Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. B. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Mr. Chairman, before we go into the routine business, I wonder if I could introduce to you 65 students from the Belle River Public School, with Mrs. Hughes in charge, and ask you to make them welcome here.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): They’re not playing hookey are they?

OMBUDSMAN ACT (CONTINUED)

On section 12:

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Riverdale.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Mr. Chairman, I would like to move an amendment to section 12 if I may.

Perhaps for the benefit of the people whom you’ve just introduced, you might tell them what we’re doing. It seems singularly difficult for students to come into this chamber and suddenly have somebody stand up and say, “Well now, section 12,” and nobody knows of what.

Mr. Chairman: Maybe the member for Riverdale would like to tell them.

Mr. Renwick: No.

Mr. Ruston: The member for Riverdale and I agreed on a number of matters prior to the dinner break. I would take this opportunity to say that we are on Bill 86, which is clause-by-clause reading of the Ombudsman bill. This bill covers the appointment of a person that people may go to see if they cannot get what they think is fair treatment from government agencies, and we’re now on section 12 of the bill.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Is there a quorum?

Mr. Chairman: It is highly out of order, but we always yield to the requests of the member for Riverdale. Now he will carry on on section 12.

Mr. Renwick: Would you please give that message to the Attorney General (Mr. Clement)?

Mr. Haggerty: I thought the member for Essex-Kent was going to ask for a quorum.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, the point that concerns me about this provision in the bill which provides for the Ombudsman reporting annually on the affairs of his office to the Speaker of the assembly and then causing the report to be laid before the assembly if it’s in session or, if not, at the next ensuing session, is that it does not provide a vehicle by which the Ombudsman can report to the assembly as and when he sees fit. I am not at this point in time speaking about the noncompliance with recommendations where, later on in the bill, he has the opportunity, after consulting with the Premier, of laying a report before the assembly on a specific matter.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Yes, after jumping through all the hurdles, he finally can get here.

Mr. Renwick: I am not really talking about that. What I am talking about is whether or not the minister would be receptive to an amendment which would simply add on at the end of section 12: “and may from time to time present to the assembly such other reports, with respect to his office, as he thinks fit.”

The idea is simply that there may well be occasions when he doesn’t wish to wait for his annual report, and at the same time it’s not the kind of situation in which he is going to be engaged with respect to speaking to the Premier before he can lay down the report before the House on the implementation of a specific problem, but simply be given the leeway of saying, “Oh, I’m not really restricted just to an annual report. I can if I want to make a report from time to time to the assembly, which is my master,” if I can use that term, at such time as and when he sees fit.

It seems to me that not only is it appropriate, it is a provision which is in the bill establishing the same office in the House of Commons in England. I do not consider it to be an answer to my request that it deal with the other situation where, if a person has been aggrieved, and the injustice has not been remedied, he can then report to this assembly, which is the provision to which I referred earlier and to which we will come later in the bill.

Would the minister consider such an amendment while I sit and write it out?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): Mr. Chairman, the purpose for which the member for Riverdale feels the Ombudsman must have this additional right, I suggest with the greatest of respect, is already covered in section 22, subsection 4. Under that section, if no action is taken which the Ombudsman thinks is appropriate under the circumstances, he reports the inaction to the Premier and immediately thereafter can report to the assembly as he sees fit.

Mr. Lawlor: My colleague already ruled that out.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, but he and I have so many differences of opinion, in terms of our interpretation. I take the one position and he takes the other.

Mr. Lawlor: You couldn’t possibly be at odds on that one. You repeated precisely what he said; it’s not to the point. Please address yourself to the issue at stake.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it’s already covered. Do you understand that?

Mr. Lawlor: You keep on repeating yourself, like a dog chasing its tail.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): That’s his answer.

Hon. Mr. Clement: That’s my answer to you: I think it’s already covered.

Mr. Lawlor: The answer -- you’re not directing --

Hon. Mr. Clement: And he doesn’t.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Mr. Lawlor: You’re not directing your fine legal mind --

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Call order, Mr. Chairman. It’s getting out of hand.

Mr. Chairman: Order, the member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: What do you mean, “order”?

Mr. Chairman: We have an amendment before the Chair now and if the member for Riverdale will produce the amendment I’ll read it.

Mr. Renwick moves that section 12 of Bill 86 be amended by adding thereto the following words: “and may, from time to time, report as he thinks fit to the assembly.”

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, I would like to speak to it. The bill to which I have reference is the bill which establishes the same office in the House in the United Kingdom, in England, the mother of Parliaments, the House of Commons at Westminster, All right?

Mr. Lawlor: The minister has heard of it?

Mr. Renwick: It provides the two aspects of the report of the Ombudsman. It provides what I have just moved, in addition to the provision to which the minister has referred in subsection 4 of section 22, to which we will come later on.

What subsection 4 of section 22 says is that if he makes a recommendation or a proposal for a remedy of a wrong which has taken place, and if that is not implemented by the ministry or the particular government agency concerned, he can, after going to the Premier -- I disagree very seldom with my friend, the member for Rainy River, but I do on this occasion -- all he has to do is to touch base with the Premier and then he can present the actual recommendations to this assembly which he has made and which have not been implemented. That deals with a specific situation.

This goes back to what I tried to say to the minister on second reading of the bill. If the Ombudsman is to be something more than a formal officer of this assembly and is to have an easy relationship with this assembly, he must be able not only to make his annual report but in a very flexible way to report from time to time, as he thinks fit, on anything he wants to do.

The bill in the United Kingdom which established the parliamentary commissioner, which is the equivalent of what our Ombudsman will be, has the two provisions. It has the provision which states that if, after conducting an investigation under this Act it appears to the commissioner that an injustice has been caused to the person aggrieved in consequence of maladministration and that the injustice has not been or will not be remedied, he may, if he thinks fit, lay before each House of Parliament a special report upon the case.

Perhaps my colleague, the member for Sudbury East, and his mutual friend could conduct their debate somewhere else.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): I am enjoying it here.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Try to get along, now.

Mr. Renwick: We do try very hard.

What subsection 4 of section 22 speaks about is exactly that kind of special report on a special investigation situation. What I am saying is that the Ombudsman, Mr. Maloney, should not only be able to make his annual report to the assembly, but as and when he sees fit, make such other reports as he wishes to make.

There is no reason why this Ombudsman’s is going to abuse that and we’re going to be deluged with reports. It isn’t that at all. He’s got to be in a position where he has that kind of informal relationship with this assembly that he can say: “If there’s a matter I want to report upon to this assembly, I can do so, and I don’t have to wait for my annual report, or I don’t have to wait until the estimates of my office come before the assembly before we can discuss it.”

Then, as the member for Rainy River says: “I think, then, there should be an additional provision.” Of course, if he would care to move that, we would certainly agree with it. If such an additional report is made from time to time about a matter which, in the mind of the Ombudsman, is important enough that he interrupt the annual report proceeding, that should be a matter which would then be a motion -- be put on the order paper as a motion -- so that if it were desirable, the matter then could be debated.

I’m quite certain the Ombudsman wouldn’t make such an interim report, or reports from time to time, unless he had good reason and unless it was about a matter that should be debated -- and that is separate and distinct from the special reports to which reference is made in subsection 4 of section 22. I would ask that the ministry seriously consider that amendment to the bill.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Why do you restrict, constrict, truncate the powers of the Ombudsman in this way? I really find it most curious.

I refer you to the Saskatchewan Act under this head, and section 30 of that legislation. The first section gives the Ombudsman, or makes it mandatory for him, to file a report before their Legislature within a certain number of days after the commencement of the session. Then they have subsection 2, which is broken into a couple of parts. It goes on in this way.

“The Ombudsman may, from time to time, in the public interest, or in the interests of any person, department or agency of the government, publish reports relating generally to the exercising of his powers and the performance of his duties and functions under this Act, or to any particular case investigated by him, whether or not the matters to be dealt with in any such report have been the subject of the report to the assembly.”

What my friend is asking to be done here is narrower than that, but it’s very minimal. I suggest to you that you can do it. The Saskatchewan legislation is very broad indeed. It gives him initiatory powers; it gives him elbow room. It gives him the possibility of submitting a report in a general way to the general public on any issue that seems paramount, important to the public realm and to him.

The minister knows as well as I do that the report is coming down once a year. First of all, we can’t tell what that report is going to look like, of course, in advance. But if it comes to resemble the reports that we get on a diversity of other matters, then it’s worth nothing; it’s fairly useless.

I am not disparaging the report of the legal aid people, but their reports basically are statistical summaries. They break down into various headings, a whole range of various kinds of cases. There is page after page of appendices in which you get some kind of notion on the basis of mere numeration of what is going on with respect to legal aid practice.

There is no reason why this Ombudsman’s report may not be analogous to that. If it were so then we’d have no cause to complain, although we can complain as much as we like. The Act says a report, and he will say, if he wishes, “That’s the report, and that’s the way I propose to draw it.”

I will again make mention of the 1974 Ombudsman’s report of the Province of Saskatchewan. That is a fairly elaborate document, going to 175 or so pages, giving in some detail the numerous kinds of cases he has dealt with, touching upon those cases which have given him some difficulty and are hard of resolution, what he has done in these several instances. This is the way you should operate.

In Sweden, as you know, the Ombudsman there, a Mr. Bexelius, has much wider powers than anything envisaged within the ambit of this legislation, much wider powers. He keeps a watchful eye on the state Church. As a matter of fact, I have in my hand here a recounting of an incident in which one of the parish clergymen went out to try to get himself elected, because that’s the way you get ahead in Sweden in the Church, because everybody is paid. All pastors and churchmen are paid by the government in that parish and so it falls within the public realm.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Civil servants?

Mr. Lawlor: Yes, in almost all the Protestant countries of northern Europe such is the case. It’s true in Germany, true almost all over the place. I am not recommending that here. I am simply saying this is the case.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Thank you.

Mr. Reid: Some of us might be better off in that case.

Mr. Lawlor: The young clergyman went out to visit his bishop --

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Is that a “Free the Servants” button the minister is wearing?

Mr. Lawlor: His bishop said that he was not to do so, but nevertheless having done so, in defiance of the bishop --

Mr. Laughren: Is that a “Free the Servants” button you are wearing?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You’ll have to speak to them.

Mr. Laughren: I am talking about the button you are wearing. Does it say: “Free the Servants”?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Come over and read it.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please! The member for Lakeshore has the floor

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Why don’t you just ignore them?

Mr. Lawlor: I can’t ignore it.

Mr. Chairman: Order!

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Keep your member out of this thing. Send him back to his office or someplace better.

Mr. Lawlor: I am trying to tell you a little story, just to leaven the malice.

And so he, in defiance of the bishop, proceeds to get himself elected by the parishioners, except the bishop excommunicates him. He goes to the Ombudsman in Sweden, the Ombudsman tells the bishop he has no right to do that sort of thing, slaps him on the wrist, the bishop writes him a letter, says “I am doing God’s work, not the work of the state, not what you Ombudsmen tell me to do.” The Ombudsman proceeds to ding the bishop into court and fines him. Isn’t that a perfectly working system?

Mr. Breithaupt: Excommunicate the Ombudsman.

Mr. Lawlor: I mean, who’s in charge, Caesar or Christ? See how powerful the Ombudsman is in Sweden?

Mr. Reid: What was the point to that?

Mr. Breithaupt: The work of the Lord is not so powerful as the work of the Ombudsman.

Mr. Lawlor: I just wanted to make the point.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please! Would the member for Lakeshore get back to the amendment as it pertains to section 12?

Mr. Lawlor: In Rowat’s book of ombudsmen all over the world, you know there is a section that tells how, when legislation came into the British House of Parliament under this head the same kinds of complaints were raised against that legislation which we are raising against yours, and which was subsequently amended as a result of that. The statements were somewhat as follows: “The limitations placed on the commissioner’s scope and powers by the government were greeted with a good deal of criticism by the press in Britain. He was amusingly described as a muzzled watchdog, a crusader without a sword, ombud-manqué and an ombudmouse.

I will not say our Ombudsman is a mouse yet, but the full possibilities are there within the terms of your legislation for a man of great power to reduce his stature and to pull back on what he may do in an effective way.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You know who fears the mouse.

Mr. Lawlor: Once a year he comes forward to this House with a report which may or may not have some kind of scope, some kind of range in reach and description of what his functions and activities so far have been in the previous year. Is that enough?

Is that adequate for the rapport which should exist between the Ombudsman, who is the creature of this assembly, and ourselves? Is he to be contained in this particular way? Is it fair to him that he should be so? Why do you make him, as I say, hop through the hoops, in other words, like an errand boy? If he has a complaint, if he has some matter of great significance that he as our representative of all sides of this House wishes to bring before us, why on earth shouldn’t he be able to do so?

Why does he have to go traipsing up like some lackey to the Premier’s office and get a little holy water sprinkled on his brow? Why does he have to get the imprimatur of the Premier in advance of being able to address us directly? I just don’t understand that. Of course, I understand it -- it is a hoop. It is a defence mechanism. It is a way by which the government is setting up an obstruction as a way of forfending against the power of the Ombudsman.

Certainly, the Premier (Mr. Davis) is a man of parts. If any matter known to the Ombudsman is going to come before this Legislature and is in the least embarrassing to the government, he will sidetrack it.

Mr. Renwick: If he can get Mel Lastman to stand for nomination he must be a man of parts. He must be like Mackenzie King.

Mr. Lawlor: I think that on occasion that procedure can stand. There is a second procedure of a direct reporting to this House. I would have the third procedure, if it were my bill, that he could report not just to this House but to the general public as he saw fit. He would have independence. He would have stature, he would have force and he would be a force in the community; not handcuffed, swaddled and tied as he is in terms of this legislation. You would think he was some kind of an inmate who had to be placed in bandages against his own ruination.

That is not the kind of man you have got and it is not the kind of office we are thinking to create. We want something with teeth; we want something with flesh and we want some muscle in the position. This thin creature you are giving birth to is really something quite weird and that’s not your style. You usually take things full on, foursquare, not hacking off the edges, not diminishing the quality of the legislation. Quite the contrary; normally the thing has body but this tends to be one of the weak ones. It takes no great sense to know you are doing it deliberately. Or, if you are not doing it deliberately, I can only say why do it at all? Why not have a little magnanimity -- it is not magnanimity, it is damn common sense -- and adopt what my colleague has submitted to you tonight, to give him some flexibility in his role as he sees it? Once a year is just hopeless as far as I can see.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, I would rise in support of the amendment which has been placed by the member for Riverdale. It would appear that some approach to intermediate reporting would be useful and indeed should be encouraged by the Ombudsman. As the Attorney General has commented, there is no necessity, perhaps, to have the word “forthwith” in this section which would require the Speaker to do something which the Speaker might not, in fact, do. Without a sanction as the Attorney General says, this might not be too valuable to put into legislation.

On the other hand, my point of view would be that that kind of word, “forthwith,” as had been discussed earlier, or this amendment at this point would encourage things to happen in a more progressive and better manner. If the Speaker, for example, were required to bring forward a certain item as soon as it was received, even though there was not any sanction, it would at least encourage the Speaker to act promptly and with the kind of responsibility that the House would ask him to show.

In the same situation I think the amendment which is proposed by the member for Riverdale is also worthy of support. In this case the Ombudsman is not required to present preliminary reports or intermediate reports before the annual report which might otherwise be made. However, I think it’s worthwhile to encourage the presentation of those interim or preliminary reports.

If there are certain circumstances which do come forward and are of great public interest, then we would have the opportunity of having a report on those subjects, if the Ombudsman thought that was required; almost immediately, while the item might still be of much more current interest. Reforms can take place in the various kinds of laws that we do pass from time to time and a reform of a particular abuse might come about much more quickly and promptly, if there were a report while publicity and public interest on a certain subject were still high rather than if it formed part of an annual report.

We are all well aware from the exposure that we have had to various comments in the media, whether printed or picture, that public interest in certain issues can change very quickly. What is a sudden and all-compelling issue this week may be entirely stale within a month or two. Indeed the same situation could well occur in a report which might have to wait to discuss one of these issues, if the Ombudsman were only required to report annually.

If the Ombudsman is to report annually we are doing ourselves a possible disservice. If, on the other hand, we are able to encourage the Ombudsman to report from time to time as he may see value in such reporting, then I think we are going to come up with a better piece of legislation.

We are also going to come up with a better procedure by encouraging this kind of involvement, not only by the Ombudsman in presenting things while they are still fresh, but also in the general knowledge that the public will obtain from time to time of various issues that are otherwise perhaps buried or maybe stale in an annual report. As a result, I would encourage the Attorney General to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise also to support the amendment. At the conclusion of my remarks I’ll move a subamendment to the amendment proposed by the member for Riverdale.

I’d like to put to the Attorney General two points as to why I think this amendment in the Act is necessary. First of all, just before the dinner break we were talking about access of the public to the Ombudsman. We talked about how he was perhaps going to have offices across the province and of how he might get around the province. That certainly is probably the primary function, the access of the public to the Ombudsman and vice versa.

The other side of that equation has to be the access of the Ombudsman to the Legislature. He’s a creature of this Legislature and he should be able to contact the Legislature at his will. If he feels he has a problem that cannot be solved without bringing it to the attention of the Legislature, then he should have the ability to come before the Legislature by way of an interim report or some kind of report and say: “This is a serious problem. I feel it is urgent and that the remedy should be now, not at the end of the year, and not in an annual report.”

I think that the access of the Ombudsman to the Legislature and the members of it is very important. That’s the first thing. I think that’s an obvious point and I would wonder why the Attorney General would not accept that argument. It is obvious if he looks at the other side of the coin of access.

The point I’d like to make, and I hang this on my experience as chairman of the public accounts committee, is that we very often find that we will come across something that the auditor has raised or that we have found by our questions to a particular civil servant or minister -- some problem within the civil service or within government machinations, patterns, or administration that shouldn’t wait for redress or change until our annual report is made; we feel that it’s urgent and that the changes should be made now.

In those circumstances, I’ve taken it upon myself as chairman, and with the concurrence of the committee, to contact the minister and deputy minister directly without waiting the required time of six months, eight months or a year before we complete our work and for those recommendations to be made.

I’d like to quote again, to the Attorney General, something from a study on ombudsmen. It says: “Any remedial action the ombudsman may gain for an individual is a by-product of his continuing struggle to secure sounder government for the people in the future.” I think that if he’s going to do that job he must not be constrained from coming to the Legislature directly if he feels that is necessary.

Personally, I don’t envisage the Ombudsman running in here every week or two weeks, even once a month, or once every quarter -- whatever the Attorney General wants to say -- and saying: “Look, here’s a little report I dashed off on the weekend. I thought you might be interested.” The Attorney General is hanging most of his arguments on the quality of the man we are appointing; I agree with that.

The Ombudsman is going to have the discretion as to what he thinks is important -- what is immediately important and what is urgently important. I would suggest it probably wouldn’t happen once a year. But he should have the ability to come before this House, he should have that access, and I think he should be encouraged by the legislation to do so.

The corollary to that, of course, is that having been given that access to the Legislature and to its members, then the members themselves should have the opportunity to debate whether what the Ombudsman has brought to their attention is important or not and what action, if any, should be taken.

Mr. Reid moves a sub-amendment to the amendment that “if such a special report is made, a motion shall be placed on the order paper and shall be debated within two weeks of being so placed.”

Mr. Reid: As I say, Mr. Chairman, I won’t go on at any length. I think the points are self-explanatory, and I’m sure that the Attorney General, who is a reasonable man, will accept both amendments.

Mr. Haggerty: We will divide the House.

Mr. Chairman: Does any member wish to speak to the sub-amendment?

Mr. Renwick: I would like to speak to it. First of all, I would like to say on behalf of our caucus that we would support the sub-amendment posed by the member for Rainy River.

I think it’s clear from what the member himself said -- but I think it deserves reassertion in this effort to persuade the Attorney General that both amendments merit his support -- that there is no obligation that the debate take place. It’s simply a procedural device by which, if it merits that attention, it will be debated. I think that’s the intention.

I make the second point, which we must make on all of these amendments throughout the whole course of the evening so that it doesn’t have to be said again: We are not engaged in the elegances of draftsmanship; we’re engaged in making points. All of these amendments are, of course, subject to legislative counsel drafting, in appropriate language, the amendments which are before the assembly. I just want to say that so people will understand that we’re not wedded to the precise words; we’re wedded to the ideas which are involved in those words.

Mr. Ruston: It’s the principle we’re interested in.

Mr. Renwick: If I may, and to reinforce what has been said by the member for Rainy River and by my colleague, the member for Lakeshore, I happen to have, by coincidence, the second annual report of the Ombudsman for Saskatchewan. My colleague, the member for Lakeshore, referred to the Ombudsman in Saskatchewan and the provision of their bill which addresses itself to the very problem to which we’re referred and provides for a much wider ambit of publicity than we am dealing with.

I happen to believe that what we are proposing is appropriate and apposite to what we are talking about in this bill, but my colleague said that these annual reports tend to be statistical. The Ombudsman report, which goes on for 175 pages in Saskatchewan, and of course we have a very real affinity to the Province of Saskatchewan, and we must mark here tonight the resounding victory at the polls which --

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): In that they only lost a little ground.

Mr. Breithaupt: They only lost seven seats.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): I was wondering how long it would take you to mention that.

Mr. Breithaupt: From 55 to 39 per cent.

Mr. Renwick: If you come back here with a 38 to 22 working majority after your election, you’ll consider it a resounding victory, I can tell you that.

An hon. member: Darn right you will.

Mr. Eaton: We will do better than that.

Mr. Reid: We’ll be back without you.

Mr. Breithaupt: Wait until you get home tonight.

Mr. Renwick: I don’t think Premier Blakeney is losing any sleep tonight about the closeness of his margin of victory, and as for my friends on the right --

Mr. H. C. Parrott (Oxford): You will tell the story better the next time.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): It is a matter of degree.

Mr. Renwick: -- they will be changing leaders in Saskatchewan as they will be in Ontario after the next election.

Mr. Breithaupt: Just after you change your leader.

Mr. Renwick: In any event, the second annual report of the Saskatchewan office of the Ombudsman runs to 175 pages.

Mr. Kennedy: He didn’t say the NDP were going to win.

Mr. Renwick: There are 25 pages of report and the 150 other pages are a compilation of statistical information, and that’s exactly what my colleague, the member for Lakeshore, stated. I’m not saying that statistical information isn’t important. Of course it’s important, but that’s what annual reports are about. Annual reports aren’t about people, they’re about statistics, they’re reporting about their functions, about what they do. They’re not about people, and if ever there was an office that we are creating as an institution of government that’s about people, this is what ombudsman means. I don’t even know exactly what it means in Swedish, but my guess is it has something to do with a “people’s man.” That’s my guess as to what the word means.

Mr. Breithaupt: “Everyone’s.”

Mr. Renwick: “Everyone’s man.” That’s what we’re about, and that’s why we’re saying that if we in the assembly are appointing an officer of this assembly to be that kind of person and to perform those kinds of functions, he’s got to have access to the assembly and we, in turn, have to have our opportunity, should we wish to do so, to debate the matter about which he might exercise his privilege of making additional reports, other than the reports required by subsection 4 of section 22, or the annual report. I would urge the Attorney General to accept that amendment. I may say that from our point of view, Mr. Chairman, with perhaps one exception, we intend to ask simply that the votes on these various amendments be stacked.

Mr. Chairman: Does any other member wish to speak before the minister replies?

Mr. Reid: Just say “yes.”

Hon. Mr. Clement: I have listened to the submissions made by the various members who addressed this situation. Firstly, I am in complete agreement that the ultimate leverage, if I may use that word, that can be utilized by the Ombudsman is, in fact, this House.

I think we must explore for a minute the whole purpose of the Ombudsman. He is created to deal with maladministration, with injustices practised on the public by some agency, board or individual involved in this government. The English commentary, the study which preceded the public commissioner legislation in England and which made very strong submissions to the United Kingdom government, said inquiries should not be done in the glare of publicity. That was done by a former chief justice.

Mr. Reid: I am not arguing about that.

Hon. Mr. Clement: All right.

Mr. Renwick: We’re not arguing that.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Okay, fine.

Mr. Reid: It is the final resolution.

Hon. Mr. Clement: All right, the final resolution. The member for Lakeshore accuses us of hooping or restraining the Ombudsman because of the procedure set up for reporting the maladministration ultimately or penultimately to the Premier. He makes light of that and I direct his attention to the Saskatchewan legislation which his colleague has already touched on in his argument or his debate. We use the word “Premier.” They use “Lieutenant Governor in Council” out there because they recognize what has to be done.

Let’s take a situation when some wrong has to be corrected. It comes to his attention; it goes through the process. The Ombudsman agrees that the wrong has to be made right and the Act sets up in section 22 what he does. If that minister or that department head does nothing or if that wrong is not corrected, he reports it to the Premier and as soon as he does that, he can talk to the Premier and come right into this House with that report. There must be contact with the House. There is no question about it and I tell you it’s in section 22. He is not precluded from coming in here. That’s right. You must give --

Mr. Renwick: You are so secretive, it is unbelievable.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, but you must give those who can correct the maladministration an opportunity to correct it. If the minister or the director or the Premier doesn’t want to correct it, this House will learn of it and it will be corrected.

Mr. Renwick: And we will never know what the correction was.

Hon. Mr. Clement: You will know in the annual report. You will know in the annual report how many matters such as that have been referred to the Premier’s office.

Mr. Lawlor: No.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Let me ask you this; I just put this to you. Does it really matter if a wrong has been made right --

Mr. Renwick: Yes, it is immensely important that the light of publicity be shed upon the decision to correct maladministration in the government.

Hon. Mr. Clement: That’s where you and Sir John Whyatt of the United Kingdom cease to keep company because he has the very opposite view. He takes the very opposite view. He said these things --

Mr. Renwick: No, we will come to that when we come to --

Hon. Mr. Clement: He says the inquiries should not take place in the glare of publicity.

Mr. Renwick: I agree with that. We agree with that.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Okay.

Mr. Reid: You are talking about remedies.

Mr. Renwick: We are talking about reports.

Hon. Mr. Clement: He has access to the House under section 22. There’s a procedure set up. Your Saskatchewan legislation, which has been in effect for three years, with its section 25 sends it to the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

Mr. Renwick: We don’t agree with that. We applauded the Saskatchewan government for moving two years ago but we don’t necessarily agree with every jot and tittle in the legislation.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I was of the opinion that was advanced type of legislation and I think that legislation is good legislation. We recognize it except we direct it to the Premier’s office. If the thing is not corrected -- I think what we are really talking about, the nub of the issue, is should all wrongs be debated here in the House even though they have been corrected? I just don’t share that view. I say he has access to the House under section 22 of our bill and he should come to the House if the director or the minister or the Premier don’t do as he suggests. They ignore him, he comes in and he puts his special report right here.

Mr. Reid: What happens then? May I ask the Attorney General, if we grant that under section 22, what happens once he comes and makes a report and says nothing was done about this? What happens? He leaves a report before the assembly and then what happens?

Mr. Renwick: Nothing.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I presume the glare of publicity at that point would generate interest, certainly within this House, in why something hadn’t been done.

Mr. Renwick: But we would not be able to debate it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: You could ask the Premier. You could ask the minister, whoever he might be, in question period every day.

Mr. Renwick: Of course we could ask the Premier. Do you think there is any chance of getting satisfaction?

Hon. Mr. Clement: You have the opportunity to question him and to describe to the House why nothing was done in this particular instance.

Mr. Lawler: One-sided, unilateral.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. Let’s have one member speak at a time.

Mr. Renwick: On a point of order, if I may. We are not debating at this point in time subsection 4 of section 22. That’s separate and distinct from the two amendments which have been placed before the assembly; and it’s just that simple. We’ll debate subsection 4 of section 22 when we get to that section. But we are not going to debate it now, because it’s simply a diversionary activity on the part of the Attorney General. You might as well explain to your colleague, the Minister of Energy, the member for Don Mills, that we won’t be at his bill tonight -- so he can go home. Okay?

Hon. D. R. Timbrell (Minister of Energy): Oh, I think I’d like to stay.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Chairman, I am not suggesting we are debating section 22. I just tell the members of this House that in my humble submission the problems that the opposition parties are describing are dealt with in that section.

Mr. Renwick: They are not.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Chairman, it is a little aggravating to be either deliberately or unconsciously talking at cross purposes across this House. I think your moves are uncharacteristically diversionary tonight -- for some strange reason. Maybe you are afraid of your own legislation; I don’t know.

Mr. Chairman: I don’t think those remarks are called for from the member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: What are you talking about?

Mr. Chairman: You have been guilty of talking across the House when the minister has been talking; and I haven’t been firm enough as chairman to keep you quiet. So don’t blame the minister for something that happens on both sides of the House.

Mr. J. H. Jessiman (Fort William): Right.

Mr. Breithaupt: He is being fair tonight.

Mr. Lawlor: I am talking about a subject in which the minister has been forthcoming with respect to replies to this matter in which he won’t address himself directly to the issue at stake; but goes off in some other section as a pure red herring. He ignores us, as though he had never heard it. He cites Saskatchewan back at us, ignoring in the process the very section that I had quoted to him earlier -- as though it didn’t exist. And section 30, subsection 2 of the Saskatchewan legislation makes ample provision for the kind of thing we are talking about.

Hon. Mr. Clement: With the greatest respect, that section that you have just quoted deals with publishing; it doesn’t deal with bringing reports before the House.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Minister, I said earlier that it went away beyond anything we are even asking for. Yes, it gives all kinds of amplitude and scope to the Ombudsman in that particular province. I am not asking to go that far. I think it would be a wonderful thing. As I’ve said, if I were the Attorney General, and sure, if we were the government, a similar clause to that would go into this legislation -- that’s the way it would be.

If he saw fit to avoid this House, he would not go cuckolding to the Premier of the province or any minister of the Crown, or any senior civil servant to get their permission to make disclosures on what’s going on internally in the government, but could go out to the public forum and say, “This is wrong.”

He publishes a report and it’s picked up by whoever is interested in picking it up -- which is a good many of the citizenry.

I say, again, we are not even asking for that. We are simply saying we want to avoid having to wait for a single period in a single year to produce a report which may not have any great meat in it, but will be full of statistics, could possibly be and would be of no great efficacy to us in the House, and really would traduce the basic job that we see the man doing; and which we couldn’t complain about because this is the way we have accepted the legislation.

Instead of doing that, we just want him to be able to come here on his own hook if he considers in his wisdom that the matter is of sufficient significance to warrant him doing so. And if you don’t repose that kind of confidence in this kind of office -- which is an office of plenary confidence and nothing else -- if you haven’t got that, then you ain’t go much. And you won’t get much.

I can only attribute it to 33 years of a type of paranoia built in over there, which we find it extremely difficult to understand. The minister being a relatively new member of this assembly, we wouldn’t expect him to have that contagion that disease, worked into his system yet. In any event, he’s always been able to avoid it until this hour, but there he is, obviously adamant about this. It stays as it is. He’s not taking any chances. There’s not going to be any more amplitude in this post than there possibly has to be. He’s going to derive the full benefit of talking about the problems at election time, saying the government has appointed an Ombudsman and get all the glory which proceeds from that without the meat.

Who is to know? The electorate isn’t going to be aware of how relatively empty this legislation is, when there’s no need to make its defects public. The complaints that went against Whyatt in the British House were precisely as the wording goes -- “unnecessarily truncated.” Subsequently, it had to be enlarged. This is quite irrationally and unnecessarily truncated and we protest and see no reason for it.

If we thought we were crying for the moon or just being awkward or trying to push something down your throats in some fit of aggression or something like that, that would be one thing. We do that sometimes. But this is not the case tonight and it’s not the case in this kind of thing. What we’re suggesting here is plenarily rational and in direct line with what you, yourself, in appointing an Ombudsman would want to do. It falls within the logic of his office. To the extent that you deny it, I think this is illogicality written into the legislation.

That’s a great pity because there are inertial forces working in legislation, particularly of this kind which are delicate pieces of legislation, which perform an extremely delicate social task. You don’t play with the Ombudsman easily. Once this is in print and down we will all be loath to move in on his office in any way, abrogating, cutting or even expanding unless he specifically asks for it. That would be the way it is because we respect that post and have an arm’s-length attitude to it. Even if the Ombudsman’s post is our creature and we have a kind of fatherly, let’s say, care for it, it’s still a sense that that independence is absolutely vital; as vital as it is in the case of the judiciary, perhaps more so in some instances.

Therefore, that’s why we’re so anxious to give this the best way we can; to carve it out tonight. I suspect our opportunities in the future are going to be few and far between. However we may feel about the failures here and there, we will not be predisposed to bring this post into any ridicule. We will bend over backwards, on every occasion, to keep it in some kind of veneration even so that it keeps its full force, the plenitude here, what this man can do in this post to keep sovereign civil liberties alive when they’re always under tremendously increasing pressure as the inevitable process of centralization, of increased multiplicity of bureaucracy goes on apace.

We have created a civilization like that. It’s intrinsic to our way of life. We can’t govern otherwise. The only thing holding our society together is these fabrics we have created. They’re onerous. Most people find they’re even heinous. They protest against them and yet they don’t know their virtue. That virtue will go on apace.

There are other countervailing forces, I hope, inside government which try to alleviate those pressures and that concentration which is a dehumanizing concentration, which grinds people down and which, in terms of statistics, sees them impersonally. It sees them out there as integers and not as living human beings. That is the devil of contemporary government and most of us are trying to do something about it.

One of the ways we’re trying to do it is through the Ombudsman. He is a human element -- very deeply human; the best human element we’ve devised thus far -- to stand between the amorphous mass, the grinding monster of contemporary government, and the citizen at large. Ought he not be given every conceivable power? He won’t abuse it. Are you afraid of him abusing it?

You wouldn’t have appointed the man and we wouldn’t have given our sanction, if we thought that that would be a possibility in Maloney’s case, and it’s not. I have every trust in his discretion and good sense and, therefore, I’m prepared to entrust him with the powers of that office so that he can operate in the widest swath and in the most benign way possible. You are refusing it to him. I think it is a most questionable thing. It’s the most diminishing thing I’ve seen proceeding from that particular department in this House. I’m not going to beg. I don’t beg any more. I simply say, please give it some damn good consideration. What is proposed here is beneficial, even from your point of view.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Chairman, I have absolutely no qualms nor does the government or anyone in this chamber to my knowledge have any qualms as to the capacity and the integrity of the proposed incumbent of this very responsible office. There is just no question about that. I have taken a position on this. I believe rightly that it is already provided for in a later section which we will debate later on.

I must point out to the members of the House this observation. I heard on Tuesday evening and Tuesday afternoon from various members of the House, including the member for Riverdale and the member for Lakeshore, tributes paid to the member for Downsview (Mr. Singer) who was then absent from the House because of illness and who apparently, as I understand it, had for some 10 years given this matter his thoughts. I would suspect that the member for Downsview has probably turned his mind to the question of the Ombudsman-type legislation more than any other member of this House -- certainly more than I have -- because he has been working and has been interested in it for a period of 10 years. He is a man who is experienced as a keen lawyer and as a lawyer he is a man of no mean experience. He’s very able.

Mr. Lawlor: That is a very subtle argument.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, it’s not a subtle argument at all. I look at this proposed bill and his proposed bill follows the form of the Saskatchewan legislation, whereby if nothing is done on the recommendation of the Ombudsman etc., he lays the matter on the table of the Lieutenant Governor in Council. In this bill, we take the view that it should go directly to the Premier and then it can come into this Legislature and the matter can be reported. I’ll tell you that I cannot ignore the position that was taken by the member for Downsview. As he sees it, I presume, as I have not discussed the section with him --

Mr. Lawlor: I don’t think this is fair. The member for Downsview should be here to speak for himself.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Oh, you don’t think it’s fair. I just tell you it’s an observation that I can’t lose sight of and I’m obliged to bring it to the attention of the members of this House.

Mr. Lawlor: Well, in light of the debate, he might change his mind.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, I should only comment to the fact that my colleague from Downsview in the bill which he has brought forward has, I agree, put his mind more seriously and perhaps more in depth than any of us have had the opportunity to do because of his interest in this subject over the years. This is, not to say, though, that even his bill could not perhaps be improved upon by debate and discussion among various members within the House. I think that while he may not have dwelt upon this particular point that has been brought forward, still we have the opportunity to encourage the Ombudsman to come in with reports at intermediate stages two, three or five times throughout the year on particular issues that might be of interest.

Those issues, as I have mentioned earlier, might be lost otherwise because of the fact that many of the things that come before us fade in the public interest after quite a few days. So this whole approach need not be precluded from the thoughts of the Attorney General just because it wasn’t included in the bill that my colleague has brought forward over the years. I still think the amendment has great merit.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Sudbury East.

Mr. Martel: I hadn’t intended to speak to this section but, in listening to the minister, I well recall last spring when we delved into the Elliot Lake situation. My colleague from Lakeshore says that when one has to go to the Premier to get something brought forward the minister gives the impression it can be done readily; no one will attempt to scuttle it. Yet I can recall during those debates in committee where the chairman, on record, agreed to a meeting wherein we would call in doctors and what not. The Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) was there and he agreed.

Twice we went through the hassle and fought it out in committee. After the consensus had been reached in the committee stage, after an agreement had been reached, lo and behold, to this day we’re waiting for that meeting, because the weight of the Tory party was sufficient that despite the agreement a commitment which had been made to the members of the Legislature was lost because someone decided we shouldn’t proceed. If the minister is telling me that wouldn’t occur in dealing with the Premier or with cabinet ministers, I want to suggest to you that is just not quite right.

I also recall during that debate last year that we attempted to focus the situation on Elliot Lake, and there was a document floating around the minister’s office called the Muller report, and that didn’t come to light, and we were being accused at that time of being straight political. So there are attempts to prevent things from coming to light and there are ways of scuttling them. Even when you have agreement in committee, among supposed gentlemen, it can be scuttled at that stage.

What’s to stop something that isn’t even known to the public from being kept hidden from the public ad infinitum? That is what we are saying. It is possible that that could occur and I don’t think that’s in the best interests of the public and I don’t think that’s why we’re here discussing a bill which brings about this position. Surely if the government is sincere and if it isn’t just window-dressing, then the government is going to say, “It is wide open. That is why we’re creating the job.” Surely the minister’s adamant position now destroys all that. I think the minister should be the first, in his capacity as Attorney General, to want those things to come forward.

There is so much cynicism that surrounds governments today and members of Legislatures and members of the House of Commons, some of it an overflow from Watergate in the United States. The cynicism that pervades the public about legislators today is so horrendous that I’m not sure why any of us even run anymore, because we are all considered crooks. I don’t believe that to be the case.

The minister has had it thrown up to him, all of us in this Legislature have, that we are trying to hide things and we are trying to keep things back. Surely we should be doing everything in our power to get the public to start to appreciate and respect this august place. That isn’t happening and I fear for the democratic process because of that. Surely this is just an avenue to start the long healing process that is necessary in the political arena.

Mr. Chairman: Does any other member wish to speak on the amendment or the subamendment? Is it agreed that both the amendment and sub-amendment be stacked?

Mr. Renwick: No, Mr. Chairman. That was our intention because --

Mr. Chairman: I thought the member for Riverdale proposed this.

Mr. Renwick: That’s right, that is what I did propose.

Mr. Lawlor: We changed our minds.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): It isn’t just a woman’s prerogative.

Mr. Renwick: The reason, Mr. Chairman, that I proposed it was on the assumption that there would be some indication from the ministry that they were not going to hard-line this bill through the assembly and that we were going to have an intelligent debate about a new instrument of government. It is obvious that the government is going to hard-line it, and I’m simply saying that our indication was that if we gave them time, while we moved these amendments from time to time, to consider them, that would be fine. But obviously there is just no elasticity, no flexibility, they’re just tough about it and they are determined to be tough. Well, we can be tough too. We have limited instruments but we can be tough, and we are going to call a vote on this amendment.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to be tough. I take a position on this and we’re having a very interesting debate and it’s a very important issue. I don’t minimize it for a minute. There must be access to this House by the Ombudsman; this is the nub. I take the position that there is access under the legislation, under section 22(4); my friends across the House don’t share that view. I don’t see it in any other perspective but that because I recognize -- and the draftsmen of the proposed legislation recognise -- that there must be access to this House if things are not done.

As far as the member for Sudbury East is concerned, I listened to his comments with interest. I point out to him, with the greatest of respect, that as far as the Premier delaying it is concerned, the Ombudsman under that section, I suggest, can report the inaction to the Premier, walk right down this hall and come in and file the report.

Mr. Renwick: You don’t believe that for a moment. We can debate that when we come to it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I don’t think that would happen, because the Premier would react to it. The Premier would react to that matter drawn to his attention.

Mr. Lawlor: I am sure he would.

Mr. Breithaupt: He wouldn’t get in the door.

Hon. Mr. Clement: But I tell you, legally, he could do it.

Mr. Martel: Might I ask the minister a question? If you say it’s in subsection 4, why were you so adamant against accepting the amendment in an earlier stage of the bill?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I’m sorry, would you repeat the question?

Mr. Martel: If you say that section 22(4) does allow the Ombudsman to get the matter before the Legislature, why are you so adamant against accepting the amendment in an earlier stage of the bill?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Because I say it’s already in the bill.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Chairman, what this debate comes to is a dividing line between where we stand with respect to the matter and the esteem in which we hold the Ombudsman, and your position vis-à-vis this created portfolio.

On one side you say he will have access to this House but on your terms and conditions, and subject to the way in which you provide the access, with a number of obstacle courses thrown up between him and this House. The Ombudsman, again, is a child of this House. He’s not the child or the creation of the Premier of this province; nor, in the first instance, ought he to have to attend upon him.

We say he has access to this House when he wants that access. He comes back to the parent when he desires to do so, not when you give him your ad libitum to come, your permission, your sanction. Who do you think you are to send him through a route? When you know that every issue will be sidetracked -- not in any invidious way; it’s just that a government is going to be vulnerable.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Where is it in your Saskatchewan bill?

Mr. Lawlor: It goes further. Section 30, subsection 2, permits him not just to address us but to address all the people, to go to the people directly. He can come to the Legislature if he wants. He’ll publish a report; he says something’s wrong. He doesn’t go toadying to anybody; he is his own man. He says what he has to say. We think we’re willing to cut back half-way and say let him come here if he so desires. If he desires to attend upon the Premier, so be it, he may go that route. But if, in his discretion, he thinks this is the better route, or the matter is of sufficient importance that it needs an immediacy of attention, he will bring it directly to this forum where he knows there will be response. Every issue and every element in the province, I trust, is represented here and we will respond, not in any self-serving fashion because somebody’s ox is going to get gored, we recognize that. It could be us here as well as you there. But you, to forfend against the possibility, have set up this circuitous little route, this road map which you draw into your legislation which the others don’t do.

Mr. Reid: Shame.

Mr. Lawlor: You carved it out very trickily, indeed, in a way which would be the most beneficial to yourself in terms of public disclosure. You appoint an Ombudsman for the purposes of public disclosure and the rectification of internal ills; which if they are not rectified, come to the full public scope.

Here we are: You send them through the back door and out the front door, maybe even along that little passageway which the Premier uses to escape the reporters around here --

Mr. Breithaupt: It’s called the cattle chute.

Mr. Lawlor: You’ve effected your purpose and you make yourselves as invulnerable as possible --

Mr. Renwick: It’s like one of those tunnels in the Midway.

Mr. Lawlor: You go inside your skins on this and build a shell over yourselves. That’s the way we look at it, and we’re offended; we’re really upset. We anticipated a reply and a response that would be positive, maybe altering it a little here and there, but not a blank stare, not some pussyfooting around the edges and not some circuitous route over here being affirmed as the very thing we’re asking for.

The way we’re being treated tonight you would think we’re fools. Somebody’s a fool around here tonight. We don’t understand one another? We understand one another only too well. I opt for the second one.

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): Realism.

Mr. Chairman: The chairman has a sub- amendment to the amendment moved by Mr. Reid.

Mr. Reid: I wonder, Mr. Chairman, if we could put both as one amendment.

Mr. Renwick: It would be quite agreeable to me.

Mr. Chairman: Well, the member for Rainy River has made a sub-amendment to the amendment. Does he want us to deal with it or does he want to withdraw it?

Mr. Reid: No, no. We’ll leave it.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. My colleague, the member for Rainy River, and I, from the point of view of facilitating the business of the House, as we always want to do, are agreed to consider the amendment and the sub-amendment as a single amendment so that when the vote is called, we won’t be ringing the bells twice.

Mr. Chairman: You’re agreeable to deal with both as one. Is that correct?

Mr. Renwick: I’m agreeable, if all the other members are agreed.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, the suggestion is to avoid voting on both the sub-amendment and the amendment, to do it once.

Mr. Chairman: Okay, we’ll vote on both the amendment and the sub-amendment.

The committee divided on Mr. Renwick’s amendment and Mr. Reid’s sub-amendment, which were negatived on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 21, the “nays” are 33.

Mr. Chairman: I declare the amendment lost and the sub-amendment lost.

Section 12 agreed to.

On section 13:

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, on section 13 of the bill, I don’t think there is any single section of the bill which shows the total disregard by the government of Ontario for this assembly. If one reads that section, there is no public official that I know of who is --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Ferrier: There are too many unruly Tories in the House.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. The member for Riverdale has the floor.

Mr. Renwick: Would my friend, the member for Lambton (Mr. Henderson), like to discuss something with me?

Mr. Eaton: We are having our own discussion.

Mr. Renwick: Why don’t you have your debate outside?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: What are you going to do, flip a coin to see which one is going to be minister?

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. The member for Riverdale, could I have your attention?

Mr. Renwick: Yes.

Mr. Chairman: Could you proceed on section 13 of the bill?

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Chairman, in the course of the debate on second reading of the bill, I asserted in very positive terms that this bill simply provided a very formal, distant relationship between the Ombudsman and this assembly. If ever there was a section of the bill which defines that sense of distance and curtails and circumscribes the powers of the Ombudsman so far as this assembly is concerned, as an officer of this assembly, it is this section. I want to read it because I want everyone to understand what it says. It says: “Before commencing the duties of his office, the Ombudsman shall take an oath to be administered by the Speaker of the assembly . . .”

If I may interrupt that. You know as well as I do that this is a particular jewel in the crown of the election platform of the Tory party -- its ability to perform, to have these elaborate ceremonies to which all sorts of people are invited. This is exactly the kind of game they want us to play in this section of the bill. The Ombudsman will come here and the Speaker will administer the oath, and you can be sure that if anything is going to be televised it will probably be that ceremony.

Mr. Eaton: Not a bad idea.

Mr. Renwick: Quite likely a large number of people will be invited to attend and quite likely the Lieutenant Governor will be asked to have a reception for the Ombudsman afterwards, and quite likely all sorts of invitations will be sent out because it’s a political game the Tory party is playing.

Mr. Laughren: It sure is.

Mr. Renwick: That’s what the bill is about. That’s what the people of the Province of Ontario have to understand. There’s no element of sense in the bill which the government has introduced; it’s a game.

Mr. G. A. Kerr (Halton West): Don’t let the member for Downsview hear you say that.

Mr. Renwick: The oath says: “ ... that he will faithfully and impartially exercise the functions of his office ... ” We think that is exactly the oath the minister should take.

Mr. Kerr: The minister?

Mr. Renwick: The Ombudsman should take. We object to the balance of the provision which says, “ ... and that he will not, except in accordance with subsection 2, disclose any information received by him as Ombudsman.”

Subsection 2 says, “The Ombudsman may disclose in any report made by him under this Act [We’ve already gone through the report business and we’ll go through it again under subsection 4 of section 22] such matters as in his opinion ought to be disclosed in order to establish grounds for his conclusions and recommendations.”

If one wanted to muzzle the Ombudsman in the sense of what he could say, what better way than to do it under the august auspices of an oath administered by the Speaker of the assembly, in the presence of the members of the assembly and in the ceremonial way which this government conducts its business? How else would you do it? I can’t conceive of any other way because always -- even if we had won the last amendment -- what would the Ombudsman say to us, either in the estimates voted for his office or at any other time when we received a report from him? He would say, “I am an officer of your assembly but you have enacted an Act under which an oath administered by the Speaker of the assembly requires me to be limited only to such matters as in my opinion ought to be disclosed in order to establish grounds for my conclusions and recommendations.” How else do you emasculate the office of the Ombudsman?

I said in speaking on second reading of the bill, we are creating an institution of government; that’s what we conceive the Ombudsman to be. That’s not what the government conceives him to be. The government conceives him to be a masquerade, a false face for the privilege of the government in power to fail to disclose information to the public. I wish I could say it better. I don’t know how to say it more clearly.

Mr. R. K. McNeil (Elgin): We wish you could. However, you say it very well.

Mr. Renwick: If you’re in power for the length of time that the Tory government has been in power, and if you’re in power in a tradition of government under which the acts of the executive and the administration of Parliament are subject to absolutely no scrutiny of any significance of any kind and then you say, “We’re now going to appoint a person, we’re going to use the Swedish term for him and we are going to corrupt” -- and that’s what it is about -- “we’re going to corrupt that office and make it ours. We’re going to use a term in Swedish law, we’re going to take it into English law and we’re going to so corrupt it and emasculate it that he’s not going to have any role to play, and we’re going to say to the assembly” --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You can’t mean that.

Mr. Lawlor: Yes, we mean that.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Arthur Maloney wouldn’t put up with that.

Mr. Renwick: He didn’t know about it.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Oh, come on.

Mr. Lawlor: Wait until he finds out.

Mr. Renwick: All right. You haven’t been in the assembly. Do you understand? You haven’t been in the assembly during the debate.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I have heard every word.

Mr. Renwick: My colleague, the member for Lakeshore, asked during the course of the debate earlier today as to what discussions had taken place with Mr. Maloney about the bill, and the Attorney General was forthright, and not only forthright but he corrected himself when he got the other information, that the first contact between the Ministry of the Attorney General and Mr. Maloney was subsequent to the day in which he stood up in the gallery of this House when the Premier of this province, on May 22, made the statement about his being the person who would be appointed the Ombudsman. He hadn’t seen the bill and he had no opportunity to discuss it. I’m not suggesting that he should have, but I’m saying to you he didn’t know what was in the bill and he doesn’t know the restrictions that are imposed upon him. My guess is that one of the men, let alone the public of the Province of Ontario, who will understand our debate on this bill will be exactly that Ombudsman.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I think we both know Mr. Maloney better than that.

Mr. Renwick: That’s right. I am going to come to that.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: You don’t think he was asked in the morning and showed up in the afternoon?

Mr. Renwick: Wait a minute. There is some considerable misunderstanding around the assembly about what’s going on. You can’t have it both ways. You cannot say to the people of the Province of Ontario that as the jewel in your crown, you’re going to have an Ombudsman, and you cannot select a man -- impeccable in the choice which you made -- like Arthur Maloney -- a wise choice, the kind of choice that the moment it was announced I took it upon myself to send him a note saying, “A fine appointment, I’m glad you were able to accept it” -- you can’t have it that way and then, in the legislation which provides for the authority under which he will operate, so constrict his activities that he has no real activity to perform, and yet you pose him as the person that all of us in this assembly accepted totally.

Mr. Haggerty: Now you should beware.

Mr. Renwick: This bill does not trust your selection as the Ombudsman. There is no question about it. Let’s not fool around about it. This is what you are going to the electorate on.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): You’ve got to be kidding.

Mr. Renwick: Don’t kid yourself, boy, there are wiser men than you in government, boy.

Mr. Drea: I ought to know.

Mr. Renwick: And there are people who know about something called power that you will never know, and Lord Acton knew it -- power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. You are corrupt in this bill.

Mr. Drea: Why don’t you come on TV against me?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That was absolutely wrong, and the member for Riverdale knows it.

Mr. Renwick: It is not wrong.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Maloney wouldn’t accept that position under those circumstances.

Mr. Renwick: He didn’t know what the bill said.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Why don’t you go back to committee? You messed that up.

Mr. Renwick: This bill is not what the Ombudsman is about in Sweden. It just doesn’t bear any resemblance to it.

Mr. Lawlor: Not even close.

Mr. Renwick: Let’s not misunderstand anything.

Mr. Lawlor: He has no initiatory powers whatsoever -- and then you swaddle him after that.

Mr. Renwick: If you say to him --

Hon. Mr. Clement: Take a look at his function.

Mr. Renwick: Wait a minute. Regardless of his function, you are talking about his oath of office. His oath of office restricts him -- and you know this, Mr. Attorney General, as well as I do -- in what he can ever say. I can just hear any ombudsman with integrity when we question him under whatever limited auspices we may have to question him.

When we ask him some question, he will say: “I took an oath of office from the Speaker of your assembly. I am an officer of the assembly. Section 13 of the Act says that I will not, except in accordance with subsection 2, disclose any information received by me. With your imprimatur, you restricted me. I am your officer, but you restricted me. And I can only say what that oath of office administered by your Speaker says that I can say.”

That’s the section we are talking about. And that bears no relationship to the Swedish Ombudsman -- none whatsoever. It is a masquerade and it is a fraud if you persist in what you are doing in this bill.

I don’t know how I can express what I am trying to say. We actually thought in this caucus, when we discussed this bill and the problems we saw inherent in it, we quite literally thought that because this was going to be an officer of this assembly, that we could have some kind of a reasonable debate about what the bill was about. We quite literally did. We didn’t anticipate that we were going to be faced with this hard-line game that is being played tonight -- and will be played tomorrow. It will be played so long as you think that you can get this bill through this way. But you can’t do it.

Do you think that I am going to sit in this assembly and listen to the Speaker of this assembly administer that oath to the Ombudsman -- everybody’s man -- and put that kind of blinker upon him? And then, in addition, impose the blinkers under subsection 4 of section 22? What do you take us for?

Do you think we don’t understand what power is about? Do you think we don’t understand what government is about? Do you think we don’t understand why the executive encroachment on the assembly has been so dominant over the years, that we don’t understand that the Ombudsman is an attempt by people to respond to a need of government?

As my colleague from Lakeshore said: “You don’t understand us. You don’t understand what we are about. Or, either, you understand it too well” -- if I can paraphrase his phrase. And he said: “That’s the problem; we understand each other too well.”

We can also play. We can hard-line it or ment, because it isn’t a debating chamber on this bill. There is no way; there isn’t one jot or tittle of this bill that will be changed in the course of this debate. So be it.

We can also play. We can hand-line it or hard-ball it, whatever you want to call it. And we will -- because you’re wrong and you can’t play it.

I will not sit in this chamber, and no member of this caucus will be in this chamber the day the Speaker administers that oath to the Ombudsman of this province. It’s just that simple, because that destroys him -- let alone all of the other provisions of the bill which we will come to deal with clause by clause. That destroys him. Mr. Chairman, I’m relatively overwrought and I’m not going to pursue this matter at this time.

Mr. Renwick moves that section 13 of Bill 86 be amended by deleting everything after the word “office” in the fourth line.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour of Mr. Renwick’s --

Mr. Renwick: No, no.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: When I first read this legislation a little while ago -- what’s wrong with the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet?

Hon. Mr. Winker: Nothing in particular, what’s wrong with you?

Mr. Lawlor: Are you suffering from some kind of cholera? If you are, take yourself out and empty your bowels.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I will join you if that’s your mood. You have been unduly cantankerous lately.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): What are you emptying now?

Mr. Lawlor: When I first read this legislation some time ago, reading it on a superficial level, I came to a conclusion that was pretty favourable. On the surface, it didn’t look bad; after all, it was an Ombudsman bill. As we interrogate it, as we go through clause by clause in the legislation, more and more pitfalls emerge. The weaker the legislation becomes, the more subterfuge is written into it. It is a piece of sheer charade in area after area, on at least eight major points, to give the role of the Ombudsman any force, any power, any weight, in any regard -- at least on eight points that we’ve figured out so far.

Mr. Drea: All right, how about you taking it for no fee?

Mr. Lawlor: And as we argue longer and hear more --

Mr. Drea: How about you taking it for no fee?

Mr. Lawlor: -- it becomes more and more apparent, as more is disclosed to us, just how weak and how inefficacious, how devious and what a masquerade this piece of legislation is. You’ve taken steps to swaddle and straitjacket every possible role which would be --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: There is nothing in the world like a socialist lawyer anywhere.

Mr. Lawlor: -- of high benefit, which an Ombudsman could perform. Every time you hit the hard point, you foreclose the action.

You’ve got him so circumscribed, so screwed up in the course of writing this legislation that as one peruses it and thinks it over and it emerges to the surface, the implications of the legislation become even worse.

Mr. Drea: Can we record you give your fee to charity?

Mr. Lawlor: If I had to do it over again, I’m sure this caucus -- and certainly I would -- would vote against the legislation as it presently stands. If that’s the best you can do, forget it. We’ve waited a long time and what do we get?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Why don’t you vote against it?

Mr. Lawlor: Some inept production by some threadbare, inept, empty-headed deputy minister up there -- or rather parliamentary assistant -- working in the courses of the land.

Mr. Chairman: Order, order.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: You can’t talk about civil servants like that.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Mr. Lawlor: Why don’t you take yourself off? Why don’t you take off to the ruination of the assembly downstairs instead of ruining it up here?

Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, on a point of privilege with all due respect.

Mr. Lawlor: Your contribution is negligible. I have the floor.

Mr. Chairman: No, you haven’t. He has a point of privilege.

Mr. Lawlor: Privilege? He’s not going to say he’s not empty-headed? That is not a privilege in his case.

Mr. Chairman: Order. The member for Scarborough East has a point of privilege.

An hon. member: Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Chairman: I don’t know whether he has one or not.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, with all due regard to the civil service, I do think the remarks made by the member for Lakeshore -- and I think if he would give them the proper consideration --

Mr. Renwick: He wasn’t talking about civil servants. He was talking about you.

Mr. Drea: -- that a decent normal person --

Mr. Chairman: Order, order. The member for Scarborough Centre, what’s your point of privilege?

Mr. Lawlor: No, I was talking about the member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, I am not the deputy minister of any department or any ministry. I am an elected member.

Mr. Reid: That’s something to be thankful for.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Get him in the right seat.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, I don’t raise it on my point of view --

Mr. Chairman: The member for Scarborough Centre has no point of privilege.

Mr. Drea: Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman, in all fairness. I don’t raise this on behalf of this guy from Lakeshore --

Mr. Chairman: Order. The member for Lakeshore may proceed.

Mr. Martel: Throw him out, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Lakeshore may proceed with the debate on the amendment.

Mr. Lawlor: On a point of privilege, I wish, if there was any misunderstanding, to withdraw my remarks and to apologize to the deputy minister.

Mr. Jessiman: And you should, and you should.

Mr. Drea: Why don’t you apologize for the remarks about the parliamentary assistant?

Mr. Lawlor: Well, we won’t be talking about the parliamentary assistant, will we?

All right, as I said --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I guess the member for Lakeshore lost that one.

Mr. Lawlor: If we had to do this over again with the emerging disclosures, with the widening of the writs, isn’t it strange how, in course of discussion, there emerges out of the chasms the lava -- what is really in there. I suppose you thought you could pull the wool over our eyes and bull this legislation through, because it is sanctimonious. It has, on its surface, all the best elements.

On the other side is that grinding, tatterdemalion, that old, snuffling --

Mr. Chairman: Order, order. The member for Lakeshore should proceed.

Mr. Lawlor: -- that House leader -- the persiflage and weakness.

Mr. Chairman: Order, order. The member for Lakeshore --

Mr. Lawlor: The Tory government in this House is typified and symbolized in that standing monstrosity.

Mr. Ferrier: The two of them.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: If the member for Lakeshore laughs at himself he is doing the right thing.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Order. The member for Scarborough Centre hasn’t got the floor, so let him please take his seat.

Some hon. members: Name him. Name him.

Mr. Chairman: Would the member for Scarborough Centre please take his seat?

Mr. Martel: He is out of order.

Mr. Chairman: And would the member for Lakeshore please curtail his remarks to the amendment?

Mr. Drea: I’ll tell you, my friend, we will discuss this tomorrow -- the remarks you called me tonight. I have had just about enough blatherskite from you.

Mr. Lawlor: Go downstairs and have a drink.

As this section says --

Mr. Chairman: We have a lot of people up in the gallery. Let us conduct this like the Legislature of Ontario, not like some mudslinging contest between different parties. Let’s try to conduct the business in a manner in which we can go home tonight and be proud that we are the legislators in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Lawlor: The chairman’s sense of decorum is much greater than mine.

Mr. Chairman: I would hope so, tonight.

Mr. Lawlor: It is almost pretty. This is a debating chamber; we say what we think and how we feel. We are riled over this particular piece of legislation, and justifiably so. If certain personalities emerge in the clash, that’s all to the good. It gives the debate some edge. It may be heard in the land. It may even penetrate the press. We may make our point. That is all we are seeking to do.

We have to get through somehow and we will endeavour to do so by holding votes and the usual methods used by the opposition to make the point, because everybody assumes that this is the greatest piece of persiflage that was ever handed down. We want to make it known that it is so, that hidden underneath it and emerging as this debate goes on, are all kinds of loopholes, pitfalls and sheer pretence.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): That’s your opinion.

Mr. Lawlor: It is a piece of hypocrisy. It is about the grossest bribery ever offered to an electorate -- and we will continue to try to make that known. What do you do in this particular section? You set an oath, you bind him, you close his lips. You say he may open them once, no, perhaps twice -- namely, in the one report that he can submit through the auspices of the minister, and, I suppose, a second type of report which he has to give to the Premier before he can ever venture to come on to this sacred ground and speak his mind and make disclosure. The other time is once a year.

So you have him pretty well clammed up -- haven’t you? You really have. Yes -- muzzled. You watch a muzzled watchdog -- as they said in the British legislation when it first went though.

Mr. Samis: A sheep in sheep’s clothing.

Mr. Lawlor: It is already all designed, and we take grave exception to the duplicity written in to what is a fundamental office of integrity and honesty. So you undermine your Ombudsman before he even gets started -- and unbeknown to him. I’m sure he would have very severe reservations in accepting this truncation and being shackled in this particular way.

This debate will go on in this tenor and in this vein because we are incensed. We feel the powers over there thought to take us. We wanted to go along with some gentleness; we wanted to affirm and give cognizance to this new post and role. We wanted to be in a position of being able to affirm it, to give it strength and fortitude and cunning but what do we get? In clause after clause we get an undermining; a cutting into the office; a cutting back of the office; a narrowing of the functions. By the time you get to the last section, it becomes so constricting, it becomes like a prison cell in which he becomes largely a token or emblematic figure without the requisite functions and power.

You have really strapped him in and you are doing a wonderful job doing it, pretending all the time “Oh, no, it ain’t that way at all.” We are at least alive to what you are doing. We will continue, if necessary, to flog it. If you dig your heels in, we dig ours in, too. If you are not prepared to move in the matter and give some flexibility to his role, we are prepared to be as inflexible as we can on this side of the House. That’s our only weapon. We will use it.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, I believe there are other members who have remarks to make in this particular area. Perhaps this would be a convenient time for the committee to rise and report if the minister was so minded.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

Report agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, as I suggested to the House, we will deal first with item No. 13, Bill 100. Should we conclude second reading of that particular piece of legislation, we will deal with item 7, Bill 77.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Speaker, before the adjournment, is it the House leader’s intention to proceed with Bill 100 directly to committee at that stage? No, of course not; it will be going to the standing committee, will it not?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That is correct. That has already been suggested and we will deal with it. After second reading, it will go to the standing committee. As I suggest, if we conclude that debate tomorrow, we will proceed with Bill 77.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:30 o’clock, p.m.