Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

MUNICIPAL UNCONDITIONAL GRANTS ACT

House in committee on Bill 192, An Act to amend the Municipal Unconditional Grants Act, 1974.

Mr. Chairman: When the committee rose at 6 o’clock, we were about to consider Bill 192. Are there any comments, questions or amendments to any section of the bill?

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): I raised on second reading --

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore. What section?

Mr. Lawlor: All sections. Cross sections. Number 2, Mr. Chairman. Basically, section 1, Mr. Chairman, is tied in to two sets of schedules here with a special column 3, in which the township of Burleigh and Anstruther, for instance, is getting $1,434.

I want to make it clear, by the way, for the record, that no one in this party, or I suppose in this House, is really objecting to any of the sums of money. The only problem is that we are under some responsibility to know what they are about.

As far as I’m concerned, I would think that we could foreshorten this particular debate if the minister were prepared to break down those figures and let us who are interested in the breakdown have it on some subsequent occasion. We are not going to win this battle tonight. If the worst comes to the worst, the House leader will get up on his hind legs and call the whole House back in -- not just the two or three of us who, as the Lord said, “was silently gathered together.”

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Silently?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): It will never be silent as long as the member for Lakeshore is here.

Mr. Lawlor: You have to do something to stay awake.

I wonder if the minister is prepared to give the kind of breakdown on the three areas that have been set out, namely the business of the Child Welfare Act sums. Nor did the minister tell us in reply, or at least I didn’t hear him, precisely what area of child welfare has made this added budget requisite in the situation.

I think we all know about the Kenora situation, and the division of moneys as between the other two -- namely the special planning moneys that were necessary in some of these areas, and the child one. So before I sit down, first of all tell us about the child welfare situation; secondly, is it possible, rather than to take you over these items one by one and ask you to break them down -- and it could take a considerable time to go over that -- for you to be prepared to let us have a breakdown in, let’s call it the fullness of time, say by midnight tonight?

Mr. Chairman: The hon. parliamentary assistant.

Mr. R. B. Beckett (Brantford): Mr. Chairman, I think the points raised by the member for Lakeshore are well taken. I would like to give my personal commitment that I won’t bring something like this in again without further detail. Also, in my opening remarks I will attempt to give more. I think I can only plead my inexperience on this. If I may, I would like to indicate --

Mr. Lawlor: You are one of the few honest Tories in the House. You are remarkable.

Mr. Beckett: There are many of them, sir.

Mr. Lawlor: No one has ever said that before -- anyway to my knowledge.

Mr. Beckett: I am going to confuse you further, I’m sure, because I gave you wrong information regarding Sudbury. I said it was two years. It’s for a three-year period, 1973-1974-1975. This is an agreement that was made between the municipality, its planning board and the actual people who are doing the official plan. These are exact costs of each one of these official plans with the exception of the last two items which were the Children’s Aid Society’s -- that’s the improvement district of Beardmore, and the counties of Prescott and Russell. The information I was given was that these were unexpected costs to the Children’s Aid Society for the care of children who suddenly were forced upon them for some reason that they did not anticipate.

Mr. Lawlor: Prescott and Russell; that’s $1,000.

Mr. Beckett: Yes, sir. The last two items -- improvement district of Beardmore for $4,969, and the counties of Prescott and Russell. All I can presume is that when the municipalities consulted with the Children’s Aid Society, which presents its budget to them in the normal spring procedures, they estimated what their costs were going to be with regard to the care of children, custody of the society -- and obviously they were under. This is the way it has been decided is the best way to make sure the municipality is reimbursed for costs for which it can’t exactly he charged.

Mr. Lawlor: Let me then just take one moment of your time. Take the county of Hastings; the $24,700 is a fairly large item. That must be there, in that situation, wholly in terms of special planning studies.

Mr. Beckett: No, sir. The grants, originally, if you remember, were conditional; and they became “deconditionalized.” These were agreements that were made in order to assist the municipalities with them, because we had made a previous commitment to them. This is what these moneys are for.

Mr. Lawlor: Another question: The township of Harvey -- why is it split into two sections? Why has it taken the sum of close to $2,500 just for next year, the 1976 year?

Mr. Beckett: The information I have received is that this is the way that the agreement was made between the municipality and the consultants doing the official plan. This is the estimate for producing the whole work. The $4,995.60 would be charged against 1975 and the $2,497.80 will be against work to be committed in 1976.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any further questions, comments or amendments to any section of the bill?

Bill 192 reported.

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

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of the whole House begs to report one bill without amendment and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 192, An Act to amend the Municipal Unconditional Grants Act, 1974.

Motion agreed to.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC ACT

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves second reading of Bill 177, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Yes, Mr. Speaker, this bill, as we know, has some rather important legislation in it; some other not quite so important, I would suppose.

Not being a lawyer, I get confused every so often on rulings and so forth; the difference between the Criminal Code and the right of the province to issue the licences. This has been in and out of the courts, I think, for the last few years. From what I can gather from this bill, it actually gives the province the power to prohibit anyone from driving when they have once been convicted of impaired driving or a similar offence, and does not allow a restricted licence. In some cases we have seen judges who have allowed people to drive on a to-work basis, or what we call a restricted licence.

I suppose that it had some merit; because if a person goes out some night in his car with too much to drink and is charged with impaired driving, his method of livelihood, is gone for three months. That is, of course, if he is a truck driver or someone who has to depend on driving for his living.

We must make safety a prime factor on our highways. With the high statistics of impaired driving or people drinking and driving as far as accidents and the death rate on the highway go, one must of course consider these firstly. But I really do think there is some merit on a first offence, where a person’s living depends on driving, that there should be some way that a person could be allowed to drive. I know that there’s another approach -- and someone, probably among the legal people, will bring this up -- which is the complete absolution of a person after he has been charged. I have read of one or two cases of that happening.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, we will support the bill wholeheartedly. There are a couple of things that maybe the minister in his reply can explain to me on the particular point, as far as any possibility of a restricted licence for those whose living depends on it, having in mind that the province has the right to issue a driver’s licence and our federal government doesn’t have jurisdiction here, except under certain applications of penalties under the Criminal Code.

As for the flashing lights on buses and stopping at all speeds, as it was before, in the case of anyone driving a bus at 40 mph or over a motorist was obligated to stop at the flashing lights. In a 35 mph zone or under he was not obligated to stop while the bus stopped to pick up children. It has been brought up a number of times by different groups and different organizations that there were real problems there, and even in nor own area we had them in the township of Sandwich south. There were a number of people who had a problem where a bus was in a 35-mph zone and there were no sidewalks or anything and no place for the people to get off and wait even on the side of the road. Yet the traffic wasn’t obligated to stop. It brought on a real problem, so we appreciate the minister bringing in this legislation.

I suppose, though, that there is always someone who will object I understand that when this resolution went through county council in Essex, there were about seven or eight of the 41 members who objected to it, if my information is correct. I guess they were figuring that it would hold up traffic too much. My understanding of the Act is that the driver must use his own discretion. If there is a sidewalk where he stops to allow the children off, then he doesn’t necessarily have to put on his flashing lights. It was my understanding that if it was in a 30-mph zone in downtown traffic, that might be one of the alternatives.

I think the colour is in here too, isn’t it?

An hon. member: The colour of the buses.

Mr. Ruston: The colour of the buses.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): That is the Boretski amendment.

Mr. Ruston: We had a sad situation in our own county but that’s been brought up by a number of people. I imagine the member for Huron (Mr. Riddell) will be speaking on that, Mr. Speaker, so I will stop my remarks at that and some other members will follow up a little later on.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Lakeshore.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As was said, this particular piece of legislation is a very queer melange. May I say that I don’t, nor ever have, nor I suppose ever will, wholeheartedly, as the hon. member just said, adopt it. There is a curious twist to the tail with highway traffic legislation. The more coercive, the heavy-handedness of government seems to be constantly present and impose itself. Some kind of delight starts with the concept that, after all, driving is a privilege and from there on whatever we may do to the driver, he deserves it.

However, the privilege may be a necessity, and much havoc in family and personal lives may be wreaked by the implication of all kinds of sections in the present legislation, which drives people to the wall. I’m thinking, of course, of the sections here which are central to this legislation. One can’t be too tough about it.

It is a form of alleviation that we’re going to have going through here tonight, where a first conviction is made for a range of offences under the Criminal Code: under section 203 of the Criminal Code, that is, criminal negligence causing death; section 204, criminal negligence causing bodily harm; section 219, the manslaughter section in the Criminal Code; section 233, criminal negligence in the operation of a motor vehicle involving, in subsections, failure to stop and, secondly, the perennial clause, which is so difficult for lawyers to construe, called dangerous driving, whatever that is as, say, opposed to criminal negligence on one side and careless driving on the other; section 234 of the Criminal Code, driving while ability is impaired by drugs or alcohol; and section 235 of the Code, the refusal to take a breathalyser test, which brings about, by this simple failure, the same penalty as if one had taken the breathalyser test and had been found wanting.

All these sections then come into effect, and the penalty is meted out -- apart from any penalty that the federal government may have imposed by way of fine or imprisonment, the special penalties which constitutionally the province has a right to impose; for a first conviction on any of these matters, three months suspension, and for any subsequent conviction, six months. In the case of driving with ability impaired, a second conviction before a criminal court will automatically involve one in 14 days in jail -- no penalty apart from that -- then, coming out of jail, this particular penalty of six months is imposed and runs consecutively.

Now, we do need brakes on the various misuses of the privileges of driving under the Criminal Code; there’s no question about it. I’ve always found it a bit questionable, though, that this ministry, even in face of what the judges have seen and what the judges have assessed, hearing the evidence in a courtroom, the pleas being made on behalf of an accused person, the livelihood at stake, will nevertheless aloofly dismiss and cast aside any gestures of mercy, of alleviation, on these counts.

I think, in this law, that while the penalty can be imposed, the minister should repose enough discretion and faith in our own judges -- namely, the provincial court judges of this province -- so that in a worthwhile case, in a deserving situation, that judge ought to be able to have the final say, and not have the minister’s cohort in the ministry applying a rule of thumb across the board which invariably will lose a man his job. Sometimes it’s possible for him to get his wife or a friend to drive him to work, but if he’s a man who relies for his livelihood, for the making of his bread, by way of driving, in one way or another -- as a salesman, as a truck driver, in a whole range of occupations which require and make driving absolutely mandatory if he’s going to earn a living at all -- the ministry’s axe falls.

Wherever an axe falls like a guillotine -- I think of the French Revolution -- it’s too tough. The ministry has done good work, because previously the division, as I understood it, was as between whether or not property damage and personal injuries were inflicted; where automatically, if one had an accident and was convicted of any one of these various offences then he got six months, but if there wasn’t personal injury or property damage then he got three months.

Under certain circumstances, at earlier times, one could, if he got the six-month period, ask for alleviation by the minister or his department for certain purposes only, on a restricted licence situation and not for recreational or pleasure driving at all, but simply to get to work and back again within certain time limitations as to the hours you may drive a vehicle, simply to keep your job and not send the family off on to relief or whatever it is that will flow as an almost direct consequence of this fairly Draconian type of law. I don’t see anything in this piece of legislation giving either the minister or the judiciary any area of elbow room or any quality of mercy that is not strained or otherwise; there is nothing like that. Why not?

I say to this minister, I have seen other ones sitting over there that I wouldn’t even make this kind of appeal to; it would not be worthwhile because they were puppets and tiny mandarins who had their own coercive puritanical morality, and when they had somebody under their thumb they just squeezed.

I don’t think this minister is that kind of man. I think he has a completely different approach to these matters; he has a far more rough-and-ready, give-and-take kind of manner about these things. If he can make it more humane, why doesn’t he? He can do it without encouraging or seeming to give way to drunken driving or any of the ranges of offences in terms of negligence that are set out in the Criminal Code -- and thereby be of very considerable benefit to the community, instead of the iron screw of the law always being brought to bear, and as I say, most peculiarly in the area of highway traffic law.

Apart from those central features of the law, Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal in the legislation about something called a motor-assisted vehicle, which is a bicycle with a motor. All the ingenuity and wisdom of the department has at this time in history lighted upon this strange contraption as worthy of monumental legislation and the amendment of many sections of the Highway Traffic Act in order to encompass it. I say, “Bully for you, boy, that is really a move forward.”

Wheelchairs manage to get honourable mention throughout the legislation too, particularly with respect to pedestrian crossings and things like that. I suppose some provision should have been made for that a long time ago, and it is not a matter which we can argue about.

A thing which the ministry has done that is beneficial under the legislation is to have matured just slightly, let’s say by a quarter of an hour. That brings them from the age of 13 years, six months, seven hours, etc., by that extra quarter of an hour, to almost 13 years and something.

In other words, what they have done is they have said to the municipalities: “Listen, you pass bylaws on a whole host of matters under the legislation, with respect to one-way streets, slow-moving traffic, the spring weight loads and limits that affect different municipalities in different ways, also with respect to speed limits. We won’t call those into question basically. We are deputizing to you, and you don’t have to get our approval for a wide range of these matters.”

I suppose that is a basic move to give some kind of recognition and enfranchisement of wider powers to the municipalities of Ontario. But they have a most curious section, a queer section in here, section 31, about which the side note says:

“Where, in the minister’s opinion, a municipal bylaw dealing with traffic or the operation of a motor vehicle is inconsistent with the Act and the bylaw prior to the amendment would have required approval of the minister, then the minister may declare the inconsistent portion of the bylaw invalid.”

You know, it sounds like the United Nations with the veto power reposed in the Russians or something like that; or like any number of sovereign bodies, such as the ones you never like upstairs at Ottawa, who have the power, if the provinces pass legislation, to veto the legislation or to rule it out as unconstitutional by edict of the federal authorities.

I always thought that the Tory government of this province found that a little irksome and unpalatable, but here it is embodied in the government’s own legislation vis-à-vis its own creatures, namely for the municipalities of the province, so that the minister moves in and says that bylaws which are apparently law and which are recognized as such are not law at all after the event. That is a questionable piece of legislation, or at least the wording is, in that particular matter.

There is a good deal in here, all to the good, about the definition of school buses -- eight-passenger; certain kinds of markings on the bus; the kind of stop lights that must be used by the buses; the fact that the 35 mph speed limit is not the guiding factor with respect to stopping when behind or approaching school buses. There is a certain havoc on our roads with respect to these buses and to children being injured along the rural roads of the province particularly: if these various features do anything to save life and stop injuries then all to the good.

Just before I finish I go back again to the main point; the cancellation of licences, the suspension of licences and to the periods of time, upon which the minister’s legislation dwells, people will be kept off the road as a categorical, unyielding piece of business in this regard. He can’t do it on this occasion -- if he even was disposed to, but I would ask the minister to give a good deal of thought to some alleviation.

I think any one of us in this House who have been lawyers and have attended cases knows of an instance where a man who has driven for 25 years in perfect safety; who has all kinds of records of good behaviour with his firm; who has a first-class record of driving, goes out with the boys, has a drink and gets picked up.

You know -- I make no bones about it -- I think that most of us on some occasion, were we unlucky enough, might be the victims there, but for the grace of God. But the grace of God isn’t there that night and he ends up in the police station, with a breathalyser and he’s finished.

There he is; isn’t the penalty great enough, the shame of the situation? Secondly, comes the incarceration; he may have to spend some time that night in the jail. Thirdly, he has to pay a fairly steep fine. He has to pay a wretched lawyer in order to get the fine imposed properly, because otherwise without a lawyer how would he ever get fined properly? Then, having got all these penalties reached, the minister comes out of the clouds like Zeus with his thunderbolt and knocks him out of his job completely.

Now, the minister says they deserve every bit of it. They drank and they were told they can’t drink and: “By George, we’ll teach them!” Well, I don’t think human beings are that way. While I think, by George, a lot of them should be taught and that it acts, as I say, as an inhibition and a brake upon a good many of the citizenry, I just wonder how many people don’t drive their motor vehicles because of the threat of the minister’s legislation. I dare say a good portion of the population doesn’t even know it exists. They learn about it for the first time when the charges are laid.

The penalty at that stage just becomes too rough. The driver loses his job. The minister could easily spoil a whole lifetime over an incident of that kind. I don’t say it’s a minor incident; I simply say it’s a very human incident in which the minister must have some kind of alleviative powers and if he doesn’t preserve that in his legislation then it’s cruel.

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

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Mr. Speaker, there are two sides to that coin and it is my respectful opinion that this law is not coercive enough.

Mr. Lawlor: I should leave the House before the member talks.

Mr. Givens: I don’t think the member for Lakeshore should leave the House. I think he should stay here to hear what I have to say, because he was --

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): He was talking to me.

Mr. Givens: -- waxing eloquent with his mixed metaphors about Draconian kinds of laws, and quoting from the Merchant of Venice about the quality of mercy, and talking about thunderbolts from Zeus and wretched lawyers and about his horrible clients who are locked up in jail because they happen to take a drink and, after 23 years of safety, they’re in this terrible box. But the member didn’t mention one important factor: What about the poor victim who got killed just before they were arrested? The member didn’t mention that.

Mr. Lawlor: He wouldn’t be fined for that; he would go to jail.

Mr. Givens: He wouldn’t be fined for that. Mr. Speaker, I say this law isn’t explicit enough.

Since we are talking about the principle of the law, this gives me an excellent opportunity, since the minister is in the House, to read him a letter which I asked a constituent to write to me and which I was going to send to the minister. With many of the weighty things that the minister has to think about, such as the Metropolitan Toronto transportation plan review and other weighty things of that nature, I would have thought that if I sent him this letter one of his secretaries would probably relegate it to one of his legal officers or one of his lower-echelon, high-priced help -- I don’t know how low they are, but many of them seem to be very high-priced -- and that he would probably never get to read it.

I couldn’t have a better opportunity to read him this heart-breaking poignant letter which I want to put on the record and which I want the minister to listen to, which I’m sure he will, because as much as we’ve had our differences in this chamber, I know what a very sympathetic-hearted person he is.

As a lawyer I’ve had experiences like my friend from Lakeshore has, the kind of experience where one sits in a magistrate’s court and sees a person arraigned and a charge read out where somebody has been killed, particularly a child. But the degree of negligence that has been exercised by the person who is arraigned and who has been charged is not so great that one can make a charge stick under the Criminal Code or even under the Highway Traffic Act. Generally, the person gets off with a slight rap over the knuckles or maybe a $25 fine, and the poor parent whose kid is killed can do nothing about it.

The accused gets off scot free. There is all kinds of sympathy in the world for him while the parents of the child have the rest of their life to grieve in their agony. We talk about this shameful person who committed this thing -- and one can’t call it a crime. We talk about it being terrible that he may lose his job because his licence is going to be suspended for a period of six months.

I want you to bear with me, Mr. Speaker, as I read this letter from this person called Donald C. MacCharles. It reads as follows, and it is worth listening to:

“Dear Mr. Givens:

“My 11-year-old daughter was killed by a motorist who was subsequently charged and convicted with careless driving. The evidence showed that had he not been speeding then, he would have been able to stop 10 ft short of hitting her. My daughter is dead and the motorist had a $100 fine levied along with a 30-day driver’s licence suspension.

“He could not be convicted under the negligent and dangerous driving provisions of the Criminal Code because a wanton and almost premeditated act of behaviour is necessary and this could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The next appropriate charge was the careless driving one which is treated as little more than a misdemeanour. Given the seriousness of the consequences of the action, it would appear that the law is at fault and that this type of behaviour, while not criminal in origin, is certainly not trivial.

“This behaviour falls between two jurisprudence stools with the consequence that the law dealing with traffic casualties, in my opinion, is not giving the social control over these actions that is required in order to reduce the fatalities on our roads.

“The civil law of tort would normally provide some measure of correction for this imbalance in the statute involved. But, unfortunately, it too is defective. The provisions of the Highway Fatalities Act read such that the maximum claim permissible is $100 for each year of a child’s life, while alive, plus funeral expenses to a maximum of $800.

“The net result is that there is no effective method of controlling much of the dangerous driving on our highways. Drivers should be required to be more cognizant of their social obligations when they undertake to drive a vehicle. This could be accomplished through such methods as a larger range of offences being specified, with stronger punitive measures in the way of long-term licence suspensions, as well as making them subject to larger civil actions. Perhaps then a larger degree of sanity could be brought to traffic control in the province. This is especially important in an age when the automobile has such a pervasive influence, and is used as the major form of transportation in our society.

“In order to show the seriousness of this social problem I quote here from recent studies. They show high life loss, and in particular for young children in urban areas. The Financial Post shows in a chart that about 400,000 potential years of life are lost each year through accidents. Potential years of life that are lost through death prior to age 70 in 1971 were 1,683,100 years -- 13 per cent of them resulted from motor vehicle accidents.”

Then there is a quotation from the Globe and Mail which reads as follows: “Ontario road deaths up 1.3 per cent.” This quotation is absolutely devastating when you listen to it:

“A total of 1,959 died in Ontario highway accidents in 1973, up 1.3 per cent from 1972, the Ontario Safety League, quoting government statistics, announced yesterday. The league says the growing popularity of bicycles and motorcycles is reflected in the figures.

“Sixty-nine bicycle riders were killed in 1973, seven more than in 1972. More than half were under 15. Eighty-four motorcycle riders died compared with 66 in 1972, an increase of 27 per cent.

“Apart from deaths, the league notes that impaired driving increased in all age groups but particularly among people 20 to 24. A total of 1,613 impaired drivers in that group were involved in collisions in 1973, compared with 1,260 in 1972. There have been 94 traffic deaths in Metro this year.”

Then he quotes from a CIBC booklet about accidents.

“The following chart illustrates the number of children’s deaths as a percentage of total deaths from the causes shown. Forty per cent of traffic deaths are children under 14 years of age.”

Forty per cent of traffic deaths are children under 14 years of age!

“Therefore what I am proposing is two specific statute changes to help bring the law up to date with our current social reality. The first is to broaden the range of specified driving behaviour offences with long-term licence suspensions. The second is to review the Highway Traffic Fatalities Act so that people can be made responsible for the consequences of their actions through the law of tort.

“It is worth mentioning that at the moment the law is more concerned with protecting the rights of the accused rather than the rights of those who have died or are left behind to suffer the loss. In point of fact, in my case, the judge felt that the young man being accused would suffer the consequences of the death for the rest of his life and therefore awarded a minimum punishment.

“In fact it is my wife and I who will bear this loss. Especially since the subsequent actions of the driver indicate that he feels no responsibility. Not only did he tell me that he felt he had done nothing wrong, but he has subsequently been fined for speeding through the same intersection in which he killed my daughter. When the police apprehended him his comment was, ‘Why don’t you pigs stop harassing me?’

“I think the time has come to treat the carnage on our highways with the seriousness it deserves and make the people responsible for it, truly responsible. Let’s get our highway laws out of the horse and buggy era.”

Mr. Speaker, this is the end of the letter. When you read a letter like this which is written from the heart, from a man who has undergone this kind of experience himself, there is nothing in here that you can possibly quarrel with, Mr. Speaker. You can say, “Well, the accused in this case was an unusual kind of person. A young man who is devil-may-care, couldn’t give a damn, couldn’t care less; he committed one accident, he is prepared to commit others. Apparently he has gotten into trouble again and again and again.” But on whom should the onus be?

He who is careless should be carless, really. The onus should be on the other side. The duty should be on the side of the person who doesn’t take care. The onus should be on him -- not on the person whose life has been taken, but on the person who takes life. The carnage on our roads is absolutely abominable. And I tell you, Mr. Speaker, through you to the minister --

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): No more Spadina. Ban the automobile, ban the expressway. That’s the solution.

Mr. Givens: Well, I don’t know what that interjection was for, Mr. Speaker.

An hon. member: It shows someone is listening.

Mr. Givens: It shows he is listening, but it also was a silly remark. I had a secretary who was killed on Christmas Day. She didn’t get killed on an expressway, she got killed at a subway stop just this past Christmas. So, I mean, if the member is going to make silly remarks, I could make the remark that you can get killed on a subway as easily as you can on an expressway, Mr. Speaker. This just happened a couple of months ago -- less than a month ago. So, I mean, of what consequence is that kind of remark?

The carnage on our highways has become so serious that for people who aren’t prepared to drive with due care and attention, we should have no pity and no remorse. The duty and onus should be on them and we should stop shedding crocodile tears for those people who have licences suspended, provided that the due process of law is followed. I mean, I don’t think we should have some bureaucrat in the minister’s office who looks at a piece of paper that comes through and says that because of something that happened a licence should be suspended automatically. I mean, provided the normal course of events is followed and the proper investigation is made, and this person is deserving of having his licence suspended, it should be suspended whether he has to make a living or not. He should think about it before he gets out on the road.

But no remorse should be shown to these people who drive without due care and attention. Our civilization and our society have come too far along this road without our being so puny in this particular case that we shed too many crocodile tears about the particular person who is careless in this regard.

I am glad I had this opportunity to read this letter and with great respect to the minister, I hope that when he gets his copy of Hansard and he sees this letter -- and perhaps I’ll still send it to him -- he will take these suggestions of this gentleman, Mr. MacCharles, seriously. I hope he sees whether indeed the law officers of the Crown, in the minister’s department or in the Attorney General’s department, can possibly make these necessary changes that he talks about in here to accommodate the kind of offences and the kind of misdemeanours and the kind of wrongs that he thinks should be righted, and that he feels they should indeed be righted in accordance with the manner that he has suggested.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have two or three comments to make on this, and I am almost reluctant to say what I am going to say, given some of the comments that have gone ahead of me.

I consider drinking and driving to be a very serious problem in Ontario. I recognize that for the most of us -- and I include myself in the number -- there is every likelihood that at some point in the past we might have been stopped, or in the future we might be in the position where we could be stopped, and could be considered under the law to be under the influence of alcohol while in control of a motor vehicle.

I still think that we have to take pretty strong measures to try to bring to the public’s attention the consequences that they will face if they are caught drinking and driving, particularly drinking in excess. I think it is unfortunate that we have to wait until someone is killed or there is a serious accident before we seem to be able to recognize that there is a problem developing within society. It’s really too late to raise a hue and cry when a motorist strikes a child crossing a street or when two cars collide at an intersection and one of the drivers is considered to have been impaired.

I think we have an obligation, though, to do more than what’s in the bill. I think we have an obligation to begin a very serious programme in informing the public of the attitude of the people of Ontario. I think that the highway traffic signs in Ontario could well carry a warning. That warning might well be that if you are caught drinking and driving in this province your licence is likely to be suspended. If not suspended, you are likely to lose it for an indefinite period of time.

I realize there is always the likelihood or possibility of what my colleague has said. A person might have driven for 23 years and never once have been stopped. Suddenly, he’s stopped by a police officer -- for one reason or another -- and is discovered to have had too much to drink and is convicted and loses his licence and his job is in jeopardy.

What my colleague didn’t say is that the person may have driven for 23 years, and in each of these years he might have been driving in the same condition but never have been stopped before. This unlucky soul happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s only, perhaps, by the grace of God that there wasn’t somebody who stepped off the sidewalk or a car that came out of a driveway; or for that matter that he didn’t lose control of the vehicle.

We have rather severe weather conditions in Ontario which make it necessary to recognize that we have to require people to have all of their faculties and all of their senses when they are behind the wheel of a car.

I don’t know what I would feel about the kinds of penalties the minister should impose. I don’t really think that fining people makes much difference, because it is not long afterwards they have forgotten the fact that they had to pay the money.

I can’t see much point in putting them in jail, because in actual fact the majority of them are not doing anything much different from a great many other people. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have a real problem with people who come crying to me and tell me they got picked up for driving while intoxicated and they may lose their job, because they need a car to get either to and from work or for the purposes of their business. I have to think that that’s something they should have given some thought to before they had the extra drink or two.

I would be even tougher, I think, if I were faced with it -- although my colleague would disagree with me. Perhaps all of my colleagues would disagree with me, for all I know. I think that the three-month suspension on a first conviction, given that that is only a first conviction and not necessarily a first offence, is not at all too difficult to consider.

I am of a mind, if a person were to be convicted again within that five-year period, whether they shouldn’t lose their licence altogether.

I’m really quite concerned that the law isn’t sufficiently strong in this regard. Driving an automobile, given the traffic volumes in the majority of metropolitan areas, is a hazardous occupation, a hazardous undertaking at the best of times.

I have personally watched drivers come out of the parking lots of hotels at excessive rates of speed, entering highways and streets without proper care, weaving down the street, luckily getting home and parking and going in and falling asleep. It is because no one else happened to be in their way, or everybody else happened to get out of their way that they were able to avoid an accident. It was only because there were no police in the area that they managed to avoid being picked up.

I think it’s a bit strange, though, that in this day and age we insist that hotels that are being built have parking lots for 200 cars or something, while at the same time talking to people about not drinking and driving. I once thought that maybe it would make sense if we didn’t allow hotels to have parking lots at all. Then maybe people would have to take the bus or take a cab.

I don’t know how that would go over with the hotel proprietors; but I am still concerned that you can’t encourage people to take their car down to the local pub for a drink and expect them to come out sober and drive home.

I know, in some instances, the police sit in very close proximity to hotels and are able to pick up quite a few people after they leave in their cars.

Hand in hand with what we’ve got, I think we’re simply going to have to embark upon a very serious and continuous programme of public education. I don’t think it’s nearly enough to make a statement every once in a while about the hazards of drinking and driving. Perhaps we could begin by making sure that every hotel is adequately signed to show that after you’ve had three drinks you’re not considered fit to drive within the law. Maybe it would be a start to have a number of signs in each hotel beverage room -- the best place is probably in the washroom on the wall, where everybody reads -- stating that after your third drink you’re really not fit to drive and you should consider taking a cab.

Beyond that, I think there should be considerable emphasis placed on public education, both in schools and on the highways. On the highway signs from Hamilton to Toronto and within Metropolitan Toronto, perhaps it wouldn’t do any harm to have as part of those signs that in Ontario if you lose your licence you may not get it back. I think that would make people think twice. It might not stop them; it might go on just as it did before, although I doubt it because I think a lot of people would have some serious concern about the possibility of not being able to drive at all.

It might simply encourage people to drive without a licence. In that case, then the penalty has to be even more severe. If you have lost your licence, if you know you don’t have one and you insist on driving, then the penalty has to be much more severe -- and people have to understand what it is; we have to make clear to them what it is.

I realize that most people might think that’s a kind of Neanderthal approach. A lot of people might think I’m a bit backward in my thinking about it. I’m not apologizing for that, but I can’t think of any other way to come to grips with it.

If people insist on drinking and driving, then they have to be made fully aware that the consequences are that they will not have a licence. I think we’ve got to say to hotel owners that they have a responsibility to play a role in making sure that people are made aware of this. I think we have to make sure that the public advertising campaign is sufficient and that the penalty -- I suppose it’s called a penalty -- is of sufficient magnitude to make it desirable for people not to break the law in that regard.

I gather the minister means business; I don’t know. Everybody feels sorry for the guy who loses his licence; I do too, sometimes. I feel sorry for someone who loses his licence in a marginal case. Nevertheless, I have some real feeling about the people who, luckily enough, manage to get home without getting killed by the guy who was drunk, or who perhaps had problems with him because he was drunk. I’m not just sure any more. I have a lot of mixed emotions about it. I’ve wondered a lot about it and I’m not sure what the answer is. But I’m sure that part of the answer is in making sure that people who habitually drink and drive are not given licences to drive in the Province of Ontario.

I think we’ve got to recognize that there are very few cases indeed, although no doubt there are some, where a person once in his or her lifetime happened to drink too much, drove and got caught. But in the majority of cases it’s the person who drinks too much and frequently drives who gets caught.

Mr. J. F. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Especially those who are too drunk to walk.

Mr. Deans: It may be that all I’ve said won’t make any difference, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if we don’t do something about the situation of drinking and driving in an effort to try to bring to people’s attention the dire consequences they face, then we’re not going to be able to afford to drive in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Givens: That’s why cabinet ministers have chauffeurs.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): I heard what the member said.

Mr. Deans: I don’t have any statistics about it, but I’m told that much of the damage to automobiles results from drinking and driving; that in a great percentage -- perhaps my colleague from Yorkview (Mr. Young) knows -- of accidents drinking and driving are involved; and that property damage, which results in higher rates of insurance, is attributable to a great extent to drinking and driving. I might say that I, like a lot of people around here, enjoy having a drink, but I am concerned that at some point we are going to be faced with very serious problems if we are not already faced with them. I suggest to the minister that the legislation is okay, but I think it could be even stronger.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Essex South.

Mr. D. A. Paterson (Essex South): Mr. Speaker, there are two principles in this bill with which I would like to deal very briefly. They are both contained in section 28 of the particular bill and have to do with school buses.

I believe it was some eight years ago the township of Anderdon posed a problem to me relating to the 35 mph speed limit. At that time I took it up wish the ministry, and on subsequent occasions, and I am very pleased to see that this particular section is going to be deleted from the bill.

Mr. B. Newman: How long did it take the member to get that through?

Mr. Paterson: It is eight years we have been working on this. In this particular instance, Mr. Speaker --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: My ministry has resolved it in the space of one year.

Mr. Paterson: -- the township in question had to make amendments to its speed limit, to get it down to the 35 mph limit from the previous limit, in order to protect the children, as the road surface is quite narrow and there are ditches and no place for the children to stand. This was one way they circumvented the system, and now I am sure that they will be quite pleased, as other areas in my particular riding will be, with this particular amendment to the bill.

The second principle with which I am concerned is in relation to the regulations respecting colour and markings of school buses. Is the minister aware, the member for Essex-Kent and myself did pose a question to the ministry a year ago after an unfortunate accident when a workers’ bus was mistaken for a school bus. Certainly we uphold the principles contained in here on the chrome yellow painting with the black letters and so forth. There is no question in that regard.

This past weekend I was approached by owners of two school bus lines in my particular riding who were somewhat concerned about this particular legislation, as apparently the school bus owners’ organization in the province has endorsed a principle, on their understanding at least, that these school buses could no longer be used for charter purposes. If that is incorrect, that’s all I want to get from the minister.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It is incorrect.

Mr. Paterson: It is incorrect? Well, that’s the word we want to have. The documents that came out from their association have been misinterpreted by some of the smaller school bus operators. I am glad to hear this, because it is very essential in many municipalities that these buses be available for charter purposes. I know in the counties of Essex and Kent, where some 8,000 school children work in corn detasseling, the only method of transportation is school buses. Certainly some of the select committees of the Legislature have travelled many hundreds of miles by school bus and we wouldn’t want to see that denied to them. I am pleased to learn this from the minister and I will pass it on to my constituents.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Yorkview.

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Mr. Speaker, I want to make a few remarks about the business of the restricted licences tonight. It is, I suppose, about a year or so ago that the hon. member for York Mills (Mr. Bales) and I, along with the Attorney General at that time (Mr. Welch), had a bit of an altercation here in the House over this whole matter, because fresh in my mind was a case of a rather gross injustice of a chap who had been driving, had been caught, his licence had been suspended and he had lost his job. This chap -- it was a first offence -- had not made a habit of drinking but he had made a bad mistake. I felt that here was a case of injustice and perhaps we should be thinking in terms of giving some leeway to the judge to make some award of a restricted licence or something of that nature, so that people of this kind might be looked at carefully.

On the other hand, of course, one always has to weigh injustice on both sides, and certainly as I looked over this last year, as I have, at some of the figures of death on the highway due to alcoholism, and the upsurge of the alcoholism and the death rate among younger people particularly since the lowering of the drinking age -- along with the voting age -- I realize perhaps there is a great deal to be said on the other side of the situation. While injustice may occur on the one hand, perhaps more injustice occurs on the other hand. The person who is allowed to get away with drinking and driving creates real problems for himself and many other people. Perhaps the weight of the evidence is on that side rather than on the other.

Last fall I put a mass of figures in Hansard in connection with this whole problem of alcoholism and traffic safety. I’m not going to repeat those figures tonight. I don’t have them with me, but even those I remember I’m not going to repeat in any kind of detail.

The thing we have to recognize is that we are dealing with two activities of the human race -- the activity of drinking and the activity of driving. Both are legal in this province and around the world. But our problem is to separate the two, and to say to people: “If you’re going to indulge in this particular legal activity then you should not indulge in the other legal activity. You can’t mix gasoline and alcohol.”

That’s our problem in this society. It’s the resolution of that problem that the minister is trying to get at tonight. It is being wrestled with by a great many people on this continent in a way that it has never been wrestled with before.

Last fall, here in Toronto, 30 nations were represented in a conference dealing with alcohol and traffic safety, and as I sat and listened I saw the common problem of 30 nations was being met with bewilderment -- nobody had the answers. The problem was defined, but nobody had the ultimate solution to the whole thing.

Our own committee, who looked into this and last fall brought out a report on drinking and driving, pointed out certain very startling things. The death rate on the highway among teenagers, particularly late teenagers, has more than doubled since we lowered the drinking age. It’s tied right in to that time frame so that there is no question of a basic cause for it. When we see that in 1972 the 18-year-olds had an accident rate that was between 300 and 400 times the rate before the drinking age was lowered to 18, and the 19-year-olds had almost as bad a record, then we commence to realize we are facing a desperate problem with our young people.

The other thing pointed out was that young people are being bombarded today in an incredible way by television ads which make the drinking of beer particularly, and of course by transfer, all alcoholic beverages, the thing to do --

Mr. Givens: Glamorous.

Mr. Young: -- as the way to manhood or womanhood, the way to happiness, the way to wealth, prosperity, what you will. And that’s been driven at them constantly day and night by an industry which is seeking only one thing, the profitable sale of their products. They don’t care one iota what happens to the young people of this country.

This is something we have to face. Simply making a change in the restricted licence doesn’t go any distance at all toward solving the problem. We have to face up to what this kind of advertising is doing to our civilization. We have to face up to the fact, and I think everybody is agreed upon this who is knowledgeable in this field, that this kind of advertising ultimately must be banned.

The myth is so often perpetuated that beer is not as dangerous as alcohol, as hard liquor. But one bottle of beer has the same alcoholic content as a shot of hard liquor. So whether you drink a bottle of beer or a shot of liquor, you are getting the same alcoholic content.

The thing the British did is extremely significant, although it didn’t last too long. They went out on a campaign when they brought in their breathalyser legislation. They had a multiple of three. They said this to everybody: “Three drinks and after that, no driving. Three drinks, no driving.”

That’s not always accurate. It depends upon a person’s weight, his eating habits; all the rest of it. But, by and large, they made that a rough rule of thumb: three drinks and out.

This is where we have got to get at the thing. We have to show our people that the alcoholic is a person who needs help. We’ve got to train more people to look after them. But, beyond that, we’ve somehow got to persuade our people that if they are going to drink beyond the two or three drinks that will bring the blood level up to four, five, six, seven or eight per cent, then that’s the time to stop driving.

If a sober person is going into town to drink, Mr. Speaker, then he must make arrangements to get home without sliding behind the wheel of a car. That’s the fundamental thing we have to do. We have an education job here that must be done.

I don’t know what the total answer is. I don’t think any of us does. But, certainly greater enforcement is part of it. As my colleague, the member for Wentworth said, we have to start an educational programme in the schools that is realistic to show our young people how alcohol can be properly used, and what the misuse of it will lead to.

Certainly, we have to have television programmes and a thorough-going educational programme to show our people that they must not take the risk of losing their licences by driving after their blood alcohol level is up to a certain point -- and 0.08 likely is too high. That’s the law now, and we’ve got to live with it. But that’s likely too high.

It is a big problem, yet here is a start. The minister is trying to say to people that this is penalty. But, Mr. Minister, I say that it has got to be backed up by far more than this.

I would hope that this ministry and the other ministers on the Treasury benches will take this matter seriously; that they will read that report on alcoholism and traffic safety, that this government has produced with all the facts and suggestions that are there; and that they will say:

“We are going to take this seriously. We are going to put resources into this programme. We are going to put teeth into the programme itself. We are going to put enforcement resources there that will at least persuade a lot of people who are now sliding behind the wheel of a car that it doesn’t pay to do so. And somewhere along the line we are going to lower the whole incidence of traffic accidents.”

It is a startling fact that over 50 per cent of all the deaths on the highway are alcohol-related. A larger percentage of the accidents are alcohol-related. So we have got to bite the bullet. We’ve got to start on the road away from the kind of trend we’ve had in the past. We have to find the way back to sanity in this whole matter of the consumption of alcohol.

I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that I hope that this House will take this whole matter seriously and not be content with just a small amendment to our Highway Traffic Act. We must go beyond that and make the whole matter of highway safety effective.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Huron.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Thank you, Mr. Speaker; I just want to make a few comments. The first thing I’d like to do is commend the minister for making some attempt to provide more adequate legislation for the safety of the children who travel to and from school by school bus.

You are probably familiar, Mr. Speaker, with the fact that in 1973 and again in 1974 I introduced a bill aimed at safe school bus transportation. This bill addressed itself to the two major areas of the school bus operator and the school bus itself where safety demanded legislative action. I recall when I spoke on that bill some member from the NDP got up and said there was legislation but it was just a case of it not being enforced.

I took this as having some basis in fact owing to the fact that I wasn’t here that long and I really wasn’t all that familiar with the legislation that was available. But since that time I have had a chance to look at what legislation is available and I have tried to determine what was covered by federal and provincial statutes. I was surprised to discover that mandatory safety standards for a 1973 automobile carrying only six passengers were more stringent than those for a 1973 school bus carrying 65 children.

This is hard to believe. Here we are transporting probably the most precious cargo that any vehicle could carry, that is young children, and the safety devices within these buses do not meet with half of some of the safety devices that we have in passenger cars. In fact, safety standards for school buses are only now beginning to be researched by a committee of the federal Ministry of Transport. I believe a study was recently being done by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications regarding school bus safety.

In this bill before us, the minister has recommended that buses be required to stop regardless of what speed zone they are in. Again I commend him for what I call a very small aspect of the overall bus safety picture. The reason I think he is wise in bringing in this particular legislation is that statistics have shown that the most hazardous part of a journey that a bus makes every day is when the bus stops. More children are killed crossing the highway to and from the stopped bus than are killed as passengers within the bus.

I might say, Mr. Speaker, I have done quite a bit of research on this. As a matter of fact, every time I heard of a bus accident I wrote and asked for a police record of the accident just to see what types of injuries were being sustained by these young people in the bus. I feel I am a little better equipped to talk about the thing than I was maybe in 1973.

The lives of school children alighting or boarding school buses must be protected as far as possible wherever they might be. Therefore no exemptions should be made with regard to the speed limit; motorists must stop for a school bus with lights flashing letting off or taking on passengers at all times.

This has now been incorporated in the bill. The old argument that the stopping of buses in a 30 miles per hour zone would delay traffic is not sound as far as I am concerned because school buses tend to travel when traffic is not the heaviest, and surely the safety of a child should be put before the movement of traffic.

Based on findings, and according to reports and numerous letters I have been receiving from concerned people in Ontario, it’s evident that the selection and training of school bus operators leave much to be desired. I am only sorry there wasn’t something included in this bill which would indicate that the bus driver must be subjected to a more severe driving test than he has had in the past. I could go on and say quite a bit more about the types of tests I think a school bus driver should be subjected to, but hopefully I might have a chance to speak on this before the session ends.

One area of concern that crops up time and time again in letters directed to me, Mr. Speaker, is the overloading of school buses. Here again, we haven’t any legislation that prevents the overloading of a school bus. Despite the fact that research has added indisputable evidence that standees can become human projectiles in the event of an accident, the practice of standees in buses still persists. In fact, Ontario law permits standees to the extent of one-third of the seating capacity of a bus.

I simply fail to understand why the minister won’t act on this particular matter and bring in legislation insisting that no standees be permitted in a school bus.

As I have said, I have checked into a lot of the accidents that have happened, and the fatalities that were reported were among those who had to stand in the aisle. The ones who received injuries but were not killed were the ones who had some protection inasmuch as they were sitting in a seat.

Nevertheless, these young people were thrown forward in the bus and received facial lacerations and their teeth were knocked out simply because of that steel bar that runs at the back of the bus seats. There is no padding on the back of the seats in the buses; and there are no arm rests on the bus to actually restrain the young people.

I just can’t understand why we can’t have legislation upgrading the CSA standards whereby they would have to construct buses, and whereby school boards would be compelled to buy buses, that had all these safety features added to them.

There are more school bus accidents occurring as time goes on. We in Ontario have been fortunate that there have been very few school bus accidents up to now, but we do see them reported quite frequently now. I have been following them up, and many of the injuries and many of the fatalities have taken place because we simply do not have properly designed buses with the proper safety features in order to give children some protection. There are probably many more things I could say on school bus safety, but I am not going to at this time.

The only other thing I want to mention is this business of farm vehicles travelling along the highway. It is my understanding that under the existing law if such vehicles pull over on to the shoulder of the road to allow traffic to pass, and there happens to be an accident, that farmer is held responsible simply because he pulled over on to the shoulder of the road.

I would like the minister to tell me whether I am right or wrong in this respect, but I think this is something worth looking at. I think if a farmer is driving a tractor, say pulling a load of hay along the road, and he knows he is holding up traffic, then I think he should be allowed to pull over on to the shoulder of the road and to travel along there until the traffic passes him by. But it is my understanding, and I might be wrong, that the way the law is at the present time, if a farmer does pull over on to the side of the road and there happens to be an accident, then he is held responsible for that accident.

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): I think the member is wrong.

Mr. Riddell: Those are the only remarks I am going to make at this time, but I would like the minister to tell me why he won’t bring in more adequate legislation to protect our young people travelling to and from school by school bus.

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

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the minister on bringing in, at least, this subsection to remove the provision that the subsection applies only where the maximum speed limit is greater than 35 miles per hour.

It seems to me that every September I have been besieged by parents and school teachers complaining about the unsatisfactory arrangements that have existed. In fact, just last fall in one of the communities the people put out a petition to raise the speed limit on their road from 35 to 40 mph, despite the fact that they would have preferred that the speed limit be reduced to 30 mph. The reason they signed what appears to be a ridiculous petition was simply that they wanted the school bus to be able to activate the lights when letting the children off, but every year I got letters back -- I suppose written by the same person in the minister’s office

-- explaining that this couldn’t be done. In fact I think the minister must have some people who sit in his office and write the same letters year after year; and the new ministers, as they come along, just sign the letters, perhaps without even reading them.

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): That’s only for members who didn’t understand the first one.

Mr. Ruston: There they are, the letter writers.

Mr. Burr: Oh they are under the gallery. Well I have written to the minister on occasion about another problem that all of us hear about, the idea that shopping malls should be put under the Highway Traffic Act so that the police and the fire departments can have adequate access in the event of emergencies.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I have read all those letters and I agree with the answer.

Mr. Burr: The answer that I got this year used the word “tradition.” It couldn’t be done because it was traditional that the Highway Traffic Act governs only highways and it doesn’t govern shopping malls, so this is tradition. I find that with this minister, if one talks to him personally, one gets farther than if one sends letters to these professional letter writers, who are traditionalists.

Mr. B. Newman: They allow snow removal on private property.

Mr. Burr: Do they?

Mr. B. Newman: So they can just turn around and do the same thing.

Mr. Burr: They are defying tradition then, aren’t they?

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I wonder if we could return to the principle of the bill.

Mr. Burr: Oh yes. Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out, as my colleague from Yorkview did in different words, that it’s now a privilege in Ontario to drive at 16 after passing a test for ability, and at the age of 18 people have the right to drink without passing any tests of their ability to do this; but nobody has any right or privilege to do both of these at the same time. We should have signs around on our highways: “Don’t drink while driving, don’t drive while drinking”; or words to that effect. Actually, in Windsor, we do have some signs up in this vein. I forget the exact wording now, but some of the signs refer to the .08 level and others get the message across that one is heading for trouble if he is drinking and driving.

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the breathalyser tests, they have proven to be ineffective because they are not used in spot checks and the motorists know this is the case. The police now have a device to make our highways safer but they don’t, or they can’t use it. The breathalyser test is just as valuable a safety device for you and me, Mr. Speaker, as is the seatbelt or the shoulder belt, but there’s no point in our having seatbelts or shoulder belts in our cars if we don’t use them; and there’s not much point in having our police armed with breathalyser devices if they don’t use them on our behalf.

Most motorists are sensible enough to realize that if they were driving while they were drinking and were subject to spot tests the chances of their being caught would be significant and many of them would make sure they never ran the risk.

I think I saw some figures recently that the average policeman in Ontario makes two impaired driving arrests a year. That gives you some idea of the ineffective enforcement we have, Mr. Speaker, because various studies have shown that as many as one out of 12 drivers are in the impaired range on certain occasions when tests have been made.

Alcohol advertising should be banned. Perhaps some of the hon. members noticed that this Christmas the breweries put out posters with the slogan, “None for the road.” This, of course, was for the Christmas holiday only, because it just isn’t very nice to be killed by a drunken driver during Christmas holidays.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: I wouldn’t want to be killed at any time of the year.

Mr. Burr: Oh no, but as far as this slogan is concerned and as far as the breweries are concerned this is the slogan for Christmas time, you see, because it’s not nice --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Sandwich-Riverside has the floor.

Mr. Burr: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This type of slogan should be used throughout the year and should be publicized throughout the year and not just at Christmas time. So, I appeal to the minister, Mr. Speaker, to take advantage of the high office that he’s holding to make our roads and our streets and our highways safer for all the motorists and the pedestrians of this province.

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

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to make a few comments on this piece of legislation, and, at the outset, hope that the minister enjoyed himself last Saturday night. He was with a very nice group of people at the Caboda Club.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Where’s that?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That’s in Windsor-Walkerville riding.

Mr. B. Newman: That is in the Windsor-Walkerville riding, the great riding of Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. Burr: On the edge of Sandwich-Riverside.

Mr. Breithaupt: Fame enough.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, my first comments concern a restricted licence. I hold no brief for an individual who is apprehended by the law for being intoxicated. But I don’t think that under all circumstances, simply because the individual is intoxicated and is driving, he should lose his privilege to drive for a period of time. I think that individual, especially on a first offence where there is no property damage or where property damage is very minor, should not lose his right to earn a living.

I can understand the ordinary individual losing his licence, but in talking about an individual who drives a vehicle professionally all the time, I think it is wrong to deprive him of the opportunity of earning a living. Under no circumstances would we take away the right of a doctor to practise medicine simply because he were caught driving while under the influence.

Mr. Burr: But he should be rehabilitated first.

Mr. B. Newman: The doctor should be rehabilitated?

Mr. Burr: The drunken driver.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I think that if the individual is caught for the second time, there should be no compunction whatsoever. Maybe we should even go farther than to cancel his driving privileges; maybe we should use the State of Michigan system, which is that drunk drivers go to jail, stop.

I think we have to come to grips with the problem of the drunk driver, and I don’t think we can come to grips with that problem by being too lenient. I only make that one exception, and that is where it is the livelihood of the individual, and it is not during the course of his work -- he is off work when, for the first time, he happens to be caught under the influence and then loses his right to drive. For a second offence I say that individual certainly should have his driving privileges withdrawn.

I think the big problem, Mr. Speaker, is an educational problem. I don’t think we can stress strongly enough in our school system the hazards of drinking and driving at the same time. I can recall in my earlier days in the classroom attempting to point out to the students some of the problems they could run into as a result of overindulging in the products of the Hiram Walker company, and other similar companies. But it is extremely difficult to convince people at that age that they should be moderate in their approach to alcohol, food, or anything else that we may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think the minister could suggest to his colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Handleman), that every time a liquor licence board gives a special occasion permit, the organization not only post the permit on the wall, but also other types of signs. These would state that if the individual overindulges, then he certainly shouldn’t drive. We might have signs similar to those our American friends use, that is: “Drunk drivers go to jail.” Through an educational programme, we have got to convince the public that driving and alcohol definitely do not mix.

Now, I would say that not only with special occasion permits should there be some type of poster that should be posted in the hall in which the function is taking place, but there should be several of these posted inside taverns in an attempt to alert the individual that if he overindulges there are penalties that he may have to be subjected to if he is apprehended by the law officers of the Crown.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the minister has followed the suggestion that originated, if I am not mistaken, in the county of Essex, and that is concerning leaving the one colour exclusively for buses. I think it was a forward step on his part, but I just wonder why, Mr. Minister, it takes so long for good suggestions to be adopted by government.

Mr. Paterson: I explained that.

Mr. B. Newman: The member for Essex South has been attempting for years to alert the ministry concerning the problem, and just didn’t seem to be able to get anywhere. We hope, Mr. Minister, suggestions from this side of the House also have merit, and that the ministry and its officials should think seriously concerning them.

I can recall being in correspondence with either the minister or his predecessor concerning the adopting of the specific colour for school buses. That was well over 1½ years ago, and it is still under consideration. Surely, the ministry doesn’t take a thing under consideration indefinitely. As the member for Essex South said, he has attempted for years and years to convince the ministry of adopting such a scheme.

I would also like to tell the minister that I am extremely disappointed in the legislation introduced today in that it doesn’t designate ambulances as emergency vehicles. Surely, Mr. Minister, an ambulance is an emergency vehicle -- I think it is.

Back on May 17, 1974, I received a communication from the minister stating the matter was “currently under review.” He said:

“Although it is unlikely that any amendments to the appropriate sections of the Highway Traffic Act can be ready for introduction during the current session of the Legislature, it is my intention to deal with the matter at as early a date as possible.”

That was May 17, 1974. It doesn’t take that long, Mr. Minister. I really think that ministry officials should look into designating ambulances as emergency vehicles.

From my understanding, and in talking with officials in the ministry, they are not considered emergency vehicles -- and as a result must stop at all traffic intersections, even though they may be rushing an individual to a hospital, it being a matter of life or death.

Returning to the bill, Mr. Speaker, I’m also pleased the minister now has taken the recommendation, of Mr. Crothers I think it was, who has hounded the ministry to have the law changed so that flashing lights would be required at any time a bus would stop, regardless of the posted speeds. We owe Mr. Crothers the real thanks of the Legislature for his hounding the ministry to see the ministry did eventually listen to a good suggestion. The suggestion, I would say, not necessarily coming solely from him, since there were other groups and organizations that have made that suggestion. I can recall practically every council in the county of Essex passing a resolution to that effect.

An hon. member: Annually.

Mr. B. Newman: The Ontario Municipal Association likewise passed a resolution to that effect. I think the PTAs and Home and School Associations have also attempted to have that legislation accepted by the ministry. Now that the ministry has accepted that, we commend the ministry for it.

I hope he goes farther than he has done so far and that he also looks at the suggestions that the member for Huron made in his comments back in 1973 and then again in 1974 concerning buses and bus safety. He has made some good constructive suggestions to the ministry. We hope the minister and his officials read his comments and don’t hesitate to implement them. They come from this side of the House, but we’re generally constructive and we would like to see him implement some of the things that are for the betterment of our youth.

This is the content of my comments, Mr. Speaker. I hope the minister has a chance to reply, and especially to reply to me concerning the ambulances as emergency vehicles.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, I’m pleased to enter this debate and bring just several comments with respect particularly to the operation of school buses.

In reviewing the basic approach this bill takes, it is, of course, clear now that one of the major points that the bill raises is a definite suspension of drivers’ licences for certain offences for a period of three months for a first offence and six months upon a subsequent offence. We are aware that over the past several years there has been a certain difficulty in immediate suspension for drivers’ licences and as well of the view that some people had that they could obtain a specific licence for work or for certain job requirements, generally on a restricted term during the time that otherwise their licence would be suspended.

I think it is worthwhile that we have now come to a conclusion on this particular problem and have received assurance from the ministry that in certain circumstances, which I hope will be well advertised, there will be without question a suspension based upon a decision made that that kind of a penalty is a valuable one and one which, hopefully, might be a deterrent in certain other circumstances. The sections of the Criminal Code which deal with those offences for which suspension is mandatory are clearly set out in the Act and we would certainly agree with them here.

There is one point that I would like to raise and that’s with respect to the matter of school buses. The minister may be aware there was an editorial comment in my home newspaper, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, with respect to this whole approach concerning the requirement to stop cars during the letting off or taking on of pupils onto the school bus. Drivers of cars have been forbidden to pass a school bus if the flasher signals are working, and only if the bus has been stopped where the posted speed limit is more than 35 miles per hour.

I think it was reasonable that the editorial comment raised the point that it might well be a question to the person driving by as to just what the speed limit might be in a certain area. They particularly raise the comment that apparently was made at Goderich to a convention of the Western Ontario chiefs of police with respect to a resolution urging the government not to extend this stopping requirement into other areas.

One of the police chiefs involved at this particular event apparently commented, as it’s reported, that the whole approach of requiring motorists to stop in speed zones posted at 35 miles or less was in fact a traffic hazard. This police chief, reported in this case to be Mr. Robert Cook, the chief of police for Sarnia, was of the view that stopping in these kinds of zones was a greater problem, proportionately, than the certain concerns that might exist with respect to the safety of school children. The chief of police of Point Edward, Mr. J. H. Clarke, was reported as having the opinion that we would have a better system if stopping for school buses was removed entirely from the Highway Traffic Act.

Certainly in my view, and I’m glad to say that in the view of Mr. Wilfred Henrich, the chief of the Waterloo regional police and formerly the chief of the Kitchener police department, we should be putting the lives of pupils and possible injuries that could occur ahead of the traffic inconvenience of this kind of a stopping pattern in zones in which the speed limits would be 35 miles per hour or less. Certainly there might be a minor traffic hazard involved, but we think that the risks balanced against the possible injury which could occur to pupils using school buses would be well worth that kind of balance.

Accordingly, I would appreciate the minister’s views concerning the comment of Chief Henrich, that “one cannot provide too much safety for the children of the province.” I think this kind of an approach, whereby we now require drivers to stop their motor vehicles at any time they see a school bus stopped, is a much improved situation. Whether the speed limit might be 35 miles per hour or more is something which of course could be omitted from a driver’s remembrance as he goes through a 40-mile zone or as he comes out of a 50- or 60-mile zone.

I think that if we make this particular change we are working toward a better safety situation and we are going to have the requirements that school buses, when they are stopped, must bring a definite reaction within the members of the public who are driving motor vehicles. That reaction has to be that vehicles will be stopped; that there will be the encouragement, not only from a position of safety but also from a position of simple common sense, that the lives of the students who are using those buses are certainly to be more than balanced against the traffic inconvenience of making stops at those points.

The one point I would raise with the minister, and I would appreciate his comment, is the question which comes forward from the present requirement that one has to stop when meeting a school bus except where there is a median strip. One wonders, as a result, if there is really meant to be an exemption when there is a median strip and whether this should not also be removed to permit school children to completely cross a highway. The matter of the median strip may prove to be an inconvenience or a certain problem as vehicles are otherwise approaching a school bus. I think there should be some clarification on this point.

Again, if the present requirement to stop for school buses is complete, no matter what the speed zone limit may be, then some publicity also should be aimed at the oncoming driver as to what is expected. If the matter of a median strip is going to be a solution to avoid that person’s stopping, then I would hope that the minister might give that some particular publicity so that the drivers of the province -- as most of us are, of course -- are aware there are certain basic requirements and that the exceptions to those requirements are clearly spelled out.

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

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I think the sections of the bill that caused the most discussion were those that dealt with the changes, and the new section that deals with the suspension of drivers’ licences and privileges on conviction for certain offences under the Criminal Code.

I’d like to make it very clear at the outset that the word penalty has been used and this is, in fact, not a penalty for the particular conviction. The penalties are called for by the Criminal Code, but the suspension will follow the conviction for any of these offences.

As far as the change is concerned, it certainly is my opinion that when people take the responsibility that goes with the privilege of driving an automobile on the highways of this province, they must accept that they are expected to obey all of the laws, and that if people are going to violate the Criminal Code they must be subject to the possibility of losing the privilege to drive in the province.

The suspension of three months for the first offence is, in fact, less than the existing Act now provides. The existing Act, for example, upon conviction under the impaired and intoxicated driving sections, calls for a suspension of six months, but a suspension of one year if they are involved in an accident that injures or causes death or excessive property damage. It is six months for the first offence and up to two years for any subsequent offence.

What we are doing here is removing the possibility of the restricted licence. What I am saying is that if a person is convicted for any violation of this sort under the Criminal Code he must accept the fact that he will not be able to drive upon the highways of this province, for a first offence for three months, and for any subsequent offence within the following five years, for a period of six months.

Mr. Breithaupt: Is the minister going to publicize it?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It will be well publicized. One of the problems we have is that in the courts around this province there has not been a consistency in the application of the law. We still face -- and I want to make it very clear -- we still face the situation where the driver convicted under the Criminal Code sections in a provincial court can appeal and he could be given a conditional discharge or on absolute discharge. Although he may have been found guilty he’s not convicted, and he must be convicted before he will receive this suspension. As far as we are concerned in the province, upon conviction within our provincial courts these suspensions will be mandatory and no extra privileges will be given.

I have listened to many of the arguments that have been put forth. It’s been interesting to listen to the differences of opinion. The member for Lakeshore and the member for Windsor-Walkerville both feel there should be this mercy, this leniency, this consideration for a person who may lose his or her job as a result of being convicted. Quite frankly, I would have to side very quickly with the member for Wentworth, the member for York-Forest Hill and others who have said that the person who is driving an automobile and who makes his living driving an automobile or a truck should be well aware of the fact that he is taking that chance of losing his licence, and it is not really the responsibility of the courts to show this mercy and leniency. The responsibility is upon the driver, who knows full well that if he is going to be convicted --

Mr. Lawlor: The minister always sets up some perfectionist norm. If he appeared before the courts very often he wouldn’t think that. Each case always has unique circumstances.

Mr. Deans: He would be as corrupt as the rest of the lawyers.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. minister has the floor.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I am going to associate myself with the comments of the two members opposite, the member for Wentworth and the member for York-Forest Hill. As a police officer in a municipality of some size I spent a lot of time investigating various accidents. I’ve seen people who have been killed, or badly injured or maimed, and unfortunately I cannot find too much mercy for the people who stagger away from these vehicles; you take them down to the police station and then the leniency of the court allows them back on the highway the next day.

Mr. Lawlor: Nobody is suggesting that. The courts will look after that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I find no reason for any leniency in this area whatsoever for the person who finds himself arrested. Because he didn’t hit and kill somebody, some lawyer throws his client at the mercy of the court and has him given a restricted licence even upon conviction. The following day that individual can just as quickly be killing someone. I don’t see anyone feeling awfully sorry at that time for the victim, but they are awfully sorry for the person who happened to get caught again.

It is my position to stand by this particular section and to let it be known and widely known that within the Province of Ontario, if one is convicted under any of these sections of the Criminal Code he is going to have his driver’s licence suspended.

Mr. Lawlor: The minister doesn’t think three months is going to make any difference, surely.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): There is a certain inconsistency.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I am sorry?

Mr. Lewis: It is just the business of removing the restrictions on the one hand and reducing the term on the other.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Let me comment upon that. The feeling is we can get an absolute suspension for the three months on the first offence and six months on the second and any subsequent offence. If one reads the Act as it is now, it was all relative to how much damage he did in the accident or whether he hurt someone or whether he killed someone. The way I feel about it is that that is really not the important part; that isn’t the part we are trying to discourage. The severity of the accident really isn’t that important, it’s the fact that the person was in such a condition. I fail to see why a person who is intoxicated and merely causes a slight rear-end collision that may cause a bit of whiplash --

Mr. Lawlor: If he is impaired, he is not intoxicated. It’s quite different.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- should be treated any less severely than the person who smashes into a car and does any number of thousands of dollars worth of damage. That’s one of the reasons why it was felt this would be even more consistent, that it is more severe in that there cannot be restricted licences given, at least not in the provincial courts or not within the suspension section that we have.

As far as the bus-stopping law is concerned, I don’t think there is perhaps too much for me to say with exception of responding to the comments of the member for Huron who wondered why we hadn’t gone a little further. He mentioned the standees in the buses. I think it’s simply a question of economics, quite frankly. I think it is a matter of the number of buses. For example -- and I think the member is probably more aware than I of this -- if a bus is making a run in a particular area and it has so many passengers in that bus that the bus is full to capacity and a new family moves into the area with two more students, what can one do with them? Does one have to hire a whole new bus to start delivering those youngsters? I think it is a matter of economics. Does one add a couple of standees to that bus, or does he buy a new bus?

I wonder just what the school boards would do and how they would approach it. I hesitate to use it after the remarks by the member for Windsor-Walkerville, but it is a matter that has been under discussion with the Ministry of Education. The officials have been talking about it. I don’t know when we are going to be able to establish or raise the levels of doing away with the standees. It is a very serious problem and one that can have a great, severe economic effect on the school boards which are trying to provide a transportation facility.

As far as the standards of the buses themselves are concerned, these have been developed. The CSA standard D250, of which I am sure the hon. member is aware, is being improved upon and updated and in a very short while there should be new standards brought forth. This is being done in conjunction with the Consumers’ Association of Canada, the Ontario branch, which has representatives on that particular body. They are keenly interested and have offered a tremendous amount of input into the discussion.

These standards, I think, will be improved. Ontario school buses have been meeting the CSA, the D250, standard since 1971. Anything that can be done to improve the standards I think will be done, recognizing that there are certain grandfather situations involved as to buses that have been purchased today by a school board that may not meet the standards that may be put into effect next year. Hopefully, these standards can be improved as we go along.

I think perhaps I would make one comment on the median strip. On major highways, where we have multi-lane highways with a median strip, it is our intention not to require oncoming traffic to stop. The stopping rule would apply in all other areas.

Mr. Breithaupt: I think some publicity would be worth while.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Again, that’s absolutely correct, Mr. Speaker. The definition of median strip in the Act is what we would apply it by, and I have to agree that the publicity would be required.

I think this stopping law is going to be accepted a lot better than perhaps it was at first. There were those in some municipalities -- and I think in the larger areas such as Metropolitan Toronto, Ottawa, London and Windsor -- some of them were concerned that it was going to create a traffic problem within their communities if you made traffic stop for these buses.

I wanted to point out to the member for Essex-Kent that I think he may have misunderstood the question about the driver of the bus. The driver of the bus is required in the Act to activate these lights. The only time that he does not have to do so when he is loading or discharging youngsters is at an intersection that is governed by traffic lights. Aside from that, he is required to do at all times.

But I think there is more acceptability -- certainly in the smaller communities we have heard a tremendous amount of comment from a great many people. Certainly the bill that was introduced by nay colleague the member for Wentworth North (Mr. Ewen) that was debated here in the House some time back brought a lot of reaction from around the province supporting the position of having traffic stop.

The colour of the bus; although it took a long time, as the member drew to my attention, I think we are going in the right direction as there is a need for distinguishing the colours. I will say again that the buses that are owned by the school bus companies will not be prohibited from operating on charters during the off season. They will be required to cover up their school bus signs as they do now and the lights would not be used; they would be covered as well. They will be permitted to be used, but we will not permit the yellow and black buses to be taken out of use and put into some other service. They must be painted over; they cannot retain that colour. That will be exclusively for the school buses.

I think, Mr. Speaker, I will terminate my remarks on that and we will perhaps do more as we go into committee.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I would like it to go to the committee of the whole House, please.

Mr. Speaker: Do you want to take it right now?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I would like it to go at this time.

Clerk of the House: The fifth order, House in committee of the whole.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC ACT

House in committee on Bill 177, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Chairman, I would hope we might be able to move along rather quickly on this. The first amendment will be to section 1, subsection 2.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Wentworth.

On section 1:

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): This may have been answered, I am sorry -- I may have missed it; I had to go out for a moment. One of the difficulties we have had is on something called a warning strip.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Median.

Mr. Deans: Median, yes. In a number of municipalities there is a strip of pavement separating the lanes in either direction. It’s generally corrugated in nature.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Rumble strip.

Mr. Deans: Rumble strip; it’s a warning strip. There have been a number of questions raised about that. There have been convictions, in fact, for people passing school buses that were stopped where that rumble strip, as you call it, was in effect. One was in the area of Highway 20 and Highway 8 in Stoney Creek in my riding. Another was, I think, in the area of Clappisons Corners, but I am not positive about that one.

It is still a little vague. It says, “by a physical barrier.” Well, a physical barrier; is that intended to mean something you can’t get over?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Right.

Mr. Deans: Okay. Or an unpaved strip of ground? But if there’s a paved section there, then that doesn’t constitute a --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It would not be classed as a median as it’s defined in the Act. The median strip definition that we have would be that of a physical barrier which would make it impossible under ordinary circumstances for you to get through. There are those who’ve tried, but they don’t make it. And the other is the unpaved divided area on the highway.

Mr. Deans: Okay. Let me describe something to you. There’s a situation at the intersection of Highway 20 and Highway 8 where there is a wide, what you would call, physical barrier at the intersection. It then carries on beyond the intersection to become a rumble strip. A person coming along there, when he gets to the intersection, would automatically assume that that was a continuation of the existing physical barrier, only lower -- it’s perhaps six inches in height in the centre. It causes some considerable difficulty for people driving there because they’re never sure whether they’re supposed to stop for school buses going in the opposite direction or whether they’re not.

I wrote to the ministry about this very problem three or four years ago because of a conviction that occurred, providing not only the circumstances but a sort of diagram, of how the intersection happened to be developed. I’d like to suggest to you that the legislation, even though it is changed, doesn’t yet adequately cover that. A person going into court, were he to be charged by an officer -- which he could well be -- would have serious difficulty in trying to prove his point.

Let’s say the bus pulled around the corner and then stopped about 20 ft around the corner at the intersection, they would be in that sort of never-never land between the barrier and the rumble strip.

Mr. D. W. Ewen (Wentworth North): That’s 30 miles an hour.

Mr. Deans: Well, it may be 30 miles an hour there now, but there are other places farther down the highway where the same situation prevails. I’m not sure it properly defines what you’re talking about. It’s not always 30 miles an hour.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Chairman, I think that the only comment I could make is that a rumble strip only serves its purpose; it’s there to warn drivers when they drive on it that they’re getting off their own side of the road. It’s not a median as such.

Perhaps we should take a look and see if we can be a little more specific in the definition of “median”. We feel that as it is now, will handle it; experience may make us have to change it. I would hope that that would be acceptable.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 1 carry?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Chairman, it is on section 1, subsection 2, that I have an amendment.

Mr. Chairman: Section 1, subsection 2?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves that paragraph 15(c) as set out in subsection 2 of section 1 of the bill be amended by inserting after “motor” in the second line, “which is driven by electricity or.”

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The reasoning for that, Mr. Chairman, is that we have since learned that there are motor-assisted bicycles with electric motors, so we want to include those as well.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Is section 1 as amended carried?

Section 1, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Does any member have any comments or amendments prior to section 20 of the bill?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Chairman --

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore first.

Mr. Chairman: Section 3.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I have an amendment to section 2.

Mr. Chairman: The minister has an amendment to section 2.

On section 2:

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves that the bill be amended by adding thereto the following section, that subsection 1 of section 9 of the said Act as amended by Statutes of Ontario, 1974, chapter 66, section 5, is further amended by adding “or” at the end of clause (c), by striking out “or” at the end of clause (d), and by striking out clause (e), and that the remaining sections be renumbered accordingly.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the minister would be good enough to advise us as to what that says since, of course, we don’t have copies of the original statute in front of us. Perhaps he could advise us as to the intent of that amendment.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I was rather hoping this might slip by, Mr. Chairman, because it is a bit embarrassing. You will recall that about a year ago, or less, there was some error in the legislation which failed to make it a requirement to put a sticker -- a red sticker at the time, a green one this year -- on the licence plate. A drafting error was made in the amendment that was brought in to require that they he put on the licence plates. As a result, we ended up with a penalty -- well, for example, the section says:

“In the form and manner prescribed by the regulations evidence of the validation of the permit, where the permit for the motor vehicle has been validated the general penalty provision of the Act applies, namely a minimum fine of $20 and a maximum fine of $100.”

When we amended the Act we created a similar offence by adding clause (e) to section 9(1). As a result, we now have two penalties. We thought it was redundant and that we should remove one to leave the general penalty and not the one of $50 to $500.

Mr. Breithaupt: I won’t make any comments that will embarrass you.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Thank you very much.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Yes, if you don’t tell anybody, we won’t.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Section 3.

Section 2, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Has any member any comments on section 3?

On section 3:

Mr. Lawlor: For my general education, I suppose, I would like to ask about proposed section 15(b). I suppose it applies to people who have their licence suspended in this province and go to another province, apparently to obtain a permit to drive elsewhere, then come back to Toronto and drive with the extra-provincial licence. Is that common? I didn’t even know it was possible.

My recollection in the case of certain clientele is they tried to do that trick but they were totally unsuccessful. The other province asked for the production of their Ontario licence; and on their being unable to do so, or it being marked in a certain way, simply refused the issuance of that provincial licence.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Chairman, what can happen, of course -- and the purpose of this is to make sure that it does not occur -- is that a person can go to another province -- the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba are the likely locations -- and apply for an original licence as an unlicensed driver, receive a licence by passing the test of either of those two provinces and come back into Ontario with a very valid Quebec or Manitoba driver’s licence. So it is not a question of having to produce your old Ontario licence; you merely go in and apply as a new driver, take the test and get the licence.

Mr. Lawlor: Well, I can’t help very much here, I agree, but that of course is fraudulent misrepresentation which would be subject to criminal penalties if they so did, because every application form has certain questions making disclosure necessary.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Does the minister have any intention of possibly employing the use of social insurance numbers on applications for drivers’ licences, which would at least allow a fairly immediate check with adjoining provinces where it was suspected that some driving offence had occurred and therefore that the person may have had a driver’s licence suspended in an adjoining province or elsewhere and against which person there may be some serious infractions recorded as to that person’s driving ability?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No, Mr. Chairman, we haven’t looked at the possibility of using that number. It is something that can be looked at, but to the best of my knowledge that hasn’t been considered.

Mr. Breithaupt: Well, at least that number would avoid any duplication in source records. And since most of us, whether it’s from income tax or through various other areas, are now all related to that one consistent number, this might be a valid view of driver-licence applications. So that, too, could be referred into a common source of information as to an individual, which appears to be accepted generally now by the people of Canada.

Section 3 agreed to.

On section 4:

Mr. Chairman: Section 4. Would it be out of order if the Chairman asked a question on section 4? Are you on section 4?

Mr. Deans: Section 5.

Mr. Chairman: Would it be out of order?

Mr. Lawlor: It is unheard of.

Mr. Chairman: Would you agree to it?

Mr. Deans: It would be; but we are always out of order -- so go ahead.

Mr. N. G. Leluk (Humber): It is out of order, but do it.

Mr. Chairman: I would like to ask the minister on section 4: Does it mean that a person 14 years of age could get a licence, say, to operate a motorbike on the highway?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No, Mr. Chairman, it does not. It does not require a licence under this Act to operate a motor-assisted bicycle, as it is defined. You are referring to the driving of a motorcycle?

Mr. Chairman: No, a motorbike.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: You do not need a driver’s licence to operate a motor-assisted bicycle, as defined in this Act. A person under the age of 14 would not be permitted to operate them. A person over 14 would be, but would not require a licence.

Mr. Chairman: The question I want to ask is: What can they operate on the highway at 14 years of age?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: At 14 years of age they can now operate a motor-assisted bicycle. And they can also operate a 10-speed bicycle, which goes faster than the motor-assisted bicycle.

Mr. Leluk: Not necessarily.

Section 4 agreed to.

On section 5:

Mr. Chairman: What section of the bill does the member for Wentworth wish to speak on?

Mr. Deans: Section 5.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: May I just, with your usual great grace and compunction, Mr. Chairman, say my final word with respect to this particular section?

I think, as a lawyer who has watched the courts for many years, that arbitrary across-the-board legislation which binds everybody in an overall way, is purblind, narrow and stupid. Every case which comes before the judiciary -- and the direction of justice must be in the direction of humanity -- always has surrounding it and included within it certain mitigating circumstances. They ought to be given grounds of presentation. The intelligence of the courtroom should operate that way.

To set up arbitrary barriers, limitations and categories, such as has been done here, seems to me the very reverse of the notion of justice, the notion of law. It’s easy to do. It’s simple-minded; it’s blockheaded. I suppose, purblindedly and backwardly, it achieves its purpose -- although I question that very severely. If the minister thinks that with a three-month penalty he is in any way going to foreclose on the possibility of traffic deaths, then it seems to me that he’s badly mistaken in his estimate of what human beings are up to and what they think about.

You do have to have a penalty; and the penalty should be invoked in the overwhelming majority of cases. Nevertheless, there are circumstances, there are special cases. There are pleas that might and should be made, in the interests of decency, that you’re foreclosing in this particular bill.

To invoke, as this member here does, a victimization of certain people being placed in a bad situation, a great wrong having been done, a child killed, and then over against that, to say that we must use the mechanisms of the law to punish somebody else in order somehow to make up the balance in some remote and strange way, that is a parcel of the retributive mind.

I don’t know what people are thinking about when they think in these terms of mathematical equivalence, or some kind of factor system that you can balance off lives. You can’t do it that way. Everyone regrets that circumstance, but that has nothing to do with the actual case before the courts with respect to this very man’s case. To mitigating circumstances, such as they may be, he gets no presentation under this and under your law as it presently stands. I consider that stupid.

Mr. Deans: Before you answer I want to say --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: You fellows go ahead and debate --

Mr. Deans: -- I think it is a privilege and not a right. If a person is made fully aware of the consequences of his actions and insists on following through with those actions then he has to be prepared to face the law. I understand my colleague’s position. It’s difficult for lawyers. I appreciate that. I’m not a lawyer, thank God, at this point. I might have liked to have been a lawyer but I’m not.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Aren’t you glad?

Mr. Deans: I listened to what you said earlier about this being a more stringent application of the law than the previous law, though it doesn’t appear that way. I think you are right; it probably is.

Mr. Stokes: Would you believe that both had dinner tonight and never mentioned this bill?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: They ate at different places.

Mr. Deans: I still feel that if a person, given the opportunity and given the knowledge of the law, is prepared to take the chance, notwithstanding whether he kills someone or not, then he has got to appreciate that he will not be able to drive in the Province of Ontario for a specific length of time. I’m of the view that if a person were to be convicted more than once, he ought not to drive at all. I feel quite strongly about it. I think that if a person is caught twice it may be just his bad luck that it’s only twice in his whole life that he has got drunk and driven, but I suspect that isn’t the case.

Mr. Lawlor: Can you hear the pibroch of John Knox in the night?

Mr. Deans: If a person is unfortunate enough to get caught twice, it is probably because he drives in that condition quite frequently. He is a hazard on the road.

These aren’t the only people who should be taken off the road. I’m telling you, Mr. Chairman, that as far as I’m concerned there are a lot of other people who are not capable of driving on the highway and shouldn’t be on the highway because they are a danger to themselves. They may well be able to make the choice to be a danger to themselves, but they shouldn’t be able to make a choice of whether or not they should be a danger to other people who may be quite unsuspecting.

I say to you that if a person were to be convicted twice in a year, he should certainly lose his licence for life. There should be no justice, as my colleague talks about. If it were to be twice in five years, maybe the suspension should be a year or longer.

I feel quite strongly about it. Beyond that, let me just say here what I would say on section 9. I want to suggest to you that the licence should be removed in the court. It shouldn’t be left in abeyance or in a state of limbo as it currently is.

Mr. Lawlor: It is, under the legislation.

Mr. Deans: No, it isn’t always.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It is.

Mr. Deans: Quite frequently, a person is informed that he has been convicted and then has to await the notice from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.

Mr. Lawlor: No, they take it away from him right in court.

Mr. Deans: Where does it say that? I was looking for it and couldn’t find it.

Mr. Chairman: Let’s deal with section 5 and then we’ll move to 9.

Mr. Deans: Show me where it says that, will you?

Mr. Chairman: Let us deal with section 5.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I just want to make one comment on section 5, and this will be my last comment. The member for Lakeshore for some reason wants to impose upon this Act the penalty for impaired driving or drunken driving or dangerous driving. There is no penalty in this Act that deals with any of these sections.

The leniency of the court can well be found when the trial is held under the charge tinder the Criminal Code. If the good judge who hears the case before him convicts upon the evidence submitted to him on the charge under the Criminal Code, as a result of that conviction in respect of the leniency that he did not receive at the hands of the judge, the Highway Traffic Act simply says that upon conviction -- as the warning says -- of the offence and the circumstances indicated therein, his driver’s licence shall be forthwith suspended. The leniency will be in the court either to convict him or let him go. You either convict or you don’t convict on the basis of the evidence, and the judge can be lenient.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): He can’t be lenient on a conviction.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): You may lose convictions on that basis, then.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: What you are telling me then is, there is no leniency in the Criminal Code at all.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Chairman, I can’t let that pass. It is a misrepresentation, actually, in most instances, if I may say so. Let’s get the first thing clear here, by the way. A driving-with-ability-impaired charge is not the same thing at all by a damn sight as driving while intoxicated or drunken driving. There are quite different standards. On most standards a fellow who is impaired is quite disintoxicated. We wouldn’t think he was necessarily intoxicated at all, but he reaches that .08 on the Richter scale, and by George the earthquake has happened. That’s No. 1.

No. 2 -- the penalty is not written in, in that sense. But the penalty that this Act, in fact if not in law -- and in law too, because it’s in legislation -- inflicts upon these individuals can be far more devastating than anything the court would dream of giving the individual in question. The fact that his licence is under suspension, his livelihood is down the drain and his family is in dire circumstances because of that, is the thing that strikes me; and there may be good grounds for his making some kind of compassionate or other kind of appeal in the circumstances.

There may be mitigating circumstances. There very often are. For the minister to cut that off, a priori, right from the word go in terms of his legislation, seems to me a purblind move to say the least.

I’ve wanted the legislation for a long time made more humane, made more flexible. I would even go the other direction and give the judge the power to inflict a hardship penalty; maybe suspension for life depending upon the unmitigating circumstances of the case. I think there should be a swap here. But to set up a minimal term, the minister may as well make it two years; three months is all he needs to be thrown out of where he is so that his livelihood is lost.

What is he supposed to do for those three months? The minister makes no provision for these possibilities at all. The circumstances may be the most superficial and minor in the world. The consequences that flow from that particular infraction might have been neither here nor there. Nevertheless, he has to bear the full penalty along with somebody who has been very venal indeed in the circumstances that were found in that other case. We have to leave room in law, and if we don’t that law is stupid.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 5 carry?

Sections 5 and 6 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Anything before section 20?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Chairman, I would move an amendment to section 12.

Sections 7 to 11, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 12:

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves that section 12 of the bill be amended by adding thereto the following subsection:

“Section 49 of the said Act is amended by adding thereto the following subsection: 1(a) -- Subsection 1 does not apply to a motor-assisted bicycle with an attached motor which is driven by electricity.”

Mr. Lawlor: I am sure glad he did that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Aren’t you though? I didn’t want the member picked up on his way to work on his electric bicycle.

Mr. Lawlor: Smoke marijuana on your little electric-driven bike and you have had it.

Mr. Chairman: You’ve heard the minister’s amendment to section 21; is there any comment? Shall the amendment carry?

Section 12, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any other section before section 20?

Sections 13 to 20, inclusive, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Does any member have any comments or amendments to any other section of the bill?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Chairman, I would like to move an amendment to section 28.

Sections 21 to 27, inclusive, agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves that subsection 1 of section 120 of the Act, as set out in subsection 1 of section 28 of the bill, be amended by striking out “motor vehicle designed for carrying eight or more passengers and,” in the first and second lines; and inserting in lieu thereof the word “bus.”

Mr. Chairman: You have heard the minister’s amendment to section 28 of the bill.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Does that cover a three-seat station wagon?

Mr. Chairman: Does the member for York Centre have any comments?

Mr. Deans: Could we have the definition of “bus” read out, since we don’t know what the definition is in the original Act?

Mr. Chairman: The member for York Centre first.

Mr. Deacon: I just wanted to find out if it included a three-seater station wagon; which has a capacity of nine, I would think.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: What we are hoping to do is to have this applied to buses, and actually a bus is defined as a vehicle that carries 10 passengers. It is intended that this would remove from the conditions of this Act those vehicles, such as cars or station wagons that are used in many cases in the outlying areas as small feeder-line buses, if you will, to take youngsters to a regular school bus. We do not want to impose upon these smaller vehicles the need to have the requirements as laid out in the Act.

Mr. Deans: Oh, I am sorry. Are you telling me, then, that station wagons used for school-bus purposes are not to be regulated under this Act?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No, I am simply saying that we do not want to define them as they were defined in section 28. The definition of a bus is, “a bus means a motor vehicle designed for carrying 10 or more passengers and used for the transportation of persons.” That would be the application within section 28.

Mr. Deans: Well I have got to understand what you are doing and I don’t. I know of a number of school buses, for transporting crippled children in particular, that are of a station-wagon nature. They hold, I don’t know, eight --

Mr. Deacon: Eight or nine.

Mr. Deans: -- crippled children, I guess, or nine. They are sort of three-seat affairs. Are they not required to have “Do not pass when signals flashing” signs on them? Are they not required to have two red signal lights in the rear and two red signal lights in the front? Are they not required to be painted yellow with black lettering?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That is correct.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Deacon: You would make them impractical to operate.

Mr. Deans: Why are you doing that? You are going to have to deal with those somewhere; you are surely going to have to deal with them someplace. There are a number of school jurisdictions that I can think of that use station wagons, and they travel --

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Retarded children use a lot of them.

Mr. Deans: Retarded children, crippled children.

Mr. Breithaupt: But you are not loading and off-loading along the road.

Mr. Deans: You most certainly are. You have to stop at the side of the highway in order to pick them up.

I want to know whether they are going to be regulated in some way, because the thing about having this whole section is that it has some handle on the safety of the bus. It means that the buses are going to be easily identified, that hopefully people will be more careful when they are in the area of a school bus. If you can run one of these other little station wagons loaded with crippled kids as a school bus, and not have to put on it that that’s what it is really used for, then I think you are going in a backward direction.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: There is a major problem here, and that is that a great many youngsters are being transported to schools for retarded children and schools for crippled children and ordinary taxis are doing the job. They are paid for by a local service club, and they drive around the community and pick them up and take them. What we were hoping to do was to --

Mr. Breithaupt: They are not loading on the streets.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That’s right. These vehicles will have the word “school bus” on the front of them. That will be on them. But what we are saying is we are not --

Mr. Deans: Why? Where does it say that it will have that on those?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: They are required to have that on now, I think, as a contract. They are not required under the Act because it is not being defined as a bus. Anything less than 10 passengers we do not wish to define as a bus.

Many of these will pull off the highway themselves, turn in driveways, and are not making the long-haul, multi-stop sort of pickup and delivery to a school. We were concerned at the time when we had these included, and there was some considerable discussion about it.

Mr. Deans: Okay. Let me just say to you that I used to own a little station-wagon affair -- what was it called? A club wagon, like a Volkswagen bus. It carried eight people or nine people, I guess. I see them being used frequently for school-bus purposes.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: You described it, though, as a bus.

Mr. Deans: No, it’s not, it’s called a club wagon. I see them frequently being used for the purpose of transporting children to and from school.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: If it will carry 10 or more passengers it is a bus within the definition of the Act.

Mr. Deans: It is set up to carry nine -- three and three and three.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Then it is not a bus; then it is not within the definition of a bus in the Act.

Section 28, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any other section of the Act, any other comment, or amendment?

Mr. Lawlor: Section 31.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I have an amendment to section 31 which I thought the hon. member for Lakeshore might be interested in.

Mr. Lawlor: Have you? Well, you may be improving.

Mr. Chairman: What section?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I think my amendment, Mr. Chairman, will satisfy him.

Mr. Chairman: Okay.

Mr. Lawlor: I doubt it.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Or come close.

Sections 29 and 30 agreed to.

On section 31:

Hon. Mr. Rhodes moves that subsection 1 of section 135 of the Act as set out in section 31 of the bill be amended by striking out “in the opinion of the minister,” in the first line; by striking out “the minister may declare,” in the 12th and 13th lines; by striking out “or any part thereof to be invalid by notice sent by registered mail to the clerk of the municipality and such bylaw or part thereof,” in the 13th, 14th and 15th lines; and by striking out “21 days after the sending of the notice,” in the 16th and 17th lines.

Mr. Chairman: Do members want to comment on section 31?

Mr. Lawlor: Are we going to work all night or am I going to get time to think about this?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Can we come back tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon?

Mr. Breithaupt: Is it the view of the House leader that we would finish this bill this evening?

An hon. member: Oh no.

Mr. Breithaupt: Or what do you have in mind? We are agreed to it if you wish.

Mr. Deans: I just want to ask you one question.

Mr. Lawlor: It will take another half hour at least.

Mr. Deans: It will take a little while. Could I ask one question about what I just raised with the minister; I realize it’s passed --

Mr. Chairman: If it’s now in the bill, why you are not entitled to ask another question.

Mr. Deans: Well, we are not going to finish the bill, but we’ll talk afterwards.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

Report agreed to.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): I was just going to ask, Mr. Speaker, since we have now more or less completed the list of legislation, other than the completion of committee stage for this bill and proceeding with Bill 191, the Ontario Lottery Corp., perhaps we could hear from the government House leader as to what he is proposing to do later on. Will, for example, Bill 195, a further Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act, follow along the present bill we have been discussing this evening?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we will proceed to the conclusion of the bill presently before us; and then we will proceed immediately to Bill 195, to be followed by Bill 191 and Bill 182.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:35 o’clock, p.m.