Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Leluk: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to introduce to the House this afternoon 64 grade 8 students from John G. Althouse Public School in York West riding. They are seated in the west gallery.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the members of the House to welcome the pupils of grade 7, from The Elms Middle School in the riding of Etobicoke, accompanied by their teacher, Mr. Michael Luedicke.

Mr. Evans: I would like to introduce to the members of the House, grade 12 students of the Barrie Eastview Secondary School, sitting in the west gallery, and ask them to join with me in giving them a warm welcome.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry. Oral questions.

CONDITIONS IN CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Correctional Services: What is his ministry going to do about the alleged problems within the jails and correctional institutions of Ontario other than involve the Ombudsman, whose domain I would have thought to be secondary rather than primary?

Hon. J. R. Smith: This has been very apparent to me since I assumed the responsibilities of the Minister of Correctional Services. I have visited a number of the centres in the province -- such as Brampton and Sault Ste. Marie, as well as here in Toronto -- where there is severe overcrowding. We are trying to speed up the new facility at Maplehurst and increase the accommodation facilities from 100 to 400 within a few weeks. These and the House of Concord north of Toronto and new detention centres are going to provide some relief from the overcrowding in certain of these municipal jails.

Mrs. Sandeman: Supplementary: What steps is the minister prepared to take in the meantime while the overcrowding exists in the present jails, to make sure that the staffing levels in those jails and reformatories are sufficient to deal with the very high number of inmates?

Hon. J. R. Smith: Staffing has been increased in the Don Jail this year to 35 correctional officers; five in Brampton and 60 at Mimico. We are doing our very best. I recognize that the correctional officers in these centres are under a great deal of pressure because of the overcrowding, but we are up to complement.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary: Does the minister recall that his predecessor spent over $2 million in upgrading Burwash in the last year and then closed it, also in the last year? Why doesn’t he reactivate Burwash if he needs room? It is all there, with all of the facilities and the people who want it in the community.

Hon. J. R. Smith: The immediate problem is accommodation for remand inmates who have to appear in court almost on a daily basis. They have to be near their legal counsel. The population that was previously at Burwash was primarily from southern Ontario. Only 10 per cent of the inmates were from northern Ontario centres. One gets into the problems of transportation --

Mr. Reid: We don’t have those problems up there.

Hon. J. R. Smith: -- proximity to legal counsel and family and rehabilitative services. It is hoped that these new facilities such as Maplehurst, Mimico and House of Concord will alleviate that problem.

Mr. Nixon: You don’t put remands in the reformatories.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary if I may: Do I take it from the tenor of his answers that the minister largely agrees, or at least implies that the intimations of a blowup, as expressed by the Civil Service Association on behalf of its personnel, are apparently real and that things have been allowed to deteriorate to a point where they need the rescue of an outside agency like the Ombudsman? What does the minister intend to do as the crisis develops before his eyes?

Hon. J. R. Smith: I beg to disagree with the statement of Mr. Cooper that there is a crisis situation and a fear of riots in the institutions. This is ever present in this form of correctional work, either at our institutions or those of the federal government. It is ever present

Our main concern is to see that we are satisfied that enough precautions have been taken with regard to the staff and their training and that there is security, but when we reach a certain overload in institutions such as Brampton, where we have facilities for an average of 30 beds and we have 68 inmates -- such as the day I was there -- they replace the single cot beds with bunks and then they have 60 places and an overflow of eight. That means they would have to sleep in the corridor at night and that’s when the security problems arise.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. J. B. Smith: I have a great deal of concern for the correctional officers when they have to enter those corridors in that kind of situation. We are moving as quickly as possible to try to open these other facilities and I welcome full co-operation with the Ombudsman. The CSAO requested this and it did not, as the member has intimated, come as a request from this ministry. We are willing to co-operate fully with him, in every way we can.

Mr. Speaker: This will be the final supplementary on this question.

Mr. Young: Could I ask the minister a supplementary regarding the timing of this tremendous upsurge of inmates in the correctional institutions? Over the past two or three years, we were led to believe that things were going very well and now suddenly we get the crisis. What is the reason for the sudden crisis?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. We are now straying into a debating session. The original question had to do with the Ombudsman’s participation. In fairness, I feel we should allow a final supplementary to the leader of the -- not the leader, the member for Sarnia.

Mr. Foulds: The undeclared candidate.

Mr. Nixon: It is a very natural error, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Bullbrook: Would it be the feeling of the minister that perhaps an undue backlash to the Bail Reform Act is causing part of the overcrowding at the present time?

Hon. J. B. Smith: There are many factors behind the overcrowding. That could be a contributing factor, yes. It is also related to the fact that the populations are basically very young, 18- to 25-year-old males, and to the end of the baby boom; there are many things such as the member suggested. In Metropolitan Toronto there has been an increase of 30 per cent this year in admissions to the Toronto jails.

Mr. Bullbrook: Are any representations being made by the hon. minister to his colleague, the Attorney General, (Mr. McMurtry) in connection --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I think that was the final supplementary. I tried to draw that to your attention a moment ago.

TORONTO TEACHERS’ NEGOTIATIONS

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Premier -- I hope he will understand my addressing it to him in the absence of the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells).

Now that the high school teachers in Metropolitan Toronto have seemed to indicate quite specifically that they intend to exercise their right to strike when the secret ballot comes this week, is there an intention on the part of his government to intervene at the highest levels to bring the parties together in the last-ditch effort we would all support since there are now only about nine days left before the walk-out begins?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I expect the Minister of Education will be here, perhaps even before the question period is over, and I think that question should be properly directed to him. I think he does have something to say in this regard.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE RATES

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, if I may: In this period of constraint on all fronts, is the government now prepared to consider requiring of the automobile insurance companies in Ontario that they justify any future premium increase applications that they may bring and that the now minister provide a public explanation for the 63 per cent rise in cumulative premium increases since 1972?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition well knows, we have always required them to justify premium increases, but I think the complaint he has is that we haven’t required them to justify them publicly. The restraint programme which the federal government has now embarked on, obviously will have an effect on future rate increases. I have been talking to the people in the insurance industry, and there is still some confusion as to whether or not they are all going to be required to go to Ottawa and justify their rate increases. In the meantime, I can assure the hon. Leader of the Opposition that we will carry out our responsibilities to the public.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: What exactly does that mean? Many of the automobile insurance companies have increased rates in three installments in 1975 alone at 30 to 35 per cent of the premium levels as they existed in December, 1974. What intervention will his ministry make, in good faith with the guidelines, to make certain that no future increases occur without public scrutiny by this government?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, I can’t assure the hon. Leader of the Opposition that there will be public scrutiny. There certainly will be scrutiny within the ministry. If there is any public scrutiny, it may very well be by the Anti-Inflation Review Board in Ottawa.

Mr. Singer: Would the minister not believe now is the time to proclaim the unproclaimed sections in the Act which would give him power to control those rates?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Makarchuk: Supplementary: Would the minister consider looking into the increases that were imposed on the taxi drivers in Brantford last week where the rates went up anywhere from 60 to 300 per cent? Would he examine them and report publicly as to the reason why the increases were introduced at a time when we are supposed to be practising restraints and this government preaches these restraints?

Mrs. Campbell: That is not supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Was that an increase in the insurance rates that the hon. member was talking about?

Mr. Makarchuk: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, there have been some instances of increases in insurance rates on taxis and other public vehicles. I would be prepared to look at any specific instance that the hon. member would like to bring to my attention, as I have been doing for the past two weeks.

ASBESTOS EMISSIONS AT JOHNS-MANVILLE OPERATION

Mr. Lewis: One last question, if I may: Can the Minister of Health undertake to table in the Legislature the readings for asbestos emissions in the Johns-Manville mine and plant in Reeves township near Timmins during the course of the eight years that that mine and mill were in operation?

[2:15]

Hon. F. S. Miller: I’ll check into it, Mr. Speaker, and see whether I can.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: Is the minister personally aware whether or not readings were taken systematically during the course of that eight-year period, or were the readings confined just to the last year?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I can’t say.

PAYMENT FOR CATTLE PURCHASES

Mr. Nixon: I would like to put a question to the Minister of Agriculture and Food regarding the situation pertaining to Essex Packers, that was raised by my colleague, the member for Guelph (Mr. Worton), in the House on Friday. Can the minister explain to the House how the taxpayers of the province involved themselves to the extent of close to $1 million in making available the facilities at the Guelph Reformatory to Essex Packers? Have we in fact lost that $1 million in this circumstance, and was there ever an application by Essex Packers for assistance from the government so that they could maintain their operation?

Hon. W. Newman: To the first part of the question, I can’t really give the member a full answer on that. On the second part of the question, yes, there was a meeting some time ago and it was pointed out to Essex Packers by the ministry that they must themselves raise $1 million in capital before we would have a look at it. We are under the understanding that they would have raised this, but as of last week they had not. My prime concern here is the payment to the farmers prior to Oct. 17 and the outstanding balance to the farmers.

As far as the amount of money owing to Essex Packers by the Ontario government through the Ministry of Correctional Services is concerned, there was a cheque to be issued for $185,000, which I have today asked for a hold to be put on, to see what we can legally do about taking some of those funds to make sure that the farmers receive their payments, which I believe are outstanding to the tune of approximately $160,000. The OBIA are meeting today and I expect to meet with them myself later this week.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary: Since Essex Packers is, I believe, the last in the smaller group of packers offering any competition to the major packers in this province, wouldn’t the Minister of Agriculture and Food have a broader concern to see that this organization is kept functioning for the good of the agricultural community and also for the good of the consumers?

Mr. Speaker, it’s a bit of a problem directing the question, since it might at least be directed in part to the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. J. R. Smith), since the correctional facilities in Guelph have been in partnership for this period of time with the commitment of $1 million in our funds. But I would direct it to the Minister of Agriculture and Food, since it certainly falls within his more general responsibility to serve not only the agricultural community but the consumers.

Hon. W. Newman: The receivers moved in last Friday afternoon. I’m not convinced in my own mind at this point in time that, unless it was a very large amount of capital, even an infusion of money would keep this company going. We want to wait until we get back some further information later this week before a decision is made on that.

We did make it very clear before that they must infuse some of their own capital. After all, it’s owned, I think, primarily by two people. They were to infuse their own capital into this situation before we would look at it. From the way their statement is beginning to look at this point in time, I’m not sure the infusion of large amounts of capital would really help the situation at the moment.

Mr. Nixon: They’ve already got $1 million.

Mr. Gaunt: Supplementary: Since time is of the essence, when does the minister anticipate having this legal opinion as to whether some of this money from Correctional Services could be made available to the farmers for payment?

Hon. W. Newman: As of this morning I’ve asked the legal people from Management Board to look into it to see what our legal status is and to see what we can do. My prime concern is for those farmers who got a lot of NSF cheques prior to Oct. 17. I will do all I can in my power to try to see that they get paid.

Mr. Worton: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary: What plans does the government have for using the plant now? I understand it’s coming to a halt. Does Correctional Services plan to keep it going under its own staff, or what plans does the Government have?

Hon. W. Newman: At this point there are conflicting views whether it is still buying or not buying. But where any buying has been going on, the cheques, in processing, are being certified by the bank at this time to guarantee payments to the individuals. They have to give at least 37½ hours’ notice to the employees, so they’ll have to operate this week. I can’t tell you at this moment exactly what the outcome will be of the plant at the Guelph Reformatory until we’ve got more facts and figures on it.

ADVERTISING OF RENT REVIEW

Mr. Nixon: A question of the Premier: Is the Premier now in receipt of a letter from the election expenses commission indicating the opinion of the commission that the Minister of Housing has been in violation of the intent of the Election Expenses Reform Act in the publication of advertisements in the election campaign?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think I am in possession of a copy of a letter sent to the Minister of Housing.

Mr. Nixon: A supplementary: What does the Premier intend to do about it since, when the statute was proclaimed he himself indicated, I thought rather gratuitously, that his party intended to support not only the words in the regulations and the law itself but also the intent? This, of course, was the indicated intention of all sides. What is he going to do about it? Is the Premier going to arrange for payment into the consolidated revenue fund of those moneys that the ads cost?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think the commission really will have to make some decision, other than just passing some form of opinion, which is really what I understand from the resolution.

Mr. Nixon: It was a motion of the election expenses commission.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to be provocative, because if I became provocative I might say the only mistake we made in the Election Finances Reform Act was that we didn’t provide in the legislation that it be compulsory for advertising in election campaigns to be reasonably truthful, which would have then obliterated the Liberals’ total campaign. That was the only mistake we made. But I won’t become provocative today, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Ruston: You wouldn’t have got a word in.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I can only say, as I said to the press, that I think it is something that you can have a difference of opinion on.

Mr. R. S. Smith: We have no money for advertising.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I mean there was public funding going into your advertising; don’t forget that.

Mr. Reid: And yours.

Hon. Mr. Davis: That’s right, but I tell you, at least ours was truthful.

Mr. Nixon: Go ahead.

Mr. Reid: You used the government’s money to run your campaign. That is the whole point of the question.

Hon. Mr. Davis: As I said to the press -- and I don’t intend to prolong this --

Mr. Nixon: You don’t intend to prolong this, but you are.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- I disagree; what do you mean, I don’t intend to prolong it?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The question has been asked and the answer is being given.

Mr. Nixon: The Premier is totally at fault in this regard. Is he going to make restitution or not?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I am not totally at fault at all.

Mr. Nixon: You are. The election expenses commission says you are.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would have thought the former Leader of the Opposition would have learned something from the last campaign, but quite obviously he has not.

Mr. Nixon: Yes, I learned that I cannot trust your statements.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am not directly involved in this at all. There is a letter expressing an opinion from the commission. Fine. If the commission wishes to make a ruling, as I have said to the press, this government and this party will abide by any ruling that that commission makes.

Mr. Nixon: That is the weakest answer I have heard in this House.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Nixon: A supplementary question: Does the Premier then mean that the motion of the election expenses commission saying that his party, and in fact his government, is in violation of the intent of the Act is nothing more than a personal opinion and that he refuses to take action?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think it means this: The commission will have to make some determination. If they make a determination as to what they believe should be done, this party and this government will abide by it.

Mr. Singer: They have no such power.

Mr. Nixon: You are not prepared to act --

Mr. Reid: So much for the spirit of the Act.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: What I am saying right now, Mr. Speaker, is that I haven’t read the detailed, unofficial commission minutes. Listen, you people should talk about the spirit of the Act --

Mr. Nixon: What are you talking about?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I am on my feet.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I refuse to sit here and listen to cheap innuendo from the leader of the Conservative Party when he is trying a weak defence of a position which he knows himself to be completely impossible and indefensible. Is the Premier going to make restitution to the treasury or not?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. That is not a point of order. Is there a further answer to the question?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can only say this, if the former Leader of the Opposition is suggesting that I am making innuendoes -- and I am not -- I can only say that there is one man in this House who should know what that is all about.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary? The hon. Leader of the Opposition?

Mr. Lewis: The present leader of the present opposition is what you call it, I think. May I ask the Premier --

Mr. Nixon: It’s a total abdication of the Premier’s responsibility. The intent of that legislation has been smeared.

Mr. Deans: Why don’t you two get together on television and debate this?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. Leader of the Opposition wishes the opportunity to ask a supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: Could I ask the Premier if he would consider directing the commission to make public and to post regularly, perhaps with all members of the Legislature or perhaps in some other public function, the minutes of the commission as they are arrived at and the time at which it is intended to make a determination based on a motion passed by the commission?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think I would be presumptuous to direct the commission. I certainly would be quite prepared to discuss it with the chairman of the commission.

Mr. Nixon: He may be foolish to listen to you.

Mr. Reid: Just ignore them, that’s all.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, while I am on my feet, if I might interrupt the proceedings of the House, I would like to introduce to the members of the House the Prime Minister of St. Vincent, who is in your gallery watching these proceedings here this afternoon.

Mr. Lewis: In St. Vincent, they demand restitution.

Hon. Mr. Davis: They don’t have a Liberal Party in St. Vincent.

HOME WARRANTY PROGRAMME

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Does the minister recall two years ago informing me in this House that there would be, within six months, a warranty on new homes? Does he recall, about 18 months ago, my being informed in this House that that warranty was being drafted? Does he recall about a year ago my being informed it was simply a matter of getting a little bit of agreement with the federal government? Could the minister tell me where the warranty is?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: I am glad to hear the member correct his question in the second phase because I didn’t inform him. As he recalls, it was my predecessor in this portfolio who made the two statements. During the examination of my estimates in the last session, I told the hon. member that we were working on a warranty plan and I hoped to have it in place this fall. This fall is not completed yet and I’m working on it.

Mr. Deans: Not quite.

Mrs. Campbell: Christmas is coming.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We have reached the point where we are almost in a position to announce the plan but I can’t tell him the exact date.

Mr. Deans: A supplementary question: The minister can forgive me for being a little bit worried about it because we seemed to be at the same point a year ago. Could he tell me whether we’ll have this during this session?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It may not require legislation so I would be presumptuous if I told the hon. member we would be introducing something in this House this session. We are working toward the implementation of a plan completely apart from the federal government but also we would like to be in a position to integrate a plan with a national plan in the event the federal government does arrive at some consensus with the industry across the country. But we are proceeding on our own.

Mr. Deans: One final supplementary, if I may. How can a warranty be put in place, which would be legally binding across the province, without some Act of the Legislature?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: There was no suggestion on my part that it would require legislation at all. We would probably be adopting a warranty plan in the very near future. We may not require legislation to do it and until such time as we’ve arrived at a final plan, I think it would be a little bit premature of me to make any further statement.

KRAUSS-MAFFEI SYSTEM

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Transportation and Communications. Has he, in his search for the information supposedly tabled by his predecessor, had occasion to look at Hansard of April 18, 1975, page 968 -- when he can see the first time the question was answered -- or at Hansard of June 20, 1975, at page 3200 -- when he can see another time the question was answered -- or at the words of his predecessor who said on June 20, “I have said to the member, and I have made the statement in this House as late as my estimates, that these figures will be tabled in this House.” If his investigations have led him that far, when are we going to see the Krauss-Maffei cost figures?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Since the hon. member asked that question Friday morning, I have not had an opportunity to search all those copies of Hansard. I gave him my word on Friday that the figures would be available and they will be. I understand they’ve already been tabled but I have to confirm that.

Mr. Singer: Come on; that was the whole point of this. Neither you nor your leader have figured that one out yet.

MUSTARD REPORT ON HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Williams: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Health: Could the minister advise this House as to what the current status is of the Mustard report pertaining to delivery of health services in this province?

Mr. Nixon: He is after your job.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I am not really used to having voices come from behind me. Sometimes it’s a sign of an ailing mind.

Mr. Lewis: That would be fair.

Hon. F. S. Miller: The enemy I can see before me is always one I can trust.

Mr. Foulds: True enough.

Mrs. Campbell: You are right.

Mr. MacDonald: Let’s get back to question period.

Mr. Speaker: Could we get to the answer, please?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I was trying to think of one.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s what I thought.

Hon. F. S. Miller: During the last session of the last Parliament, I did have a chance to report on the reaction of this government to the Mustard report. As a matter of fact, during the summer months a booklet was prepared called, I think, “Report, Reaction, Response.” This is a fairly concise summary of the response of this government to the many recommendations of Mustard and the responses of the people who studied it. It could take a long time to go over them and since it is a matter of record I’ll take it upon myself to send the member a copy so that he’ll have them.

[2:30]

HIGHWAY EXTENSIONS

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Speaker, a question to the Minister of Transportation and Communications: Does the minister intend to meet with three groups which have requested a meeting to discuss the extension of Highway 400 south to St. Clair Ave. and the paving of the Spadina Expressway from Lawrence Ave. to Eglinton Ave? These three groups are: the Citizens Transportation Coalition, which requested a meeting on Oct. 6, 1975; the borough of York council, on Oct. 1, 1975, and again on Oct. 27, 1975; and the city of Toronto, on Oct. 15, 1975. If the minister does intend to meet them, can he tell me when?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat concerned, because I cannot say I have not received any of those requests, but I certainly have not received them all. In my office on Friday, I was going over requests for such meetings, and I have had some requests that we have not been able to fit in, but those were not among them.

Mr. Dukszta: Supplementary: I asked the minister, but maybe the question should have been directed to the Premier, since the requests were sent to the cabinet I assumed that in the meantime those would have been directed to the minister to deal with.

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, I have not seen those requests.

Mr. Dukszta: Another supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Ms. Speaker: Order, please. The last one was not really a supplementary. I thought it was more of a statement. Is this a supplementary?

Mr. Dukszta: Can the minister make sure he gets copies of those requests?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes.

PURCHASE OF RAILWAY LAND IN ERIEAU

Mr. Spence: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Could the minister clear up the confusion of the ownership of the land that has been owned by the Chesapeake and Ohio, Railway in the community of Erieau, Kent county? We’ve heard rumours that a private businessman has bought this property, and then we read in the Windsor Star on Oct. 11, 1974, that the Province of Ontario owns some of this property that was owned by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. Could the minister clear up this confusion over the ownership of this property, and does he intend to buy this property when possible?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member’s interest in this particular area. In fact, it is an area that the hon. member and I personally examined. We did express some real interest in developing this particular area as a provincial park to serve that part of Ontario. We indicated our interest in purchasing this particular property.

However, in the interim I am told that a certain gentleman by the name of Drake from London, Ont., moved in and negotiated with the C and O Railway before Government Services could do any negotiating on our behalf. We have no ownership of any land there at this present time. I understand that Mr. Drake is having financial difficulties in finalizing the arrangements, but I am not sure of that.

To the second part of the hon. member’s question, if we are still interested: I would have to say we are still interested, but I would have to point out as strongly as I can that because of budgetary constraints, and cutting back in land acquisition for provincial parks specifically, this does not have a high priority on our list at the present time.

ONTARIO’S CREDIT RATING

Mr. MacDonald: I have a question of the provincial Treasurer. In view of Moody’s action in the United States recently in reducing Ontario’s credit rating from a triple A to a double A, would the minister give the House an explanation as to what he ascribes this downgrading; and second, what difficulties, if any, is it going to create for the government and Ontario Hydro in terms of capital needs over the coming year?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, I may have missed this, but I am not aware that they have done so.

Mr. Lewis: What? The minister did not hear of this cataclysmic decline in Ontario’s credit rating on foreign markets?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. MacDonald: Supplementary: Would the provincial Treasurer investigate this -- because I have every reason to believe that what I have been told is correct -- and reply to my question at his earliest convenience?

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary on that -- because it is a very interesting subject that we’ve heard about frequently from the Treasurer’s predecessor: Did the representatives of that American firm call on either the Treasurer or representatives of the treasury during the last four months to discuss this credit rating? Has this been a matter of more concern than the Treasurer is evincing at the present time?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: They did not call on me, Mr. Speaker. I believe there was to have been a meeting with the deputy minister and some officials about 1½ or two months ago and it was cancelled.

Mr. Nixon: The deputy was called back on a matter of urgent importance -- was that the story at the time?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

HUMAN RIGHTS CODE

Mr. B. Newman: I have a question of the Minister of Labour. Does she intend to amend the Human Rights Code so that discrimination because of a physical handicap will no longer deny an individual with a handicap, who can perform the services of being given an opportunity of employment?

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, the question raised by my hon. colleague is a very pertinent one. The Human Rights Code of the Province of Ontario is to undergo a complete study and revision within the next 12 months. I would be certain that aspect of human rights will be included in that study and will be taken into consideration.

MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. Makarchuk: I have a question of the Minister of Labour. In view of the harsh restrictions imposed by the guidelines on people at the lower income levels, is the minister prepared at this time to raise the minimum wage?

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague knows, the minimum wage is under constant scrutiny within this province. It is being studied at the moment and there will be proposals made, I am sure, within the next two months regarding movement of the minimum wage in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Lewis: The government is learning.

Hon. B. Stephenson: It will be recognized, I am sure, that the statement made by the Minister of Finance of Canada was not that the federal minimum wage was to be raised, but that in fact any wage under the level of $3.50 an hour could be elevated to that level without any penalty under the AIB.

Mr. Lewis: They are nothing but generous.

DEFINITION OF DISABILITY

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, my question is of the Minister of Community and Social Services. I must first quote an incident in order to make my question clear. In the case of a person who had been denied eligibility under the GAINS programme administered by the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the eligibility finally came though during the month of September. I was rather gratified because at the point at which she had died, previous to the eligibility -- I thought she died of unemployability.

My question is has the minister given any consideration to redefining disability for purposes of GAINS? Secondly, in line with the constraints of the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough), would he not now think it would be advisable to disband the medical review board, which sits at the rate of $25,000 a year per person, for four persons for part-time service, in view of the fact that they never see a patient and their decisions may be overruled by a lay board, namely, the appeal review board

Hon. Mr. Taylor: Yes.

Mr. Reid: Stop right there.

Hon. Mr. Taylor: In connection with the first part of the member’s question, I certainly have given a great deal of consideration to that problem. As the member knows, it has been a difficult problem because of the criteria that must be involved. I am giving consideration to that. There is supposedly a difference, as the hon. member knows, between the permanently unemployable and those who are permanently disabled. That’s a difficult situation.

Mrs. Campbell: That’s what I am talking about.

Hon. Mr. Taylor: We’ve reviewed that. That has been an ongoing review. We’ve reviewed every case from 60 to 65 years of age. As a matter of fact, there have been quite massive transfers from the permanently unemployable to the permanently disabled. That has gone on.

In regard to the medical review board, I would want to give that further consideration before I gave an answer.

Mr. Deans: Is the minister telling us he reviewed them all?

Mr. Speaker: Is there a further question from the New Democratic Party?

Mr. Shore: Mr. Speaker, could I ask a question?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Beaches-Woodbine.

Mr. Bullbrook: The member for London North has a question.

Mr. Speaker: I thought there was a question there a moment ago but I think we caught them by surprise, so we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

SPENDING REVISIONS

Mrs. Bryden: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the chairman of Management Board. In the House on Friday he gave us a statement in which he claimed that the government was expecting to achieve a four per cent reduction in something known as the civil service complement by the end of the fiscal year. Will the minister provide us with the two missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle, which will enable us to determine if actual savings are being made?

The two pieces of information requested are: First, the number of civil service jobs existing prior to Apr. 1, 1974, which have been contracted out to other workers? Secondly, whether those called “contract employees” are included in the figures of civil service complement? If not, how many contract employees were there a year ago and how many are there now?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, as far as the second question is concerned, if one assumes that the definition of a contract employee is anybody who is working for the province who is not on the classified staff or the civil service staff, then as of this date in time, Nov. 3, I would estimate there would be about 16,500 people in that category.

I hasten to point out that figure includes a great many part-time people, like Crown employees, people who work in the jails, psychiatrists, dentists, and so on. It also includes roughly 500 teachers who work in places like the schools for the blind, the schools for the deaf and the Science Centre -- a variety of places.

Mr. Reid: There are 100 of them in the Premier’s office.

Hon. Mr. Auld: In the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, it includes snowplough operators and winter maintenance people. In the summertime it includes roughly another 10,000 students and all the people who work part-time in the parks. There are a great many part-time people and it is virtually impossible, I’m informed by my own staff, to say that there are so many contract people in one year, it will vary seasonably.

I might be able to give the hon. member the answer to the first part of the question, as to the number of civil servants who have been dropped from complement who might now be found under the guise of contract employees. I can say that it would be very few, because the way Management Board plugged that loophole was to reduce direct operating expenses, including all salaries, by 10 per cent, so that in the event someone tries to replace a permanent civil servant by contract employee they still have to have the money to do it, and that we are watching very closely.

However, if it is possible, I will try to give the hon. member a further answer to the first part of the question.

Mr. Reid: I wonder if I could ask --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Has the original questioner a point of clarification?

Mrs. Bryden: Yes; do I take it that the minister says contract employees are not included in the civil service complement? Secondly, all I’m asking for on contract employees is the number as of, say Nov. 3, 1975, versus Nov. 3, 1974, which would cut out all the problems about seasonable and part-time? Is that possible?

Hon. Mr. Auld: I’m afraid it isn’t quite that simple, but I will try, and --

Mr. Foulds: No, it certainly isn’t.

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- give the hon. member an answer. You see for instance --

Mr. Lewis: Never mind the for instance, just give the answer.

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- in the government there are positions -- not a great many of them, I understand -- which have always been filled --

Mr. Lewis: The minister is the greatest fudger in this Legislature.

Hon. Mr. Auld: I am sure there are others who don’t want the answer, but the hon. member might.

Mr. Bullbrook: He means the minister is sweet when he calls him a fudger.

Hon. Mr. Auld: There are positions that have always been filled by unclassified and contract people. For instance, in what we might call the foreign service in industry and tourism.

Mr. Lewis: The foreign service? This is Ontario.

Mr. Foulds: Where do they work -- northern Ontario?

Mr. Speaker: Order please, we are wasting time.

Hon. Mr. Auld: I have a great answer, but I’ll restrain myself.

Mr. Deans: Go ahead.

Mrs. Campbell: Just give us the answer.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Auld: We can get together --

Mr. Bullbrook: Yes, that would be great.

[2:45]

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- you be Mr. Interlocutor and I can give you a lot of definitions.

The people who work for Industry and Tourism in the United States and in other countries have always been unclassified non-civil servants. For one thing, they can’t take the oath of allegiance and there are always local conditions, so it is not quite as simple as it appears on the surface to try to get these definitions.

Mr. Lewis: That is certainly germane.

Hon. Mr. Auld: The hon. member may find some more illumination in the special programme review committee, which I understand has been taking a look at this problem along with others. I will endeavour to clarify things further for the member.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Did the member for Rainy River have a supplementary? One final supplementary.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Speaker, at the risk of taking on the Paul Martin of the Ontario Legislature once again, I would like to draw to his attention that there is a question in my name and that of the member for Kitchener (Mr. Breithaupt) on this very thing. My question was on the order paper for four months in the last session. Is it not possible for the Management Board to come up with these figures and, if you like, categorize them as contract people and others as opposed to permanent civil servants? Quit playing games with the people of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Auld: If the hon. member will indicate how long he means -- if he would like to have delineated every person who has been on contract, including those for a months and those for six month, it is going to take another four months. I’ve tried to explain the complexities of this --

Mr. Reid: It’s taken you six months to answer that question.

Hon. Mr. Auld: I suppose the answer may have been just about ready and then there was a whole different group of unclassified employees --

Mr. Singer: Then you had to tear it up.

Mr. Reid: Give me the old answer. I will take the old answer.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The answers are getting quite lengthy.

Really, I believe if there is further discussion, this should be between the two people. The member for London North.

ANTI-INFLATION PROGRAMME

Mr. Shore: I have a very simple question. It seems we are having difficulty reconciling what I consider simple questions so I’ll ask this question in a more simplified form.

Mr. Speaker: Could we have the question please?

Mr. Shore: Could the minister, the hon. Treasurer, reconcile this: He is said to have stated in the Globe and Mail the other day that about 120 civil servants, who are in the salary range of between $30,000 and $50,000, have been told they have a freeze. I’ve been informed that public accounts have stated that there are over 375 people in this category. Could he please reconcile these two numbers?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, what we referred to in the statement was the senior compensation list which is about 120 or 130 people. Their range would be -- I think $30,000 would probably be a little bit on the low side; $49,000, I think, would be the top. There are people who are certainly earning over $30,000 who are not on the senior compensation list. Provincial judges come immediately to mind; and there are also Crown attorneys and a number of others who are not on the senior compensation list. There is a cross-over point there.

Mr. Shore: Could I ask a supplementary? How was the decision made as to who was frozen and who wasn’t?

Mr. Lewis: By law.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The ones on the senior compensation list.

Mr. Foulds: The Celsius scale.

HOLIDAY CLOSING FOR RETAIL BUSINESSES

Mr. Bounsall: A question of the Solicitor General (Mr. MacBeth), Mr. Speaker: With reference to his newly introduced Act to regulate holiday closings for retail business will he consider exempting the downtown core of the city of Windsor on the same basis and for the same reasons as he is considering exempting Muskoka and Niagara Falls?

Mr. Bullbrook: It is out of order, Mr. Speaker, you know it. The legislation is before us. My goodness gracious, who has to do your job for you?

Mr. Speaker: I think that question -- order, please. This bill will be discussed very briefly; I think there will be an appropriate time then.

Another question; who have we? The member for --

Mr. Sweeney: Kitchener-Wilmot, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Yes.

FAMILY PLANNING CLINICS

Mr. Sweeney: A question of the Minister of Health: The various county and regional health units have been advised to set up family planning clinics. It is my understanding that a community advisory group is supposed to determine some of the rules of the game. Those groups are presently --

Mr. Speaker: Your question please.

Mr. Sweeney: The question is does the Minister of Health or his ministry advise those groups as to what age level -- I would have to use the term children -- they are to receive family planning material, shall we say? There seems to be a great deal of conflict as to --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please, the question only. No debate or discussion.

Mr. Sweeney: At what age does the Ministry of Health recommend --

Mr. Speaker: The question has been asked.

Mr. Sweeney: At what age does the Ministry of Health recommend, through its family planning clinics, that people would get family planning material or devices?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, as far as I know we don’t advise an age.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired.

Mr. Lewis: Let the supplementary go on; I want to hear the supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Petitions. Presenting reports.

Motions.

Hon. Mr. Welch moved that Mrs. Campbell be substituted for Mr. Good on the select committee appointed to consider the fourth and fifth reports of the commission on the Legislature.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. B. Stephenson: I beg leave to table the 56th annual report of the --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I believe I may have missed the order for reports. You may continue.

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to table the 56th annual report of the Ministry of Labour for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1975; and explanatory materials for the 1975-1976 estimates of the Ministry of Labour.

Mr. Speaker: Any further motions?

Introduction of bills.

Mr. Lewis: Where’s the rent bill?

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The first order, resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Hon. the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Lewis: I am not at all sure I can cope with both the Premier (Mr. Davis) and the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) arid the entire entourage in the House at the same time.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We can leave.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Does the member want us to leave?

Mr. Lewis: What wonders doth minority government perform.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and delighted to begin the response to the Speech from the Throne for our party. I don’t intend to dwell on or savour or relish in unseemly ways the election results. I don’t want to fight those battles all over again, although I judge from time to time that’s going to happen anyway. I wanted to make only one reference to the election campaign which struck me as symptomatic or symbolic of some of the problems which the government faced, the conclusions to which I didn’t know, frankly, until today.

Right at the end of the campaign, Mr. Speaker, with about a week or 10 days to go, we had a public contretemps, I suppose that’s the way it could be described, over the increase to the GAINS programme and the minimum monthly income which the government was going to provide. The Premier had made an announcement of $6.02 per month to bring everybody up to $250 a month, as I recall, and we said that $5.99 of that would be the cost of living increase provided by the federal government on Oct. 1, and that was much disputed. The Premier said they would go ahead anyway. I learned today that the increase provided on Oct. 1 under the federal cost of living adjustment was, lo and behold, $5.99, and that in fact the government really did, during the campaign, increase the amount by only three cents a month and endeavoured to get away with it at that time.

I had a feeling, in retrospect as I looked at the figures, that that was part of the malaise of the Tory campaign, that there was a continuing inconsistency and lack of public credibility in much of what was said. Now, of course, fortunately, happily, the senior citizens of Ontario are receiving $255.99 a month as a result of the various adjustments. It’s not as much as they should have, I presume, but it is rather more than they would have received had the matter not been reconciled during the campaign.

I am not going to deal with all of the issues which emerged, Mr. Speaker, although I want to deal with some of them in their aftermath. I presume, as I look across the floor, that the mere shift in the physical array within the Legislature is enough to disconcert the Conservative Party. I guess the presence of the socialist hordes is trauma enough to unsettle some of them.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I doubt think hordes is quite the term.

Mr. Lewis: I thought perhaps I would pre-empt it in advance of the next campaign, if you will allow me to do that.

Interjections.

Mr. Lewis: The Tory rump has become the Liberal rump, which is an interesting shift in proportions, as it were. The monolithic juggernaut that we once knew has become the fragile remnants that we now see. That, as well, indicates to all of those who wish to judge the House what remarkable shifts there have been in the Province of Ontario.

I don’t want to indulge myself in merriment over things which occurred -- that will happen regularly during the session -- nor do I want to raise a whole wealth --

Mr. Yakabuski: Go ahead.

Mr. Lewis: No, I will do that later, I would say to the member -- is he from Renfrew North or Renfrew South?

Mr. Yakabuski: Renfrew South.

Mr. Lewis: Renfrew South. I will do that later. Nor do I want to range over a list of new issues. That will be provided during the estimates in the new year, if we reach the new year intact.

The election is over; the Premier remains the Premier; bloody but as yet unbowed. My felicitations to him. The Treasurer, I notice, still runs the government; that too is reassuring. The Liberals anticipate their leadership ruckus as soon as they draw lots to see who will run; and we, Mr. Speaker, I hasten to add, are indeed Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. If I may say, as ambiguously as possible in the hope of satisfying everyone, we don’t intend to be in the opposition forever.

Interjections.

Mr. Lewis: I said “as ambiguously as possible.” What more would members wish?

Interjections.

Mr. Riddell: The leader of the NDP will enjoy it for the short time that he has it.

Mr. Lewis: We will enjoy it for as long as it is conferred upon us. Maybe we will ascend -- who knows? In any event, so much for the pleasantries; I want to get down to business.

Our view of politics in Ontario at the moment is one of the continuing shifting sands of the election campaign itself and of the period which preceded. Our view, I think, is that much remains the same in Ontario as was characteristic of the election campaign and the events which preceded it.

If I can identify on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic caucus -- and there are happily many of them -- I think that what persists now, which was in fact the Achilles heel of the Tory party prior to its partial defeat -- more than partial some would say -- is a continuing failure of political leadership. I don’t mean that in the context -- I think the Premier understands -- of an individual. I mean it in the context of the government as a whole. Its political leadership was wanting before the campaign. Its political leadership was wanting during the campaign and the failure of political leadership persists now.

All of the patterns which were clearly evident in the Province of Ontario before, continue. They harass the government; they haunt the government; they demonstrate a government at once inconsistent and confused, government which hasn’t yet been able to reconcile what authority it should exercise.

On those issues which were germane and central to the life of the election campaign itself, nothing very much has changed. No sooner was the election over, the last 10 days or two weeks of which were fought on the question of rents in large measure, than there emerged a succession of reversals and pirouettes by the government on the question of rent control, rent review, tenant security, whatever you wish, all of which successive reversals were unlovely in the extreme. From the day the election was over until this day, this government, this cabinet, has still not been able to define in its own mind what it is going to do about an issue which was absolutely central to the life of the electorate.

That suggests to me a continuing failure of political leadership.

[3:00]

The election, Mr. Speaker, was fought in large measure on matters of energy. No sooner was the election campaign over than the Minister of Energy tabled, a little later perhaps, the first Isbister commission report and announced, characteristic of the Conservative Party, that prices for a gallon of gasoline at the pump and a gallon of home heating fuel would go up by 5.4 cents in the first case, by 4.8 cents in the second place, effective Nov. 16 next.

That is a default on political leadership. That is a practical and current demonstration of the things which brought the government into disrepute prior to this climactic election campaign of ours.

The Isbister report simply said that the inventories had run out for 1975. It made no pretence at recapturing the extra days of inventory which resulted in windfall profits for the oil companies in 1974 -- some 48 days of inventory and some $52 million of unanticipated windfall profit. The Isbister report didn’t say to you: “Raise the price on Nov. 16;” but you did it, willingly, voluntarily, gratuitously.

You did it, even though to this day you have no statistical documentation from the oil companies which you provided to the Legislature or Ontario. You did it even though to this day you have no knowledge of whether the current base price is valid and legitimate or invalid and illegitimate. You did it although you know that the increases in profits to the oil companies continue to be unconscionable, even though they claim they are losing money.

Can I just refresh the Premier’s mind that in 1970 the net profit of Imperial Oil was $105 million and by 1974 had risen to $290 million; that the rate of return on investment in that same period of time jumped from 11 per cent to 22 per cent?

Can I refresh the Premier’s mind that Gulf Canada jumped from $39 million profit in 1970 to $161 million profit in 1974, an increase of 313 per cent, and the rate of return on investment went from six per cent to 20 per cent?

Can I remind the Premier of Ontario and his colleagues that Shell Canada’s profit went up from $51 million net in 1970 to $142 million in 1974, an increase of 178 per cent, and the rate of return went from seven per cent to 16 per cent during that time?

Can I remind the Premier that the profits of the oil companies and the improved rates of return continue apace through 1975, never once justified in the public marketplace; and yet this government, without the slightest whimsy or hesitation, increases the price per gallon yet another 5.4 cents effective Nov. 16 next?

These oil companies, you know, they never lose. They never lose. What they don’t get from Peter Lougheed, they get from William Davis. What they are not provided with from Pierre Trudeau, they are provided with by Darcy McKeough. Every way they turn, every government acts as a supplicant to the oil companies.

It makes life very difficult for people in northern Ontario, many of whom my colleagues represent in this caucus. It makes life intolerable for wage-earners and consumers across the Province of Ontario who face the spectre of restraints on all sides while you free the price for the oil companies. You want to lock horns on the question of energy? We’ll lock horns with you on the question of the profits you are providing for the oil companies.

Do you remember that memorable quote which was provided from the hearings before the Nova Scotia Public Utilities Commission by the comptroller of Imperial Oil when he said: “I think I have to preface my remarks by suggesting to you that prices are not entirely related to cost. I think there is considerable judgement in the numbers which are picked out of the jumble of numbers in order to put the price into the market as best we see it.”

They charge what the market will bear. They charge what governments allow them to get away with and you have forced the consumers of Ontario to pay more than a quarter of a billion dollars in additional prices to the oil companies -- no questions asked; no answers provided -- and it was done in the wake of an election campaign which clearly marks this government with a failure of political leadership. So it persists.

It persists as well in the field of Ontario Hydro. There the failure of political leadership is also a failure of political courage. Either the government believed that the 27 per cent increase guaranteed or allowed by the Ontario Energy Board should be passed on to the consumer or it didn’t. Either it felt it was too high in the context of the federal guidelines or it didn’t. But collectively, this government didn’t have the courage to make the decision itself. It never does. That is also the failure of political leadership.

We don’t begrudge the government turning it over to a select committee of this Legislature, because I suspect that the opposition parties combined will give Ontario Hydro the kind of public scrutiny which has not occurred in a political context for so many years. It will doubtless result in a reduced rate of increase, despite Ontario Hydro’s insatiable growth fetishes. But it had to be done by the collective apparatus of the Legislature. The government, across the way, did not have the political strength and credentials to do it itself; a failure of political leadership.

Even when the government introduces something so relatively lesser on the scale of human needs as Sunday legislation in the retail industry, to prevent the openings on Sundays, it could not bring itself to respond to the clear and evident pressure all over the Province of Ontario for uniform store hours during the week as well. Again, the government succumbed to the effective lobby of the corporate monolith -- sure it did -- to the large corporations, and refused to accept what PUSH said to it, what the Federation of Canadian Independent Business --

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, that is silly.

Mr. Lewis: The Premier thinks it’s silly? He doesn’t know how silly I feel finding myself in agreement with John Bulloch, rather than with others. I resent that bedfellow relationship, I’ll tell you. It’s more than I can bear.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I don’t think he considered it that kind of relationship.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, I questioned it closely, and I have to grant the Premier he is as uncomfortable as I am.

Nonetheless, political leadership, some sense of what was at work in the Province of Ontario, would have allowed the government and should have allowed the government to do both things simultaneously. But again it falls short.

On matters which were central to the election campaign, on matters which revealed the problems of the Tory government, problems that appear never to be recoverable, problems that appear somehow never to be alterable, those things are reinforced in the day-to-day work of this short legislative session. We’re not going to call the government down because of that -- I don’t mean that in terms of a vote of non-confidence -- I understand what it is wrestling with. It may be that at some point the government will mobilize itself and pull itself together.

I want to deal a little more thoroughly -- albeit not in as great length as I’ve dealt in previous Throne speeches -- with the latest issue in the life of the Ontario Legislature, which creates for the government and for the province an enormous problem, and for the Legislature an enormous tension. And that is the statement by the federal Prime Minister on Thanksgiving last. We are ready as a caucus to deal with this subject in minute detail -- particularly in response to the Treasurer’s statement of Thursday -- but I want to deal with it in general terms first, because it so clearly underlies everything we’re going to do in this House. It raises a fundamental difference which, at some point either, has to be resolved or will be evidenced in legislative votes and proceedings.

It would be possible for me, obviously, on behalf of my party, to take the time to challenge the fundamental premises on which that whole apparatus of wage and price guidelines was based. It would be possible for me to quote the Statistics Canada figures which show that while real wages have increased 36.3 per cent between 1961 and 1974, the gross national product has increased more than 2.5 times that and profits have increased more than six times that. It would be possible for me to quote chapter and verse from Statistics Canada that the value of real wages actually fell in dollars and cents terms compared to the increase in the consumer price index over the latter part of 1973 and 1974.

It is possible to show how dramatically the poor become poorer and the rich become richer in Canada generally and in the Province of Ontario because the lowest quintile of earners in Canada now take about 2.5 to 3.5 per cent of total income, while the highest quintile now occupies between 45 and 50 per cent of total income. In other words, income distribution in this country and this province continues to be entirely inequitable. Clearly wages have not yet, in many sectors of the economy, particularly those which are most vulnerable, have not yet caught up with inflation; and clearly prices and profits are still very much out of control. But I don’t want to challenge it on fundamental premises, I want to deal with it in the context of the provincial government, if I may.

I think that the Province of Ontario embraced those wage-price guidelines with indecent haste and that it did so not out of patriotic motivations but out of simply unadorned political motivations. This government was exceptionally relieved at the apparent initiatives which the federal government would take, particularly in the wage sector.

The people over there love to control wages. It is so easy. The employer does it for them. Every employer is a policeman over wages. There are no great problems in control. It strikes this government as a very fashionable attack in the marketplace. It embraces the possibility of having the federal government solve for it all kinds of collective bargaining settlements which may have been uneasy or awkward. This government embraced it very quickly. I suspect that ministers sat down at cabinet and chuckled over the fact that Pierre Elliott Trudeau, irony of ironies, had come to their rescue at a time when the government felt itself profoundly vulnerable.

I have no doubt this government was also seeking an issue and, Tory intuition at play, it felt that some demonstration of austerity, it felt that hard-lining it and it felt that statements, which in their way were even more extreme than the statements made by the federal cabinet ministers, might set the basis, the groundwork for the next election campaign. That I sense also.

We can understand that over here. Those things are obviously matters of discussion, but the simple fact is that the government’s embracing of the federal guidelines, as we saw it, stemmed from those motivations. It never had the candour to say anything about it. The Premier and the Treasurer clutched the national interest to their bosoms when just three months ago they were prepared to revile every federal initiative and did so shamelessly on every occasion they could muster. The instant conversion is hardly very persuasive.

On the other hand, the government has done it. It has gone head over heels for the guidelines and now we have to cope with the consequences. The New Democratic Party admits willingly that the federal guidelines are a watershed in the history of politics in this province and country. We concede there had to be a careful provincial response, because I am prepared to admit that the question of inflation is, and was, truly grievous and truly difficult.

[3:15]

There isn’t a political party in this House that doesn’t want to face inflation frontally. I am perfectly willing to admit that even our sister New Democratic provinces in western Canada are at sixes and sevens about the extent to which they should encourage the guidelines or respond to the guidelines. It’s entirely possible that British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, while expressing more profound reservations than Ontario will ever express, will not resist the federal application of the federal law in a frontal fashion because they understand the political realities as well. I concede that. The political reality is that everyone in this country wants some response to the question on inflation.

But only Ontario, as far as I was able to judge, opted in -- uncritically, almost mindlessly. It didn’t know anything about the rules or the regulations of the anti-inflation board; didn’t have any of the details; didn’t express anything other than the most ritual and trivial reservations -- indeed not just ritual and trivial but simply fashionable reservations -- and just moved to embrace the guidelines. This government, I think, abdicated in the process a whole range of provincial initiatives to strengthen the guidelines where they are weak and to ameliorate them where they are wrong; to strengthen them where they are weak and to ameliorate them where they are wrong.

That again, I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, indicates the failure of political leadership. Abdication is not leadership. To surrender everything to the federal government is not leadership. The provincial Treasurer’s statement of last Thursday was not leadership.

You know what social democratic parties believe. We have, for a very long time, all of us, believed -- does that bother the Premier? Would he prefer me to say democratic socialist or the New Democratic Party?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am wondering about the difference.

Mr. Lewis: There was a time when he called us the socialist group. Maybe that would be fashionable for him now.

You know what parties like ours believe. We have always believed as an article of faith that it is legitimate for the state to intervene fundamentally in the economy. That used to be a basic difference of opinion across the floor of this Legislature as the Tories protected the private sector from government intrusion.

We have always believed, as a tenet of our social philosophy, that it is legitimate to intervene in the socio-economic apparatus of Canada or of Ontario, to defend the citizenry or to make major alterations in economic distribution; or indeed in prices, profits or wages. No one who is a socialist has ever hesitated on that score, and I put it to you as simply as that.

On the other hand, I think we have understood what perhaps the Conservatives in Ontario have not understood. That is that the power of the state is so awesome you don’t intervene lightly. You don’t intervene in the fashion which Pierre Trudeau is now entertaining. If you’re going to intervene in the economy at all, you do it with one underlying rationale and that underlying rationale must be fairness.

The government across the way has abdicated fairness, that’s what they have done. They’ve accepted the guidelines with all of their inequities and they’ve made no effort whatsoever, as a political government showing some sense of political leadership, to institute fairness.

We’re going to oppose the guidelines in every way which strikes us as unfair, unworkable and inappropriate because we think that’s the job of an opposition and of a government. We’re also going to ask the government to move in and do something for the people of Ontario which it has clearly refused to do. Let me simply remind the House of what that consists.

When the Treasurer of Ontario made his speech the first area of four which strike us as a total abdication of government responsibility was the question of prices. He said,

A lot has been said about prices by those who oppose the programme and who have apparently not read or understood the proposals for limiting the price increases and net profit margins of large corporations.

I want to tell the Premier and the Treasurer, as directly as I can, that we understand exactly what the price proposals of Pierre Elliott Trudeau consist of. Every federal cabinet minister who has spoken is falling all over himself to explain that prices will continue to rise. Jean-Luc Pepin has made it clear that prices will continue to rise. Pierre Trudeau asks us to show patience because prices will continue to rise for a year, or two, or more.

The major companies do not have to give advance intention of raising prices and have them approved, they only have to give notice of intention to raise prices, without approval being required. The system to establish monitoring is not yet set up, the number of employees attached to the anti-inflation board is pathetic in the context of the job. There is absolutely no mechanism built into the federal legislation which will deal with illegitimate price increases.

So if the government is willing to show political leadership; if it is willing to give the people of Ontario some sense that the guidelines are fair -- that coming down like the guillotine on wages will have a corresponding consequence on prices -- then either it sets up a provincial review board in Ontario, which scrupulously and relentlessly monitors every single price increase and rolls it backward if illegitimate, or it does what they had the courage to do in the province of British Columbia, and that is to institute a price freeze, and it does it today for a minimum period of two months until things sort themselves out.

Mr. Yakabuski: Until the election is over.

Mr. Lewis: No sir, not at all. The election is in fact continuing, but that is not what I am talking to. I am talking to a very important issue.

You wouldn’t consider the price freeze. The Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) made some reference to it in his speech. The fact of the matter is that the price freeze in British Columbia is one of the most remarkable successes that government has ever undertaken.

Do you know that one retail company after another has fallen into line? Do you know that one supermarket after another has agreed to follow the price freeze of the government? Do you know that there are supermarkets and retailers in British Columbia who now have signs over their marquees which read: “We co-operate with the Province of British Columbia”?

Do you know that the business community has not openly, since the freeze, attacked the government of British Columbia for what it has done? Do you know that at least in that province the wage-earners and consumers have some sense that the government is serious about prices rather than simply being serious about wages?

But there is no such political leadership in the Province of Ontario at all; no such political leadership whatsoever. Your only interventions in the marketplace are ad hoc and self-serving. If you intervene in the marketplace it is only because an election is coming and you have to do something with the oil company increases. That is all. That is the only time you ever raise a finger. I will come to that in a few minutes.

The one area of provincial initiative which was entirely open to you, that of prices, you have defaulted on, and you can understand why working men and women across Ontario will feel jaundiced and sceptical about their government while prices continue to go up irresistibly without any interference on your part whatsoever to protect the consumers of this province. That is called the failure of political leadership.

The second area with which the Treasurer dealt in his speech on behalf of the Premier (Mr. Davis) and his government was the question of profits. Nowhere was the Treasurer prepared to concede how easy it is for major corporations to manipulate profits, or to write them off, or to calculate them in ways which no army of accountants could possibly decipher. Nowhere did the Treasurer of Ontario blanch at the prospect that profits could be maintained at 95 per cent of the level of the best profit margins of the last five years.

Have you looked at any of the profit margins of those companies for the last five years? Have you looked at International Nickel? Have you looked at Denison? Have you looked at Rio Algom? Have you looked at Ford? Have you looked at Canada Packers? Have you looked at George Weston?

We have looked at all of them. All of them provide for profit increases of between 45 and 100 per cent over and above what existed in 1970, even at the 95 per cent level.

In other words, the Treasurer will bring down his fists on wages but he will do absolutely nothing to intervene in profits, although he did say something. The Treasurer said this:

Our concern is that these proposals should be reinforced if necessary by a corporate surtax. Such a tax would be levied against corporate profits in excess of the guidelines where these profits are not reinvested.

I read that as an open invitation to the corporations of Ontario to soak the consumers of Ontario, to accumulate as much by way of profit as they can, and if the appropriate portion of it is reinvested, they are exempt from the corporate surtax. That’s the way the government’s corporate surtax would work. It is an open-ended policy for the corporations to behave as they wish. If the government is going to tie price increases to that kind of open-ended corporation profit, then what the devil is the use of this whole masquerade anyway? The government has failed on prices, it fails on profits and yet it talks about political leadership. Although the government laughs it off now and tends by and large to be benignly indifferent about the public’s view of the Tory party at the moment, it’s the failures in these areas which I think will come back to haunt the government.

The same attitude, incidentally, just by way of passing, is shown toward professional incomes. When the government dismisses fee for service as a basis leading to the guidelines and their enforcement, and it talks about professional income being subject to a surtax, what the government is saying to the consumers of Ontario or the recipients of professional services is simply: “You will pay the increase and if we catch it later as an excess profit in some professional income, we may retrieve it.” But along the way the consumer and working people continue to pay the additional amount. That’s what the government is granting to the corporations, and that is apparently what it is willing to grant by way of professional incomes; that again is a complete abdication of political leadership. It’s classic Toryism all over again.

The third area, and the one which I admit is most contentious and controversial, is the whole question of the public sector. Here again we part company in pretty fundamental ways and speak again to the question of political leadership. I believe, this party believes, that the option clause provided under the federal legislation to the Province of Ontario isn’t just some constitutional quibble; it’s real.

I am not going to get into constitutional arguments, although I think Ontario’s case could be much stronger than the government has made it out to be; but I am going to concede that if the government accepts the guidelines, it has to accept the federal law and try to deal with it.

The option clause gives to the province an alternative worthy of very serious consideration, and it’s a political alternative the government chooses not to exercise. Not every province, despite what the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) has said, intends to turn its entire public sector over to the anti-inflation board -- by no means every province. Quebec is clearly going to operate separately. It looks as though Newfoundland will operate separately. It looks as though New Brunswick may operate separately. Saskatchewan and Alberta have not yet indicated how they intend to proceed.

All of those provinces are looking carefully and clearly at the option which is open to us under the federal guidelines; and none of the motives which lie behind the careful appraisal of the option proceeds from the assumption that they would undermine the federal scheme if the province exercised its own authority.

Mr. Bullbrook: It wouldn’t be there if it undermined it.

Mr. Lewis: Precisely.

Mr. Bullbrook: It wouldn’t be there; it wouldn’t have the option.

[3:30]

Mr. Lewis: The Treasurer says on page 13 of his statement:

As the programme develops, I am confident that all responsible individuals, whatever their particular economic interest, will work for the success of the programme and not for its erosion. For this reason, we accept the intent of the federal legislation for full inclusion of the province and its emanations. At this critical stage of development of what must be admittedly a very complex and yet often arbitrary programme, we cannot afford to behave in an obstructive manner. It is the national interest we are all involved in now and not the limited interests of any one level of government or its agencies.

What he is really saying in that statement is that the course he had determined on is the only course. Our response to that is: “Nuts.” There are alternative courses available to him. What is good for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is not necessarily good for Canada.

I want to remind them of that and simply to cast it in these stark terms doesn’t validate the position they have chosen. I don’t deny the present predicament of inflation in Canada. But I do differ with the government profoundly in its method of dealing with it.

The provincial Treasurer said a little earlier:

Picture what would happen if all provinces set up separate review and enforcement bodies. Each would make an unconnected string of decisions concerning exemptions and apply different standards of enforcement. This could only lead to a tangled web of disarray, a serious erosion of the national effort and, as a consequence, a higher rate of inflation in this country. This government does not endorse that kind of approach.

That, frankly, is fatuous. That’s not what is involved. It is rhetorical absurdity.

Who is to say what would be undermined? If it was the decision of the Province of Ontario to adhere to the guidelines in any way which was consistent with the federal proposals, what would be undermined in any manner? Why does it necessarily undermine it to allow the province to exercise its authority in areas which are traditional to it?

What the province might do -- which the federal government will probably never do -- is introduce a powerful component of fairness to the way in which the guidelines are applied. If he is serious about the guidelines he will recognize the implications which exist within them. He doesn’t surrender his responsibilities. If he talks about the public disarray which would flow if he didn’t give the public sector to Ottawa, let me suggest to him the public disarray and non-confidence that will flow, the disrepute into which the guidelines will fall, if people sense the unfairness of what is now afoot. The Treasurer went on:

In one way or another the government has a special relationship with virtually every member of the work force in Ontario. Trade unions, small incorporated businesses, businesses requiring licences, tradesmen, small construction companies, real estate brokers, credit unions and other provincially-incorporated bodies.

These and many others are covered under a variety of provincial statutes. Public servants are by no means the only groups who have a special provincial relationship.

What kind of silliness is that? He understands the difference between the public sector and the rest of these chartered statutes. He understands that in the public sector the government is directly or indirectly the employer of all these people and therefore has an absolutely central responsibility. How can it be denied?

Let me suggest the inconsistency which emerges and I’ll do it again in greater detail. It is all eight for him to surrender to the Legislature of Ontario the setting of Hydro rate increases but he quite happily turns over the wages of the Hydro workers to the anti-inflation board. That’s the kind of inconsistency in, and abdication of provincial authority which will ultimately get him into a great deal of difficulty.

Let me put it this way. If the guidelines were lasting only three to six months we might say to him, “By all means deal with it as you are dealing with it.” But the guidelines are lasting for three years. He is opting in for two years. That’s a long time for people’s wages to be constrained and therefore the provincial jurisdiction has to be exercised.

Let me put it another way. If it was an absolute freeze, if there was no variation, we might say to him, “Fair enough, do it this way.” But the anti-inflation board has been given the specific right to vary settlements up and down and once variation is permitted, those variations should be exercised by that jurisdiction which is most sensitive to the settlements that are involved and that, again, is clearly the provincial jurisdiction in this area. I’m not suggesting to the government that it is going to vary them away up. It may not vary them at all. It may vary them by only one or two per cent but it would be done in the area of provincial jurisdiction where it clearly belongs.

If, as most of us believe, there are inequities in the private sector in Pierre Trudeau’s guidelines, why should they be imported into the public sector? What rationale is there to maintain inequities in both sectors? Why is the government so willing to compound injustice? And if it doesn’t think injustice exists, then it could exercise its authority accordingly and maintain the guidelines at their exact level. There is no great virtue in identifying wrong in one sector of the economy and duplicating it in another sector of the economy.

If the government is so all fired up about enforcing the guidelines, then it could obviously still do so. It could obviously give to the Province of Ontario the kind of authority and power which would deal with the guidelines on terms which make it happy or which it finds manageable and satisfactory. If that means descending with both feet on the public sector, the government is clearly able to do that; or with some sensitivity, diplomacy and careful political response, it could deal with some of the individual applications in a way which exercised fairness. There is something terribly inconsistent and, I suggest to the government, wrong in the way we are abdicating our authority in this area constitutionally for a considerable period of time and it will visit unnecessary aggravation arid resentment on large numbers of people.

I’m going to admit a very special concern on the part of this caucus with the public sector. I am concerned about the way in which they have emerged to full collective bargaining rights only over the last three or four years. I’m concerned about the potential explosiveness. I’m concerned about the sense of grievance that exists. I’m concerned about the very low income earners who lie at the bottom of the scale, among the hospital workers, for example, or the lower echelons of the public service, for example. I’m concerned that the government should play fair and should keep the faith with all of these people.

I’m not suggesting to the government that it break the guidelines indiscriminately because as a government, it never would. I understand that. But if the government is going to vary it one or two or three per cent, up and down, let it at least be done by the authority to whom the workers feel beholden.

Let me digress for just a moment; let me mention the teachers. I hold no special brief for teachers. The only thing in my life I’ve ever done other than being a politician is to teach.

Mr. Hodgson: There are a lot of them over there.

Mr. Lewis: It’s a nice profession. There are a lot of teachers over here. There is no vested privilege. I’ve said before -- too much abuse from the teachers, I may say -- that many of their demands were exorbitant and silly. Where they are exorbitant and silly, we should say so because that’s obviously disruptive, and everyone understands that.

I want to come back to the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) and to the Premier (Mr. Davis) -- the man who fashioned this educational model -- to remind them of something. We’ve worked for three to four years in this Legislature to fashion a bill for collective bargaining for the teachers of Ontario. For a year or two, the minister hedged in the way it was emerging. We were confronted with that major demonstration in December, 1973. He changed his mind between 1973 and 1975, and all that we did in response was to applaud him for the change. He brought down a bill on collective bargaining for teachers which is one of the most enlightened bills in the field, and I concede it happily.

Then the teachers of Ontario and the boards of Ontario started to bargain within the confines of that legislation, Bill 100. They bargained scrupulously on both sides. They bargained in good faith on both sides. In the case, for example, of the Metropolitan Toronto high school teachers, they went to a fact-finder, a man whom the Minister of Education acknowledges is one of the most objective and excellent arbiters in the business. Stanley Hartt came down with a fact-finder report. I feel a little chagrined about it myself because this party argued so hard and so long for a fact-finder method which would give the public a sense of what might be an objective settlement. The fact-finder’s report, while acceptable to the teachers, is totally unacceptable to the boards of education.

The possibility of a settlement, even though that is the case, has now, I think, been lost because of the guidelines. The possibility of a strike on Nov. 12 looms very large, partly because of the guidelines.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to you that if this strike occurs it will be unlike any other teachers’ strike in Ontario’s recent history. It is not going to be like Windsor and it is not going to be like Thunder Bay and it is not going to be like Ottawa. It’s going to be long, it is possible to predict. It’s going to be terribly bitter, it is possible to predict. It is going to do some serious damage to the educational system despite the fact the teachers and the boards wish that didn’t have to happen.

I am amazed, through the Speaker to the Minister of Education, how the moderates in the teaching profession feel aggrieved and angry. I am amazed how the rank-and-file teachers feel they should carry placards for as long as it takes to win their point I worry greatly -- as he does, I admit fully -- about the consequences for the educational system in Ontario if and when this strike should occur. I don’t understand why, in God’s name, he has been taking such a long time to intervene at the highest level to see if it could be coped with.

But it’s the guidelines in some measure which are bringing these groups to this frontal confrontation. It’s the sense that somehow they are responsible not to the minister any longer, not to the Premier any longer, but to Jean-Luc Pepin, absurdly enough, which is creating even greater tensions than now exist.

Look at the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association in the Toronto area, 4,000 of them. They are coming off a three-year contract which gave them 2.7 per cent in the first year; 3.5 per cent in the second year -- sorry, 4.7 per cent in the second year; seven per cent in the third year and no cost of living arrangements in the latter part of the contract. Now they are subject to the guidelines.

I am not asking the minister to give them extravagant wages but any reasonable human being will admit there’s something profoundly unfair about that group of public sector workers facing the crunch they are now facing. I gather that 2,000 or 3,000 of them intend to come down to the Legislature tomorrow night to give voice to their protest.

Teachers aren’t popular. Does the minister want to clobber them? It’s the most fashionable game in town. We understand that. The public will be with him. We understand that. The point being made is that the guidelines are often unfair or, where they are perhaps fair, to surrender the entire public sector to Ottawa is going to work lasting damage and hardship on a whole range of provincial employees, working men and women in this province, who should not be thus subjected.

I really think that on those grounds, partially if not totally, the minister should re-examine his position. If they are to be dealt with unfairly -- in their minds -- at least let them feel they are being shafted by an adversary rather than by some surrogate in Ottawa. At least in terms of their own hostilities and anger, they will be able to identify the group responsible.

What happens four, six, eight, 10 weeks down the road when we all come together in this Legislature to bring in compulsory arbitration for the Metro high school teachers’ situation? What happens then? What is the minister going to have them settle at? At the guidelines? At the last board offer? At the offer of the fact-finder? How is it all going to sort out? What are the consequences for the school system? We are saying to the Premier, as strongly as we can, that we don’t need any federal intervention, gratuitous or otherwise, to foul up a situation that is already perilous and difficult.

[3:45]

I think the problem lies on balance, in the philosophic rationale. I will use the last quotes I intend to use from the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough), who couldn’t have written this himself:

I am frankly somewhat dismayed by the number of groups who have already rushed forward with demands for exemptions. A year from now, these same groups will be arguing for cost-of-living increases and will probably not admit to any connection between their earlier income demands and the rise in living costs for the general public. This, in my view, is a distressing form of economic isolationism.

He goes on to say:

I said in Ottawa last week that we must be prepared to live for a time with inequities and to draw the line now. I do not believe that there is any other way of proceeding if we mean this programme to work. It is a tough decision, but the times demand it.

The people over there on that side of the House, are so easy with their inequities. They are so ready to tolerate inequity. In my book inequity means injustice, and I want to know what re-definition of the political process they are about.

When a government sees injustice, it moves to strike it out; that’s what a government does and it doesn’t sit back. It doesn’t sit back in that sanguine, self-indulgent way of the provincial Treasurer and say with a flip of the wrist, “We will have to abide the inequities.”

How easy it is for politicians to render sacrifice on to others. It is always that way, isn’t it? That’s the way of the political process and that is what the Pierre Trudeaus and Darcy McKeoughs and William Davises are now saying to the public of Ontario.

I must say that’s where we part company, because time and time again it doesn’t take the illustrious Treasurer to dislocate the facts and to skewer them in the process. There are others who have done it. The federal Minister of Labour, John Munro -- may I apologize for quoting him on this one occasion, but it serves my purpose. I will use anyone when it serves my particular purpose.

Mr. Reid: We will go for that. Right on. It is the only true thing he has said so far.

Mr. Lewis: I know, the member for Rainy River will take that out of Hansard and spread it across the front --

Mr. Singer: Stop right there.

Interjections.

Mr. Lewis: I will now descend to John Munro, who said this on Oct. 28, to the Newfoundland Federation of Labour:

I have consistently argued over the last few years both inside and outside Parliament, that wage and salary gains have been a result of inflation, not its cause. Much of the public hysteria over wage levels has been generated by some who, intentionally or unintentionally, have distorted statistical data. Some settlements, admittedly, have been excessive by any standard, but taken as a whole the increase in wages and salaries in the last couple of years has reflected an attempt to offset real and apprehended inflation.

The federal Liberals are good -- they apprehended inflation and apprehended insurrection. They also understand the meaning of real inflation, and that is what sticks in the craw about the Treasurer’s entire statement.

Day in and day out in this Legislature for four years and more, non-stop, we asked the government about price increases in everything from supermarkets through to automobile insurance premiums, and not once did it lift a finger to defend the consumers of Ontario. Not once in that entire period of time! Week in and week out, month in and month out, we chronicled for the government the profits of the corporations, and not once did it lift a finger to defend the consumers of Ontario from the excessive and outrageous corporate profits which exist.

Now, the Premier (Mr. Davis) asks us to live with it. At the end of the economic cycle, when the workers of Ontario try to catch up with the prices and the profits, the guillotine descends and the government says it will live with the inequities and it elevates it to the position of a principle. That’s what’s wrong with the Tory party. It has never understood how profoundly unfair is the way in which this economic order works. And it is now prepared to reinforce all of the unfairness that is consummate in the guidelines presented by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It is not a government any longer. It is a facsimile. That’s the problem of political leadership. This leads me to the last point I want to make.

There isn’t a thing in that entire statement from the provincial Treasurer worthy even of talking about as it relates to jobs -- not a thing. It is as though unemployment barely existed in the Province of Ontario. He makes a quick and facile bow in the direction of unemployment figures but he indicates not a single proposition in response to it -- not a one. The reality of course is that in a position of inflation and recession the question of job creation is every bit as important as the question of wage, price and profit control.

There isn’t a thing in this statement of the Treasurer, and therefore in government policy, relating to the building of houses in the Province of Ontario -- nothing. All of the things that were said about the housing crisis during the campaign have obviously had no impact on this government whatsoever. The announcement which Barney Danson made, just a couple of hours ago as I understand it, in the federal House of Commons will alleviate the situation hardly one jot. So the fact of the matter remains that the provincial initiative which his government could have exercised in the area of jobs, it refuses to exercise. As a matter of fact, the only initiative it really took was to say that next year it will contain its provincial spending to a limit of 10 per cent over this year.

That’s admirable in itself, but we know in this caucus where those cuts will come. They will come where they always come. They will come in services to people. That’s the way it works with the Conservative government. When it cuts back, it cuts back not in hardware but in services to people. When it cuts back in services to people all over the province, from jails to treatment centres, it means that it creates further unemployment and further social and economic dislocation. What has really emerged from the paper of the Treasurer is the worst of all worlds.

If the government wants to accept the federal law, accept it as we would do. The law is the law. I have said to trade union groups and I will say it anywhere that I am not interested in confrontation; I am not interested in general strikes; I am not interested in civil disobedience. It has never commended itself, or on occasion so exceptional that one can chronicle it in an itemized way, but not in this case. If we don’t like the law, then we have the option of changing the government. That’s clearly there too for us over a period of time. But it would be right for a provincial government to summon its courage about it and to take a number of important initiatives, to move on prices through price freeze and price control, to move on profits in a way which made an impact, to maintain to some extent a provincial authority over the public sector so that inequity did not spread from one group to another and so that all option as a province would clearly be exercised and, above all, to create jobs.

All of those routes which we would have exercised and which would give the government as a government some sense of political leadership in the community as a whole, the government has chosen to default upon. It has simply surrendered everything to another jurisdiction with the beads of sweat of relief upon its brow as it retreats from making the kinds of political decisions which others make easily and which it always finds terribly, terribly difficult to do. It will not do anything that requires either initiative or exertion. That has become characteristic of the Tories in this province. They are walking a tightrope in Ontario and I don’t know how long they can maintain their balance or their equilibrium.

We think that the government is a very long way from pulling itself together. Our impression is that there is still a large quotient of public weariness, scepticism and even suspicion generally about the Conservatives and that they are making a very serious error on the guidelines.

I don’t deny for a moment that all over Canada there are individuals and groups who have heaved a sigh of relief at some expression of federal initiative. All over Canada there are individuals and groups and political parties who are glad that the fight against inflation has begun. But we believe this is the wrong way to conduct the war. If it must be conducted in Pierre Trudeau’s trenches, then the Premier of Ontario can at least intervene to make it fair, equitable and workable, where that is humanly possible to achieve. For whatever reason the Premier has opted out of that obligation entirely.

The lessons of the campaign? They seem never to be learned. The political leadership, whether it’s in rents, energy, housing or guidelines, is clearly wanting. The political leadership on human issues is clearly wanting -- and that hasn’t changed either. I listened to the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Taylor) give a reply today to the member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) about a case involving the difference between those who are permanently unemployable and those who are physically disabled and the absurd distinction we make in the lives of people and the differing amounts of money that we ascribe to one condition but not to the others. He implied that all of the cases have been re-examined.

Mr. Deans: Nonsense.

Mr. Lewis: My colleague from Wentworth says it’s nonsense. I remember, during the course of the campaign, raising the ease of a Mrs. A in Stratford who was so clearly physically disabled that only a medical nitwit would be able to describe her otherwise, and to this day she remains categorized as permanently unemployable rather than physically disabled, as we attempt to get one statement after another from medical personnel to somehow persuade the board of review that this woman deserves the slightly increased amount of money which she should receive from the state.

It was a day or two ago that we asked the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. W. Newman) about the question of the farm income security plan. During the course of the campaign we raised questions about cow-calf operators and farmers in agricultural distress because of the government’s agricultural programmes.

During the course of the campaign I raised the case of a man named Barnie Evans, who is a cow-calf operator -- a one-time Tory, I want you to know; he is lucid, articulate and bright, and has become ever increasingly so as he deserts his Tory origins. He lives not very far from Embro. In the course of the campaign we set out how this terribly earnest and dedicated cow-calf operator found his whole farm operation going down the drain because of the absurd subsidy programme which the government had provided him.

After the election, Barnie Evans sold over 80 of his 140 cows. As a matter of fact, he took seven cows to market in Kitchener just ,a couple of weeks ago and got $872.81 for all seven of them. The government should calculate that when it is looking at the subsidy it has provided for the cow-calf operators and think of it in terms of the farm income subsidy plan that we discussed generally in this Legislature; then it will know that its loss of so much of the agricultural community in the last election leads directly from its refusal to listen to the cries and pleas for help from individual farmers.

I asked the Minister of Health (Hon. F. S. Miller) today at question period whether or not he has readings for the asbestos workers in the Reeves mine of Johns-Manville up near Timmins. I got a letter back from him which shows that in the three-, four- or five-year period before the mine and mill closed down, they took some scattered readings in one of the working environments which was the single most hazardous environment that I’ve discovered on the North American continent.

[4:00]

While we talk about that in the Legislature today, the Workmen’s Compensation Board of Ontario is still procrastinating and stalling on the cases presented to it for compensation as a result of Johns-Manville in Scarborough, for asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma -- procrastinating and delaying in individual human circumstances --

Hon. B. Stephenson: That’s hogwash!

Mr. Lewis: -- which makes the behaviour of the board intolerable, and I would like to hear -- and I will be glad to hear it from the Minister of Labour --

Hon. B. Stephenson: You will.

Mr. Lewis: -- when you are going to provide the compensation for the cases that have been brought to your attention -- not just from Johns-Manville, wait until you hear it from Elliot Lake -- over the last several months I would like to know when the Workmen’s Compensation Board will make decisions on some of these areas so that we don’t forever have to deal in fields where there is a clear and explicit failure of political leadership. There never seems to be a satisfactory resolution.

All right, Mr. Speaker. Let me provide summation this way. The new mandate which the New Democratic Party has in this Legislature we hope to exercise as carefully and thoughtfully as we can, with as many alternatives to government policy as we can muster during the course of the session. We don’t seek ritual confrontations with the government on issues or on votes. Where we will divide, we will divide, and it will be on serious and substantive matters.

I am not going to move an amendment today to the Throne Speech debate, partly in good faith, partly because that amendment avenue is open to us at any point over the next four or five weeks, and the vote coming, as I expect it is, in December, we would like to contain in our amendment those issues which are more clearly divisive depending on the course of debate over the next one or two or three weeks. The confrontations will not be ritual; they will, in fact, be real, and I want the Premier to know that.

I also want the Premier and the government to know that we have no illusions about the past or about the future, where we are concerned. We know that the campaign was a nice amalgam of hard work and good fortune and we noted the fortuitous vote splits; we noted that as well.

I also find it occasionally worthy of a smile to see the irritation in parts of the media that somehow the NDP was not dealt with toughly enough in the campaign; we were ignored too easily; we came up the middle illegitimately. You want to deal with us anyway --

Hon. Mr. Davis: I never heard the word illegitimate used.

Mr. Lewis: -- you want, we will be happy to respond to that challenge. But we are, however unexpectedly to anyone, Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. You will notice how easily those words trip from the tongue, how nicely they are savoured.

Hon. Mr. Davis: One of these days your tongue will trip you up.

Interjections.

Mr. Lewis: You cannot imagine how many toasts to the Queen I have indulged in since this election was over --

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think you started about four weeks ago.

Mr. Lewis: -- with every variety of intoxicant.

We have a voice and a role and an audience which we never had before and we intend to exercise it. It will not be exercise , let me say to the Premier, in political ways which are either abusively or stridently personal. I think he knows that.

As a matter of fact I noted in that article in the Toronto Star about the Leader of the Opposition, the one which had the very gracious pictures of my childhood, that the Premier found it hard to say publicly that he liked the Leader of the Opposition. I think the quote was “I can’t say that publicly” or something to that effect.

Well, even if it drives you to distraction I am going to tell you right in the House now I think you are just fine. I am really quite fond of you. I know it scars your political honour and I know it causes a great deterioration in the credit with which you are held by your colleagues, but I think you are a nice person and I am not going to conduct a battle with you in personal terms -- under no circumstance. Nor do I think we will be obsessed with power and considerations of power as we watch the session emerge over the next few weeks and perhaps the next few months because the New Democratic Party has always been cautious about the exercise of power understanding that it usually comes at the end of a pretty lung road for us.

On the other hand, were we to form a government at some point after an election we would today cope just as we indicated at the outset of the election campaign we would attempt to cope. As you look at some if my colleagues in the New Democratic opposition benches I think you see and will increasingly see that we have the capacity to fill a cabinet as well.

It may just be, therefore, after we’ve dealt with the issues of this session and perhaps a Throne Speech and a budget and we’re out on the hustings again, that this election, quaintly enough, will be fought on matters of political philosophy, on matters of political programme, on matters of political issues. I want you to know in advance that nothing would please the New Democratic Party more than that kind of election campaign when it occurs. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, whenever that happens, we look forward to it.

Mr. Nixon moved adjournment of the de bate.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The 13th order; House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (CONTINUED)

On vote 2801:

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, I believe we’re on item 11 of vote 2801 and I believe one or two of my colleagues wish to make contributions on that item, the Languages of Instruction Commission.

Mrs. Gigantes: Mr. Chairman, I’d like to ask the minister to explain, if he could, his understanding of the situation in London where the board has apparently done away with the French language advisory committee. I am also informed by people who seem to know the situation that the submissions made by the French language advisory committee to you to investigate that situation have not been answered; and that Alexandra elementary school is going to be turned by the board from a French language into a bilingual school for English students.

Hon. Mr. Wells: First of all, there was no legal obligation for there to be a French language advisory committee in London because they don’t operate classes at the secondary school level. They can, if they wish, establish a French language advisory committee as an option, which I understand was done in London. However, they don’t have to have one. I’m emphasizing that the legislation only says you have to have one if you have programmes in the secondary school panel.

They did have one and then I think the board, for various reasons, decided to disband that committee. I’m not saying I agree with their decisions to disband it, but they did disband the committee. We had some correspondence, I can recall, about that action and we really felt there was nothing we could add to what the board had done. We felt the board could, if it wished, do away with the committee. They have not submitted that particular dispute to the Languages of Instruction Commission at the present time, as I understand it.

Mrs. Gigantes: Who has to make the submission to the Languages of Instruction Commission?

Hon. Mr. Wells: The submission to the Languages of Instruction Commission can be made by the French language advisory committee, or by a group of parents or a group of ratepayers concerned in a matter between themselves and the board. In other words, there does not have to be the existence of a French language advisory committee in order to have access to the good offices of the Languages of Instruction Commission. In the case of elementary school disputes -- and as the hon. member knows, there are many elementary French language schools in the province run by boards where there are no French language advisory committees -- if there is a dispute in these particular areas the citizens concerned, in most case the parents of the students at the French language school, or the French language parents, will submit the dispute to the Languages Instruction Commission.

Mrs. Gigantes: I understand that it was the Languages of Instruction Commission which advised the setting up of the French language advisory committee in London. I am wondering what the minister’s position will be if that commission, appealed to by the committee or parents now not in a committee, because the committee has been disbanded, is faced by the committee with the need to reassert the existence of the French language advisory committee in London? Will the minister back up the commission?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Will I back up the Languages of Instruction Commission?

Mrs. Gigantes: Will you back up the commission? The commission last year called for the establishment of the advisory committee in London; that advisory committee has been disbanded by the board; the minister is saying that the parents who were on the committee should now appeal to the commission again. Presumably the commission would still feel that there should be a French language advisory committee in London. Would you back up the commission if it decided once again there should be such a committee?

Hon. Mr. Wells: It is very difficult to speculate on exactly what I would do if the commission made certain determinations in the future. I can just tell you that, based on what I have seen and heard and recall from the London situation, I would probably back up the commission, yes.

Mr. Foulds: Did the original commission report, from which you set up the Languages of Instruction Commission, not recommend that the committee at the elementary level be set up in a compulsory manner, rather than the optional manner in which you have set them up in your legislation?

Hon. Mr. Wells: It was not recommended by the Symons report that these committees he set up for the elementary panels. I think the rationale for that was that most of those schools are operated by school boards which had a preponderance of French language trustees already sitting as full trustees. At the particular time when we were drafting the legislation we were discussing the matter with the separate school boards of the province, who, by and large, have under their aegis most of the French language elementary schools, and they felt there wasn’t need for French language advisory committees for their particular boards.

Mr. Foulds: Obviously this case that my colleague from Carleton East has brought up points out a weakness in the way that we are dealing with French language instruction at an elementary level. How do you deal effectively with the situation in Ontario where you have -- as in London, and I believe it’s in Halton county, is it not? -- a substantial number of French-speaking elementary pupils who do not have access to French language instruction? How do you deal with that? I think it is Halton or Burlington -- somewhere in that area -- where there has been a large influx of workers from Quebec, with students at the elementary level who have had a terrible difficulty with their board in getting instruction in French.

[4:15]

Hon. Mr. Wells: As I recall from memory, the Halton situation involved the Halton Roman Catholic Separate School Board and a large group of francophone parents who were attempting to get instruction for their children in a particular area or school. There has been quite a dispute over the past few years as to whether there should be a separate school built or whether classes should be carried on in two or three different locations in Halton, rather than one central location.

About a year and a half ago, I think, we worked with them and developed a programme that was acceptable in Halton. It wasn’t easy. I think the Languages of Instruction Commission worked on that, and people from our Council on French Language Schools. The solution appeared to be there and was moving down the road to being implemented but, as you are probably aware, most recently a group of English-language parents have not been agreeable to the kind of changes that had to be made in order to accommodate the solution to the French-language problem. That is now being worked out.

Mr. Lewis: They have also got the Renaissance movement, God help them.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The London situation I think is different, though. The London situation is a combination of many factors, I suppose. Far be it for me to explain the London situation to you when the immediate past chairman of the London Board of Education is sitting in this Legislature and probably could explain it to us all in a much better fashion than any of us. I am referring, of course, to the education critic of the Liberal Party, who I am sure could give us at least the London Board of Education’s version of this particular situation.

I simply believe that there are a number of factors all tied together in the problem In London and it has been a difficult one to try to sort out in any way to make all sides happy. I think that as much as anything else, there have been conflicts of personality that have made it a very difficult thing to be able to sort out. But the Languages of Instruction Commission has been trying to do this and will continue to try to do this.

Mr. Foulds: Let me take this a step further and shift the discussion slightly but still on the same topic.

I have had some correspondence from across the province from parents who would like their particular board to take stronger initiatives in terms of instruction in French at the elementary level. Is it the job of this commission to expedite that? Is it under another vote?

What I want to put to you pretty strongly is that I think Ontario is not moving adequately and fully enough towards a bilingual policy and towards adequate teaching of French to us unilinguals; and this might be the only opportunity we get in these estimates to debate that, because it may be the only opportunity we get to debate it where it’s important, at the elementary level.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The role of this commission applies only where we are talking about French-to-French or English-to-English for the minority group. It does not concern itself with those matters where parents are attempting to have immersion programmes or programmes of instruction in French for anglophones. It doesn’t enter into that particular situation. That would come under the regular curriculum discussion; that’s part of the regular curriculum in the schools. As you will recall, this is a commission that was set up to guarantee and protect the rights of minority groups to have instruction in their own language; that is, of the official languages.

Mr. Chairman: Shall item 11 carry? Carried.

Item 12?

Mr. Foulds: I want to start with this item and I’ll get back to it after a few of my colleagues have undoubtedly piled in.

Mr. Minister, you gave us a commitment in the last debate on this item in the estimates in 1974 to bring the superannuation commission members before a committee of the Legislature in order to sort out some of the allegations, if you like, which have been levelled against the commission in terms of the inequities created by the present superannuation fund. I wonder if we could have that commitment carried out this session?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. I fully intended that the commitment be carried out and I guess the only reason we didn’t get down to carrying it out in the latter half of the session, in the spring and early summer, was our lengthy discussion of Bill 100 which occupied all our time. It didn’t give us a chance even to get a committee we could take this matter to.

The commission and Mr. Causley are ready. I think what we need is an opportunity to spend some time down there with them discussing the various impressions, things that are said about the commission, the way they operate, the feelings held by people about the commission and perhaps what are the facts as to how the commission operates. There is a degree of misunderstanding.

Mr. Foulds: When you say you intend to carry out that commitment before the end of the session, does that mean before we wrap up in December or are you thinking of going into the spring?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I’d be prepared to do it before the end of December but I understand we don’t have any of the regular committees organized. We have one or two committees and I’m not sure that would serve the purpose we wish. I would say if we could do it before the end of December I would be agreeable. If not, I guess we should do it as soon as we organize in the spring -- all of us being here -- and we get the regular committees. It could be one of the first jobs of the social development committee to have meetings with the commission.

Mr. Foulds: My own feeling is that the sooner we can get that, the sooner we can clear away some of the clouds, misconceptions and what have you. Certainly that’s going to be our thrust in that committee when we meet.

I can very easily be confused, as I’m sure most people can, by actuarial figures and there are certain principles I think we need to debate and we need to come to a firm understanding of before we can discuss the item intelligently. I would urge that the sooner we can get that the better. If it is possible even to organize the social development committee for this short session, say for the second week in December if we should sit so long, that should be aimed for.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I’ll speak to the House leader about that.

Mr. Warner: Mr. Minister, I’m interested to know whether the scope of that committee would include items such as an escalating clause for those members who have already been superannuated. There seems to be a great deal of discrepancy in that area. Would it include also public knowledge for those who pay into the fund as to where their money is being invested and the return they are getting for that investment? Would it also include information as to when the commission should be required to put money into the fund, as stop and start dates for those deposits?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, I think that’s the kind of thing we could get into in detail.

I’m a little confused about your comments about escalation for those already on superannuation. I think this bill was passed by this House before our summer recess. It does guarantee escalation for those already on superannuation at the time the bill was passed and it builds into the plan an escalation feature for those who will go on superannuation from this time henceforth. It’s all laid out in there. There has been an increase in contributions from teachers and the government to cover that programme. If that isn’t clear to everyone out there who is contributing to the fund then I do think we have a communications problem and we should communicate better because that has been done.

Mr. Warner: I stand corrected on the information, but you are correct in assuming there is a communication problem.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, and I think it would be helpful to discuss the investment programme and the way that it has been handled. As you know, the only investment of the fund is in government bonds. The government buys the bonds back. As I understand it, the new batch that will be bought will bear an interest rate of just a little over 10 per cent.

Again I think there is a communications problem because there are a lot of teachers out in the province who think the government buys the bonds and pays three or four per cent or five per cent interest. In fact this batch of bonds will be bought at a little over 10 per cent interest.

Mr. Warner: But the conception out there, so to speak, is that after the bonds have been purchased the interest accrued from those bonds is what the government’s share of the superannuation is. Whereas the teacher is paying his percentage from his salary, the government is in fact using the interest from the investment, not ever having really to put in its own money, so to speak, so that the government can operate a superannuation commission without it really costing them any money whatsoever. That kind of feeling from out there has been with every teacher group I’ve ever spoken to.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I think that my friend can see, if he looks down those figures in this particular section of the vote, that we are in fact putting in our money, if you will. There are about $70 million going in there; at the bottom of that section entitled teachers’ superannuation fund under the Act -- $70,771,000. That’s the matching contributions. There is a further item for interest that goes into the fund, and that money goes in and the government buys the bonds back out.

The government puts in the money, the teachers’ money goes in, and then the interest that is paid goes into the fund and so forth. It all builds up. The government doesn’t reduce the share that it puts in by the amount of interest that it has to pay on its bonds. In other words, it is all there and it is in the fund. I’m told that even taking all that money and all the interest and everything that’s there and taking the kind of plan that we have -- the pay-outs -- if everybody was to get his total entitlement out of the fund we would still be short; and therefore we have to build up the unfunded deficit each year in order to keep the fund sound, even though we all know that everyone isn’t going to take all the money out at one time and therefore there never will be that kind of a draw on the fund.

Mr. Reed: Is it safe to say then that the borrowing by the government from the superannuation commission is done on an open market basis? Are the interest rates offered competitive with the open market?

Hon. Mr. Wells: The interest rate is arrived at and it is in the legislation. We don’t have any option. We can’t change that unless this Legislature changed the legislation. It’s the open rate that is paid by the government in the preceding year; not the current year but the preceding year. In other words, we are now operating on the interest rate the government paid in the open market last year. That works both ways. When the interest rates are going up, it seems that you’re just trailing a little behind. When they start to go down, you get the benefit the other way.

Mr. Moffatt: There are two questions I would like to pursue with regard to the teachers’ superannuation fund. I think the first point is one which should be considered very carefully. In the light of the kinds of settlements which teachers have managed to achieve with their school boards over the last 10 to 15 years, and in light of the inflationary trends in the economy, the fact that the superannuation fund still uses a best-of-seven years as a base rate upon which to calculate pensions, it seems to me it works a pretty severe hardship upon the teachers. The kind of salary increases which have taken place mean that over a seven-year period, a best-of-seven calculation will tend to be significantly lower, so that the pension determined by that calculation will also be significantly lower.

I wonder what sort of time period the minister can give me with regard to the implementation of a best-of-five years calculation? It appears to me, from talking to teacher groups, that there have been a number of suggestions, and apparently within the ministry itself there has been at least some hint that we will go to a best-of-five years. Now, maybe that hint has been rather veiled or maybe it has been misread, but I think it would be beneficial if the minister could give me any kind of indication about that kind of change.

Hon. Mr. Wells: In December, 1974, the government set up a committee which included Mr. Causley, Mr. McIntyre from the Treasury division of TEIGA, and two people from the Ministry of Education, Mr. Kinlin, the Assistant Deputy Minister, and Mr. Glen Bonham. We set this group up with a group from the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, which was made up of Miss Ward, Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Gauthier, and Mr. Bill Jones -- and some others who were added. I asked that group to look at all the areas in the fund where they thought we should be looking at changes, with the exception of the escalation matter because we had another committee working on that. That committee worked and brought forward its report, which was accepted and the bill was put in -- and we all know about that. It resulted in a one per cent increase in contributions.

The other group worked over the spring and looked at all these other matters and identified them. The best five years, rather than the best seven years, was one of those matters -- along with a whole host of other matters. Part of the work of that committee was to identify the cost of implementing these various changes. Again we get to this communications lag, but the feeling was that there was adequate money in that fund to change these kinds of things without an increase in teacher contributions.

As I’ve said, in looking at the fund the actuaries found it’s certainly providing the benefits that it should under the present levels of contributions, or perhaps the money is even buying a better plan than it would under a private plan, given the same levels of contributions. Anyway, all this suggested to us that if other changes were to be looked at, like the best five rather than seven years -- and a whole host of other changes that discussed -- then we would also have to look at increased contributions. These figures were all worked out and we tried to work out priorities, and so forth.

The committee is still sitting and discussing these various matters, so I can’t tell you when there will be any determination of these matters. However, from our point of view, we certainly feel that any changes in benefit levels -- and certainly best five instead of best seven years is a change in benefit levels -- would have to bring concurrent changes in contributions by both parties.

That’s part of the ongoing work the committee is doing at the present time, to verify figures and see just what the increased contributions might be. For instance, in the past it has been a 50-50 split, so much by the contributors so much by the provincial government. That’s really where it stands. As a result of that committee’s work we did make 21 changes in the plan which were in a bill passed here just before we adjourned in the summer.

Mr. Moffat: It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that the committee to which you referred, should be able to give us some guidance as to a kind of time limit when at least they will report so that teachers will have a basis upon which to calculate pension contributions and so on.

I agree with your statement that any kind of increase or change in going to the best five years rather than the best seven years is bound to mean a change in contribution. I think what we should do fairly quickly is be able to come to some kind of understanding so that at least people in that profession will have an idea as to where they are going.

I wonder, too, if the committee to which you referred is studying the question of changing the 90 factor to an 85 factor, which I believe has been put forward by the teachers’ federations. I would also like to say that in many instances when teachers were working in 1967 I think the average teacher’s salary was in the neighbourhood of $6,500. The average teacher’s salary from most boards now is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,500 or $11,000. It seems to me that calculating those lower-paid years in the beginning tends to make the pension available to a teacher significantly lower.

I would urge you to make that kind of input to the committee and to suggest to them that your ministry supports that kind of change. I wonder if you could tell me if the 90 factor is going to be changed to the 85 factor?

Hon. Mr. Wells: That’s one of the matters which that committee is looking at, as I say, along with other things. I can’t tell you what our opinion would be of that. That is all part of the work of the committee and what we are going to have to look at when we see the cost figures associated with it.

The committee, I think, is hoping to make some kind of report to us early in the new year. At that time we will have to review them and decide just what can be done.

I draw to your attention, to show you the kind of situation we get into in this matter, the amounts of money which have to be voted here in these estimates. An increase in benefits resulting from even a 50-50 spread in the contribution is going to increase the amount of money that is going to he needed in the Ministry of Education estimates. We are going to be under a constraint, as the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) announced in his statement the other day, in the development of our estimates for next year.

We are going to weigh priorities as to what money we have to spend. In other words, if we take a large chunk of money and put it into the teachers’ superannuation fund to match contributions to get increased benefits in the plan we may not be able to put money into some other area of the Ministry of Education estimates, like general legislative grants or special education sections and so forth. We have to have that priority-setting process go on as we develop our estimates.

Mr. Moffatt: With respect, the people we are talking about now are people who for the great percentage of their teaching years worked at extremely low salaries and carried the Ministry of Education and various people who have since become Premier on their backs in order to create an educational system in this province. Those are the people who today are being asked or told to retire on pensions which are not in keeping with pensions in other fields because of a number of factors, including the reluctance of the government to move in reducing that retirement factor which would free the classrooms for younger people to take those places.

The whole business of keeping teachers in the classroom until they build up that 90 factor causes hardship in a great many cases. I would suggest that one of the things that has happened in Ontario is that the people who have put together the educational system -- I don’t happen to be one of those people who tears it apart all of the time and thinks it is evil and misrepresenting and so on -- are the ones retiring. At this point in their lives they are worthy of more consideration than they seem to be getting from the ministry.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I want to say certainly we have all been attempting to develop a pension programme for teachers which is equitable and fair. I think that if my friend compares it with a lot of pension plans that are available in the private sector, he will find there a lot in the private sector who would like to have something that is as good as the teachers’ superannuation fund and pension, with the kind of guaranteed stability that’s in it plus the fact that we now have built in this escalation feature, which again is not available in a lot of private plans at this particular time.

Granted, it’s being paid for in contributions; but still, for the very people you are talking about -- those in the last few years of teaching -- I think it is an awfully good addition and enrichment to the pension plan; and it guarantees that once they do go on pension, that pension is going to continue to increase if inflation continues to increase. We hope it won’t and that therefore the escalation wouldn’t be necessary; but if it does, they are not going to be caught. That’s an enrichment that I think is going to help them.

I guess what I am really saying is that that was the priority this year when we came to looking at various changes that could have been made in the plan. The priority was that the escalation feature should go first and then we will have to look at some of the other priorities and see how we are for funds.

Mr. Moffatt: The part that does bother me a bit is the fact that, as you indicated, the Treasurer has priorities for the Province of Ontario; but as the leader of this party indicated this afternoon, whatever priorities are established in economic terms in this province, it seems to be services to people which will indeed suffer.

I suggest to you, sir, that what has happened is that those teachers presently retiring had significantly lower salaries for most of their teaching careers than those in the industrial sector of our economy; indeed, they had lower salaries than almost any other group in our economy. It seems to me only fair that since at that point they accepted a lower salary for 10, 15 or 20 years of their teaching career, maybe we could look after them in a perhaps fairer fashion in this day and age.

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

Mr. Ferris: Mr. Chairman, the minister answered my question in his remarks to the last gentleman.

Mrs. Gigantes: Perhaps the minister could explain why it is, if the superannuation investment in government bonds is such a good deal for the teachers that the Ontario Energy Board in its report in 1974 warned Hydro that it might not be able to look for future financing from that superannuation fund.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Hydro has never borrowed from the teachers’ superannuation fund. It has been straight government of Ontario bonds that the government itself has bought for the teachers’ superannuation fund not --

Mrs. Gigantes: Yes, it’s an indirect link.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I am not sure I know exactly what you mean.

Mrs. Gigantes: It was suggested in the energy board report that if the superannuation fund were invested in other than government bonds that Hydro’s financial position in the future might be in doubt; given a warning on that score, because apparently the energy board thought there was good reason for the teachers to question the investment of the superannuation fund in Ontario government bonds.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I guess what you mean is that if the government didn’t borrow its money from the fund, it would have to borrow somewhere else; and that borrowing somewhere else would mean that Hydro couldn’t borrow that money at that time and therefore Hydro would then find itself in difficulty to get money for itself.

I suppose that could be a possibility, but I just want to emphasize to you that while I read a lot about borrowing from the teachers’ superannuation fund, again I think this indicates a communications gap. In my official meetings with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, it has not been put forward to me that there should be a different arrangement. As a matter of fact, they have never asked -- certainly not while I have been minister, for instance -- that they be allowed to take over the pension plan. I hear that in the field from time to time, I read it in the Globe and Mail and I hear of certain people making speeches about it. But the official position put forward by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation has never been that the teachers would like to completely take over the plan and run it themselves, because they realize that there are great advantages in having the plan run by the government and having the stability that results therefrom. They really have never suggested that they should take it over.

[4:45]

I think the same could be said for the fund being used to purchase bonds in other areas or make other kinds of investments. I think that some times -- particularly in this kind of economic era that we’re living in, where they see all kinds of high interest rates and all kinds of very attractive investment situations -- people picture being able to take this fund and invest it in some way that’s going to earn much greater interest. But I think that if they study some of the large pension funds in the United States and so forth, which perhaps do have a much wider portfolio to draw from, the overall returns are not any greater than this fund. In fact, sometimes they’re a lot worse. The return of some of the pension mutual funds in the States last year was not all that great.

Mr. Foulds: I have one comment and, I think, two questions. We shouldn’t let the item go by without clearly indicating that the escalation clause does have an upper limit. It is eight per cent. What the minister has said earlier didn’t clearly outline that and I think we should clearly state that.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The federal government copied our plan.

Mr. Foulds: The question that arises out of that is: You made that level, I believe, last July, when the amendments were brought forward; did you have a preview of the Thanksgiving message, or was that just something you pulled out of the hat with sheer blind luck?

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, it is just the good management of this government. Don’t forget also that while it does have a cap of eight per cent there is a carryover feature. If inflation runs at a higher rate you can carry over the percentage that is higher than the eight. So it is a little better.

Mr. B. Newman: For how many years?

Mr. Foulds: Yes, for how many years does the runover come? Is it for the next year?

Hon. Mr. Wells: It is unlimited, except that you can never get any more than eight per cent in a year.

Mr. B. Newman: But is there a carryover all the time? Supposing it goes up eight per cent one year, 10 per cent the next year and so forth, does that percentage carry over so that eventually it equalizes itself?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, it does.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, I had a question on the statutory items down below, and I don’t quite know how we raise that, but they’re moneys that we spend under these estimates.

Mr. Chairman: The statutory items are not subject to the vote, but if the minister wishes to accept a question on any of the items the Chair will be pleased to accept it.

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s a question over the student aid loans write-off. Is that because it’s been entirely moved to Colleges and Universities? In 1973-1974 you were budgeting for it.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes. As I understand it, Mr. Chairman, these appear in here, and that is back in the 1973-1974 year, this is an accounting technique. We had to write off those loans from the days, as you pointed out, when we were making those loans which are now made by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. They were accumulated old student loans that were not repaid, and this was to write them off in that year.

Vote 2801 agreed to.

On vote 2802:

Mr. Chairman: Item 1, programme administration. Shall that item carry? Carried. Item 2, curriculum development.

Mr. Sweeney: I note from the estimates of the minister that for curriculum development almost $12 million is to be allocated, which would indicate that this is an important part of the ministry’s operation. I think we should recognize that the Education Act of this province very clearly allocates to the provincial ministry the responsibility for curriculum development and curriculum guidelines in the Province of Ontario.

I think we should also appreciate that over the last number of years the approach of the ministry to curriculum development in this province has been a loosening-up kind of approach and a more humane kind of approach. We applaud that, and I believe the ministry probably feels some pride about it.

Any remarks that I should make are not intended to be construed as a desire in the area of curriculum to go back to some of the deficiencies of the past. We do not want to go back to the area of rigid, box-like structures whereby every student was asked to do the same thing at the same time in the same way. We applaud the more humane approach where we try to take the understanding of the individual student needs and attempt to meet those needs.

I do, however, in my remarks to the minister, want to point out that there are many in this province -- and I am one of them -- who believe that in some ways we have gone too far in the swing of the pendulum; that we have in some senses loosened up the curriculum of this province, at the provincial level particularly, much too much and that we are finding that we are paying a price that may be too high.

At the present time in this province we are under a series of guidelines, a series of documents from the Ministry of Education, which indicate exactly what the curriculum should be. Perhaps just for a minute we can go back and discover how we got here. In 1937 the Ministry of Education issued a little guideline rather affectionately called the “little gray book”. That guideline set out for the Province of Ontario what was expected to be taught in the classrooms. That guideline was in fact the official curriculum guide for the primary and junior division of this province, up to and including 1966, almost 30 years.

At that time we started getting a series of interim guides for the primary and junior division. These interim guides were not compulsory. It wasn’t until 1971 that a consolidation of these guides was brought out and became compulsory as the curriculum format, if you will, of the Province of Ontario.

One of the significant changes that occurred when these P1 and J1 documents were brought out was an indication that what the student wanted, what was considered “fun in education”, was the right way to go. I think it was not too long before many people in this province recognized that that particular approach to education, that particular understanding of human psychology, had some rather serious faults in it. We have known always, and we particularly know now after our exposure to this approach, that education and learning cannot always be fun. It certainly can be and should be enjoyable wherever possible, but in many cases it has to be hard and difficult.

An example in point is what we sometimes call rote or drill learning. It is not fun to learn mathematics tables and it is not always fun to learn how to spell, but these things must be learned. They are the basic tools of communication in our society. At the present time, within our curriculum guides those are not stressed as compulsory areas of study.

As a matter of fact, there are statements in curriculum guides which would lead us to believe they are not even considered to be priorities, at least in some ways. If I may quote from a rather famous curriculum guide in the Province of Ontario, the 1969 edition of English for the intermediate division. I would point out that this edition is still the official English guide for the Province of Ontario for the grade years 7 through 10; for the age level 12 through 16. In many areas of this province this document is not looked upon with any great favour. I would draw to your attention comments such as this,

There is no significant correlation between the teaching of formal grammar and the improvement of one’s use of English. There is no significant correlation between the teaching of formal English grammar and the successful acquisition of a foreign language.

There are other statements along that line. I do not believe it was the intent of the author of this document, nor was it the intent of the ministry, to downplay the need for such things as formal study of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. But it is comments like that which have created that very kind of position in this province.

We do not have in our schools today a serious study of the basic language skills -- not in all of our schools but in too many of our schools. We are finding from parents, students themselves, teachers, employers, university professors -- I mention only some -- a grave concern about the ability of our students to be successful in what we know as the basics of education in this province.

I believe what has happened is that we have, intentionally or otherwise put out the perception that what we know as the basic skills of education in this province, the basic computational skills, the basic language skills, are not important and that our students can get by without them. If there is one thing I think all of us heard loud and clear in this province during the last election campaign it is that the majority of people among the groups I named earlier do not believe that this job is being done well and they are asking why.

It is here that I feel the Ministry of Education, which should be providing the guidance, the direction and the leadership in this province, is not meeting that need. The P1 and J1 curriculum documents which we have had in this province for the last six or seven years -- the most recent one the minister has alluded to, “The Formative Years” -- do not give that kind of direction.

There is not included, either in the former document or in this document, a clear statement of what we expect our students to learn in the basic educational subjects, if you will, reading, writing and arithmetic. There are some allusions as to what they should be looking at but there is not a clear statement as to what they should be learning. There is not a clear statement as to what we should rightfully expect from the average student in this province, and I use that word deliberately.

I am not referring to the 15 or 10 per cent of our students who have serious learning problems. I am not referring to the other 10 or 15 per cent of our students at the other end who can be expected to learn much more. I am referring to the great bulk of our students, the 70 to 80 per cent who are considered average learners.

There is not a statement of the level of expectation in this province in any of the guides which this ministry puts out which says what those students should be learning. Equally, there is not a statement which advises school boards and teachers as to how they should monitor the evaluation of those skills to see that they are being done. There is simply a statement saying is should be done.

[5:00]

May I go back to a remark I made earlier. I do not believe that it is necessarily the intention of the minister or his ministry to put out this kind of perception. But the fact remains it is there. The fact remains that the kinds of things that have been printed by this ministry, the kinds of statements that have been made by this ministry, have led many to believe that basic education is no longer necessary and no longer important. We are reaping the results of those kinds of statements.

The Ministry of Education has made very clear that as a secondary school level, four of the 27 credits necessary for secondary school graduation must be English. It is generally perceived by the public -- and I’m using the larger public here -- that these would include basic language skills, skills such as sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, grammar and so forth. Yet it is entirely possible -- it is not only possible but it is a fact -- that in many of our secondary schools students can choose four courses in English that contain none of these skills. They can choose four courses in English that are predominantly and perhaps totally in the area of English literature, where they would never have to cope with the language skills that they are going to need to be able to communicate effectively.

I would suggest that that is a rather serious defect, and perhaps an unintentional deceit among the people of this province as to really what is being done with respect to English in the secondary schools.

The same thing is true of the two compulsory subjects in Canadian studies in this province at the secondary school level. Once again it is the perception of parents, it is the perception of the public, that when we talk of Canadian studies, we are talking of such things as Canadian history and Canadian geography. Yet in many schools of this province students can take studies in the areas defined as Canadian studies, that have nothing to do with Canadian history, nothing to do with Canadian geography. I would suggest that it is a mini-scandal that students can, in this province, go through our secondary schools without ever once studying anything about the history or the geography of their country.

The point I am trying to make is that we have some very fine ideals about education and about curriculum in this province. However, too many of those ideals are not in fact being met. The ministry has not provided the leadership and the direction and the guidance which is needed.

I applaud the fact that individual differences are being considered. I applaud the fact that we have taken a more humane approach to education. But surely if there is one area in this province where we need more direction, more guidance, a firmer stance from the Ministry of Education, it certainly is in the area of basic education -- the three “Rs,” if you will -- in the area of the understanding of the history and the geography of our country. We do not have that at the present time.

I would also draw one last point to the minister’s attention. This is one that has been mentioned several times, and I believe it falls in the area of curriculum. That is the place of grade 13 in our secondary schools.

At the present time it is possible for students from outside the Province of Ontario with 12 years of education to come into this province to enrol in our universities. We did a random spot check of this. York University accepts these students; the University of Toronto accepts these students; the University of Waterloo accepts these students. As a matter of fact, it is estimated that right at the moment approximately 100 students presently in the University of Waterloo are from outside this province, and that their basic education was at the grade 12 level. Sixty-seven of those students, I believe, are from the Province of Alberta.

I think we have to take a good hard look at why it is necessary in the Province of Ontario for a student to take 13 years to gain university entrance -- we are talking about average students now, we are not talking about advanced students who do it in less -- whereas in other provinces in Canada it is possible to accomplish the same aim to enroll in Ontario universities after only 12 years.

The pendulum in education in this province has swung -- and I repeat myself I think unintentionally -- too far. We can have a fine system of education but it must be reviewed and we must take a stronger stance in the area of curriculum guidelines.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I just want to say that I don’t disagree with everything that my friend has said. I think that perhaps he has made the same mistake that a lot of people have made. They have seen the pendulum swinging away over too far, as he said, but they haven’t perceived what has actually happened in the last couple of years.

I would like to ask him first and foremost, if it may be only in the form of a rhetorical question, are the students in the Waterloo Roman Catholic separate school board getting a good education in the basics?

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, may I speak to that?

The point that I am trying to make is that the leadership and the guidance coming from the ministry are not indicating to the school boards and the teachers of this province as to what is expected of them. I believe that there are many school boards and there are many teachers who are doing what they believe to be right. Whether in fact they are right, I don’t know. When I was a director of education I did what I believed to be right with my teachers and my school system. I do not know how they stack up against any other school system in this province.

You will notice that I confined my remarks to basic education. I wasn’t talking about all those other subjects where I think there should be a tremendous diversity of learning opportunity. If there is one thing where I think there should be a common standard and a common norm, it is in basics. As a matter of fact, Mr. Minister, in your remarks of last week, in the documents that your ministry has provided, you refer time and time again to provincial norms and provincial standards. What I am saying to you is that they do not exist. They do not exist as far as the teachers of this province are concerned. They do not exist as far as the parents of this province are concerned and they do not exist in the minds of many of the students who have gone through our system.

It is in that area, I do believe, that in some cases teachers themselves feel that they go against the ministry’s guidelines when they teach sound basic education. Some teachers feel a small twinge, if you will, of civil disobedience. I do not believe that that is the intent, but nevertheless that is what is out there, and it is what is out there that we must address ourselves. It is for that reason and that reason only that I make these comments.

Hon. Mr. Wells: First of all, it is ridiculous to say that people who feel they are teaching basics are going against the guidelines of this ministry, because certainly in the last three years that has never been the situation. But I still didn’t get an answer to my question as to whether the young people in the Waterloo Roman Catholic separate school board in the last three years have been getting a good basic education. Are they or aren’t they? That’s what I want to know.

Mr. Sweeney: I don’t believe they have ever got anything else but that.

Hon. Mr. Wells: That is what I thought. That answers my question.

Mr. B. Newman: It is the director who takes care of that.

Mr. Foulds: Are you sure that that direction came from your ministry?

Mr. Sweeney: As a matter of fact, if you refer to what has happened for the last three or four years, may I remind you of what has happened in your ministry as far as curriculum guidelines have been concerned in the last three or four years? It was, I believe, in 1973 that your ministry recognized some of the defects which you yourself speak to in the introduction to this document. We were advised that by the spring of 1974 this would be available. It wasn’t. We were asked by your regional office officials to set up meetings in the fall of 1974, because this was going to be available It wasn’t.

Another province-wide curriculum conference was held in February, 1975, I believe. It was going to be immediately available. It wasn’t. It was finally delivered to schools -- this and this only; none of the backup material that the minister referred to -- in June of this year, I believe. I personally know of five school boards that have not sent this out to their teachers because they do not believe that it contains the answers that the ministry’s curriculum conferences, the ministry’s officials and the minister himself said it was going to contain.

I also understand -- this by hearsay -- that this document sat on the minister’s desk for at least two months because he himself was concerned that it did not clearly and specifically enough outline the kinds of things that I have referred to. I cannot attest to that; it’s simply a statement I’ve heard.

I do not believe that in the last two or three years the minister can allude to direction or guidance from his ministry in the area of curriculum; it has just not been there. What is happening out in the schools is happening in spite of what the ministry has done, and not because of what it has done. I am not saying that’s intentional; I’m simply saying that’s way it is.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I would have to disagree with the hon. member, because I think he shows a very shallow appreciation of the idea of shared curriculum responsibility. He would be the first to stand up in this House if this ministry was suddenly to say, “This is the way you will do it in Waterloo county.” This is the way you will do it in Toronto” and “You will do no other; you’ll teach exactly what we say in this book.” That’s the kind of bad thing that we don’t want to go back to. We’ve got professionals all over this province who can assume a shared curriculum responsibility. What we need are the firm guidelines.

I’m not going to talk about what went on five and six years ago. I’m going to talk about what has gone on since I’ve been minister in this ministry. We have been and are providing what I think are clear guidelines.

The hon. member indicated some concern about the holdup in this document being delivered. The holdup in this document being produced was to be sure that it was simple, concise and clear. I believe it is that I believe that the educators who have worked on it and the educators I’ve talked to feel it is that kind of document and does stress the basics. But the hon. member has stood up in this House and tried to tell me that it doesn’t even do that; that it doesn’t satisfy his need for a document that stresses the basics.

I don’t know what in heaven’s name he thinks would be the kind of document that he’s looking for.

We have shared curriculum responsibility; we have a group of highly trained professionals; we’ve got a wide variety of students out there, all of whose aims, objectives and potentials have to be taken into account. Given these facts and the fact that I don’t think there is anyone in this province who doesn’t believe that children must have the basic skills -- no one disagrees with that -- what we’ve got to do is get together and show people it is being done.

One of the most hypocritical things of the last campaign, as I’ve said, was the kind of simplistic statements that were made by members of the Liberal Party about going back to the three Rs. Heavens, no one knows what they were talking about.

I’ve talked in terms of teaching the basics over the last few years and in presenting this document to teachers, and I guess the one complaint that comes back to me from teachers is, “What do you think we’ve been doing in the schools? We’ve been teaching the basics. Perhaps the thing that is regrettable is that there has been a communications gap and people don’t know that we are doing it. They don’t believe the basics are still being taught in the schools because kids don’t sit in straight rows with their hands behind their backs and not make a noise any more. They sit in little groupings and there is a lot of activity going on; there are kids learning at different levels and they are reading different books in the same classroom.” Then somebody says, “That’s not good enough. There is no discipline in this class and the basics aren’t being taught.” That’s a lot of nonsense, as far as I’m concerned.

I just want the hon. member to know that as far as we are concerned, we’ve been making a concerted effort to remedy the defects in the curriculum guidelines that this ministry puts out, to try to put out clear, concise guidelines that would set general objectives, general patterns and yet allow for the cooperative curriculum development approach so that teachers, principals and local boards could take the broad guidelines, put the flesh on them and make them into specific guidelines to apply to their particular situation. I think in this kind of approach we can take into account the diversity of interests and learning abilities of the vast majority of young people who are in our schools.

[5:15]

I don’t want to say, and I’m not going to say, that everything is perfect. We’re trying to develop, we’re trying to refine, we’re trying to improve a system. We’re not trying to go back to something we used to have. I think we all have to look forward to making the system that we’ve got a better system. That’s the kind of challenge we’re trying to meet.

As I say, I don’t think and I don’t want anyone to feel that the Ministry of Education is abdicating its responsibility. Its responsibility is to set the broad objectives and guidelines -- not in an authoritarian manner, but to set those objectives and then work with the people in the school system so that they can develop the programme. That’s the kind of approach that I’ve felt was needed and the kind that we’re following in this ministry.

Let me just comment on one other thing that you mentioned -- grade 13. It is not the policy of this ministry or this government to phase out grade 13 in this province. Grade 13 is, I guess, an extra year, if you will, in this province. Certainly those provinces that have reverted to the credit system or that have adopted the credit system are only asking for about 26 credits, whereas a young person in this province, when he or she completes grade 13 will have 33 credits. So they obviously have a greater body of knowledge than those from other provinces.

I’m a little surprised to learn that the universities of this province may be taking into our three-year programmes people from other provinces with the four-year graduation degree. They may be taking them into our four-year programmes, but I’m surprised if they are taking in young people from other provinces into the three-year pass arts programme. I always thought that in this province we had an honour graduation diploma which would allow a young person to go into a three-year university programme and he or she could still graduate in the same length of time as others in most of the other provinces where they had four-year programmes. I’m not sure about that and I haven’t got the details on that particular matter here.

Certainly it’s not the intention of the ministry or the government to phase out grade 13 in this province. Our thrust is to make provision for those students who can complete grade 13 in less than five years, to do this through an acceleration programme which would allow them to do it in 4½ years or four years if their aptitudes, their desire and their ability allow them to do this. We think that’s a better approach, because we talk about learning that isn’t in a lock-step process, yet we expect everybody to end up on the finish line at the same time and that just always isn’t going to be so.

Mr. Grande: Mr. Chairman, first I would like to congratulate you on the position which this House has conferred on you. Secondly, I would like to thank the Minister of Education for having provided for me his speech that he delivered the other day.

Mr. Chairman: If I might interrupt the member for Oakwood, I understand that microphone is dead. Do we have the permission of the House to allow him to move to another microphone?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

An hon. member: Provided his speech is the same.

Mr. Foulds: There is a nice one right here.

Mr. Grande: I won’t repeat what I said previously.

Hon. Mr. Welch: I think you should.

Mr. Grande: I congratulated Mr. Chairman, first of all, for the position which the House has conferred upon him and I joined with other members of the New Democratic Party in those congratulations. The second point was that I thanked the Minister of Education for having provided for me his speech that he made in this House the other day. It was very nice of him to do that.

Let me assure the minister that I and my party are not among those people who seem to be bent on criticism seemingly for the sake of negativism alone. This is what the minister said in his speech. We on this side of the House will criticize the Minister of Education, will criticize any other ministry of the government, but at the same time we are going to be providing as many alternatives as possible for the people of Ontario. This is what good government is all about. This is what the people expect us to do.

The minister in his statement makes three fundamental basic points. He first talked about the quality of education, then he talked about the assessment of a child’s educational attainment, and then he discussed honest and straight reporting to parents regarding a child’s educational achievement. As far as I could understand it, these were the three main thrusts of his speech.

Under the quality of education, the minister defines it as, “a system that develops efficiently and effectively the greatest possible potential of the largest possible number of students.” Let me humbly suggest to the minister that his view and definition of quality education is at least limited. His view and definition ought to be, “a system that develops effectively and efficiently the potential of every student.” The minister’s definition leaves out a tremendous number of pupils His definition leaves out the inner-city child and the culturally different child.

As long as this government says it is doing its best, then it cannot be faulted; as long as the educational institutions say that they are doing their best, they cannot be faulted; hence, by inference, the fault must be within the child’s background, within the child’s experience prior to entering a school setting. The system has involved itself in this kind of circular thinking for a long time. The circular thinking is sometimes verbalized in the following fashion.

The child may be one or two years behind in educational attainment, measured by the tests which the minister mentioned in his speech. The next step is to take a look at the child’s background. Here the system finds that the child’s family does not speak fluent English; or that the child is being reared by only one parent; or that the head of the household only received an elementary education; or that the head of the household has a job that is not considered in the professional or managerial categories on the Blisken scale. The next step is where the rationalization and justification occurs. It is verbalized in these words: “What can you expect? What else can we do? We have done our best.”

This type of thinking pervades the whole educational process. This type of mentality prevents thousands upon thousands of children from receiving the best possible education, and consequently limits their educational opportunities.

This circular thinking, as far as I am concerned, must be halted. The vicious circle must be broken; otherwise the educational figure of many pupils looks bleak indeed.

The minister should look at the Toronto Board of Education’s “Every Student Survey, 1970,” the updated version of it if it is still in print. He should look at Bernard Coard’s pamphlet, “How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal In The British School System;” and a recently-published book by OISE, “The Education of Immigrant Children.”

Also, he should look at the draft report of the Multicultural Trustee Work Group of the Toronto Board of Education. This draft report, as far as I am concerned and as far as many people in the communities out there are concerned, represents a milestone in recognizing the difficulties of the culturally different child. It is a document, Mr. Minister, that you and this government should embrace and implement, because it provides a tremendous number of sound solutions to the problems that the educational system has in planning for the best education of the culturally different child.

Let me talk for a few minutes on the education of that particular child, and if anyone in this House thinks I am talking about two or three per cent of the school’s population, let me assure every member that I am talking about 50 to 55 per cent of all the children who are attending schools in Metropolitan Toronto, whether they be in the public or separate school.

Yet, even though half of the population within Metropolitan Toronto schools is composed of students of non-English-speaking background, their problems are considered to be peripheral and marginal to the whole system itself. Even your own ministry does not encompass the English-as-a-second-language programme, which leads me further to think that you, yourself, consider that aspect of that curriculum to be something other than within the jurisdiction of your ministry.

One of the fundamental concerns which you and every board of education in Metropolitan Toronto must squarely face is the concern voiced by thousands of parents and community leaders that the culturally different child lags far behind his Anglo-Canadian schoolmate in academic achievement. The reason for that under-achievement can be summed up in one single word, and that is language.

Educators are well aware that unless a child has oral command of the English language when he enters school at the junior kindergarten level he will not and cannot progress according to the educational norm. It appears that fluency in English is a prerequisite, then, for academic success. Unfortunately, at the present time oral fluency cannot be expected, given the tremendous number of pupils. But the logical question to ask is: What is a school that has 75 per cent or 80 per cent of its students who came from a culturally different background going to do?

The teacher will try his best to teach his children in English. They use the methods and techniques they have found to be successful with English-speaking students, I do not intend to minimize the efforts of the teachers. As you probably are aware, I have been one for the past eight years.

In many cases, they attempt to do their best with the all-English approach. This is how they were taught at the teachers’ colleges; they were not prepared for a multicultural classroom. I will make further comments in terms of the teachers’ college when it comes to that particular item.

The basic all-English approach has obvious limitations in helping the culturally different child to learn. Let’s take the case of a four-year-old child, who reflects a French or Portuguese or Greek or Italian background, on his first day of school in September. His first encounter is with a teacher -- with an adult. The teacher speaks a language that is alien to the child; the child cannot understand the teacher. The question is: How can that child learn in that atmosphere?

What the child finds is that he himself has not only that particular pressing need of learning the English language and being able to communicate with that teacher, but also there is a pressing need that he has to make use of that language immediately in order to function as a pupil. From that day on the child begins to drop behind his English-speaking age-mates who have no difficulty understanding what the teacher is saying. This is the definition of educational retardation. Not retardation because of lack of abilities, but retardation because it is built in within the system.

[5:30]

The ill effects of this all-English approach show up most dramatically when the culturally different child is in grade 3 or 4 and the scores in a reading achievement test prove that he or she is approximately two or three years behind the expected level.

In other words, Mr. Minister, what is the point of testing the culturally different child with the test that you mentioned in your speech when we know that that child will score low on such tests? Is your intention to further humiliate the child into believing that he’s incapable of learning? This situation is really emotionally damaging to that child, because what he sees and understands is that he is failing, that he cannot learn, and consequently he blames himself for the failure.

It is impossible for him to reason that the failure that he encounters is not his fault but is the fault of a system that is culturally and linguistically biased. Let me make it clear that I am not referring to children who have just emigrated from another country. What I am talking about is 90 per cent of those children who were born right here in Canada.

The present situation has to be remedied. The implications are really enormous. Bluntly stated, it may be construed that the linguistically and culturally different pupils are deprived, by a monolingual educational system, of their fundamental right to receive an education commensurate with their abilities. Solutions to this basic void in the education of a culturally different child must be found and implemented.

Throughout the United States of America and in many parts of the world educators, community leaders and governments are turning to bilingual-bicultural education as one possible approach that makes good sense in educating that particular child. By bilingual-bicultural I mean using the child’s mother tongue and culture with either of the official languages.

Mr. Minister, as you will recall, the Toronto Board of Education, with your permission, two or 2½ years ago instituted such a programme at the kindergarten level. To find out if the approach is effective, a research component was added. The report that has been published by the Toronto Board of Education, “Transition from Italian in the First Year,” has made public the findings of the first year of a two-year programme.

Incidentally, let me point out that neither from the Toronto Board of Education nor from the ministry itself did this particular programme receive any kind of public attention. One could be led to believe that both the board and ministry mounted the programme because of the public pressure that was brought to bear upon them and as soon as the two years elapsed, we would quickly forget about it. That has not happened.

Let me quickly report to you, Mr. Chairman, the highlights of the report. The children in this bilingual-bicultural programme were found to be more verbal than the children in the control group. That means the children were able to express themselves more than the control group, and also, I quote: “On the average, more children in the bilingual programme participated in group conversation periods.” This finding is especially significant in the light of the fact that kindergarten curriculum in Toronto devotes a great deal of attention to the importance of speech in group situations. The fact that more children speak in these group situations may be viewed, “as an important signal that the child feels comfortable in a group setting and may also indicate that he feels his own thoughts are significant enough to contribute.” Increase in self concept is the direct result of the bilingual-bicultural programme.

The second significant difference that was found was that:

While parents from the comparison group expressed as great an interest in their children’s education, as did the General Mercer parents, fewer of them had attended specific school events.

In other words, at General Mercer parents seemed to have become more directly involved with their children’s programme. These findings demonstrate that the availability of the Italian language has already had direct positive effects on both the students and their parents.

Mr. Minister, if you are convinced that one of the biggest challenges for education today is to involve parents in the schools in a meaningful way, I would urge you to look at these bilingual-bicultural programmes with favour.

The third important finding in the report, which is really significant, is that even though the children in the bilingual programme used Italian for the better part of the year, those children in that programme learned as much English as the children in the control group. Therefore, in terms of the myth that the children won’t learn English, propagated by those who still haven’t seen the value of such a programme, I would like to put their fears to rest.

The conclusion which can be safely drawn from the evaluation of this particular bilingual programme is that the model works. In other words, a bilingual-bicultural programme in which the mother tongue of the child and English are used as the languages of instruction is a realistic, sensible, practical, inexpensive and humane way of introducing the culturally different child to the educational system and at the same time introducing the educational system to the non-English-speaking parents.

Another concern which many Canadian and non-Canadian parents alike have and are becoming vocal about is that the first language of the children in the schools right now is encouraged to deteriorate. I said it before and I will say it again: it is a criminal act perpetrated by your ministry upon every child who has knowledge of a third language to allow that knowledge to deteriorate as he proceeds through the elementary school.

It is ironic that a student on entering high school is offered the opportunity to learn his first language. By that time, during the intervening years, immeasurable damage has been done to his self-esteem and to the communication between his parents and himself. The communication skills the child had on entering kindergarten are lost by the time he enters high school.

This policy of your government is senseless as far as I’m concerned. It would be much better to encourage the child in the elementary setting to maintain his mother tongue from the first day he steps into kindergarten. There’s a large section of the community which will demand this approach, What can you do to remedy the situation?

Actually, there are two things you can do. One is that you should amend at once the Education Act of the Province of Ontario, to permit the teaching of languages other than English and French at all levels. Next, permit teachers to use languages other than English and French in communicating with their students at all levels. This change would allow fully bilingual programmes to be developed and implemented.

The Province of Ontario would not be the first jurisdiction to make such a change. The Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba already have legislation to that effect. The Congress of the United States of America passed the bilingual education Act in January, 1968. I would like to read the very first section of this Act.

The Congress hereby finds that one of the most acute educational problems in the United States is that which involves millions of children of limited English-speaking ability because they come from environments where the dominant language is other than English; that additional effort should be made to supplement present attempts to find adequate and constructive solutions to this unique and perplexing educational situation; and that the urgent need is for comprehensive and co-operative action now on the local, state and federal levels, to develop forward-looking approaches to meet the serious learning difficulties faced by this substantial segment of the nation’s school age population.

The State of Texas passed bilingual legislation in 1973. The State of Massachusetts in 1971 enacted the Transitional Bilingual Education Act.

The second thing that the Minister must do is to ensure that adequate funds are made available to the boards of education across Metro, and indeed the whole province, to encourage and assist in the development of these bilingual programmes.

The federal government must assume its responsibility for the immigration policy decisions it made in the late 1950s and 1960s. It is about time that the federal government understood that its responsibility does not end as soon as the immigrants land at Malton airport. The feds will probably tell the minister that education is a provincial responsibility; but now that they have become bosom buddies in essence, the feds will probably listen.

The minister should remind them that over the past years the federal government has indeed contributed nearly $2 billion to education. For example, there is the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act of 1967 for secondary school education; the Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act, which was superseded in 1967 by the Adult Occupational Training Act; the Canada Student Loans programme; schools for the children of the armed forces; and funds have been received to soundproof schools in Etobicoke, etc.

I hope the minister has paid heed to these remarks and will move with speed to remedy the situation. It is really critical. It has often been said that our strength as a nation lies in the diversity of its people. Let us not annihilate this diversity, because in doing so we will destroy and prevent the true development of our Canadian society.

Mr. Warner: Mr. Chairman, I can certainly appreciate that there could be some discomfort in the minister sitting there facing the largest number of elected teachers that this House has ever seen. I assure you that for my part I view my role as a politician who happens to be a teacher.

I hope in what appears to be some consternation on the part of the government in coming to grips with its whole thrust of education, that the minister could appreciate that perhaps he has two problems on his hands; one, of inheritance and, second, of trying to decide where the real governing power belongs. Speaking of inheritance, I noticed that the minister made some reference to the fact that he was talking about his tenure as minister; perhaps that in itself reflects that there is some concern about past Ministers of Education.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, it does not.

Hon. Mr. Davis: He was worried about Egerton Ryerson.

Mr. Foulds: This is the first time I think I remember the Premier being in the House for these estimates for four years. It is good to have the former Minister of Education here.

Mr. Warner: If that is the case, it certainly is well founded because it was during the 1960s when money was spent on buildings and on furnishings but not on teacher development, curriculum, quality of education -- not on all of those ingredients which now come to the fore as problems for students, for teachers, for parents and for taxpayers.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Look where all the money went in those years when 75 per cent of it went for teachers’ salaries.

Mr. Foulds: That’s the transfer grants; come on.

[5:45]

Mr. Warner: We saw during that time no real concerted effort to do educational research. During that time if a teacher wished to become proficient in the teaching of English, for example, he had to attend Columbia University in the United States. It’s because of that inheritance difficulty perhaps that the government has come to rely on what one might refer to as the great white father syndrome. Can we look and say that local boards have now reached a position of wisdom whereby we can transfer authority to them and let them run their own show? What happens when that occurs is a vacuum. I think it’s within that context that we face the serious problems that we do.

We heard from another party, a third party, during election time that one way to cut spending would be to cut out the regional offices, and at the same time they said they could decentralize. I have no idea how those two are compatible. I realize fully that the ministry has made some attempts toward trying to bring about some standards throughout the province. Yet what has been ignored unfortunately are the local boards. I remind the minister that it was only at the time when all of the power was centralized here at Queen’s Park that we saw teachers’ strikes. It was only during that concentration of power down here that we saw local trustees talking about being disgruntled with the educational system.

I submit that our problems arise from the fact of decentralization. But they are not solved by simply having a great white father approach and blandly turning it all out with the kinds of material that we’ve seen produced, the P1J1 and the HS1 which effectively let you off the hook. It’s not that easy. Although all of us realize, I am sure on both sides of the House, that we want a good sound educational system for our children and that we want everyone to grow up literate, I don’t think that it can be done by simply abdicating responsibility in the area of curriculum.

I urge the ministry, for example, to consider very seriously the implementation of compulsory subjects in the area of physical education and in the area of English and Canadian studies. That in no way should be misconstrued as taking away autonomy from the local boards, in all of this, the people who have been forgotten are those very people who were very upset during the election, the students, the teachers and tie parents. Nowhere in all of this swing of the pendulum from local board control to centralization down here, nowhere in all of that were the students consulted as to curriculum, were the teachers consulted as to curriculum or were the taxpayers consulted. The decisions were made by the civil service.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Oh, no.

Mr. Warner: The decisions were made by the OISE ivory tower and the decisions were made by the Minister of Education and his deputies.

Hon. Mr. Davis: That is where your party organizers are. What do you mean ivory tower? Your party organizers are up there.

Mr. Warner: And we are now re-organizing it. We may in fact disband it if we get a chance.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Why don’t you tell him? He can volunteer to retire.

Mr. Deans: Why should he?

Mr. Warner: We have two ministers of education now.

An hon. member: We’ve got a Minister of Education and a mini-Minister of Education.

Mr. Foulds: He may become the deputy premier.

Mr. Warner: I would ask the Minister of Education if he could please explain when this government will earnestly approach the students and the teachers and the parents. By that I do not mean any sort of formal superstructure in any taxpayer organization or the students’ council per se or the principals of the province. I mean the students themselves who are not organized, the teachers who are working in the classrooms and the ordinary taxpayer. I would ask the minister when those people will be approached as to what they want in terms of education in this province and as to how changes can be effected by talking with those particular groups. Where are the results?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Teachers, of course, and students and parents are all involved at various levels, both at the provincial level and, of course, more particularly at the local level where it’s easier to involve them in the process.

I can’t let go by the statement that teachers are not involved in the development of the curriculum. A person happens to come down here and work as a provincial civil servant; he holds a teaching certificate and has served well as a teacher -- just as my friend has served and now becomes a member of this Legislature; he’s still a teacher -- and these gentlemen sitting in front of me are still teachers. We have a programme to involve them in things which go on in the classroom and I have to emphasize to you that the curriculum which is used in this province is developed by educators and teachers with input from students and parents.

Specifically, you said why didn’t we ask these people what they wanted and what their opinion was of what was going on? We did a very massive informational study over the past 2½ years, I guess, of teachers, students and parents to find out what they thought about the system, what they wanted done, the whole ball of wax. If you’d like to see a copy of that you are perfectly welcome to take a look at it.

Mr. B. Newman: I wanted to ask the minister if there are any developments going on within the ministry toward recognizing other languages at the secondary level. You will recall a year ago or earlier this year I was in touch with either you or your officials as a result of a presentation made to me by the Ukrainians in the city of Windsor. They want the Ukrainian language considered an accredited subject in the secondary school system and also want guidelines so that the teachers would have to fulfil certain requirements and be accredited instructors or teachers in the Ukrainian language at the secondary level.

Hon. Mr. Wells: There already is provision for credit courses in a whole variety of languages other than the normal ones we think of -- French, Spanish, German and Latin. There is provision for a whole variety of other language courses for credit in the secondary schools starting at year one. The provision is that there be the demand for that language in the community. Then the board has the option of instituting the programme in one of the schools.

I look here and I see Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Latvian, Yiddish and some of the native people languages are all being offered for credit in secondary schools across the province at the present time.

Mr. Philip: I was somewhat dismayed and concerned during the last election campaign at some of the simplistic views and attacks on the educational system which were proposed by certain people wishing office in this House -- most of them to the left of me, incidentally.

An hon. member: Only physically, not politically.

Mr. Gaunt: Don’t get sanctimonious.

Mr. Philip: I wonder if, in developing the curriculum budget, you have given serious consideration to ways in which teachers can be given some help in implementing innovation in such a way that parents and the community can understand the kinds of innovations taking place without having the kind of backlash which we experienced during the last election campaign. It seems to me that innovation or curriculum development means more than just consulting teachers and parents. It’s the whole process by which one consults the parents and teachers, and the whole process by which the teachers learn to be comfortable in consulting with the parents and other people in the community.

In talking with a number of teachers I find that, for whatever reason, they are afraid of parents, and when that kind of thing happens, it seems to me that we have within those teachers some fear of their own competence in explaining and in working with the parents on curriculum. I am wondering if any thought has been given to developing with the teachers the kind of techniques and processes which will help them to feel more comfortable in working with the community and innovating curriculum with the community?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, each of our regional offices has a budget of about $20,000 for professional development and curriculum development; in other words, money where they can organize programmes in their region to help the teachers in the various systems organize curriculum development programmes and institute programmes to help those teachers explain the programmes and institute programmes to help those teachers explain the programmes to the parents m their particular area. I can’t guarantee that this kind of development work is going on because, in their wisdom, some of the regions may have decided to institute different types of curriculum development activities. I think what you have said is vitally necessary. It certainly is my perception that a lot of the misunderstanding and concern expressed by parents is because they really don’t understand at the present time just exactly what’s going on in the schools, and because they don’t understand they have a feeling of mistrust and a feeling of lack of confidence in what is going on, because it is different than what they remember, and they don’t know why and nobody has taken the trouble to explain it to them.

I think what you said about some teachers being ill at ease in explaining to parents what is going on, is actually so, and that is one of the things I think we are going to have to come to grips with.

I delivered a speech not so long ago to the Canadian Education Association, the whole thrust of which was this whole business of parental involvement in the schools. That is probably one of the biggest things that we need in education today. If we can get the parents in as volunteers and helping in the schools, then they will know what is going on and they will understand what is going on, and there will be that bond of communication built up, because the teachers who perhaps are a little afraid of parents, seeing them and working with them in the schools will develop a rapport with them that will allow them to be able to explain things to the parents.

If we don’t have that, and I don’t think we can expect all parents to be volunteers in the schools, then I think the schools have got to open their doors and welcome parents in; they have got to have days where the teachers explain what is going on in the schools in a meaningful, easy-to-understand way. You have to realize that there are a lot of these curriculum days in schools and parents go, and they come away and they don’t really understand what’s going on at all, because somebody has given them a lot of educational jargon that is not completely understood by them, and therefore are no better off

We have to develop programmes where teachers can communicate with parents about what the schools are doing, how the learning process is going on, what is being taught, so that they can be shown that the basics are being taught in the schools, and just how they are being taught. When that comes about, I think we will quell a lot of the concerns that parents have, and quite rightly so, because they are not sure exactly what is happening.

These are the kind of things that I think the school system has got to direct itself towards, and that is the kind of thing that I have been preaching as I go around the province. It is not something that you overcome overnight, as my friends over --

Mr. Deans: It doesn’t happen though. You can stand here and speak about it as long as you like, but it doesn’t happen.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I know, but it has got to happen. We have got to do something to make it happen --

Mr. Deans: What are you doing? Tell us what you are doing.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- and that is what we are trying to do. Let me just indicate one small manifestation of concerns about this. Those who were in this House last year when we put through the new Education Act will recall that we made parents official visitors in the school.

Mr. Deans: That has been a big help. They have been going to schools ever since.

[6:00]

Hon. Mr. Wells: Who were the greatest group of people who were opposed to that particular section but the educators in this province, and particularly school principals. They said, “Good heavens, you are going to interrupt the whole process in the schools if we have a group of parents running around schools. You shouldn’t do that in a piece of legislation -- making parents official visitors in the schools.”

There is a new book by a professor at Calgary university that I think is an excellent one on this whole subject. He said there are now signs on the doors at schools stating, “Anyone visiting this school must first go to the principal’s office.”

You can’t walk into a school and even go to your own child’s classroom. It’s going to take a while to overcome some of these ideas and impressions parents have and that teachers have, but I think we’ve got to work on it.

Mr. Foulds: I wonder if I could ask the minister whether he plans to reply to my colleague, the member for Oakwood (Mr. Grande), at the conclusion of this item or with that --

Hon. Mr. Wells: Oh yes, I certainly do. He delivered a very excellent presentation and has done a very fine job in this particular area, and I congratulate him in his first speech here.

Hon. Mr. Welch moved 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 certain resolutions and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, before moving the adjournment of the House, may I remind the members that tomorrow we will hear from the leader of the Liberal Party as to his contribution to the Throne debate.

Mr. Foulds: Such as it will be.

Mr. Deans: Better wear your hardhats.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I have an appointment out of town.

Mr. Deans: If you have, can I come along?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Following this, we will go into committee of supply for the continuation and consideration of these estimates, which we will do in the evening as well. Tomorrow evening at 8 o’clock, the standing committee on estimates will continue its examination of the estimates of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism.

Hon. Mr. Welch moved the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 6:05 p.m.