Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I would like to introduce, in the east and west galleries and in your gallery, Mr. Speaker, enthusiastic members of the Peel South Progressive Conservative Women’s Association and their guests. Would members join me in welcoming them?

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

ESTIMATES

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, I have a message from the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor signed by her own hand.

Mr. Speaker: By her own hand, Pauline M. McGibbon, the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor, transmits estimates of certain sums required for the service of the province for the year ending March 31, 1976, and recommends them to the legislative assembly, Toronto, May 5, 1975.

LENNOX TO OSHAWA HYDRO LINE

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Mr. Speaker, in June, 1972, pursuant to the provisions of the Public Inquiries Act, the Solandt commission was established to inquire into the transmission of power from Nanticoke to Pickering. On March 21, 1973, the terms of reference of the commission were extended to include an examination of the proposed route of Ontario Hydro’s transmission facilities between Lennox and Oshawa.

During the course of his inquiry, Dr. Solandt held public hearings in a number of municipalities between Lennox and Oshawa. These hearings were conducted between May, 1974, and January, 1975. After consideration of all the evidence presented at these public hearings, Dr. Solandt has prepared and submitted his report, which I am now tabling, containing recommendations regarding the preferred location for the transmission line between Lennox and Oshawa.

A commission of this nature is a valuable step in a planning sequence designed to satisfy both the wishes of local residents, who may be affected by the location of a transmission pathway, and the needs of residents in a wider area who require an assured future supply of power. This difficult task must be accomplished, while at the same time ensuring that environmental, agricultural, technical and economic factors are given full consideration.

Dr. Solandt notes in his preface to this report that the choice of routes is so large and the pros and cons are so varied that there is no single selection that stands out as the best or even the worst. He also notes that each potential route was stoutly opposed by at least one ministry, municipality, planning group, local citizen organization or by individual citizens.

The Solandt commission has performed a thorough and commendable task. On behalf of the government, I would like to thank Dr. Omond Solandt, and his staff who have worked so hard during the past two years. This report, like its predecessor, is a remarkable compilation of facts and a wise and considered judgement of the situation. Copies of the commission’s report will shortly be delivered to those who made submissions to the commission. A summary report will be distributed to others and will be publicly available in municipal offices between Lennox and Oshawa.

As was done with the previous report on the Nanticoke to Pickering line, I am inviting public comment, during the next 60 days, on Dr. Solandt’s report and its recommendations.

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Treasurer, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Mr. Speaker, while I am on my feet, perhaps members might join with me in welcoming --

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): He just got on his feet.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s what I said. While I am on my feet, the members might join with me in welcoming a group of grade 12 students from the Wallaceburg District High School who are here today to witness our proceedings.

METRO TORONTO ACT AMENDMENTS

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, later on I will be introducing an Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act. The purpose is to make several not necessarily related amendments.

One important amendment, requested by the Metropolitan Toronto council, is to establish an Exhibition Stadium Corp. The corporation would have responsibility for managing, operating and maintaining the Canadian National Exhibition stadium, in accordance with policies of the metropolitan council.

A second amendment would permit the metropolitan council to build and operate other sports stadia which could be used for track and field and other amateur sports activities.

Another amendment would enable school boards to undertake contracts with private school bus operations. It would also authorize the operation of horse-drawn sightseeing vehicles in Metropolitan Toronto.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Two horses, one named Krauss and the other Maffei.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The bill also includes certain amendments, Consistent with existing provisions of the regional Acts, to increase the interest rate charged on overdue payments of the metropolitan levy, as well as to increase the penalty rate on charges for water supplied to the area municipalities.

A final amendment would provide the Metropolitan council with authority similar to that of the regional municipalities in issuing debentures in foreign currencies.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS ACT AMENDMENTS

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I will also, sir, be introducing amendments to the Municipal Elections Act.

The first amendment is consistent with the government’s support of the principle of bilingualism in Ontario. It would permit the use of both English and French in the printed instructions to voters and other elections forms, as prescribed by the minister under the Act.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): About time.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The second amendment would make provision for the holding of a new election if a municipal council or local board is unable to conduct its business for a period of two months because of a lack of a quorum.

The final amendment would provide for the fulfilling of responsibilities of a council or local board where the majority of the seats of the members are vacant, until a new election is held and the members so elected have taken office.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

LIAISON WITH INDIAN COMMUNITIES

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): I would like to put a question to the Minister of Natural Resources. It really concerns a matter in his own constituency, and that is the relationships with the Indian community in the town of Kenora. Is he prepared to recommend to his colleagues the appointment of an all-party committee from this Legislature which can go and talk to the Indians in their own council houses and talk to the elected people in the communities concerned -- that is, in the elected councils such as Kenora -- about the situation as it was last summer and as it may well be again this summer, so that we can use the good offices of this Legislature as well as the government to at least move toward an acceptable situation in that area rather than wait for problems that might come forward this summer?

Might I ask another question at the same time: Does the minister recall me putting forward this alternative a year ago now to his colleague, the policy secretary (Mrs. Birch) when she said that it was under consideration; and could I ask the minister if he would agree that this is the time the good offices of this Legislature could be used rather than waiting for some problems later -- and I hope there are none -- when about all we can do is send a Deputy Attorney General to the Kenora area?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, if I may respond; and I can say that I would respond as the local member, I don’t think I could respond on behalf of the government at this point in time until the matter has been thoroughly reviewed.

First, of course, I want to commend the Leader of the Opposition for going to that great riding of Kenora.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I was very well received there.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We are always most appreciative of those visits. They come quite seldom, but nevertheless it’s good to have him there.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Just around election time.

An hon. member: There must be an election coming.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): The people he met had to ask who the local member was.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They thought it was Pat Reid.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I am particularly pleased, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Leader of the Opposition has seen for himself the situation in Kenora. It gives me a great deal of concern; in fact, I would have to say I spend a considerable amount of my time conferring with a number of people in the local area, both inside and out, as to how we could resolve the situation. I think it is fair to say that as a result of the recent publication that has come out, there is further tendency to divide the community.

Mr. Lewis: A recent publication?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, a recent publication.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): “Bended Elbow.”

Mr. Lewis: That savage book.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: To come up with an answer that would solve all our problems at this point in time -- I just don’t have the answer. I think the member’s suggestion is one that should be considered by the government. Certainly, as the local member, I would support any move that would tend to bring to bear the services of this Legislature and the efforts and the guidance of other groups throughout the province. I have to say that some of our problems are caused by outsiders -- I say it very, very sincerely -- and it may well be that this would be the approach we should take; certainly it is something I would support.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I appreciate the tone of the answer, believe me. Is the minister aware that municipal leaders in Kenora have indicated publicly they have been disappointed with the federal initiative and the provincial initiative in dealing with this matter? To be informed, as members of the Legislature, is surely the beginning of some kind of wisdom, not only for this Legislature but for the government itself. If the minister is prepared to recommend it, certainly we would be glad to participate.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I would have to say, not in defence but I think in thrust, that the situation which occurred in Kenora last year was one that this government took very seriously. In fact we dispatched one of the highest level civil servants to that particular area in the person of Dr. Doug Wright, who was actually involved in the discussions and who has been continuously trying to bring the situation to a reasonable conclusion. He has spent a tremendous amount of time both in dealing at the local level and in conferring with my cabinet colleagues. I am hopeful that the Social Development policy field, along with the thrust of the local member, can come forward with some positive suggestions.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, if I may.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary, the member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: To what extent, in the last two or three months, have cabinet ministers or senior officials of government been in direct contact with the leaders of the Indian community, in particular in the Kenora area, to deal with them about another reaction similar to last year? What direct conversations have taken place and what ground has been covered and what is the minister’s sense of the situation now and in prospect?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, again, of course, I speak as the local member and I can say that a number of my cabinet colleagues have been very much involved in dealing with the situation. I have spent considerable time dealing with the new mayor and his council.

The Solicitor General’s and the Attorney General’s offices are very much aware of the situation, as is the former Community and Social Services ministry group now under the Indian community secretariat. We have established a new representative for the Indian community secretariat in a person from Moosonee who is very able and very well qualified to deal with that aspect of the situation. In fact, as late as last Wednesday, we met with the Indian chiefs from across Ontario and the issue was brought up that there may be further problems this coming summer. Hopefully there will not; I think all sides are hopeful that this confrontation does not go in the direction it went last year. We are very concerned about it.

I had to indicate that it may well be that if there are movements in these directions, with this type of confrontation where there are arms, as the local member I would certainly ask that law and order come in immediately. I think this has to come in before the news media is there and I have said this publicly. I don’t think we can have the harassment we have had.

The people in Kenora -- and I have full sympathy for them -- have gone through a lot. They had the occupation of the post office about a year ago, without any control. They had the occupation of Anicinabe Park, in which the people of Kenora have a great deal of pride. To have a third occurrence -- I don’t think the people in Kenora would stand for it, really I don’t. There has to be law and order brought in very quickly.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River? The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Martel: A supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry.

Mr. Martel: A supplementary question of the minister: Doesn’t the minister think it is time the government itself took a positive role and put the Indian secretariat into a ministry where it would remain rather than pass it from pillar to post as it has now done by taking it out of Community and Social Services and putting it into Culture and Recreation? Wouldn’t that be the first positive step?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I don’t think that really matters, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Martel: Sure it does.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- because the Indian secretariat is being moved as a package. The same people are there and the same thrust is there; to say moving it around from ministry to ministry does not help the situation, but they have a place to go. I think it is fair to say that during our meeting on Wednesday last, the cabinet approved in principle a new structure for the Indian people to confer with the policymakers of this province, rather than have to go through an Indian secretariat.

Mr. Lewis: Some decade the government will deal with causes; then we won’t have the symptoms.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We accept that principle; it’s one that’s been given to the federal government and one that we’re going to seriously look at.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition.

SUPPORT OF ATHLETES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have a question of the Chairman of the Management Board. Does he recall giving approval, and in what amount, to a recognition dinner for athletes, which I believe, was held a week ago at the Sheraton-Four Seasons? As a second question associated with that, did he read the column in the Toronto Sun, written by George Gross, the sports editor, pointing out that a number of Olympic athletes from Ontario are leaving this province to go to Quebec because they are not given sufficient dollar support to early out their preparations for the Olympic Games in 1976?

My question is this: Is the Chairman of Management Board satisfied that the scarce dollars, which are to be applied to put forward our athletic opportunities here, are being spent properly when they go mostly for this colossal dinner at the Sheraton-Four Seasons rather than for the direct support of our athletic endeavours?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the first part of the question, this has been an annual affair for quite some time and has been included in the consideration of the ministry’s estimates.

The second half of the questions concerns me more than somewhat. I regret that I have not as yet seen that article in the Toronto Sun --

Mr. Lewis: Rush out!

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- but I will appraise myself of it and discuss it with my colleague the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Reid: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Can the minister inform the House sometime this week what the total bill was for that particular dinner at the Four Seasons?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: If I can acquire the figures this week, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Reid: Or next week?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- I certainly would be delighted to announce to the House what we spent on this dinner in honour of the athletes who participated in the programmes of the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: Further questions?

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): One supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary. The member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Has the minister considered the financial hardship and difficulties that confront a number of athletes who don’t live within the immediate area of Metropolitan Toronto and the fact that some are not able to attend the dinner because of the distance and the cost? Has he given some thought to whether some appropriate arrangement might be made to assist them?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I wasn’t aware of that situation, Mr. Speaker, but I’m certainly willing to take it under consideration; because I believe that all of them should be able to participate.

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

COCKSHUTT BRIDGE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Perhaps this shouldn’t be directed to the Treasurer, but he’ll be able to answer it if he chooses.

What is the situation in the city of Brantford and the county of Brant whereby, because of the structural weakness of a major crossing of the Grand River, the Cockshutt bridge, the city decided to go ahead with the building of the bridge, and the Municipal Board, in reviewing these capital expenditures, cancelled it on a basis of financial capability? What is the position that can be taken, since it appears that even on appeal this might not be permitted?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It is my understanding that the member for Brantford (Mr. Beckett) is arranging a meeting with the Ontario Municipal Board about this matter.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Since the Treasurer, I suppose, is responsible for finding a large share of the money, would he be in communication with the Minister of Transportation and Communications, who has just taken his seat now, to see that the provincial highways are going to be maintained in a safe and viable situation? Apparently the OPP cruisers are not even supposed to cross that bridge.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It is my understanding that the member for Brantford has been in touch with the Minister of Transportation and Communications, and I think the matter is in hand.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Then I would put a question to the Minister of Transportation and Communications: Is the Cockshutt bridge going to be built this year?

Mr. Martel: It’s election year.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Speaker, a letter has already gone out to the mayor of Brantford and to the county people as to what our participation will be. I understand the project is well in hand and will be taken care of.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Since the government maintains the OMB in this position of fiscal supervision, even over a city like Brantford, is the minister simply going to reverse the OMB position on that from his cabinet position? How is that going to be accommodated?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I have had a number of meetings with people from the area. I don’t know whether they have discussed this with the hon. Leader of the opposition as well, but in my discussions with them it was their feeling that the position I have taken in my ministry will be adequate to meet their requirements and that they will be able to go to the OMB and resolve their problem. That’s the last I’ve heard from them. As recently as late last week a letter was sent to the mayor outlining exactly what our position was and it seemed to satisfy them.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions?

An hon. member: Why didn’t the minister get his letter to the mayor?

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

AUTO INSURANCE RATES

Mr. Lewis: Yes, I was listening Mr. Speaker.

I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Has he investigated the intention of the automobile insurance companies to raise their rates by yet another 15 per cent in the near future? What is the process which his ministry will follow?

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): First of all, Mr. Speaker, I think it’s a little premature to say there is an intention expressed. There have been some newspaper articles speculating on this. Those newspaper articles are based on the so-called green book which is given to the Superintendents of Insurance in the various provinces and we’ve just received that.

We will be reviewing the information in the green book, and I’m told that the rate advisory group for the industry is also studying the report. We will be monitoring any suggested changes and I can assure the House that we shall continue to monitor closely industry decisions and suggestions in this regard, as we always have done. At the moment, there has been no decision with regard to increased rates.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, that is wonderfully useful. That’s terrific.

By way of a supplementary, instead of simply monitoring the rates which the insurance companies impose -- and the minister knows those green book rates will be imposed -- is he finally prepared, in defence of the consumers of Ontario, to insist on an open and public justification of any rate increase application and to recommend to his cabinet colleagues that those increases in automobile insurance premiums be rolled back if they cannot be justified, as we believe they cannot be justified?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I do not admit those suggested rates in the green book will be imposed.

Mr. Lewis: They always have been.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We have always required the industry to justify its rates.

Mr. Lewis: Has the government ever rolled them back?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It is done internally and we will continue to do it.

Mr. Lewis: Has the minister ever done anything about them?

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary, the member for Downsview.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Speaker, since the minister is not going to be able to tell us any one year in which those rates in the green book have ever been varied, can the minister advise us if this year it is the government’s intention to proclaim the two unproclaimed sections in the Insurance Act which would give the government power to roll the rates back, which sections have been in the Act for over 30 years and have not been proclaimed?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, it is not my present intention to proclaim those sections.

Mr. Singer: No, of course not.

Mr. Martel: Does the minister ever do anything but attack Ottawa?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary, can the minister give the House one instance in the last 32 years --

Mr. Singer: There aren’t any.

Mr. Lewis: -- or perhaps in the last four, when the superintendent of insurance of Ontario has called into question an automobile insurance premium rate increase? if he cannot, why does he give to the auto insurance companies the right to take from the people of Ontario whatever they please without intervention on the part of government?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the first part of the question, I would have to inquire as to whether or not there has been that kind of question. Second, I don’t admit to the assumption which is inherent in the second part of the question.

Mr. Singer: There have been questions but the rates have never been rolled back.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: In our view, there is competition in the insurance industry and we will make sure that any rate increases proposed to us are fully justified.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. There are a number of supplementaries; the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the minister why he would not accept the principle that automobile insurance is a necessity even though the ridiculous law in this province allows some people to drive without liability insurance? Since it is a requirement by everyone who drives, why shouldn’t there be a rate review the way there is apparently going to be some review of a change in hydro rates and certain other things? Why not have a review before a committee of this House or a committee established and responsible to this House?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly prepared to give consideration to that suggestion. I agree that insurance is a necessity. However, as my predecessor has said and I have to repeat again, the number of people insured in Ontario compares favourably with that in any other jurisdiction in North America.

Mr. Reid: The minister is afraid of the insurance companies.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Therefore, we are absolutely convinced that the necessity which is automobile insurance is fully available to all people in Ontario.

Mr. Lewis: I have a supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: One final supplementary, the member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: What does the minister mean when he says he will make sure the increases are legitimate? Does he mean he will tell the Legislature where they appear to be unreasonable? Does he mean he will measure the rates of return on investment? Does he mean he will look at the interest paid on the reserve funds of the insurance companies to offset rate increases? Does he mean he will look at the American ownership? What does the minister mean when he says rate increases will be “legitimate”?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, first of all I think it will have to be justified to the Superintendent of Insurance on the basis of all of the grounds that the hon. member has mentioned, as well as the history of underwriting experience of the particular company.

Mr. Lewis: They are unreasonable,

Mr. Speaker: Any new questions? The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: On a separate question: If the minister’s examination finds them to be illegitimate, will he prohibit the increase?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We’ll discuss that with the company involved.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions.

Mr. Stokes: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: I understood it was the last supplementary a few moments ago.

Mr. Lewis: That is complete catering to the automobile industry.

Mr. Speaker: We are spending a lot of time getting the same answers. It seems to be repetitive material.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, will the minister also --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I indicated that we had the last supplementary a couple of moments ago.

HARVESTING OF WILD RICE

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Natural Resources, if I may; and I guess it flows in a sense from what was discussed at the opening of the question period. What decision is the government making about the wild rice legislation, the Wild Rice Harvesting Act? Is the government permitting the harvesting of wild rice in northwestern Ontario by individuals or groups other than the Indian communities?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, if I may just explain, there were funds allocated this year -- I think through the DREE agreement, the regional priorities agreement -- to study the entire wild rice situation in northwestern Ontario. At that time it was to look at specific lakes, to look at the natural harvesting areas of the Indian people.

Mr. Reid: The government has been studying that for the last five years.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I would point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that there is no right given by legislation or by statute or by regulation to the treaty Indian people for the exclusive harvesting or growing of wild rice in this province.

Over the years we have tended to lean in that direction. Because of their cultural past and their cultural ways, we give these people the opportunity of going in there first. In fact we designated areas, I think something like 10 specific areas in northwestern Ontario, for the various bands to operate. So, obviously, over the years, the non-status Indians, the Metis groups and certain whites were very concerned with this restrictive policy which we had. So we thought we’d study the entire management and the harvesting practices for wild rice; and we are doing it at the present time. We’ve assured the native people those traditional harvesting areas would be theirs.

However, we’ve looked at other areas, because there are something like 40,000 lakes in northwestern Ontario. Many of these don’t have wild rice now, but could support wild rice.

There has been no firm decision. Our discussions are going on and they will go on. The Indian people will be involved in those discussions.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary: Why does the minister say there is no undertaking, when under Treaty No. 3, signed in 1873 --

Mr. Singer: I remember that well.

Mr. Lewis: -- the substance of which the Premier acknowledged in a letter of Jan. 13, 1975 -- gives the Indians of the area the right to harvest wild rice? Why does the minister slough over that so lightly? Why have the Indians not been consulted up until now in the reassessment he describes? Does he not recognize that this threat to their economic livelihood is precisely what underlies situations like the occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, this is not entirely right, what the hon. member is saying. At no time did we indicate we would take over those traditional harvesting areas in any of our discussions; and they are very much aware of that. In no way would we move into those traditional harvesting areas. But there are other areas that will support cultivation, if the individual wants to go in and plant that rice and control the water levels.

There are 40,000 lakes in the Province of Ontario, Mr. Speaker. We are harvesting about 20 per cent of the wild rice now -- that’s a million pounds -- and we should be harvesting four to five million pounds. I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that one lake in Manitoba produces more wild rice than we do in all the province.

Mr. Lewis: Give some support to the Indian communities and you wouldn’t have the Kenora situation.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We do; we have given strong support to the setting sip of a co-op that does processing of their wild rice in the southern part of the Lake of the Woods. They are doing very well; and we encouraged them to continue.

Mr. Lewis: Who does the processing?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They do.

Mr. Speaker: Further questions?

METRO TORONTO HOUSING

Mr. Lewis: Yes, a question of the Minister of Housing, if I may. Has he seen a recent comment -- I’ll just simply quote it to him:

“The housing situation in Metro Toronto, as in many of Canada’s big cities, is reaching, if it has not already reached, scandalous proportions. The vacancy rate in apartments is approaching one per cent, when in fact under normal conditions it would be almost five per cent. Consequently, there are no vacancies. This is a scandalous situation.”

Has the minister seen that statement from outside and within the Conservative Party?

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, I haven’t seen it outside or inside the Conservative Party. I have heard it, from the members of the NDP.

Mr. Martel: We wouldn’t understand.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: I wouldn’t believe them.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: In any such event, we still say that supply is the answer to the problem which we have in Metropolitan Toronto and other areas of low vacancy rates. We think the programmes that the federal government and ourselves will supply will offset the vacancy rates we have now.

Mr. Singer: Those terrible people up in Ottawa again.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: It’s too low, we recognize that.

Mr. Lewis: I ask, because what I read from was the PC Metro Times, the quarterly newspaper for Metro’s federal Progressive Conservatives. The article is by Jim Gillies, MP, who describes the rental and housing situation in Metro as “a scandalous situation”.

Mr. Breithaupt: Very perceptive.

Mr. Lewis: I take it the minister doesn’t agree with that. Given his figures about rental problems, will the minister reconsider the rent review and rent control alternatives that we have given and that he clearly indicates are necessary?

Mr. D. W. Ewen (Wentworth North): It’s not working in BC.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I said several times in the House last week that I am continually reconsidering our position in regard to how we may have a supply of housing for Metropolitan Toronto and other areas, and what action we should take. It will not be done quickly, nor will it be done because of certain statements made by the opposition; it will be done after we have had a very careful review of all the facts. What Mr. Gillies has stated may be his personal opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with that.

Mr. Lewis: I see.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Jim Gillies is an NDPer, is he?

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): The minister won’t get any votes from tenants in this election.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: The minister has declared war on tenants.

Mr. Cassidy: He certainly has.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Rainy River with his question.

INSURANCE SERVICES IN NORTHERN ONTARIO

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations -- a matter I have discussed with him privately. What action is his ministry taking in regard to insurance companies with their head offices in Toronto which pull out of areas in northern Ontario, doing away with their agents there? The second part of the question: What is he doing about the fact that these head offices in Toronto are requiring consumers not only to have their auto insurance and house and fire, but requiring people holding these policies to have all their insurance with the one company?

Mr. Stokes: I wrote the minister a letter on that last week.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, first of all, there is a special problem in northern Ontario. The underwriting losses of some of the companies have caused them to withdraw.

Mr. Reid: What are they in business for?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Of course, in the north there are not as many companies operating as in the south, which makes it much more serious when one or two or three companies withdraw.

Mr. Lewis: We should have public insurance.

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): And have a BC loss.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: These are all foreign-owned companies. They represent something like 1½ per cent or less of the total writings in Ontario. What our superintendent is doing is ensuring that everyone in the north, by one means or another, is covered or can obtain coverage if necessary.

Mr. Martel: Well, what’s with the monopoly?

Mr. Lewis: Whatever the price.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: With regard to the second question, Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of that practice.

Mr. Martel: Certainly he is. I’ve written to him.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Certainly the superintendent is looking into all complaints at this time. I would appreciate the hon. member giving me any specifics he has with regard to that kind of a tie-in to auto insurance, because I would agree with him that it is not a proper method of obtaining auto insurance business.

Mr. Cassidy: It happens in the minister’s riding.

Mr. Reid: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Will the minister or will his Superintendent of Insurance sit down and tell the industry that the minister won’t put up with this kind of practice? And also, does he not think that it’s highly unfair for these companies, no matter where they come from, to withdraw from the market where they happen to be losing money and stay in those areas where it’s profitable for them? I thought the idea of insurance was to spread the risk.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, first of all, without being as blunt as the hon. member was, the Superintendent of Insurance has done exactly that to members of the industry. In other words, we will ensure there is service available.

With regard to the second question, there are certain statutory requirements with regard to capital, as compared to portfolio investment. The falling value of portfolio investment made it impossible for some of the foreign-owned companies to do business in Ontario at all, simply because of their inability to raise capital at home. As a result, and as a result of underwriting losses which they have incurred -- very substantial losses -- they have withdrawn from the Ontario market completely. It’s not simply a question of making money in one place and withdrawing from the north. They have, in fact, withdrawn from this market completely.

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

Mr. Stokes: Supplementary: Will the minister specifically investigate the actions of Prudential and Continental Insurance; whether they have absolutely refused to underwrite any car insurance east of Thunder Bay along the north shore of Lake Superior?

Will he further investigate the reasons they have done this? They say it’s because of their accident loss. Will the minister check with his colleague, the Minister of Transportation and Communications, to see whether it’s road alignment and extremely hazardous winter driving conditions that have brought up their accident statistics to such a high rate that they would withdraw from underwriting automobile insurance in the area?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, first of all I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the ministry to ensure that any specific insurance company continues to do business. What we must ensure is that coverage is available. That’s exactly what we are trying to do and have been able to do. At the moment, we are not aware of anyone who has not been able to obtain auto coverage.

Mr. Stokes: They won’t underwrite it unless they get the whole package.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: The cause of the accidents is a question that quite properly, I think, could be addressed to my colleague, the Minister of Transportation and Communications. There is the other matter, of course -- the cost of repairs -- and that is one of the reasons the underwriting losses are as severe as they are.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Those roads are pretty rough.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Kitchener have a question?

PORTRAYAL OF VIOLENCE BY COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY

Mr. Breithaupt: I have a question of the Premier, Mr. Speaker. Is the Premier aware of a report in the Legislative Library covering a two-year study by 12 American medical doctors and psychologists, entitled “Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence”; with five volumes of research reports? Would the Premier acquaint himself with these items so that the necessity of Ontario’s further studies on the subject might be averted at the saving of some public money?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I must confess I haven’t read the report. I am aware of it. As the leader of the NDP pointed out, that is not the only report; I think there are at least five or six reports, some of which have some relevance here, some of which were done primarily in the United States and some of them not necessarily up to date.

If the hon. member is suggesting that such a study is not worthwhile and that he and his party are not concerned about this aspect as one part of violence in our society today, then let him say so.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We think the study is not worthwhile. It’s throwing money away.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am aware of the report and if it makes him feel any happier, I’ll make sure that the chairman of the commission is also made aware of it.

Mr. Lewis: We think the government should investigate sin with as much relish as violence.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Would the member define sin for me?

Mr. Lewis: I will give such a broad definition of sin that no one will escape.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Is there a supplementary question? The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Premier if he is now prepared to tell me how much the government has budgeted for this entire LaMarsh study? Does he have any idea what it’s going to cost the taxpayers of Ontario?

Mr. Lewis: It is the LaMarsh sabbatical.

Mr. Reid: I understand that at $250 for 180 days, she’s going to make $45,000,

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I told the hon. member that when we had some idea as to what might be the anticipated total, I would get it for him. I can only assure him -- and this view is supported, I must tell him, by a number of people -- that if the commission can come up with some possible solutions to the problem, then the investment will be well worthwhile. I shall try to get the figure for him.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

KIMBERLY-CLARK EXPANSION PROGRAMME

Mr. Stokes: I have a question of the provincial Treasurer. Have the staff of his regional development branch apprised him of the problems associated with the $240-million expansion by Kimberly-Clark, whereby towns like Nakina, Geraldton, Longlac, Schreiber and Terrace Bay are going to be forced to come up with a lot of money for services to accommodate that huge expansion? Have the personnel of his regional development branch apprised him of those problems and will he be prepared to assist those communities that so badly need assistance in this time of rapid expansion there?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, meetings are going on, yes.

Mr. Speaker: The members of the NDP missed their turn on the questions before. Who’s next? The member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): They are not getting up; it is not your responsibility.

PORTRAYAL OF VIOLENCE BY COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I want to pursue the question of the television inquiry as well, because I am concerned about the implications of censorship that may be involved.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Question?

Mr. Speaker: What’s your question?

Mr. Cassidy: Can the Premier say whether the government of Ontario has ever made representation to the CRTC about violence on television? And since almost all programmes that are seen in southern Ontario containing violence come from American stations and are available both by cable and by direct transmission, can the Premier say what the government intends to do about those programmes if, as one would expect, it’s found that the violence in them may be harmful?

Mr. Breithaupt: Even “Provincial Affairs” is getting pretty violent.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I want the record to show that the hon. member for Kitchener has observed that when the Liberals do “Provincial Affairs,” it has become bad and violent. I think that’s what I heard him say. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that at all, particularly the bad part.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: One thing for sure, it’s not sexy. I can tell him that.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would only say this, Mr. Speaker, I have rigid --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He is the one who killed “The Baby Blue Movie.”

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Did he kill the Baby Blue?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I want it to be on the record, Mr. Speaker, that the Leader of the Opposition is very concerned that “The Baby Blue Movie” is no longer on. I didn’t think he was here on Friday nights.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I’m delighted to see that he has missed them.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: He has lost his reason for staying over.

Mr. Lewis: God, they were boring.

An hon. member: They weren’t on.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I want the record to show the leader of the New Democratic Party found “The Baby Blue Movie” boring.

Mr. Lewis: I will give the Premier a more definitive description than that.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, just to show you how square the leader of the government is, I am not in a position to comment. I haven’t watched them.

Mr. Reid: They are a lot like the Premier’s speeches, boring.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, they may be. I guess the hon. member for Rainy River has watched them too much and finds them boring. But I must also point out, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Reid: I have.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- because I have been out working, I haven’t seen them.

Mr. Ruston: We’ve got to work too.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I am trying to reply intelligently to the question asked by the member for Ottawa Centre, if there aren’t any more provocative interjections. What did he ask?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, Mr. Speaker, I know exactly what he asked, because it has been asked half a dozen times, and quite frankly I would say in a more articulate sense, by his own leader, if my memory serves me correctly. If the hon. member wants to check Hansard and find out what I said to his leader, perhaps that answer will suffice. If it doesn’t suffice, I will take five minutes to explain it again. In fact, I may take five minutes to explain it again.

Mr. Lewis: Maybe the Premier could crack a few more jokes, a little humorous repartee.

Hon. Mr. Davis: That’s right.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: As I endeavoured to say some few days ago in reply to the question from the member’s leader on this very same subject, I want the record to show I admit, Mr. Speaker, that a certain amount of the violence that I think --

Mr. Lewis: Spare us!

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- is on television comes from the American networks, which I know are shown here in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Lewis: They know not what they do; no kidding!

Mr. R. F. Nixon: How is Judy going to stop that?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I recognize, Mr. Speaker, there are some members opposite who would say that because we do not have the constitutional right to do anything about it we should shrug our shoulders and say we are not interested. Mr. Speaker, I will acknowledge once again that the Province of Ontario does not have the right to censor television. But the Province of Ontario does have obligation, as far as I am concerned, because the concern I feel is there with a lot of parents and with the public generally about violence in a total sense in our society today. I say this, and I say it personally, that I think --

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): The government could change society.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- television is partially a manifestation of it. I think the study will not only focus public attention, but it may come up with recommendations that could have some influence, and there is no question it could have some benefit.

Mr. Lawlor: Change the economic system and we would have that.

Hon. Mr. Davis: If the member for Ottawa Centre is totally content with what is happening in society today -- and if he says this government should not assume any leadership --

Mr. Martel: You are the government.

Mr. Cassidy: You are the government.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- then why doesn’t he say that to the public?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I happen to believe otherwise, and that is why we are having this commission. I should forewarn the member that there are an awful lot of people in the public who generally support it.

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): You’ve been in power all along.

Mr. Martel: All the Premier does is look for a scapegoat.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary by the member who asked the question; and then one over here.

Mr. Cassidy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just remind the Premier, as a supplementary, that I also asked --

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary question should be very short and to the point.

Mr. Cassidy: Since the government has jumped into this with both feet, could the Premier reply to the first part of my question? Did the government ever make a representation to the CRTC about violence on television before announcing the LaMarsh commission?

Mr. Lewis: Before he referred it to the commission.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I certainly haven’t made representation to the CRTC.

Mr. Samis: Why not?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Davis: And I doubt there will be any representation made until the commission is finished. That would be the appropriate time for submissions to be made to the CRTC.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary, the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Lewis: I mean one wants to manifest concern when it is possible.

Mr. Cassidy: Well, that is the answer, isn’t it? We have had television for 20 years and the government didn’t bother.

Hon. Mr. Davis: No.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to say to the Premier that we recall his concern about violence on the ice rinks last year. We had a royal commission then. What has happened since his concern sort of calmed down a little bit? We have been reading about a lot of violence on the ice.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I told one of the Leader of the Opposition’s colleagues, if memory serves me correctly, again last week, that I would try to get some more specific information. My impression has been that in those areas, certainly up to junior D -- is there a junior D or a junior C? -- the number of incidents involving teams in the OMHA, the Metro league, the NOHA or the Ottawa Valley -- whatever number of minor hockey leagues there are -- without question the amount of stick swinging, fighting, etc. has been less. This is the information provided.

An hon. member: Not at the rinks.

Mr. Reid: Doesn’t the Premier read the newspapers?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I will go one step further, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: There are court actions.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would say that at the professional level it is probably not any better than it was, but I happen to be fairly optimistic. The member for Rainy River has urged this. Really, I think he was very much in support of this study some few months ago, if memory serves me correctly.

Mr. Reid: That is because the Premier was supposed to do something about it.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think the member for Sarnia (Mr. Bullbrook) was almost in support of it. I would say, yes, it had a very beneficial effect. Not only here in this province; it is interesting that two or three other provinces -- one I know for sure -- have adopted a good part of the report for their own use.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The Premier hasn’t --

Mr. Speaker: The member for Huron-Bruce.

CHICKEN IMPORTS

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food.

Mr. Lewis: Ask him about the violence to the turkey farmers.

Mr. Gaunt: Is the minister concerned that the importation of chicken into Ontario has increased 500 per cent in the past year and exports are down 86 per cent during the same period? Does the minister attribute this particular increase to the increase in vertical integration in the broiler chicken industry in the Province of Ontario?

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): In the Province of Ontario?

Mr. Gaunt: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I will have to take the question as notice, Mr. Speaker. I have not heard those figures before. I want to take a look at them before I make any comment.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wentworth.

HOME BUYER GRANT

Mr. Deans: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question of the Minister of Housing. Can the Minister of Housing explain that portion of the advertising currently being conducted with regard to the $1,500 home buyer grant which says this grant is part of an overall programme to increase the number of new homes in Ontario, when the minister himself stated the $1,500 grant was not intended to produce new homes in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I think it does two things. First of all, the programme is to stimulate the economy which it will do by making sure the new and used homes vacant at the present time are taken off the market and are sold, so we have people buying the appropriate facilities for those homes.

Second, we will have builders putting new houses on the market and we will have people ready to buy those homes -- we haven’t had them in the past -- who have the available cash, which they wouldn’t have otherwise. They would have to borrow from the hank or have a personal loan.

Mr. Lawlor: Does the minister think $1,000 will make any difference? One has to have $25,000.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: In this way they will be able to supplement their resources which will allow them to have a home and have the amenities in the home which they wish to have at all times.

Mr. Deans: A supplementary question: If it is true that the grant is not available to anyone unless they are first in a position to buy a home, how can there be more people buying homes in the Province of Ontario? How can this possibly stimulate new home production in this province?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I think it is very obvious. If they didn’t have $1,500 or $2,000 in the first instance, they would be more inclined to rent. This way, they have the federal --

Mr. Deans: But they don’t have it now. They can’t get it until after they buy the house.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: -- government’s $500; they have our provincial government supplying $1,000 this year on top of the federal’s $500; they have our $250 next year and $250 the year after. This certainly helps a young couple obtain a new home.

Mr. Deans: But they can’t get it until they buy the house. They have to qualify first.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: No; new questions. The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. Cassidy: Is he going to use singing commercials on all of these advertisements?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

HOME IMPROVEMENT FUNDS

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): I have a question of the Minister of Housing. Is the minister aware that under the Neighbourhood Improvement Programme the funds available from the federal government and the government of Ontario total $7,500, and those funds are insufficient to repair homes to the minimum housing standard in the city of Windsor? Many of these poor who live in their homes will have no other alternative but to sell their homes to the highest bidder.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, the same question was asked last week. As a matter of fact, I have just got down to signing two letters to people from Windsor. As I said before there is absolutely no way I can agree with the member or with the complaints. If people have a loan available to them through the Ontario Home Renewal Programme, or if they have a loan or grant available to them from any federal or provincial programme, I think it allows the people to maintain that home.

We must preserve the homes in any community. I just don’t follow the member’s argument as to why they should lose their homes. I would be delighted to hear a more well-placed argument than I have had so far.

Mr. B. Newman: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is the minister aware that the city of Vancouver has expressed that same doubt and that same concern as far as housing in that community is concerned, and it has asked the federal Minister of Urban Affairs to increase the federal grant to at least the extent of the cost of living increase since 1973 when this programme was originally implemented? Would the minister do likewise and increase his portion of the grant according to the cost of living increase?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I will even do more. I will ask the federal minister responsible for housing to increase all the funds allocated to Ontario to make sure that we have the proper amount of funding for Ontario in 1975. I think we will support BC very much in all their requests, which have not to this date been answered. I have been, along with my deputy minister, very much in contact with British Columbia, and they are as disillusioned as we are with the federal programme so far.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor West.

CROWN EMPLOYEES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING ACT

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): A question of the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, Mr. Speaker: Can the minister explain why section 9 of the 1974 Act to amend the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act -- that section dealing with the bargainability and grievability of layoffs -- has not yet been proclaimed? Is the lack of proclamation to this date because Mr. Justice Estey could make this award to the community colleges in this area but can’t until the Act is proclaimed -- under the old Act he can’t -- and the minister wants him to be in this position?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I will have a very careful look at that. I think I have made arrangements for a number of the sections to be proclaimed, if that has not already been done, but I will have a very careful look at that.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Introduction of bills. The member for Etobicoke.

CONDOMINIUM AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Braithwaite moves first reading of bill intituled. An Act to amend the Condominium Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): Mr. Speaker, this bill makes further amendments to the Condominium Act so that condominium purchasers and owners will be better able to successfully cope with the many problems associated with condominium ownership. The transition from the original developers to the individual owners is facilitated by amendments governing the appointment of a registrar of condominiums, the common elements, leasing, absentee landlords and the continued ownership of some units by the developer. Further, the bill makes provision for the handling of many of the continuing difficulties --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Will you just state the principle of the bill?

Mr. Braithwaite: -- I am just finishing, Mr. Speaker -- which plague boards of directors and complicate the management of condominiums after the developers leave.

MUNICIPALITY OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. McKeough moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AMENDMENT ACT, 1972

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

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, I am calling the ninth order. On Friday I actually said I would call 10 first and 9 second. I’m waiting for the chairman of that committee to arrive, so I would ask the House to consider item No. 9 first.

TRAINING SCHOOLS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Potter moves second reading of Bill 64, An Act to amend the Training Schools Act.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Mr. Speaker, we don’t have very much to say on this bill. It’s something that we have asked for in the last few years during the estimates of the Ministry of Correctional Services, and we agree with the bill.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Lakeshore.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Mr. Speaker, one of the first speeches I heard in this House, coming into it, was that of the member for Scarborough West (Mr. Lewis), who was not the leader of this party at that particular time, inveighing against the clauses incarcerating and sending to training schools -- and they were much worse institutions in those days than they are now -- young people, children who had done no wrong against society nor breached any statute, provincial, federal or otherwise, and whose parents would appear before a family court judge and give evidence against the child with respect to its unmanageability. Then, as a last, desperate, hand-wringing measure, the judge -- probably in most instances very much against his own will, but what else could be do in the circumstances? -- would send the child off to a training school, there to be indoctrinated for a further successful life in pilfering, various forms of assault. Even possibly, among the elite in the profession, he might just be trained to become a proper safecracker. And this is what has gone on.

This minister is to be commended, therefore, after all the torrent of words that appeared in Hansard over the years on this very section, for moving in on it and eliminating it. We completely confirm the legislation and think it beneficial and enlightened legislation, but we are a little concerned that there be no perversity involved -- namely, that they go out of their way now, police and custodians and others, to find precisely a section under a provincial quasi-criminal statute or the Code or in any way in order to catch these kids.

During the estimates of last week this matter came up. It was pointed out, as I recall, that 30 per cent of 30 per cent of the kids who went into training school would be there under this particular head, and that would now be out.

The group home concept, the expansion thereof and the placement of children who find home conditions absolutely impossible, and in particular working through the social welfare mediums in the sense of some compassion and suavity, are the fitting and the proper substitute for children in this particular situation. I think we’ve indicated and will indicate our complete and wholehearted assent to this matter.

Mr. Speaker: Do any other hon. members wish to speak to this bill? Is the member for Ottawa Centre standing to speak?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words about this bill, perhaps to resume one or two of the remarks that I made the other day when we had the minister’s estimates here.

It seems to me that obviously we are supporting the bill as it stands. It’s a very simple bill and it’s about the most straightforward way that we could get rid of a very objectionable section in the Act. Very briefly, it’s just being taken out entirely and the minister is not surrounding it with ifs or ands or buts. It’s just going out, and it should have gone out a long time ago.

That begs the question, however, of what preparation has taken place. I’m sorry the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch) or the Provincial Secretary for Justice (Mr. Clement) is not here.

What is being done out there in the Ontario community for children who were previously being sent to training schools under section 8? What proportion of these kids will still wind up in training schools because they will be put in for various offences under section 9, but would have been put in under section 8 because it was more convenient? What’s going to happen to kids who are in the training schools right now under section 8? I think that’s a particularly important question. What is going to happen with the training schools, which were largely, or exclusively, dedicated to looking after kids who came in under section 8; that is, the training schools that were for girls? Those are the main questions I would like to have answered.

Let me just take up the one question about kids who are in training schools right now because of section 8 committals. I think the minister owes an explanation now of what the plans are for these particular children. On an average, they stay for nine months. In certain cases they may stay for a year or more, but they then remain under the tutelage of the ministry for a period which may extend for as long as five or six years, until they reach the age of 18.

I wasn’t able to be here for the second session that we had in committee on the minister’s estimates in dealing with training schools. I don’t know whether the minister, at that time, gave any indication -- but my brief perusal of the debates indicates he did not.

There are no particular plans, as far as I can understand, Mr. Speaker, for changing those sections of the Act, which are quite different from the treatment of adult offenders, in the treatment of juvenile offenders and of kids under section 8. They permit the ministry to keep charge of a child for the period after it leaves training school -- not lost for a few months or for a period of probation, but all the time until a child reaches the age of 18.

It seems to me that the situation we face is that tomorrow a child, which the Children’s Aid want to put in as being unmanageable, would have to be steered into a community facility which presumably is run by the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Or, maybe, God forbid, they will try to look after the kid in its home. But a child who is released from a training school today or tomorrow, who had been put in under section 8, could still be committed and recommitted; will still be under the supervision of the training school administration for a period of up to four or five years.

I would like an assurance from the ministry that either that will also terminate today or that there is a plan and a programme to terminate that kind of tutelage over section 8 kids, who are now within the system over the period of, say, the next six months; or, realistically, the end of the year.

I would also like a commitment from the minister that the children who are in training schools now under section 8 will be released. I would like to know when they will be released and how and what plans the ministry has. It seems to me wrong to continue what, in effect, amounts to a sentence in training school for a child who hasn’t committed an offence, when kids no longer will be put into training schools because of section 8 treatment.

Then there is the question of the training schools for girls. The minister may recall the figures I had, which I put into the record here, that something like three-quarters of the girls who were admitted to training schools have been admitted under section 8. As I recall, there are at least two training schools for girls, exclusively, plus another two or three that are coeducational.

If those girls being admitted were, in fact, unmanageable or deemed to be unmanageable, but did not have records of criminal offences, then the minister is not going to get them in.

I think that he should tell the House now what are the plans for closing down girls’ institutions as rapidly as possible because, otherwise, we are simply going to waste money. There is going to be a temptation of trying to shovel people into an institution because it’s there. That, obviously, is not in line with this particular amendment.

I think, also, that the minister should give us some indication of what the overall record of the ministry is liable to be after the section 8 referrals are terminated.

As I recall -- and this is recently -- something like half of the kids who went into training school had never committed an offence, and had never been convicted of an offence, but they came in under section 8. The recidivism rates of the training schools are therefore truly remarkable, Mr. Speaker, when you think that somewhere around half of the kids who came out of training school were back there or in another institution within 18 months, despite the fact that half of them who went in hadn’t committed any offence at all. As I said in the debate earlier, they are training schools for crime, rather than the other way around.

When one considers the fact that police don’t catch every offender, that many of those responsible for burglaries, shopliftings, break and enters, and offences like that that teenagers may commit, or may have attempted to commit, are not in fact ever caught -- that is, only a small proportion of them ever result in an arrest and a conviction -- then one has to wonder whether the training schools are in fact not being counterproductive. If that’s the case then, as I suggested to the minister before, we really ought to be talking about closing all the institutions down rather than just beginning with a particular end of the problem.

Finally, I’d like to know from the minister just what arrangements are being made about care in the community for kids who formerly would have been committed to training schools under section 8. What arrangements are being made for the kids who would otherwise have been committed to training schools?

I would like to assume that there have been some plans made in conjunction with local Children’s Aid Societies, the Ministry of Community and Social Services and possibly the Ministry of Health and other agencies of government which may be involved. I would like to think that that was the case. During the last year I believe something on the order of 300 or 400 kids were admitted to the training school system under section 8.

I presume the problems that led to agendas wanting them committed haven’t ended overnight. It’s obvious, as far as we’re concerned that they would like to see care in the community and wherever possible care within the family setting, within the home. But if the ministry is simply agreeing to abolish section 8 and not taking any other measures at all, then it’s a typical kind of Tory reform.

It is rather similar to the reforms that were made in the wake of the Williston report when there was an effort to get kids out into the community and out of government institutions, but there was no corresponding effort to provide the institutions in the community. The government cleared out the mental hospitals; it tried to clear out institutions for the retarded and places like that. But in that effort there is never a balance at the other end, in order to ensure that the community is capable of accommodating and locking after the people who are in fact cleared out.

Those are the questions I wanted to raise with the minister, Mr. Speaker, and I hope he can give us a good reply I to those particular ones, particularly the questions of what is going to happen to section 8 kids who are now either in training schools or under the supervision of the ministry.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other hon. member wish to speak to this bill? If not, the hon. minister.

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): Mr. Speaker, I do want to thank the hon. members for Ottawa Centre and for Lakeshore for supporting this bill -- the member for Ottawa Centre particularly -- and the member for Essex-Kent.

The member for Ottawa Centre has brought up several matters that we did discuss during my estimates. It’s unfortunate that he wasn’t able to be here when we went on with that part of the estimates. But I pointed out at that time, and I just want to repeat today, that an interministerial committee has already been set up, with representations from the social and justice policy fields, to review the co-ordination of children’s services in the province, particularly as they relate to emotionally disturbed children and those children who have been sent into our care.

This committee is charged with the responsibility to set up an implementation plan for the transfer of responsibilities from this ministry to Community and Social Services and we expect it is going to take them several months to complete their job and then of course we will proclaim the Act at that time.

I do want to point out that we are very concerned about this group of children, not for political reasons; we are just as concerned as the opposition or anyone else is because we feel the children must be properly taken care of. We feel each child who has been placed in our care under section 8 at the present time should be individually reviewed, bearing in mind their individual needs under the new legislation and making sure that plans are made for them in the future.

As far as closing training schools completely is concerned, we don’t agree on this, the member for Ottawa Centre and myself. I feel, like the majority of people not only in this province and this country but around the world who have been studying the situation, that there will always be a need for a training school facility for a certain type of child who can’t be handled in group homes or in the community.

We have introduced a programme of closing our training schools when there is no longer a needs for them. We’ll continue that programme but I don’t think we should try to kid ourselves by saying there will not be a need for any type of facility such as this. In other jurisdictions where they have closed them, they have found they do need them.

I would ask the House to give approval for second reading of this bill.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, could the minister permit a couple of questions on matters not handled in his reply? Maybe I could just pose them briefly.

Mr. Speaker: If they are brief, perhaps the minister will answer them.

Mr. Cassidy: What will happen to section 8 kids who are either now in training schools or else are still under the supervision of the training school ministry when this Act is proclaimed, as the minister now says, in several months?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I replied to that. I said each child’s wardship would be individually reviewed, taking into consideration what is best in each particular case. They will be dealt with accordingly.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the bill be ordered for third reading?

Mr. Cassidy: To committee, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: To committee of the whole House?

Agreed.

Clerk of the House: Order for committee of the whole.

TRAINING SCHOOLS AMENDMENT ACT

House in committee on Bill 64, An Act to amend the Training Schools Act.

Mr. Chairman: Does any member wish to speak on any portion of this bill? If so, which section?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Section 2.

Section 1 agreed to.

On section 2:

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Chairman, I sent this to committee to pursue this matter a bit more with the minister. The minister is simply saying, “Trust us. We’ll proclaim the bill sometime when we’ve got everything else under control. We will review on an individual basis the kids who are in training school right now under section 8.” That’s the end of it as far as he is concerned.

I don’t think that should be the end of it, Mr. Chairman, and I am looking for some more definite commitments from the minister. In the first place, how soon does the minister expect it will be possible for proclaiming this bill? What is his deadline for proclaiming it?

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): I have not got any deadline. As I said earlier we want to make sure we do have provisions for looking after these children. The committee is set up. We are asking them to bring in the implementation plan. We think it will take several months and, you made the suggestion yourself just a few minutes ago, perhaps we are talking about the first of the year. Perhaps we are. I’m not prepared to say this would be July 1, Sept. 1 or Oct. 1. I think it is one of those matters we must continue to press for and make sure the committee does act as quickly as possible so we can get it under way.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Chairman, my next question is, since you are now getting perhaps 40 to 50 kids coming into the system every month under section 8 will there be any instructions to Children’s Aid Societies, the family courts, other people who are involved in committals to training schools and family court judges to tell them to cool it on section 8 committals during this interim period while you are trying to set up other facilities?

Hon. Mr. Potter: This is what the committee is set up for. Maybe the committee will make any recommendations. I have already spoken to many of the family court judges and many of the provincial judges as late as last week. I am anticipating they are going to do so. Once they know this bill is passed -- it will be proclaimed as soon as we have the necessary programme set up -- I can anticipate their co-operation. I don’t think this is a particularly big problem; it’s a matter of making sure that the children are properly looked after, and we will do that.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: Well, the minister’s attitude is still, “Just trust us,” and that’s about all.

What about kids who are in training school right now and were committed there under section 8? Will they have to find themselves a lawyer and fight their way out? What will be done in order to get them free from the tentacles of the system, which is a real problem they face for as long as three or four years?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Once again, Mr. Chairman, I just got through telling the hon. member that it’s anticipated each one of these cases will be dealt with individually. There is no need for them getting a lawyer or fighting anything. This will be done for them. We’re anxious to get them out of the training school system. We’re determined to do that. The only way to do that is to make sure that each case is dealt with individually, and we’ll make sure that they do get out of the training school system.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Chairman, the minister is huffing and puffing a little bit on this. I don’t understand why. After a certain date -- Sept. 1, Aug. 1 or maybe Dec. 31 of this year -- a family court will no longer be able to send a kid to training school under section 8. But a child who is in the system now or who is under the supervision of the superintendent of his friendly neighbourhood training school and sent back in the community at this time under section 8 will not necessarily be cut off from that supervision at that time.

It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that there are two laws being put in here. On the one hand, we’re putting in a law that says section 8 is wrong and we are ending it. But, on the other hand, we say it wasn’t wrong to send a kid in under section 8, nor is it wrong to keep a child under the supervision of the training school system under section 8 after Dec. 31 or whatever the cut-off date is. Is that what you are saying?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I agree. Once the cut-off date is reached, then that’s cut off, yes; they will no longer be under our care and there won’t be anybody admitted to our care under section 8. What I am saying is that in the meantime we must make sure that we have social and family services and the other agencies properly set up so they can handle these children and not just leave a vacuum there.

Mr. Cassidy: Will the minister make a commitment, Mr. Chairman, that every child now in the training school system under section 8, whether in an institution or under the supervision of one, will also be moved over to other facilities in the community or sent back to their homes, and that there will be no child left in the system under section 8 after Dec. 81 or whenever the date of the transition is?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Definitely, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cassidy: I appreciate that commitment, Mr. Chairman, and on that point I will rest. Thank you.

Sections 2 to 4, inclusive, agreed to.

Bill 64 reported.

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 one bill without amendment and asks for leave to sit again.

Motion agreed to.

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 64, An Act to amend the Training Schools Act.

Clerk of the House: The 11th order, House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, PROVINCIAL SECRETARIAT FOR JUSTICE (CONTINUED)

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Mr. Chairman, I was on my feet the last time the committee met. Let me see, one, two, three, four, five, six -- I am not calling a vote -- just six Tories in the House, seven including yourself, Mr. Chairman, if you call yourself a Tory, but you are above all that when you are sitting in that chair; you become practically nothing, One, two, three, four, five -- five New Democrats alone -- one, two, three, four, five, six Liberals. Why must it always be this way, Mr. Chairman? Oh, does the House leader ever count?

When I get up on this thing I am going to count every time I get up, and since I get up six times a day. I will be counting all the time. I think it’s iniquitous that you shouldn’t have any members over there, whereas we have to supply the quorums all the time.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): I think the actions of the hon. member are despicable; shouting like that in this assembly. I remember counting very well one other evening when --

Mr. Lawlor: Where are all your people? It is always this way. I will prove it to you.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- there were only two or three of you, I have forgotten which.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That’s all I can tell you.

Mr. Lawlor: Every time I get up I will count to see who is here and who isn’t.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore is out of order.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): He is not out of order. He is very much in order, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: You are all out of order. Will we go on with the estimates? Now, if the member for Lakeshore would like to speak to the estimates.

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): Mr. Chairman, I don’t want the member for Lakeshore to get mad. I don’t want him to get annoyed, because I want him to be in good humour here today. I will speak to my House leader privately if I may. I want him to be in good humour today.

Mr. Lawlor: Well, sweet as the provincial secretary is and with all the light in the world, I am sure it won’t get through. We have spoken before. If you speak harshly, it matters not.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Despicable.

Mr. Lawlor: If you speak gently, or maybe if you whisper to the beggar, something may happen. The last day, Mr. Chairman, I went over approximately 28 different heads of law, which was designed to make it very clear that the ministry in question is in a state of stagnation and that nothing, really nothing, of value is happening despite the really urgent need in area after area which I discussed at that time. There is no point in recapitulating that.

I have two other areas which I shall mention before we sit down on these particular overall comments. One has to do with a perhaps somewhat lofty theme, mainly what law is all about, what you are supposed to be doing in an overall way since you have tentacles in and influence these new ministries around you, and the second one has to do with a brief review in line with what the member for Downsview (Mr. Singer) did on Friday with respect to the really remarkable statement that you made -- you see, the word “remarkable” is very neutral on the whole; it neither gives any condemnation nor any condonation of the statement, but we will see when we get to it.

That’s all I want to bring up at this particular time just in the purview of the overview of this ministry, which is precisely designed to have an overview, a wider compass and a higher perspective of the whole interrelationships between those things which are most specifically directed to justice policy in the province.

For 100 years in British law we have been under an incubus, a bane. A man by the name of John Austin, back in 1843 or thereabouts, invented a theory called legal positivism. Legal positivism has permeated our law schools ever since. It has bred a particular kind of mentality in lawyers, a carping, narrow, empirical mentality which abnegates, which denies from its inception a vision of law as having first of all anything to do with morality. For John Austin and for generations of legal professors in the law schools, in the courts, and the --

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Chairman, I hesitate again to interrupt my friend, but I can’t see a quorum here.

Mr. Lawlor: Well, I wasn’t going to call one.

Mr. Singer: I think it’s rather disgusting. The minister can’t even get his parliamentary assistant here. He’s down for $5,000 and the minister can’t even get him in the House.

Hon. Mr. Clement: He’s probably at the committee meeting.

Mr. Singer: Yes, probably. His estimates are up; he should be here.

Hon. Mr. Clement: We work in many areas.

Mr. Singer: Yes.

The Chairman ordered that the bells be rung for four minutes.

Mr. Chairman: We now have a quorum.

Mr. Lawlor: As I was saying, before I was so delightfully interrupted, the overall British view of law -- and it’s true in most western countries -- is that law has no relationship with any other discipline at all. It must be taken independently, on its own.

The division of the sciences has been such that what was previously a religious influence in law, and always was so in Hammurabi and primitive law, where there were other sanctions and where there was a deep sense of piety invested in law, it was rubbed away. Where moral theory had something to do with it, either in terms of compassion or mercy on one side of the fence or in terms of justice on the other, that was abrogated and left out of law; there was no central portion to play.

It basically came from a particular and very peculiar image of man, from Thomas Hobbes and his leviathan, whose basic thesis was that man is a beast of prey and that we live, all of us, whether we know it or not, whether we want it or not, as aggressors. We are animals from the jungle who stalk one another and who would devour one another if we got the opportunity. That is the basic background that permeates British law. It has a good deal to do with theories of violence in this society. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

The central thesis, then, is that law had one purpose and one only: among animals from the jungle, the only thing to do is maintain a form of order. Order became everything. Order still is uppermost to this day in our law schools and in the parliaments of this country, and all over the western world -- but particularly in the English jurisprudence. It is very peculiarly British -- that order is a chief end. And this whether it is a just order, whether it is a libertarian order, whether it is an order in terms of the common good -- that’s all beside the point; order is primary.

Therefore, when it talks about things like justice, this particular theory, which is so powerful, says that justice is basically to obey the law, and that the chief virtue in men, therefore, is obedience; and to the extent that we learn to obey or are made to obey, that the law has point in purpose and validity.

A socialist theory of order has to do with justice, basically. It says justice is the chief end of a society and law must subserve justice. It is found in terms of class interest and in terms of advantages taken by individuals over against other individuals within a society.

The liberal theory is that freedom is all important; human self-determination in a very narrow, individualistic sense. And that the law has one end-purpose and one only. It is not to serve justice, and not necessarily to serve order, except as order is ancillary to freedom, and therefore to the extent that the law makes men free or permits them by having no law to be free. Therefore, in that theory, law is an enemy. It is something that by and large constricts, restricts and imprisons man. Therefore law, the state and all that, is to be scouted, is to be very suspicious of and to be got rid of to the fullest extent possible.

There is a third theory which comes out of Catholic philosophy; St. Thomas Aquinas, basically. It is that the whole purpose of law is not freedom. Freedom for Aquinas is a means, a method. It is something that has to be given, for sure; it has to be recognized, it must exist for the ends of justice or otherwise the law will have no force; it would be for evolution of human development. What it is basically about is the “common good,” as he calls it. That is a sense that all elements of the population are listened to and heard and have a voice, and cognizances taken of their needs, over and against any particular weight being thrown on law in favour of any particular element in the society. You see, our society doesn’t measure up to that definition of the good purposes and the fundamental rationale of law. We fail grievously in this regard.

The liberal conception has had a certain day in the sun and it’s now under fire because of its kinds of tolerances that it had written into it. It’s regrettable to see. But having got the handle by the wrong end and not seeing that freedom is a necessity and a sine qua non for social justice, it has placed its emphasis on that point solely, to the exclusion of justice and therefore to the encouragement of certain forms of social injustice. I put to you the socialist notion of law subserving justice. Where it doesn’t do so, then grave questions of obedience to law arise.

There is the theory of the modern status conformity -- conformity to the law taken as the chief end and good of a civilization. It therefore has no amplitude, no scope, no wider vision, and no sense of how things fit into a social whole. It’s taken rigorously just as it stands. The letter of the law must be obeyed. It is somehow sacrosanct. Law is a fact. Law is a command.

In fact, law isn’t a command. It’s a directive of reason. Those who think that its chief function is to command all the time and that it works in the imperative mood mistake its basic purpose. I find, standing up year after year in this House, that as laws are handed down that’s its chief motivation. That’s the driving force behind it. Put the screws on. It’s an imperative. It will twist men to its purposes.

The liberals find that unpalatable too because it doesn’t give the sense of autonomy, the sense of self-determination that is necessary for men to grow within the law and to act as a soothing and suave force, bending human nature and not breaking it over a particular stump.

These, I thought I would make mention of, are the chief theories as they exist in the modern world. In a wider sense, as I always do once a year in these particular estimates, I would like to put on the record a few remarks about this type of subject from a man by the name of John MacMurray, a Scottish philosopher, a man of 84 years of age, who lives in Scotland today. He writes:

“So we are brought back to the question of justice. What is justice, we ask? How are we to know what is just and what is unjust in human relations? Can there be any other standard of justice than the law itself, namely, the positivist position? This is a proper question indeed and yet it is not the primary question. The really important question is, do we intend justice or not. Justice is an aspect of morality. It is a restriction which I oppose on my own power for the sake of others. To be fair in my dealings with others means that I do not exploit their weakness to my own advantage. To intend justice is to intend that my own claim shall not take precedence over the claims of others.”

Therefore, if I may depart from the text for a moment, to what extent is this society just? To what extent do individuals not prefer their own claim over against the legitimate claims of others? Not very much, damn it and thank you. To continue:

“Justice is an obligation that each of us has to other people. I cannot be just to myself except in a strained and metaphorical sense. My political obligation to maintain the law is derived from this moral obligation. It rests upon an intention to see to it that my freedom of action does not directly or indirectly injure anyone who is affected by it.

“Now the law is a mere device. It has neither hands nor feet. To be effective, it must be operated, and the power which operates it is derived from all those against whom it operates as a restriction on their freedom. If the power of the state is not to be misused, then those whose power maintains it, that is, the society whose law it is, must intend justice. Insofar as a society intends justice, the law will be properly used; insofar as this is not the general intention, law will be inevitably misused.

“Justice, after all, is the negative aspect of morality only, the minimum of morality that can be demanded as necessary to the co-operation of free agents, the negative of habitual rightness in action without which all the positive aspects of morality lose their rightness. Without justice as the very bare minimum you have nothing. All the rest of the virtues and powers of men are erected upon this very minimal attention to other persons.”

This is an almost impersonal, highly rule-wise notion of morality, as though it were guided by a whole set of nostrums like the Ten Commandments, or something like that, which is largely alien to the higher reaches, but he is consonant with the theory of justice involved. So, this is a theme which I am going to repeat since the Premier (Mr. Davis) sees fit to repeat the opposite theme.

In a society such as ours we have endemic violence. We have followed and entrenched in our law a form of violence, in even so simple a thing as the procedures of the court; namely, the adversary system, which lawyers will boast of as the finest thing that has ever come down the pike. The adversary system is a form of violence. It is a form of seeking to overreach, undermine and put down the other guy. The co-operative instinct is abnegated or de-emphasized; it is ferocious. Of course, it’s subtle now, subtle as a stiletto, when you think of Scarlett in the British courts and his mode of operation -- Machiavellian subtle -- the ability to go behind and undermine and overreach and domineer and put down. This entrenched and enfranchised aggression in our society takes the name of free enterprise. That’s what it is supposed to be -- the finest flower of a civilization, when it is one of the weakest reeds upon which any society of men ever started to build a decent relationship among themselves.

This aggression, I say, has been encouraged. It is deep in our society. It wins all the palms. They carry away the loot who are most inclined in this particular way. This is the positivist theory in law, that law is fundamentally force; that he who is the most powerful will win. A thinker called Callicles set it out in “The Republic”; 3,000 years ago it was thoroughly discussed; hundreds of men in the society held it to be the truth of the way things are and it was Socrates who went to work on it and tore it to pieces. But the lesson has never managed really to go through and here we stand today still talking, listening to the Premier at question time on the same subject, having engendered and supported and found benefit from a society rife with violence, rife with aggression, fundamentally founded on fear.

That is where violence comes from; that’s the root of it -- fear of oneself, fear of the world and fear of others. Its order to defend you hit and you hit first before you can get hit, because the defensive mechanisms are all working. The society has grown up in that particular fashion instead of meeting some kind of symptom out there. One of the symptoms is the adversary system in the courts. Another symptom is violence on television. But they are symptoms; they are not the disease.

The disease is basically in the economic system and in our social relationships. If you want to make any change in this, when are you going to get about it? In order to do so all I can promise you is a complete transformation of everything you believe in, or ostensibly believe in, because in some part we believe in the co-operative instinct and that sort of thing. Another part of us, because of the positions we have achieved in society and because of the entrenched positions we wish to retain, repudiate what we most deeply believe and we go on every day practising the old thing and blaming everybody else for certain manifestations of it out there -- having very little to do with it, because “I don’t watch blue movies on Friday night,” the Premier says.

Yes, I agree with my leader; I watch them once in a while. I have to get up to keep my kids from watching them, but I agree with them, they are dreadfully dull. That is the chief thing you can say against the wretched thing. If they’ve been taken off, that’s fine.

I suppose you could go on. When the so-called culture estimates, whatever they are, come along, I intend to spend a good deal of time on this particular subject.

In the meantime we’ve had before us opening remarks by the minister. He talks on the second page about a rapidly changing society, rapidly changing times, and needs a body urgently to co-ordinate the various segments of the rapidly changing scene around him in the justice thing. I think I have flayed the department long enough. I agree with you -- let’s get on with it. If it is that important it should occupy your first remark. That is fine.

The interrelationship of the ministries. I’ve pointed it out in many areas and in areas which you don’t cover; I pointed it out in terms of your relationship with the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle), in terms of your relationships with that incredible Environment Minister (Mr. W. Newman) and the terms of law in his department; to snaffle them in once in a while to bring them into dialogue with the super-ministry, if you are going to retain it at all. An ongoing input from people who are particularly well equipped to see the issues in this regard, namely yourself and your senior officials, would be visited upon his head, too, because that’s a pretty purblind head which has very little sense of what the needs are, particularly in the area of law in the particular area of environment.

You want to find ways and means within the system of diverting people from the courts themselves to start with; and when they are in the courts, ways of diverting them from being jailed, necessarily. You are working on various schemes. It is not very explicit what you’ve got in your mind here; you don’t say particularly. You go off on to that incredible series of questions which gave me the tenor of my middle remarks a few moments ago.

You ask a question, “To what extent should the government intervene in the regulation of economic and market activities in order to achieve a sound financial and market environment in terms of your justice ministry?” -- I admit it should have an enormous impact and the question is legitimately put but it seems a little far-fetched. It seems to me the first time I’ve ever heard a Minister of Justice refer to matters of an economic import. With that in mind we certainly had a lot of elbow room in which to make our initial remarks on this particular occasion. It’s perfectly right -- to what extent should it? -- bearing in mind what I have said about what the ends of justice and the ends of society really ought to be.

One of your estimates coming np in the Attorney General’s department is going to show an enormous $1 million increase; another $1 million increase in another. I suppose this all has to do with the stuff on the fourth page, having to do with data processing, the expansion of statistical information. I couldn’t agree more.

The amazing thing is we’ve reached this degree of sophistication in this society without knowing these facts. At this latter day we certainly want to clue ourselves in as to what is happening in the courts; where the convictions go; who is convicted; what happened to them. There are no figures with respect to the recidivist rate; no figures apparently with respect to anything. There was free enterprise for you. You know nothing; you pretend you know nothing and you do nothing about it.

You are changing. As I say, every day we are all becoming a little bit more like us, the socialists. You want a little insight, a little intelligence, brought to bear upon the great “out there” and you want to be able, in this particular thing to plan how you are going to work things, particularly the administration of the courts and that whole thing by which you have apparently been burned. I mean the reaction against you by the totally conservative milieu -- the legal profession and the judges -- thinking their toes are going to be stepped upon because you’re going to appoint court administrators.

If I were a judge I think it would be the thing I would want first so as to be able to get back into the courtroom. I suppose some of them have forgotten whatever law they ever knew and therefore are terrified to get back into that courtroom. They’re like school teachers who have been away for 10 years. They are sitting at their desks and rattling off six dozen reports for you a week. Now you are going to have somebody to do it for them. That’s great. I think you should get on with it.

I know you set up a pilot study project -- I forget what you call it -- somewhere down in southwestern Ontario in order, gently, with the utmost caution, with a true Tory sense of perspective, gradually to test the water to see whether or not it will work and if it has any feasibility at all.

Then you come to your Thursday gatherings, those pleasant little get-togethers where you appear in three suits of clothes with several hats and sit around us, as my friend the member for Downsview pointed out, leaping from one end of the table to another, contradicting yourself and giving in pro tem through one side of your mouth and taking it away with the other; breathing in and breathing out, both at the same time. It must be a wonderful gymnastic display to see what happens on that Thursday morning, particularly if the other two guys don’t show up.

Mr. Singer: He has got a parliamentary assistant who doesn’t show up either.

Mr. Lawlor: There being only one vote, I don’t think these particular estimates will be prolonged, except we would like a little insight as to what really happens on various Thursday mornings. As a matter of fact, I wrote down here: “What took place on Thursday, July 29, and on Thursday, Sept. 26?” There was no particular reason for having those dates; I’m sure they’re not red-letter days in your life. Still, it would be interesting to know whether the relationship between the OPP and Correctional Services was considered on that particular day or what went on.

Mr. Singer: Was that before or after he was appointed?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Which year?

Mr. Lawlor: Last fall; last year.

Mr. Stokes: In 1974.

Mr. Singer: Careful, he might not have been appointed then.

Mr. Lawlor: You’re going to get off the hook, are you? All right, don’t let it worry you.

Mr. Singer: Make it this last month -- or January.

Mr. Lawlor: Let’s say any two Thursdays in January and February to see what happened.

Mr. Singer: Tell us what the member for Peterborough (Mr. Turner) did at those meetings? He was on the committee, wasn’t he?

Mr. Lawlor: Your role with respect to native peoples is commendable, but your lip service to participational democracy is a constant theme without substance, as far as we can see. I’m talking about the top of page 9:

“The secretariat will be engaged in organizing meetings across the province with a view to studying the question of how the general public can be more directly informed of, and involved and consulted in, the whole process of justice.”

La-di-da! We’ll wait and see on that particular one.

There are 14 pages and they tell strikingly little. They are kind of an exercise in legal rhetoric, which is not the kind which is most mellifluous. But I won’t run you down on it. If you want to make that kind of statement each year, fine. I would put a little more substance in it. I’d outline precisely what I intended to do -- not so much padding, not so much mere sentimentality and a little more hard facts on straight law as to what the programme should be. That kind of statement can be valuable. But this statement is not that disvaluable; for your first time up, we’ll forgive you. Don’t let it happen again. You’re still standing at $1 as far as we’re concerned too. We’ll get around to your Attorney Generalship in a few hours.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Mr. Chairman, when the Provincial Secretary for Justice stood up at 10 o’clock on the evening of Monday, April 29, and read his 14 pages into the record, I don’t believe he ever thought it would produce, albeit over an interrupted period of time, such a torrent of words from my colleague, the member for Lakeshore, and my associate, the member for Downsview. So it is with some diffidence that I rise to extract from the provincial secretary’s speech my version of what he was trying to say to the assembly.

Mr. Singer: If you can, good luck to you.

Mr. Lawlor: Let’s not say anything, Vern.

Mr. Renwick: First of all, whether we like it or not, and despite the difference in viewpoint as to whether there should or should not be a Provincial Secretary for Justice with this particular grouping of ministries over which he has some responsibilities for coordinating policy, I am going to accept it that we do have one at the present time. In all likelihood some version of it would be retained by this party should it become the government.

Apropos, first of all, of nothing at all, other than to draw it to the attention of the provincial secretary, I was intrigued at the opening of the courts -- I say apropos of nothing at all because I have wondered just exactly what the treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada was trying to say at the opening of the courts on Jan. 6, 1975, and it really bears little relationship that I can see to what I basically want to say about the minister’s speech. But perhaps he would ponder on it.

Perhaps he would at some point indicate, not to us, but in the discussions which he may have in his position as ex officio bencher of the Law Society, what the responsibility of the treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada is when he takes it upon himself to address the judges at the time of the opening of the court.

Is he speaking just for himself? In other words, the night before, does it suddenly dawn on him that he has to make a few opening remarks the next day, so he feels free to make whatever remarks he may wish to make? Does he speak for the governing body of the Law Society in making the opening remarks? If he does so speak, I think these remarks which he made on Jan. 6 deserve very careful consideration by the Provincial Secretary for Justice, by the Attorney General, being as he is an ex officio member of the Law Society of Upper Canada? Am I correct in that you are, ex officio, a bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada?

Hon. Mr. Clement: For life.

Mr. Renwick: Then regardless of how long your tenure in office is you are ex officio for the rest of your life?

Hon. Mr. Clement: By statute.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Stuart Thom, who was then the treasurer of the Law Society and may still be --

Mr. Singer: Who was?

Mr. Renwick: Stuart Thom.

Mr. Singer: He is.

Mr. Renwick: He still continues to be the treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada. He said:

“My Lords, it would be idle to make a pretence of believing that the year that lies ahead will be an easy one. The economic and social pressures that are building up in the community will place an increasing strain upon established institutions and the courts over which Your Lordships preside will not be spared.”

“It is a matter of satisfaction to the bar and to all right-thinking citizens -- ”

Mr. Lawlor: Who are they?

Mr. Singer: Tories.

Mr. Renwick: To continue:

“ -- that whatever the pressures and strains may be, the courts will continue to perform their proper function in full accord with the traditions of competence and justice which have prevailed in the past.”

Well, that form of polite rhetoric for an opening paragraph is not something that I would question. I suppose somewhat similar words would be said by anyone in that position. The next paragraph or two concern me, and again I pick up the quote:

“A serious risk of damage to the integrity of the judicial system is posed by the increasing custom of our political masters -- ”

Mr. Lawlor: That’s you.

Mr. Renwick: He says:

“ -- to attempt to avoid the responsibilities which are those of the Legislature and of government by imposing on the courts the burden of attempting to enforce laws which are ill conceived and on occasions were not even meant to be enforced by those who put them on the statute books. Chief Justice Deschênes, of the Superior Court of Quebec, in September last year refused to impose judicial penalties on a large group of strikers -- ”

Mr. Singer: He is about to do it again today.

Mr. Renwick: I continue:

“ -- at the instigation of the civil authorities who were seeking to use this method to put down an admittedly illegal strike. He said that the political power does not have the right to leave the judicial power to rule on social conflicts within the unsatisfactory framework of the present law. It does not have the right to unload on the judicial power its political obligations. The court must always make use of its repressive power with circumspection, must not collaborate with an action bound in advance to fail and unsuitable for resolving a dispute which is a matter for the political authority.

“My lords, the courts cannot fulfil their basic function of upholding the rule of law if public acceptance of their integrity is undermined. Chief Justice Deschênes was attempting in a way which may not be entirely satisfactory to bring it home to the government and the politicians that the rule of law is their responsibility too.”

I find that, Mr. Chairman -- not the criticism of your government -- a strangely ambivalent statement, coming as it does from the head of the governing body of the Law Society. I leave it for the Provincial Secretary for Justice perhaps to ponder and to think about. It causes me some grave concern, simply because I think it is fair to say that the laws which this assembly pass are passed with some degree of due deliberation, regardless of whether on occasion there is or is not a quorum in this assembly. After they have presumably been conceived by and put forward in the assembly after due consideration by the government -- and I am speaking now in a nonpartisan sense -- they are debated, albeit not perfectly but albeit publicly and albeit many times in committee.

It ill behoves the leader of the legal profession of the Province of Ontario, without having made any effort to understand the process by which the legislation is passed, to suggest that of the laws which are passed by this assembly. To call this assembly or the government the political masters of the judges is a non-contribution to an understanding of what our system is about and how it functions.

My colleague, the member for Downsview, interjected that by coincidence Chief Justice Deschênes is being asked today a very similar question, because we do not know any more than the government of the Province of Ontario knew how it was going to enforce a back-to-work order. It may well be that the words or the rule, “the supremacy of Parliament” and the law which has been passed by the federal Parliament about the return to work of the dockworkers is one which is not isolated to the Province of Quebec but is a very real problem which we here in this assembly should be considering. Regardless of the merit or demerit of whatever the partisan political judgement of those in opposition may be about the law of this assembly, there is unanimous agreement, I believe, amongst the members of the assembly and amongst the people whom we represent that if this assembly does pass a back-to-work order there must be an efficient and fair method by which that law is implemented.

Strangely enough, I would like to hear at some point from the Provincial Secretary for Justice or in his capacity as Attorney General later on just how a back-to-work order of this assembly, being a law of the Province of Ontario, is enforced against those persons who are in breach of it. It is all very well to say it will be enforced in the same method as any other law would be enforced, but I am curious to know whether in the kind of situation where there was substantial disobedience of such a law by a substantial number of citizens, who obviously would be acting in what they considered to be within their right to object to that law, a government such as this would proceed to enforce that kind of a law. I think it is most important, if we are concerned as we all are about the security of our society, that we understand the methods by which a government will enforce a back-to-work order.

It seems to me it is a unique exercise of the power of the Legislature over citizens who believe themselves to be in the right. Therefore it is particularly a political law in that sense rather than a criminal law. I leave that for what it’s worth. I just wanted to say to the Provincial Secretary for Justice that I don’t think we can ignore the procedural steps by which an assembly such as this should enforce that kind of law.

Having made those two remarks, basically flowing out of the ambivalent and rather strange remarks -- to me in any event -- of the treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada and the problem inherent in what might have happened in the TTC strike in the Province of Ontario --

Mr. Singer: It happened for four days and then it stopped.

Mr. Renwick: -- and is happening, of course, in the case of the dock workers’ strike. I think it is a problem to which government has to address its attention, particularly the members of the government who are charged with the responsibility of the impartial and effective but sensitive application of the laws of the province.

Turning now, if I may to the address which the Provincial Secretary for Justice made a week ago in the House, I was struck by the number of times he mentioned the words crime, criminal justice, control of crime, the crime problem, the limiting of criminal activity, crime prevention, the awareness of the public of the true nature of crime and a reference to some survey polls. There was a rising crescendo about public participation in discussions of these problems about the nature of crime, ending in the final crescendo of his address that we’re going to host an international conference to deal with crime and the treatment of the offender.

I don’t know exactly who wrote this speech. I have a feeling the provincial secretary either wrote it himself or had a substantial part in rewriting it because it sounds very much like the provincial secretary. I think that’s what concerns me about it. I have become a fairly avid watcher of certain ministers in the government through their public speeches which come across our desk. Some I read for amusement; some for the Boy Scout enthusiasm which they bring to their tasks. I do read what the Provincial Secretary for Justice and the Attorney General says. I do read what the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) says and on occasion I read what the Premier has to say if they bear on matters which appear to have any significance.

What concerns me about the secretary’s speech in this context is I can’t tell whether or not his whole speech is hinged upon a survey or surveys of attitudes and responses of the public done for the purposes of the Progressive Conservative Party in its political role. Or whether or not his speech is hinged upon a survey or surveys done by the ministry in its role of government; by the Provincial Secretariat for Justice, by the Attorney General’s department, by the Solicitor General’s department, or by the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

I suspect that it’s the former; that we are seeing introduced into the address of the Provincial Secretary for Justice the attitudinal response of people in Ontario through a survey conducted for the purposes of the Progressive Conservative Party. If I am wrong in my suspicions, I hope the minister will allay them. I quote from his speech:

“While it is true that surveys of the public’s attitude to crime indicate that people do not consider it to be one of the major problems facing society, those same surveys indicate that while there is no general alarm there is concern that what has happened south of us could happen here and there is a determination that it must not happen here.”

Well, the first questions of importance to me are: What are those surveys? Where are they? What are the questions which were asked? What was the result of those surveys? Will the provincial secretary make them public? Or how did he come by what appears to me to be a major statement in his address?

I suppose it’s fair to say that with one exception the society of the United States differs not in quality but in degree only from the society that we have in the Province of Ontario. I certainly didn’t read into what the provincial secretary said any sense of a holier than thou attitude about we being different from those south of the border. The one qualitative distinction, of course, is the obvious one. It is the extent and degree of racism in the United States society, which has been documented many times and has been documented both authoritatively and otherwise for a long, long time. That racism, which is inherent in the United States society, is perhaps not a visible theme here.

I want to say to the minister that I want to express my concern that there may well be not a qualitative distinction, but really only one of degree in the Province of Ontario on the question of racism based on colour. It may well be that given the same kind of pressures in a different degree in Ontario, white racism would be a dominant problem for the Provincial Secretary for Justice and for the Attorney General and the Solicitor General and the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Potter). I’ll perhaps come back to that in a moment or two.

Certainly, I would suggest that the ministries have watched -- the Solicitor General’s department, and before the Solicitor General’s department the Attorney General’s department -- an immense increase in the expenditures on the police forces of the Province of Ontario. I would suggest that if one looked at the figures -- and if I have time before we come to the Solicitor General’s estimates, I intend to do so -- we will see a tremendous growth in the number of actual dollars which are spent on the police forces. A substantial part of that, of course, goes for salaries and recruitment in order to recruit personnel for the police forces in Ontario. But a very substantial other part goes with respect to their inventory of equipment of all kinds for the purpose of crime detection and crime prevention.

So when the minister says -- as he does in another part of his address -- that our neighbours to the south have poured in an immense numbers of dollars but haven’t slowed the rate of increase in crime, he is drawing what I believe would be an exact parallel to what has happened in the Province of Ontario. We have already poured in immense numbers of dollars, and we are being pressed to pour an immeasurable number of more dollars into the police forces. And yet at the same time, we are faced with this anomaly of a constantly rising rate of crime.

Well, I do want to say that I’m rather surprised at the minister using one lone isolated statistic. He carefully said he didn’t want to be an alarmist, but in making use of one isolated statistic he certainly could cause a reasonable amount of alarm, when he stated that in the past six months the total number of people held in the Toronto Jail increased by nearly 40 per cent. Left alone, that is an alarming statement; and I would trust that during the course of his remarks he will give me some idea of what is behind that statistic, because it is a meaningless one, without all of the kinds of distinctions that need to be made before that one is dropped before the public in Ontario.

Mr. Singer: That’s why they need a computer -- so they can select the statistics.

Mr. Renwick: I agree, although I don’t think the provincial secretary intends me to agree, that we are not going to solve the problem of an increase in the rate of crime by doing what, in this gracious language of our times, our neighbours to the south did, of throwing millions of dollars into their forces. I don’t think that does an injustice to the provincial secretary’s words.

There was a fascinating lead editorial -- I suppose one would call it that, but it’s always called Notes and Comments -- that appeared in the New Yorker magazine on Jan. 6, 1975. It’s quite brief but quite appropriate for the tone which is running through the provincial secretary’s remarks.

This is from the Jan. 6, 1975, issue of the New Yorker magazine, of which on occasion I’m a devoted reader:

“The other day, as we were reading that the figures on crime in the United States had gone up once again, we were reminded of a phrase that we had not heard for quite a while: Law and order. We could clearly remember the time not so very long ago when we had heard about almost nothing else. Candidates for office in particular had been preoccupied with the subject; each one had said that if he was not elected, crime rates would rise. In Congress, one ‘tough’ measure after another was passed, in many instances, by overwhelming majorities. The measures included provisions for ‘no-knock’ entry into private homes by the police, provisions for the ‘preventive detention’ of certain criminal suspects and other seemingly unconstitutional measures. President Nixon promised to alter the complexion of the Supreme Court; ‘soft-headed’ justices were to be replaced by ‘strict constructionists.’ The President also asserted that criminals should be treated ‘without pity’ and proposed the restoration of the death penalty for some offences -- a penalty that the Supreme Court had struck down only a few months earlier. The mood of the public grew panicky, too. We remember that in our city [speaking, of course, of New York] an atmosphere of fear, almost of terror, developed. The streets emptied at night. People stopped going to the theatre because they were afraid of being mugged on the way home. Our taxis came to be equipped with grimy, transparent plastic shields between the rider and the driver.

“But none of the measures taken by the politicians or anyone else worked. All were false cures, as many of the men who proposed them and voted for them well knew even as they did so. Then, rather suddenly, in the months following Richard Nixon’s fall, the atmosphere changed. The scare words vanished from the lips of the politician. The no-knock law was repealed. The theatres filled up again. But it was only the atmosphere that changed. As far as anyone had been able to tell, the fall of President Nixon had no measurable effect on the crime rate. In the last decade or so, a wave of fear swept over the nation and then subsided. Politicians, the press and television took up the issue of crime for a few years, and then dropped it. The spread of crime was a real and enduring affliction, but the campaign to cope with it turned out to be illusory and evanescent, and vanished like last year’s fad. What it left behind is what we see around us now, a collection of damaged institutions; a deeper suspicion than ever among citizens that what they hear from public men has nothing at all to do with the conditions of their daily lives; and a rising rate of crime.”

It says very well what I wanted to say about that aspect of the provincial secretary’s remarks, because I want to ask him now is he serious about what he is talking about?

If he is serious about what he is talking about, then he can, with whatever qualifications as a member of the family compact he wishes to make, read with some considerable detail and have his secretariat read not only the report of the President’s commission on the causes and prevention of violence in the United States and the long list of recommendations which came out of that commission, but many of the supporting papers of the task forces which worked on that crime commission and many of the documents which have been produced since then, as enlargements up on monographs which were commissioned for that commission or as work which was stimulated amongst persons who had worked for the commission, or had been asked to contribute, or as other books and other articles which have appeared from time to time.

I say again that in my judgement our society differs only in degree and very little in quality from that of the society to the south of us. I will say that the causes of crime have been isolated by that commission and the steps outlined which need to be taken in order to try to achieve the elimination of the kind of violence which our society cannot afford to tolerate, without dreaming for one single moment that we are going to isolate or eliminate all crime and all violence in the society. Perhaps my friends across the floor could conduct their part of this debate outside.

Mr. Lawlor: Order.

Mr. Renwick: That particular report is in my judgement a brilliant document about what we are all really talking about. I think it is what the Provincial Secretary for Justice was trying to talk about when in this address of his he tried to devote himself to the problem of the theme of crime in the society. I’m going to equate for a moment crime with violence, because I think that’s the area where people are concerned with whatever need be done amongst the ministries of the government to try to assist in some way.

I want to refer to what was called a progress report which was made very early in the course of the hearings of that commission. It was very brief and was simply a progress report. I’m not going to quote it all at length. My friend and colleague from Lakeshore has given some of the historical references that have come to his mind in dealing with this question of crime and, particularly, violent crime. I do want to quote one or two paragraphs from this progress report, with which I’m sure my colleague, the member for Lakeshore, will agree:

“Man, said Aristotle, is a social animal. Man’s ability to create social order has enabled him to embrace for human purposes the challenges and opportunities of the environment. The condition for social order came in time to be known as the state and the rules of its maintenance the law. But interwoven in human history with the strand of social order and co-operative behaviour is the strand of violence. From Genesis and Iliad to this morning’s newspaper the story of civilization has also included the story of man’s violence towards other men.

“Historically, men have not acted on the principle that all violence is to be avoided. Our nation [and I could say Ontario] is no exception. Like all others, our society has recognized some uses of violence as necessary and legitimate and some as unacceptable and illegitimate.”

Well, I commend that progress report to the ministry, because what we are really trying to say is that not that we are going to try and eliminate violent crimes -- or, indeed, crime in its non-violent sense. All we can do is to have the institutions of the society and the basic conditions under which people live respond in a way which will localize, without repressing, the incidents of violence which do occur. The only way that I know of is if we understand what it is about.

I think it’s fair to say that without immense guidance from the ministry -- in other words, without the ministry saying to the public at their public meetings: “You have a right to know what we think about the nature of crime” -- that the ministry is not going to get any public input of any real significance from what you refer to as the public. And I must say that I was rather surprised to see the silent majority creep back into the minister’s remarks, because the silent majority is the group to which he is going to appeal. He states:

“This brings me to the whole question of input to the process from that overwhelming majority who are not directly engaged in the system on one side of the other, but feel quite rightly that they have a stake in ensuring that public safety and protection, public order and equality before the law are maintained.”

Well, that’s the Tory version of the silent majority. And the minister is going to involve them in discussions about what he will only refer to in his paper as the nature of crime.

It’s very interesting to note that the nature of crime -- and this is one of the delights about this particular Provincial Secretary for Justice; it seems to be almost a put-down of the announced royal commission on violence on television and through the media. And it’s very much worth quoting, because in the same section of his remarks where he refers to convening these public meetings, he goes on and says:

“It is also our intention at such meetings to do all in our power to increase the awareness of the public of the true nature of crime, which is not always the same as the impression that some may have from viewing films or television shows which emanate largely from another country and portray accurately or inaccurately a totally different society. But different or not, there is always a very real danger that given constant exposure people confuse the image with reality.”

Well, I think at least he has some concern about the validity of this royal commission that is going to look into the question of violence in the media and on television.

Mr. Lawlor: Why doesn’t he speak to the Premier about this? Bring him into the minister’s camp.

Mr. Renwick: I make the caveat -- which I know very well, since the minister comes from Niagara Falls -- that he doesn’t really mean to say that the people who live in New York State or in Michigan or in Illinois or in the northern parts of the United States, which we perhaps happen to know much better, are in a totally different society. Indeed, this government has been engaged in interconnecting the southern part of Ontario, and indeed the whole of Ontario, inextricably with that society. And it is not a totally different society.

All right. That’s about the only indication in his speech as to what he thinks is the true nature of crime. If you are going to the public meetings for the purpose of raising an anxiety among the public for the purposes of enforcing what has come through the press as a matter of concern in the society about law and order, if that is, the purpose of your public meetings, forget it. Don’t play that kind of contrived political game.

If your purpose is significantly to engage the public in some appreciation and understanding of what you refer to as the true nature of crime, I think the public is entitled not to some necessary definitive statement -- because it is an immensely complex topic and there are any number of theories about the nature of crime -- but at least some kind of a green paper. If you can have a green paper on Sunday store closings, surely the public is much more entitled to get a green paper on the nature of crime or the theories about the nature of crime.

Maybe out of an amalgam of all the theories about the nature of crime it would be possible to have some useful and valuable public input into that particular debate. Without that, there is no way the public you want to engage will be able to participate. There will be an isolated number of specialists who may very well come to your meetings along with other people who expect to learn something from the meetings; an isolated number of people who are specialists in various areas of the field who will monopolize the meetings and who will make their statements about positions they believe the ministry should take.

How many theories are there? I know very few of them. There is the riff-raff theory, which is a widely held one. Everything would be fine if we could get rid of the riff-raff. It’s the equivalent in the criminal sphere of the small band of revolutionaries who travel around the world causing unrest in what are otherwise peaceful countries. Nobody can ever quite find out how that small band is financed but generally the NDP is blamed for a good portion of its activities in fomenting revolution in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Singer: You’re getting awfully self-conscious at the moment.

Mr. Renwick: There is the riff-raff theory. What other theories are there? There is the gun theory. There is the simplistic theory held by the parliamentary assistant to the provincial secretary when he held the former portfolio that if you could outlaw all the handguns in the Province of Ontario that would make a significant contribution to the reduction of the rate of increase in crime, violent crime and violence in Ontario. I think you have, I suppose, our version of the frontier theory. We have never claimed we had a frontier that was overcome but we do have one and there is a substantial element of that in the gun theory of control of crime and violence in Ontario.

I suppose there’s the media theory. There is the theory we are all simply subjected to what the media transmit to us. As a friend of my colleague, the member for Lakeshore, says, the medium is the message and that’s what causes the problem. That great sociologist, Mayor Yorty of Los Angeles -- I remember hearing him at Convocation Hall at the time of Watts; he was to discuss municipal finance but the violence in Watts disrupted his remarks that evening and he blamed it all on Marshall McLuhan. He blamed it all on television and then on Marshall McLuhan for explaining to people what television might do. I never thought for a moment that Marshall McLuhan would be blamed for the riots which occurred in Watts. Thank God, Yorty appears to have disappeared from the political scene but there is that theory. Strangely enough, I don’t believe that any more than the minister.

Mr. Lawlor: I think the Beatles are responsible.

Mr. Renwick: I wouldn’t be surprised.

I think this is a relatively fair statement and I am not going to give the source of this quotation. I will, if anybody is interested and the degree of interest will be illustrated by the number of letters I receive asking me for the source of this quotation:

“People have always reacted to events in terms of their own needs and problems and their social identities, not in terms of the self-serving construction placed upon events by those who may communicate them. Receptivity to certain kinds of experience and a predisposition to interpret and react in certain ways are much more basic than the precise form or vehicle of communication.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what the minister was thinking about at the time he registered his caveat about the media and the influence which the media have on this question of the incidence of crime, the degree of crime, the degree of violence and the increasing rates of crime.

Well, what are some of the other fashionable social theories? There’s the repression-aggression one, or frustration-aggression one, depending on how it is expressed. That if people are frustrated and are repressed in the social world and in the work world in which they live, they’re going to act aggressively in sort of a response nature of a reply. There’s the sensation in our society, with the sexual suppression that goes on, that somehow a freer, a more open sexuality in the society would produce a counteraction to the violence and to the violent crime which does occur.

What are some of the others? I suppose there are many, many more. There’s one that’s common in the United States, the question of access; that if you deprive people of access to power or a relationship to those who are exercising power over them so that they were isolated from it, you were therefore going to create circumstances in which crime will take place.

There’s the Marxist theory; one doesn’t need to be a Marxist to say that there is an element of validity that economic relationships determine to a great extent the way in which law and order is selectively enforced in our society. There are other schools which indicate that the social institutions of the state themselves, the educational system, for example, can be authoritarian and can be repressive, that the police can be repressive, that that creates the kind of crime which we have in our society.

All I’m saying is, I don’t want to pretend for one moment that I know anything about the theories other than their names, and I’ve only listed a few of them, but if you are going to go to the public on the question of public participation about the true nature of crime -- and those are the provincial secretary’s words -- surely you’re under an obligation to indicate the extent and the ambit of the field with which you are dealing, and it is not just saying that the arrest, trial, detention, correctional operation is a progression which must of necessity always take place.

Let me say to the minister that I think the time has come when anytime a person is arrested in the Province of Ontario for the commission of a crime -- and I say for the purposes of simplicity, a crime being a crime under the Criminal Code, as a reflection of the norms of behaviour which are the minimum norms of behaviour which are required from people in our society under pain of penal sanction. That is, we have authorized the police and the judicial system to exercise force and violence -- because that’s what force is, by its nature -- on our behalf as surrogates for us, against persons who commit breaches of what we have taken to be the Criminal Code. We commission and we authorize that violence and we delegate it and we cannot escape the responsibility for that delegation, or the kinds of questions that have to be asked.

You can see it in the provincial courts across the province, certainly at the old city hall, that the pre-sentence report -- leaving aside the inadequacies of the numbers of people and the time within which the presentence reports are required -- the presentence reports have got to get away from the idea that there is some kind of individual pathology involved in the person about whom the pre-sentence report is being made.

It’s all very easy to say; well, the only reason why this offence occurred is because of the pathology of this individual, or the psychopathology of this individual -- with some brief reference, perhaps, to the institutional framework to which the minister referred in his remarks; and perhaps the family surroundings the offender grew up in, whether he be still a juvenile or whether he be an adult; or the educational background of the person or his work experience. All of those institutional things are thrown in peripherally, but basically it’s an attempt to assess something called his own pathology.

When you make that assessment, presumably the judge then takes into account the question of rehabilitation, the question of deterrence for that individual, the question of protection for society and the amalgam of concepts -- which we as lawyers are taught is trite law, but which are very difficult for us to understand.

We have simply got to get away from that question. I say this in a very blanket way: Anybody in Ontario charged with a criminal offence under the Criminal Code has got to have an assessment made which answers, I believe, this particular catalogue of questions. Not for the purpose of coming up with a definition, but for the purpose of saying to ourselves: Why did this person commit this crime?

The questions seem to me to be very real. I certainly find, as a lawyer, that I don’t feel that I must be either a psychiatrist or a sociologist or an urbanologist or a social worker or a member of the Ontario Legislature, to understand them.

I think they are simple questions. The first question: Who was the object or victim of the crime?

The second question: How was the crime carried out; how was the act carried out?

Third question: What was the motivation? Was it a deep motivation; a superficial one? Was it a calculated one; an impulsive one? Were there factors which militated and affected the motivation? You know, the question of drink; because drink and the use of drugs affects the motivation.

Fourth, the association: Was it the act of a lone individual or was it done in association and conjunction with other persons?

Next, was it part of an organized activity? It could be organized in any number of ways; but particularly, of course, one thinks of organized crime in the sense of planned organized crime, however there are many other ways in which that kind of activity can be organized.

Was it part of a cultural pattern? Was it a response to a cultural situation which deserves assessment and attention? Does it have political impact and political effects?

It seems to me those seven itemized headings are the kinds of questions that should be asked? It is the kind of assessment which should be made of the individual who committed the act and of those associated with him; of the organization to which he may belong; the purposes which it was designed to achieve, the motivations.

In some cases, undoubtedly, you can rule out many of them. Many of them are done as isolated acts. Many of them are done only once in a lifetime. But if one wants to assess each and every individual charged with a crime, I suggest to the provincial secretary that his secretariat has got to ask those kinds of questions. I don’t want to deal with the question of whether or not it is organized or syndicated crime, that’s a different question. The question I’m talking about is the kind of inherent potential for social violence in our society.

The minister indicated in his remarks that one of the areas of concern, which is a constant theme and topic in this assembly, with very little ever happening that we can visibly see in any event, is the whole question of native peoples. I find it very frightening when the member for Kenora, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier), states that when the chips are down he’ll come clown on the side of law and order in an incident like Anicinabe Park. I think my sensation at the time that event occurred was it’s really very pitiful that in our society native peoples should be required to take that kind of action to draw attention to something they consider fundamentally wrong. We have all of the things which I mentioned. We had the small band of imported persons who were causing all the trouble up there, the ones who had come from Wounded Knee.

An hon member: They’re not imported, you know.

Mr. Renwick: Not if they are Indians they are not, as we sometimes think. They’ve a free right to come and go, as I understand it.

We had the theory of what took place; that really our native peoples are peaceful, quiet and orderly and there are no real injustices; that won’t happen here.

That was pitiful. It was unfortunate it had to take place, but I don’t want, for one moment, this minister, bearing as he would the major responsibility for the enforcement of the law of the Province of Ontario, ever to fall into the trap of using the mailed fist in situations like that.

True, they may be very frightening situations for individual citizens confronted with them. They are frightening. I know very well that on occasion, I have been placed in a position where, even though I have the utmost sympathy for the person or group of persons I am talking to about the problems which they face, I have a sense of fear and concern and apprehension. I guess that’s part of just surviving; if you don’t have it you are not going to survive very long. But that is no authority whatsoever for the use of force.

What I really want to say is I don’t know whether I welcome that the ministry is about or I don’t welcome what it is about. Perhaps if I can ask for a clear elaboration in response to what I have said about what came through to me in the provincial secretary’s speech it would help me a great deal to decide whether or not I would come down and say the suggestion of public participation in these discussions would be a valuable method for acquainting people with what we may or may not be faced with in the province.

I do not think for one moment there is not a very real concern, which has been expressed over the whole question of immigration policy into Canada, which is based upon racism. I am not making any value judgment about whether people should or should not have those views. I happen to be a person who hopes and believes he is not motivated, in his responses, to matters related to racism.

I am very much concerned that there was an element of white racism against black racism involved in the review which has taken place of our immigration laws. It seems to me to lie just beneath the surface of the debate which is taking place across Canada about the government’s green paper. Certainly it’s couched in many terms -- the threat to economic security of persons who were born and brought up in this country. It has been couched in all sorts of benign terms as well.

It may well be that white racism will have a political effect in communities such as Metropolitan Toronto. I have raised this on other occasions and there will be other opportunities to do so. I am concerned, and have been concerned for some time, about questions of white racism, questions of this theory that somehow or other citizens can clothe themselves with some kind of vigilante rights and ride the public transit system in Toronto for the purpose of taking unto themselves their views about the enforcement of what they take to be their rights against other citizens in the city of Toronto. That whole area is one which is extremely real.

When you look at that kind of question in the light of the seven headings which I used, it seems to me that a sensitive police force will begin to understand whether or not a particular incident in a metropolitan area such as Toronto is an isolated act or is solely related to the individual pathology of the person, or whether it has much wider ramifications not related directly to that individual but related to the net which is encompassed by the seven headings I repeated a little while ago in my remarks.

I think that’s all I have to say, Mr. Chairman, although I have one other matter which, while it is related -- all of these matters are related -- is one I want to raise with the Provincial Secretary for Justice in a moment.

I want to come back to say to him, though, that the theme of his speech to me was directly related to something called crime in all of its aspects. The word “crime”, in different contexts, appears as a repetitive word and a repetitive phrase throughout the whole of his remarks. I am very much concerned about what the surveys have disclosed. I’m very much concerned to have some substance given to these public meetings that the secretariat is going to participate in.

I’m not going to say anything about the international conference. I do think they are very good and we need that kind of interchange, but I don’t happen to be enamoured by that kind of conference. Mind you, if I’m still sitting in this assembly at that time, which I hope to be, I would like very much to get an invitation to attend. But apart from that, I’m not going to spend any time on it. If the ministry is going to devote very much of its efforts to that conference, I hope that it will second other people to do the job and not divert the limited number of people in the Provincial Secretariat for Justice to the work of the logistics and organization of that international convention.

If I may, I would like to turn aside from what I believe to be the major things I wanted to say to the Provincial Secretary for Justice and to close with separate and distinct remarks. I want to read a letter into the record, not for the purpose of asking the minister to respond today but for the purpose of analysis of the information which obviously is necessary.

I wrote to the Minister of Correctional Services earlier this year on the question of solitary confinement in Ontario institutions. The bald figures bother me. I don’t know how to analyse them. They are monthly figures, and I don’t know how to project them on to a yearly basis.

I recognize the diffidence with which the deputy minister, Mr. Glen R. Thompson, responded, but I did appreciate the very full response he gave to my inquiry. This is a letter dated April 2, 1975, addressed to me:

“Early this year, you wrote to my minister requesting information, either statistical or otherwise, with regard to the extent to which solitary confinement is used in institutions within this ministry. I am replying in the absence this week of the Hon. R. T. Potter, MD. Your letter was prompted by a discussion you had with Mrs. Betty Pellier, chairperson of the subcommittee on penal reforms of the social action committee of the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, who is apparently concerned with the use of solitary confinement as a form of punishment.”

I may I say that Mrs. Pellier called me because she had addressed similar questions related to the federal institutions and she wanted me to try to find out for her the extent of the use of this form of punishment in the provincial institutions. To continue with the letter:

“I apologize for the delay in replying to you, but as you will appreciate the survey has required some time to complete.

“While we would like to be able to say that segregation or dissociation of inmates, as we refer to it rather than solitary confinement, is not used by this ministry, unfortunately this is not the case. It is at times necessary to use segregation as a form of punishment for misconduct by inmates, particularly for those who at the time present a danger to staff and/or other inmates.

“The period of time in which an inmate can be placed in segregation is limited to 10 days in accordance with the regulations made under the Correctional Services Act which govern the penalties that may be imposed by the superintendents for misconduct. I might add that superintendents of our institutions are very cautious in the in which they exercise this authority and only authorize segregation when all other means of dealing with an individual have failed.

“While in segregation, the inmate is visited regularly by the superintendent, medical and other institutional staff. Visiting and correspondence privileges are not restricted and, wherever possible, daily exercise periods are permitted. In some cases, the inmate may be employed during a portion of each day in the daily maintenance of the segregation area.

“With regard to the statistical information you have requested, I am sure you will agree that sometimes such data can be misleading and misinterpreted. Nevertheless, we have compiled the following statistics for your information on the use of segregation for misconduct purposes in all of our correctional centres and larger jails. These statistics are up to date and represent the use of segregation for the month of February this year.

“Average daily population, 1,796; number of inmates placed in segregation, 173; number of days spent in segregation, 628; average number of days spent in segregation by each person segregated, 3.6.

“While the average length of stay in segregation was only 3.6 days, in a number of cases it was much less. We also did not include a number of the smaller jails in our statistics simply because they do not have any segregation facilities which are separated and apart from the rest of the institutional accommodations.

“The extent to which segregation is used from institution to institution varies according to the classification in the inmate group placed in a particular institution. It is not surprising therefore to find that the use of segregation is higher in a maximum security institution such as Millbrook Correctional Centre by comparison with the Monteith Correctional Centre.

“I hope this information will be of assistance to you in any further discussions you may have with Mrs. Pellier on this matter.”

That’s just an isolated observation. I wanted to put the whole letter on the record rather than just the statistics so that you would understand the whole context in which the deputy minister responded so fully to my inquiry. But is certainly underestimates the need for the kind of statistical information which is needed and is indicated in the provincial secretary’s speech.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member has finished his remarks?

Mr. Renwick: Yes, I have.

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 supply begs to report progress and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ HOUR

LANDLORD AND TENANT AMENDMENT ACT

Mrs. Campbell moves second reading of Bill 27, An Act to amend the Landlord and Tenant Act.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to this bill which, as you may recall, is essentially a bill which was introduced last year by me. It is a bill which would provide for a landlord and tenant review board in municipalities with populations of over 50,000 persons.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): It wouldn’t cost the government a cent.

Mrs. Campbell: The whole purpose of this bill is to seek to have proper supervision, to start with, over rent increases which are occurring at a very serious rate in the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and which are accelerating, according to my information, across the province.

I want to make it clear that this caucus, this party, does not approve of rent controls if we’re talking about rent freezes. But there has to be, in a crisis period such as we’re facing now, some supervision of the kinds of rental increases which are going on.

Mr. Speaker, this government reminds me of a statement in Samuel Butler’s “Way of All Flesh” when he says, and I paraphrase: “The farmers were prepared to oppose all the tax on the Christian religion, but were not inclined to ensure that it be taken seriously.”

This government, it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, will say it opposes all the tax and the protection of the public, but is not inclined to ensure that public protection be taken seriously.

Mr. Speaker, you may recall the other day in question period I raised the question of the problem of the Lynwood Ave. tenants committee, I would like to read this letter into the record because I think it’s significant. It is a copy of a letter sent to Alderman Colin Vaughan and I understand the same copy was sent by registered mail to the Minister of Housing (Mr. Irvine).

“On behalf of the majority of tenants in the above three-storey apartments, we appeal for an inquiry into the inequitable position in which we have been placed by the new owners of this property which was purchased effective Feb. 28, 1975.

“Prior to completion of the sale, the purchasers made application, on Dec. 31, 1974. to the city of Toronto committee of adjustment under the name of Seawolf Enterprises Ltd. to permit the building to be divided in order to sell separately eight triplex dwelling houses together with the lands thereto and including rights of way.

“Although the tenants in this building are on the assessment roll, no notice of the hearing was issued to any tenant. The residents for whom we are most concerned are the 40 per cent between the ages of 60 and 94, many retired or widowed, who have resided in the buildings up to 40 years with pride, dignity and independence. These tenants cannot reasonably be expected to afford the proposed increases nor can they readily move to find suitable alternative accommodation.

“The present owners, Lynwood Ave. Enterprises Ltd., have stated that the future rent structure for two-bedroom apartments will be such that two senior tenants face a monthly increase of $200. I think if you have been following the press you will note that one of them is facing an increase of $215 a month. Admittedly, floor space in our units is comparatively generous. However, they are far from being the luxury apartments recently advertised by the new owners. Some tenants have made repairs and renovations at their own expense.

“On Feb. 12, 1975, based upon the evidence by Mr. Wolf, the committee of adjustment found that the land contained a building with 24 dwelling units, and that the building was so designed that it divided into eight triplex dwelling units. However, in our view, the building does not naturally divide into eight triplexes without the addition of some structural changes.

“The committee of adjustment gave its consent to convey separately, mortgage, charge, grant, assign, exercise a power of appointment, or enter into an agreement with respect to the eight parcels of land, on the strict understanding that each prospective former purchaser is to enter into an agreement with the vendor respecting the maintenance of the common areas.

“On April 11, 1975 we forwarded a petition to Seawolf Enterprises Ltd., and Lynwood Ave. Enterprises Ltd., requesting a meeting with the principals, since we had not received any valid information concerning the future rent structure in plans for the building.

“Mr. Steven Riecken and Mr. Rodney Wolf did meet with the tenants on April 16, 1975. The tenants had mutually agreed that a reasonable increase was justified, using the consumer price index as a guide, and some tenants were willing to subsidize some of the senior tenants. We so informed the owners during the meeting. However they, the owners, stated a new rent structure and would not consider an across the board increase. Mr. Riecken and Mr. Wolf indicated they intended to deal with each unit individually. Subsequently, one of the tenants approached the principals on this basis, but was unable to obtain either a satisfactory, or indeed a civil, answer.

“Must tenants be placed in the position of subsidizing mortgages for individuals or companies are speculating and taking advantage of the current housing situation to the detriment of middle income taxpayers and the elderly? Our problem is symptomatic of a great and urgent problem which faces this community, and indeed every urban community in this country.”

And then, in closing, he asks for a meeting with Alderman Colin Vaughn.

I raise that particular case for more than one reason. First of all, there is the increase itself. Second, on investigation I find that this property was purchased for $480,000. The mortgages on the property at this time are $530,000. So that in effect, by shuffling papers, the increased price of the building is $50,000.

Mr. Riecken called me as a result of my concerns and he took the position that the rental increases were not really relevant, because he felt that the rents which were there at the time they took over were not economic rents -- well, I really can’t understand that kind of an argument -- and he particularly stated that it was nobody’s business but his own if he wanted to mortgage for $1 million.

I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that if this kind of operation can go on it will become quite prevalent across this city; and, in fact, of course the cost of those mortgages is borne by the tenants.

I was interested, too, that just the other day I had a gentleman in to see me who was 69 years of age, he’s on a 55 per cent war veteran’s pension -- and you know how difficult it is to get a 55 per cent war veteran’s pension if you’re still mobile -- he was in a conventional apartment in my riding and he was advised that his new lease would cost him an increase of $30 a month. The lease was not ready at the time that he inquired. Two weeks later he went to sign the lease and the increase was $48 a month; $18 in two weeks’ time.

I cannot understand why this government doesn’t realize that this situation is a crisis situation. I wish with all my soul that we could debate this situation in a non-partisan fashion, because I am assured that there are members on the government side who are concerned about this situation, and it is a great pity if we cannot bring good conscience to bear, in dealing with this kind of a problem, to the people across the province, but particularly those in the large urban centres.

It’s one thing to talk about letting rents find their own level by the introduction of new housing development, but it is useless to talk about that in these times when our new development has dropped to such a low. These people can’t wait for new developments to bring them the kinds of apartments they can use at the kinds of rents they can afford. I noticed in an article today that someone is looking into the possibility of assisting these people through the medium of senior citizen housing, but I would point out to you, in the case of this war veteran, and quite possibly in the case of these tenants, they are not eligible because their income may in some cases be higher than that which is permitted for eligibility in senior citizen housing.

What is the solution going to be, if it isn’t the right to have some supervision over the activities of landlords at a time when tenants have no alternatives and no choices? If there was adequate accommodation, we probably wouldn’t be talking about this today, but when people are stuck in this kind of a situation, surely a government that cares has to be prepared to take action to assist them.

In the bill itself we provide for the right of the landlord to have an opportunity to justify the increases, and I know that increases are justified in many areas. I have had occasion to deal with a limited-dividend building in my riding and, going over the figures, some increase was undoubtedly justified. But I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that on doing it the increase which had been applied for was not the increase that went into effect, at that time, on the figures. I would say this, and I have discussed it with some landlords, that they would not be averse to this, because they feel that they can justify the increases they’re asking for. If they can, then the board would allow those increases; but if they can’t, surely the tenants’ rights have to be protected.

There is one other matter I was going to introduce by way of an amendment, and I would like to speak to it for just a moment; that is the whole matter of tenant security which is provided for within this bill. There is one omission in the bill. I will read what I would propose:

“Where a tenant is in possession of a residential property and the landlord refuses to renew his lease by reason only of his activities in the affairs of the tenant association, the tenant may apply to a board for a review, and in the event that the tenant’s position is found to be substantiated, then the board may direct that a renewal of the lease be granted.”

I recognize, too, that the situation of landlord and tenant is one of contract and in the normal course we have been prepared to support that contractual relationship. But where in the Act we really have provided that it is proper for a tenant to engage in a tenant association activity, then surely that tenant should have security of tenure when his lease is up and when that is the only reason for his not having a renewal of the lease. In any event, I put it to you.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking that the government, which has been very firm in its position with reference to tenants, would give consideration, in good conscience, to this type of legislation to ensure some protection to people who at this point have none at all. If we think in terms of the speculators or investors, or whatever you want to call them, Mr. Speaker, who can put on any mortgage they can raise, then we know the tenants are going to be placed continuously in the position of either paying up or getting out. I ask the government where do they go?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. L. M. Reilly (Eglinton): Mr. Speaker, first of all, may I explain that my colleague from Hamilton is away sick this afternoon. He was planning to participate in the debate.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Who is he?

Mr. Reilly: The member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. J. R. Smith). If it’s agreeable to the member for St. George and the member for Wentworth and other participants, I would like to extend the period of time.

Mr. Haggerty: We’re always glad to hear from the member for Eglinton.

Mr. Reilly: I understand this has been done previously.

Mr. Deans: I don’t understand what he is asking for.

Mr. Speaker: The member is requesting permission to do the same thing which I understand was done once before when the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick), I understand, spoke longer than his allotted time because there was not another speaker from that side of the House. Do we have that agreement?

Mr. Deans: No, that is not agreeable. The rules are the rules.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): The member for Riverdale did the very same thing here a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. Speaker: Do we not have agreement?

Mr. Deans: That sort of thing has to be agreed by members. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know if the member for St. Catharines (Mr. Johnston) is supposed to speak.

Mr. Reilly: It is quite obvious, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Instead of two speakers, we’re having one.

Mr. Deans: No.

Mr. Kennedy: During the same circumstances the House agreed the NDP speaker could carry on for over 10 minutes.

Mr. Deans: No, I didn’t.

Mr. Reilly: In other words, Mr. Speaker, the member for the New Democratic Party would like to play it one way for his party and another way for another party.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): That is typical.

Mr. Reilly: I’m a little bit disappointed in that respect, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): The member for Eglinton should get on and talk about tenants rather than distract the House.

Mr. Reilly: First of all, Mr. Speaker, may I say to the member for St. George I’ve a great deal of respect for her. We have shared a lot of confidences. I even have some affection for the member for St. George; she works well for her riding. May I say at this particular time that even though we often disagree, for which I am sorry, never have we been disagreeable. In this particular case I find myself in disagreement with the member for St. George.

Mr. Cassidy: And pretty patronizing as well.

Mr. Reilly: It seems to me that whether we call it a rent review board or rent control, it amounts to the same thing if we are going to control rents, review rents and have the power to say to a landlord or a tenant this is going to be increased or is going to be decreased.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): That is why they call them Conservatives.

Mr. Reilly: Let me tell members there is a strong appeal, make no mistake about it, within the city of Toronto, and perhaps throughout the province, for some form of rent control. Of course, there are more tenants than there are landlords. I’m a tenant.

Mr. Good: He is also a landlord.

Mr. Cassidy: His bourgeois mentality is obvious.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Reilly: I’m also a landlord and let me tell members if my landlord said to me tomorrow, “Reilly, your rent will be frozen as of today,” I’d be delighted.

Mr. Good: Which does he enjoy more?

Mr. Reilly: I’d be delighted, and so would other tenants across the province to have rents frozen. There is no question about it. I’ve every bit of sympathy for what the member for St. George has indicated and what she has told us about the Lynwood Ave. tenants. I have many in my own riding, in the same way, with similar views.

For instance, one constituent writes: “When I moved in this location, my rent for this one-bedroom apartment was $189. I’m now informed it is going to be $245.” Another constituent writes: “In December, 1974, I experienced an increase of $35 and another one of $25 effective May, 1975.”

I know exactly what the member has been talking about today. I experience the same thing within my own riding. I’ve the greatest of sympathy, particularly for those who are on low incomes and those who are on fixed incomes.

Mr. Cassidy: His sympathy don’t pay those rents.

Mr. Reilly: The member for Ottawa Centre is talking about sympathy and paying rents. Let me tell him I have more people who are on fixed incomes in Eglinton riding than perhaps any other riding in the city of Toronto.

Mr. Cassidy: I’ve got a lot in my riding, too.

Mr. Reilly: I know a number of these people who are on fixed incomes. My own daughter lives in an apartment and can’t afford to buy a home because of increased costs of housing.

Mr. Deans: In the Province of Ontario?

Mr. Cassidy: But she reads the member’s speeches avidly.

Mr. Reilly: I suppose, Mr. Speaker, what you are going to do is allow me extra time for the interruptions by the members. I understand, if you are going to be fair about it, you would do this.

Mr. Deans: Not very likely.

Mr. Reilly: I can give members many convincing arguments, the same as my friend from St. George, from the standpoint of why there should be control of rents and the number of people who are affected, those who are on low incomes and those who are on fixed incomes.

May I suggest that everything I know of has gone up; and, of course, my hon. friend knows that. At one time I paid $2 for a haircut; last week I paid $8 for a haircut.

Mr. Good: Maybe he got trimmed.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Where does he go?

Mr. Reilly: Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Maybe I got trimmed, as my friend from Waterloo said.

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): How does he think I feel?

Mr. Reilly: The price of groceries has gone up; the price of transportation has gone up; the price of clothing, the price of furniture --

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): What was the member saying months ago?

Mr. Reilly: All I am saying is that rent is just one component in the cost of living, and that component really has not gone up on the same basis as others in the cost-of-living index.

An hon. member: Come on.

Mr. Reilly: Now the man says “come on”. Let me tell him that from 161 to 1972 there was an increase in the cost of living from 44 per cent to 67 per cent in apartments, depending upon whether they were one-bedroom, two-bedroom or three-bedroom. The average weekly earnings, instead of going up from 44 per cent to 67 per cent through the same period of time, went up 92 per cent. And if one is interested, from the standpoint of the cost of construction, the wages during the same period of time went up 233 per cent.

All I am saying is, why isolate rent? If rent is to be controlled, why not control everything? Why not control wages? Why not control prices? Why not control profits? Why single out one business? That’s all I am asking.

Mr. Samis: What did the member say during the federal campaign?

Mr. Reilly: Why be unjust to one segment of our community?

Mr. Samis: What did the member say in June and July?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr. Reilly: If we are going to talk about increases in costs, why not control the price of houses?

Mr. Speaker, do you know that in 1961 you could buy a house for an average price of $15,000 in the city of Toronto? By 1912 the average price was three times that, or $45,000; now I suppose it’s between $55,000 and $60,000. But they don’t mention controlling the cost of housing. The leader of the New Democratic Party wouldn’t agree to that, I am sure --

Mr. Germa: Don’t get smart.

Mr. Samis: Ask him.

Mr. Cassidy: Ask him.

Mr. Reilly: As I have said to the consumers’ association, if we are going to control the rents, let’s control all the ingredients that make up the rent. That’s all I am saying. Let’s say to city hall: “There will be no increase in taxes.” Let’s say to whoever supplies the heat, whether it’s electrical energy or oil: “There will be no increase in the cost of heating.” Let’s say to the maintenance men: “There will be no increase in the cost of maintenance --

Mr. Cassidy: That’s what the government is saying to Alberta, but it won’t do it here with rents.

Mr. Reilly: Let’s say, from the standpoint of repairs, there will be no more increases in the cost of repairs. Let’s say to the superintendent, to the foreman and to the janitor that there will be no more increases in wages. And let’s say to the mortgage people and the lending people that there will be no increase in the cost of finance. Let’s make sure, all across the board.

At this particular time, when we are talking about the cost of construction, I suppose some of the unions once again will be asking for further increases on top of that 233 per cent. As far as I am concerned, many of the suggested increases have been incredible. I would negotiate to remain exactly where I stand right now --

Mr. Cassidy: Is this what the member tells his pensioners when they face a $50 rent increase?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Reilly: Mr. Speaker, I’d like to state some of the objections I have to a rent review board or a rent control board, to anything along these lines. First of all, you put the burden of inflation on one special group, the property owner.

Second, you discriminate; you say it doesn’t make any difference whether you can afford to pay it or not, you are not going to pay any more. Whether you can afford to pay it has nothing to d0 with it. Now I have sympathy for those people who can’t afford it --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mrs. Campbell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the member for Eglinton, but I would have to protest that is not what the bill says. It does not make provision for increased costs.

Mr. Ruston: He has never read it.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Reilly: Oh, I have read the bill all right --

Mr. Deans: He wants to make his own speech.

Mr. Reilly: What it proposes is to offer shelter and services to certain groups at a discount -- that’s really what it amounts to -- and the destructive effects would remain for years. The member knows what regulatory requirements are better than I can tell her. She knows they are time-consuming and costly.

Mr. Samis: The member is justifying a rip-off.

Mr. Reilly: What they do is they encourage the owners of the small units to sell. I have had people approach me on this basis. We know what happens with properties when we put a ceiling on them. They begin to deteriorate. We know what happens from the standpoint of creating black markets when they sell the key or sell the furniture. We know what happens when we put on controls. It’s frustrating and it’s expensive, both for the landlord and for the tenant.

Mr. Sands: Maybe it works though.

Mr. Reilly: What it really does is it generates a housing shortage.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Reilly: It dries up the market. The investor turns to where he gets his best dollars. It’s obvious right here in the city of Toronto. One couldn’t build an apartment today and make a profit renting it out at today’s costs. That is one reason why things have dried up.

Mr. Speaker: One more minute.

Mr. Reilly: You know what is going to happen, Mr. Speaker. The government eventually, under these circumstances, will become the major builder. Lord knows, I don’t know of anything the government does better and cheaper than private enterprise, and we don’t want that to happen.

We know what happened elsewhere. They talk about Vancouver; in Vancouver right now building has virtually stopped. I guess it’s the worst shortage of apartments in any of the metropolitan cities right across Canada. In New York they didn’t solve it with housing controls. They started on a temporary basis and from there on for 30 years. Now they are trying to de-control it.

Mr. Speaker: The member has 30 seconds.

Mr. Cassidy: It is too much, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Reilly: Well, let me tell members what the Globe and Mail and the Star said. “Rent Controls Hurt Those Who Need Help,” says the Star of March 24. The Globe and Mail says “Londoners Prefer Flats Empty” -- and you know what happened in London.

On Nov. 12, 1974, it mentions the problem the BC government had and says that the University of British Columbia economists came out with a 10.5 or 10.6 increase, and neither the tenants nor the builders were happy. We know what is likely to happen --

Mr. Deans: Time.

Mr. Reilly: -- we are likely to find that the New Democratic government --

Mr. Deans: On a point of order. I object.

Mr. Reilly: -- in British Columbia will eventually --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Time.

Mr. Reilly: -- get to that point where they will be recommending a 21 per cent increase.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member’s time has expired. He started at 5:22.

Mr. Deans: The time expired at least three minutes ago.

Mr. Speaker: It was 5:22 when the hon. member started.

Mr. Deans: The other member did not take all of her time.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. There was a procedural wrangle and the speaker was involved, so in all fairness we started at 5:22, which isn’t really detracting from the rest. Who is the next speaker? The hon. member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: I object to what has happened here today. I object to it because the member brought it upon himself by asking for something which was quite outside the rules.

Mr. Kennedy: And what those people got.

Mr. Deans: Let me just begin by saying we have now heard from the apologist for the apartment owners.

Mr. Reilly: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Deans: The member for Eglinton has, consistently over the years, been an apologist for apartment owners in the Province of Ontario --

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Deans: -- he has stood in the way of decent rents --

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I think we should settle this. The member for Wentworth starts at 5:33 -- he got an extra minute there -- and I think we should get on with the business.

Mr. Reilly: The point of order I would like to make, Mr. Speaker, is, it was my information that the same thing had happened previously in this House.

Mr. Deans: It had not.

Mr. Speaker: But permission was not given. I understand. The member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Thank you very much.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, we have heard from the apologist for the apartment owners; now we can try to talk about the needs of the people of Ontario. I frequently wondered just what the sinister relationship was between this government and the apartment owners in the Province of Ontario. Whenever we ask a question about what the government might do to protect people against the gouging that is obviously taking place across the province, the government sits back and says absolutely nothing. They don’t build apartments for people. They don’t build public housing in sufficient numbers. They don’t take any direct action to cut back on exorbitant rent increases, even though they are brought to the government’s attention. I don’t understand how any member representing an urban area can stand up and make the kind of speech made by the member for Eglinton.

I also don’t understand how any person in this House could think there is any other alternative but to have a review of such a necessity.

What are we asking for? First of all, we are saying the people have a right to decent accommodation at a price they can afford. That’s a right. That’s a right just by virtue of being a human being. And we have to, as a government, or we have to as a Legislature, try to guarantee that that right is fulfilled.

We also have to say that people have to understand that the building, managing and looking after of apartment complexes is not the same as going into any other business; that it isn’t just a matter of getting out of it every penny the traffic will bear.

If you are going to be an apartment owner, Mr. Speaker, then you understand you are going into a very different kind of business to the making of keys and the selling of locks. What you are doing is you are going into the provision of an essential commodity and there will be a great deal of scrutiny of your activities and actions. If you can’t stand that kind of scrutiny, for heaven’s sakes don’t go into that kind of business, invest your money in something else.

We have got to try to understand that tenants have to have some security, because you are not talking about the ownership of their automobile or the ownership of their television, Mr. Speaker. You are talking about the place they live, where all of their roots are, where they have to be able to go after work and where they have to have their children come home. You are talking about trying to give them a sense of security, a sense they are not going to be turfed out on the street at the whim of any person who doesn’t happen to like the way they comb their hair.

That’s what we are talking about. What I am saying is that what’s gone on in the Province of Ontario is unconscionable and we can’t continue with it. What I am saying it’s not nearly enough for the Minister of Housing, because it happens to be brought to his attention that there has been an increase perhaps a little more than ought to be or a little more than can be justified, to say that he will review it and that he will make some appropriate move towards the owner to ask if maybe he or she will reconsider that increase. That’s not good enough. If the Minister of Housing is saying there are occasions when a review is justified, but only if those people are able to get access to him either through a member of the Legislature or directly to the minister in writing, then what he’s saying is there are great numbers of other people across the Province of Ontario who are not being given fair and equal treatment, and he is playing right along with the apartment owners.

I wrote a letter fairly recently to the Hamilton Apartment Owners’ Association as the result of some things that had come up in the press. I had pointed out that I believed there were unwarranted rent increases and there should be a review board established and that review board should do the following things:

First of all, it should be given the power to judge on the justifiable nature of any increase that’s brought in. It should do it at the request of the tenant. It should require and have the power under the law to require, that the owner provide all of the statistical information necessary to substantiate the increase, if that’s to be the wish of the board. The landlord should be required by law to respond and the board should be given the power either to grant or not to grant the increase, but not to vary it.

I made that point, because I didn’t want to get into a situation where a saw-off was arrived at. I wanted to make sure that landlords did in fact respond positively to what is becoming a very difficult situation for a great many people.

I look around and I see people getting rent increases upon rent increases upon rent increases. I see nowadays that the norm is not to give a lease. In years gone by the landlords were desperate to get a lease and desperate to tie people into the apartments. Now the norm is becoming that they don’t grant leases.

We suggest there ought to be a model lease available in the Province of Ontario and that the Landlord and Tenant Act ought to be changed so that model lease will be deemed to be in effect if the landlord doesn’t offer the tenant a lease or the renewal of an existing lease, and that the tenant be given those kinds of protection because we are talking about their home. We are not talking about some non-essential commodity; we are talking about a very essential item in their entire life.

Anyhow, I got into a bit of a hassle with Mrs. Walker, who was the president of the Hamilton Apartment Owners’ Association. I wrote to Mrs. Walker after having conducted a fairly extensive review of procedures in Quebec and in Washington, DC; and after having carried on conversations here in Metropolitan Toronto and in Hamilton with people who know something about the apartment business. I suggested to Mrs. Walker that I thought she should open her books and that a number of her colleagues in the business should open their books and show us, once and for all, where the increases were justified. I will read the letter to you, Mr. Speaker, so I don’t take too much time. I made that statement to Mrs. Walker in January. I took time between January and Mar2h to study some of the implications of a review of the books of an apartment owner. Then I wrote to Mrs. Walker as follows:

“Dear Mrs. Walker:

“Further to my request in January for the opportunity to review the books of a number of the apartment owners whom you represented as spokesman for Metropolitan Hamilton Apartment Owners Association, I have been awaiting some information as to which of the owners, including yourself, would be prepared to permit me to review the financial operations of their business. To date this has not been received.

“Since January I have been in communication with people in Washington and Quebec City, and here in Toronto, and I believe I now have sufficient knowledge to look into the business, at least in a preliminary way, in order that I can properly understand the workings of your operations.

“I would appreciate it if you would inform me by mail the answer to some questions. On receipt of this information I will then he prepared to sit down to what I know is going to be a major task and review the books. Although I feel the necessity to bring in an outside person. I will, of course, discuss that person’s qualifications and suitability with you in advance.

“The questions are:

“1. The address of each building and the municipality in which it is located.

“2. The year and original investment of the first apartment purchased.

“3. The year in which each subsequent purchase was made, together with a list of any sales.

“4. The amount of the original investment.

“5. The purchase price of any subsequent purchase, together with the amount of the mortgage assumed.

“6. The interest rate of each mortgage.

“7. Any refinancing which has taken place and the details of the same.

“8. Any change which has taken place in the interest rate during the period of ownership and the sale price of any sale.

“9. The original rent in each building.

“10. A listing of each rent increase.

“11. The cost of fuel for heating purposes and the municipal taxes in each year of ownership of each building.

“12. The rate of corporate tax applicable, the amount of corporate tax paid and the amounts, if any, of tax write-offs available and those received.

“13. The cost of maintenance, including the provision of caretaking services in each building yearly.”

I think that if we had established a committee of the Legislature and if we had selectively required apartment owners across the province to come before that committee, and if we had asked them those questions -- perhaps some more but those basic questions -- we would have been able to understand the nature of the building; the amount of the investment; any refinancing that took place; the cost of the interest; what had been paid in rents; how much the maintenance costs were; what it cost to heat the place; what it has cost them in taxes. And then, together with the other things, we could have made a reasonable determination as to the rate of return and what the profit margin was; and then we would have been able to decide whether the rent increases were satisfactory.

Mr. Speaker: The member has 30 seconds.

Mr. Deans: I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that that’s the only way we’ll ever come to grips with the whole matter of apartment rent increases. If we don’t do these things and if we don’t build more houses, and if we carry on like the member for Eglinton, apologizing for the actions of apartment owners, and if we allow the Minister of Housing to be selective in his reviews, then we will have failed a major, a significant, perhaps the largest portion of the population of the Province of Ontario. And your kids, Mr. Speaker, my kids and their kids, will not be able to afford to live in the kind of decency we expect.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Etobicoke.

Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): Mr. Speaker, I want to join this debate in support of the member for St. George and to state specifically that this party is 100 per cent in favour of rental review boards.

Mr. Speaker, I also want at this time to make it quite clear that I cannot go along with the apology tendered by the member for Eglinton. He seems to confuse, as does the minister, the fact that a rental review board and rental controls are two different things. It is fine for us to stand here in this chamber, to split hairs and to talk about the difference and to try to muddle the whole thing by saying controls won’t work when we haven’t even tried -- I’m speaking about the government -- we haven’t even tried to do anything.

In my view, Mr. Speaker, this bill should have been brought out by the minister over a year ago. I want to join this debate, Mr. Speaker, to point out that the people in all of Etobicoke have brought to me the same complaints that the member for St. George has mentioned, and previous speakers have mentioned.

The fact is that the minister, in this very House, tries to make out that rental review boards and rental controls are the same thing -- as did the member for Eglinton. In support of this bill, Mr. Speaker, I want to make it quite clear that they are different.

Rather than sit on its hands, the government should do something to show that it is interested in what happens in this province. If it doesn’t do it now, Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt the government isn’t going to be over on that side after the next election.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have many, many cases here of people who have called me and who’ve written to me about this very problem. I want, for the record, to mention one Desmond B. Gladish, who lives at Unit 4, 2 Clement Rd., Weston. Basically, he says, Mr. Speaker, that not only did his rent go up from $275 to $375 per month for the next year, but -- and this hasn’t been mentioned before, Mr. Speaker -- most of these rent increases are put in in such a hurry that the tenant must sign the new lease or get out. This is a real problem to a tenant who has a family and who has to take time off from work to see if he can find some place, some elusive apartment, that is cheaper, and it’s almost impossible. That, Mr. Speaker, is one of the real problems connected with this whole question of rents and their review.

I have another letter here from a Mr. Cheyne, who lives at 545 The West Mall; actually, he doesn’t even live in my riding. But he wrote to me, Mr. Speaker, and I’m just going to quote one paragraph: “Do you think a 48.15 per cent increase in rent over three years is justified?” This is what he asks, and he goes on to tell me how he’s suddenly been forced to pay this.

The letter actually is written to the hon. member for York West (Mr. MacBeth) and this man lives in that member’s riding, but he put a little note on the bottom of the copy he sent to me, Mr. Speaker. He said:

“Dear Mr. Braithwaite:

“Thought you might be interested in these figures as I understand you are trying to do something about this situation.”

Now, I wonder why the government members don’t get that type of letter. If they do, why aren’t they doing something about it? It shouldn’t be that we on this side should have to push the government on something like this. In the government caucus, why don’t the government members point out that all throughout Metro, and I’m certain throughout the rest of Ontario, this is a problem that renters are having, generally speaking?

I want to turn from the private sector to the public sector, and I want to talk for a few minutes about Ontario Housing and the people who live there.

In my particular riding, Mr. Speaker, in the northern part of Etobicoke, we have something like one in 10 people who live in Ontario Housing. A lot of these people are not people on welfare; they’re what we call the working poor. These people are people who don’t have the benefit of the huge increases you read about that unions are getting. These are the very people who have to stay in Ontario Housing. This, basically, is one of the reasons why Ontario Housing was brought about.

The question of the 25 per cent of gross income that is required by Ontario Housing is a real problem. I want to quote from a letter that was written to me by a tenant in Ontario Housing:

“I am writing in regard to OHC rents. With rent geared to 25 per cent of gross income, we find it very hard to make ends meet. If things continue the way they are at present I would be better off on welfare, after paying car and life insurance, rent, hydro, phone, gas for car (six-cylinder economy car), medicine prescribed by doctor for wife and children and myself, and one small loan to bank.

“I do not smoke or drink or buy anything outside the home to eat or drink. We try to save $8 within two months so I can take the wife out to the movies. The doctor said I should take the wife out as much as I can. But we are lucky to have $20 to $25 for food. We budget ourselves very tight. May 1 we will be paying $225 a month compared to the old rent of $180. As you can see that is an increase of $45; you can see things are getting tight.”

Then he goes on to say that the supervisor keeps bugging him if he’s a day or so late on the rent. Now, maybe that’s his job, but I’m sure there should be more consideration shown. But then he goes on to say: “I should have mentioned that my net income is $137 to $141 a week.”

Mr. Speaker, rent geared to 25 per cent of gross income is unjust, and coupled with the fact that no consideration is given to other economic factors in the assessment of rent, it is most unfair. I believe that rental review boards should be set up for Ontario Housing residents with a view to more equitable assessment of rents on a more individual basis.

This 25 per cent of gross income assessment should also be viewed in the light of its effect on hard-working people who would like to move out of Ontario Housing, and into the private sector. After all, Mr. Speaker, isn’t that one of the reasons Ontario Housing was set up in the first place?

I am going to mention a family in Ontario Housing in Rexdale which consists of a mother and father with four children. These people were saving up to move out of Ontario Housing and the lady took a job at Eaton’s in December. She made something like $5,000 over the year and they had $1,300 to put a down payment on a house they won in one of those HOME lotteries. As soon as Ontario Housing found out that she had worked, they sent her a bill for $ 1,800. Nobody said how the figure was arrived at and it is a good question of how it was arrived at.

Mr. Speaker: May I ask the hon. member if he can finish in one minute to give the --

Mr. Braithwaite: Mr. Speaker, I want to go on to say this woman had one awful time, finally having to go to her credit union to borrow $1,800 to pay Ontario Housing so she could get out of Ontario Housing. The real crux of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that not one official at OHC, from the lowest echelon upward, cared at all about what she was doing, whether she was trying to get out or not.

Secondly, the way the rent assessment in Ontario Housing is geared now, Mr. Speaker, prohibits families, just like this woman’s, from ever moving out, and that is a crime.

I want to close by saying that these working poor, these people who have to live in Ontario Housing and are doing their best to get out, are in many cases actually bearing a good proportion of the subsidization cost of those in Ontario Housing who are unable to support themselves and are a public charge. For these reasons, Mr. Speaker, I say not only the private landlord but also Ontario Housing Corp. should come under some sort of body like a rental review board.

I want to close by saying, Mr. Speaker, that in all conscience I can’t understand how the minister could stand up here day after day under heavy fire from the opposition and try to muddy the whole situation by saying controls won’t work.

Mr. Speaker: Your time is up.

Mr. Braithwaite: A rental review board will work, Mr. Speaker. It should be tried by this government as soon as possible. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Stormont.

Mr. Samis: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the limited time I have at my disposition, let me say I wholeheartedly support the bill that has been introduced.

I come from a small town in eastern Ontario and the question of housing is not one confined to the large metropolitan areas. In the city of Cornwall, for example, I am getting an increasing number of people coming to me complaining about rent increases. Here we are talking about something, Mr. Speaker, that is not a luxury. It is an essential, and there is no choice whatsoever. The lack of any form of rent control really hits hard at the people on low incomes, the elderly and, in our community, the unemployed, people who do not have any form of job security in the textile and pulp and paper industries.

If you listen to the other side, Mr. Speaker, you think this or that, black or white, no choice. There are two provinces in Canada which at least have done something and they aren’t necessarily NDP provinces. The Province of British Columbia, through the NDP, has obviously taken a very rigid policy of rent controls with a fixed percentage, but the Liberal Province of Quebec has done something as well with its rental commissions. It is not a question of no one doing anything. There are two provinces which have had the guts at least to try to do something and there is a variety of options available.

We can have general provincial controls which we in the NDP would support. Failing that, at least we could have some form of municipal control. If the city of Toronto or Ottawa or Hamilton requested it, they could impose it at a municipal level; at least that’s something to help the tenants.

We can have an outright freeze, a ceiling, with no increases whatsoever. At a time of inflation that is obviously debatable. We can have control of the increases. We can allow a certain percentage increase but would control the increases. That would obviously make sense in our society right now.

We could have the fourth option, the one that has been taken over by this government -- the do-nothing policy of the Tories. They refuse to do anything to protect the tenants of Ontario. The minister stands up here saying, “Send me a letter and I will investigate.” My colleague, the member for Parkdale (Mr. Dukszta), sent him 12 letters; he said, “Insufficient evidence; I won’t do anything about it.”

That is sheer tokenism. It is an Uncle Tom approach and it is unacceptable in our society.

In the context of the second option, Mr. Speaker, we can have rental commissions, Quebec style. We can have what the member for St. George has suggested -- rent review boards -- or we can have the rental tribunal suggested by my colleague, the member for Ottawa-Centre.

Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to support any one of the three to do something to help the tenants of Ontario who right now are getting absolutely nothing in terms of protection or assistance from this government. The need is there. The increases are extravagant, and yet the government refuses to do anything.

It amazes me, Mr. Speaker, because six months ago these same Conservatives were going around all across Canada preaching a wage and price freeze. They were supporting it here in the Province of Ontario backing Mr. Stanfield. They wanted a wage and price freeze. Yet they get up here in the Legislature and they are opposed to any form of assistance for the tenants of Ontario.

The budget was totally devoid of assistance for the tenants of Ontario. Again, it was a do-nothing policy. In large metropolitan areas, Mr. Speaker, they talked about letting the market supply situation settle the price. We’ll see what happens in that context. In how many cities is there real competition in the construction industry compared to the number of cities where there is an outright cartel or control by monopolies or a few large development companies?

I noticed that the mayor of North York who, I understand, is no flaming socialist, said: “I’m a business man. I believe in free enterprise. However, I do advocate government intervention when monopolies and cartels control an industry. Only a handful of developers control the apartment market here in Toronto.” This is a free enterpriser saying that he sees there’s no longer free enterprise but it’s monopoly control. Obviously, something has to be done.

We in the NDP have advocated for a long time and will continue to advocate rent controls and amendments to the Act to provide for further rights for tenants. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, we want to see a far greater supply of rental accommodations. Whether it is publicly or privately financed, something has got to be done to increase the supply. We’re not satisfied with the 7,000 increase in the total number of units constructed.

We want to see a coherent, unified policy to protect tenants from gougers and from exploitation. We don’t begrudge the landlord the right to increase rents based on cost, based on the cost of living and proven conclusively. If it can work in Quebec with all its deficiencies -- and it’s working in Quebec -- if it can work in British Columbia, it can work in Ontario. This is the year to try it, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Is there no other speaker?

This order of business is completed.

The hon. House leader.

Mr. Deans: Before we have an adjournment motion, I want to clear up a misunderstanding. On April 14, when the hon. member for Riverdale was speaking, he spoke as the second NDP speaker. He had followed our colleague from Windsor West (Mr. Bounsall), the member for St. George and the member for Renfrew South (Mr. Yakabuski). He reached a point in his remarks when the Speaker pointed out that his time had elapsed. Since he was reading from a document, he asked if he could complete the reading from the document, and there was consent given.

That’s an entirely different matter from asking to be allowed to use the time of two members. If the member for Eglinton had been reading from a document and had wanted to complete that reading, there is no one who would have denied it to him. But I think it’s a bad precedent to establish that one member can take the time of two in the private members’ hour. If the Tories can’t find two members to speak on an important bill like this, then they should be ashamed of themselves.

Mr. Reilly: In speaking to the point of order that was raised, Mr. Speaker, in my view there’s no difference whatsoever. It’s an extension of time which was granted to the member for Riverdale and which was not granted to me. It was definitely an extension of time and there was no difference whatsoever.

Mr. Cassidy: That is not what the member asked for.

Mr. Deans: Not at all. The member for Eglinton asked for the right to use up two members’ time.

Mr. Speaker: We asked for your consent and it wasn’t obtained. There’s not much more we can do.

Mr. Deans: No, he did not.

Mr. Speaker: As a matter of fact, if the full number of six speakers always speaks it takes an hour and 10 minutes anyway. So somebody has to give a little bit here when it’s reasonable.

The hon. House leader.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Yes, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the first order of business I will call is item No. 10, before we return to the estimates of the Provincial Secretary for Justice (Mr. Clement). As I understand it, he has some official commitment. If he has to leave prior to 6 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, I will call the estimates of the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart).

Mr. Deans: Am I to assume from that, Mr. Speaker, if I may, that in the evening tomorrow we will do the estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I think I can assure my hon. friend that that is the case, yes.

Mr. Deans: Thank you.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 6 o’clock, p.m.