nice if a few members of the Conservative caucus were to get involved in this particular debate and indicate how they felt about the minister’s proposal.

But alas, there is no such thing as a debate on so many bills in this House, Mr. Speaker. It’s simply a dialogue of the deaf in which we state our views based on the very inadequate information that is given to us and then we sit back while the minister, like a kind of absent-minded tutor --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A dilettante is more like it.

Mr. Cassidy: -- tells us what he really thinks he had in mind and chastises us for not grasping what he had never told us in the first place. That’s the kind of situation we have.

I’m upset by this bill as well, Mr. Speaker. I am upset by it because for three years, ever since I have been in the House, it seems to me that one of the major debates we have been having, certainly between this party and the government, has been over planning, over land use and over who controls land, particularly urban land, in the Province of Ontario.

We have taken some stands that have been pretty different from those of the government, and I think that time has shown that the policies of the New Democratic Party have been pointed in the right direction.

The government seems to indicate that by the fact that on so many occasions it sort of moves half-heartedly in the direction in which we have put up the signposts. What has bothered me, as speaker to this minister on so many bills, has been the mutilated fashion in which the legislation comes forward. This is no exception. That has even led us on occasion to oppose bills which attempted in a halfhearted fashion to implement things which we have been urging the government to do.

On this particular occasion, despite the defects of the bill, Mr. Speaker, this question of public land ownership, and the desperate necessity for public control to replace private control of the urban land market which could be implemented by use of this Ontario Land Corp. if the government saw fit, leads us to a position where we can’t oppose the government. All I can do in the course of this debate is tell the minister yet again that he isn’t really grasping the problems that exist in the province right now.

His inadequate kind of grasp of the need for planning and the inadequate linkage between the Ontario Land Corp. as proposed and the planning that ought to have been under way in the province by now is something for which we will pay and for which future generations will pay. The mistakes of this minister and this government will go down in history and our children and our children’s children will pay the consequences of the fact that back in the late Sixties or back in the 1970s the Conservative governments of the day could not come to grips with land, allowed land prices to get completely out of control and were unable to take effective steps to cure it.

Obviously, one of my major disquiets with the bill, Mr. Speaker, is simply that we have only the vaguest of ideas of what the minister is about. His statement about the bill before the Legislature back on Nov. 7, a month ago, and the comments made by the Chairman of the Management Board before the Property Forum ’74 were to say the least contradictory with what has actually been taking place in steps which appear to be the first moves made by the Ontario Land Corp. in advance of its actually being created.

May I say, Mr. Speaker, it alarms me that in the minister’s mind the land corporation has actually existed since some time in the spring or during the summer. The ministry documents have referred to the land corporation as though it were already in being, and ministry actions have been taken as though the land corporation already existed.

It was back in the spring when the minister had that meeting with the investment people, and he proceeded to put forward to them a series of rhetorical questions about what this land corporation should entail. Those questions, Mr. Speaker, are not answered in the bill, have not been answered by any statements made by the minister and, in the main, have not been answered in other ways by the government, either.

As the hon. member for Riverdale pointed out, the new corporation has been stripped of its powers to develop land. The other ministries in the government simply didn’t see that as being on. It threatened their own little empires too much, and, therefore they could not see fit to grant that particular power to the Ontario Land Corp. Dare one say that maybe the government’s developer friends also saw to it that the Ontario Land Corp. would not have the power to develop land? They wished to have the whip hand on the development and they wished to have little project corporations to push around, rather than have to deal with a body that might be bigger than they were.

The question of new towns was mentioned by the minister: We don’t know where, we don’t know when, we don’t know how many. All we have is the blue-skying, if I dare to use the word, of the Treasurer at various places across the province, but nothing more specific than that.

Back in July the minister was quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying that he didn’t think it would be unreasonable to expect two million people to go into new towns before the end of the century. That presupposes a very substantial number of new towns. We don’t have a plan across the province to know where those particular new towns are going to be. We do have the Treasurer shooting from the hip and acquiring land in a sort of offhand fashion, at the cost of millions of dollars to the public Treasury and in advance of the creation of the Ontario Land Corp. But it is not in the context of any plan that I can see.

Back at that time as well, the minister talked about the possibility of putting into northern and eastern Ontario industrial parks that would be filled with plants attracted by serviced land being sold below cost. It’s not clear, to put it mildly, whether the land corporation will be capable of selling land below cost or whether, as appeared to be the drift of the minister’s thinking, it’s got to be a self-financing body that at least prepays its own expenses, even if it doesn’t make a profit. That question has not been adequately answered. But the blue-skying of the minister is at odds with the way in which the corporation appears to be developing.

As the hon. member for Riverdale pointed out, the new financial instruments that the minister was at such pains to seek from the finance industry have not yet materialized. If they had, it seems to me that the only honest way to deal with this Legislature would be for the minister to have talked about those kinds of things before bringing in the legislation, rather than waiting until our party and the Liberal Party had made their comments on the bill before unveiling anything that he may happen to have under his sleeve.

I’m still quoting questions that the minister put out in his platonic way before the financial people in June or July. The question of the “appropriate government relationship,” as he calls it, I will come to this in a few minutes. But the bill digs back into British experience with Crown corporations and public corporations of the 1940s, into something that was drawn, I suspect, straight from the pages of Herbert Morrison.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): They were supposed to get 20 names on to it.

Mr. Cassidy: It permits written direction from the minister, whoever that will be, to the corporation, but nothing more. And it’s very difficult to see how the use of written direction alone will be sufficient to make the corporation an instrument of government policy.

If it’s not going to be an instrument of government policy, if it’s just going to work completely on its own, then frankly that is not the way that the New Democratic Party, as a government, would handle the Ontario Land Corp. If the corporation is to deal within a broad framework of government policy and is to be subject to the most occasional written direction, which is the practice used in these corporations in Britain, then that makes it very difficult for it to be responsive to changes in government policy and changing priorities. If, on the other hand, the written directions will descend in an avalanche from the minister to the corporation week after week, then we may as well not have the independent setup that is being proposed.

“Should the corporation be at arm’s length to government?” asked the minister. Well, we don’t know. The minister says that most of the directives probably will come from the private sector, but that still doesn’t say whether the one or two or three directors coming from his ministry or from the realms of government --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Or from the Tory caucus.

Mr. Cassidy: Or from the Tory caucus -- whether they will have an overriding say or whether they will be simply one vote in 12 or however many directors there are. We don’t know that. That has not yet been spelled out.

What role might the government have in the board of directors? The minister hasn’t spelled that out. All he says is that government appointee who come from within the civil service or the Legislature may have from between one to 12 of the positions on the board.

He has answered a question about whether subsidiary corporations would be established to develop commercial portions of each new town. Well, that has been partially answered by the talk of project corporations, but the way in which joint ventures will be organized has not yet been elaborated. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I think we need that kind of elaboration because of my fear and the fear of many of us on this side and of many people in the province resulting from their experience of this government, which is that this government is too damned cosy with the private development industry, and if it is given the chance to set up joint ventures, we will find that the government will take the risks and the private developers will get all the gains.

What type of management structure is going to be involved? Well, the bill simply says that they can hire public employees, they can hire under the Public Service Act, they can hire on contract or they can hire outside. The options are all open. The questions that the minister posed last spring are not answered.

What are the problems in the transfer of the responsibilities of a new town corporation to a municipal structure of government? The member for Brant and the member for Riverdale both touched on this in their speeches. Those transitional problems are clearly of concern to people at the local government level, but those questions have not been answered by the ministry; clearly there has been no bringing of the public into its confidence. There has been no process of consultation that could have taken place in a very genuine way.

I would have liked to have seen these questions put forward, not only to 20 or 50 people in the investment banking business and not just to the 15 or 20 people on the PMLC -- there to be discussed over a period of half an hour or, at the most, the hour or so that can be given to any particular subject at the meetings of the PMLC -- but on a much broader basis right across the province. But that hasn’t been done.

If the minister had said along the way that these questions are still moot, but we have got to go ahead and get the legislative vehicle and therefore we want to carry the legislation now to set up the Ontario Land Corp. -- if he had been open with the public in that way, I think he could have come to this Legislature with more prospects of wholehearted support from our side of the House.

I recognize that not all of the questions he was posing last June or July could have been answered by Dec. 12, but it seems to me that the embarkation on dialogue should have begun at that time, rather than being compelled to come out of the minister at this time. I am sure he will say that he is open for all sorts of input.

“We would be delighted,” the Treasurer will say, “to have the views of anybody in the province or anybody else as well. I know that this is an intellectual problem that has intrigued academics and people in administration in Britain, Australia, Canada, the United States and other jurisdictions, and we would very much appreciate having advice from other parts of the world as well.

“In fact,” he will say, “we are going to spend $20,000 and get somebody to go and canvass some advice because the member for Ottawa Centre and others think it would be a good idea.” And he will agree and look quite magnanimous in so doing.

But the question, of course, is why in hell’s name do we have to wait until this time for the minister to even embark on looking at those particular problems? Why does the Treasurer play such a close hand? Why is he playing for high stakes without bringing this Legislature into his confidence, without bringing the public into his confidence, without even bringing, as one understands, the cabinet into his confidence when he goes ahead?

Will the corporation’s share and debt capital be structured so as to be exempt from taxation as a Crown corporation? We don’t know that either. I am not sure what the question means. I am not sure if he was looking for a tax-free kind of instrument as exists in the United States. But if so, I think it was incumbent on the minister to float that idea beforehand and not as this is being debated.

What type of securities might the new land corporation offer to the public? The one thing we clearly know is that the land corporation will be a segregated form of financing, in the same way that Hydro was a segregated form of financing. And since the investments will be in land, that is an approach with which we are not in disagreement

However, the type of securities that will go ahead is something of which we have very little information, beyond the knowledge that on instruments of less than five years the corporation will be engaged to work in the short- to medium-term money market without having constantly to go back to cabinet for approval of new issues.

The role for joint, private and government development and for funding on an individual corporate basis, again, is not answered by this ministry.

The questions about non-profit housing that the minister put forward and I won’t go through them all again were not even touched upon by the minister.

I, too, had hoped that this bill would go into standing committee so that for a couple of days next week, if for no longer, we can look into it and we can have input from the outside. In fact, I would suggest very seriously to the minister that -- since he has not, apparently, been impeded in the acquisition of land at Cayuga or at Spencerville, or other parts of the province by the lack of the Ontario Land Corp. -- he seriously consider letting the bill stand in committee on the order paper over the Christmas break in order that we can hold two or three days of hearings on it in January, when we are apparently going to come back. At that time, people will have had full opportunity and full notice and maybe they may have had some more specific declarations of intentions from the ministry to which they may react in considering the details of the bill.

The questions about mortgage money were not answered. The questions about the commercial aspects of industrial parks, again, in my view, were not answered. The ministry is saying that the new land corporation will be going into eastern and northern Ontario to set up new industrial parks. It appears that its first venture is in Spencerville, where it will suck growth away from established communities in eastern Ontario. The question there arises that if the new corporation is meant to operate on a break-even basis, or something better, what will it be doing that private developers cannot be doing in this particular field; or will it sort of be breaking even, and then guaranteeing the risks so that the private developers can take away the gravy?

Finally, there is a point which we thought about, because of our policies concerning land, Mr. Speaker. That is the question of what effect the new corporation’s entry upon the financial markets is going to have on the market for Hydro bonds, on the market for rollovers of the Province of Ontario bonds, and other forms of provincial financing. Those questions have not been seriously engaged upon by the minister up until now.

You’ve got a vehicle here, John White, but we don’t know where it’s going to go.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Will the hon. member refrain from referring to the ministers or other hon. members by their first names?

Mr. Cassidy: We have a vehicle here, Mr. Speaker, which could be called John White’s dune buggy.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member will refer to the minister as the hon. minister.

Mr. Cassidy: I’m not speaking to the minister now though. I’m saying that we could call the corporation John White’s dune buggy -- do you see? But we don’t know where it’s going, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lawlor: Oh, come on. He committed a sacrilege. The only sacrilege in the Legislature.

Mr. Cassidy: Let me take up this question about planning, Mr. Speaker. There is no provincial plan right now. The kind of notes for an exegesis of a sketch of a provincial plan, which the minister promised to use a few months ago, are not yet forthcoming.

When the Toronto-centred region plan was issued three or four years ago now, the province talked specifically about encouraging growth to the east and north of the province. Coming from eastern Ontario, I have seen very little, if any action to implement that -- and the minister may have remarked my comments upon that several times.

The actions that have been taken, apparently on behalf of the Ontario Land Corp., have not been taken in the context of a public plan. Or, if they are being taken to implement a plan which the minister has up its sleeve, then, clearly, the plan is a perverse as you can predict, Mr. Speaker. Any plan that provides for two new satellite communities within 20 miles of each other in Haldimand county -- down on the borders of Lake Erie, down near the land route between the midwestern United States and the eastern seaboard of the United States -- on that new industrial corridor that the government seems hell-bent on trying to create, is clearly not going to do a heck of a lot to encourage growth to the east and to the north of the province.

Granted, it has been suggested the corporation may become responsible for the land that’s been acquired in the North Pickering townsite. But the population projections for that townsite are as low as around 70,000 to 95,000, according to provincial planners in the Ministry of Housing who are now working on the site. That clearly is not a major leap eastward as far as growth in the province is concerned. The thrust of the big land acquisitions made by the province and by Ontario Housing Corp. has been to the west and to the southwest, and in no other direction. It just seems nuts, as far as we are concerned, that there isn’t a provincial plan after 30 years of trying on behalf of this government, and that the acquisitions and the actions of the Ontario Land Corp. are not pegged to the plan when the land corporation starts to acquire land.

Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but if a provincial plan existed, bearing in mind the fact that you can’t wait for 10 years before you decide whether or not to acquire a particular piece of property, one would have assumed that the cabinet at the very least would have been consulted and that techniques would be devised in order to ensure that municipalities and other people who are concerned could also be consulted about the direction of growth and about major steps such as large land acquisitions which would affect the future pace and direction and type and quality of growth. Not a bit of it, as far as the Minister of Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs is concerned, however. What we’ve seen right now is nothing less than an irresponsible series of actions by a minister who has an inflated sense of his own importance and a complete contempt for consultation even, apparently, within his own cabinet.

If I can make a specific reference, Mr. Speaker, I guess the minister will be telling us a bit more about Spencerville during the course of this particular debate. But enough leaks have come out of this place to make it pretty certain that Spencerville is either being acquired on account of the government or that it is destined for the government because of some kind of “lunch at the Albany Club” type of agreement which has been made between the minister and one or two of his people and the parties that are acquiring the options in the Spencerville area.

I’m afraid that no other explanation is adequate, given the fact that the options for 10,000 acres there are in the order of $500 an acre. So $5 million is involved, a sum which is only realistic if there is a buyer prepared to wait for an awfully long, time, prepared to hold land which is not even along the St. Lawrence but is set back from it, and who feels confident that he can get planning permission from the local municipalities, the servicing provided, the dockage and the other facilities in order to make the land there acceptable for industrial purposes.

My information, Mr. Speaker, about both Spencerville and the Cayuga assembly down in Haldimand-Norfolk is that the minister and one or two of his close associates or cronies or advisers -- perhaps I should use the word “advisers” -- decided that those lands should be acquired, gave specific instructions to people in the private sector to go and acquire the options and tried to go forward with what was in their view a clean, neat kind of deal. In the case of Cayuga I suspect it may have been because the ministry’s original land acquisition was going badly, land prices were skyrocketing and there may have been a panic and a feeling that no townsite would be acquired at all if the ministry didn’t do anything.

What has happened instead is that two townsites have been acquired, each capable of holding a population of at least a quarter of a million, in an area which only needs one townsite that will grow to about a quarter of a million by the end of the century. That may not be completely crazy, but it certainly seems a bit bizarre that now we have two townsites within very close proximity to each other, when the government, in fact, only needed one. It has a commitment of $44 million instead of $22 million and now has a situation where the local people -- who, as we predicted, are just about dazed by what’s been happening and by the kind of urbanization which they face within the next few months, let alone the next few years -- are now being told by the minister to decide over the course of the next month which of the two townsites they would prefer to see developed first. This they are being told at the same time that the minister is putting forward elaborate Buckminster Fulleresque-types of projections about the dream city of Cayuga, a world competition, Brasilia on the Erie, and that kind of thing. But he is also telling people in the area that they can decide within a month which townsite to have.

Frankly, to tell people in the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk, who have only had a planner on their staff since, I think, April of this year, who are only beginning to come to grips with the kind of rapid economic, physical and social change that faces them with the major urban developments that are down there, that over the Christmas season -- when one might have thought they might have had just a bit of respite, time to milk the cows and time to enjoy their families and time to think about what it is they are about to lose through incursions of Ontario’s planners and Ontario industrial development -- to tell them to make that kind of choice is no choice at all. That’s a shabby, inadequate kind of consultation for the minister and for the government to indulge in.

The minister can tell us whether or not the cabinet was consulted as far as the acquisition of Cayuga is concerned. From what I have been hearing, if he acquired it on his own it’s not untypical, because all sorts of ministers, I understand, are so fed up on the cabinet process over there that they are making decisions on their own and not bothering to consult with their colleagues.

Hon. Mr. White: That’s ridiculous.

Mr. Cassidy: It may be ridiculous, but that’s what I’ve heard about a number of ministers who have just become totally frustrated with the process and have decided that they will make announcements on their own.

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): All the member’s information is false.

Mr. Cassidy: All right, what does the member know about the cabinet then?

Mr. J. A. Taylor: I hear just as much as the member.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I find the hon. member’s comments very interesting, but somehow the Chair can’t relate them all to the principle of the bill. Would you return to the principle, please?

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the Ontario Land Corp. will be acquiring one of these townsites in Haldimand-Norfolk about which I am talking, and I am talking about the process which the decision was made to acquire the land there.

As for Spencerville, if the cabinet was, in fact, informed that the Treasurer intended to acquire 10,000 acres through the same option technique carried out through a private real estate company in the Spencerville area, then clearly both the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Industry and Tourism were out to lunch. Not only were they either not present or not aware of what was happening when the matter was discussed in cabinet, but one has to go further and say something is wrong, really rotten in that cabinet, when the Treasurer can’t take the member for the area and the Minister of Housing aside and say, “Don, look, don’t get too upset about what’s happening in Spencerville; it’s all in the cause,” and when he can’t take the Minister of Industry and Tourism, who has a certain interest in eastern Ontario as well, aside and tell him that it might be wise if he stopped making comments such as, “The land is too expensive for us to afford,” or “It’s crazy for us to go in,” and the other comments that that minister had made.

Before going in to this land corporation, Mr. Speaker, we should have a clear statement about what Spencerville means. As far as eastern Ontario is concerned, there are very real concerns in that area because the eastern Ontario plan hasn’t yet been published. We’ve had a series of shoddy options put forward in a kind of grade 10 planning document that was eventually produced by the ministry, like a mouse produced by the mountain.

People in the area are concerned about the survival of and about a certain amount of growth in their particular communities. Some would like to see every community over 2,000 continue to grow. Others recognize that it has to be only certain communities that can survive or that can grow rapidly while the others maintain a residential function. But they are still saying it doesn’t make sense that in eastern Ontario people might have to drive 30 or 40 miles in order to get to jobs in a new industrial park; that it would make an awful lot more sense if people were put within access to jobs in their major communities, such as Hawkesbury and Cornwall, Brockville and Smiths Falls, Renfrew and, say, Pembroke; given the option, in other words, of whether industrial growth would take place in five or six selected growth points in the eastern Ontario area or whether it would all be concentrated in a new industrial park with subsidized land that would suck dry any effort by Cornwall or by Brockville or any other community to get new industry into its own bailiwick.

If industrial development goes into Spencerville, what is the ministry going to do about the tax mix for communities like Brockville and Cornwall which will obviously be affected? What’s the Treasurer going to do when the new mayor of Cornwall comes along and says: “Look, we have been doing better in the last year and one half. But clearly people are still upset by the situation -- witness the election of the new member for Stormont (Mr. Samis). Clearly they know that it’s not enough and now, rather than taking action to continue to provide a few more jobs for Cornwall, you are sucking us dry in putting growth down into the Spencerville area which is a good half hour or more commuting at $3 a trip each way for each of our workers that drives down there, since there is no public transportation to speak of?” Now that’s crazy.

That’s the kind of situation which the minister appears to be imposing or to which the minister appears to be acquiescing with this land acquisition at Spencerville which I gather is to be taken over by the Ontario Land Corp. We should talk about Carlsbad Springs, which is a federal-provincial land assembly that might also eventually come under the wing of the Ontario Land Corp. What we have there, Mr. Speaker, is a situation where the province proves completely incapable of providing any leadership or exerting any pressure or putting on any influence in the area in order to make the case as to why the satellite community at Carlsbad Springs should be developed ahead of other areas of land that were owned by developers.

Curiously enough it was people who were good friends of the Conservative Party, such as Controller Garry Guzzo of the city of Ottawa, a man who was the Conservative candidate and almost the Conservative member for Ottawa Centre in 1971, who worked on the regional executive and on the regional council of Ottawa-Carleton in order to ensure that a low priority be given to the federal-provincial land assembly at Carlsbad Springs and that a high priority be given to lands owned by developers in the south end of the Ottawa-Carleton region south of the city limits of Ottawa. They saw to it that the developers were served, and these were people who are in philosophical and in political alliance with the people of this particular government.

There was no leadership by the government in getting Carlsbad Springs off the ground. There was no pressure by the government on its friends up there on the local councils to get them to toe the line. Oh, no, to the contrary, the government acquiesced while its friends in Ottawa did a good turn to the developers.

These are questions that have all got to be raised, Mr. Speaker. In the case of the new York-Durham servicing scheme, which will incidentally service the new town of Pickering and which presumably will come under the Ontario Land Corp., there will be the servicing of something like 680,000 people, in fact, quite possibly more, as a result of this particular scheme. Of those people, only 70,000 or 80,000 will be on publicly owned land in Pickering. That land is intended to be farmed back through into the private sector, according to statements the minister has made.

In other words, 80 or 90 per cent of the land which lies up there and which is mainly in the hands of developers and of speculators, including cabinet ministers and other people in this government who have played those games in the last two or three years, is to be left in private hands. The enormous increase in value that is accruing to that property because of the central York servicing scheme, a government scheme, will go into private pockets. There has been no statement of policy that the land will be predominantly controlled by the Ontario Land Corp.; that is, that the public will take control and will ensure that if there are accretions of value they go into the public pocket and not into private pockets.

Mr. Speaker, the minister is shooting from the hip. He doesn’t seem to have an approach to planning. He sees some land by a bridge near Spencerville and he says go ahead. He sees something in Cayuga and he says go ahead. Stelco tells him they want a new town and he says, okay, we’ll go ahead. That’s the minister’s approach. There is no evidence at all of any further consultation.

Just the other day, when I was trying to find out when this bill would be coming forward, I talked with the assistant deputy minister in the minister’s department responsible for urban and regional planning on the Metro level. He is responsible for preparing the provincial plan, among other things, and I said: “Do you know anything about the Ontario Land Corp.?” And he said: “No, the assistant deputy minister responsible for economic policy and for the financial operations of the government has charge of that.” Clearly, there had been no particular consultation there, to boot.

Mr. Speaker, now I would like to try and come to terms with the bill on a more specific kind of thing. We have a bill here which is a skeleton bill, and I have stated rather reluctantly that we will support it, because it is essential policy of the NDP in Ontario that public authorities should have control of the land market around our major cities, and a vehicle like the Ontario Land. Corp. --

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Just around the major cities?

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, around the major cities.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: Well, okay. I know that the Liberal Party is at odds with that, because their leader has just said that they can’t support this kind of a body. The Liberal Party is clearly somewhere back in the 19th century. They really think that it’s possible to kind of unwind all of the growth that we have had in this province over the last 20 or 30 years. And this is despite the fact that they have been, for the most part, its uncritical supporters over that period of time. Now they find out what’s being destroyed. Now they find out the value --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I wonder if the hon. member would direct his comment to the principle of the bill.

Mr. Cassidy: I certainly am, Mr. Speaker. I am pointing out, though, that in the course of the debate it is justifiable to talk about comments made by other members of the House. And the Leader of the Opposition indicated that his party is not at one with the principle that there should be very substantial public land holdings. We believe that that’s the case.

Mr. Reid: That is not what we said at all.

Mr. Cassidy: What? If the Liberal Party opposes this particular bill --

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): That is not what we said at all.

Mr. Cassidy: -- then it means that as far as they are concerned, they simply will not go ahead. Sometime at the turn of the century they might decide that there should be a few thousand acres to come into public land ownership but nothing more.

Now, what is needed, Mr. Speaker, is a much more solid determination on the part of the Ontario government that the major part of land coming into development around our cities will be in public hands.

One of the points that needs to be made about this bill -- and that I hope the minister will answer, is just this: If the government leap-frogs to acquire a land at Milton, or if it leap-frogs to acquire a land at Carlsbad Springs, or if it leap-frogs to acquire a land down in Haldimand-Norfolk or at Pickering, that in itself is not unjustifiable. But the land-banking game for the next 10 or 12 years is basically over. Because the land-banks around our major cities now are held almost entirely by small groups of major developers and by people with whom they enjoy close corporate links.

If this government intended to bring urban land under public control and to bring the land coming into development under public ownership, then it would take steps to ensure that the land held by major developers around our cities came into public ownership, and that it came into public ownership at a price which was related to its acquisition cost, not at the inflated values that are now created because of the oligopolistic control of that land market by a few major developers. And that’s a step that I am afraid that the government is simply unwilling to take.

When the Treasurer goes ahead with this particular bill, how is this corporation going to serve as a vehicle of government policy? How will those instructions in writing be carried out? Who, in fact, specifically will be the minister to whom this land corporation reports? If it is not the Treasurer, and if it is not the minister who is responsible for planning, then how on earth would the land corporation’s activities be integrated with planning activity across the province?

Why is the Treasurer bringing in such a skeleton bill as this, and why can’t he give us more details about what he is intending to do? Why is it that he has been forced to water down the bill, as the member for Riverdale has pointed out, to the point where this corporation will not be able to develop land under any circumstances, but will have to set up project corporations in order to do so? It seems to us that that will probably tie the hands of the corporation in certain instances and make it a less effective body than it could have been otherwise.

If we allow developers or developers’ appointees to be the majority of the members on this particular board, Mr. Speaker, then what assurance have we got that they are going to act in the public interest and not in the interest of the place from whence they came?

Why is it that the minister goes ahead with the anachronistic theory that members of the Legislature should be members of this particular board? Now, that’s nuts. We’ve been fighting that for a long time, and it should not be perpetuated in a new bill. If the minister thinks that he himself, in his capacity as minister, should be on the board of the corporation, then that’s fine. But I don’t think that anybody as eminent as the member for Haldimand-Norfolk (Mr. Allan) or as inutile, if I may say so, as the member for Middlesex South (Mr. Eaton) should be put on to the board of the corporation. This idea of putting back-benchers on as a kind of political reward should not be permitted.

Mr. Speaker, we are very concerned about the fact that this corporation will operate almost completely away from any kind of legislative control. In the first place, presumably the subsidiary corporations are not, according to the minister’s intent, going to come back for legislative sanction. What they do will be decided in board rooms by people used to dealing in board rooms, and not by people used to dealing in the public trust. The requirements for disclosure are quite inadequate. The requirements for reporting are quite inadequate. The annual report mechanism we know is a farce, and the publication of accounts is going to be very much delayed.

Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but the people who may be appointed to this board are cronies of Cadillac, Fairview and the other major development corporations active in the province right now and who have contributed very substantially to the Tories -- at least, their cronies are permitted to come in.

The conflict-of-interest regulations should be much tougher. We should not be in a situation where people who have access to private corporations will also have access to and be privy to the information that goes around within the Ontario Land Corp. In particular, the situation that permits a director, officer or employee of a private corporation, including a developer, to be on the board of the Ontario Land Corp. and to vote on everything that that corporation is doing, without even having to declare conflict of interest, is totally unacceptable and must be changed, Mr. Speaker. It’s another reason why I hope that this bill will go before the standing committee.

There is no provision that interests be declared and made public at the time that the directors go on to the board. But that should be there. Since the minister is coming in, I’ll just repeat for him that the idea that a director or an officer of a development company could be on the board of this corporation and not have to declare his interest under any circumstances is nuts. It obviously was an oversight -- I hope it was an oversight -- in this particular bill, and I hope very strongly that the minister will bring in an amendment in order to change that, because it is one of the chief weaknesses we find in the specific technical details of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, if I can talk a bit more about the question of the link with developers, the cabinet -- if you will forgive a short digression -- is faced with a very difficult problem right now. In the hearings on the city of Toronto’s 45-ft height bylaw, there was Ronald Rolls, QC, and an assistant up against 25 QCs, and as many assistants or more, representing the development industry. The elite of the legal profession was there representing the elite of the development industry, most of whom have also got very close links, financial and otherwise, with the Conservative government.

Now comes to the cabinet an appeal, from which I frankly suspect every cabinet minister would have to absent himself on the grounds of conflict of interest, because of the source of some or all of the election fund that were given to him or her for use in their particular campaigns. The world being what it is, the cabinet will apparently try to make a decision on that, and they will try to come to grips with that; but here they have the tiny, perfect Conservative mayor of Toronto asking them to uphold the decision made democratically and wholeheartedly by the Toronto council, and the OMB, as the lackey of developers, telling them to go the other way.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Shame on them.

Mr. G. Nixon (Dovercourt): Terrible.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the member for Prince Edward-Lennox and the former member of the Toronto council should read the judgement of Mr. Shub et al of the Ontario Municipal Board because of the way in which that body completely, uncritically sided with developers; the way in which they attacked the reputation of one of the finest planners now operating in Canada, Mr. Barker; the way in which they chose to attack a planner because they didn’t quite have the guts to attack the democratic decision of the Toronto city council; the way in which they ignored the fact that the Toronto council made that decision, held by that decision after consultation, consulted with the public and so on -- all of that thrown out the window. Yet the OMB was able to say at the same time that Norman Pearson of western Ontario, who was a developer’s agent in these particular things, was an eminent planner; and that Neil Wood of Fairview should be listened to because of the fact that he had $800 million worth of projects and was responsible for Eaton Centre and therefore that his opinion counted for something more than that of the democratically-elected representatives of the city of Toronto.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: I might say that the comments coming from the rump indicate that the Conservative government is far more at home with developers than it is with the people who are democratically elected to city council.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I think we should stick to the principle of this bill.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: He hasn’t any principles. The issue isn’t the developers; the issue is the integrity of the Ontario Municipal Board.

Mr. Lawlor: That integrity is under question.

Mr. Cassidy: It is under grave question, Mr. Speaker, and I regret to say that, because I was a member of a committee that said that the OMB should be continued.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Cassidy: Okay, I won’t go any further with that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lawlor: Don’t provoke him.

Mr. Cassidy: But the point that I made in general was that this government has got to be like Caesar’s wife when it comes to questions of its relationships with developers, and that is a practice that it has found very difficult in the past and is very difficult for it in this particular bill.

The reaction from the back benches when I came to talk about developers, Mr. Speaker, indicates the difficulty the government has in freeing itself from a kind of identification with the interests of developers over and above the interests of the public at large and democratically-elected politicians.

Mr. Reid: Is the member for or against this bill?

Mr. Good: Does the member support the bill?

Mr. Cassidy: I said at the very beginning that we are supporting the bill. One of the reasons I said I was supporting the bill at the beginning was to guard against the risk that I might convince myself that we should vote against the bill at the end.

Mr. Reid: The member for Riverdale does it all the time.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right. He suffers from the same problem as I do.

The point I was making was that despite our grave misgivings about the way in which the bill has been put forward in its present skeleton form, the principle of a major public involvement in land ownership in and around the cities is too important for us to be able to oppose the bill, despite its defects.

Now I call on the minister, Mr. Speaker, to bring in amendments to this bill in order to ensure that people who are directors or officers of development companies, or who otherwise have active links, with developers, may not be also members of the board of the Ontario Land Corp. It seems to me that otherwise your conflict-of-interest provisions are a dead letter and nothing more.

It seems to me too, Mr. Speaker, that the way in which this corporation is identifying itself with the private sector has some grave risks. Up at Malvern we have land that was acquired many years ago for $500 an acre, but is now being sold for figures of between $80,000 and perhaps $200,000 an acre, serviced, by the Ontario government under the HOME plan. The government has seen fit in that particular case to take the profits unto itself and to act as just another private developer and nothing more.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: That’s not right and the member knows it.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, one of the fundamental weaknesses in the bill is the fact that not only is this corporation going to act as a private developer itself but it also has the power, and is going to be encouraged according to the policy enunciated by the minister, to get into bed with private enterprise, to put in the big pipes and then to ship the land back into private hands.

What we’re finding out right now, Mr. Speaker, is that once we let the land back into private hands we’ll never be able to afford to get it back again. The land which is being acquired in Haldimand-Norfolk for $2,000 an acre, or a nickel a square foot, is land which, when developed, may in fact be selling for $1, $2 or maybe even $3 a square foot. I believe that residential lots in the Toronto area now are selling between $3 and $5 a square foot, which is an incredibly high sum of money to pay for land that may have cost only a penny or two a square foot to begin with.

The fact is that the government is committing itself to acquire land, for let’s say between a penny and a half and a nickel a square foot, and then to sell it off to developers at something which will be close to the break-even point -- maybe 10 cents or 15 cents a square foot; we don’t know -- which will allow the developers to turn around and sell the land for $1, $2 or $5 a square foot over a period of time. That’s nuts. We will never reacquire control if we buy it and then resell it.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: What the member is saying is nuts.

Mr. Cassidy: The member can read it afterwards and he can read it in the course of time.

Mr. Speaker, the member says what I am saying is nuts, to quote his words --

Mr. J. A. Taylor: No, the member said it.

Mr. Lawlor: Don’t pay any attention to the member for Prince Edward-Lennox. He’s a hogtied, purblind free-enterprise --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre has the floor.

Mr. Cassidy: One has to ask oneself, Mr. Speaker, whether the people, who are now buying into houses brought on to the market by the Minister of Housing (Mr. Irvine) at $42,000 for small three-bedroom units on the extreme outskirts of Metro, wouldn’t have been better served if that land had been acquired publicly five years ago in order that those selfsame houses could now be coming on to the market for maybe $30,000 or in order that much better quality units could have been brought on to the market for $32,000 or $35,000 per unit.

One has to ask oneself whether the $10,000 or $12,000 that’s being paid per unit for land speculation, and nothing more, is really a justifiable tribute to be made to the friends of the member for Prince Edward-Lennox.

We would ask the minister to remove from this bill the power to sell land back to the private sector. Take it right out.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Get everything out.

Mr. Cassidy: We would suggest to the minister, if he is anxious that the land be developed quickly in certain new towns, that he look at the question of whether the servicing by private enterprise must be accompanied by the ownership of private enterprise. I would suggest very seriously to the minister that those two do not have to go hand in hand.

After all, when the Ontario Housing Corp., on a proposal call, gets Campeau, Assaly or some other company in Ottawa to build a senior citizens’ apartment at an agreed price, the ultimate ownership of that particular unit is in public hands. In the case of certain of the HOME subdivisions, obviously the actual physical work of servicing has been done for the OHC by private companies, rather than by the ministry’s own forces. That doesn’t make bad sense. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But the minister seems to be hung up with the view that if the ministry isn’t going to shovel every shovelful of dirt for the new housing land and other land that is being made available, then the land has got to be given back to the private sector. Frankly, we would have hoped for something that was more innovative than that.

On new towns, Mr. Speaker, I would say to the minister that I would like to see us have a debate on the question of new towns in this House in relationship to the provincial plan and not in the vacuum in which it is now taking place. I’ve probably said enough about this in the past and at present without having to go into this any more deeply, but I would like to see that kind of process take place, and I would like to see the discussion about new towns take place on a public level across the province as well, in the context of discussions that are related to the provincial plan. But no, the ministry drags its feet, the advisory committees are all still aborning, and in the meantime the ministry itself is pushing on helter-skelter.

It really makes one weep, Mr. Speaker, to hear the Chairman of the Management Board, through the mouth of the Minister of Housing, on behalf of the Treasurer, say that the process related to the land corporation that has taken place since last April has been an open, democratic process of consultation with individuals and organizations who were in the best position to provide the government with the advice it was seeking. Nothing reveals the class bias of the government, Mr. Speaker, better than the fact that the people whom it consulted -- and the only people it consulted -- were the investment community, the property industry and people engaged in development and in development banking. I just wanted to touch on that.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: He is getting mixed up with the speech of the member for Riverdale.

Mr. Speaker: May I draw to the hon. member’s attention that the Chair has been rather lenient in the far-ranging sphere of this debate. I would ask you to come back to the principle of the bill on second reading.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I’m sorry that you missed part of the debate, but I would point out to you that the principle of the Ontario Land Corp. is in itself very wide, sweeping and encompassing. I’ve spoken for about an hour now; I intend to sit down in about 10 minutes and I think that a reasonable kind of period for debate. I rather question the intervention of the Speaker, because that always has the effect of suggesting to the members that debate should be stifled and should not be full and free.

Mr. Speaker: The Chair will never stifle debate. However, we would like to have the comments directed to the second reading and not so far-ranging as they have been.

Mr. Lawlor: Don’t pay any attention to him.

Mr. Cassidy: Thanks very much.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: His mind wanders.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the Ontario Land Corp. is presumably an emanation of either a partial land policy or non-policy on land, I’m not sure which. The minister may elucidate more when he gets up to speak.

There have to be two or three principles involved in a land policy. One of the things on which we’ve heard hardly a word from the minister has been the question of agricultural land. I know the people in Haldimand-Norfolk are very concerned. They can look at the Townsend site and they know that’s good land; and that’s one of the reasons they are now looking over towards Cayuga, because the land there is not as well drained and is not such good agricultural land as it is on the Townsend site.

The only comment the minister and his people have made is that they will not allow land acquired by the land corporation to lie fallow, but will ensure that it continues to be farmed. All right, that’s very nice. If one supposes that in the next year or two maybe 30,000 or 40,000 acres may be acquired by the land corporation, that’s a certain amount of land which will presumably then stay in agriculture.

But it was in agriculture already, Mr. Speaker, and when it’s designated that means the ministry intends to take it out of agriculture. Those decisions about what lands are to be taken out of agriculture are not, I contend, being taken with a view to the best interests of the agricultural industry of this particular province.

What is needed as part of the land policy of this province, Mr. Speaker, is a commitment, such as the NDP government made in British Columbia, that in future we will preserve every acre possible of class one and class two agricultural land across the province, do everything in our power to ensure that farmland stays in production, take measures to ensure that land that has been taken out of production for speculative purposes is brought back into production; and if the owners are unwilling to bring that land back into production, then in fact we will use other techniques to ensure that land is used productively.

We face a food crisis, Mr. Speaker, which is world-wide and which threatens to become worse and worse. Yet here if you drive around the outskirts of Ottawa, of Toronto or, I suppose, of London or of Kitchener, you find acre upon acre of some of the best land in the province lying fallow right now because it is being held for development or for speculative purposes.

There is no policy, as far as the ministry is concerned. The policy that is required is not a policy that involves major acquisitions and major expenditures of money.

As far as we are concerned, in a policy of designating agricultural land and protecting it against urban intrusions, we would use the planning powers to do that, Mr. Speaker, and we would ensure that the farmers who were protected would also be guaranteed through some form of income maintenance against loss because of that. This is a means of ensuring that farmland stays in production, Mr. Speaker, and that is something this ministry doesn’t have.

The second point -- and surely the experience of the last few years and the incredible inflation we’ve suffered in land under a conservative government is witness to the need for it -- is that it is our view we just don’t need an Ontario Land Corp. that will go into Cayuga and that will violate the provincial plan all over the place. We don’t need that.

What we do need is a commitment on the part of government to public land ownership in order that the increased land values that result from community growth and development should accrue to the public; and in order that, in future, the decisions about urban growth are made publicly rather than at the behest of private developers.

This is something which the Conservative government in Sweden brought in 60 or 70 years ago; and which this government clearly endorses, in part, through Pickering and Cayuga and places like that. But they have not been willing to take the steps necessary to change the control of the urban land market from private to public hands.

We contend that that change must take place, and that in order to resolve all of our concerns about the environment, about affordable housing at reasonable cost -- accessible to everybody in the province -- about sound planning and so on, this government has got to accept the consequences of the planning that was embarked upon in this province back in the 1940s and move to a system of massive public land ownership.

Now that means that around our major cities the bulk of the land should come into public ownership over a period of time.

The third thing, Mr. Speaker, is that we need more than is provided for in this bill in order to permit public acquisition of land. Members may recall the Minister of Housing rather limply talking about the way in which land had been acquired in the Milton area, and why expropriation had not been used as a technique in that particular land assembly; and when, frankly, the situation cried out for either expropriation or some other technique that would have the same virtues without the nasty connotations of the word “expropriation.” That technique of saying “Okay, we are going to buy this land; now let’s work out a price for the expropriation valuation system” is an awful lot fairer than going around trying to sign up options and trying to sort of shoulder the widower into selling out cheap -- while the developer and the speculator, who know where the action is, get a better price from their land. It’s a lot fairer to do it through an expropriation technique.

The Minister of Housing in relation to the Milton assembly, Mr. Speaker, said that he couldn’t use expropriation powers because they weren’t broad enough; and I think he may have been correct. The Ontario Land Corp. is acquiring those particular powers. But it has still got to work behind closed doors; it has still got to send A. E. LePage out to acquire land; or else, all of a sudden, it’s got to say: “Okay, we are blanketing this area with an expropriation order, which will cover all of North Pickering, all of Milton, all of Cayuga”; all of whatever new town it is intended to be created.

A new technique is needed in order to provide for a temporary hold on land prices, and basically on land dispositions, while public decisions are made about whether or not to proceed with satellite town developments or other public projects on that particular land.

In Quebec, the technique is known as homologation. It permits public authorities there to freeze land years ahead of use and then to acquire the land at a price that was related to the value at the time it was frozen. As for the landowners, if they don’t wish to continue with the existing uses, they have the right to dispose of the land to the public authority during the period of time in which it is homologated.

We need a technique like that in order to permit large-scale acquisitions and public decisions about which townsites should be used; for example in Haldimand county. If both of those sites were homologated, were frozen for a period of six or eight months, then the new council could decide what to do. Once that decision was made, one site could be freed up and the other one could be acquired.

The savings from public land ownership, Mr. Speaker, are immense. The Dennis report estimated that in a decade alone we would save about $2 billion through the technique of public land ownership in this province. I suspect with the kind of inflation we are suffering right now, it could even be greater than that. And not only that, Mr. Speaker, but if the Ontario Land Corp. was active in and around urban areas, as well as in the new towns, we could ensure the land was used much more economically and effectively in support of provincial housing policies. We could bring back the $25,000 house rather than selling gimcrackery at $42,000, the way the Minister of Housing so proudly tells us he is doing right now.

Both servicing and land cost per unit could be cut very sharply if the Ontario Land Corp. were used in a major way and not only in certain selective situations. We could ensure the land was directed to co-operatives and non-profit housing groups rather than being directed solely to the private sector. But the minister won’t have that. We could set cost ceilings on new homes, something the government is struggling with but has been incapable of bringing itself to do. And we could ensure that development was oriented to public transportation rather than to automobile types of transportation.

The final element, Mr. Speaker, in what we would do with this Ontario Land Corp., would be to ensure that people benefit not just now but also in the future from the savings that can be made through public land acquisition and development. I think it’s fair to say that we could give the new corporation power to develop lands rather than hiving it off and giving the various ministries exclusive right to control the project corporations.

We say that the land owned by the Ontario Land Corp. should be put out on leasehold tenure and not on a kind of freehold tenure that allows speculators, developers and even homeowners to make unconscionable profits. We say that where land is given for commercial or industrial uses or for the ownership by large developers of rental property, that land and the property built on it should revert to the Crown at the end of 40, 50 or 60 years. In other words, it should come back to the Crown, buildings and all; because by that time the customers, the tenants, the purchasers, the people who bought the factory’s products, the people who bought the firm’s services, the people who bought the store’s goods will have, in effect, paid off the mortgage and paid for that particular structure and therefore it’s quite right that it should come back into public hands. It’s a technique which is known in other countries and could certainly be used here. That’s an innovative technique, but the minister is afraid to use it because it would offend his friends in the development industry.

We also say, Mr. Speaker, that the lessons of the HOME programme should be very carefully studied and applied in the development of Crown-owned land for residential development. We say specifically that when housing -- condominiums, townhouses, single-family dwellings or whatever it is -- in these satellite cities, the new towns on publicly owned land, is developed for residential purposes, there should be a lease with the purchaser of the housing unit. The lease should have an indefinite tenure that would permit the purchaser and his heirs and assigns -- that is his sons and daughters and cousins and sisters and brothers and aunts -- to hold that property as long as they want.

In other words, somebody who has a feeling -- as I am sure the member for Prince Edward-Lennox has -- that he wants his kids to have the chance of acquiring the property they have would not be barred from it by the terms of this lease. What the lease would ensure, though, Mr. Speaker, would be that at the time the owner wished to dispose of his property outside of his family he would resell it through the Crown, through the Ontario Land Corp., and at a price that would be related for the land to the purchase price and for the property to the original construction price of the property plus inflation that had taken place since that time.

Mr. Speaker, if I can give the example of Malvern, what this means is that land developed at Malvern three or four years ago on lots worth about $8,000 would revert to the Crown with the lot still worth about $8,000. The value of the house would rise as the construction costs have risen in Metro. Where you had a $25,000 package, when the person who owned it wanted to let it go, he would let it go back to the Ontario Land Corp. and then the property would become available again to people in roughly the same income group. If it was a young, beginning teacher who had been able to buy the house in the first place, what with the increase in incomes they would still be able to buy a house at maybe $22,000 instead of $18,000 with the land price that was still related to that original $8,000.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: That is part of the HOME programme -- now.

Mr. Cassidy: It is not a part of the HOME programme right now.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: -- that they lease the property now. They have to get a consent to convey from OHC in Toronto.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Cassidy: After five years, Mr. Speaker, under the existing HOME programme, the purchaser of the house can acquire the land, and once he has acquired the land, then he is free to do with it what he will. That means that in the Hamilton area, for example, home properties that were acquired for a total price for land and building of around $20,000 are now on the market for $40,000 or $45,000.

Now who benefits from that? Well the people who were fortunate enough to get into those HOME properties four or five years ago benefit, but working people -- people who work on the CNR and in the steel mills of Hamilton and in the shops and stores in downtown Hamilton -- who were able to get a house of their own, are now turning around and when they find they have to move on or their kids are grown up and they want to move into a smaller place, they are selling their properties, not to working people and CN brakemen and steel mill workers and so on, but to foremen, junior executives, vice-principals and people of that kind of income range, because people who were doing what they did when they bought their homes can no longer afford the properties.

I hope that’s clear. It’s a difficult concept to explain, Mr. Speaker, but it seems to us in the New Democratic Party that we do need a lot of innovation in this field of land ownership and that the scheme which we have talked of as Crown-hold ownership is an important adjunct to the introduction of an Ontario land corporation.

If you bring in public ownership of land, Mr. Speaker, and the land corporation sells the land back to the private sector, ultimately you lose control of the land and we have the same situation as we have right now.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: Yes, that’s right. What you have, quite simply, is another --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Cassidy: What you have, Mr. Speaker, is simply another big developer which comes into the market.

Mr. Breithaupt: It is called the Ontario Land Corp.

Mr. Cassidy: I am afraid that what would tend to happen in that particular case, Mr. Speaker, is that the land corporation would then tend to bid prices up.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Cassidy: Just as now, for example, it is paying $2,000 an acre down in Cayuga for land which is farmland and may be only worth $500 or $600 an acre. It is bidding prices up now because it is not using the proper technique.

I urge the minister to accept the consequences of establishing the land corporation; not to listen to the rather prehensile view of the Liberal opposition but to follow the sign posts which we have been consistent in putting forward to him, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, that he move, in addition to creating the land corporation, to giving it the necessary powers to ensure that public authorities have the major stake in the development of urban land that is coming onto the market in addition to the new towns, and that in future we do not alienate the birthright of Ontario citizens by taking publicly-acquired land and giving it back into the private sector.

I fear that the government is going to botch this one up, that the kind of pink Toryism of the minister is going to display itself again, and that the government is going to cosy up with developers on this particular bill. That’s why it’s with great reluctance that I say we are going to support the bill.

We nevertheless would like to see an Ontario land corporation in being. I think I have tried to lay out pretty explicitly how we would use it and it is in that sense and in the context of the NDP’s policy are related to land that we will be supporting this particular bill.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: It is interesting to hear that the member for Ottawa Centre has committed himself and his party to the support of this piece of legislation. I think that this may well prove in years to come to have been one of the more important subjects discussed in this Legislature.

We have seen, as the various areas of government influence and involvement have come ahead over the years, the greater input into the land holdings and land development of the province, and now we have seen some 18,000 acres of land, which my leader has already referred to, already owned by various emanations of the government. So on one hand we have red Toryism meeting with what I presume is blue socialism that tells us that the land and the resources of this province should presumably be owned by the government of the province. The minister, involved now as chief planner and chief economist and chief expropriator, becomes really the Lord High Everything Else to the Premier as the Premier attempts to conduct the business affairs of this province as he sees them.

Hon. Mr. White: I wish I had a tenth of the power John Turner has.

Mr. Breithaupt: Well, perhaps if the Treasurer had 10 times the ability he might have 10 times the power, I don’t know.

What we’re debating here is a major tool to deal with the future of this province, and it’s being done in an approach and in a way which we, in the Liberal Party, cannot support.

In a speech given by the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet on this subject to Property Forum ’74 on Nov. 19, I read with interest that there were three particular models discussed as to how this could be developed. First of all, it could be a purely financial corporation. That would have been solely a source of funds for the province’s land acquisitions. Secondly, it could be an omnibus corporation which would not only acquire land but service it and develop it, although not hold it in perpetuity. The third was to be a combination of the first two, a financial corporation which acquired land and then turned it over to its own operating subsidiaries.

Well apparently the fourth model is a combination of these three. This fourth model is going to raise money and assemble land, but it’s not going to develop it. The development is going to be done by a special project corporation, presumably set up by the Minister of Housing, or perhaps by the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) in certain circumstances, or it may be industrial park development by the Minister of Industry and Tourism. But however it is, it’s going to be in a way that will change drastically the growth patterns within our province.

I would like to refer to an article that Robert Williamson wrote in the Globe and Mail back in July of this year. His view was that more than any other single measure this is going to be the tool that will have the greatest single impact on directing the future growth of Ontario. I agree with that view, because I think that the minister, as he has attempted to allay those fears in the private sector, has found out that the business community of this province recognizes that this corporation will be the most important corporation that this province may ever know.

It may not do the things that we think should be done, but I dare say with the majority that the government has in this Legislature, it will receive the approval of the House. I tell you now, Mr. Speaker, that it will be approved, perhaps even with the support of the New Democratic Party, but not with the support of the Liberal opposition.

Mr. Lawlor: Oh sad.

Mr. Breithaupt: In the March, 1973, report called “Subject to Approval” --

Mr. Good: The member for Lakeshore is in trouble.

Mr. Breithaupt: -- the Ontario Economic Council made the following observations, and I quote:

“In its work to date, the regional development branch has demonstrated surprisingly little technical sophistication, despite obvious possibilities for computer simulations to test land use and transportation alternatives. However, notwithstanding the branch affiliation with Treasury and Economics, little has been published to date that would indicate how the economic consequences of its proposals have been evaluated, or whether in fact they have been evaluated. What appears quite certain, however, is that the current spate of provincial regional planning activity is proceeding without the benefit of a visible overall provincial development plan or strategy.”

Hon. Mr. White: That was out of date the day it was published.

Mr. Breithaupt: Whether it was out of date or not, the Economic Council made those comments --

Mr. Cassidy: It was a pretty good report. The Treasurer shouldn’t knock it like that.

Mr. Breithaupt: -- and I think the comments still have some relevance to the kind of machinery we are being asked to initiate this afternoon.

The question of accountability is the one to which my leader has referred, and later on in that report that subject is dealt with as well. Here’s another quote from the report:

“It is important to know what the province is about when it interposes itself into the local scene. Is such intervention based on reasoned judgements? Does it derive from a systematic concept of development or planning goals? Or are such actions simply the response to political intuitions?

“It is here that the question of real accountability emerges. The province’s actions are well within the British tradition of strong central government. However, in the United Kingdom, channels exist for counterbalancing the heavy, arbitrary hand of central government. In Britain the basic information which underlies important decisions can be secured, albeit often with a struggle. In Ontario adequate success to provincial information and a suitable non-political degree of provincial accountability would seem to be equally necessary.”

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the information that we have sought on many occasions, whether it was in the Milton land assembly, to mention a recent example, or whether it was in something as disparate as the secret reports which the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch) keeps bundling up behind her, shows that government information is not available so that an objective view can be made, not only by the opposition, but by other sectors of interest within the economy, as to what government is all about in the province.

This proposed Ontario Land Corp. in our view would take provincial accountability in exactly the opposite direction that we think it should go. If the provincial planning decisions are removed just a further step from the public and from the Legislature, then we are not serving the people of this province well by bringing forward this kind of corporation.

What has this British experience been with respect to new towns, Mr. Speaker? There have been some 24 co-called new towns in existence as of the end of 1972, with a population of some 90,000 people. There are two phases to that programme in Britain that has been operating since 1945. The phase 1 new towns were expansions of relatively small marketing and service centres such as Stevenage and Crawley, with nucleus populations of 7,000 and 9,000 people respectively. Then, later, the phase 2 larger towns with a distinctive industrial base have been selected, such as Redditch, with 32,000; Telford at 73,000; and Warrington and Northampton at over 120,000 population.

All of these phase 1 towns have been successful financial ventures and the political measure of success is surely the growing number of the new town designations, especially in the phase 1 area. This is the course that we think it would be worthwhile for the government of Ontario to follow in this province. We have got all sorts of these phase 1 towns scattered across the province. Nearly every riding outside of the Metropolitan Toronto area has four or five or 10 centres of community that could be developed at reasonably low expense to provide the kind of housing, the kind of business facilities, that are needed to make those towns viable.

As my leader has said, they have got their churches there; they have got the skating rinks and the curling clubs; there are already sufficient bank branches; there are enough gas stations; and another two or three thousand people in each of those towns could build upon the town’s traditions and background and could give us the kind of intelligent growth within this province that we think should exist.

Our friends to the left in the New Democratic Party are apparently prepared to accept these thousands of acres and the new town approach that is going to bring forward the kind of projects that the Treasurer envisages. We don’t think that is the right way to go. We think that the evaluation of the new town concept, as it has existed in the United Kingdom, is something that we should consider quite seriously.

Ivor Seeley, in his book, “Planned Expansion of Country Towns,” evaluated this experiment and notes:

“Town development projects have radically changed the outlook and prosperity of many small static or declining country towns. Planned expansion under the Town Development Act has been instrumental in bringing in new industry, new residents, modern services, and a new wave of prosperity.”

That, Mr. Speaker, is exactly the way we think Ontario would be better served than by bringing forward this kind of a corporation that is going to own tens of thousands of acres of land in the Province of Ontario over these next 20 or 30 years.

There have been various other articles dealing with new town development and I don’t want to take the time of the House to review all of them, or even a large number of them. But I think that when you look at a community the size of Stratford, for example, a city of 25,000 people, we find that that community is unable or unwilling to accept greater growth because the challenges which are being faced and put upon the local persons involved are simply not being able to be met or backed up with the resources of this government.

Here is part of an editorial from the Stratford Beacon Herald of July 20, 1974:

“While Stratford could undoubtedly absorb more people, we would not like to see our city be subject to rapid growth. Growth may have its merits when it comes to cities, but there is a point where this growth ceases to have any validity. In many cities that point has already been reached.

“In Stratford, great care will have to be taken to assure that our community does not outgrow the needs and wishes of those who live here. In the 1970s more and more people are beginning to realize that growth and bigness are not the answer.”

Mr. Speaker, I come from a community that has grown rather rapidly in these last few years. If you look at the proposed redistribution reports you find that in the 1967 election we moved from two constituencies, the historic division of Waterloo county, which were Waterloo North and Waterloo South. The riding of Kitchener, that I have the pleasure to represent, was formed in that year. And now, just seven years later, a redistribution again brings a fourth constituency into the region of Waterloo. So we have effectively doubled our population in those last seven years.

We have been able to accommodate and cope with some of the growth, but as one of the more rapidly growing areas in the province, we realize the kind of strains that are imposed when populations double within the life of a child, who perhaps starts school and by the time he or she is in grade 8 or grade 10, the family has moved several times and the whole community in which they live has changed.

These are the kind of problems we think could better be resolved by the development of the kinds of programmes to which my leader referred earlier.

Last May, the Bureau of Municipal Research, which is an independent, non-profit agency in Toronto, convened a conference to discuss the development of new towns in Ontario. There was, Mr. Speaker, a summary report issued in September which dealt with the proceedings of that conference. Here are a few of the things that report said:

“While the discussion offered no final answers, it did help to clarify our concerns about the direction in which our province is moving. These concerns relate mostly to the overall question of the rationale for Ontario’s new community planning. We began to wonder, as we reread the transcripts, whether new town development is being pursued by the province because it has become the fashionable thing to do rather than because it will serve as a significant element in the control of urban sprawl around Metro Toronto.

“Consequently, one of the effects of the conference for us was that it highlighted many basic questions about how the province is planning to cope with growth in Ontario and how meaningful a new towns policy can be.”

I suppose, Mr. Speaker, that new towns can have some merit if there is a close involvement by the people who live there, who will have control of the development for the future growth of their own communities.

I think that it is quite clear from the comments made earlier on in this debate that the fears which we have concerning the control being outside of the local autonomy, that we think is important, are fears which are fully justified.

There are a number of other things which I could say, Mr. Speaker, but I leave perhaps just one analogy with you. Presumably, many members of the House have studied, with rather great interest, the report of the land drainage committee. I was rather taken, if not by the content of the report, at least by its cover.

Mr. Cassidy: With passion, in fact.

Mr. Breithaupt: That cover, I think, really shows the direction in which the Treasurer appears to be taking us.

Of course the drain that appeared on the report had a cover on it. I’m told that the picture wouldn’t be approved unless that, in fact, happened, because after all we can’t have nasty things crawling up from drains. But other than this drain and the pure water or effluent of some sort flowing from it, we saw out in the distance what perhaps could be called the “White City,” to take as good a name as any.

What is White City? White City is a stadium complex in England that deals with various sporting events. I recall various massed band concerts and all sorts of things that go on there. There are great lights and great illusions. There’s great enjoyment, no doubt; but in fact eventually, when the light and shadow is finished and the show is over, the place becomes darkened, the place becomes rather an unsatisfactory memento that even the Treasurer perhaps would not like to have his name associated with.

But we can look at this in some other light. We can look at it, as my leader has commented, as the land of Oz. There is the wizard with his thunder machines, with his emerald glasses, with all sorts of things that make illusions seems real. He suggests to the people of Ontario that they follow the yellow brick road.

Who are the people who have followed that road? We have, of course, Dorothy, the little girl who no doubt represents the Province of Ontario. And what about her three companions? There is no question about the scarecrow who needs a brain, because I think we’ve heard comments from our friends on the left who simply don’t understand how the lands of this province could best be developed.

Mr. Renwick: Oh!

Mr. G. Nixon: Right on.

Mr. Cassidy: I’ve never heard the member so partisan; keep it up.

Mr. Breithaupt: Whether the scarecrow needs a brain or not I’m sure we can find that out later.

What about that tin woodman looking for a heart? I think it’s too late for the Conservative Party that way, because the oil that is needed to keep that tin woodman’s joints going is the oil of commerce that has been helping that party for a long time.

Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, we have to liken ourselves in this party to that lion that needed a little courage. Because as we go up that road, we are prepared here and now and in the future of this province, to gain that courage and make the decision that we think is important for the growth of this community.

Mr. Renwick: The Liberals are terrified of the bogey man in the dark. That’s their problem.

Mr. Breithaupt: The courage that we think is important, Mr. Speaker, is to allow the communities that exist in these areas, now covered in their tens of thousands of acres, to grow at an intelligent pace in a way that can best serve the communities that are there now.

Mr. Lawlor: The courage to do nothing.

Mr. Breithaupt: We think that this will be the way that we should solve the problems of growth in this province. We also feel, as a result not only of the programme brought forward by the minister, which made the bill bad enough, but of hearing that the New Democratic Party was going to support it, and that was the last straw, even from that scarecrow --

Mr. Lawlor: They also stand and wait.

Mr. Breithaupt: -- that for all those good reasons we will oppose the bill.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Speaker, between you and me, I sometimes think that the only good Tories left in this House are the party to my right over here. I mean all the rest of them are incarnadine pink or various shades of vermilion, and that fellow over there -- I wouldn’t dare mention his name unless you caught him under your very strict guidance -- the member from wherever he is the member from --

An hon. member: London South.

Mr. Lawlor: He is the arch-Marxist of them all.

Hon. Mr. White: On a point of privilege, if he says that outside this House I’ll sue him for every nickel he’s got.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member will continue.

Mr. Stokes: He isn’t even a limp-wristed one.

An hon. member: He hasn’t got a nickel.

An hon. member: The Treasurer won’t get one.

Mr. Lawlor: The Leader of the Opposition said earlier today he likened the Treasurer to the wizard of Oz in this particular legislation. I think his literary references are all awry. What is happening in this bill, is that a Brobdingnagian creature has now entered the land of the Lilliputians and has grown small in the process.

What has happened in the legislation, as pointed out by the Globe and Mail and a number of other publications, is that the Treasurer has gone to the private sector twice in the past month -- once with the executives of the financial world at the Royal York Hotel and more recently with developers and industrialists at a Toronto restaurant. I hope it is one of the prime Toronto restaurants, because the Treasurer’s taste in restaurants sometimes redeems him. But it’s the company he keeps in those places that makes all the difference.

What has happened in this particular matter is that, Brobdingnagian that he is, expansive in the extreme, having come forward with legislation which had some teeth, some girth, some pull, some punch, some purpose behind it, he has now drawn in his waist. He has not just gone on a diet, he fasts. He not only fasts, he practically expires.

The watered-down legislation we have before us today is a faint resemblance to what is desirable, even on the Treasurer’s own terms, and he knows it. The business of pulling back, with respect to the full possibilities of development, to laying the pipes, to really putting the houses on there, is the answer and is the only incentive to the private sector that we are likely to see in this province. Under that paleolithic throwback over there nothing would be done; no planning principles, no sense of forging ahead, no sense of development in an overall way.

Mr. Stokes: Which one is that?

Mr. Lawlor: There has to be some sign of centralizing wisdom --

Mr. Stokes: Which one is that?

Mr. Lawlor: -- blown into the economy. Oh wretched Liberals in this particular matter.

An hon. member: Let that be on the record.

Mr. Lawlor: A time to subserve the votes of every aboriginal right-wing idiot in the province because they think they will feed them with funds, which they will, and they think they will get votes, which they won’t. And between those two things, I hope they fall between the stools.

There is no principle in this thing. It’s ancient and a throwback as far as this operation is concerned. For only that reason we join them in supporting the wretched bill.

Mr. Renwick: We have just lost the votes of the aboriginal idiots in the province.

Mr. Lawlor: Anaemic as it may be, at least it has some fortitude. Talk about courage. It has at least some sense of impetus behind it in the beam.

Mr. Breithaupt: I would hate to think what would happen if they were against us.

Mr. Lawlor: I hope and I am sure that the Treasurer has spent time on the Globe and Mail editorial of July 27, 1974, where the editorial is largely taken up with a series of questions, some of which questions we would like very much to ask in committee, to see whether he has the answers thereto. Toward the centre of the second column they say, which is most important:

“Why was the meeting secret? Why were only a very limited number of businessmen admitted on the ground floor of what could be a very lucrative business? If incentives are to include land sold at a loss to the Treasury, the taxes remitted or abated, why is the opportunity not open to everyone? Why should Mr. White and Mr. Stewart be talking and planning to talk again to a select 14?”

Surely that is a very questionable, internecine way of carrying on the business of this province at some restaurant -- Latina or somewhere close to the vicinity -- laying down policy which is more properly addressed and discussed here than in that particular area?

It is true, too, that this legislation --

Hon. Mr. White: On a point of order, the article, frankly, is not correct. We were not talking about the Ontario Land Corp. It was not a secret meeting --

Mr. Reid: They were talking about party finances.

Hon. Mr. White: It was not a secret meeting, or I wouldn’t have described it in some detail to the reporter. I would have taken issue with this -- what’s the word I’m looking for; a euphemism for crap? --

Mr. Lawlor: Tripe.

Hon. Mr. White: -- tripe is the word I was looking for -- except that I was going on my holidays about that time and I didn’t want to get myself in an unpleasant, passionate mood, so I let it go. But the whole article is incorrect.

Mr. Breithaupt: Is your passion usually unpleasant?

Hon. Mr. White: The whole editorial is crazy.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member will continue.

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Is the Treasurer saying the editorial writer of the Globe and Mail is crazy?

Mr. Lawlor: We may just refer -- and this is so true --

Hon. Mr. White: It was a complete misunderstanding of the facts.

Mr. Renwick: The Treasurer went away in his usual pleasant passion?

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. member for Lakeshore has the floor.

Mr. Lawlor: To continue: “There is a place where things like this used to be discussed. It used to be called the Ontario Legislature.”

Mr. Breithaupt: Oh, it’s still called that.

Mr. Lawlor: Actually they didn’t say it used to be, because it is. But that is one of the major faults, that the government does rush off to consult the investment industry instead of making up its own minds in this regard. They will not get the adequate housing. What is wrong -- without going holus-bolus in the full direction of my colleague from Ottawa Centre, with full governmental control and the apparatus there, which I do believe will come to pass in this province, and shortly, as the only efficacious way of providing housing -- but even if we didn’t go that far, what is wrong with participation with private industry in the fullest possible way toward the development of housing in the widest girth? Why does the government pull back from that? Why does it carve out an area for the private developer and say that area is sacrosanct; that he makes his profit over here and we stay on this side of the fence? We provide all the emoluments. We provide all the wherewithal. We set the whole deal up. The only thing we don’t do is make anything back.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Mr. Lawlor: We strip ourselves in the process. Why not participate?

Mr. Breithaupt: But members to my left are going to vote for the bill.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lawlor: Why not participate fully through our land corporation -- because, by God, we need a land corporation in the Province of Ontario? If it worked in the amplitude and scope and within the parameters that are being suggested over here and not cut back in a way which seems to undermine the minister’s own legislation, then we would have something. We would have a fully developed creature which would have power, force and efficacy in the province and would be able to do some land planning, and set aside the agricultural areas. It would keep them in agriculture, as the minister says, through employing the graduates from the Ontario agricultural schools, or in any other way possible -- by bringing in new immigrants, if in no other way -- in order to keep those fields ploughed and, in general, to forfend against what is happening in terms of the depletion of housing resources, to do it in conjunction with industry, to have planned industrial areas, and the whole thing that the minister wants.

Why don’t we give the minister the arsenal of weapons that he needs in order to carry out that purpose, instead of being in some way stultified by a group of people simply interested in their own financial advantage, whether or not they can carry out the mandate that the province requires going into the future? And I believe they cannot. They have failed now and they will fail the government if it lays heavily upon them. I don’t cut them out. I participate fully.

But over and above any particular kind of thing, I would make preventive measures. I would take due care to have extra muscle there coming from the governmental sector to put the damned houses up and the factories, if necessary, and rent them out on leaseback arrangements or any other terms that the government can in order to make a fully developed, intelligent 20th century concept of what goes on in the housing market and its relations to that market and to land planning and development generally from which it shrinks. The minister almost came to the verge, but virgin-like, at the last moment he shrank back from the full plunge.

Mr. Renwick: He went down to Bay St. and they told him what to do.

Mr. Lawlor: The minister is well advised, in my opinion, to work in the area of new towns. There are 32 new towns in Great Britain. They started with the garden cities. I think on the whole they are highly beneficial. The felicitous life is lived in those towns. There is the green sward and ways to get under the highways and pleasant lawns. There is a whole ambience planned into the town, even to the point of pubs. If the Treasurer plans a pub here and there, he might redeem himself for the mind of Ontario into the future.

In any event, there they are. They are set pieces for him to investigate. As my friend said, for 60 years in Sweden, they have been commonplace. That is the way they have provided housing in that country, basically; they got low-rental housing and they have been able to provide housing. They have a problem, as we have too, and no wonder, in an expansive population, but it is not on the catastrophic scale that we are suffering from in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. White: They had a 16-year waiting list the last time I heard about it.

Mr. Lawlor: If the Treasurer is venturing overseas, why doesn’t he drop into Stockholm some afternoon and find out what is going on over there? The minister performs magnificent gestures before he withdraws.

Mr. Renwick: What is the housing situation in Kuwait?

Mr. Lawlor: I sometimes think he wants to be a verb like one of his favourite authors Fuller -- Bucky, dear old Bucky. I seem to be a verb, Bucky. The minister seems to be a verb too. Well, if he is, he should be active one and even a transitive one. Move into the area and flesh out this legislation to a far greater extent, to the extent that he said he was going to in his budget and which he is betraying in this House and reneging on and pulling back from. His friend Alvin Toffler is the “Future Shock” fellow. Sometimes one is shocked right in the present. One doesn’t have to wait for the future with the way things are taking place here today.

Mr. Renwick: The future is the present, he told us the other day.

Mr. Lawlor: As the minister moves towards retirement, I see him as moving into a science-fiction world all of his own making, crepitating in the process and afraid of the industrial giants who surround him. Like the Ontario Municipal Board, he gives way too easily to the powers that be.

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

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): I want to get into the provisions of this bill from a slightly different point of view. Having been involved in land-use planning in what I consider to be a much more realistic way in northern Ontario than has ever been undertaken any place before in the province, since we had strategic land-use planning and the wise use of Crown land, primarily for recreational use but also having regard for the use of land generally in the north, and since we had management plans for specific and somewhat small and localized regions throughout the north, we have now embarked upon what they refer to as SLUP -- strategic land-use planning -- on a regional basis.

We have been undertaking several meetings over the last couple of months in areas in northern Ontario, particularly the northwestern and the north-central region, and the question that keeps coming up -- and the one I raise at every opportunity -- is if we are going to plan and provide for proper land use in the northern region, we really can’t do it in isolation of the rest of the province.

We are attempting to use Design for Development in establishing priorities for the wise use of land, but if we plan in isolation and in the absence of an official plan for the entire Province of Ontario, we are actually working in a void and may very well be working at cross-purposes.

The minister, in response to and at the urging of the land planners down here within the confines of Queen’s Park -- perhaps he was in a bit of a tiff or I suppose he was trying to keep the wolves from the door -- has stated that within a matter of weeks he will have an overall land-use plan for the Province of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. White: No, I wasn’t in a tiff. I told my officials about last May to get cracking and have it this fall. Now, that’s not a tiff. When I revealed this fact to the Legislature in my estimates, I simply told them that; and indeed, I hope to have it this fall. When does winter start?

Mr. Young: The 21st

Mr. Cassidy: The Treasurer has got eight more days.

Mr. Stokes: Okay, this fall. Surely the minister knows that any plan that was asked for as recently as May of this year and was demanded for delivery by this fall has to be the height of superficiality.

Hon. Mr. White: It has to be the first plan of a draft nature; very rudimentary and utilizing a lot of stuff we have been collecting for years, yes.

Mr. Stokes: It has to be the height of superficiality --

Hon. Mr. White: Well, we have got to start somewhere.

Mr. Stokes: -- because I happen to know that it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort by a lot of dedicated people to come up with a realistic land-use plan that is in any way meaningful. For the minister to be bringing in a bill, without having an overall plan, as he is now, I think he is putting the cart before the horse.

I am not going to go on at great length about this, but I am vitally concerned and vitally interested in a plan for the region that I represent -- and I know perfectly well that such a plan is going to be next to meaningless unless we can have the support of people down here.

We know that when the government is setting up plans for the Toronto-centred region, the North Pickering region and Nanticoke, the things done down here have a very profound effect on the kind of decisions and the kind of options that are left open to us up in northern Ontario.

We are a resource-based economy, and if we are going to prevail upon the minister’s colleagues, the Minister of Industry and Tourism, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) and the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development (Mr. Grossman), I think they are the people who must be aware of an overall land-use plan for the Province of Ontario if the plans that we are making, somewhat in isolation in northern Ontario, are going to have any real meaning and are going to fit in and meld nicely with an overall official land-use plan for the Province of Ontario.

It is not happening at the present time, and I don’t think this plan that the minister has asked for before winter sets in, is going to be the kind of plan that is going to allow us sufficient leeway and sufficient ability to meld our plans with the overall official plans.

All I’m suggesting, Mr. Speaker, is that they’re putting the cart before the horse. Unless the Treasurer has got some real magicians over there, I can’t see his task force coming up with the kind of plan that I think is necessary for a realistic land-use plan for the Province of Ontario.

What I’m doing, Mr. Speaker, is making a plea on behalf of all of the people in the north who are genuinely interested and who are concerned and actively engaged in what we consider to be proper land-use planning in the north. For heaven’s sake, let the government get on the ball and come up with a plan so we can see what it is in order to make ours more relevant and more realistic.

Hon. Mr. White: I move the adjournment of the debate, and in so doing, point out that this is historic, progressive, Conservative legislation -- far too progressive for the Liberal mugwumps --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. White: Far too conservative for the socialists.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Renwick: The Treasurer is out of order.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I assume that there are other speakers who wish to take part in the debate?

Mr. Lawlor: Point of privilege. If he says that outside the House, I’ll sue him.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, it’s my understanding --

Hon. Mr. White: We will proceed with this order after question period tomorrow.

Mr. Breithaupt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lawlor: Did the Treasurer hear me?

Hon. Mr. White: Tomorrow morning -- yes, sir.

Hon. Mr. White moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

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