Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 10 o’clock, a.m.

Prayers.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Mr. Speaker, if I may rise on a point of order, I understand that yesterday my leader asked a question as to why three members of the Canadian Workers’ Union were denied access to this building and your answer was that there had been a mistake, sir, and that the matter would be investigated. Could I now ask why they are still being denied access to the building, as I understand they are?

Mr. Speaker: Order please. They have not been excluded this morning, and the point was clarified. I will have a statement to make on the other part of it a bit later.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, this may be presumptuous, but I don’t really regard that as satisfactory. I want to know why, after you spoke to the House yesterday afternoon at question period, these people were treated as they were. I have not that much sympathy for the cause, but let me tell you, there is something wrong with this building when people are denied access again yesterday evening after the Speaker professed his own concern. When I saw one of them this morning, to receive just a two-page written message expressing concern about the way they were treated, there was an Ontario Protective Service security guard sitting in the corridor, and I object that people who come to see me, as a member of the Legislature, have to be followed around the buildings by security guards. That doesn’t seem to me to encourage accessibility to legislative members, and I would like an explanation from the Speaker why this particular group has been so hounded over the last 24 hours. It really baffles me.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps I should make my ruling at the present time on both matters, which I was going to bring up later.

I feel I should refer to a situation which developed in the House yesterday afternoon. I am referring to the fact that first of all the member for High Park (Mr. Shulman) introduced a weapon into the chamber. I assume that one purpose of this action was to demonstrate that the security of the chamber appears to be inadequate. This is a matter which has been receiving consideration in recent weeks from myself and officers of the House in conjunction with the OPP, and I feel definite progress has been made, notwithstanding yesterday’s incident.

Members are aware that all entrances to this building are now being monitored and parcels are being inspected. However, members of the Legislature are exempt from this inspection. It can, therefore be easily understood that a member could walk into this building and even into this chamber with a parcel and leave it under his desk, without the duty officer of the Ontario Government Protective Service being concerned with his action. It is for this reason that I consider the dereliction was not on the part of the officer but rather constituted a flagrant misuse of his privilege by a member.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Most people won’t agree with the Speaker, so the Tories can go on and pound their desks.

Mr. Lewis: They have got to be kidding, those people opposite.

Mr. Speaker: Privilege carries with it responsibility and if the members are going to abuse the privileges they enjoy in a manner such as this, it is obvious it would become necessary to examine every parcel and every briefcase brought into the chamber by members. I think the House would agree this would be undesirable.

In any event, I must say I take such a serious view of this matter that I feel I would be justified if I asked for a motion to expel a member guilty of such conduct in the future.

Now there was also the incident of an alleged refusal by a duty officer to permit a statement to be sent by members of the public to the press gallery.

Notwithstanding my statement of yesterday, I have carefully investigated this further and found that there was more to this incident than I was aware of at the time. The persons in question were members of a group of demonstrators who were given every opportunity to use the normal facilities, always extended in such cases, to make an appointment with anyone in the building who is prepared to receive them. They made no effort to make such an appointment.

Mr. Lewis: What do you mean make an appointment? What kind of an answer is that? Come on.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Order, please.

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): Don’t admit that you are accessible.

Mr. Speaker: Nor did they at any time communicate to the duty officer that they wished to deliver anything to the press gallery or have any such document delivered for them. Had they done that, they would have been accommodated. I feel the duty officer acted quite properly and in accordance with his instructions.

Now the word which got to my ears didn’t include this information. However, it was a demonstration and, as the members realize or remember or recall, when there were previous demonstrations -- which must be outside -- if any one of those people or a group of them wish to see a member or anyone in the House, they are accommodated. This was done a short while ago. I forget what group it was; the IEW, I believe it was; I could stand to be corrected on that. At any rate they met with various members of the House and they were escorted to wherever they were going. But the demonstration must be outside.

By the way, when it was pointed out this morning that members of the group from yesterday wished, I believe, to sit in the public gallery, they have been allowed to do so because it’s not a demonstration.

Mr. Lewis: That’s very nice of you, after we make a public issue of it.

Mr. Speaker: No. This is not a demonstration; there must be no demonstrations in here, you understand. That must be done outside.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, the demonstration quite aside, since when is it necessary for people to inform your security officers of appointments made with members in order to gain access to members? That’s the first time I have ever heard it apply to any group. I want to point out to you, sir, that there was no demonstration last night when they were denied access to the gallery again.

I am not at all sure they should be followed around by security guards during the course of the day. I think your security guards are, on occasion, perhaps over-zealous with private citizens. I would like you to suggest to them that when people feel they are demonstrating on legitimate causes, they should be allowed access to members of the Legislature as the general public almost always is.

Mr. Speaker: I disagree with a part of the hon. member’s comment. First, it was a demonstration yesterday. I’m positive that the members will support me in my determination that the duty officer took the right step. I was not aware that they were refused entrance last evening.

Mr. Lewis: They were denied again.

Mr. Speaker: I was not aware of that. I want to make it quite clear that the public will not be denied entrance to this building; but if they are part of a demonstration, and they wish to come in, they may do so providing --

Mr. Lewis: They have an appointment.

Mr. Speaker: No, they don’t have to have an appointment ahead of time. But we will contact a duty officer who will make sure the member wishes to see them -- or whoever it is who wishes to accommodate them -- rather than just let them run wild. I don’t mean run wild in the literal sense of the words.

Mr. Lewis: That’s what the Speaker does mean, that is exactly what he means.

Mr. Speaker: No, no. I don’t want to exaggerate this thing; but this is the way it must be, to keep control of demonstrations.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Sir, on a point of order, if I may.

Mrs. Campbell: Sir, just following that, may I ask if you will define in these instructions precisely what a demonstration is. If one person comes to the front of this building with a placard, is that a demonstration and is that person going to be placed in this position? How many people constitute a demonstration? If we’re going to have this kind of ruling, then I think we’re entitled to know the definition upon which this ruling is based, sir.

Mr. Speaker: I don’t think it’s difficult to understand and to know when to class something as a demonstration. I think that’s quite evident -- by placards or any other organized action -- whether there’s one person, three persons or 3,000 persons, all demonstrations must be outside. I think there is general agreement with that. We can’t have them running through the halls here.

Mr. Shulman: On a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: The member for High Park’s point of order.

Mr. Shulman: Sir, I’m not discussing your ruling at all -- which of course I wouldn’t want to do -- but do you not intend to comment on my action? The purpose for which I brought that weapon into the House was to illustrate the too-free availability of such automatic weapons?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): The Speaker did comment on it.

Mr. Shulman: May I finish? Will the Speaker not agree that the people outside this chamber deserve the same protection as we get in here?

Mr. Speaker: I’m not concerned with the purpose for which you took that action. I say to the hon. member that it is what happens in this chamber and in this House which comes under my jurisdiction. I think I made it quite plain that we cannot condone such actions. I thought I had made it plain before; but I make it very plain, right now.

Statements by the ministry.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He doesn’t care.

Mr. MacDonald: Who doesn’t care?

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): The member for High Park doesn’t care.

Mr. Lewis: Does the government want to know what it is irritated about? Its bluff was called on the law and order kick, and look what happened?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Cheap.

An hon. member: The member for Scarborough West doesn’t believe that.

Mr. Lewis: Guns are accessible. Don’t be silly.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. It sounds like a demonstration in here. Order, please.

The hon. Minister of Energy.

Mr. MacDonald: They start the grandstanding and object when somebody exposes them.

Mr. Shulman: It’s just an election gimmick.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. May we have any statements by the ministry now?

BRADLEY-GEORGETOWN HYDRO TRANSMISSION CORRIDOR

Hon. D. R. Timbrell (Minister of Energy): Mr. Speaker, I am today announcing the government’s intention to provide the mechanism for a review of a portion of the Bradley-Georgetown transmission line as requested by citizens in the area.

On July 11, 1974, the former Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) announced in the Legislature the government’s approval of the transmission corridor from Bradley Junction to Georgetown. This line was planned to tie in with the 500-kv transmission corridor from Nanticoke to Pickering.

Since last summer, the government has received many inquiries regarding the alignment of this line, particularly in the area of East Luther, East Garafraxa and Erin townships. I have met with a delegation of interested citizens who expressed their concern regarding the impact in this area of the proposed transmission corridor.

Because the government wished to acknowledge and recognize the sincere concerns of the farmers and residents along the middle portion of the route, my ministry has undertaken over the past few months a review of the planning processes and alternatives leading up to the approval of the route. Upon commencement of this review, I requested that Ontario Hydro cease all preliminary work. They subsequently halted survey work and deferred construction work pending the conclusion of this review.

The present construction schedule for the Bruce A generating station calls for unit No. 2 to begin delivering power to the provincial grid by Jan. 1, 1976; unit No. 1 a year later on Jan. 1, 1977; unit No. 3, by Oct. 1, 1977; and unit No. 4 by Aug. 1, 1978. When approval for the northern line was announced, it was expected that transmission line construction would commence in February of 1976 and that the in-service date would be June or July of 1977.

It is now evident that these deadlines for completion of the northern route cannot be met and that there will be some economic penalty to electrical energy users of the province. Power from the first two units can be transmitted by the existing 230-kv system, but extra transmission capacity for the third and fourth units is absolutely essential. If not available, we will incur the cost of generating power by alternate and more expensive fossil fuel means.

It was estimated last year that the economic penalty to the electric power users of Ontario would be between $13 million and $33 million per year in 1977 and would rise to between $39 million and $61 million per year in 1979.

The first part of this approved corridor uses an existing 230-kv right of way. It is the intention to widen this right of way to accommodate a 500-kv transmission line. At the southern end of the line, it is necessary for the transmission corridor to cross the Niagara Escarpment. During his study of transmission facilities from Nanticoke to Pickering, Dr. Solandt investigated the problem of Niagara Escarpment crossings. He concluded that two crossings of the escarpment were necessary because, in Dr. Solandt’s words, and I quote:

“A large part of Ontario Hydro’s generating capacity will be located to the west end of the Niagara Escarpment, while the major load centre is to the east. The integrity of the circuits crossing the escarpment is vital to the supply of the area east of the escarpment, including Metropolitan Toronto.”

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): What does that mean, “the integrity of the circuits”?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: It’s security.

Dr. Solandt recommended the Highway 401 crossing of the escarpment for the Nanticoke-to-Pickering transmission line and a second crossing of the escarpment at Limehouse for the transmission lines from the Bruce generating station.

Regarding the Limehouse crossing, he stated that in the Limehouse area a crossing can be made with relatively little environmental damage or social disturbance.

I emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that this was an important part of Dr. Solandt’s report. The government accepts Dr. Solandt’s recommendations for the Limehouse crossing of the Bradley-to-Georgetown transmission line and sees no reason to make any further study of this segment of the line. We are fully convinced that Dr. Solandt did an intensive review and that his findings remain valid.

A small portion of the overall route -- between Colbeck and Limehouse -- constitutes a new right of way which has not been independently reviewed or which does not follow an existing route.

The citizens of East Luther, East Garafraxa and Erin townships have requested an independent review of the transmission corridor in the area. I understand the concerns of the people living in these townships, and the impact on the agricultural land and the environment which may be caused by this transmission facility.

Because of this concern, the government has authorized and directed the Environmental Hearing Board to review information pertaining to that portion of the approved Hydro transmission route, Bradley Junction-to-Georgetown, between point 33 near Colbeck and point 95 near Limehouse as identified in the Ontario Hydro environmental report, and conduct the public meetings necessary to determine if the selected alignment between these points can be modified in any way that, having regard for reasonable cost, will minimize the impact on the agricultural land and undesirable effects on the environment.

I have requested the board to begin the procedures necessary to hold meetings in the area affected as soon as possible and report their findings to me. They indicated they expect to begin by the middle of July.

One further point, Mr. Speaker, there is a need within the next 20 years to service the Kitchener area with a 500-kv transmission line. An acceptable alternative to Ontario Hydro is a tap off the approved 500-kv line at the point where it intersects the existing 230-kv line from Kitchener to Orangeville. This involves the widening of an existing 230-kv corridor to accept the 500-kv transmission line.

Hydro will propose to Dr. Porter and his commission that this acceptable alternative be given serious and early consideration at the forthcoming hearings on the long-range expansion of the electrical system. In the direction given to Dr. Porter, the government requested that the overall problem of 500-kv transmission be given a top priority.

Mr. Speaker, the government is always concerned about the cost of these facilities. The members of the Legislature are well aware that Ontario Hydro has an application before the Ontario Energy Board for a major change in rates. The realignment of this line may involve extra cost. The delays to conduct the public reviews will certainly result in extra cost, some of which may be due to the locking-in of generation at Bruce. However, it is important to the government that the citizens of the province in general, and the communities of Erin, East Garafraxa and East Luther townships in particular, be fully aware of the routing of this line and have an opportunity to comment at an independent review of the transmission line. The government has therefore decided to request Ontario Hydro to delay any further activity in order that the environmental review process can be held and the people of the area can be heard.

Mr. Lewis: It won’t help, but it was the right thing to do. There are so many retreats, it’s a rout.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions. The hon. member for St. George.

OTTAWA-CARLETON DETENTION CENTRE

Mrs. Campbell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, my first question is addressed to the Provincial Secretary for Justice. Would the provincial secretary advise this House whether he is satisfied with the state of security in the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre in view of the apparently rather easy escape therefrom by six armed men, at least some of whom were held there pending trial on very serious charges?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): Mr. Speaker, at 9:10 last evening some prisoners from the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre did attempt an escape, and all but one did in fact effect an escape. Two officers were shot at. One is in serious condition, having been shot in the hip. The other one was shot but apparently the bullet was deflected by his wallet and he suffered no injuries.

The Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Potter) is in Ottawa today to personally look into this matter to find out: (1) How the prisoners came into possession of two firearms; and (2) to ascertain if the security in the institution is in fact effective.

Mr. Shulman: Anybody can get them.

Mr. Foulds: Even prisoners.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I might add that two of the prisoners were captured later on in the evening in a motel in the Ottawa area. Until I hear back from the Minister of Correctional Services, I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment, on the basis of what sketchy knowledge I have, on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the detention centre.

I am concerned, of course, as I’m sure everyone in this House is, about the health of the man who was seriously injured, officer Lannon, and I hope that he recovers quickly.

I am sure that when the Minister of Correctional Services is back the first part of the week, he will be able to bring the House up to date in detail on this particular matter.

Mrs. Campbell: May I say that this party shares the concern of the provincial secretary for the health of the guard and trusts that there will be speedy recovery from his injury.

But, as a supplementary, could the minister advise whether in his opinion this sort of centre ought to be situated in the heart of a residential area in these kinds of circumstances?

If I may proceed on another supplementary point, now addressing this minister as the acting Solicitor General, is he aware of the fact that the Gloucester township police in that area have no electronic connection with the Ottawa regional police? Would he not believe that in these circumstances he should check into this kind of situation in order to protect the citizens of that city and probably also to protect the police officers who are called upon to exercise their duties under such circumstances?

Hon. Mr. Clement: First, the problem doesn’t seem to me to be that the regional detention centre is in an urban area or not; the problem seems to be that, regardless of how maximal you make the security at any prison, when prisoners come into possession of weapons there is just no way you can preclude them from taking over control of a portion of the institution.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Where did they get the weapons?

Hon. Mr. Clement: That in fact is what happened -- they took over control of a command module which contains electronic equipment. The detention centre is connected electronically with the area police in terms of telephone communication. Whether there is a panic button directly connected to the municipal police force in the area, I cannot say. I just don't know at this time.

These men gained control of a wrench-like key and were able to open certain of the cells. I might add that there were a number of prisoners invited to join them in this escapade and declined to do so.

I should point out, Mr. Speaker, that I did mention that the one officer who is in serious shape was shot in the hip; he wasn’t, he was shot in the lower abdomen. I’m sorry, I was confusing him with the other officer, who was shot in the hip.

Mr. Lewis: They removed his spleen.

Hon. Mr. Clement: But I think the whole thing is the matter of coming into possession of the weapons. It doesn’t matter how secure the institution is, when you’ve got a gun in your hand it’s amazing how you can force your exit. That, to me, would be the key. I’m very concerned as to how those weapons came into possession of those men inside an institution, be it a maximum- or minimum- security institution.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

PICKERING GENERATING STATION

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Energy. Could the minister bring us up to date on the situation with reference to the reactor at Pickering? We seem to be reading of one more leak, two more leaks and so on. It was the practice of the previous minister at least to keep us up to date, to let us know what the total impact is. Could we now know?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, just to answer the innuendo or insinuation that information has not been going out, in point of fact regular reports have been going out from Hydro people and are available to the public and the media.

The problem to which the hon. member refers has to do with the No. 4 reactor at Pickering. Work is progressing very well in carrying out the repairs. The problem is basically the same as with the No. 3 reactor last year in the rolling joints of the pressure tubes within the reactor. There is no anticipation of difficulty with unit Nos. 1 and 2, because different materials were used on those other two reactors.

With the experience from last year, Ontario Hydro did develop some new scanning machines that assisted in finding the problems very quickly and pinpointing the areas where there was difficulty. The general statement therefore is that work is progressing very quickly and very well, and very likely the unit will be back into service shortly.

Mrs. Campbell: Supplementary: Can we be assured that we are going to have some final solution of this problem so that we don’t keep on developing these leaks and that we know what cost is involved in this kind of continuing repair or whatever it is they are doing?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will realize that with any form of machinery there could be problems; it could be a fossil-fired plant using coal or oil, and you could have problems with the turbines, with the boilers, with the pipes, with anything. We’re not going to stop, forever, all breakdowns that involve problems.

The point to be borne in mind, which must be of utmost concern to everyone in this House and it certainly is to me, is that the security and safety of the system be maintained, and that has been the case. In fact, any of the problems with No. 4 unit right now or No. 3 unit last year have been totally self-contained, with no risk whatsoever to the employees or to the public.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. E. Sargent (Grey-Bruce): Supplementary: Some weeks ago, a report appeared in the New York Times that 70 per cent of the nuclear expansion programmes in the United States were being held up because of safety factors such as the ones we’re talking about here. Why is the minister continually hell-bent on development here when he doesn’t know where he is going?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is the expert on going quickly to an unknown destination -- I would have to say this, that what the hon. member is referring to --

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): He knows where he is going; the minister doesn’t.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: The report the hon. member refers to -- and I didn’t see it in the Times --

Mr. Sargent: If we are going the minister’s route, we are going in a hell of a hurry.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I didn’t catch that; I’ll read it in Hansard.

Mr. Foulds: Can the minister read?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: We are talking about totally different systems. The hon. member must understand that the Americans, by and large, are using light-water, enriched uranium reactors with a very large central vessel. There was difficulty with one of them -- I believe it was in Massachusetts -- about two or three months ago, and as a precaution they closed down a number of others that were designed on the same basis to check them out.

We are talking about a totally different system in Canada. We are talking about heavy-water, natural uranium reactors in Canada. We are talking about a totally different design, for safety purposes, to enclose and to gather any discharges that might come from a leak.

Mr. Sargent: We are having a lot of shutdowns but everything is okay here.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I am telling him, Mr. Speaker -- if the member can’t understand it, I can’t help that. I am telling him he is talking about a totally different system in the United States from what we have here.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

RECYCLING WASTE

Mrs. Campbell: Yes, I have a further question of the Minister of the Environment.

Is the minister aware of the criticism which has been launched by Peter Love with reference to the minister’s recycling programme, in which he says that as long as the government lacks the most basic economic and physical data, not to mention a comprehensive accounting system to determine how the job can best be done, the barriers will persist? Is the minister looking into this criticism? Has he anything to offer to the House with reference thereto?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, we are talking about recycling garbage. I think one of the comments made in the article I saw in the press was about lack of action by provincial and federal governments. I would just like to point out with reference to recycling in the Province of Ontario -- and I say this without any fear of contradiction -- I think here in the Province of Ontario we have the best programme in comparison to any other jurisdiction in the world.

Mr. Lewis: Is that the eastern world and the western world?

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): The round world.

Mr. Lewis: The whole world?

An hon. member: The round world.

Mr. Ruston: It’s going round and round.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Not just the little flat world but the round world.

Mr. Lewis: Why does the minister confine himself to such microcosmic views?

Hon. W. Newman: We have an experimental reclamation plant we are now in the process of constructing in Toronto, in co-operation with Metro Toronto. We have also signed agreements for four reclamation recycling plants in other parts of the province.

Mr. Lewis: He is one of the funniest people in this House.

Hon. W. Newman: We hope to get the other two signed very shortly. We will programme recycling and recovery in this province in the years ahead in such a manner that we hope sometime, about 15 years hence, we will be able to recover from garbage all the resources which are now wasted.

Mrs. Campbell: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Would the minister comment on the statement that the pulp and paper industry will be forced to do more recycling when it has used all the virgin wood Canadian forests can provide, perhaps in 15 years? Can he tell us whether or not he would agree with that comment?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I think if she is talking about the amount of pulp and paper left in the Province of Ontario or in Canada or in the world, available for newsprint, she should ask that question more properly of the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier). In our ministry, we are also looking at processes to recover, recycle and reuse paper. Newsprint is a fairly large component of our solid waste and we were looking at ways to recycle this on an economic basis so it can be reused. A lot of it -- I should say the long fibre paper now being used in cardboard, if one wants to be technical -- is certainly in demand because a great deal of that material is used in the building trades. It’s the short fibre paper such as we have in newsprint for which there is not a demand.

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

GUN CONTROL

Mr. Lewis: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I want to follow logically from the events of yesterday without dwelling on the event itself, and address a question to the Attorney General.

How can the Attorney General feel as sanguine today or as assured today as he did 10 days or so ago in this House when he talked about the registration and licensing and general controls in the gun control area in Ontario, as though there were no improvements which could be made? Is it not now clear there are very dramatic and important improvements which can be made, certainly in the purchase of semi-automatic and automatic weapons of over a certain length; and is he prepared to take initiatives himself or to recommend initiatives to the federal government?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I have never at any time said there is nothing which can be done insofar as the problem involving firearms is concerned. I believe I pointed out in this House a week ago yesterday that as I perceive the problem, and our policy field people perceived it, the difficulty seemed to be not on the question of registration but on the question of accessibility to firearms.

Mr. Lewis: There we are.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I have maintained that view for some time and still maintain it, and I for one am not about to say, nor have I ever said, that there is nothing which can be done. As a matter of fact, as I recollect my comments made here some eight days ago, I invited criticism and suggestions of a very positive nature.

This past Monday and Tuesday the provincial registrar for firearms and the Deputy Solicitor General were, in fact, in Ottawa meeting with representatives of the federal Solicitor General’s ministry to discuss this very involved problem; they were there along with the provincial registrars from across Canada.

The matter that was touched on here yesterday as to the accessibility of firearms was very much discussed, so I am advised. I stress I was not present and I am only repeating to the House, and reporting to it, the report of the registrar who, in fact, attended. It was interesting for me to note in the press this week that Mr. Allmand again appeared to have changed his position, but what it really meant was that he now recognizes some of the futility of the present registration of firearms programme.

Mr. Lewis: Obviously.

Hon. Mr. Clement: As I understand it, the federal government has embarked or is about to embark on a rather crash study of this thing to have something available in the form of different legislation by the end of this summer. This is what has been reported to me by the provincial firearms registrar.

Mr. Shulman: Another study.

Hon. Mr. Clement: So before embarking on this, I guess they wanted the views of the provincial registrars and those, in fact, were offered on Monday and Tuesday last. But as far as the availability of semi-automatic weapons and long guns is concerned, they have been available since year one, this is part of the frustration.

Mr. Lewis: By way of a supplementary question, I must admit that I didn’t understand the process was as easy as my colleague, the member for High Park, demonstrated yesterday; I didn’t understand that myself.

Isn’t there more than a touch of hypocrisy to the government’s position on the theme of law and order when it can allow stores to dispense weapons with easy and free accessibility, about which it professes to be concerned? Why isn’t it possible for the Province of Ontario to move into the licensing and sale of guns, with very, very tight control over weapons such as the member for High Park purchased? They have no problem in alcohol; why do they allow people to buy weapons of destruction with impunity, and why don’t they close down the stores if they present that kind of hazard? Does the minister not feel that it is time we moved within the province in a serious fashion, rather than engaging in the rhetoric of the Premier (Mr. Davis) and others?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I think we probably would have jurisdiction to license the sale of firearms within this province --

Mr. Deans: Why aren’t they sold through government stores?

Hon. Mr. Clement: -- but all that would do, if members will just look at the problem, is merely drive the availability of firearms even more underground than it is now.

An hon. member: That’s true.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): That is the problem.

Mr. Lewis: Then deal with that when it happens.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Registered firearms, Mr. Speaker, can be properly licensed and held in your home or mine or anybody else’s, but the minute that home is broken into and they are stolen, the registration of those firearms is of no value except for purposes of identification when the thief is found.

Mr. Lewis: The minister talks about accessibility.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The member for High Park made his demonstration here yesterday just as though he had discovered something. I am aware of this, and the member should have been, for a number of years.

Mr. Lewis: I wasn’t aware of it.

Mr. Shulman: Why hasn’t the minister done anything about it?

Mr. Lewis: Then it is wrong to let it go on.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The only thing that concerns me is some day the member might find out about sex, and I wonder what will happen in the House then.

Mr. Lewis: About what?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Sex.

Mr. Lewis: Sex?

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary, the member for High Park.

Mr. Lewis: Rest assured.

Mr. Shulman: Is the minister seriously suggesting that if he passes a law here forbidding the sale of semi-automatic weapons, those weapons will still be sold? Does he not realize that by forbidding their sale we will stop them from coming into this province?

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, I am not suggesting that at all. I just suggest that anybody who wants one and can’t avail himself of one will acquire one in an unlawful fashion. It is just as simple as that.

Mr. MacDonald: Why doesn’t the minister do it instead of hypocritically posturing then?

Mr. Lewis: If the minister is worried about violence in society, do something about it.

Mr. Shulman: Will the minister bring in a bill forbidding the sale of semi-automatic weapons? Can we have a straight yes or no?

Mr. Turner: If I want to buy a gun I can get one.

Hon. Mr. Clement: There is legislation on the books. We have made a request to the federal government that they amend it.

Mr. Shulman: Will this government do it?

Mr. Lewis: Why doesn’t this minister do it?

Mr. Shulman: He has the jurisdiction.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: The members opposite create such expectation in the minds of the public, who believe this is a simple problem that can be simply resolved; and I tell them it is not, it’s a complex thing.

Mr. Lewis: But the minister can take some steps.

Mr. Shulman: He’s doing nothing but pass the buck.

COW-CALF PROGRAMME

Mr. Lewis: I have a couple of more questions, but first one question which perplexes me, to the Minister of Agriculture and Food. He will recall that yesterday afternoon I asked him about retroactive payments to the cow-calf operators in Ontario, particularly those on Manitoulin Island, and he replied to me that was what was under consideration.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I said that was under consideration.

Mr. Lewis: That is under consideration. Can the minister explain to me why the member for Algoma-Manitoulin (Mr. Lane), yesterday morning before I asked the question, phoned the leading farmer on the island who was involved in the request for funds, and told that farmer that he had it from the minister there would be no retroactivity? Why is that message conveyed to the farmers in the morning, and when I asked the minister the question in the afternoon he tells me it’s under consideration?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I can answer that question very simply. The matter is under consideration. The member for Algoma-Manitoulin may have gained the impression from me that it would not be possible to do that, but the matter has not been finalized by the government and it is still under consideration.

Mr. MacDonald: Well, let the rest of the people of Manitoulin know about it.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you very much.

MEDICAL EXAMINATIONS FOR ASBESTOS WORKERS’ FAMILIES

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Health, if I may: I’m sure he feels it desirable, but does the Minister of Health feel that it is possible, and might he consider undertaking, a scrupulous health examination of the families, particularly the wives and the children, of those who have worked in the asbestos industry with serious levels of exposure to asbestos fibres over the last 10 or 20 years, in a determined effort to seek out those who may be carrying some significant lung or respiratory disease?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I am willing to consider, not necessarily 100 per cent, but possibly a sample that would give us some picture of the magnitude of the problem. I have discovered that really no such study has been done in our country, and that it may be worthy of consideration.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: Does the minister know -- I assume he does -- of the study just completed by Dr. Selikoff of families of Paterson, New Jersey, workers in the asbestos industry in the late 1940s, which study shows, incredibly enough, an x-ray abnormality consistent with asbestosis or pre-asbestosis of between 33 per cent and 40 per cent of the wives and children looked at? And does the minister not recognize the extraordinary reduction in disease we might effect, and in fact protection of life, if we did that with the families in Johns-Manville, the families in Raybestos-Manhattan in Peterborough, over the next year or 18 months? Could I appeal to the minister on that basis so that any developments similar to the very unhappy, isolated case I brought to the attention of the House yesterday might conceivably be forestalled in the future?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I will be glad to consider it.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you very much.

HEALTH AND SAFETY STANDARDS

Mr. Lewis: If I may ask then one further question of the Minister of Health: Did he notice that Peter McCrodan, director of the mines engineering branch, when he appeared before the Ham commission, I think the day before yesterday, said that Denison Mines has not yet come anywhere near reaching a target standard for dust levels that was set by the ministry? How then can Natural Resources be so confident that none of the men are at risk, when the dust levels and the radiation levels continue to exceed what the Ministry of Health has recommended as desirable?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I haven’t seen the submission by him to the Ham commission. Our own is being made right now.

Mr. Lewis: Right; yes, I know. It’s this morning. We’re monitoring it word by word, I assure the minister. May I ask the minister: Is it not time to embody in regulations in Ontario all of the threshold limit values for silica, for asbestos, for whatever, so that there is a law to which we can turn, rather than simply a set of recommended targets, now that more and more information is mounting, some of it ominous?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I hope that’s one of the jobs the advisory committee is going will help me with, in terms of deciding which of the threshold levels have enough operating experience to become regulatory and which can serve only as guidelines to give us operating experience, because we’re going to have to have both kinds. Hopefully, if we get proper representation on this advisory committee for occupational health threshold levels and standards, we’ll have a mixture of union, management and scientific people who can set guesstimates, can monitor them and can make recommendations to me about incorporating them in regulations.

Mr. Lewis: Can I ask one final supplementary on this question? When does the minister expect all of this to happen? When will we have actual laws governing contamination and occupational health hazards rather than just the recommendations, since all over Ontario it is admitted that the targets he wishes to achieve are being exceeded on a daily basis, whether it’s radiation exposure in Denison or asbestos in Raybestos-Manhattan? When does he expect the law to take effect?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’m relatively encouraged in this area of late, rather than discouraged. Progress may have been slow in starting because I think all of us -- and I put blame on government, management and labour -- have not recognized for many years the importance of occupational health problems. The realization has come to us slowly and late. We’re now trying to react to it and get workable rules which will protect the health of miners and other workers. I feel my ministry currently is at least on time in meeting the organizational steps given to us to make possible the statements the three ministers made about a month ago. I’m hoping before the fall we’ll see real evidence of operating ability.

Mr. Lewis: Will the minister move himself, or support, the suggestion of the Minister of Labour (Mr. MacBeth), that all the testing the occupational health branch does in these various plants be posted and be made available to the workers? Surely, as a Minister of Health who has shown real concern in the area, he must have been taken aback by the reports yesterday in the response from the Minister of Labour that the Ministry of Health’s people had been into the plant in Peterborough on four separate occasions issuing directives and taking tests -- four separate occasions within one year -- and not once were the workers in that plant informed of the findings or the directives?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I support the Minister of Labour and the member’s suggestion in this area. I find the greatest danger in any of these health hazards is lack of knowledge.

Mr. Lewis: Okay. I have one last question of the minister.

Mr. MacDonald: Tell the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development that. He is always afraid of knowledge because it will scare people.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, I will ask the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development a question. He is afraid of the faces in the crowd.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It depends whose face it is.

Mr. Lewis: I have it here.

GRANT TO TRIPLE NINE FOODS LTD

Mr. Lewis: It’s Friday morning, the ritual would not be complete without one question to the provincial secretary.

Could he find out for me from the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Bennett), whose portfolio falls within the minister’s secretariat, and maybe indeed from the Premier himself, what the rationale was for giving to Triple Nine Foods Ltd. in Brampton a $250,000 grant to purchase equipment to produce a new special coated peanut? Could he do that for me?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you very much. No further questions, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member has reached the bottom of the barrel.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Grey-Bruce.

OWEN SOUND HOSPITAL

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Health. Due to the fact that our hospital is an area hospital and our halls are still full of beds and chaotic conditions continue to exist -- it was in the news yesterday that four hospitals within walking distance of this building have many empty beds -- and in view of the fact that 70 per cent of his budget comes from Ottawa --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Come on.

Mr. Sargent: That is a fact -- how does he get the right to make priorities on who gets hospitals? Why do my people have to be treated like second-rate citizens?

Mr. Turner: Where does the member for Grey-Bruce get his figures?

Hon. Mr. Miller: They’re treated like second-rate citizens because they elected a second-rate member -- I guess that would be the logical answer.

Seriously, they’re not treated like second-rate citizens and the member knows it, but if he is going to use that rhetoric I’ll use it.

Mr. Lewis: That is right. Give it to the member on his own terms.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): The minister should rise to the member’s level.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’ve risen to the member’s level.

Mr. Lewis: The minister won’t be pushed around.

Mr. Deans: Is he embarrassed?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I find it tough to come out with nasty things like that. I’m even blushing.

Mr. Deans: I am sure he does.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Look, I’ve met with the hospital board within the last week. I don’t know where the member was, but I met with them. We discussed the problems; they seem to be satisfied with the progress we’re making. The member knows we are taking the steps as quickly -- I think the tenders have been let. Will somebody nod their head up and down for Owen Sound?

Mr. Sargent: Thirty beds.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Thirty-four beds. Which way did it go? I can’t see any heads nodding at all -- except those who are asleep.

Mr. Foulds: The minister hasn’t got the nodders with him this morning.

Mr. Deans: Why doesn’t the minister stay on his feet a while?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: That’s all we need -- a Minister of Health who is a stand-up comic.

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. This is damned serious business for us in Owen Sound. I’m fed up the way you are running this --

Mr. Turner: How would the member know?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: So why don’t they send someone who is serious?

Mr. Speaker: Your point of order, please.

Mr. Sargent: What a bunch of clowns they are when people’s lives are at stake all the time. My mother died there about a year ago; she would have died in a hall if she had died before that --

Mr. MacDonald: Order, order.

Mr. Speaker: This is not a point of order --

Mr. Sargent: It goes on every day --

Mr. Speaker: This is a debate; it’s not a point of order. Will the minister complete his answer?

Mr. Sargent: What kind of a clown is he, anyway?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, Mr. Speaker. The issue is serious. The member knows that we have negotiated with his hospital over the past 2½ years; that we’ve agreed, at their request, to put up temporary facilities --

Mr. Sargent: That’s not true.

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is true!

Mr. Sargent: The minister told them it would be 1980 before they get a hospital.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: That’s right. I told them it would not be before 1979.

Mr. Sargent: What right does the minister have to say that?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: As the Minister of Health, I have that right, and I exercise it. And we don’t get 70 per cent of the money from the federal government; we get about 33 per cent.

An hon. member: That’s right.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sandwich-Riverside.

LENNOX GENERATING STATION

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Energy about the failure of a stainless steel boiler at the Lennox generating station at Bath, just west of Kingston, about the beginning of April. What was the cause of the failure? Were inadequate anti-corrosion procedures responsible for the failure?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I’ll have to give the hon. member a fuller report than this, but I believe that it did in fact have something to do with the pipes, rather than the boiler. It wasn’t the boiler, it was the pipes. I’ll get a more complete report for the member, but I would just like to say now that it was not the boiler itself.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary question, when the minister makes the report, will he give us the specific details of the times and dates when that boiler and the attachments were inspected?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Sure, Mr. Speaker. I really don’t think it’s a major issue. We do have these problems with pipes and so forth; I would be concerned if it were in fact the central boiler. But yes, I’ll give the member a complete report.

Mr. Burr: Supplementary: Would the minister also give us the financial picture of the cost of this breakdown -- how much the repair takes and how much we lost? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Etobicoke.

STRIKE AT NCR

Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Labour concerning the NCR strike in Rexdale. In view of the letter dated May 26 from the president of local 28B of the Graphic Arts International Union, wherein he makes reference to the high-handed conduct of the wholly owned, foreign-owned subsidiary, would the minister state what steps he and his ministry are taking to use their good offices to bring the company to the bargaining table with some constructive suggestions as to settlement?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, my information is that they last met with people from my ministry on May 16. At that time both parties were adamant as far as concessions made were concerned. We are to contact them again next week to see if there is any point in getting them together.

I would like to point out that I don’t see any more recalcitrations on the part of one party than I do on the other in this one. They are both pretty adamant that they won’t budge; and until either one of them is prepared to show some readiness to move, then there is not a great deal that my people can do in getting them together.

Mr. Braithwaite: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary: In view of the letter that I have just mentioned addressed to the minister dated May 26, I want to bring to the minister’s attention that the president of the union states categorically that the union did budge and it’s the company that did not.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Is there a supplementary question?

Mr. Braithwaite: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask if the minister is aware of that, in the light of the statement he just made that neither side budged?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, my information is that up to May 16 they were both firmly entrenched and neither side was prepared to move. If there is something further on that, I’ll be glad to investigate it. We are going to attempt to get them together this coming week.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York South.

SALE OF TAINTED MEAT

Mr. MacDonald: I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Does the minister share to any degree the growing suspicion that the marketing of meat from fallen animals here in Ontario may be falling into the hands of those who are linked with organized crime, as in Quebec? And if so, does the minister not feel that there is need for a public inquiry to seek out the solid evidence not now available to make effective court action?

Mr. D. W. Ewen (Wentworth North): Has the member got any proof?

Mr. MacDonald: That is what I am seeking.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: We have no evidence to substantiate the earlier part of the hon. member’s statement. We do not accept that as fact. There have been rumours coming out of the hearing in Quebec which are not substantiated in fact. As a matter of fact, one of the people who is licensed by our ministry, I believe yesterday stated in the paper categorically denying any allegations in the statements that were made in Quebec.

With regard to the second question, I wouldn’t want to make a positive commitment on that one way or the other until there is much more evidence available to determine the wisdom of such an inquiry. I think we would like to hear what more emanates from Quebec. I expect we will likely hear more today as witnesses continue to testify.

Mr. MacDonald: Supplementary: Is the minister in any position to give us information with regard to the results of the testing of the meat that was seized yesterday somewhere in eastern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: No, I am not, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know whether my colleague, the Minister Health, is or not. It was seized through the local district health unit there. I can’t tell the member what the results are.

Mr. MacDonald: Would the minister give us those results early in the week?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Really the question should be directed to the Minister of Health because it is his people who did it, not ours.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of the Environment has the answer to a question asked previously.

Mr. Foulds: That’s a switch.

LAKE DRAINING BY FALCONBRIDGE

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, on June 3 I was asked a question by the hon. member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) concerning the lowering of a lake called Moose Lake in the Sudbury area and whether or not officials of my ministry were aware of the lowering of the water level in this lake and what effect this had on the recent washout of the dam which resulted in a sudden release of approximately 50 million gallons of water to a creek leading to McLeod Bay in Lake Wanapitei.

I am advised, Mr. Speaker, that my ministry was aware of the lowering of Moose Lake and approval was given as part of our programme with Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd. to take action to stabilize the tailings disposal areas and to improve the aesthetics of the area. I am advised also that it was physically impossible for the drainage of Moose Lake to have contributed to the flooding incident as the water level on this lake is approximately 20 ft lower than the pond which was being lowered on May 29 when the flooding incident occurred. I am also advised that the drainage of Moose Lake was directed by way of Massey Creek to Bolans Bay on Lake Wanapitei. I think the members for Sudbury East was probably referring to another Moose Lake which is some 30 miles away.

I was asked a further supplementary by the hon. member for Nickel Belt concerning the cleanup of abandoned automobiles and other debris from the area which is being drained. I thought at the time the hon. member was referring to my ministry’s programme to collect abandoned automobiles from the whole Sudbury basin, which I believe the member is now aware of. In any case, I have asked the officials of my ministry to contact the companies involved to ensure that the debris which has been uncovered by this drainage project is removed as part of the ministry’s programme to improve the aesthetics of the area.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Sudbury East has a supplementary.

Mr. Martel: Can the minister indicate if any of the water from Moose Lake got into Bolans Bay which serves as a drinking water source for the city of Sudbury?

Hon. W. Newman: I think the member was talking about two different Moose Lakes the other day. The one Moose Lake that was allowed to be lowered by our ministry was full of tailings. It was to be drained and fixed up for aesthetic reasons. The other Moose Lake the member was talking about where there was some water taken out, where there was some drilling being done on the old Nickel Rim Mines property by, I guess it is Falconbridge that owns that now, and it is doing some diamond drilling in that area. But we did allow them to drain the one Moose Lake, which could not possibly drain into the other lake because it is 20 ft lower. It went down into another bay -- the one that was drained off there -- so that the area could be reclaimed and seeded down for aesthetic reasons.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. Laughren: Supplementary: Does the minister allow companies to drain untreated water from tailings dams directly into the water supply of the community, such as that of Sudbury?

Hon. W. Newman: In this particular case in Moose Lake, our people told them to drain the water off the top so that the land could be reclaimed. The people were well aware of what was happening in that particular area, and there was no environmental problem caused from that.

Mr. Foulds: That’s the same as the minister’s concern about the tailings from Reserve Mining.

Hon. W. Newman: Now there was a problem when the other dam let go, I realize that.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

WINDSOR AREA SUITS AGAINST U.S. COMPANIES

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. I am sure that the minister is aware of the class action that was taken on the part of the residents of La Salle in suing polluters across the river. Now, as a result of an incident over the weekend, Sunday night and on a Monday, the residents of the city of Windsor would like to take class action against polluters from the Detroit side. Will the minister’s department provide all the technical data and information to assist the residents of Windsor in their action against the American polluters?

Hon. W. Newman: Yes, Mr. Speaker, we have been talking to the Wayne county people. Actually I don’t think they have pin-pointed the exact source. We have enough information and data from our equipment there on site, and from vegetation collection. We will be able to assist the residents and we’ll make all that information and data available to them.

Mr. B. Newman: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Has the minister ever considered financial assistance so that the individuals may not be out of pocket?

Hon. W. Newman: Not at this point in time, no.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

MOOSE MANAGEMENT

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Chairman of the Management Board. Has Management Board finished its review of the Ministry of Natural Resources moose management programme, and has it approved the categorical statement by the minister made publicly on Feb. 21, that the ministry would hire four moose biologists and increase its budget specifically to $440,000, or is that still under review by Management Board as the minister indicated to me on April 15?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, in the ordinary course of events, that question should go to the Minister of Natural Resources. I can say this to him that a moose management programme has been approved by the government.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Does the minister not understand that the Minister of Natural Resources on May 15 said that the programme was before Management Board. Specifically, I would like to know what moose management programme Management Board approved of. Did it include, specifically, the additional hiring of four moose biologists and a budget of $440,000, which the Minister of Natural Resources announced publicly on Feb. 21?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I don’t wish today to interpret any statement made by the Ministry of Natural Resources. Mr. Speaker, I would let the minister answer for himself. The programme was established and funded.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Essex-Kent.

STRIKE AT TELSO PRODUCTS LTD.

Mr. Ruston: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Labour. Has the minister had any correspondence or anything with Telso workers or the Telso company in Tilbury, which has been on strike now for 36 weeks? Does he anticipate that they may be able to do anything with the parties to get them into negotiations?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, they have been out since Sept. 26. It is the longest strike outstanding as far as my ministry is concerned. I’ll try to stir them up again; both sides are relatively inactive at the present time. If the member has any signs to encourage us that there may be some hope of getting them together, we’ll certainly do our best to do so, sir. I’ll make some inquiries.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor West.

PUBLIC SERVANTS SETTLEMENT BOARD

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): I have a question of the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, Mr. Speaker. Is the minister contemplating introducing into the Legislature a concept for the civil servants, such as a public servants settlement board, similar to the Education Relations Board that was introduced into the House in connection with the teachers’ bill?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, not at this particular time.

Mr. Speaker: We have time for one short question. I believe the member for Huron-Bruce is next.

BRADLEY-GEORGETOWN TRANSMISSION CORRIDOR

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The minister to whom I was going to direct this question, the Minister of Energy, has gone so I’ll direct it to the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development.

The Environmental Hearing Board, as I understand it from the minister’s statement this morning, will commence public hearings in mid-July this year in respect to the Bradley-Georgetown power corridor, dealing specifically with the portion from Colbeck to Limehouse. What is the time-frame within which he expects to complete those public hearings and when does he anticipate having a report on it?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think anyone could give any kind of a reply to that with any degree of accuracy. That would depend on the number of people who will be making presentations, the amount of consideration they require and so on. It is in the interests of all concerned that it be done as quickly as possible, which was the reason the government has decided to take the action it has rather than leaving it to the long-range hearings. Hopefully it will be done as quickly as possible. That’s really all I can say to the hon. member.

Mr. Gaunt: Right.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired. I will recognize the member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, in the east gallery are 66 students, under the supervision of Mrs. M. Franklyn, from the St. Bernard School in the great riding of Windsor-Walkerville. I ask you and the members of the Legislature to extend a warm welcome to them.

Mr. Speaker: Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The 21st order, House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (CONTINUED)

On vote 2901:

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Would the House leader get us the minister?

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): The House leader is going to fill in for him.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): He is pretty fast, that fellow.

Mr. Martel: Is he? He slipped away on you again, did he?

Mr. Ferrier: He is jogging in Queen’s Park.

Mr. Martel: He is swimming over at the pool.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): He is jogging right now.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You have the wrong one.

Mr. Martel: Are you going to have a coffee break now or later?

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): He is in the first door on the right.

Mr. Martel: He is in the first door on the right? I think that is where it is. He is going to jog in, you watch. Here he comes, jogging in.

Mr. Chairman: The member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell). Item 3, vote 2901.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Chairman, we were, I believe --

Mr. Chairman: The member for St. George.

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): On a point of order, may I ask a question for a second please?

Mr. Martel: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I think after the minister read the list of items being considered so the member for Sudbury (Mr. Germa) could discuss hospital planning which came under item 2, when we left last evening we were still discussing the planning of cancer facilities for northern Ontario.

Mr. Chairman: My suggestion at this time is to take the whole vote 2901 altogether and when it is done, it is done.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): I agree.

Mr. Martel: All right.

Mr. Chairman: Okay?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I am delivering the agreed-upon sheets for 2901 with the captions. One of the problems I can understand the opposition has in looking at the headings under any vote is that our moneys are separated into transfer payments for hospitals and, say, administrative costs for hospitals. You can see the same heading under two different votes, but I’m not really going to argue too much which vote one elects to talk about, if that’s all right with the Chair.

Mr. Chairman: The member for St. George.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would first like to preface my remarks on this particular matter and my questions.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. When the debate adjourned last evening, I was on the list to follow my colleague, the member for Sudbury, who was speaking to the situation of cancer and the development of facilities in northern Ontario for the treatment of cancer. I hate to infringe on the member for St. George, but we’ll have to come back to it later on if the chairman doesn’t want to allow us to continue along that line of questioning for the next few minutes.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Chairman, in view of the fact that I was absent last evening in Ottawa, I was not aware of the prior commitment. You know I asked you at the opening if there were speakers down and I was assured there were not. I don’t want to preclude the opportunity to the NDP to proceed but I would hope we could have some alternating kind of arrangement so we don’t have the NDP completely all morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Martel: Heaven forbid that anyone would suggest the NDP would try to dominate the proceedings, Mr. Chairman.

Mrs. Campbell: We know you too well.

Mr. Martel: I realize the minister was a little upset with my remarks and my interjections last evening. I want to indicate to the minister that many of us have similar types of problems, having just gone through it in the last two months personally in my own family as well. One recognizes the difficulties.

However when one considers what my colleague was talking about, the ministry really has two choices -- it develops plans now to be implemented in 1980, but in the interim, surely to God, there should be some provision made under OHIP or some other programme to assist patients from northern Ontario?

I recall talking recently to Dr. Desmarais, the radiologist who was formerly at St. Joseph’s -- I think he’s moving over to the new Laurentian -- whose wife also underwent surgery and had to come to Toronto for that surgery in Princess Margaret Hospital. He, as a doctor with a fairly adequate income, indicated to me, “Certainly it’s easier for me because I can afford to hire someone and spend some time in Toronto with my wife during this trying period and that assists the healing process.”

But the area is predominantly made up of miners, smeltermen and so on who financially can’t afford to get a housekeeper and turn around and come to Toronto and spend a week or two, or fly down weekly to be with the wife -- if it's a wife -- who's in Princess Margaret Hospital. That woman, if the case is a woman, has a much more difficult time. I’m no medical man but I’m told by people in the medical field that, therefore, the healing process is slowed up considerably.

There was an interesting study apparently done during the war in Vietnam. They took a number of wounded and half were told they were going back to the front to resume battle once they got out of the hospital and the other half were sent off to Hawaii. The healing process -- nothing magic about it, without any extra drugs -- for those who went to Hawaii was much quicker than for those who were faced with the prospect of going back into the fray.

I presume the same applies -- this is what Dr. Desmarais, the radiologist, was telling me -- to the patients from northern Ontario who must come and be alone in a hospital here in Toronto many hundreds of miles away from their families, with no one to visit them. You’re lucky if, on the weekend, the husband can come. The same applies to the men, conversely.

The number of cancer cases from the sintering plant is now about 40. We have the 100 cases that Dr. Stewart from the Workmen’s Compensation Board indicated would develop in Elliot Lake over the next little while. Instead of the 43 who have passed away, as in Dr. Muller’s report, you have Dr. Stewart saying just a week ago today that we will reach 100 cases of cancer in the Elliot Lake area. Again, you have got to bring them 400 or 500 miles. Who can be with them during those periods to comfort them and so on?

I heard the minister say last night, “Well, we have a big population here and we need a second one in Toronto,” but you could make arrangements in Toronto, Mr. Minister, that are impossible to make in northern Ontario. You can, in fact, take someone -- and I know this to have happened -- who is a patient, possibly at the Women’s College Hospital over here, over to Princess Margaret Hospital every day for a treatment. You can’t do that in northern Ontario. You can’t bring someone from the Memorial Hospital in Sudbury down here daily for the treatment, but you can take someone from Women’s College Hospital over to Princess Margaret, as an outpatient, and bring them back.

You can’t do that in the north. You’ve got an alternative: either move ahead now, or ease the financial burden and make it possible, in terms of transportation costs being reduced or met, to bring both the husband and the wife down. Make it possible so that the husband can be here, at least shortly before major surgery, and for several days after. You just can’t let it sit in limbo. You can’t bring everybody from the catchment basin my colleague speaks about, to Toronto under the same conditions as you do people who live right in Toronto or people who can commute daily.

You are not even making any contingency plans. You just say, “Do it,” and that’s it. That is what I was referring to when I made the interjection last night that the minister is not being humane. We have to think in those terms, to make it easier. Under these circumstances, I suppose there is nothing more frightening to people than to be told that a member of their family has cancer. We’ve got to be humane and make it easier for the families.

I can appreciate the minister’s concern last night, and his own expression of the difficulty within his own family, as I say, having experienced it in February ourselves at home, but surely we can make it somewhat easier. That is what we are imploring the minister to do. If you have the capital, laying around, you don’t put it in Toronto to start with, because you can make other types of plans -- as I have mentioned already, moving patient’s between Women’s College Hospital and Princess Margaret -- but you take that money and you put it where it is most desperately needed.

Certainly there are enough patients coming out of the north. I am told that on any given day at Princess Margaret, 10 per cent of the patients are from the Sudbury basin. I am told this by the hospital administrator from Sudbury. I don’t know how precise those figures are, but I am told if you go to Princess Margaret you are never alone if you are from the Sudbury area, because there is a raft of people from the Sudbury area in that hospital on any given day.

Surely it isn’t good enough for the minister to say, “Well, in 1980 we will start to plan” for something off in the future. If you intend to implement a plan by 1980, you have a contingency plan for assistance now and your planning starts now so that it, in fact, can become a reality by 1980. If you wait till 1980, if it is anything like the Laurentian Hospital, it will be 1990, Mr. Minister, before we are even set to open the doors. I would ask the minister to comment on those points I have made.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I am in a ministry where every single decision relates to human suffering and human life. In almost every aspect of the ministry, more dollars might save more lives. So I have a nasty job, and that, whether I like it or not, is equating dollars spent to lives saved. It is a pretty hard decision, because one can argue, if it is his own life, that any number of dollars is worth the saving of your own life. It isn’t that simple, you and I both know that.

Sadly enough, I have to make decisions to use the dollars I can get to save the most lives possible. I’d like very much to think I could find the moneys for transportation for people from all parts of Ontario if they have to go to regional centres for specialzed treatment. It’s not limited to cancer. It’s true of almost any disease. I know how sad, alone or lost you feel when you’re 100 miles even from your family. I don’t know whether you’ve done it but I’ve done it for three months at a time, where you have no one to talk to and it’s pretty lonely. The fact remains it’s pretty hard to justify money for travelling expenses when I can’t find the money needed for some of the other programmes for life-saving operations and procedures.

We found from the analysis of the money spent on cancer that specifically by adding to the existing facilities of Princess Margaret Hospital the dollars spent could treat more people than the building of any new facility anywhere else in the province. Secondly, I would suggest that that one hospital has more expertise in it than almost any other centre in Canada, if not any other centre in Canada and perhaps many in the United States. When people come there for treatment they know they’re being treated by expert people with highly specialized homemade equipment -- and I say that in its best sense. They have a staff of physicists and engineers at Princess Margaret Hospital who do nothing but design and build equipment for that one institution, which is often copied by other people once it’s done. I feel that if I were a patient in need of expert cancer treatment, there’s no place in the world I’d rather go that I know of than the Princess Margaret Hospital. I have to weigh these things.

It’s our assumption that the suggestions and recommendations in the Kate, Peat, Marwick study, saying that 1980 is the approximate date that we can justify in all senses -- not dollar senses -- a cancer treatment facility in the Sudbury area, will hold true. That doesn’t mean that we’ll necessarily await the start of planning until 1980. It could mean that we’ll start planning two years hence for that facility, but we’re projecting, I believe hopefully, that we might be in business in the 1980s in that area.

To say that 10 per cent of the residents or patients at Princess Margaret are from the Sudbury basin, I think I’d agree with very roughly from what I hear. If the estimates I got last night from the member for Sudbury were correct -- was it 675,000 population that you quoted last night? --

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): It was 580,000.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It was 580,000 in the entire catchment area?

Mr. Germa: North central.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Then the population is running some 7.5 per cent or thereabouts of the Ontario population by itself. You have had two industries which aggravate the situation. You have, therefore, had to send more people to that specific institution than other people in the province would do. Lots of people from my riding don’t end up in Princess Margaret for cancer. They end up in Toronto Western or Toronto General. For specialized treatment of certain types, nothing heats the Princess Margaret.

After a lot of talk with the cancer associations, the foundation and the institute in Ontario, it was agreed that the best use of dollars in the short run was at the Princess Margaret, Toronto, with these other facilities being started in some cases, like London and the moneys I mentioned last night for improvement of certain services already existing in the other cities. We take it very seriously and I’m going to do my best to meet the need in that area because I would much rather keep patients where they could see their families on a regular easy basis.

Mr. Martel: Could I ask the minister just one or maybe two questions? The new hospital in Sudbury is not yet completed. Have provisions been made to include anything with respect to the treatment of cancer in that new facility or can it be adjusted to include it?

Secondly, does the government intend to take over the old hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital, and possibly renovate it? It seems to me we are going to have a large facility obsolete or some of it obsolete. As an interim measure what about the possibilities of utilizing the St. Joseph’s Hospital, which is right downtown in the city of Sudbury and with some modification and, I presume, some renovation, could be made into a facility which could be utilized? That building is going to sit there vacant; it presently belongs, I guess to the Grey Nuns who, I am sure, would part with it willingly. I don’t know if it is feasible or not but has anyone looked into the feasibility of utilizing that facility?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t know, Mr. Chairman, I would assume that people in my staff would be considering the use of existing buildings before new ones were built. The one thing I have learned about hospital plant is that it can look awfully good and yet be outdated in most ways. I don’t know that my figures are accurate here but if we spend a dollar on plant -- what was the cost of the Laurentian Hospital? Twenty million? Does $20 million sound right to you?

Mr. Martel: It was $23 million.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Okay, $23 million, a round ball park figure -- $23 million to build it; cost of operation $11.5 million per year. That’s pretty normal; in fact, that may be at the low end relative to capital investment around the province. You will see we are spending 50 cents every year for each dollar we invest in plant in most hospitals and I would suggest to you in some it is over a dollar per dollar invested. You begin to realize the capital plant, albeit impressive and visible, is only a tiny part of the cost of health care. The real costs are in the utilization of the facilities inside. From a strict productivity point of view, you can often justify money being invested in new facilities, rather than using old ones.

That explains exactly what happened to 550 University Ave. down here, which sat idle for two or three years, a great brand new building in your eyes and mine, until you start trying to make it fit the needs of the people in it.

Mr. Germa: On the same question, Mr. Chairman. I recognize we are already committed to the expansion of Princess Margaret Hospital and I presume you cannot back off from the first phase. I also understand there is a second phase already in the planning stage and it is a major construction phase. I am going to ask the minister to rethink this programme and, when it comes time to do this major expansion in another year, to redirect that capital into the area we are talking about, namely, north-central Ontario. We can see that the incidence of cancer up there is higher than normal, and we are going to generate enough cases to keep a major institution going there in a very short period of time. I would like to see that money for the second phase redirected.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Again, in what is a decentralization of decision-making, we have asked for and accepted the advice of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation who operate and raise funds for cancer in Ontario -- a good deal is still raised voluntarily -- to tell us where the money should be spent on a priority basis. They have done so; I think it is wise that I listen to them because they have the entire province to worry about and they are looking at area need.

I am told the second phase of Princess Margaret really will be a modernization, such as I referred to a few minutes ago, rather than an increase in patient load so that we can handle people more efficiently; or more people in the same space.

Mr. Chairman: The member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I proceed I would like to express my concern over the attitude of the minister in the interchange with my colleague. He was very serious about expressing his concerns about hospital needs in his area. Surely we are all prepared to treat these matters more seriously than this minister indicated in that flippant and discreditable manner in this House.

Leading from that particular exchange, I would like to indicate again my concern that the minister seems to take the position on every occasion that the consultations about delivery of health services will be with boards of hospitals, save and except in this one case. Once more, I am going to say that I want an answer from the minister as to when he is going to make boards of governors of hospitals responsible to the communities in which the function. I think the dichotomy was very evident in that unfortunate exchange. One member was expressing concern on behalf of a community and the minister was seeking to be uproariously funny about his communications with the hospital board.

It is not always clear that hospital boards do in fact reflect the needs of a community. Because of my particular area, because of my nine hospitals on which I can speak, I want to know from the minister what sort of planning each of the boards is doing to provide service to the communities across this Toronto area -- and I recognize the distinction between the teaching hospitals and the other hospitals. I want accountability; I don’t want any flip answers.

The health needs in this community are various and they are urgent. Speaking for the Wellesley Hospital, I have no hesitation in commending that board for their thrust into the community and their attempt to serve the needs of a particular portion of the community, and I trust that they will be able to function in meeting the needs of the over 1,100 new units which I understand now are going to be brought into the St. James Town area, starting in another week. I wonder if they are kept alerted to these trends and what their plans are?

I would like to know further what the plans are for all the other eight hospitals in the riding, since the minister continuously states that the boards are autonomous and responsible, but to whom he has yet to define.

I also am concerned to know the planning of Princess Margaret Hospital, since it is one of the hospitals within my riding. My information was that so far as the second phase was concerned, it had to do with improving the quality of existing functions such as heating and that sort of thing to cut costs, rather than to provide, as the minister has indicated, more patient care. But I believe that people of the riding, the people who live around that hospital, have some right to know of these plans.

I know the minister must be aware of the opposition in the area to these plans, and I think only by a complete explanation can we hope to work together to resolve these dichotomies with reference to Princess Margaret Hospital. There is no doubt in my mind that I can at least support the minister wholeheartedly on the great work which is done in that institution.

In his answer, I would like to know in some precise terms what sort of co-operation there is among all the hospitals to ensure there is a maximum effort to deliver health services without overlapping. It seems to me that that is important to the future delivery of service.

I understand in one hospital there has been some thrust to attempt to use vacant beds, in the same way as the proposals for Mount Sinai’s old building, but could I understand from the minister what the difference is in the financing for that hospital, or any hospital, which is asked to convert beds in the same way? How does it vary from their financing in the normal terms of an active treatment hospital? How does it affect their budget? I think that is important for all of us to know.

Leaving the hospital matters, has the minister followed, or are there those in his ministry who have followed the recent experiments in the United States by both medical doctors and psychiatrists in looking to the matter of nutrition for psychiatric patients? I am advised, for example --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Megavitamins?

Mrs. Campbell: No, I’m not talking megavitamins, although it may be a part of it. I'm talking about the straight diet. I understand in the west they are studying the megavitamin approach. For example, in many cases wheat amounts to an allergy, and if it is withdrawn it has rather dramatic effects in restoring the patient. I should like to know if they have been doing anything of this kind here. My information is that no one knows that we’re doing anything here, but they do know that some such experimentation is going on in the west.

I’m particularly concerned, because if it is possible to effect some kind of cure, perhaps -- I don’t know the proper term -- at least some sort of control of some of these conditions in this way would help. It doesn’t strike me -- and perhaps the minister will correct me if I’m wrong -- that this would be a costly kind of experiment. It simply means the withdrawing of the patient, as I understand it, from the food regimen that he or she is presently on, and beginning to place the patient on a diet.

The doctors were quite interesting as I listened to them in that they said in most psychiatric hospitals one of the main diet constituents is wheat. I draw it to your attention because from that flows the concern we have in the whole area of the ministry’s approach to the treatment of those in some need of psychiatric assistance.

Of course, we have been asking the minister what he is prepared to do about implementing some form of assistance programme and otherwise in halfway houses to protect the community and to protect the patient who is released from Ontario Hospitals. If we can find some other solution which will permit these patients on corrective diets to live normal lives, of course, we would be looking to that solution instead. I would like to know that we are at least having some creative activity in this field.

I think we are continuing our concern for the services which are still, I must suggest, inadequate for those patients released from active-treatment hospitals and returned to their own homes. Certainly the advent of the outreach health services at Wellesley has been a tremendous help but I would ask if it is really an ongoing policy of the ministry and how it is being implemented in areas other than the riding of St. George and, pretty basically, the St. James Town area although I am aware of the centre in Moss Park.

I think perhaps at that point I would like to hear from the minister, Mr. Chairman, before I proceed further.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, the first comments were aimed at my response to the member for Grey-Bruce (Mr. Sargent). This House is not always noted for its serious comments in the question period and I don’t feel I need to apologize to that member any more than I would expect other members who’ve tried to be flippant with me or other ministers to apologize. It’s become a matter of a way of life in here sometimes and I think the assumption that --

Mrs. Campbell: It is unfortunate that is so.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t particularly like it. The fact is I answer a straight question in a straight way, you know that, but if somebody is going to attack me, I am going to attack them back and I make no apology for it because that’s the way it is in here.

I could tell you I have treated his problems seriously. I have personally visited his community at least twice. I have met with his hospital board and representatives of the community at least three times personally. I have had members of the staff meet with them a number of times. You can imagine with the little amount of time ministers have to meet delegations, if that same degree of time were spent on every member in this House, I don’t know what I’d be doing in running the ministry.

For him to imply we have not tried to resolve his problems was unfair. He had a bunch of statistics which were wrong. His hospital had requested a portable addition. We concurred only after some argument. We started and called for tenders and the tenders have been let on the addition to the hospital. It belongs to the province and we have made it available to him for his patients in his area in an attempt to find a short-range way of using the existing plant until the admittedly required new hospital can be justified.

He has a pretty good hospital in an awkward location. It’s been added to like Topsy. It’s backed up against a stone hill, as I recall. It’s got very little room to expand. It has simply been added to when, in fact, many years ago perhaps the decision should have been made to move it to a new spot.

But the money is there. It’s like the Toronto General Hospital, located in the middle of the city. The money is in that place and it can’t really be vacated today, because of the tremendous residual investment and because of the relative condition compared to other areas of the province, such as the one the member for Thunder Bay (Mr. Stokes) talks about. So we are stuck.

I say, in all sincerity, when I tell a board that it can’t do something for five years, is that not better than leading them down the garden path and saying, “Plan and I’ll consider it,” when I’m not going to consider it? I think it is better to be honest with people and say, “We are not going to have money for at least three years for you. If you are not going to have money in those three years, please don’t waste your time or effort raising funds in the community. Please don’t hire consultants, whose advice may be out of date by the time we can allow you to proceed. That’s happened so often and I’ve been faced with the aftermath that I just made up my mind. I’d rather say no to begin with, until in fact a person had a chance to get the money to go ahead. It’s a simplistic way of approaching the problem. They are mad at me once, the first time; they are not mad at me the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh time, and that’s the way I have decided to run that aspect of the ministry.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Law of survival.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I hope and trust it will mean one more thing -- my staff will be dealing with those proposals that, in fact, are going ahead. You can imagine the staff load there is and the criticisms we get for not doing things fast enough. If you are looking at four things that might get built and you’ve got one that will be built, should we not be dealing with the one that will be built and not looking at the four that might be built? That was really the basis behind it all -- better service, hopefully, to those hospitals that are going to get approval.

Okay. I am serious about my job but I don’t think that being serious means I have to go around with a sad face. I think that if it assumes you have to look like an undertaker to take your job seriously it is totally wrong.

Mr. Ferrier: You don’t have to take an unreasonable attitude.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I point out to the member that there are not too many ministers who accompany opposition candidates through their ridings.

Mrs. Campbell: Yes, for that I’m very grateful.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Okay, so much for that. When it comes to the hospitals in Toronto, we have two planning groups -- three planning groups really, as I’m sure you know -- Metropolitan Toronto Hospital Planning Council, I think is one, and the Hospital Council of Metropolitan Toronto. I find it a bit confusing to sort out what those two are.

Mrs. Campbell: This is one of the things that are wrong.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have to be told which one it is each time, because I can transpose the words and have it wrong. I talked to the HCMT just last week, addressing them, and I would say we were very encouraged this year by the progress that voluntary group of hospital people in Toronto has shown. They came ahead with their priorities to us on a planning basis for all of Toronto, and I think that’s a great step forward.

The other thing is, you’ve got the UTHA group, the University Teaching Hospitals Association. They overlap naturally, but there are 12 members of UTHA in Toronto. They get the 100 per cent money from us, as you know, the 100 cents on the dollar for capital needed for clinical teaching facilities.

We have had real problems fitting their needs into our budget. They have sincerely and seriously tried to resolve their problems. I understand Wellesley Hospital has, if not the highest priority, one of the highest priorities in its planning procedures for extra moneys. They have suggested to us some interesting means of bridge financing. They are considering them, the banks are considering them and we are considering them so that their planning can result in building on a rational, step-by-step basis. I would say that their planning is pretty well done. Those two groups have made, in our opinion, real progress in the last while.

I guess the Princess Margaret Hospital serves all of the province. It is located in your riding and it certainly serves your riding. The ratepayers are keenly interested in it, not necessarily from a service point of view but really from a zoning point of view and the size. The city is looking at it. We have talked about that earlier. I think I’ll not say any more about Princess Margaret.

Last night we did discuss the overlapping of services to some real degree. I would rather have you read some of the transcripts.

Mrs. Campbell: I tried to get them. I couldn’t find any.

Hon. Mr. Miller: You asked me what happens when we ask a hospital to convert beds from one form to another or make structural renovations. Up to date, it is still one-third, two-thirds financing that is required. I don’t know that that is bad because that is the only onus that we put on the community being served by a community-based hospital.

I can be always tripped up, as I was the other night, but total capital outlays in my ministry this year are of the order of three per cent of my budget. Does that sound right? It is $100 million in round figures for new hospital plant in Ontario. That means that if all of that, and it isn’t, had to be matched by the community, $50 million would have to be raised. UTHA money is in there and all teaching facilities and some certain specialized funds that are 100 per cent. Maybe we are asking the communities of Ontario to raise $25 million to $40 million this year to support their community-based hospitals.

Today more and more municipalities are assuming that responsibility rather than having the hospital go out on the old-fashioned, fund-raising drive that was the backbone of the hospital fund-raising system for so many years. I am not sure I like it. It’s easy. It spreads the load across all the people in the community but I question whether we want all our decisions made by government. It’s kind of nice once in a while to make a discretionary decision to give some money to something you believe in.

I would encourage from time to time the raising of funds for special ventures. When one looks at that $40 million and realizes that I have a budget of $3 billion, you can realize it is not much more than one per cent of the total amount of money being spent on health care in the province that we are going back to the community to stimulate. We look upon it as a measure of their willingness to support that particular enterprise in their community. If the community won’t do it, surely then we’d look at our willingness to put the balance in and support the operation of that.

In northern Ontario we give five-sixths, I believe, to those people in communities of less than 12,000. A hospital north of the Mason-Dixon line -- since I became minister that is the Severn River -- has a five-sixths funding.

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Nobody knows where the Severn River is.

Hon. Mr. Miller: As for nutrition and psychiatric treatment, I am now speaking without any real depth of knowledge. I realize up to now I have been speaking with great depth of knowledge.

Mr. Laughren: We hadn’t noticed.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I wish you wouldn’t wake up every so often and make those comments.

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): Quite a wit. Exchanging notes with me.

Mr. Laughren: Plotting your downfall.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Really there is so much unknown about the causes of mental illness that far be it from any of us, even the psychiatrists, to dismiss as foolish any suggestions of the nature you make, but rather to say we will be watching those very carefully and maybe doing some research -- maybe not -- depending upon the validity of the arguments that come forward.

I have listened to some fascinating discussions about the chemical transmittal of communications in the brain and their effect upon your mental health. I can understand the tremendous difficulty for the scientists to detect, analyse, identify the function of these various chemicals. But I would suggest that as time goes on we are becoming more and more aware that mental illness can be related to chemical imbalances, which can be related to nutritional imbalances in the body. Far be it for me to argue; I will simply say we will be watching and perhaps taking part.

There are all kinds of ideas coming forward all the time, and to be trying them all is very difficult. In our Ontario Hospital system, I find that the individual psychiatrist -- and somebody can correct me if I am wrong -- is given a great deal of freedom in using certain treatment procedures. Where these psychiatrists believe in a system, they are generally allowed to pursue it as long as it isn’t way out in left field. And I don’t know that we even stop those in left field.

Mrs. Campbell: They might get home some day.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Regarding halfway houses, we have all kinds of halfway houses to talk about, of course, but as we go back to more and more community support for the treatment of mentally ill persons, getting them back into the community faster and faster -- and we are, not for dollars and cents I say quickly; not for dollars and cents -- it has been accepted that those people should be back in the community for their sake. There are lots of weaknesses in the system, but if you have taken a trip -- and I am sure you have -- through any of the Ontario Hospitals in the province -- Whitby, I think, would be a classic --

Mrs. Campbell: What about Queen St.?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well, Queen St. isn’t a good example by comparison with Whitby.

Mrs. Campbell: It certainly isn’t.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Just a second. Queen St. is changing its methods very quickly, but Whitby has been left with many people who were mentally ill years and years ago. They are the closest things to zombies I have ever seen. They sit all day, they have expressionless faces and they stand up and sit down on command. No one could tell you today whether they are still mentally ill or not, but they are institutionalized. They were institutionalized at a time when society’s only concern with the mentally ill was to get them out of sight and keep them there. So many, many people who could have returned to the community and survived, who could have become useful parts of society again, have stayed 50 years in hospital and have little, if any, chance of rehabilitation.

If we are taking risks, the risks are on the side of the patient, even though we know he or she may commit suicide because of the lack of protection around them. Every time it happens, somebody screams about the permissiveness; but they forget about the hundreds of people who wouldn’t have made it if some gambles weren’t taken in the psychiatric system.

We need several things. Most of all, we need community understanding of what we are trying to do. Community understanding is blocking almost every attempt of this ministry to find suitable community-based homes, whether they are for mentally ill kids, disturbed kids or adults trying to get back to the community. The very community that complains about it is the very impediment to the progress we want to make. I have deep feelings on that. I believe we have an obligation to accept these kinds of things and, as politicians, to defend this ministry when it wants to create them in the zoning areas of the city, because that really stops us right now, more than dollars.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Chairman, if I may, following the minister’s explanations, the minister has pointed out the fact that the hospital in Owen Sound is in a bad position. He has already discussed with us the Sudbury hospital. He has, again, with respect, refused to deal with the issue of the responsibilities of boards of governors of hospitals. I don’t know why this minister, whom I admit is usually very frank and open, simply skirts around that particular question.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I missed my notes on it, that’s why.

Mrs. Campbell: Good, we’ll get an answer.

The other thing, of course, is that no one is suggesting for a moment we would want to see people continue in an institution if they are, in fact, able to cope with the community. But there has to be some help for that patient.

The thing that always bothers me is this, over the years we have seen psychiatric treatment, we have seen all of the attempts to restore those with these sorts of difficulties. And you know, really, the record of success in our present treatment doesn’t inspire in me any great degree of confidence for the future. Why is it that we always have to say that we will watch what others are doing with great interest? Why isn’t it possible that we can ourselves try something different?

I am appreciative of the fact that the minister, I think, gave to me and to some of my hospitals -- what was it? -- 2½ to three hours of his very valuable time. I am rather saddened to know that he is able to be in other places for several days at a time; however, I am delighted.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Only when the fishing is good.

Mrs. Campbell: I see. I’ll tell you, if you come into my riding seeking fish, the best thing you can do with the fish you’ll get there is to use it for magnificent fertilizer, and it’s available.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I saw them floating in the harbour.

Mrs. Campbell: Yes, I am thinking of going down with a bucket myself.

The other matter, and it’s a quick one: Is the minister aware that apparently in parts of this province the hospitals are using shock treatment for the treatment of migraine headaches? If he is not aware of it, would he investigate it? I am informed that, at least, that treatment is not recommended by any expert for that particular condition. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. minister wish to reply?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I missed a topic, as I mentioned. First, I am not aware of anything on the migraine shock treatment. Normally, as minister, I would assume that treatment procedures and methods used by any physicians in Ontario was subject to review by the College of Physicians and Surgeons as to their suitability.

Responsibility of boards, we have talked about in both previous encounters in the estimates.

Mrs. Campbell: The minister never answered.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t know that I can answer the question to the member’s satisfaction. Some hospital boards are very well elected, some are elected by a handful of eligible people; so that one cannot say that they are truly democratic institutions. I am not even totally satisfied they should be because in the main they are looking after provincially-allocated moneys under provincial guidelines.

Mrs. Campbell: So the public shouldn’t have accountability?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, that is not the issue. The boards have been charged with certain specific duties in their bylaws and, because they are almost all volunteer people, in the main we have attracted top-grade people, particularly in the hospitals in your area.

Mrs. Campbell: Without question.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would like to think they became more management conscious yet I recognize it is not the fault of the people we put on boards that they don’t worry about, let’s say, real savings in health care costs but rather worry about meeting the demands of their community for services, simply and solely because they are not accountable to anyone for the raising of those funds. They simply have to argue with our ministry about their budget.

They are not like a town council or a board of education which puts the money on a mill rate. Incidentally, they spend more money than most town councils and boards of education put together and multiplied by two.

Mrs. Campbell: That is the point.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I keep warning the municipalities that if we ever honestly transferred back to the local mill rate the health care costs in hospitals of this province you would see the greatest revolution you ever saw in terms of trying to limit facilities.

Mrs. Campbell: Precisely, and in my case they are province-wide views.

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is one of the problems. We have a provincial system and because many hospitals are serving many more people than the community immediately around them we have had to recognize that fact in our funding.

Boards are subject to overthrow.

Mrs. Campbell: How?

Hon. Mr. Miller: We had an issue, I think, in Scarborough not long ago when there was an attempt to take over the board; after Dr. Schiller's case went through, if I am I not wrong. Sadly enough, it usually takes an issue of that type to polarize opinion in a community and to make people turn out and take an interest in who is running the hospital.

On the other hand, I think we have had very dedicated people across the province. From time to time I have to disagree with some and use whatever ministerial discretion I have. I am disagreeing with some in Windsor as the member for Windsor-Walkerville will be telling you shortly. I have disagreed with one in Haileybury on the very points you talked about a few moments ago -- that I used my ministerial prerogative to say they had chosen a site which was not as good as another site. We can argue forever who was right. As I said the day I made the statement I wish I knew I was right. I believe I was right and all I can do is act on my beliefs in a case like that.

Certainly I am told in your own leader’s riding -- I guess it was the Paris hospital -- the board has been overthrown within the last very few months and a new group of people has come in. In that case I guess it was certain managerial problems, budgetary problems, which caused a group of interested citizens to come in and vote for new members of the board.

It is possible but it usually takes some problem in the community. Maybe that’s wise. Usually you and I get re-elected as long as there isn’t some tremendously controversial issue involving us in our riding as individuals.

Really, I think that’s all -- I was going to say something about the halfway houses.

Government isn’t the only source of help in this world. If I have one belief as a Conservative it is that government has become far too much the source of help.

The Toronto Star in its editorial a while ago was talking about help for those once mentally ill -- you may have seen it on May 6. It said it was not a task for government but for the voluntary sector -- for the caring, concerned, community-spirited men and women with the initiative and the imagination to devise and organize the help needed. That was to help people get back to the community. I think that is right. I have been impressed with the comments and talks I’ve had with some of the community mental health people who are attempting to go that way.

Mrs. Campbell: They’re usually shorthanded as funding goes.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Ottawa West, and then I’ll recognize the hon. member for Cochrane South.

Mr. D. H. Morrow (Ottawa West): Mr. Chairman, I understand that the minister is accepting questions on all three items here, 1, 2 and 3. I would like to address myself to an old familiar subject of mine that I’m sure that he and his ministry have heard of for several years now, and that is inadequacy of chronic care facilities in the Ottawa area.

The minister will recall that on several occasions I have brought this to his attention, to the attention of former Ministers of Health, as well as to this House. Our last confrontation on this matter was when the provincial cabinet met in Ottawa last November. A brief was presented to the minister and the cabinet on that occasion by a group of Ottawa doctors, outlining this particular situation in Ottawa. They believed it to be a crisis situation at the time, because they are definitely of the opinion that they could empty out some 250 to 300 active treatment beds in our various Ottawa hospitals if only we had additional chronic care facilities.

I must say that this Minister of Health has been listening to our complaints, which shows the flexibility that he has been exhibiting on many occasions. He was most receptive to the presentation of this brief at the Ottawa conference and even promised some help at that time; and this was, indeed a welcome thing. It at least indicated to the people who had been complaining about this matter for some time that the Ministry of Health had at last acknowledged that there was an inadequacy in these beds. Up to that time, although all those conversant with the situation in Ottawa kept pointing this out, there was always some computer here in Toronto which seemed to indicate that we had 200 more chronic beds in Ottawa than we should have had.

Of course, the same was true of the nursing home situation. Those who were close to the problem really thought that this was some joke, because there was no surplus of beds at any time.

The Ottawa Perley hospital was turned down on their application for an extension of some 100 chronic care beds at their hospital -- in Ottawa, we have the two main chronic hospitals, the Perley and St. Vincent. Two years ago they made application for a 10-bed extension. They documented the case well, but they were denied on this suggestion that there already were sufficient beds in the Ottawa area.

I happened to be a member of the Ontario Hospital Services Commission at the time. Of course, I well knew that it was the matter of financing new capital projects that was the real reason for the turndown at that particular time, and not a surplus of chronic beds in the Ottawa area.

I don’t really want to go on with a litany of this problem in Ottawa; I’ve outlined it many times. There was just one further thing that has happened this past year which I think the minister is well aware of, and which has exacerbated the problem. When the former Harrington chronic hospital -- we had a third hospital there a few years ago -- was closed down, some 30 to 35 patients were placed in the Beacon Hill Lodge, an Extendicare facility. They took over the eighth floor of the Beacon Hill Lodge and it actually became a chronic hospital. Due to some financial differences with the lodge this past year, it was decided to phase out that facility. Now, these 30-odd beds that were in Beacon Hill Lodge have been phased out and these patients have been put into other beds that had been made available which, as I say, has made the situation worse.

The situation in Ottawa has improved. The reason I say that is because I talked to a member of the Ottawa Civic Hospital board a few weeks ago. I was trying to run down just what had been done since our meeting last fall with the minister, when he promised some help. I knew that some work had been done, and I wanted to find out where it had been done. He couldn’t be too definitive in his answer to me on this matter, but he did say that he thought 60 or more beds had been made available, I think spread throughout some of the active treatment hospitals, such as Riverside and the Ottawa Civic.

At this time, therefore, I would just like to be brought up to date by the minister and would appreciate if he would expand on this subject a little bit to let us know what has been done in Ottawa. Although we expect it is still quite inadequate, we would like to know the true picture and we’ll be able to keep chasing them thereafter if it doesn’t meet the situation.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, the member for Ottawa West has contacted me regularly and impressed upon me the need for more chronic beds in that area. I quite agree with his comment that computers and people can’t always be compared. Therefore, when there has been evidence of real need anywhere in the province, whether it was for nursing homes or chronic beds, we’ve tried to recognize that the bed statistic that should apply, doesn’t always apply.

At the St. Vincent Hospital in Ottawa, we have opened a total of 50 beds -- Jan. 4 to Feb. 1, 13 beds; Feb. 1 to March 1, 13 beds; and after March 1, 24 beds. At Riverside Hospital, we are proposing 17 beds to be in service by July 1, assuming we are able to approve the budget submitted. We are negotiating right now with the Montford Hospital for a further 20 beds. That will give you the picture.

Further, the district health council in Ottawa, which you know was the first formed in Ontario, has a subcommittee looking into the problem of chronic care facilities, and we expect an answer from the district health council by June 18 on their assessment of bed needs in the community and the results of an accommodation survey. So we’re going to have some definitive information from your local body to help us very shortly.

Mr. Morrow: Supplementary to what I said, I was wondering whether the Ottawa district health council had got into the picture at all, because a year ago your people met in Ottawa with these people when the new council was formed, and I believe the continuing care committee discussed with your officials a further survey of the matter. I thought this was superfluous at the time, because we didn’t think another survey was needed; we had about 10. The need was there, and we thought this was only a stall at the time. However, it is well to get a true picture. I was hoping they would come up with something definitive and what the true needs were.

I wonder if the minister or some of his officials could tell me how you got the physical facilities to get the extra 50 beds at St. Vincent? Did they open up some new floor or something up in the attic? How did you get them in the other hospitals? What was sort of surrendered to get the extra physical setup for these extra beds?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am getting my information because honestly I don’t know firsthand. I am told that the central supply room was moved to make room for some of these beds. And some beds, I guess were active beds. They were chronic beds, Riverside had the empty beds. When there are empty active beds, as you know, the change is a little easier. There are certain structural requirements usually needed to adjust to chronic patients.

Mr. Morrow: Could the minister tell me if the Ottawa Perley Hospital has resubmitted the application for the 100-bed addition which was turned down a couple of years ago? They told me last August they were thinking of reapplying now that the need was so great and that the ministry had sort of accepted and perhaps moneys might be found for a capital project of this nature.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am told they haven’t. The proper channel, of course, wouldn’t be directly through us any more but through the district health council.

Mr. Morrow: Through the district council now? I hope they have presented it or made their priority known to them.

I have one further question on nursing homes. I had occasion two or three weeks ago to visit several of the homes. I wanted to take a look to see what was going on there and see whether they have many vacancies. A few people had made inquiries from me and had received ministerial approval to enter a nursing home but they couldn’t find one. I visited three and I found their beds all full to capacity, right to the very last bed they had. I wonder if the minister could bring me up to date on our nursing home capacity down there. Is there inadequacy there as well at the present time?

Hon. Mr. Miller: The computer says no.

Mr. Morrow: Don’t believe that computer.

Mr. B. Newman: What was fed into it? Was no fed into it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, I realize that. We took the menu right off one of the nursing home boards.

Mr. Morrow: Don’t forget they are feeding into that computer the old statistic that there should be so many beds according to the population.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I told you when I was PA, certainly when I looked at the guidelines, I always equated them or compared them to the list of the people awaiting entry who had been approved for the extended care programme.

I want to make two comments. I can give you the very detailed data. You have 1,297 licensed nursing home beds in Ottawa.

Mr. Morrow: Is that Ottawa-Carleton or Ottawa city alone?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Ottawa-Carleton.

Mr. Morrow: Ottawa-Carleton, I believe.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can name the homes one by one if you want them.

Mr. Morrow: I just wanted to know; I think perhaps it’s Ottawa-Carleton.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Only 34 of those total beds are used for people who have been released from mental hospitals and that’s a very low ratio compared to the rest of the province. You really have far more nursing home beds for nursing home patients than most areas.

Secondly, you have 179 beds approved for construction right now.

Mr. Martel: You are just crying wolf.

Hon. Mr. Miller: And 123 of these, I guess, had been released some time ago. I don’t know whether they are pretty close to construction completion or not. They should be going on right now. That’s at Beacon Hill.

The other problem I face with the nursing homes -- and sooner or later I’ll have to discuss it -- is the forms for extended care covered by OHIP. The application assessment is performed usually by the patient’s physician. By law we have to reappraise these people -- it was every three months but I think we do it every six months now -- in the nursing home, once they get there.

A lot of people think that once a person is approved for a nursing home, they are approved for life. That’s not true. The law is very clear on that fact. They have to have medical need before we pay for their coverage. If I am not wrong we pay right now $11.45 a day. It’s $17 to the homes, but I am thinking of our share of it -- $12.60 per day --

Mr. Morrow: It’s $12.60 a day.

Hon. Mr. Miller: We pay $12.60 per day. About two years ago now, we had our first reassessment of people in nursing homes and to our shock a very high percentage of them didn’t qualify for OHIP coverage. They had been admitted as qualifying, so one of two things had happened. They had improved in health since they entered or somehow the first form wasn’t necessarily accurate.

Mr. Morrow: Who makes the reassessment?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Interestingly enough it was the same physicians in each case. It wasn’t done by different physicians. It’s made me pause though, because we cannot afford to have people in nursing homes in Ontario who don’t qualify on medical grounds. It may require me to question and change the methods of the first approval. I am going to tell you that we didn’t kick those people out of the nursing homes because they didn’t qualify the second time, nor do I think we should. Frankly, it’s a traumatic experience for an old person who may have nowhere to go to be told he has to leave.

The error, if there is an error, is in allowing them in in the first case, if they already had a place to stay or a family to stay with. You may see some tightening up of the methods of approval of people for extended-care coverage in the future.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Cochrane South.

Mr. Ferrier: Mr. Chairman, I would like to deal with two or three things on this vote. We have been given to believe by the minister that a district health council is imminent in our area and that he had at one point waited to find an appropriate chairman. I am not sure whether he has found the appropriate chairman or not or how long it will be until that council can be appointed, some of the decisions are made that need to be made, some of the studies that need to be carried out, are in fact, carried out by local people, some input comes back here to the minister and hopefully some decisions get under way.

The situation for chronics is very acute in the area. The only place that chronics are housed now in Timmins is in the senior citizens’ home. There are a couple of beds in the active treatment hospital, St. Mary’s in Timmins, where I believe a couple of patients are being kept. There is a nursing home there which could add 26 beds with very little cost to the nursing home.

I put the suggestion to the minister by way of a letter that perhaps provision could be made on an interim basis for that wing being used as a chronic-care wing until other more long-term solutions are found. I don’t know what your response is to that. I know by the correspondence I had with your parliamentary assistant that you feel that we in the district of Cochrane are well off and that we have got above the average that the computer sets for extended-care beds and this in a sense takes into account chronics as well.

I also know that representatives from the hospital in Iroquois Falls have been down and met with you with a proposal to expand their hospital facility to provide 40 chronic-care beds for that part of the riding. The South Cochrane district planning council for hospitals, I believe, has said that it is in favour of that in 1976-1977. There are things that are in the works but unfortunately, maybe I am putting too much stress on one thing. We are not making the progress that we might if the health council was in operation.

The other thing is, of course, that the minister, in his visit to the riding -- I believe it was about a year ago -- met with the board of management at St. Mary’s Hospital, and I’m not sure whether the South Porcupine people were there or not, but you gave us the commitment that the district hospital would be built in Timmins. In talking to you subsequently, I gathered that one of the preconditions was that the two hospital boards could agree to come together and agree on a site to proceed with a district hospital. I believe that has now been done and the city council has looked at pieces of property and is prepared to acquire one.

The minister also knows that Texasgulf has announced its $300-million-plus expansion programme, and work will be beginning shortly on the construction of that. We will probably have 1,000 to 1,500 construction workers in our area and, knowing the nature of the industry, there will be greater stress put on the hospitals there. In addition, when Texasgulf has completed its expansion programme there will be another 1,000 and 1,500 employees of that company in the Timmins area. I think that to plan ahead to adequately meet the needs that are going to be there and to avert a crisis, action is soon going to be required and decisions made to go ahead with the district hospital and cope with the chronic and extended care situations.

I know that throughout the community there’s great concern about this chronic care situation. I’ve been criticized by your own party for not hitting you hard enough to get those chronic beds. They’re trying to blame me for you not moving. I don’t think that’s factually so, but none the less, I appeal to you again, is it dependent on that health council being formed? If so, can you get it formed, and can you give evert co-operation and assurance that the decision that will be made by them will be acted upon by your ministry? I know you said that if the South Cochrane district hospital planning council came up with recommendations you were prepared to look at them carefully and maybe move. So could you tell us what we might have in store in our area as far as some of these things are concerned?

Mr. Chairman: Does the minister wish to reply?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, I will try to. We were just making some policy here before I answered the question. It’s a delight to hear that you’re getting blamed for my sins of omission, and I hope that you can also take the blame for some of my sins of commission.

Mr. Ferrier: I would take the credit.

Hon. Mr. Miller: You may not want to take credit for some of my sins of commission. I would tell you that the order in council is well on its way for the formation of the district health council. There are no technical barriers, outside of the time it takes to go through Management Board of Cabinet, to the creation and naming of the district health council. The members are in place.

A word of caution I have given wherever a health council is formed, though, is this; I hope there’s not an oversell on the magic of what a DHC will do. It doesn’t suddenly get unlimited access to the Treasury. It simply helps to set the priorities in that area.

Health councils will obviously be advocates for the areas they represent, but because they represent broader geographic areas than a single hospital board, hopefully they’ll work our priorities within that and listen to us in terms of our overall capital capabilities. In other words, there’s no use a health council coming to us and saying: “We need all these things, and we need them now.” That’s not going to make the system work. There has been some belief on some people’s part that that would happen.

Chronic care needs in the north, it would seem logical to me, should be met in two ways. Keep the patient as close to his home as possible, if there is no real hope of recovery or rehabilitation. So you would like to use your smaller or local hospitals for that purpose. You’ll not have too many true rehab chronic facilities in the north, though, and those will be regionalized to a degree to permit the people who can profit from rehabilitative medicine and treatment to get it in certain areas, so that they have a chance of returning to home and to a more normal life. I hope that policy will gain a degree of acceptance.

I do recall my visit to your city. I think it was Mayor Del Villano who met with me and hit me over the head and told me how much money we’d better give his health unit -- and all those things. And we did, if you recall.

I did compliment the South Porcupine hospital and the Timmins hospital on their willingness to agree upon a site. I think even when I was there they had pretty well decided where it should go. I did say that that kind of co-operation would get reward faster than the kind I ran into some times in some places.

Really, I hope that answers some of your questions. I can’t give you a date as to the creation of the new hospital in Timmins, or what steps will come first. I told them that day it wasn’t tomorrow morning, but that at least they were moving in the direction that we knew as essential. And because they were working together, they had a much better chance of success than if they were working apart.

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

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to raise the issue with the minister of the hospital situation and the chronic care situation in the city of Windsor.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Where?

Mr. B. Newman: In the great city of Windsor, Mr. Minister. You know, the garden gateway to Canada.

The minister, I am sure, is aware of the sit-nation. He has been made aware of it by myself in the House, as well as by officials. I hope, in the course of my comments, that I am able to convince him that he has either been misinformed or that he doesn’t understand the whole situation in the community and that he reconsiders some of the decisions that, I think, are forthcoming from his ministry.

In the first instance, the proposal from your ministry, Mr. Chairman, is that the Riverview Hospital’s chronic care facilities be phased out; that it be closed. The second proposal was the obstetrical unit at Grace Hospital likewise be phased out and be absorbed in one of the other hospitals. The third was that the paediatric and psychiatric services at Metropolitan General Hospital be phased out and distributed to other hospitals. The fourth was that the psychiatric services at Hotel Dieu of St. Joseph Hospital be phased out and centred in one of the other hospitals.

The thing that really disturbs me the most, Mr. Minister, is the fifth issue; and that is the distribution of the patients from the chronic hospital at the Riverview Hospital. That is the result of your comment, Mr. Minister, that there is excess bed capacity in the four other hospitals in the community.

First, Mr. Minister, may I say that if there is excess bed space in the hospitals in the community it is as a direct result of poor planning on the part of your officials and the fact that an addition to the hospital had just been opened within the last two years.

I know that you are concerned. I also know that you are extremely capable and you disarm or attempt to disarm by argument very easily. You are very convincing. However, in spite of all of that I am not convinced, but I am willing to listen to your side of the argument in an attempt to convince me. Likewise I would like to do just the reverse of that.

We are cost-conscious in the community; we are also interested in saving health dollars. We are interested in the lowest possible cost for health services in the community, but we also want the highest quality of service in tune with the needs of the community. I think that those should be given serious consideration.

You have always said in your comments that you’ll be receptive to any type of position placed by the community that could convince you and that your mind could be changed. I hope I may be able to change your mind and I hope arguments and letters from the residents in the area have been convincing enough to you. I would assume that you have got probably 10 times the number of letters that I received, because when constituents contacted me I told them that I am not in the policy and decision-making area, that it is yourself and your leader who have to assume that responsibility.

One of the things that does disturb me is that in the whole area of the studies I don’t find where the consumer of the services is being considered or has had the opportunity for input. I am subject to correction, but I find in my discussion with people that they have never been consulted. As the various press releases that come along state, you discuss the proposals with the planning council, and with the hospital committee, but you don’t meet with the people who are going to be affected at all, that is, with those who could be not only patients but also fathers, mothers, husbands or wives of patients. I think that the consumer of the services always has to be involved in any of the suggestions that can eventually lead to the decision-making.

Mr. Chairman, I’d like to start out with the Riverview Hospital first. You are familiar with the fact that it is an old building. It certainly does need replacing. Funds could be spent on updating the thing to a certain degree, and I think they should have been, except what has happened is that back in 1971 there was the promise that you were going to build a chronic care facility at the hospital centre, which is the old lODE hospital in the community. Everyone in the community at that time took that as a policy of government and that they were going to carry on and do that. As a result, to the best of my information, the board of Riverview Hospital hesitated to put in substantial amounts of money into rehabilitating Riverview Hospital.

The hospital does provide excellent service and does serve the community well. In my estimation, it would be wrong on your part to close that hospital, to distribute the patients to four other hospitals and not to build a chronic care hospital -- not as an individual hospital but as an adjunct to the health centre.

Back in 1971, as I said, we had been told that we were going to get it. Then all of a sudden we find that one of your previous colleagues, the hon. Bert Lawrence, said on June 11 it’s not on the list.

Mr. Chairman, when we are talking about people in hospitals and when we are talking about those who require chronic care, we are talking about one segment of our community which really needs attention. We should be extremely concerned about their care. However, we don’t find that same concern on the part of the ministry and your officials, Mr. Minister.

I can recall a member of the board, by the name of Mike Sumner, who has been very active at the Riverview Hospital for years and years. He was extremely familiar with the problems of chronic care patients and well over a year ago he told me the ministry was concerned only with closing the hospital and distributing the patients to four other hospitals.

I couldn’t believe the ministry would ever consider doing exactly that -- placing chronic care patients in general hospitals. What you are doing by following a policy like that is completely ignoring the skills of the staff which have been developed so patiently and painfully over years. What you are doing is sacrificing the patients to the role of bed fillers to cover up, as he says, a political boo-boo of years gone by.

As a result of the latest addition to a hospital in the community, Riverview had refrained from spending money on its updating. This, Mr. Sumner says, resulted in the depreciation of the facilities so now they have neither a new building nor a decent old building. Had your ministry kept faith with the people there would have been a new chronic care wing established at one of the hospitals.

The decision, or the impending decision, on the part of your ministry has so affected the community that never before in my days as a member of this House have I heard so many complaints from constituents. It covered the complete broad spectrum of the community -- the well-to-do; the indigent; the extremely well-educated; those who did not have the advantages of education; they were all extremely concerned. Not only the general public but groups, clubs and organizations likewise have taken up the fight for a reconsideration of your decisions on the proposals of your ministry.

The Royal Canadian Legion in a communication to your leader -- and I would assume a copy was sent to you; yes, I notice there was a copy sent to you -- from Robert Westgarth, commander, zone A1 of the Royal Canadian Legion, very strongly states that the closing of the Riverview unit of the Western Hospital Centre of Windsor and the relocation of chronic care cases to other hospitals is totally unacceptable.

“Zone A1 of the Royal Canadian Legion strongly objects to the closing of Riverview unit of Western Hospital in Windsor, unless government plans include a timely chronic unit replacement which is entirely self-sufficient, with ample bed accommodation and where equally efficient therapeutic treatment can be administered.”

Individual after individual has been in communication with myself and the other members from the two ridings in the city, as well as with yourself and the Premier (Mr. Davis). They all have some concrete reason for your reconsidering the policy that is being contemplated. I’m not going to take the time of the House in reading the letters into the record, but I am going to read one heart-rendering type of letter later on in my comments.

In all of this, the prime consideration was the patient. The consideration was not as great concerning the loss of jobs, even though that is a very serious and important consideration, but for everyone who did make mention of any concern, the prime concern was the treatment that would be missing from patients in the hospitals.

While I am talking on Riverview, probably it got the greatest concern. You made mention at one time, Mr. Minister, of an editorial from the Windsor Star that agreed with your position. We don’t disagree with you attempting to save money, but are you necessarily saving money in the approach that you are using? By the distribution of patients from Riverview into the regular hospitals in the community, we don’t think you are saving money, and in addition you are destroying or breaking up a very efficient, effective health service team that has been developed over the years at Riverview and has been meeting adequately, under trying conditions and in inadequate facilities, the needs of a lot of the patients.

The same editorial, Mr. Minister, that you said was in the Windsor Star and complimented you for your approach, also contains things that you probably hesitated to make mention of. I’m going to read them here so that you can see that in the same editorial there were two sides to the issue. On April 14, the editorial read:

“No solutions are offered to hospital problems. This is a result of the impending policy of the government. [I’m only going to read portions of it, just as you referred to portions when you said that they considered your position and your attempt at rationalization probably a good approach.] The results of the shifting of patients around the city are far from desirable.

“First, without a central point, the programmes now being offered to chronic care patients will no doubt be hurt. Is each hospital going to be able to provide all the physical therapy and occupational therapy now available at Riverview?

“Second, chronic-care beds are substantially less expensive to maintain than active care beds. The per diem rate figured out at the hospital centre at lODE is approximately $87.95. [That is where you would be sending some of the chronic-care patients.] while the Riverview unit costs figure out to approximately $53.35. Will that saving be maintained if the chronic-care patients are spread around the other hospitals?

“Third, the closing of Riverview before a replacement is built seems disastrously short-sighted. [Get those words, Mr. Minister, “disastrously short-sighted.” This is from the same editorial that you made mention of as being complimentary.] The Riverview unit should be allowed to stay open as a stopgap measure until the money can be found to provide better service for the chronically ill patients. But using the chronic-care patients as pawns is an unacceptable way of improving the financial picture.”

We can’t look upon the health of the chronic care from a dollar-and-cents point of view only. We’ve got to think of health care more so than dollar bills or the green in front of our eyes.

In the few minutes remaining before the House adjourns I would attempt to read all of this letter. I've had the permission of the lady to read her letter, which comes from a Mrs. Gladys Halonen. If nothing else, this letter should convince you that your policy concerning Riverview is not the correct one and that you should reconsider it. This is concerning the incorporation of chronically ill patients in active treatment hospitals. She says:

“You’ve probably never lain in bed impaired and helpless, totally dependent on others. You’ve never had to lie there hoping and desperately praying that someone will be kind, will be patient while you try to move your limbs that no longer or very slowly and painfully respond to your will. Nor have you tried to communicate with others for your most basic needs, your words valiantly trying to escape from the prison of your mind to your lips, that so haltingly and more often cannot obey your thoughts.

“Tears of frustration sting your eyelids. An overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and nameless fear engulfs you. You’ve been completely stripped of your inherent dignity as a human being. You become bed 3, ward C. You’ve become either an angry, difficult patient or a dulled piece of flesh.

“Even animals fare better. If they are unwanted or ill, at least the Humane Society gives them a painless, humane death. As a patient, you must lie there and, as proposed by our provincial government, be shifted around for the government’s convenience until your weary, impaired body finally wears out and death mercifully releases you.

“Exaggerated, no. In 1944, while in training we were assigned to the chronic wards which were then found in every hospital in the city. Some of these patients had never seen green grass in six years. When we wheeled them on a stretcher to a window where they could see out properly, or in wheelchairs they were taken out on the lawn, their tears flowed uncontrollably. When we perfumed them up and put bows in their hair, the looks we received made us turn aside with emotion. We, at that time, did not understand.

“Until 1970, I worked in active treatment hospitals. I have seen and experienced most facets of nursing. I have worked at all levels, from general staff to director of nursing. An active treatment hospital is no place for chronically ill patients. It is grossly unfair to the nurse and to the patient. This is not due to a lack of compassion or indifference. The irrefutable fact is that these hospitals and their staff are geared to a completely different aspect of nursing. The actual nursing requirements, both physically and emotionally, are totally different.

“These chronically ill patients have worked hard all their lives, paid taxes and contributed to society, each in their own way. They are in the chronic hospital because they either have no family or their children cannot physically care for them at home. Morally, can we turn our backs on them now? Can we, now that they are helpless and defenceless, relegate them to whatever place is most convenient for us? Do they not deserve a place geared for their needs -- physio and speech therapy geared for them, a green lawn and cool trees or a sunny spot to rest in, a special kind of a person who has the time to care for them?

“The government has taken great strides in geriatric care in many respects. However, there is a large segment of the older population that, in my opinion, has been grossly neglected and if the proposal to incorporate chronically ill patients in active treatment hospitals is carried out, I strongly feel that a great injustice will be perpetrated on those defenceless people. In addition, you will have betrayed your trust to their families, plus placing an alien burden on the active treatment hospital.

“Let us go forward, not backward. This plan didn’t work 30 years ago; it will not work today. It appears economically feasible, but in practice it is not. Remember with medical technology the number of elderly people is increasing. Let us plan realistically for now and the future for all our sakes, including perhaps yours.”

Mr. Speaker, I have more comments to make and I’ll make them when we meet once again.

Hon. Mr. Miller 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 leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: I beg to inform the House that in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor has been pleased to assent to certain bills in her chambers.

ROYAL ASSENT

Clerk of the House: The following are the titles of the bills to which Her Honour has assented:

Bill 1, An Act to amend the Juries Act, 1974.

Bill 39, An Act to amend the Ministry of Community and Social Services Act.

Bill 44, the Liquor Control Act, 1975.

Bill 76, An Act to amend the Mortgage Brokers Act.

Bill 78, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.

Bill 79, An Act to amend the Judicature Act.

Bill 80, An Act to enable the Establishment of a Project for the Better Administration of Courts in the Region of Central West.

Bill 81, An Act to erect the Town of Thorold into a City Municipality.

Bill 83, An Act to amend the Municipal Tax Assistance Act.

Bill 84, An Act to amend the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act.

Bill 85, An Act to amend the Municipal Elderly Resident’s Assistance Act, 1973.

Bill 88, An Act to amend the Horticultural Societies Act.

Bill 89, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act.

Bill 90, An Act to amend the Fatal Accidents Act.

Bill 91, An Act to amend the Trustee Act.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, for the information of members, on Monday we will proceed with the consideration of the estimates currently before us. On Tuesday, we will proceed with second readings and the items as I call them are 8 through 13. Included with that list would be item No. 2 if, in fact, the House sees fit to deal with all of those matters. On Thursday, we would proceed to conclude what is not finished on Tuesday and deal with item No. 7.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 1 o’clock, p.m.