Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Ziemba: I would like to introduce to the House a group of ladies representing the west end YWGA immigrant coffee group who are seated in the west gallery, and I would like to ask the members to welcome them.

Mr. Hodgson: On behalf of my neighbour from York Centre (Mr. Stong), I would like to introduce 76 pupils from grades 10 and 11 at Thornlea Secondary School under the leadership of R. K. Smith.

Mr. Bullbrook: Would you join my colleagues in welcoming 40 students of grade 10 from Sarnia Northern Collegiate who sit in your west gallery?

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

Oral questions.

FEDERAL HOUSING PROPOSALS

Mr. Lewis: A question for the Minister of Housing. Has the minister any idea specifically what the impact on Ontario will be of the federal housing announcements yesterday and more particularly the amount of money which has or will be designated for use in this province under the AHOP programme or any other?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No, Mr. Speaker, I can’t tell the direct impact. We received the information yesterday, a very short period before the announcement was made in the House. All that we have so far concerning that proposed programme is the statement that the minister gave. It is now being looked at by officials in the ministry to see just what effect it will have on the province and how much money will be available.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary in two parts, first, do I take it as accurate that the government will of course continue with its mortgage rates credit programme, as announced during the election campaign, to reduce the effect of interest rates since there appears to be no useful intervention on the part of the federal government to that end in terms of Ontario’s needs?

Secondly, would the Province of Ontario also pass legislation requiring insurance companies and loan and trust corporations to direct some of their investment moneys or retained earnings into the housing market since, again, so much of the federal money will be excluded from Ontario by virtue of the maximum price?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, the first part of the question, the question of the mortgage interest subsidy, probably should be more properly addressed to the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough). I am not going to jump to the conclusion that the programme announced by the federal minister does not have some sort of impact in this area until we have had a chance to analyse the total impact of the programme. As far as the second portion is concerned, I did advise the federal minister yesterday that Ontario would join with the federal government in approaching those financial institutions that are in Ontario to join in this programme and to follow the lead. I suppose, if legislation is necessary, then of course it will be just as the federal government has indicated.

Mr. Renwick: You were going to do that last spring.

Mr. Nixon: Can the minister make it clear? Do we have a provincial cost allowance programme that is supposed to run out as of December, 1975? If so, are we going to make arrangements more or less to support the federal initiative in this regard for rental housing in order to extend it for at least another year?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I’m sorry, I can’t answer that. Perhaps the Treasurer can.

Mr. Nixon: Is there such an allowance?

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: What happened to the very strong initiatives which were allegedly taken with the insurance companies, the loan and trust companies and the banks by the Province of Ontario prior to the last election campaign, supposedly to release the funds which the federal government is now re-releasing on our behalf? What happened to all those meetings and all those undertakings and guarantees?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I am being repetitious. One would have to pass this question on to the Treasurer. I just don’t know.

Mr. Reid: Maybe you could answer both of them.

Mr. Lewis: Maybe I could pass it on.

Mr. Speaker: As the hon. member is still asking questions, it’s okay.

PRIVATE INVESTMENTS IN HOUSING

Mr. Lewis: It would be a new question then to the Treasurer, if I may. What happened to all of the meetings he had with the private investing field, I guess, to free money for Ontario’s housing market? How much money was actually freed in addition to commitments that had already been made and how will that jibe with the federal announcement yesterday?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am not sure about the second part of the question because I haven’t had an opportunity to read or to understand the statement in full.

With respect to the first part of the question, meetings were held with the chartered banks, with the insurance companies and with the trust companies. The problem was put in front of them and I thought there was a very excellent reception. I think we tabled that in the House at that time. In terms of statistics as to the growth, particularly by the banks, which, as we all know, just a few years ago --

Mr. Renwick: Oh, come on! We tabled that before your meeting.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- were not in the -- I think we had a very excellent reception from them. It is my recollection that they committed something in excess of $250 million, if memory serves me correctly, over and above what they were already committing.

I don’t think that has all been taken up because it ran right into interest rates. The problem in the last two or three months has not been the availability of funds from the lending institutions; the problem in the residential market, both in terms of single-family housing and rental housing, has been interest rates.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, if I may. If it hasn’t been a problem, why does the federal government feel it necessary to threaten by way of legislation the release of an additional three-quarters of a billion dollars? If all of the money is there, then how is it that the Treasurer is claiming an easy access to the money market which the federal government says it has to legislate about?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: As I read the statement yesterday or the newspaper reports as I said, I haven’t had a chance to read the statement in full, nor have I had a chance to discuss it fully with my colleagues -- what the federal government is proposing to do is in some way subsidize the interest rates, which means the money that is available will be taken up and they hope that an additional amount of money, whatever the figure was, will also be put forward. I think if there is some answer to the interest rate problem put forward in the federal proposals yesterday, then the existing funds which are available will be used very quickly and I think there will be a further demand for mortgage funds.

Mr. Shore: A supplementary to the first part of the question. In view of the statement made by the federal minister, could the Treasurer elucidate the announcement he made on government spending control:

“If there are any major new federal expenditures in housing, then I will serve notice now that we expect the federal government to adopt the same budgetary self-discipline that we and local governments, universities and hospitals are now exercising, and to find the money in existing low-priority programmes.”

Does that mean anything now that that announcement has been made?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It certainly does. I think one of the large pressures on the economy has been government spending, and what we said to Ottawa was that if you’re going to move into --

Mr. Roy: You are starting to realize that, are you?

Mr. Reid: Your $2 billion has nothing to do with it?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We are partially responsible here --

Mr. Reid: It’s the first time you have admitted any responsibility.

Interjections.

Hon Mr. McKeough: -- and most of the clamour comes from you people over there not from us.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: What you promised during election would have cost billions more!

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Let’s get back to the question period.

Mr. Reid: Two billion dollars --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I say to my friend from Rainy River, don’t come around talking to me about the problems of your --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr. Nixon: We thought you took “nice” pills.

Mr. Roy: Is that a threat? Now, Darcy --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Are there further questions? I think we had better get on to another subject. We’ve had several supplementaries --

Mr. Renwick: By way of a supplementary question to the Treasurer --

Mr. Speaker: Is it a brief supplementary? All right, we’ll allow it.

Mr. Singer: It’s all our fault, is it?

Mr. Gaunt: I thought the Treasurer had tried to change his image.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Renwick: By way of a supplementary question to the Treasurer, did the announcement by the Hon. Barnett Danson yesterday let the government off the hook with respect to its intention and obligation to introduce legislation relating to moderating the impact of mortgage interest rates in the province?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’m not sure whether I agree with the phrase “off the hook.” If yesterday’s announcement, when we have examined it, means that the government of Canada are reassuming the role which they have properly had for a number of years, of being responsible for mortgage financing in this country without trying to unload it on to the provinces, then I would say yesterday’s announcement was very welcome indeed. When we have examined the situation and seen just what it does mean in terms of the Province of Ontario, then we will be able to give a more definitive reply.

Mr. Lewis: By way of a new question, I would like to ask, did I understand that answer properly? Are you wriggling on the hook or off the hook?

Interjection.

Mr. Lewis: I haven’t asked you yet. Just relax for a moment; I’ll give you the full opportunity --

Interjections.

Mr. Breithaupt: Is this a supplementary question?

Mr. Speaker: It sounded like a question to me.

FEDERAL HOUSING PROPOSALS

Mr. Lewis: It’s a new question, Mr. Speaker. Is the Treasurer implying that the reduction of mortgage interest rates, the programme to which the government committed itself during the election campaign, may now be jettisoned in light of the federal announcement yesterday, which in fact will have a negligible impact on interest rates for those who wish to purchase homes in all of the major centres of Ontario? Does the Treasurer know there are only 20 AHOP homes available now in the entire Metropolitan Toronto area?

An hon. member: Good question.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, no, I wasn’t aware.

Mr. Lewis: Is the government going to reconsider its mortgage interest rate programme?

[2:15]

Mr. MacDonald: That was a pre-election promise --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, what my leader said very clearly a couple of months ago was that he felt something had to be done about mortgage interest rates in this country. He said he felt that that was clearly the responsibility of the federal government, but if the federal government were not going to take action and not do something about interest rates --

Mr. Lewis: They are not.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- then we were prepared to do so. My friend has read the paper and has the answer to all the questions.

Mr. Lewis: No, I do not believe that AHOP stuff is going to work.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We have not yet studied what Mr. Danson said. Not being an instant expert like the hon. member, I am not quite prepared to throw the whole programme out the window --

Mr. Lewis: Particularly if it lets you off the hook.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- as the hon. member is, after reading this morning’s Globe and Mail.

TORONTO TEACHERS’ NEGOTIATIONS

Mr. Lewis: I have a question which I would like to ask the Minister of Education since he is appearing in the wings. If the Treasurer does not answer me more clearly, some columnist will call him a protestant underachiever.

Interjections.

Mr. Lewis: Someone convey that to Norman Webster, if he is not in the gallery.

I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Education. When is he about to intervene in the very critical Metropolitan Toronto high school board dispute?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I guess what we need is a definition of the word “intervene.” I am not sure what the hon. member means by intervening. If he means, am I concerned about what is happening in Metropolitan Toronto, the answer is yes. If he means, have I been speaking to the Education Relations Commission and its chairman, Owen Shime about what they can do and asking them to do all they can, the answer is yes. If he means, have I been meeting with the teachers ever the last few days and talking to them, the answer is yes. If he means, have I been meeting with the school board over the last few days, the answer is yes.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you very much. I have one supplementary. Is the minister prepared personally to bring both sides together in an effort to reach a settlement before the teachers walk out? That is what I meant.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, if I can usefully be of help I will bring both sides together to avert a walkout, if that is possible. I am not sure when the time to do that might be or if it ever will be, but that we will have to see.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: This could be asked as a new question. I think it is the hon. member’s turn to ask questions.

Mr. Bullbrook: Well, he can ask a supplementary.

Mr. Nixon: This is a supplementary, if you don’t mind.

Mr. Speaker: You can call it whatever you like. It is your turn to ask questions anyway.

Mr. Nixon: I will ask a supplementary, thank you, Mr. Speaker, of the same minister. Is he aware that when a similar question was put to the Premier (Mr. Davis) yesterday he indicated that the minister would have a statement or might have a statement in this regard? Can the minister indicate if there is still that hope that we can avoid a strike? Would the minister undertake, if he brings the two sides together, to ask the Premier to accompany him in meeting the two sides and as well have a representative of the federal authorities, who have the powers of wage controls in this area, so that we can do everything we possibly can before the teachers walk out -- God forbid, but it appears that they will -- on Wednesday next?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, hope springs eternal. I always look for the bright side. I believe, notwithstanding the storm clouds on the horizon --

Mr. Lewis: Yes, such as the fact that we do not know the outcome of the vote.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- we still may not have a strike. As I indicated in answer to a question from the Leader of the Opposition a few minutes ago, if and when the occasion arises that I should call the parties together, I will do it. How I do and who is present at that time will be something that will have to be decided at that time.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary: Since we are all obviously concerned with this, perhaps the minister would indicate what would lead him to decide to bring all parties together.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I indicated in my answer to a question a minute ago that I had asked the Education Relations Commission to see how they were going to carry out their duties under the Act of this Legislature, which is to assist in arriving at an agreement between teachers and school boards. They are presently looking at ways that they can involve themselves to a higher degree in the dispute in Metropolitan Toronto. That presently is taking place. I’m waiting to hear back from them to see just what they are proposing at this particular point in time, given also the fact that they are conducting the official vote tomorrow. That, I underline, is the official vote that will decide whether the board’s offer is accepted or not.

Mr. Lewis: Oh yes, the crystal ball vote.

Hon. Mr. Wells: My friend, the hon. member, is asking me who should be involved at that particular time when we call the parties together. It may be that I would want to involve the Leader of the Opposition and myself at that meeting.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, with pleasure.

Mr. Bullbrook: Why doesn’t the minister invite Jean-Luc Pepin? He has been doing most of the work for the minister anyway.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk.

SERVICED LAND FOR HOUSING

Mr. Nixon: I have a question of the Minister of Housing. Frankly, I rather regret that he did not make a statement to the House today, having been present at the announcements in Ottawa yesterday.

Is the minister aware that Peter Martin, the executive coordinator of OHAP, has stated publicly that the serviced land production for new housing in Ontario is nearly one year behind schedule? Is he further aware -- and I’m sure he is -- that one of the aspects in the wage and price control announcement was that the federal people are urging the provinces to move more rapidly in the servicing of land? Would the minister not feel that it is incumbent upon him to make some statement, I hope an effective one, indicating that we are going to pick up the slack in the servicing of land -- which is, obviously, one of the more serious aspects in delaying the fulfillment of the housing commitments made by the minister’s predecessor?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Certainly I’m aware, as many are, that there is the problem of the necessary serviced land to provide housing in many municipalities. I can come here and make a statement, but I would much prefer that any statement that is made would be one that we can feel confident we will be able to carry out and make the programme work.

Mr. Reid: That is a brand new approach.

Mr. Roy: The minister has changed his mind before; five times on rent control.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The statement by Mr. Danson yesterday indicates that the federal government, of course, are going to put up extra now and make money available to municipalities for servicing. Certainly, I’m prepared to co-operate in any way I can to see that more money goes into that very necessary servicing of land throughout the province.

Mr. Nixon: A supplementary: Since, in fact, there were housing funds available to us over the last two years that were not fully expended, and since three years ago we had a new Ministry of Housing established, we have had a succession of new programmes announced --

Mr. Singer: And ministers.

Mr. Nixon: And new ministers. Since it seems the real hang-up in this is the availability of serviced land, wouldn’t the minister agree that that is one specific area where we have almost an exclusive provincial responsibility and one where we’ve got to perform better than we have in the past?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I think we would find an unanimous feeling in this Legislature that we can always do things better; we can always make an improvement. I would have to agree that, in the case of serviced land, that has to be one of the most important parts of developing a continuing housing programme, to get land serviced in the municipalities.

Mrs. Campbell: That is a change.

Mr. Speaker: I believe the member for Brantford wishes to ask a supplementary.

Mr. Makarchuk: In view of the fact that in some communities there is an adequate supply of serviced land, but it is being held by the developers in order to control the prices, would the minister move into these areas and ensure that this land is released and put into housing so that the prices can be brought down?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of any specific holdings such as those referred to that are serviced.

Mr. Makarchuk: I’d be prepared to give the minister the details.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Can I answer the question, and then the member can jump up and down? He has been here before, he knows the rules.

Mr. Foulds: He was in this House before the minister was; even before he was a Tory.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: If the hon. member will make the information available to me, I will be most glad to look into the situation. If we can get land released, we’ll get houses built on it. I hope the hon. member is also able to tell me that there are no delays being created by his own municipal council.

Mr. Singer: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Could the minister tell us what steps he and his colleagues are taking to impress upon reluctant and hesitant local councils that land should be serviced? Is the government prepared to take any action to bring councils to service land more quickly than is being done now?

Hon. Mr. Davis: The Liberal Party is opposed to that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I believe in local autonomy, and I know the hon. member does as well. Heavens, we know that.

Mr. Singer: Oh, of course I do, but what is the minister going to do about it?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We’ve heard all about that for 37 days.

Mr. Conway: Answer the question.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I also feel that the various municipalities should be convinced by us that they must play their role in the provision of housing. I was most interested to read in today’s Toronto Sun that the former member of this Legislature who is now a columnist, and was before, has become so enlightened in these matters since he left the New Democratic Party and became a columnist.

Mr. Singer: The minister still didn’t answer the question.

Mr. Samis: What was the question?

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, now that the minister has confirmed there is a one-year delay in the programme, could he explain how he could lose a full year in a programme that is only two years old, and give an explanation for the serious failure that is now revealed?

Mr. Lewis: You are lucky they didn’t lose both years.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I didn’t confirm there was a one-year delay; apparently someone in the ministry has suggested that. I’m not confirming that.

Mr. Singer: Are you denying it?

Mr. Cassidy: Are you denying it?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I don’t know whether there is a year’s delay or not.

Mr. Lawlor: You don’t know much about this legislation, do you?

MEETING WITH NEW YORK FINANCIERS

Mr. Nixon: I would like to ask the Premier if he might report to us the concerns expressed by the financial moguls in New York that made it necessary for him and the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) to go and have dinner with them to allay their fears and concerns about the financial status of this province.

Mr. Roy: Who paid for the dinner?

Mr. Cassidy: Did you take John White with you?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I must say it was lunch, not dinner, and the Treasurer and I --

Mr. Breithaupt: Did the Premier go to a 10-star hotel?

Mr. Reid: The Premier’s lunches are our dinners.

Hon. Mr. Davis: It was lunch.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I would only say to the members of the House that we were invited to visit with certain people in the financial community in New York where this province does borrow, along with Ontario Hydro on occasion, at which time we had an opportunity to set out some of the very positive accomplishments of the people of this province.

Mr. Roy: Did that create a problem?

Hon. Mr. Davis: It was a very helpful visit and one that I am sure will be beneficial.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary: Was one of the concerns expressed by those people at lunch that perhaps Ontario ought to cut back its spending spree that has been now in operation for four years; and that this has led the Treasurer to announce once again a programme of retrenchment?

Mr. Yakabuski: What about your election promises?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think “the people in New York” over the years obviously have been quite impressed with the ability of this province and of the government of this province. I think that is very obvious.

Mr. Nixon: We are paying them 10 per cent interest. Why shouldn’t they be?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think it is fair to state that people who are in the business today of lending capital funds are concerned about the economy generally, not just in Canada. I think part of it relates to a certain nervousness that we sensed when we were there. In fact it was that Friday afternoon when the teachers’ fund of all places, came to the rescue of the city of New York.

Mr. Foulds: Why “of all places”?

Hon. Mr. Davis: We were sitting there when the decision was made and I think it was 125 --

Mr. Nixon: We don’t have an independent fund. You have already spent the teachers’ money.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I told them how we did it here.

Mr. Nixon: No fooling around; just take it away from them.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I told them.

Mr. Lewis: No wonder they are dropping the rating.

Hon. Mr. Davis: But I sense, Mr. Speaker, as we all are concerned about the level of government expenditure, it was possible for us to point out that as a percentage of the gross provincial product, which I’m sure now has come through to the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk, we as a government are spending somewhat less than four years ago. I recognize it is always politically popular to emphasize the expenditure side of the government of this province and I really don’t want to repeat what the Treasurer said earlier. I just thank heaven, in terms of ratings and everything else, that we are still here and the member’s party is over there, because we would have no rating whatsoever if it had ever formed the government of this province.

Interjection.

Mr. Roy: You were talking about three-star.

Mr. Renwick: A question of the Premier: Did the Premier take the trouble to allay their fears and concerns about the New Democratic Party when he was there?

Mr. Lewis: Imagine our rating if we had been the government.

Mr. Eaton: A minus rating.

An hon. member: Zilch.

Mr. Lewis: British Columbia has a double-A, which is what Ontario is getting tomorrow.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Yes and listen, did the hon. member notice there is an election in British Columbia? Did he notice they called an election in that great province?

Mr. Lewis: I saw that.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The hon. member saw that and I bet it came as a total surprise. It had nothing to do at all with the Premier’s decision to have a freeze in that province. Not at all related.

Mr. Lewis: Not a thing.

An hon. member: The freeze ends at the end of the year.

Mr. Nixon: Or the Premier’s decision to freeze the gas prices.

An hon. member: Leadership!

[2:30]

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Let’s get back to the question period, questions and answers.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I don’t want the member for Riverdale to become upset, or his leader or anyone else on the other side of the House. I hate to inform him, but the subject of the New Democratic Party did not come up in our deliberations.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On a point of privilege.

Mr. Speaker: Heavens.

Mr. Lewis: I have a message from the Treasurer which says, contradictory to the Premier, that, “We tried to reassure them -- mainly the New York financial moguls -- that under Lewis the Ontario NDP were a very light pink.”

An hon. member: It gets darker all the time.

Mr. Lewis: “Whether they believed us, remains to be seen.”

Mr. Speaker: I think we should get back to a serious question period.

Mr. Lewis: The Treasurer is quite right, by the way. The Premier may relax.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: The Treasurer may have made that observation; I didn’t get into any discussion of the colour of the party opposite.

Mr. Speaker: We’re wasting valuable time here. The member for Yorkview.

LABOUR RELATIONS AMENDMENT AGT

Mr. Young: I have a question of the Minister of Labour, if I might. I wonder if I could ask the minister the status of Bill 111, 1975, an Act to amend the Labour Relations Act? I realize she may not be entirely clear on all these bills yet, but I would ask if she is planning to proclaim this Act in the near future and if part of the delay in the proclamation may have to do with the definition of dependent contractor, and whether or not there is a feeling that the Labour Relations Act should be further amended in order to redefine that phrase dependent contractor so that groups like the dump truck owners might be able to bargain more effectively with their employers?

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, while I thank my hon. colleague for his solicitude about my lack of preparation for this role, I can tell him that I am familiar with Bill 111. The delay in implementing that specific section of the Act was promised by my predecessor in order to allow those groups within the labour force who had some concern about that specific paragraph and that definition to make their concerns known to the ministry.

We are at the process of hearing those concerns. We have two more groups to meet; when that has been completed we shall make a decision about that section of the act and will announce to this House when it will be implemented.

Mr. Young: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: I want to congratulate the minister on her grasp of her ministry.

Mr. Speaker: Someone wished to ask a supplementary.

Mr. Good: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Just a supplementary? The member for Waterloo North.

Mr. Good: Does the minister see the proclamation of those sections dealing with dependent contractors as being in conflict with the task force that dealt with the whole dump truck industry in Ontario and the new legislation now before the House under amendments to the Traffic Act?

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, there is some question of this. I don’t see it as a true conflict at the moment, but the application of the Rapoport report will have to be made to this section of the Act and it will have to be considered in the light of the views of those who are concerned with this section of the Act.

CRIMINAL CODE AMENDMENT

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Attorney General. Could the Attorney General advise us about the progress he has made in tightening up, or having the federal authorities tighten up, the drinking and driving laws? I have reference to the speech he made the day he was sworn, which got headlines in the Toronto Star.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Firstly Mr. Speaker, I attended a federal-provincial meeting of Attorneys General a couple of weeks ago in Halifax and made representations to my federal counterpart with respect to a proposed amendment to the Criminal Code. The proposed amendment, with which the member is probably familiar, dealt with removing from the Criminal Code the power of a judge, in most instances it would be a trial judge, to make any order of prohibition arising as a result of a drinking and driving offence. I indicated to the Minister of Justice that in my view this was not in the best interest of controlling or reducing the very serious problem relating to drinking and driving on our provincial highways and requested that that amendment be changed and that trial judges be given the power to make driving prohibitions up to a period of a lifetime for the appropriate case.

Secondly, I’ve met with certain of my senior officials with respect to programmes that we hope to introduce in the Province of Ontario which will again, we hope, reduce the incidence of tragedy arising as a result of drinking and driving. I hope I will have more to announce to the House in the near future.

Mr. Singer: By way of supplementary, surely the Attorney General would agree with me that the first step he mentions isn’t going to tighten up the whole problem or tighten up punishment insofar as that is concerned? Secondly, would he care to take the members of the Legislature into his confidence and tell us the kind of thing he has been discussing with his officials because we’ve heard about this kind of thing from him and his predecessors for, lo, these last 20 years? And nothing happens.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I’ve had fairly lengthy discussions with my officials and I don’t think it would assist the House if I were to take the time of the House to relate these in details. Other than to state that -- and I’m not sure of the precise thrust of my friend’s question -- I would agree with him if he is suggesting that punitive measures by themselves are not sufficient. I think we must embark on a very serious and in-depth educational programme if we are going to make any significant progress in this area.

Mr. Singer: That isn’t quite what you said the day you were sworn in.

Mr. Williams: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Health. Yesterday in the House --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I don’t see the Minister of Health.

Mr. Cassidy: You may not get an answer anyway, so go on.

Mr. Williams: The minister is returning to his seat.

Mr. Speaker: All right, the member may proceed.

MUSTARD REPORT ON HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Williams: Yesterday in the House, I raised a question with the minister as to the status of the Mustard report dealing with delivery of health services within the province. He was kind enough to refer me to a manual entitled “Report, Reaction and Response” which I have now reviewed and as a consequence thereof it brings me to a further question. In the light of the very broad recommendations and very general nature set out in the summation of the report I am obliged to pursue the matter further in the form of a question to the minister --

Mr. Speaker: Would you ask the question please?

Mr. Williams: -- as to at what point of time and in what manner the minister intends to implement the recommendations in a more specific and precise way as set out in the general recommendations? In what form will there be a modification of programme based on the criticisms which arose out of the review of the Mustard report?

Mr. Sargent: You should rehearse these questions.

Mr. Good: Go and talk to him sometime.

Mr. Nixon: Okay, when is it, he says?

Mr. Cassidy: Yes or no?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, there were a whole series of recommendations in the report, as I’m sure the member knows.

Mr. Nixon: Around the bush.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Some of them would relate to, say, the role of the health unit, its structure and reporting mechanisms. We have health units in various forms around the province and it would be our goal --

Mr. Nixon: Tell us all about those.

Hon. F. S. Miller: -- to have them gradually affirm the district or regional board approach. I can’t set a timetable because currently that issue is being studied in Metropolitan Toronto, for one example.

Another recommendation was the rationalization of secondary care services and this is something that is progressing as quickly as we can do it. I would suggest that in this year of restraint it may progress more rapidly than it has in the past.

The third dealt with manpower problems in the province --

Mr. Roy: Sounds more like a statement now.

Hon. F. S. Miller: -- such as doctors’ supply and we’ve agreed to go on a voluntary method of distribution using incentives rather than legislation. There would be another dozen of these and I suspect, in all honesty, that during my discussion of the estimates next week these may come under further scrutiny. I’d welcome detailed questions from the member and other members at that time.

DREE GRANTS

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the provincial Treasurer. Having regard for the excellent financial position of the province, does the minister recall a commitment he made to the K-C five, a group of five communities -- Geraldton, Long Lac, Nakina, Schreiber and Terrace Bay -- where he would provide infrastructure grants through DREE Ontario so that they could provide the infrastructure services for the $250 million expansion under way by Kimberly-Clark? What is the time frame and when can we expect some action?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, I don’t know that I used the word commitment. That may be a little hit too strong.

Mr. Nixon: A political promise, not a commitment.

Mr. Singer: It was before the election.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: In that riding? The member must be kidding.

Mr. Nixon: The Tories had a candidate and they thought he was going to win; he came third.

Mr. Singer: Why did you go there?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, through you to the member for Lake Nipigon, I will review that matter and see where it does stand. We have a number of DREE situations which we are trying to sort out and I would hope to have something more up to date in the next 10 days or two weeks perhaps. We haven’t lost sight of it though.

CLOSING OF RCA PLANT

Mr. Sargent: A question of the Premier: Further to his commitment to honour the hundreds of millions of dollars in promises during the election campaign, does he recall his famous barbecue with Mr. Winkler, where he promised $500,000 to keep the RCA plant open and said no one would lose their jobs; there would be full employment? It closed today and 300 men are out of work. The Premier has reneged on $500,000. I would like to ask him: If Mr. Winkler was elected would he have reneged on the $500,000?

Mr. Yakabuski: Tell the truth.

Mr. Eaton: Let’s hear the whole story; that was in committee.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Just going by memory -- and I don’t recall the hon. member being at that barbecue; he certainly would have been welcome, but I don’t recall seeing him there -- my recollection is that --

Mr. Roy: I guess not. You would have been better off to invite him.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- Mr. Winkler made an announcement. I am not familiar with what happened to RCA today, and I think the question should be properly directed to the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Bennett), with great respect.

An hon. member: You made the promise.

An hon. member: We’ll spend an hour on it.

Mr. Nixon: It was the former Chairman of the Management Board who made the promise.

TORONTO TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

Mr. Reid: I have a question for the Premier. In his meeting later on this week with Mayor Crombie and others to discuss transportation problems in Toronto, is the Premier going to commit the Ontario government to paying any of the capital cost for a park-and-ride facility at Eglinton and at Lawrence?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I don’t know what other people I am meeting this week. I am meeting the mayor of the city of Toronto, that is correct.

Mr. Reid: A supplementary if I may: May I ask the Premier, is one of those articles for discussion the transportation system in Toronto and is he going to make any commitments on behalf of the government, particularly for parking facilities at the Eglinton and/or Lawrence ends of the Spadina arterial road?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, there is no question that I will be discussing certain transportation matters with the mayor, perhaps along with other matters. As far as any commitment is concerned as to, shall we say, off-street parking as it relates to rapid transit, this may be a matter that is raised. I can’t say specifically at this moment and I don’t know that there would be any discussion as to a specific location.

If the hon. member is suggesting that there should be provincial support for a particular facility at Eglinton and the Spadina corridor, I am delighted to have his observation.

YORK REGIONAL COURTHOUSE

Mr. Hodgson: A question of the Minister of Government Services.

Mr. Sargent: No!

Mr. Hodgson: At what stage are the plans at the present time with the architectural firm of Boigon and Armstrong as it --

Mr. Cassidy: And from behind as well.

Mrs. Campbell: When do we get out of the chaos we are in?

Mr. Hodgson: -- relates to the proposed courthouse and registry office in the region of York?

Hon. Mrs. Scrivener: This project, I believe, is at the design stage and the design is under consideration at the present time by the Ministry of the Attorney General.

Mr. Hodgson: A supplementary please.

Mr. Sargent: Sit over here!

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Hodgson: Are you relating to me -- that plans are not even at the architects yet? If not, are they at such a stage that the County of York Law Association --

Mrs. Campbell: If you can’t hook up a telephone you can’t answer that question.

Interjections.

Mr. Hodgson: I kept quiet when you were talking, Eddie.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: His seat is so precarious.

Mr. Hodgson: Are the plans at the stage now where the County of York Law Association could review them and have some input?

Mr. Good: No, they are long past that.

Hon. Mrs. Scrivener: I believe the plans are in the hands of the architects. They are at the design stage and they are at this point being reviewed by the Ministry of the Attorney General. I think that the local law association will be involved at a certain point but they are not at that point as of yet.

Mr. Sargent: You should have a coffee with the member and tell him about it.

[2:45]

CREDIT RULES FOR MARRIED WOMEN

Mrs. Sandeman: Is the minister aware of the different requirements made for married women when they go to get credit from a credit union or a bank as opposed to those made for married men? Could the minister tell me when he is going to bring in legislation to end discrimination in credit rules?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: Mr. Speaker, to the hon. member, I am certainly aware of some of the discriminatory aspects of credit granting practices on the part of certain institutions. As a matter of fact, I have just completed a set of guidelines which we are now putting out to the industry for comment. I hope to have an announcement to correct the situation before the end of November.

OTTAWA CORONER’S INQUEST

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General involving the tragedy last week in Ottawa and the full coroner’s inquest which is being called on this. Would the minister try to resolve the differences existing apparently between his chief coroner and the federal Solicitor General about the appearance of certain witnesses at this inquest? Is the minister in a position to guarantee the public in the Ottawa area that we will have a full and complete inquest with all necessary witnesses in attendance?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: The Solicitor General has assured us of his co-operation in the matter and I will do my best to see that a proper and complete inquest is carried out.

Mr. Roy: Would the minister please advise his chief coroner that when he issues an invitation to the federal Solicitor General, he does so personally and not through the press?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I am not so sure how that went, Mr. Speaker, but I will make some inquiries.

TORONTO AIRPORT NOISE LEVELS

Mr. Leluk: Mr. Speaker, a question for the Minister of Transportation and Communications: Has the minister had any meetings or discussions with the federal Minister of Transport, Mr. Lang, regarding what the federal ministry is doing at present or contemplating doing to reduce aircraft noise levels in the vicinity of Toronto international airport?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, Mr. Speaker. We do have a meeting planned. A definite date has not been set up yet but my staff and Mr. Lang’s staff are trying to arrange an appropriate date for a meeting which I expect will be probably -- certainly within the next month, I hope.

Mr. Leluk: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the residents in York West riding and other adjoining ridings in the vicinity of the airport are directly affected by these noise levels, would the minister give me his assurance that when he has his meeting with Mr. Lang he will raise this matter with him?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Certainly it will be one of the items we will be discussing.

Mr. Reid: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker, very quickly. Can the minister indicate if, with the cancelling of the Pickering project, the air traffic at Malton will increase in the next 10 years so the noise levels are also going to increase? Is this so?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think I could indicate what the aircraft movements at Toronto International Airport will be over the next 10 years off the top of my head like that.

Mr. Roy: No.

Mr. Reid: We don’t expect anything off the top of your head.

Mr. Roy: That statement is no surprise here.

Hon. Mr. Snow: There have been a great many studies done by the federal government. My ministry has not done any studies on aircraft movements at Malton; these are studies which have been carried on by the federal government.

Mr. Sargent: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please, we have to get on. No, there have been enough supplementaries. There are many members who wish to ask new questions. There are too many supplementaries and this is the reason many of the questions never get asked. I will call the member for Algoma, I think it was.

CENTRAL ALGOMA MEDICAL CENTRE

Mr. Wildman: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of Health: Does the visit of Dr. Copeman to Bruce Mines this week mean the government has any new proposals for staffing the Central Algoma Medical Centre or alleviating the very serious debt incurred by the construction of the centre at the encouragement of the ministry? Also, has he approached the federal government to request a review with a view to increasing its financial contribution to cover the labour on the project under the winter works programme?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I take exception to some of the wording in there; “at the encouragement of the ministry” is not really a fair choice of words. It’s very difficult sometimes to discourage people at the local level from spending a lot of money on similar health facilities. Dr. Copeman is visiting Bruce Mines this week. It’s a direct outcome of the meeting which the hon. member attended with the council, a meeting I promised when the cabinet visited Sault Ste. Marie just about a month ago. We investigated the problems of that community. We know there are two doctors in it; one is supported by us and one is not. The doctor who is supported by us, as the hon. member knows, is not yet earning his keep. Therefore, it would be sheer economic folly to support another one. The hon. member also knows that we increased the rental allowance to the community to help them pay their debt.

We are sending Dr. Copeman there in the specific hope that we’ll find somebody such as an optometrist willing to locate in that area and again assist the community in paying the rent on their building. But we don’t underwrite optometrists; in fact, we don’t have a programme for them up there. We simply encourage them to go to areas like that. Further, we have confirmed that the doctors may dispense in that area and therefore solve the problems in that general jurisdiction. I think we have done just about all we can.

The component for winter works has been confirmed at $36,123, and that is accurate. There is no further flexibility left; if anything, we erred on the generous side in working it out in the beginning and I can’t do anything else about it.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired. Might I remind the hon. members that a supplementary question is surely not necessary in every case? The Speaker doesn’t like to rule them out of order all of the time --

Mr. Sargent: Tell the boys at the top that first.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I think hon. members will agree with me that if we cut dawn on the number of supplementaries, we can get around to more questions. Let’s try that, please. Thank you.

Mrs. Campbell: it would help if some of the government members would consult the cabinet themselves.

Mr. Speaker: I’m talking about supplementaries on all sides of the House, not just one side.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Hon. Mr. Welch moved that commencing tomorrow, each Wednesday, with the exception of Wednesday, Nov. 12, will be reserved for meetings of committees, and that when the House adjourns on Friday, Nov. 7, it will stand adjourned until Wednesday, Nov. 12.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I’d just like to make a comment on that motion. To my knowledge, this province is the only jurisdiction involving the legislative process where the Legislature doesn’t sit on Wednesdays. The purpose of the motion is stated to relate to the sittings of committees, but in fact I think the real motive of the motion is to allow cabinet to sit on Wednesdays.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: No, there are other committees.

Mr. Roy: My respectful submission to this House and to the member moving the motion -- possibly I should make this suggestion to the Premier (Mr. Davis) would be that we explore the possibility of having the cabinet meeting either on a Monday or a Friday. I would suggest a Friday, because the House only sits for half a day in any event. It would make it easier for the out-of-town members who do not happen to sit on any particular committee at least to sit all week and then have that part of the week for their riding work, be it Friday or Monday. I would think it a more sensible approach, I say respectfully to this House and to the members, than to have the House broken up and not sitting on Wednesdays.

Mr. Cassidy: I’d like to make a comment much in the same vein, Mr. Speaker. The practical effect of having the House not sit on Wednesdays has been the following: the cabinet has been able to meet; and if it wanted to meet into the afternoon, it was able to without the trouble of having to come and meet the Legislature. Members within a 50- or 75-mile radius of Toronto have had a day in which they generally work within their constituencies. Members from farther out of town, who had long or difficult or expensive trips back home, found themselves kicking around here, manning the committees in certain cases if committees were meeting, and at other times just catching up on work and then having to take time away from the Legislature at the beginning or the end of the week in order to attend to constituency business.

Mr. Hodgson: They never missed you when you lived on the Island anyway.

Mr. Cassidy: It is a legitimate function of a member, I would add. It is perfectly legitimate for members to spend a certain amount of time meeting constituents. It is also legitimate for members to spend time meeting with people in their community who happen to keep office hours and who therefore happen to prefer to meet with members during the course of a business day rather than during the course of the evening or on the weekends. There is a kind of discrimination there between the members who live in or near Metro and people who live farther away.

The third practical thing that happened was that, apart from the private bills committee over the last couple of years, there has been no committee of this Legislature which has made effective use of those Wednesdays. The estimates committees in general did not meet on the Wednesdays but met only concurrently with the House. Other committees on certain occasions would do so. I think the select committee on company law used that opportunity. But the vast majority of the members of this House, apart from the members of the cabinet, were cot in fact engaged on Wednesdays in committee work.

I would point out as well, that the Camp commission report -- I think it was No. 4 -- suggested very specifically that the hours of sitting of the House should be reconsidered. It certainly doesn’t seem to make an awful lot of sense in the middle of the week when most people in most jobs are at the most intense period of activity that this House has just got a great big vacuum and nothing is happening.

As we know, Fridays have become a tag-end day which is not particularly useful, a day which is devoted to the Throne Speech debate, the budget debate and to minor legislation. Sometimes in the past two or three years the House leader hasn’t really had any business at all because he couldn’t find a minister to come in on that particular day. The amount of sitting time on that day wasn’t very great either -- only two hours as compared to between three and 5½ hours on other days.

I simply commend to the House the point that I think it is no longer the case that the convenience of the cabinet should rule the Legislature as a whole. If cabinet is incapable of completing its work between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. or 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, then let it find another day of the week in order to have an additional sitting. I think the matter of constituency work and the balance between that and the work of this Legislature should be recognized so that the many members who wish to give a certain amount of time to their constituencies and who happen to live outside of easy commuting range of Metro are not forced into the position that I and other members are in --

Hon. Mr. Handleman: How about Friday night and Saturday, the same as everybody else?

Mr. Cassidy: -- of having to steal time from the Legislature in order to attend to our legitimate riding work. I think this should be looked at over the Christmas recess.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Where have you been for the last 10 days?

Mr. Cassidy: I would suggest strongly to the House leader that he indicate now that this is a temporary kind of thing for six weeks only and that he will very seriously consider other alternatives in future.

Mr. Speaker: The House leader.

Hon. Mr. Welch: In view of the comments, I think we should perhaps summarize things very briefly. We are in a session of a new Parliament. There have been consultations, as the member for Kitchener (Mr. Breithaupt) and the member for Wentworth (Mr. Deans) will indicate. This doesn’t restrict the opportunity for any member of this House to comment, notwithstanding the fact that there has been some understanding with respect as to how we would order the business in order to get on with our job.

This motion is not being introduced for the convenience of the cabinet. The wording of this motion is very clear. There are three select committees, involving 33 members of this House, who have to find some time to discharge the responsibilities which this House gave them. In none of the three motions establishing those committees are they entitled to meet concurrently with the House.

Mr. Bullbrook: That can only be described as hogwash of the worst kind.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Welch: The point is that these people have to have this opportunity for this particular session to do so.

Mr. Bullbrook: You mislead the House as you always do in these things.

Hon. Mr. Welch: If the member for Sarnia and others would go to their caucuses and explain --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Welch: If the member for Sarnia ever aspired to leadership, he’d better get his wick a little longer. That is all I would say.

Mr. Bullbrook: You and your friends are playing games.

Hon. Mr. Welch: I would think, too, that under the circumstances it has not gone unnoticed that the Camp commission did make some recommendations with respect to the organization of the House. We’ve constituted a select committee to do this. We can perhaps approach it at that time once we have the benefit of the advice from the all-party select committee.

Mr. Bullbrook: In a platitudinous fashion I speak to the motion.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member who introduced the motion wound up the debate on this.

Interjections.

Mr. Bullbrook: No. Wait a minute. Absolutely not. On a point of order then.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. This has been the custom on second reading and motions such as this. I’m sorry that I did not recognize that the hon. member wished to speak. I will allow him to make a few remarks.

[3:00]

Mr. Bullbrook: Yes, right. I want to say this to you. I think most respectfully of your position. You’re quite right in connection with the custom. The custom also is for the Speaker to address the assemblage and invite others to speak before the person putting the motion is asked to wind up the debate I wasn’t asked to speak. I want to say this to you, without any misunderstanding, the government House leader gets up with his pious platitudes about saying that anybody can speak to this motion but we’ve had our arrangements made. We’ll abide by any arrangement made by our House leader, that’s understood, but let this also be understood.

Interjections.

Mr. Bullbrook: I want you to understand this, Mr. Speaker. It’s very important that you understand it because as I understood it when you took that job reluctantly a week ago your reluctance was because it’s a difficult job to protect the interests of all the members of this assembly. I want to say this to you. It’s got to be known. The government House leader was prepared to have the leader of the New Democratic Party and our House leader offer to his colleagues the ability to meet on Wednesdays -- think of this for a moment -- and join in Throne debate without any question period. I’m not prepared to sit in my place and accept the blatant statement that this type of rule, this type of involvement, had nothing to do with the cabinet. Of course, it has to do with the cabinet.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Just a minute. It is completely out of order.

Mr. Bullbrook: Let me say this to you. It’s for the facility of the cabinet; it exemplifies basically the problem this Premier has. It’s very similar to the problem another Prime Minister has -- he doesn’t understand the legislative process and its function in the government of this province. That’s basically it.

I wanted to rise to say this to you. I’m not going to accept that type of deflection, in effect, from what the true reason is. As my colleague from Ottawa Centre said, it’s for the convenience of the Premier of this province and his cabinet colleagues who really don’t like the legislative process; who really don’t like the question period.

Mr. Breithaupt: I must correct one impression which my colleague from Sarnia has left with the House.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Tell them the truth.

Mr. Breithaupt: That is, the suggestion with respect to the possibility of sittings which might convenience certain members to involve themselves in the Throne debate was made by me on the basis that we have had on several occasions in the past -- the occasional half-day --

Mr. Bullbrook: You still don’t want to sit.

Mr. Breithaupt: -- which would allow Wednesday sittings and give, I understand of course, convenience to the cabinet who had been meeting at that time.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Kitchener has the floor.

Mr. Breithaupt: As a result, Mr. Speaker, while that was a suggestion which has worked to some convenience in the House in the past, it was not proceeded with at this term. I must remind you, sir, that in that particular it was a suggestion I had made with the hopes that some members who might not otherwise be able to involve themselves in the Throne debate because of a lack of time might have that opportunity.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: Introduction of bills.

MINISTRY OF GOVERNMENT SERVICES AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Singer moved first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Ministry of Government Services Act, 1973.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the introduction of this bill is to provide for compulsory tendering for construction, renovation and repair work and in the purchase of commodities or real property. This is the third time I’ve introduced this bill as a private member’s bill. It is my sincere conviction that the letting of contracts must be done publicly and everyone interested allowed to have an equal chance to make a bid.

ONTARIO BILL OF RIGHTS ACT

Mr. Roy moved first reading of bill intituled, An Act to establish the Ontario Bill of Rights.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. Roy: I’ve introduced this bill before. The Canadian Bill of Rights was enacted by the Parliament of Canada in 1960. It provides for certain human rights and fundamental freedoms but it is limited in the field of federal jurisdiction, whereas this bill would have application to provincial legislation. In spite of the fact that we have moved positively toward human rights legislation, such as our new Ombudsman, I still feel that an Ontario Bill of Rights -- such as has been enacted in five or six other provinces -- is necessary in this province.

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS CODE AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. B. Newman moved first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. B. Newman: The purpose of this bill is prevent discrimination on the basis of a physical handicap, where the handicap does not interfere with performance of duties. It’s based directly on the legislation that has been operative now in the Province of Nova Scotia for well over a year.

Mr. Speaker: Before the orders of the day I beg to inform the House that pursuant to section 82 of the Legislative Assembly Act, I’ve been informed that the members of the Board of Internal Economy of this House are Messrs. Auld, Breithaupt, Deans, Morrow, Snow and Welch.

Hon. Mr. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, the members of the House have had placed on their desks a medallion. That medallion, I may say, is from a great area, a very historic part of Ontario known as Land of Lakes. It’s represented in this House by the member for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. McEwen) and the member for Prince Edward-Lennox. I wish to indicate to the members that the gift is from the association who visited these chambers this afternoon.

Mr. McEwen: I am honoured to join with the member for Prince Edward-Lennox in mentioning the Land of Lakes. I believe daring the last four years it was very seldom that the riding of Frontenac-Addington was mentioned; and I’m sure you --

Mr. Eaton: It was well represented until you came down here.

Mr. Yakabuski: How much money have you spent?

Mr. Singer: One by one you are going down.

Mr. Mancini: Look at all the cabinet material over there.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

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

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

[Applause]

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues are as enthused about my remarks when I have completed them.

Sir, I want to extend my congratulations to you on your re-election as Speaker. I have never been one who felt that we should have a permanent Speaker but the fact that you are here for a second term suits me. Your impartiality is respected on all sides and the fact that one of your political colleagues was a bit concerned about your decision during question period and almost interrupted the proceedings to bring that to your attention is an indication that if you are going to be unfair, you’re going to be unfair to both sides. I think that’s all right.

Also I am delighted that the Deputy Speaker has been selected from the ranks of the opposition and most specifically, that it happens to be the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Stokes). He is not in his place at this very moment, although he almost always is, in case an opportunity surfaces to speak for the great north. I think it’s an indication that when the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) was questioned about one of the political promises which had been made in that area, he said, “You must realize it wasn’t a political promise because we wouldn’t be wasting our effort or our money in that constituency” or words to that effect. We’re not really here to compliment the political prowess of the incumbent because these things change over the fullness of time, they tell me. I am very much convinced indeed that he will serve well and effectively and with fairness in such an important capacity as the Deputy Speaker and chairman of the committee of the whole.

Naturally, all of us are particularly interested in the remarks made by new members. Many members, before I sit down, are going to say, “Nixon is thrashing a bit of the old straw. We’ve heard his views on these matters before.” I was very pleased indeed to hear the member for Kingston and the Islands (Mr. Norton), who was selected by his leader to move the address in reply. I sent him a note indicating my congratulations because I felt that aside from some of the over-complimentary remarks that seem to be de rigueur when these circumstances come along, particularly with reference to the Premier of the day, his comments were very apropos and valuable for us all. We tend to get involved in the political convolutions of the provincial scene and it is quite useful when a new member coming into the House indicates some broader perspective as to the requirements of the people -- the taxpayers -- those who from time to time look at what happens in this House. I thought his remarks were valuable in that regard.

I listened to the speech of the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Jones) very carefully. Perhaps he was a little heavy on the support for his leader but, of course, there are so few people not in the cabinet that I suppose all the backbenchers, all eight or nine of them, are looking for some preferment. I was quite interested in his comments about his antecedents coming from a working family, as I think he described them, in Scarborough.

He used a phrase which is in common parlance. He was referring, I think it was, in criticism of the NDP, perhaps even the leader of the NDP who does not have a corner in speaking on behalf of -- and I use the member’s words -- the little men in this province.” Every time I hear the phrase I remember the comments made by the former member for Sudbury. He came second in this previous contest, Elmer Sopha, and he may yet find a seat here again.

[3:15]

Hon. Mr. Bennett: As leader?

Mr. Nixon: He would make an excellent leader of almost any party; there’s no doubt about that. Every time the phrase, “little man,” was used in this House he would get up on a point of order and call to the attention of everybody: “There are no little men.” I think perhaps it was advice that was good for us all. Certainly in the sight of God and in a democracy there are no little men. Actually when we see some of the wage settlements accomplished in recent weeks, we realize that these things have changed dramatically.

I was very glad to hear the views expressed by the mover and the seconder, and I want to offer my congratulations to them, but all of us, whether we are old or new members, must appreciate that this House faces more difficult problems than at any tithe since the Depression years of the 1930s. We can list them and they are in our minds always: The problems of housing, discussed briefly in the question period today; wage and price controls, which were the principal subject of the comments made by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Lewis) in his remarks yesterday and which I will be talking about as well today; the dislocation in our community and our economy of energy supply and pricing; and perhaps some more perennial problems but certainly in the long run just as important.

There are also the basic problems of quality and standards in education; the continuing tendency to centralize the decision-making powers of government, both here and in Ottawa; and, of course, the costs of government and the budgetary problems that all of us face as taxpayers -- responsibilities that all of us bear as members of this House but which surely are the main responsibility of the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) and the incumbent administration.

I don’t want to talk at length about the election but I must be frank and express my disappointment at the outcome, because here I sit -- stand at the present time -- leading the largest Liberal caucus elected since 1937; and while the quality of the membership has never been surpassed, still it puts us in third position in this House. This in no way restricts our opportunities to participate in the debate, and I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, of our commitment to full participation. I believe that we will be effective. I believe that we will show by our comments and our votes that we mean business on the basis of putting forward those matters raised in the election campaign and which we as Liberals hold as a body of principle which we must support, no matter what the consequences nor the problems associated with the political involvements in this regard.

I think I should point out to you, as I congratulate the members to my right --

Mr. Samis: Not too heavy on that word please.

An hon. member: Is the seat available?

Mr. Nixon: Do you want me to respond to that? Twice before in recent history the social democrats -- evidently they are in the process of changing their name again -- have had the special responsibility of being the official opposition. There are certain aspects of importance in this role; not only having the extra opportunities to toast Her Majesty, but also the emoluments of leadership and the special circumstances of having the opportunity to put amendments before other parties if they choose.

Twice before this has happened, as I say. The circumstance that I probably can remember personally better than any other was following the election of 1943 when under those circumstances the Liberal leader, who happened to be my father and was the Premier, came out of the election not having moved one step downward in the hierarchy but two steps downward; he found himself the leader of what the Premier will no doubt start calling a group, as soon as he thinks of it.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I have already.

Mr. Nixon: It was a group made up of only six or seven dauntless members. It was interesting as well that that was the last occasion in this House when the government of the day only had minority support. It lasted for two years, two sessions, and it was in fact on the Throne debate in the second session after the election that it was defeated by a vote of the Legislature. It is interesting to note -- I am not indicating that this is any prophecy but at least history has lessons for all of us, politicians and others -- that at the subsequent election the democratic socialists were more than decimated and returned with only a handful.

Mr. MacDonald: What about the Liberals in 1948?

Mr. Nixon: As a matter of fact, the leader himself didn’t make it. That was the beginning, of course, of the regime of Conservatism that has been so electorally successful now for well over 32 years.

George Drew was the Premier, and there was a change that he undertook which really was not in the best interests of any of us I would say -- and particularly not in the best interests of my friends and colleagues sitting crammed into the corner of the House. Before George Drew became Premier the arrangement of seating in this chamber was in a semi-circle. It was very possible and much easier, in my view, for any member to catch Mr. Speaker’s eye. I would think that, if anything, the debate was improved rather than stultified by having that arrangement. There was even room for a few extra seats, if it was necessary to provide them under those circumstances.

Mr. Drew, being a student of history himself, and feeling that the advantages of the British tradition should be brought, let’s say returned to this House, decided to have the alley as we see it here with the opposition separated from the government as it has been ever since. I would suggest that it would in no way interfere with an understanding of the democratic process if we had gone back to that semi-circular arrangement.

The other thing he did is just a matter of interest. His predecessor in the office left a good supply of stationery with the title “Office of the Premier.” Mr. Drew had that thrown out. I am told that it was replaced by stationery heavily embossed with “Office of the Prime Minister.” Well, at least the present incumbent set that straight as one of his first administrative and executive decisions when he came to office.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I used up the old stationery first.

Mr. Nixon: But I have a feeling that if he had to throw out the old George Drew remnants, that it wouldn’t worry these big spenders; nothing cheap about them.

Hon. Mr. Davis: There was still some of Mr. Drew’s paper left over.

Mr. Nixon: I don’t want to dwell on this, but of course we are looking --

Interjections.

Mr. Nixon: -- for some political comfort where we can find it. In the election of 1948 the same thing happened -- the democratic socialists were returned as the second party. But in the subsequent election that they were returned with, I think, only three members.

An hon. member: Two.

Mr. Nixon: Just two

Mr. MacDonald: And we are back again.

Mr. Nixon: They had the same strength as the Communist Party at that time. I wish that we, as Liberals, had something more to brag about under those circumstances, but there has been a shuffling back and forth.

I am sure that none of us can foresee the future, but I thought this background, under the present circumstances in which we find ourselves, would at least he of some assistance to me.

Mr. Laughren: We shall see.

Mr. Nixon: One of the interesting aspects of the last two elections, when I had the honour to lead the Liberal Party, was to listen to the spokesman from the third party, as it then was, talk about the popular vote. There was a certain satisfaction, sitting there as Leader of the Official Opposition, to say: “Well, you know, you won the votes but you didn’t win the seats.” I am now in a position where I want to talk about the popular vote.

I well remember and will never forget, of course, the events of election nights. I have had considerable training -- both as an active politician and as a supporter of the former member for Brant -- for election nights with almost all results, all except winning results. I drew some comfort, indeed, from the fact that the people of the province had turned in substantial numbers to the party which I lead, the Liberal Party. We found ourselves less than two per cent behind the government party, and 5.4 per cent in the popular vote ahead of the party on my right.

I hear a few groans up there, but it appears that 180,000 more people in the province voted for the Liberal Party than voted for the NDP. That is small comfort, but we did get that support.

Mr. MacDonald: How many of them were just negative votes?

Mr. Nixon: Even in the area of Toronto and district more people supported our party than the NDP. While I am prepared to congratulate the 14 members from Metro and as well the four members from Toronto and district --

Mr. Samis: There is something to work for.

Mr. Nixon: -- for their effort in support of my leadership and in support of the Liberal Party, I simply put that before you, Mr. Speaker, to say that I have some regrets about the outcome. But seats count; I don’t believe in the distributive ballot. The fact that Murray Gaunt got such an enormous majority, sort of dislocating this distribution, is a matter of some pride for him; and as well Hughie Edighoffer and many others who piled up these large majorities. We did substantially reinforce the basis of support and strength of the Liberal Party and I would predict to you, Mr. Speaker, that my successor is going to stand in this House before you as the leader of a government and this may, in fact, happen sooner than later.

Interjection.

Mr. Roy: We are not going to miss the member for Renfrew South (Mr. Yakabuski) at all.

Interjections.

Mr. Nixon: Even Renfrew South is vulnerable -- Renfrew South particularly.

Mr. Ruston: And Middlesex.

Mr. Nixon: Renfrew South particularly.

Mr. Riddell: It just about happened this time, didn’t it, Bob?

Mr. Nixon: I must certainly say to you, Mr. Speaker, that while I wish all new members well in their participation in the debate and look forward to hearing this debate as it proceeds, I am proud of those men and women who were elected in the support of Liberal principles and the Liberal platform; and I can assure you, sir, that we will actively participate in the important problems which face this Legislature, which I want to deal with in the time remaining to me.

The first matter I want to refer to is housing. The Minister of Housing (Mr. Rhodes) disappointed me a bit that he did not make a more formal statement today, particularly in response to the new statement of administrative policy from Mr. Danson, the federal minister. Certainly, it takes some time to examine the ramifications of his statements, but I was interested to hear the Minister of Housing indicate that he was at least cautiously optimistic that the initiative taken in Ottawa would be of some assistance in Ontario. The thing that concerned me is that even the rather inflated predictions of housing starts in the next year coming from Mr. Danson still leave, if the distribution of these housing starts is as it has been in the past, Ontario with only 80,000 starts, and this is substantially inadequate. The government has frequently said that anything less than 110,000 starts is not going to improve the crisis situation here and we must have some new initiatives taken at the provincial level here in the Province of Ontario.

The programme enunciated in Ottawa to provide some assistance with a goal of giving eight per cent mortgage money has been damned already by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Lewis). I felt at least the intention was one which is supportable on all sides and if, in fact, there isn’t enough federal strength to make that effective in this province, surely we can -- and it has been promised by the Premier (Mr. Davis) himself that we can -- undertake a programme here which, in conjunction with the federal programme, however inadequate it may be, will bring this to an effective reality in this province. One of the areas which I raised in the question period and which formed a part of the policy statement made by the Hon. Donald Macdonald -- that’s federal Don -- having to do with wage and price controls comes from page 19 of the highlights. It says:

“In particular, measures to increase the supply of serviced land, including municipal action to speed up approval of subdivisions and provision of services, will be discussed with the provinces.”

I felt a certain degree of naïveté must have gone into that statement, since the federal government I believe must take some strong initiatives to provide financing for housing but surely all of the initiative in freeing up land for servicing and leading municipalities to accept their undoubted responsibilities in this regard lies with us in this House, and the government in particular. I am very much concerned that the initiatives of this government have so far been seen to be seriously inadequate.

We have seen the statements from the Premier establishing a new Ministry of Housing -- was that three years ago or four years ago now? -- and in fact ever since that time, as if it were a signal, the housing starts in this province have taken a nose-dive, not just because we have a Minister of Housing but in spite of the fact that the government has made this special commitment. We have had a number of ministers now and we have had a number of programmes, most of them being seriously inadequate and unsuccessful.

[3:30]

Obviously we as a Legislature must support any government initiative that is going to expedite approvals of applications for subdivisions and so on. I feel that there is still a serious overlapping in the planning responsibility here. We passed a bill a couple of years ago, saying that the Treasurer was the chief planner -- in case there was any doubt. It was just a five-line bill. It goes back to the days of Charlie MacNaughton when he, as some of us do from time to time, used to participate in the debates with his fist shaking and his face red; he would get up and say, “I am the chief planner.” I think this reflects in the bill which makes the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) our chief planner.

In some respects this is unfortunate because he’s been around now quite a while; and he’s taken a good many initiatives in his former capacity as Minister of Municipal Affairs and in other areas of responsibility. I can remember him participating in the extravaganza out at the CNE grounds when the Toronto-centred region plan was first enunciated. What an extravaganza! The house was in darkness, filled with people brought in from all across the province -- the mayors, the reeves and all the Tories who wouldn’t otherwise have been elected, or asked rather. The house was in darkness, with the spotlight picking out the Premier himself as he came forward to make the statement that a great new planning initiative had been taken. You know, you get this feeling -- in South Dumfries we call it “déjà vu” -- that it has all happened before.

Hon. Mr. Davis: But would you point out how important that initiative was?

Mr. Nixon: I didn’t want to offend the member for Ottawa West (Mr. Morrow) by using French --

Interjections.

Mr. Nixon: But the same is true of -- what was John Robarts’ programme? The dynamic --

Mr. Bullbrook: Confederation for Tomorrow?

Mr. Nixon: No, no.

Mr. Singer: The Toronto-centred region?

Mr. Nixon: -- John Robarts had a programme that was similar to this, then the Toronto-centred region plan

Hon. Mr. Davis: It was TCR; they were both TCR.

Mr. Nixon: “Design for Development” is the phrase I was trying to raise. It was before the election of 1967, when the public relations experts had really fed it to the Hon. John Robarts. We had all sorts of programmes. Imagine the genius that came out with Home Ownership Made Easy. I can remember the Treasurer, when he used that at the time, he departed from his text to point out to any of us who might have missed it that that spelled HOME. I said: “My God, this is an election year for sure.” They had a programme called the Conservation of Wild Rivers. That was another good one.

Hon. Mr. Davis: We were a little worried about basic English.

Mr. Nixon: But Design for Development -- I can remember the Treasurer going around the province setting up these special groups of interested citizens, who met hour after hour to advise the government on planning in their own area.

Mr. Bullbrook: The member for Lambton (Mr. Henderson) used to go with him.

Mr. Nixon: I can remember when the Treasurer got up in the House and dismissed probably six years of hard work and millions of dollars of commitment of public funds with a stroke of his hand, saying: “That won’t work. We’re going to have a plan that will really do the job.” That was the Toronto-centred region plan. Well, that’s gone down the drain, Oh, yes it has.

All of the decisions that have been made about the Pickering airport, the North Pickering community; and the big sewer pipe, as it is called, that is going to be running down the east side of Metro -- all of those things flew directly in the face of the commitment made by the government in the Toronto-centred region plan.

During the interregnum when the member for Chatham-Kent was --

Mr. Breithaupt: In limbo.

Mr. Nixon: He was in limbo; he didn’t have his hands directly on the levers and wires of big government. During that time, a fellow named John White came out of the middle distance in London and spent a few months putting his mark on planning and development in this province. About a year ago now, he got up in the House and said: “We are going to have a land-use and development plan for the whole of the province.” He said, “It won’t be perfect [oh boy!] but I have instructed the officials in my department [and there are platoons of them] to put this all together and it will be before the House before the end of the fall session.”

That was in 1974. We never got the plan and John White isn’t here. We’re still coping with some of his decisions, however. It appears that as far as land-use planning is concerned we really haven’t got anything adequate as yet.

I would say there would be support on all sides for the concept of a land-use plan for the whole of Ontario, particularly predicated on the conservation of class 1 and 2 farm lands and the decentralization of growth from this major metropolitan urban centre. Unless we have this sort of a structure, we can never get to the point where we say to the municipal planning officials: “Go ahead. You have the power given to you from the Legislature to fulfil the general structured plan that is a plan for the whole of the province.”

Until we do that, there will always be the reference required to the nameless -- well faceless, though we talk to them on the telephone -- platoons of planners in the Ministry of Housing or in Treasury to which the members of the Legislature must take recourse when the delay goes on week after week and month after month.

John White tried to do one thing, and I give him credit for that since obviously he was concerned about these delays; he said it was going to be a priority for him to reduce the delay to 60 days or at most 90 days. He failed in that.

The other thing he tried to do was to get us into some direct contact with the platoons of planners in Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs. We got an embossed invitation one day to attend some kind of a tea party over in the new parliament buildings. We were there to meet the members of Treasury who would have a planning function and the ones that we would contact directly to assist us in relaying complaints from those municipal people and individuals back home.

I can remember walking into that tea party. They had the very largest room in the new parliament buildings. They had several tea tables set up -- as a matter of fact I think there were three bars available. I couldn’t get over the fact of the numbers of the staff in the planning departments and branches of Treasury, which is now shared with the Ministry of Housing. There were all of these people -- well educated I am sure -- who sought us out as individual members.

I remember one very charming lady, who is no longer employed by the government, saying: “Mr. Nixon, I’m glad to meet you. I am the planner for south Brant, Norfolk and east Oxford;” or something like that. I thought, my God! She’s a great girl, no doubt she has some degree from somewhere, but if that is the way planning is done no wonder there are these serious delays.

We’re simply going to have to put that aside. We’re going to have to have a plan for the province. Within that structure we’re going to have to give power to and have confidence in locally-elected people and the planning boards responsible to them, to make the decisions which are going to reduce the delays which this government has not been able to reduce, though they try their best.

I’m saying to you, Mr. Speaker, that there is no other way to do this, that we must have more confidence in those locally-elected people. Until we stop the centralization of this responsibility, we will not come to grips with the problem that has dogged not only this Premier (Mr. Davis) but his predecessor.

There is a solution that is a democratic one. Let us have a plan for the Province of Ontario in a broad structured way and let it be implemented at the local level.

I am very much concerned that this government, having been in office 32 years, has got its thinking somehow entrenched. It is not prepared to look at the alternatives that are available to it. They are defensive about the inadequate decisions and programmes that have been an embarrassment in the past and they cannot bring themselves to use the initiative that is obviously necessary if we’re going to do something about this continuing series of delays.

It is typical, for example -- and this is another emanation from the jurisdiction of John White -- that the concept was that rather than fool around with the present municipalities we will build new cities: The idea of John White was to go down into Haldimand and Norfolk counties and look out on those broad fields and say: “Here I will build me a city.” It’s almost frightening in its biblical overtones; but there wasn’t anybody in the cabinet, even the Premier, to stop him.

We went down there and bought two city sites. We’re not even talking about the Pickering fiasco; which was such a serious waste of money and a dislocation locally, there’s no doubt about that. The part I find almost incredible is that when it came to planning these new cities, John White appointed the present Minister of Government Services -- the member for St. David (Mrs. Scrivener); a Conservative member from the heart of downtown Toronto -- to go to Norfolk county and chair the planning committee. Members want to know why Jim Allan was beaten -- that’s why.

The other reason was the quality of the candidate we put forward who was nominated by the local regional council to sit on that planning committee and was turned down by the chairman. The chairman I had gone and consulted her master, the Treasurer or whoever it was, and came back and said, “No, we will not allow this sort of local input. We will consult with the chairman of the regional government of Haldimand-Norfolk.” Of course, he was appointed by the Tories down here in Toronto, fitting hand in glove with the requirements of the bureaucrats and the planners down here.

I’m telling you, Mr. Speaker, it’s got to come to an end. There has to be a decentralization of these controls. We’ve got to move toward some practical solutions if we’re going to have something better than what we have experienced in the last two years under the programmes approved by this government. The need is obvious.

In this province we are blessed with the resources to build homes. In fact, the unemployment levels in the resource industries are seriously high. Some of the sawmills are either shut down or working reduced hours. The plywood plants are the same. We have these resources. We have high levels of unemployment, not only there but in the construction trades in general. We’ve got the need; we’ve got the raw materials; we’ve got the people to do the building and we’ve got at least two levels of government thrashing around with programmes, some snore effective than others.

Surely we can solve the problem. We can build more than 100,000 dwellings in a year in this province and we must set our sights even higher than that. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that one of the keys to the bottleneck where our responsibility impinges is to decentralize these decision-making powers and have confidence in locally-elected councils.

I want to say something about the decentralization programme which we did repeatedly talk about in the election campaign. We feel that the emphasis must come on local authority. The Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) has talked about deconditionalizing grants but still has not done sufficient in that regard. He refers to his commitment made in Calgary -- was it the Calgary commitment or the Edmonton commitment? It’s a sort of catch word -- instead of lacing into the federal government. It’s almost like Pavlov’s dogs. All he has to do is talk about the Edmonton commitment and the municipal officials are supposed to nod and say, “That’s right, the villains are federal villains.”

I don’t believe that is so. I believe it is time the Treasurer made a commitment that the municipalities will share in a specific part of the income tax revenues we get as a matter of right and by agreement from the government of Canada. The money is collected without strings attached and is payable to this jurisdiction.

I believe the money should be passed on in part, as a part which is specific to a commitment, rather than leaving the municipal people at the mercies and the political whims of the Treasurer who from time to time says, “No more money unless it comes from Ottawa.” Or, if the spirit moves him and an election is imminent, he says, “We will break that rule but just under certain circumstances and just for certain areas which follow our leadership into regional government” for example; or it’s for “Regional governments which are experiencing budgetary problems.”

We believe there has to be a sharing of this particular resource which grows as the economy of the nation grows and, I suppose, as inflation expands. This is what we believe is the basis of decentralizing the authorities of government.

The government, instead of doing it that way, has caught some kind of disease whereby it feels compelled to set up so-called regional offices across this province. The Attorney General has eight regional offices; Correctional Services has four; Education has nine; Environment has five; Natural Resources has eight. Of course conservation authorities have their own overlapping responsibilities.

[3:45]

Housing has regional offices set up on three bases. They have regional offices for community planning; regional offices on another basis for subdivision control; regional offices on another basis for assisted housing programmes.

I suppose it would be too simple for the government to say: “All right, we are going to have offices out of Queen’s Park, closer to the community. We are going to establish regional boundaries which are going to be identical or nearly identical right across the province.” But no, that is not the way it has happened. We have the overlapping boundaries and the confusion which must be a continuing problem for people at the municipal level in dealing with government.

One of the things that concerns me is that even when they do contact the regional offices, so-called, if it is a decision of any importance at all it has to be referred to Queen’s Park anyway.

I personally believe that kind of regionalization is a snare and a delusion. It is simply a waste of money. Those regional offices for education cost $11 million to service --

Mr. Cassidy: You’re sure?

An hon. member: You’re certain of those figures?

Mr. Nixon: -- and in my opinion they have no useful function at all. We, as a government or as taxpayers, could save close to $50 million if we rationalized this regional procedure and in fact put the responsibility at the community level and withdrew the regional offices right across the board.

We believe as a party that this would serve democracy. It would emphasize the responsibility of the local community and, of course, it would save us money. And we are very much concerned with saving money. Even the Treasurer talks about it from time to time.

According to his recent statement his projection for the deficit -- or the net cash requirement I think he is calling it this year -- is $ 1.912 billion. One of his predecessors -- we’ve talked about him; Jim Allan, the former member for Haldimand-Norfolk when he was Treasurer didn’t like to use the word “deficit” either. He talked about a cash shortfall. Whatever it is, it is money we must extract from the economy of this community in one way or another.

It was interesting to talk about the teachers’ superannuation fund in New York saving that city from bankruptcy. We don’t have that alternative here because we have already sucked these funds dry --

Hon. Mr. Davis: With a slight distinction. They don’t make the same contribution over there either.

Mr. Nixon: -- transferred the funds from the teachers’ pension and the public service pension and also the Canada Pension Plan. All that money is used just as if it is revenue to the Treasurer, and there is no thought that the beneficiaries should have anything to say whatsoever about that, and, of course, we get that money at a very favourable rate of interest. Oh, yes, a very favourable rate of interest. Just over eight per cent -- what is it?

An hon. member: Eight and a quarter, I believe.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Currently?

Mr. Singer: What is the current rate?

Mr. Nixon: I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that it was just a year ago that the Treasurer himself indicated the access to these funds was a substantial monetary advantage to the financing of the programmes of this government.

I simply point out that we have used those funds, using the power that the government has extracted from the Legislature, as if they were general revenue funds.

I think it is very misleading indeed when the Treasurer simply says, “We have no deficits associated with that money.” We’ve got to pay it back and his friends that he has lunch with in New York are concerned about it as well.

I believe that triple-A rating is a holdover from old Charlie MacNaughton and John Robarts. We used to kid them. We used to call him “white-lipped and trembling,” because Mr. MacNaughton used to get up and say, “We face a fiscal nightmare unless something is done to bring the expenditures of this province under control.” He’s gone to sort of a Senate of the province; he’s chairman of the Racing Commission and maybe he’s not worried about it much anymore. But it seems to me there is nobody on the government side worried or concerned about those matters.

The deficit -- the net cash requirement -- is $1.912 billion and I would predict, and I think even the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) is even prepared to predict that this year when the accounts are all in the net cash requirement will be $2 billion. For all of his unctuous statements about cutting government costs, I predict we will have at least that large a net cash requirement next year and it will be in excess of $2 billion. Of all the posturing about saving money, the statement made by the Chairman of the Management Board (Mr. Auld) -- who is just returning to his office to sign important papers and otherwise rest --

Hon. Mr. Davis: He is meeting a delegation from Sarnia.

Mr. Bullbrook: They won’t get very far with Lorne.

Mr. Singer: Tell us exactly how many contract people there are in government employment.

Mr. Nixon: -- made much of the fact that our civil service complement has been reduced by 1,500. I defy anybody in this province to detect any pressures that have come on the community because of the reduction of this complement. Nobody even noticed that those people had gone away. So much for the comments about saving money and, you know, “We’re going to cut the expenditure from government without interfering with the high quality of our government programmes.” Of course they’re not going to interfere with the quality of the government programmes because the money they’re cutting out is pure fat -- unnecessary in the first place. We have been treated on at least three occasions to statements by the Treasurer and his predecessor about how great and brave new retrenchment programmes will be undertaken to cut government costs. They make these great statements and the sycophantic editors of the Globe & Mail say, “Isn’t this great?” and “Isn’t it too bad that Ottawa doesn’t do the same thing?” when in fact it just doesn’t make any difference to the quality of the programmes.

Hon. Mr. Davis: You borrowed that word from Stephen!.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, but he pronounced it correctly.

Mr. Nixon: I didn’t mean to offend the Sun in any way.

Mr. Lewis: No, no, no.

Mr. Nixon: Where’s your lunch, Clare? I thought you usually had your lunch when you came in here.

Mr. Lewis: My goodness, this is a nasty day.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: He took his ugly pills.

Mr. Nixon: Anyway, Mr. Speaker, if I may continue, the Treasurer has made much of his commitment to cutting government costs, and yet in the mini-budget, just before the election, he announced that he was going to reduce the sales tax by two per cent, that he was giving a home ownership grant of what amounted to $1,500, that he was taking the tax off automobiles -- by the way, I bought a car for myself a few days ago, and it is nice to buy it without the tax --

Hon. W. Newman: Isn’t that a conflict of interest?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Got the tax rebate yet?

Mr. Nixon: I haven’t had the cheque yet, and unless they settle the postal strike I’m going to go over to the Treasury and pick it up.

Mr. Bullbrook: Lorne just sold his car. He has a chauffeur. He resides in Petrolia.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Why not? Better than Sarnia.

Mr. Nixon: It is so interesting to see a small note here, in the Quarterly Report of Ontario Finances, dated Sept. 30, and I quote from the third paragraph: “The greater than anticipated success of the government’s economic initiatives, such as homebuyers’ grants and car rebates, has also increased the deficit.” These initiatives were simply electioneering. If the government had wanted to do something to stimulate the automobile industry it should have taken place a year ago, when the great layoffs in Windsor and other areas were taking place, but no, it had to wait until that economy was, in fact, beginning to recover before it took the tax off. We as Liberals believe we should not have sales tax as our principal source of provincial revenue and we think the sales tax should stay at five per cent rather than automatically go back to seven per cent.

For the Treasurer to talk about these economic initiatives, it’s interesting to note that they have cost us $423 million at last count and no significant cutback in government expenditures has taken place. We still have an inflated cabinet, we still have the policy secretaries, and one of them is here today. Really it’s like an appointment to the Senate. I don’t know what the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development (Mr. Irvine) is doing. I’m glad to see him here but I don’t believe his services are, in fact, necessary in that particular capacity. The cabinet would have surely been the place to start saving money.

Mr. Roy: His contribution has always been limited, you know.

Mr. Nixon: We have seen the example of the government, under Bill 100, hiring a fact-finder, a mediator, at $500 a day and now ignoring those recommendations completely. There has just been no commitment at all to some sort of a rational control of expenditures.

I was interested to hear the Premier (Mr. Davis) the other day in response to a question from my colleague and good friend, the member for Grey-Bruce (Mr. Sargent) who asked about the fulfilment of election promises. The Premier can think of only two -- one was a programme to subsidize mortgage interests and the other was to assist the elderly. Later he said, “Oh, yes, we promised to buy the grape crop, too.”

We’ve been trying to keep track of these things because during the election campaign we -- or I, as leader, -- would go into a constituency and they would say, “The government is going to build a new arena down here. If you are elected, would you build it, too?” I was really amazed that a government so concerned with the cost of its programmes would go through the province, having already made a special political commitment of $400 million in vote buying, and still feel it had to distribute this kind of electoral largesse.

The list I have is 55 promises of gifts banded out by the Premier and the members of the government. One of them was raised today. It was a commitment, a loan, to Kroehler to purchase RCA at Owen Sound. It was a commitment for $500,000 --

Hon. Mr. Bennett: It was a loan.

Mr. Nixon: -- made in Aug. 28 by Mr. Winkler, the former member for the area, who was Chairman of the Management Board. For the Premier to get up in his place and imply that unless he personally made the promise it doesn’t count is the same kind of answer we got yesterday when I pointed out to him that the election expenses commission had written him a letter saying that the actions of his government were in contravention of the intention of the Election Expenses Act. He said, “That’s just an opinion of one person.” It was the opinion of the election expenses commission. It really is incredible that the Premier can get away with that sort of statement in this House. It really is incredible. I want to read some of these promises but I won’t read them all.

Mr. Singer: Read them all.

Mr. Nixon: Maybe I should.

Loans to developers of low-income housing, spokesman Donald Irvine, Aug. 11, $47.5 million.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Done.

Mr. Roy: Does that still apply?

Mr. Nixon: Prince Edward Region Conservation Authority, promised by J. Taylor, $3,000. He didn’t think he was in so much trouble. Eighty double-decker GO coaches promised by John Rhodes, approximately $25 million, promised Aug. 11.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It’s done.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: It’s done.

Mr. Nixon: It’s not done. As a matter of fact it is not done.

Interjection.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We are still waiting for Mr. Trudeau’s promise of 1974 or 1972 was it?

An hon member: He’ll weasel out of it.

Mr. Nixon: It may be but meanwhile Mr. Godfrey, the chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, is on his way back from Amsterdam or Vienna or somewhere where he was looking at other light rail facilities rather than using the initiatives of the government of Ontario.

Here’s one I hope the Treasurer can say “done” for. Westminster Ponds Park in London, promised by Gord Walker, then MPP; $1.25 million, promised Aug. 13. Actually it was promised before the last election --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s been reduced.

Mr. Nixon: -- but he was elected and they didn’t feel they had to fulfil it. This time he was defeated.

Mr. Singer: They don’t have to fulfil it now.

Mr. Nixon: They probably will feel they can renege on that, too. Is that one done? You haven’t done that yet?

Interjection.

Mr. Nixon: Here is an interesting one. An OHM loan in Sarnia, promised by L. Henderson, MPP; $3 million promised Aug. 15. That was in Sarnia.

Mr. Singer: Yes, yes.

Mr. Roy: Very good, Lorne.

Mr. Nixon: And another one on OHAP grants in Sarnia. They were really out to get that riding. Promised by L. Henderson, $600 for each low-income home; $500 for each middle-income home; $450 for each above-average home, on Aug. 15. Is that what you are supposed to do? Is that really what you do as Minister without Portfolio? Are you in charge?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: I did those things as a private member.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: The leader of the Liberal Party will continue.

Mr. Nixon: Maybe the Minister without Portfolio is in charge of fulfilling election promises.

Mr. Foulds: Lorne, is that your first ministerial statement?

Mr. Cassidy: What do you do, Lorne?

Mr. Nixon: Otherwise he has become known as the minister for patronage. I’m not sure that is fair because since he has been in the cabinet we haven’t heard a damn thing from him.

Hon. Mr. Henderson: You haven’t been around much.

[4:00]

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I want to go on with this list.

Cobourg senior citizens’ housing was promised by Russell Rowe at a cost of $1,195,000 on Aug. 19 --

Mr. Singer: Oh yes --

Mr. Nixon: Buses for the handicapped were promised by Mel Lastman at a cost of $45,000 on Aug. 20 --

Mr. Singer: Remember him? Whatever happened to him?

Mr. Roy: He was a bad boy.

Mr. Nixon: The Cape Croker Indians were going to get $5,000 from Eric Winkler, but his promises don’t count any more, the Premier said.

Mr. Cassidy: They never did.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: That was promised long ago.

Mr. Nixon: That was promised Aug. 20.

A study of wood waste as fuel was promised in Hearst by Dennis Timbrell.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: They got it.

Mr. Nixon: There was no cost there. That was promised on Aug. 20.

Mr. Singer: That was the one they got, yes.

Mr. Good: That didn’t cost anything.

Mr. Nixon: A sports field in Napanee, valued at $14,000, was promised by Jim Taylor on Aug. 25.

Ontario Career Action -- 1,000 student jobs were promised by the Premier on Aug. 26.

A trauma centre was promised by the Premier on Aug. 26; no cost involved.

Mr. Foulds: That’s the Legislature.

Mr. Roy: That’s for his own members.

Mr. Nixon: A community centre in Durham was promised by Mr. Davis for $350,000. That’s in Eric’s former riding. They were really worried there and with good reason they promised all this.

Hon. Mr. Snow: None of those are in Oakville. Have you got any for Oakville?

Mr. Nixon: I have already referred to the Middlesex courthouse, promised by Mr. Stewart and Mr. White on Sept. 1; $2.7 million.

Georgian College in Owen Sound was promised $900,000 by a chap named Harron, the Progressive Conservative candidate, on Sept. 2.

Interjection.

Mr. Nixon: A community centre in Atikokan was promised by the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch), $83,075, on Sept. 2.

Interjections.

Mr. Nixon: A new government building in Dryden; a new government building in Huntsville -- oh, the list is very long. Homes for the aged in Hawkesbury; a sports complex in Hawkesbury; a community centre in Rousseau; hospital expansion in Tillsonburg.

An institute of occupational health -- the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Lewis) would be interested in that.

Mr. Laughren: Do you think we will get it?

Mr. Nixon: An institute of occupational health was promised by the Premier on Sept. 6.

A tax rebate for seasonal farm workers, I say to the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. W. Newman), was promised by the Premier on Sept. 9; it was $150 per worker.

A Centre des Jeunes --

Mr. Roy: Was that in Ottawa?

Mr. Nixon: In Sudbury, not in Ottawa -- was promised by Mr. Welch -- $58,000 on Sept. 9.

Mr. Roy: No promises in my riding.

Mr. Nixon: Historic Timbertown was promised in Renfrew by Mr. Bennett -- $85,500.

Mr. Singer: That didn’t help either.

Mr. Nixon: A sports arena at Belle River -- $525,000.

Mr. Ruston: Oh yes! Right on.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Listen, do you want us to take back the money from Belie River?

Mr. Ruston: Oh no.

Mr. Nixon: I thought the Premier would be concerned and just so he won’t miss any of these promises, I would ask the page to take him this copy of the promises made by himself and his colleagues. We have retained a copy and we will be asking from time to time how the government is progressing, not only with fulfilling the promises but finding the money in this year of retrenchment; in this year when the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) says we are cutting back; in this year when we receive in the mail, all of us as members, a publication of the Ministry of Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs entitled, “Insight.” It shows a picture of the smiling Treasurer.

Mr. Roy: Oh, funny!

Mr. Nixon: It says, “Photos tell the story: A picture is worth 10,000 words, as the Chinese proverb suggests, and these photographs sum up election results for the two TEIGA cabinet ministers. Mr. McKeough won his largest plurality since entering provincial politics in 1963 -- ”

Mr. Singer: All the way up to 2,000.

Mr. Bullbrook: They love you, Darcy.

Mr. Nixon: “A total of 61.7 per cent of the 37,786 eligible voters in Chatham-Kent voted Sept 18. -- ”

Mr. Ruston: Small turnout.

Mr. Nixon: “Mr. McKeough received 10,146 votes, compared to 7,347 for Liberal Jim Cooke.”

An hon. member: Some plurality!

Mr. Nixon: If the Chatham-Kent Tory Association, or even the Liberal Association, wanted to put that up, I think it is great. We wouldn’t put it in blue, which evidently is the TEIGA colour --

Hon. J. R. Smith: True blue.

Mr. Nixon: -- but the taxpayers are paying for this baloney. When we open this up -- they are always looking for fillers --

Mr. Bullbrook: They are all the same.

Mr. Nixon: “What do you remember about the 1975 budget?” asks Hal Tennant, who no doubt is paid a substantial amount of money. He is a very able person; I thought they were very lucky to get his services, yet he spends his time making up quizzes.

“In April, budgetary expenditures proposed for the year amounted to -- almost $8 billion; slightly more than $9.3 billion; almost $10.2 billion; $12 billion; or none of the above?”

Mr. Breithaupt: Or all of the above.

Mr. Nixon: That’s right. It says in question No. 4:

“According to the Treasurer, the Ontario civil service increased 3.2 per cent since 1972, while the federal civil service grew by -- five per cent; 12 per cent; 19 per cent; 24 per cent?”

Well, well. It says:

“By announcing that a certain federal reduction in excise tax would be passed on to consumers, the mini-budget provided at least a small measure of joy for beer drinkers, wine drinkers, car buyers or racetrack betters.”

Interjection.

Mr. Nixon: This is just most fatuous waste of public money. If the Treasurer wants to save money in the budget, he is going to have to start thinking in terms of cutting out this sort of thing, as well as unctuously saying: “Why doesn’t the federal government do as we do?”

The Treasurer is just asking for it. He is riding for a fall. This government has got so much fat in its expenditures -- and I won’t refer to anything else other than that -- but it has so much fat in its expenditures and its programmes that it could retrench by 20 per cent and nobody would ever know the difference.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, just on a point of order and information -- and I will be very non-provocative. The leader of the Liberal Party sent me a list; and if it is anything like some of the research that he has done, there are probably some items missing. I will try to fill it in, but I wonder if he would mark on this list those items that he feels should be totally eliminated from any consideration.

Mr. Nixon: As usual, Mr. Speaker, the Premier doesn’t want to be provocative, but as a matter of fact I would tell him --

Hon. Mr. Davis: We will get into his promises later.

Mr. Nixon: -- so that his platoons of researchers are not going to waste their time unduly, that the list was as complete as we could get it up to about five days before the election. That’s just when the Premier got desperate -- so God knows what was promised in those five days.

Interjection.

Mr. Nixon: Actually, we are going to be following up on the commitments made. I would think that this government is going to have to concern itself very deeply with them.

I want to talk as well about a situation that concerns us very deeply -- wage and price controls. I felt that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Lewis) dealt very effectively with it in his remarks yesterday. I agreed with a good many of the things that he said -- that the government is selective as far as assuming responsibilities for certain areas goes and leaving the rest to the federal authorities. But I am very glad indeed that they did not leave the responsibility for energy costs anywhere but right in this House, because we must deal with it here.

We are the biggest consumers, and the stated federal policy -- and it comes from the statement of Mr. Donald Macdonald, the Minister of Finance -- is to allow the price of energy to continue to rise in a series of orderly steps. If their commitment is that the price of energy rises to the world price, then certainly I don’t accept that and I would hope that nobody in this House accepts that.

We believe very strongly that there has not been sufficient provincial or federal leadership in this matter, because we in this province are not devoid of energy resources. For us to be under the requirements that our costs are dictated outside of this province, particularly in Alberta, is unacceptable to us.

British Columbia has resources in natural gas and Saskatchewan has resources in oil and gas. We have resources in uranium and water power -- and certainly uranium in the long run may be more valuable than any other energy resources. The Province of Quebec, in the development of hydro resources at James Bay and elsewhere, has some of the largest developments in the world and already has surplus power. In Nova Scotia there are coal and water power resources. Newfoundland has Churchill Falls, which will be one of the largest water resources in the world when it is fully developed.

Surely we can be self-sufficient in our energy utilization and have programmes for conservation that will be effective. Surely the thrust on this province should be for a national policy of sharing these resources. We must be ready to put our uranium resources on the line. In fact they already are, since they come on a shared basis of control with the government of Canada.

I want to say that we believe the government should have accepted and must in the future accept, a substantially lower increase for the cost of electrical energy than has been demanded by Ontario Hydro and approved by the Ontario Energy Board. The representatives of my party will make that position clear when it comes to the meetings of the energy committee. My point is this: Where it suits the government, it keeps the control of costs and prices within its own hands, using the powers of this Legislature.

The same is true for rents. It was indicated in the federal statement that all provinces would be asked to impose some sort of rent control. I’m very glad indeed that the policy of the government has been maintained and that there will be rent review associated with this. That leaves a substantial area of provincial responsibility which we and the NDP believe should still come under the direction and control of the government of Ontario utilizing the power and authority of this House.

Specifically, it deals with the employees of this government and agencies of this government. It deals with professional incomes and it deals with the teachers. The argument is put forward rather strongly and with some effect by the Treasurer that when we talk about a provincial implementation of a control procedure somehow or other we’re taking a soft stand in this regard. Even if that were so -- and I say to you strongly and without equivocation it is not so -- the Prime Minister of Canada has indicated that wherever salaries go beyond those guidelines it will be taxed from the recipient by means of a surtax procedure. In other words, the final control still lies with the income taxing powers of the government of Canada.

This is surely only a side issue. We are a Legislature which must exert its responsibilities in conjunction with and parallel to the statements made by the spokesman for the government of Canada in imposing wage and price controls.

The Treasurer has indicated that I am talking about letting teachers and civil servants come to the head of the line. I am talking about no special favouritism but a strong and even-handed application of the laws of Canada which allow obvious variations in the decisions of the wage and price review board. It is clear from every statement which has come out of Ottawa that there will be and there will be expected to be legal variations concerned with the timing of the last contract, historical relationships and, of course, the make-op requirements which are obviously a part of a fair application of any kind of wage and price controls.

We believe the 18-month delay the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) referred to concerns those who should not be a part of these negotiations. We believe we are heading for a number of weeks of extremely troublesome labour relations in this province. I heard David Archer, the president of the Federation of Labour, say he is prepared to go to jail and he advised other labour leaders to accept his lead in this regard if they feel they are being treated unfairly by the manifestations and orders of federal regulations.

It’s interesting to note that the Ontario civil servants’ organization has just received full ratification and involvement under the aegis of the Ontario Federation of Labour. Those people are the employees of this government. Their labour leader has indicated clearly that he is prepared -- and he suggests that they should be prepared -- to go to jail rather than accept anything they feel or they believe to be unfair in the imposition of these regulations.

This must surely have an impact on our thinking. David Archer’s been around a long time and he is not given to irresponsible statements. What I gathered from his comment is that the Federation of Labour is going to take a strong and independent stand and that will include the employees of this province.

We know what happened a year ago when we were dealing with the employees of Ontario. For us to face a repeat of that situation in which the government can only say, “We can do nothing. This is in the hands of the government in Ottawa” is unacceptable and, in my view, unconscionable.

[4:15]

The second instance is even more emergent; that the secondary school teachers of this metropolitan area will, most reasonable people predict, be on strike beginning a week from tomorrow. Sure, we hope that it won’t be so. The Minister of Education has said that hope springs eternal. But under the circumstances as they presently are, there will be a strike.

The only way that strike will come to a conclusion, I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, is by the authority of this House, perhaps a month from now, maybe six weeks from now. I say to you. Mr. Speaker, that it is unconscionable and impossible that we be asked to use the authority of this House to put the teachers back in the classrooms after the elapse of some time if, in fact, we have abdicated completely our responsibility to assist at least --

Mr. Bullbrook: Right. Think of it.

Mr. Nixon: -- in the negotiations and the settlement which causes the strike in the first place. I hope that the Premier does not believe that this is some sort of a political posture. We are prepared to say -- and also listen to his non-provocative interjections. We are prepared to say that the --

Hon. Mr. Davis: I haven’t been provocative all day.

Mr. Nixon: From time to time you are.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Oh yes. Usually with provocation.

Mr. Nixon: We have heard the Premier say that in no way is it a political reaction of the government to say that as far as all the teachers are concerned, all the doctors, all the public servants, that the government in Ottawa, or some board will look after it. Obviously it is a political godsend for a government that faces an acrimonious lengthy strike of secondary school teachers in the capital city -- not way off in Windsor or up in Thunder Bay, where they could cope with it with equanimity and let it go on and on you know. What a lovely thing to say; “That’s got nothing to do with us.”

Then with our civil servants; and you know what has happened over the last two years. They have strong, militant leadership and the former Chairman of the Management Board knows what that is; he dealt with them last year. Isn’t it beautiful to say: “We would like to do something but we can do nothing. You are in the hands of the government in Ottawa.”

The doctors have stated without equivocation that they are demanding a 40 to 50 per cent increase. Now we could deal with that in this Legislature -- not in the back rooms of the Minister of Health’s office, but by a committee of the Legislature where any justification would have to come forward and the guidelines and applications of the federal law can be imposed.

Surely there is nothing unreasonable about this? In fact there is every reasonable expectation, if we look at the future, to see that we will be called into session -- or perhaps it will be before we adjourn -- to force the teachers back into their classrooms by the undoubted power of the Legislature. We will have to respond at least if Mr. Archer, the president of the Federation of Labour, carries out his threat, and allows himself to be put in jail, be incarcerated because he will not follow the imposition of certain rulings coming from Ottawa having to do with wage and price controls. We cannot abdicate our undoubted responsibilities in this regard.

I feel very strongly that the Premier should look at these circumstances. Both opposition parties have formally put this strong alternative to him. He may be prepared to stand firm in a commitment which has been stated very firmly.

We don’t have to go through the rigmarole that nobody wants an election. We don’t want an election, that’s obvious, but I’ll tell you that in a House of 125, 74 members believe that there should be at least some sort of a provincial administrative body that will apply the regulations under the federal law under the circumstances which are constitutionally ours. Once again, I hope that you won’t misinterpret my view that 64 per cent of the voters in Ontario supported these two groups and, speaking not for all those individuals but for that political position, we are saying without equivocation that this is, in all conscience, what should be done.

We have heard the arguments that the government feels it is undoubtedly supporting the initiative of the government of Canada. You can support them in a way which gives leadership to the other provinces, and we want you to do this but surely in a province like this, with the powers -- the undoubted powers -- of this Legislature, it is incumbent upon us to have some mechanism for the application of those powers to those directly in receipt of the manifestations of those powers in this province. I want to put it to the House on that basis.

I said I agree with much of what the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Lewis) has said in this regard but our stand has been stated independently and in the question period in this House before now. I’m glad the Premier is here because I feel this very strongly.

We’re going to have a vote sometime before this House adjourns that a humble address be sent to Her Honour thanking her for her speech. We’re not going to stand on any old-fashioned approaches. We’re prepared to say: “Yes, let’s send her a humble address.”

Look at it this way: These two parties believe there should be some sort of administrative procedure at the provincial level to carry out the responsibilities which have been put before the House by the Leader of the Opposition and perhaps less effectively but just as sincerely by me.

What is the avenue open to us to convince the Tories that this is not a political posture? We believe this essential for the people of Ontario. It is essential for the conduct of our role in Confederation. It is essential for the government of the Province of Ontario.

There is only one alternative to us and that is to put forward an amendment to the motion before the House. This was open to the Leader of the Opposition and he very carefully said that it is still open to him, and this debate will undoubtedly continue for three weeks. Who knows what the final disposition will be?

My colleagues and I have sweated over this. I say again, nobody wants an election. The taxpayers don’t want an election but I’ll tell you, the electorate said: This group in opposition has a clear commitment to provincial involvement in this matter. They sent that group in support of the government.

Mr. Bullbrook: Let it be understood.

Mr. Nixon: I just want to make it that clear. There is no alternative. There is no vote. There is nothing we can do except, on a matter like this, say: “Surely in a democracy the majority should govern.”

This is a matter, I suppose, of some basic difference in principle but it is this and I put it to the Premier: It may be high principled but please do not say we do not support the federal wage and price control because we do. We regret that they are necessary but it has been decided that they are necessary and they will eventually become the law of the land. They will become the law as it applies in this province. I’m saying that if democracy means anything it is time for the government to reassess its position at least.

The government may say: “This is a good election issue. We can go out and say the Liberals and the NDP want to favour the teachers and they want to favour the civil servants and so forth.” It would probably be a good election issue, but it is more than that. It is a matter of good government and we feel committed to that.

Mr. Speaker, having given you this sort of explanation for the position, I would like to move an amendment.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Nixon moves that this House regrets the failure of the government to accept its responsibility to provide for the direct administration of federal wage and price controls.

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

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 2802:

Mr. Chairman: When we rose at 6 p.m. last evening we were on vote 2802, item 2, curriculum development; and the member for Durham East had the floor.

Mr. Moffatt: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to take a couple of minutes at this time to point out to the hon. minister what I consider to be a problem only he can deal with. In his opening remarks on the estimates on the first day of his committee, I congratulated the minister on his appropriate remarks, in which he indicated the communications problem and the problem of criticism of the school system could be, to a great extent, eliminated by the inclusion of parents in a meaningful fashion in the actual decision making and day to day operations of the school. I think that what the hon. minister said makes real sense. I regret, though, that what he has said doesn’t seem to get into the school operation.

In practical terms, what in fact happens when a Minister of Education makes a statement, no matter what the statement may be, is that it goes through the following kind of delivery system before it finally gets to the people who have to understand and implement it. The statement goes to the minister; to the Mowat Block; to the region; to the director; to the superintendent of one sort or another; to the area superintendent; to the principal; to the department head in the case of a secondary school; and then, if good luck prevails, it goes to the teacher. Then, lo and behold, it may go to the pupil and eventually that statement may go to the parent.

That kind of convoluted passage of information, I think, is exactly what the minister wants to get rid of. But all he has done is deal in a sort of platitudinous manner with the problem and suggest the solution. He has not told us, in fact, how he proposes to get that solution into the hands of the people who really matter.

The group over here during the election referred to the return to the three Rs when they wanted to develop a core curriculum. If you looked very carefully at what they were talking about, what they were in fact saying was: “We need a core curriculum at the secondary level.”

I would suggest to the hon. minister that that is completely silly. We do not need a core curriculum of the three “Rs” at the secondary level. What we need is some basic idea establishing very clearly with teachers, parents and students what is expected of people in the elementary school; not in educational jargon, not in vague philosophical terms, but in real practical terms.

We need objectives that are clearly understood by the people at large. If we have that kind of goal set by the ministry, which will give us a parameter within which teachers can plan effectively the variety of things they can implement in order to achieve those goals, then I think we’ll be on our way to establishing the kind of educational system which will have some meaning to the public. Then we won’t have great discussion about returning to some kind of three “Rs” programme, which never was that good anyway.

But we can’t stop there. If we have that kind of development at the elementary level we’ll be able, I think, to then address ourselves to the problem at the secondary level, to which these people didn’t address themselves. That is the problem of explaining to students what they will need when they finish those four or five years of secondary school in order to pursue whatever post-secondary education they may wish to pursue.

It is not enough to say to people: “Look, there are 65 options open to you at the secondary level, choose 12 of them each year or four of them or whatever.” It’s not enough to say that. It is incumbent upon the ministry right through all of its offices to say to students and parents at the secondary level: “Look, the following things will be expected of you when you finish.” So far we have not had that kind of goal-setting and that’s where we have to go, it seems to me.

I don’t mean that we should tell people what they have to take. I mean we should tell people what they have to expect if they take course X, Y or Z. In those terms, then, we can say that we have dealt honestly and fairly with the students and with the public.

The other day we talked at length about OISE and the problem of delivery of their programmes to the teachers. It seems to me that what we should be doing with regard to OISE and all of the other programmes, is taking very careful consideration of what those programmes mean to the students.

In practical terms, the minister should be explaining to us what he proposes to do over the next several months to make sure that his statement of philosophy is transformed into practical terms. Somebody needs to be able to say to teachers: “At the end of a month or at the end of a year, what are your pupils going to know.” They should be able to give you an answer; and I submit to you, sir, that they cannot give that kind of answer today.

Now the person who was my opponent for the government party in the election was the chairman of a committee in the last House which investigated the utilization of school facilities, and I believe that committee reported many things that coincide with the minister’s observations in his statement the other day. But it is not enough to simply say those are good statements and those are good thoughts and we like that philosophy. We have to be prepared to act on those things. Somewhere along the line that whole educational hierarchy I listed a few minutes ago needs to be short-circuited so that the pronouncements of the ministry, without the jargon, are delivered directly to the students and to the parents and to the people who pay the bills.

That’s what people are talking about. I don’t think that the average citizen of Ontario minds paying his tax bill if he sees that he gets value for that dollar. It’s when he doesn’t understand what happens to the tax dollar in education that he starts to criticize education in general. He criticizes, then, the actions of the minister; he criticizes the action of the deputy minister; he criticizes the teachers; he criticizes the students.

And basically his criticism is aimed at the wrong people. What he should be informed of, in real terms, are those things which the schools are doing. Now one way -- and it is only one way of doing that -- is to go along with the minister’s suggestion to have parents into the school in a meaningful way.

But that isn’t happening. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of schools across the province where in fact that does happen on a day-to-day basis. Not open house in the fall and parent’s night in the spring, or something else like that; something like education week which is supposed to be the showplace of education. We should not have education week, we should have education year. It should be every year and it should last all year long.

The kind of thing I’m talking about, Mr. Chainman, would lead to a day-to-day involvement of the parents and the students in the educational system which would make the kind of three Rs comments we heard for 37 days completely redundant.

I would like the minister to respond in some practical way to how he is going to get that kind of delivery system built into the Ministry of Education, because if it doesn’t happen, Mr. Minister, we’re going to have those same comments and those same criticisms. They will be just as unjustified, but they will be just as believable as they were in the past election.

I have great question about the kinds of results that we hear from surveys. In the school of which I was principal up until the election we took part in the survey alluded to the other day where certain people were selected or elected or chosen by lot to respond to post-secondary educational goals and so on. Believe me, most of the parents who took part in the survey did not understand the questions, they had to phone up ex-teachers, board members, teachers and principals to ask them what the questions meant. That’s the communication problem -- that’s the breakdown, and that’s what goes on in every single aspect.

If we would firmly establish in clear understandable terms what the objectives of this ministry might be, then we would be able to say, “Okay people, this is what our education system is trying to do. If you want to criticize our system, criticize it on the basis of it not meeting your objectives. Or of it not standing up to your criticism. Or of it not jibing with what you think it should be doing in ethnic terms.”

Those are legitimate differences of opinion, and as politicians, as teachers, as citizens, we can certainly answer those criticisms. But for the minister to simply say that it’s not his problem, that some other person in the hierarchy should answer, doesn’t answer anything. It leaves the whole question up in the air, and it causes us grave difficulties.

Mr. Chairman: Does the minister have a comment?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I welcome these comments. What my friend is doing is pointing out one of the real challenges to getting across a better communication policy, particularly between the schools and the parents and in a more general sense, between the schools and the taxpayers.

I think it’s fair to say that some of those who have been -- I say have been because I hope there aren’t too many around who are -- violently opposed to this kind of concept, are the very people who have to be committed to this concept in order to make it work. If you read some of the speeches I made on the community school idea about a year ago, you’ll remember I said several things. One was you can’t impose community education on a community -- you don’t wave a big stick and say, “Friends, you have to have it in your community.” It has to come up from the bottom.

The community has to want to have a community school. If they don’t want a community school, you can’t impose it on them. And trying to impose it by saying that “all of you should be involved with your school, that you should have it,” it won’t bring it about. You won’t get it because the apathy will be there. “Somebody else from away off somewhere is trying to impose this on us,” they will say. This is what prevents it from happening.

I also said that should a community decide from the grassroots that it really does want a community school -- that it wants to be involved with the school, it wants to have open communication, it wants to use the school building for a multitude of purposes, it wants to be involved in the planning of the school programme -- but the principal of that school does not like that idea, is not committed to that kind of programme and really wants to put road blocks in the way of that kind of a development in his community, believe me he will be able to put the road blocks there and you won’t have a community school.

It’s going to be difficult if the principal fights for the traditional type of operation where he and the teachers run a kind of a closed corporation where they don’t want the parents to be involved except when they want them involved. Or when we make school visitors official in the Education Act should they bring about the kind of manifestations I indicated yesterday where they want to stick big signs on the door to be sure that visitors see the principal first so that they don’t interrupt the -- as they put it -- “orderly organization of their school,” whatever that may mean. If that is the way the principal feels, it’s going to be very difficult to establish the kind parental involvement and open door policy that we should have in the school.

It is very easy to enunciate this policy. It’s much more difficult to have it take root in the province. I guess it’s a challenge that we’ve got to face, all of us, to try and get that policy established. At this point in time I can’t tell you any programme that we’ve got that will guarantee that it will be established because, as I said a minute ago, you don’t establish it by waving a big wand from here at Queen’s Park.

What we have to do is work on a number of fronts. We have to convince the profession that they have a role to play in bringing the parents in. We have to help the parents or make parents understand to some degree that they will understand the education system better by being involved with it. That means when they do become involved and when they do go into the school they don’t get rebuffed or treated like five-year-olds who wouldn’t understand what is going on and don’t get subjected to a full dose of educational jargonese so they never want to go back into the school again.

That is what happens. We have all experienced these kinds of situations. It means we have to get the profession, the parents and people interested in this kind of approach to the educational system.

I can’t tell you that we have a policy here which will bring this about. All I can tell you is that as a ministry and as a minister this is what I am preaching, if you will, and I think that will help lend support to it. I hope others will do the same thing and if we do that we will find these kinds of things will take root.

Some of your colleagues have taken part in some very excellent programmes. There is one in Thunder Bay, I believe. I think I opened the school which is a community school where, I believe, there is certainly an above-average involvement of parents in the particular programme.

Mr. Moffatt: I am pleased to hear what you have just said because I think you have isolated the problem exactly where it is. There are times when some things aren’t obvious, but it’s obvious that if you are going to change the whole question of involvement of the parents in the schools somewhere you have to develop the kind of leadership with the principals and the staff to make that kind of thing happen.

I would suggest to the minister that one of the things which would happen is that all the efforts of the regional office staff and the people who are apparently available from OISE would be brought to bear on a full-scale training session -- a full scale updating -- of principals and staff across the province in a direct face-to-face method on how to use parents in the school.

In my own particular school we ran this kind of programme for other schools and other teachers but it wasn’t supported by the ministry to any great extent. As a matter of fact, we had great difficulty finding any person in the ministry at any of the regional offices who knew anything about it and who would be able to talk to parents.

We had people who could deal with a day-long session on inter-personal relationships and other people could come in and talk about curriculum development in the 1960s as being a relevant psychological experience and so on. But we didn’t have anybody who could come in and talk to principals and teachers and say, “This is the kind of untapped resource in your community which you as a professional person interested in kids should be able to make use of.”

If the minister is looking for some way of implementing in practical terms what he has just described it seems to me that’s where we start. We get away from paying sort of homage to all of the traditional kinds of things which have gone on in the province with regard to educational hierarchies.

If the deputy minister comes to town there is a big deal laid on and so on. If the minister comes to town it is an even bigger deal. If we would stop that and spend some of that initiative and some of that effort in developing one programme per year and developing it fully I think you would have far fewer people criticizing what goes on in the schools because they would start to see what’s happening.

On the other side of the coin I think the minister has to go along with a two-fold approach to some programme such as parents or citizens now being official visitors of the school. If you say that, you have to explain to people in the school why that is important. I was principal in a school when that happened. I had no idea why it was important because we had always had a lot of parents in the school. I know other people who were horrified at it because they didn’t know what you were trying to do.

[4:45]

It seems to me if you really want to attack this programme you start at the principal level where you have clearly understood the problem in communication lies and you help those people. I agree with you, you don’t go in with a big stick and say: “Tomorrow everybody is going to have a community school.” That is obviously foolish. You start by helping them to appreciate what the values of that particular system would be. I think that money spent on that rather than putting on all the other traditional charades in education might be money well spent.

Mr. Warner: There was an omission in the minister’s statement with regard to the role played by trustees. I am wondering what efforts have been made on the part of the ministry to get the trustees in many areas to co-operate with this philosophy he has been enunciating. As the minister is well aware, when this process of opening the doors began a few years ago, there was in some corners great resistance put up by many trustees. I am wondering if the minister has some responses to what efforts are being made by the Minister of Education and his department to try to get co-operation from the trustees.

Hon. Mr. Wells: First of all, I would say to my friend that it was clearly an oversight that I failed to mention trustees there, because trustees are part of the process and are a very important part. The assistance and the full support of trustees for this kind of programme are of course necessary also. In all our dealings with various groups, we work with the trustees to encourage them to lend their support and to be the leadership people in developing community schools and parent involvement and communication in the schools in their particular area.

Last year we set up the minister’s advisory committee on community schools. This committee has an ongoing advisory role with the ministry and with the minister in developing programmes for the development of community schools and all the kind of things that we are talking about. The chairman of that advisory committee is a trustee, Judy White of the London Board of Education, a person who has been very concerned and interested and a leader in this kind of development. Along with a group of about 13 or 14 people, she is forming this advisory committee which is just now beginning to get going and develop ways that we can do some of the things that the hon. member was talking about.

Mr. Ferris: First of all, I would like to say that I agree with the minister’s comments about the need for information and would hope that he would bring forward a plan to provide this information and get a better exchange of parental involvement. I would like to ask a question of the minister because there seems to be a thread running through here in the actual financing of this area. In the curriculum area specifically there is an amount of $2 million for supplies and equipment which represents an increase in excess of 50 per cent. It is equally true in many of the other areas.

I sense that there is perhaps a trend to using pieces of hardware as opposed to doing it with people. I wonder if we are tied up in a large computer programme here. It relates back to some things we talked about the other day. I would wish the minister would perhaps react to that.

Mr. Chairman: Does the minister wish to reply?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Perhaps if we could continue, I will get that information for the hon. member in a minute. Are there any other comments?

Mrs. Gigantes: In the discussion on this vote, we’ve been hearing the minister talk about the general philosophical goals of curriculum development in Ontario, the concept of the open schools, the idea of having parents involved in the schools, involved in the development of the programme that their kids are going through. There’s been a lot of talk about communication, communication, communication. There’s been mighty little discussion of what the content of that communication is supposed to be.

Picking up on some of the things that have been said by some of my colleagues here, I’d like to suggest to the minister that there’s no use telling parents that you want to communicate with them about what’s going on with their children in school, unless you’re willing to discuss in real terms with them what the content, what the goals -- the immediate goals -- of the school programme are. I think the minister is getting off too easy if we allow him not to talk about the goals of schools, how they relate to children of certain ages and what we can tell parents about what -- we hope -- children will get out of those school experiences.

I think at the primary level, parents would like to be assured that their children are going to develop some of the basic needed skills in reading, and understand some basic concepts of mathematics, counting and so on. I don’t think they feel that assurance cow. I think one of the reasons they don’t, is that they feel very clearly that there are not sufficient moneys being allocated to the primary level of education. They feel quite anxious about sending their children off to learn primary skills in classrooms that are too large, with teachers that are too overworked. If we’re going to talk about development of curriculum at the primary level and we’re going to be honest with parents and we’re going to set some goals about development of curriculum at the primary level, we have to talk about the amount of money being devoted to the primary level of education and the pupil-teacher ratio. I think that any discussion of curriculum development aside from that discussion is unreal. Parents won’t buy it. They don’t like being fed pablum any more than school kids do.

At the secondary level, there’s been talk about community involvement, communication and so on and so on; and some suggestion that we should have core curriculum. Again, I think that parents who may say they want core curriculum -- and it’s an easy phrase to deal with and, as you know, not an easy one to talk about implementing within the school system -- would be satisfied if they felt that the children, their adolescent kids, would come out of high school with nil ability to write an essay; with an assurance that the kind of courses they were going to need for whatever further course of study they were taking would be provided; that the child would not come home in November and tell the parents that French had been dropped when it was necessary for next year’s programme; or that chemistry had been dropped when it was going to be necessary to enter a university programme.

This is the kind of thing parents are very alarmed about. They want an assurance in real terms that the school system is providing adequate kinds of checks at the primary level for basic reading skills and math skills, and that at the secondary level -- and at the primary level it would take more money -- enough interest is being shown in where each child is going; that the school is communicating with parents about the actual programme the child is involved in. That is not happening now. I know parents in Ottawa who’ve been very alarmed, learning too late that their kids have dropped courses. Some of these parents were teachers themselves and they still couldn’t figure out what was happening with their own kids.

Despite all this talk about communication, I quote you: “We can’t tell you that we’ve got a policy here that will bring this about;” an open-door policy for our schools, an understanding of parents, of what’s going on in the schools. Well, I think it’s possible to develop a policy that will bring this about. I think it’s possible to talk to the Legislature about a policy that will bring it about, and I think it’s possible to talk to parents in Ontario about a policy that will bring it about. I think it means talking to them about the contents or the goals of that curriculum. I don’t mean mind-development and consciousness-raising and that kind of thing. I mean some very concrete kinds of skills --

Hon. Mr. Wells: What do you mean?

Mrs. Gigantes: -- reading at the primary level; making sure that the child doesn’t get to grade 4, pushed on by the system, without being able to read.

Hon. Mr. Wells: You are getting to sound Like a Liberal.

Mrs. Gigantes: That is happening now. We all know it’s happening now. They’re backing up at the high-school level. Then, when they get to the high-school level and get pushed on by the system, they get backed up at the university level.

Mr. Sweeney: Sounds as if a concerned citizen doesn’t believe your claims.

Mrs. Gigantes: The failure begins at the primary level where we’re not putting in the resources. We’re not really talking to parents about that; we’re not putting content into our attempt to communicate with parents in Ontario. I think it’s time we did.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, I had not intended originally to bring this up, but the hon. minister, in his opening statements used the term “educational jargon” with respect to teachers reporting to parents. He used it again yesterday, in responding to remarks made by both me and the educational people in the New Democratic Party, and he used it again this afternoon.

Mr. Moffatt: The platoon.

Mr. Sweeney: In other words, three times in three days he used the term “educational jargon.”

The hon. minister also made it very clear that he did not feel responsible for the decisions and the actions of his predecessors, and wanted us to confine our remarks to what he had done. All right. I’ll do that.

I have “The Formative Years,” the document for which the hon. minister is responsible. Let’s talk about educational jargon. Let’s find out where it starts. Let’s find out who set the example. On page 9 of this document, with respect to primary reading programmes, I read here: “Understand and use simple, syntactic, phonemic, and graphemic clues.” I was asked by one of my colleagues what graphemic clues were. Quite honestly, I didn’t know. We went to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the one that is supplied to the members. The word isn’t in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. One of my secretaries eventually found it --

Mr. Cassidy: It’s applied to the Liberals.

Mr. Sweeney: -- in the American Webster’s Dictionary.

Mr. Foulds: Which edition? Third international?

Mr. Sweeney: I turn to page 11. Under junior division arithmetic: “Compute efficiently using standard algorithms.” That word is also not in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. In the Webster’s Dictionary there is a word “algorisms.” The word “algorithm” is not there. More jargon? On page 12 under geometry, junior division, a parent asked me what this sentence meant: “Discover patterns and identify properties of two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures.” And get this: “By tiling in the plain and stacking in space.”

Does the hon. minister wonder why people in this province are using educational jargon? Does he wonder why the parents and the teachers in this province don’t understand what your ministry and your documents are talking about?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Let me say first of all that my references to educational jargon were in the communication between the teacher and the parent. I’m not saying that there will not be, if I can use that loose term, educational jargon used in the communication of the educators of this ministry with the curriculum educators in the boards or with the teachers.

Mr. Breithaupt: I don’t think they understand it either.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I’m sure they do understand those meanings. This document was developed by educators like my friend, the hon. member from Waterloo.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, I would never develop a document like that, nor would my colleagues.

Mr. Cassidy: They obviously couldn’t spell.

Mr. Sweeney: The educators who developed that obviously hadn’t been in school for 20 years.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Do you want to make a bet on that?

Mr. Sweeney: No.

Hon. Mr. Wells: He says no, he doesn’t want to make a bet on that. His words were that the people who developed this document hadn’t been in school in 20 years. The hon. member may find that some of them were in his system. He may find that.

Anyway, while it makes for a very nice exchange in this House, I think my friend has cast a bit of irrelevancy across what was a fairly relevant argument being put forward by the member for Ottawa.

[5:00]

Mrs. Gigantes: Carleton East.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Carleton East.

Mr. Cassidy: Don’t forget it; it’s a good riding now.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The terminology in the formative years was, of course, developed for teachers and not for parents. I still intend to have a parents’ guide book for the formative years put out. There is, of course, also an implementation process which goes on with the formative years and another group of documents which will help make more explicit the kind of programmes expected in the primary-junior years.

I think the point being made was that while we are asking for communication, what are we going to communicate? What has to be communicated, of course, as far as I’m concerned, is what is going on in the schools. You can’t ask me to tell you what is going on in every classroom in Carleton East or Scarborough or Thunder Bay at this present time. I have to know and I have to believe --

Mr. Foulds: Probably meeting in a lot of corridors.

Mr. Cassidy: Probably a teachers’ meeting going on right now.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, there may be a teachers’ meeting or there may be some parent interviews. I can’t communicate to you in this House at this time what is going on in that school on any given day. I think what we’re saying is that the teachers in those classrooms should be able to communicate to the parents of the children who attend that class what is happening in that class and what is being taught.

What I’m saying about the educational jargonese is, certainly parents are not going to understand the kind of things which have just been read from the formative years book. Hopefully teachers, taking that as a broad statement of guides, aims and objectives and translating it into the meat and potatoes of the curriculum which is taught every day -- including the basics because they are all in there -- will be able to explain in clear terms to the parents of the children in their classroom: “This is what we’re teaching -- reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar. This is how we’re teaching it, here are some examples. This is why we’re teaching it. You ask me any questions and I’ll answer them for you. If you’d like to come back and sit in my classroom some day and see how I do it you’re welcome to come back and sit there and watch how I teach the children.”

I think valid points have been made on all sides. My friend from Waterloo made the point that we needed some way of measuring the achievement of these young people. I emphasize that, certainly as far as I’m concerned, it is not for the sake of comparing them with everyone else in that class so somebody can put a list on the board and say: “This child is first and this is last.”

I think we must compare them with some kind of norms to know if they are achieving certain levels and to know what can be done to assist them or stimulate them or help them. It’s not to compare them, but to know if they’re reaching the goals and objectives which have been set for them in the curriculum. That’s the kind of thing which has to be communicated and I think it can be communicated.

Again, I have to emphasize that sometimes in the communication the story doesn’t get across to the parents and they go away frustrated. Further, I think the reporting of what’s happening in the class -- not telling them what’s going on; what the curriculum is all about and what the aims and objectives of that particular classroom are -- the reporting of how each child is doing in that classroom and what they’re achieving has to be done in, perhaps, a better manner than is being done in a lot of classrooms today. It has to be done in a way that parents understand so they have some assurance on bow their child is achieving and where their child stands in certain basic skills.

I think in my opening remarks I indicated we were going to put together a team to find out where it’s being done in an excellent manner; where it’s being done in a good manner; and how we can assist boards and schools which are not doing it in as good a manner as they can to develop and do it in a better manner. We are going to work on that together with looking at the way standardized tests are being used in this province. School boards are all using them now. Let’s see how they are being used and perhaps how they can be adapted and used better.

Mr. Cassidy: I have a specific question about text book development that I want to direct to the minister and I don’t want to engage in the more general discussion which has been going on. The question relates to the offer by the federal Secretary of State’s department to match moneys being devoted by the province for the development of textbooks in the French language.

There is a serious absence of curricula for French high school students in the province, and after eight or nine years of publicly-supported secondary education in French there is also a serious absence of adequate French textbooks. For example, in the Ottawa area the entire mathematics programme from grade 9 to grade 13 in certain cases is taught with English textbooks in francophone high schools, and clearly that shouldn’t be.

There are other examples. Family life education or home economics is taught with material which is English. Science courses are often taught with material which is in English. It’s not possible to use textbooks developed for Quebec because the curricula there differ.

I want to know from the minister why the government of Ontario has refused to accept the fairly reasonable conditions laid down that Ontario could have $250,000 of federal funds for developing French-language textbooks if it agreed to give priority to Canadian publishers. It seems like a perfectly reasonable kind of request. The need for money for textbook development is obvious and pressing. The amount of money which the province has devoted, $250,000, is clearly inadequate in relation to what is needed. It just seems to be silly to be spiting your face to cut off your nose.

I would also add that as far as the development of English-language textbooks goes -- that is texts in various subjects in English -- there has been a similar outcry from the book and periodical development council which represents Canadian publishers, because they too are coming under very much the same rule. Despite the recommendations of the Camp commission on book publishing in Ontario, there is no priority being given to Canadian textbook publishers in developing or printing Canadian textbooks developed with the money which is now being made available from the province.

It’s a fund, I believe, of $1 million. That is being made available to foreign-owned publishers and Canadian-owned publishers alike. Given the backing that these publishers have in the United States, in effect it means that the Canadian publishers once again are being shut out of an important area.

On the one hand you are violating the recommendations of the Camp commission on book publishing, and on the other hand you are denying the francophone population of the province access to $250,000 in federal funds which is available for the development of French-language textbooks, unless you’ve changed your policy very recently.

Could the minister explain why these rather perverse decisions have been taken and what prospects there are for change?

Hon. Mr. Wells: First of all, let me say in regard to your last comment, actually I would turn that statement around and would say that the federal Secretary of State’s department is denying the francophone education system of this province $250,000 because of its attitude towards this particular money. They know very well what the conditions are that apply in the Province of Ontario and have not seen fit to give us that matching grant of the $250,000 because of their insistence on a condition which we cannot accept. I do not accept at all that what we are doing violates the spirit of the Camp commission report.

As I’ve said many times in this House, I believe in approaching these matters from the point of view that we involve the people concerned in the development of the various plans that we undertake and that we don’t do things as a government or a ministry in isolation. I’m sorry, I’m reminded that that was the Rohmer commission not the Camp commission, and we want to give Richard Rohmer his due for that work.

Mr. Foulds: You may give Richard Rohmer his due. I am not sure that we do.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Brig. Gen. Rohmer incidentally is himself a very noted Canadian author and I see that his latest book is No. 1 on the Toronto Star’s fiction list --

Mr. Foulds: It tells us something about the Toronto Star.

Mr. Sweeney: It indicates the level of interest of Star readers.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- I don’t know what it is on Time’s book list -- it probably isn’t listed there if Time is up to its usual tactics.

We worked with the various book publisher groups to develop the programmes that were announced by the government following the Rohmer commission report. These programmes were to help stimulate the development of Canadian books.

The programmes were a book purchase plan and a learning materials development fund and we worked with the various groups and came up with the kind of guidelines that should apply to these two particular programmes. They were particularly suggested and recommended because we no longer have what used to be called designated or stimulation grants to school boards specifically for textbooks.

There was a concern that Canadian textbooks were not being developed for the Ontario school system and that they were not being bought by school boards because there was no specified amount of money that the boards had to spend on books. The publishers were suffering because this money was not specified and the school boards were in fact -- so they said -- reducing the amount of money spent on books.

This money was put in, first of all to purchase the sample textbooks that are sent to school boards and for another fund to help with the developmental costs of new texts in areas where there was a need for this kind of curriculum material and yet perhaps there wasn’t a financial viability if a commercial company was to produce it.

In working with the publishers and in working with our own people we set certain guidelines, and those guidelines are that the books be Canadian authored and Canadian manufactured. We do not insist in our programmes that the companies be Canadian-owned. As my friend knows, many textbooks used in the schools of this province are produced by companies which do not fall under the definition of a fully Canadian-owned company, but those textbooks are Canadian authored and they’re produced in this country by Canadians.

Those same rules have been translated to apply to the French-language learning materials fund. The $250,000 that we’ve put in for the development of French-language curriculum materials can be used by firms that wish to adhere to our standards that the books and the materials be Canadian authored and that they be manufactured in Canada, but we have not held that there should be that further limiting qualification that they must be Canadian owned.

We do everything possible to assist Canadian-owned publishing firms if they wish to produce some of these materials, but I have to tell ray friend that if we’re really interested in good materials being developed -- and developed in a hurry -- for the French-language school system, we’ve got to have a much broader area to draw upon than strictly the Canadian publishing firms. We have to draw on the full range of those firms operating in this province as good corporate citizens and which are publishing books by Canadian educators, which are having those books printed by people in this province, which are having them manufactured by people in this province, and which are having the graphics done by people in this province. I think the results of this kind of a policy bring us to the point where we now have 93 per cent of the books in Circular 14, for instance, of Canadian authorship and manufactured in Canada.

I have put this position very clearly to the Secretary of State in Ottawa. I think it’s a fair position. I really can’t change my position in this regard and I’ve asked him if he can’t change his position. We certainly will give every consideration and preference to the Canadian firms when they make proposals under our plan, but we will not say that money will not be available to these other firms because we believe, first and foremost, we need good French-language learning materials for the French-language school system of this province.

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

Mr. Cassidy: Can I just speak briefly, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman: Briefly.

[5:15]

Mr. Cassidy: Very briefly; as I understand it the Ontario Arts Council, which is the other major provider of stimulative grants to publishers, specifically restricts its grants -- this is a government agency -- to Canadian-owned firms. The federal government is asking simply that priority be given to Canadian-owned firms. If you can’t find a Canadian-owned firm to do it, then give it to one owned somewhere else.

I have to say to the minister that when he mellifluously utters words about good corporate citizenship and that kind of thing and comes up with a statement like that, I feel rather ill. I don’t think this programme the minister has talked about is doing anything at all to try to ensure that Canadian publishers can have a solid textbook trade in order to help them stay in business.

It seems to me it’s a perfectly reasonable kind of thing. As a consequence of the minister’s short-sightedness he is personally depriving the francophones of the province of half of the funds which could be available for textbook development.

Hon. Mr. Wells: As I said, it’s got to be the other way around.

Mr. Cassidy: No, you are the one to blame.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The federal government could have got that money.

Mr. Cassidy: You are the one to blame.

Hon. Mr. Wells: They are quibbling over something which they need not quibble over.

Mr. Cassidy: You are out of step with the rest of the government’s programme in Ontario, not just federally.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. The hon. member --

Hon. Mr. Wells: I don’t think my friend understands some of the things happening in the book publishing business, some of the success stories there and some of the opportunities being given to educators in this province. I suppose that’s where it’s got to start.

The teachers and educators of this province who want to get books published go to places where they think they can have their book or their materials published and have it receive the widest possible use. There is one publisher in this province who has used an author who teaches at one of our teachers’ colleges and in the Scarborough school system. He has developed something, a learning material or learning aid, known as the Little Red School House which probably is one of the largest and best sellers in the United States. It is produced in Canada, authored by Canadians and yet is selling above all other materials in the United States. It is produced by a firm which is not a completely Canadian firm in your terms and yet it employs Canadians here and is using Canadian authors and manufacturing materials in Canada. It is giving Canadian educators a chance to disseminate some very fine learning materials, not only in Canada but in the United States and all over the world.

Mr. Foulds: Canadian imperialism is no better than American imperialism.

Mr. Ferris: The minister made a reference to a parents’ guidebook which he hoped would assist in communication. I wonder if he would put a timeframe on when that might be available?

Hon. Mr. Wells: We are working on it and we’ll get it as soon as we can.

Mr. Foulds: Come on, fess up. Why don’t you confess the reason it is not out is that the centre page was printed upside down.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mr. Foulds: You had the whole thing printed.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, that’s --

Mr. Foulds: It was in the backup material.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, that’s not --

Mr. Ferris: The minister is not prepared at this point in time to commit?

Hon. Mr. Wells: That’s not the guideline book I’m thinking of.

Mr. Foulds: This one? That’s why this one was so late.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No.

Mr. Foulds: Come on, confess.

Mr. Ferris: They are sometimes slow; is there no time-frame we can put on it?

Hon. Mr. Wells: We’ll get it as soon as we can.

Mr. Warner: In due time, in due course.

Mr. Ferris: In due course. Does the minister have the information available on the previous question I asked?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, the supplies and equipment section of this vote this year shows a figure of $2,038,500; 1974-1975 there was $1,238,200. This is an increase of $799,300. Of that, $750,000 is in this book purchase plan I talked about; that’s the money. In other words it’s not being spent on hardware or supplies in the ministry but to purchase textbooks which are sent out to the school boards as part of the book purchase plan. That is the increase in the plan for this year.

Mr. Ferris: Can I continue this for a moment? Are there any computer services within this budget for curriculum development?

Mr. Chairman: I must remind the hon. member that if he wants to speak, he should rise in his place.

Mr. Ferris: I’m sorry; I thought it was in reference to the same question.

Hon. Mr. Wells: There is a small amount here for the development of mailing lists and book orders connected with the book purchase plan.

Mr. Young: Mr. Chairman, if I could bring the minister’s attention to another problem, which arose in part out of the general situation in our civilization, I suppose, but was immediately triggered this afternoon by the question which the member for Wilson Heights (Mr. Singer) asked and to which the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) replied. He indicated that one of the solutions to the whole problem of our traffic and law enforcement and so on lies with the Minister of Education.

During the past year or so I heard and read speeches of the hon. Minister of Health (Mr. F. S. Miller) across this province where he pointed out that our lifestyle is responsible for a tremendous amount of the expenditure which we have to make in the whole health field. He specifically talks about such things as the use of cigarettes, alcohol and drugs.

Today I want to ask the minister about the emphasis which is being placed in the educational system upon that very problem. I want to take up the cudgels for the minister. I happened to sit on the board of one of our hospitals and I see there the living out of the very thing which the minister has been talking about. So I want to take up the cudgels for him and for his point of view.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this because I think all of us are familiar with it, but there is no question that Canadians, along with many other people of the world today, are consuming more alcohol and smoking more and this sort of thing. They are starting younger. They are driving more today under the influence of alcohol; and they are killing themselves off much faster than they have ever done before.

We have the problems the minister talked about -- alcoholism, heart disease -- and all these related problems are skyrocketing. The serious thing is that they are appearing in progressively younger people. In the senior levels of our high schools and among the young people who are just out of the secondary educational system we are finding these problems multiplying.

The thing that is really interesting is the amount of alcohol in which Canadians are now indulging. In Canada we are producing about 10 litres of absolute alcohol per person per year; whereas in Ontario, under the guidance of the Minister of Health here and against his wishes, we are consuming about 11 litres. That’s startling.

In the last election campaign I heard the kind of thing which has been talked about time after time across this land, and maybe across the world for all I know. One of my opponents pointed out that people should never vote for Fred Young, the NDP candidate, because of what is happening in Sweden. “There, governments like the one he represents are a sodden group of people -- soaked in alcohol -- consuming so much that it is just tragic. If we elect a government like his,” this person said, “then we are heading right into that same kind of trouble the Swedes are now finding themselves in.”

Interjection.

Mr. Young: I happen to have the figures and the figures are startling. We have heard this propaganda year after year after year, election after election, about the Swedes who have had social democratic governments for 40 to 50 years and who are among the highest alcohol consumers in the world. Well Sweden drinks 5.7 litres per adult per year while each person in Ontario downs 10.5, nearly twice as much.

Mr. Ferris: Who is driving who to drink now?

Mr. Foulds: What is that in Fred?

Mr. Young: Sweden has 1,515 alcoholics per 100,000 while Canada has 2,272. So it looks as if the whole propaganda line is going to have to be revised a bit. Certainly my opponent in this election campaign had just a bit of an education in this matter. I hope he won’t quote this sort of thing again.

We have seen over the past year that the total amount of alcoholic beverages sold is increasing dramatically and I am not going into those figures. But the tragic thing is that our young people, particularly in the later part of our educational system and just after, are among the greatest offenders; and, of course, when the voting age was reduced, with all that meant, then we found that “alcohol-related collisions for the age group of 18 and over increased 339 per cent in the year after the change; and the number killed more than doubled.” This means that somehow, somewhere, we are building up an attitude towards the consumption of alcohol and all its related ills, particularly in the traffic field in which I have been interested over these last years, that must be reversed.

I think the minister said at one time that it is costing us something in the neighbourhood of $135 million per year for alcohol-related diseases in our system. Add to that another $130 million for traffic accidents related to alcohol and then, of course, the bill gets very, very high.

The other thing that is very interesting in the research that has been done in this field is that the amount of traffic accidents, as well as alcoholism, the problems we face in our hospitals, all these things, increase in exact proportion to the consumption of alcohol in our society. So it looks as if the problem we have in reversing this is in reversing the total consumption. How we are going to do that, of course, I am not going to go into today in any great detail. It has to be a many-pronged campaign and the government has already undertaken part of that in its TV and radio and other programmes. But when I look at the resources that are put into that programme compared with the resources that are used in the programme to make this kind of activity respectable and the smart thing to do, then I realize that we are fighting a losing battle.

I was struck by a quotation from the report which came after the investigation in Saskatchewan a year or two ago. The committee set up to review the liquor regulations pointed out that as far as the educational system was concerned there should be hard-hitting and comprehensive programmes in the schools to combat this matter, and I quote:

“Such an educational programme would deal with the myths and mystique which have grown up around alcohol in our society. It would give the facts about the physical, medical and social benefits, the cost and the uses of alcohol in our society. The information given would be factual and be presented in such a way as to leave the decision in regard to the use of alcohol up to the individual.

“That is not propaganda as such. This is not to say that such education would be permissive. Drunkenness would be stigmatized as an inappropriate form of behaviour. Rather than being considered manly to consume large amounts, it would be shown as exhibiting a lack of control. Rather than considering drunken behaviour humorous, it would be shown to be personally degrading and a potentially dangerous condition.

“Both abstinence and moderate consumption should be shown as viable alternatives. As early as elementary school, the chemical effect of alcohol should be explained. It should be made clear that the abuse of alcohol will result in harm and death.”

I know the Addiction Research Foundation is working with our boards of education in this field today. I know ultimately we say that the place where this education really counts is in the home itself. Well that may be true, but the educational system is the system through which all the children must pass in our society. Too many homes have accepted certain attitudes and mores which result in the kind of difficulties in which we find ourselves today.

[5:30]

It seems to me that this minister must face this problem realistically. I’d like to know from him just what resources are being placed into this fight, into this reversal of the present trend in our schools; because, ultimately, I think that’s where it must be done, that’s where the attitudes must be created if they’re going to be created.

I often think of the conclusion that was reached some years ago -- about four or five years ago now -- about the whole problem of smoking. It was decided that no matter how much advice we give to the young people about this, it’s what the teachers and the parents do that has the greatest effect. And that may be also true here; I don’t know.

The fact is that the school system is where we do meet all the children. This is the place where we must make an all-out frontal attack on this whole problem. We must build the attitudes which will result in an amelioration of this problem, so that the Minister of Health can look to the future with far more confidence; and so that our whole society can see that the future is not as dark as it would appear to be with today’s trends.

Mr. B. Newman: I wanted to make a few comments concerning the item that the previous speaker brought to the attention of the House. May I assure him that that problem has been a problem for years and years in the educational system, even though we did have courses in the system concerning alcohol and drug addiction.

Mr. Young: But they weren’t enough.

Mr. B. Newman: You name it and it was all there. It was taught in the schools, but that didn’t eliminate the problem. We here have to assume some responsibility, because we did lower the drinking age. I think that could be one of the reasons the problem is a little more serious today than it has been in prior years; but I don’t know what the answer is.

I can recall teaching students about the effects of alcohol abuse, without saying necessarily that the individual should be a total abstainer but that drink should be used in moderation. However, it’s so readily available to the young. At home they find that mothers and fathers don’t hesitate to drink, and not always in moderation.

I don’t know the answer. I don’t think the ministry has the answer. In spite of all the efforts in teaching about alcohol and its use, we haven’t come up with a resolution to the problem.

Even withdrawing from an individual his right to drive a motor vehicle still hasn’t stopped a lot of people from drinking and driving and losing the right to drive for an extended period of time.

I wish some Solomon would come along and give us a real answer to the problem so we wouldn’t be confronted with it any longer. None of us want to see alcohol used to the extent that it is today in society, but it is there. The Minister of Health may have some type of an answer.

Many of our students suffered from malnutrition in their earlier days of life and possibly are going to be mentally handicapped or handicapped after a fashion for the rest of their days because we in society didn’t provide them with the proper foods required for all portions of the body to grow properly.

I don’t know the answer. I’d like to hear the minister’s answer. I’d like to hear a little more discussion from other members in the House concerning the problem. It’s an extremely serious problem. We must, in some fashion, come to a better resolution of the problem. I fear for those who do not have the will to drink alcohol in moderation.

Mr. Foulds: I don’t want to speak on this particular item, but I do want to wrap things up on this vote for our party, if I might.

Mr. Chairman: Before the hon. member continues, does the minister wish to respond at this particular point, or does he want to make his remarks after the debate?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I’d like to say a few words at this point about what has just been said about the schools and education on alcohol use and abuse and other things concerned with the health education programme. Before we wrap up this vote, I also want to make some comments about what the hon. member for Oakwood (Mr. Grande) said. I won’t make those right now. I want to say that I always welcome the exchange, particularly from the member for Yorkview (Mr. Young), about this matter, he has, of course, had a very long interest in this particular area and has expressed thoughts about it many times in this House, as has the hon. member for Windsor (Mr. B. Newman).

I think the hon. member from Windsor put his finger on it. The schools have been doing a job in this particular area for a long time. They’ve always had programmes in this particular area. People have felt that they could somehow give it over to the schools and they would take care of the problem and somehow it would get better. Of course, that hasn’t happened.

I think that by and large the schools do a good job in this particular area. But the schools cannot replace, for instance, the parents, and the influence that the parents have in haw their child handles alcohol and cigarettes and drugs and various mood modifiers and even habits that their young people develop insofar as eating and nutrition are concerned. Parents have the primary responsibility. The school’s role is to reinforce, I think, the things that parents are teaching their children. But the parents’ responsibility I think comes first.

The schools are not shirking their job. The schools, as part of an overall help programme beginning in the primary and junior years, and again I quote from “The Formative Years” -- I think every word of this statement is in all the dictionaries; I don’t think there’s any word in this statement that isn’t in any dictionary -- it says: “Acquire an understanding of the use, misuse, and abuse of mood and behaviour modifiers.” That’s part of a general group of health objectives that should be taught in the first six years of the elementary school. That, of course, will be done in a manner and in a form and using materials that would be acceptable to parents and would have some effect on children of that particular age group.

Then we move into the intermediate years. Particularly talking about grades 7 and 8, we have the same kind of curriculum guidelines suggested for these years. Keep in mind that these years, 7 to 8, are the years where there is no choice of curriculum. There’s no choice of subjects that you take, so that this programme is taught for all young people in the school system in these particular years. There are various resources available to help the teacher and the school do the job for these people.

As I’ve said, some, I suppose, are doing a better job than others. But they’re not necessarily going to bring about a radical reversal of some of the figures that my friend has talked about. Hopefully they will reinforce and help a lot of other agencies in society, plus the parents, to bring about some good understanding by young people of the hazards of alcohol, for instance. Maybe that will lead to them being able to handle alcohol better, when they become eligible to use it legally.

Then we move on to the secondary school, where, after you get past year one and year two, health education and physical education become an optional subject. Here again, the curriculum guidelines for those who chose the subject are much more explicit and the courses are very good. I’m reading from the new physical and health education guideline, which was just issued last year. In it are the various subjects that should be handled in the curriculum and they’re all spelled out in a very clear manner. It has under the heading “Alcohol and Other Drugs.”

“The focus for these studies in the senior division should be on use, misuse, abuse, decision-making and values exploration as developments from the legal, medical and pharmaceutical factors studied in earlier years.”

In other words, in the earlier years of high school the curriculum guidelines suggest certain developments and the senior guidelines should then amplify and further carry forward those kinds of teachings in a very detailed way. I think the courses being given in our schools do this.

What I’m saying is that I personally, and as a minister, am very concerned about the abuse of alcohol in our society, and certainly, where we can give leadership, we’re giving the leadership to those in the school system to have good programmes that will do the school’s part in helping with this problem. But I emphasize again that the school cannot do the whole job here and cannot bring about a sudden, dramatic reversal of what are very tragic figures in our society in regard to the use of alcohol.

Mr. Young: No doubt what the minister has said has some validity, but my point is that somehow or other we’re failing to arrest this trend. We’re just not matching, in resources, the other side which is pushing the trend.

I don’t know whether visual aids have been seriously considered by our school system. Certainly the smart ads of the liquor interests on the other side, through the television medium, are building up the whole attitude among young people that this is the smart thing to do; it’s related to joy, happiness, prosperity and whatever else you have. I don’t know whether we’re trying something like this within the school system to counteract that kind of thing.

Of course, one of the attacks against this whole problem likely is the abolition of that kind of propaganda in the public media. That may come here as it has come in some other places, and I would hope it would; but that’s apart from the education system.

Are we, within the system itself, trying to match some of this smart propaganda, some of this smart so-called education material, to counteract what is being done on the other side of the fence? This is the kind of thing which we should be facing and asking ourselves whether, in effect, we are mobilizing financial, brain and talent resources in this fight to arrest the trend today through our educational system.

Mr. Ziemba: I’d like to make one or two observations that might clear up for the member from Windsor and my colleague from Yorkview why this particular government and this particular party is not in a hurry to clear up the alcoholism in our society in the Province of Ontario. Simply, the greatest single source of campaign contributions over the past 30 years or so, for both the government party and the third party, has been the liquor interests -- the brewers and distillers of this province.

I believe that if my colleagues are asking these people to legislate in such a way and to use our education system in such a way that will cut down on the profits of these companies, then they’re chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.

Mr. Sweeney: How about the union members who work in those plants? Where do your contributions come from?

Mr. Ziemba: They come from working people; they don’t come from corporations, sir.

Mr. Lewis: Of course they do; it is all public, open and voted on. You disclose your source of funds.

Mr. Sweeney: It’s the same source.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. The member for High Park-Swansea has the floor.

Mr. Ziemba: During the summer we saw an advertising campaign that suggested cutting down on alcohol. Remember? It was: “Be your own liquor control board” This government spent $260,000 on that campaign, encouraging people to be their own liquor control board; yet in the week of May 3 they opened up 52 new outlets. How do you expect people to be their own liquor control board when you force it down their throats? There were 52 outlets opened in one week.

I’m appalled by this government’s liquor policy, especially when it comes to young people. They allow bands, such as the O’Keefe band, to attend all sorts of school functions, and the implication is there that the band wouldn’t be there and the money wouldn’t be spent on the promotion of it if it weren’t getting results. I think that if this government is really sincere and serious about cutting down on some of the alcohol problems in this province, it has to attack them head on by cutting down on the outlets in the area, by cancelling the advertising aimed at our young people and by getting rid of the bands and other attractions that appeal to our young people. That’s my point.

[5:45]

Mr. Foulds: I have a few comments about curriculum development in general rather than this specific item.

I note in the more detailed items that well over half the amount devoted in total to curriculum development is given to the Ontario Educational Communications Authority. It rather worries me that we put under this item that amount of money -- over $7.5 million -- when I think most of our debate and discussion today has been that curriculum development must take place in the classroom, at the grassroots level, with the teacher, the parent and the school principal.

I would feel much more comfortable if in future that item of transfer payment to the OECA were itemized separately. I don’t think we can count that in terms of the curriculum development we have been talking about in the last hour or two hours.

I also think the minister --

Hon. Mr. Wells: Can I say something?

Mr. Foulds: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Wells: As a point of information, to give you two things. First of all, it appears here because in the general accounting directions we get that’s where it’s supposed to appear. It is connected closest to this particular vote.

Secondly, the amount there is for the development of programmes for the curriculum by OECA. It is not intended to be a block grant for all of OECA’s many programmes but for their programmes connected with the in-school curriculum. It is for development of programmes for use there -- the videotape programmes and all those things connected with the school programme and not the open sector of the programmes.

Mr. Foulds: I understand that. The point I’m trying to make is in a vote of slightly over $11 million, we have $7.5 million devoted to the most splashy technological aspect of curriculum development rather than, if you like, some of the more humane and concrete aspects of curriculum development.

I want to say, perhaps as clearly and as forcefully as I can, about the concluding statement in your introduction to the formative years book, “As always the major challenge falls to educators at the local level to translate the objectives into relevant learning experiences for each of our children” that I think I understand and know what that sentence means but we’ve got to be honest about that.

That means time for the teachers and the principals at the local level. That means resources at that level and because, with the kind of pupil-teacher ratio we have in the formative years we cannot expect the teachers to find the time to talk individually to the parents, we can’t expect them to have the time to diagnose the problems of the children.

That means we have to talk about money. We have to be prepared to put more financial resources into elementary education if we are going to develop that curriculum the way you hopefully announced it would be developed on Friday.

The stark fact is that the pupil-teacher ratio at the secondary level is something around 17 to one and at the elementary levels it is about 24 to one. We have to be honest and say it is going to cost us money to implement this programme the way you say. It is going to cost us money.

The city of Toronto Board of Education, for example has one person full-time on curriculum development. That board, if I understand correctly, has 111 public schools; 31 secondary schools; 2,936 elementary teachers; 61,485 elementary pupils and so on. That board -- a fairly progressive board -- has one person for curriculum development.

I think that we have to come to grips honestly with those problems. We have to admit that it will cost us money and we have to start, as we have advocated many times in this party, beginning to equalize the grants in a fairly dramatic way on a per pupil basis at the elementary level so that they can eventually catch up to the secondary level.

I hope that the minister would respond to my colleague from Oakwood before this item passes.

Hon. Mr. Wells: First of all, maybe we will get into a little more detailed discussion about financial resources for elementary education when we come to the legislative grant procedures and vote. Certainly we have been allocating more resources and more grants to the elementary panel in the last year or so. But I have to say, and I hope that the members will look at these figures very carefully, if you think that it’s going to be possible to allocate massive amounts of money to education, elementary or secondary, in the next few years, perhaps you can find where it’s going to be possible to get that money.

Looking at the kind of votes that we’ve got here -- and 87 per cent of these estimates are general legislative grants -- and given the kind of restraints that the Treasurer has announced that we’re going to have to operate under, it’s going to be very difficult to find unlimited sources of money. In other words, we’re going to have to develop the kind of improvements in education without expecting massive amounts of money, and I think that’s going to be the challenge.

Mr. Foulds: And you are going to have to find some time for teachers to do it.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Surely there isn’t anyone in this House who says that money will solve all our problems because, believe me, it won’t.

Mr. Foulds: You can’t overburden the teachers and principals at the old local level and expect your programme to be carried out.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Sure, but money won’t solve all the problems.

Mr. Moffatt: But you won’t spend it.

Hon. Mr. Wells: No, not “won’t” spend it but “don’t.”

Perhaps I can get into some other comments because I studied, as I said, the very excellent comments of the new member for Oakwood and I would like to talk a bit about some of the things that he said. I congratulated him, I think, yesterday on the very fine remarks he made and on the thoughtful tone of his speech.

In immediately addressing myself to the problems of inner-city children and the culturally different child, as he was doing in his remarks, I think that this is an issue that is bothering educators. It’s troubling educators here; it’s troubling our educators in the Ministry of Education and it has probably troubled educators in a number of countries for a number of years.

I think it was recognition of some of these problems, though certainly not necessarily complete recognition, that led us to giving additional weighting factors, for instance, through which we hope to encourage boards to provide more adequate programming for these children, particularly of immigrant parents who are arriving in large metropolitan areas like Toronto.

Under the composite weighting factor which enables us to determine relative needs for compensatory education; for instance, Metropolitan Toronto generates additional funding of approximately $11 million for elementary education and approximately $5 million for secondary education. In computing this factor, we do take into account the items mentioned by the hon. member, such as the percentage of children with neither English nor French as their official language. This is one of the things that is taken into account in computing the weighting factor.

I would like further to tell my friend that not only have officials of this ministry studied the documents that he mentioned such as the Toronto board’s every student survey and the draft report of the working group on multicultural programming but as he is well aware, we’ve set up an ongoing liaison with the various groups working in the Toronto board and we’ve set up our own work group that is headed by Mrs. Catherine Michalski, who is sitting here at the table in front of me today. The ministry recently hosted a seminar on multiculturalism which was planned jointly with the Toronto representatives, trustee Dan Leckie, principal Ed Kerr, and representatives from community groups, faculties of education and boards across the province. These people spent 3½ days over in the Macdonald block thinking about ways of improving both pre- and in-service teacher training so that --

Mr. Foulds: Did they escape alive?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Certainly, they had a very good time. They discussed how teachers might be better prepared for the problems and rewards of our multicultural society. We had some valuable input for teacher education institutions, and as a result of this working seminar we intend to offer a summer course, Education in a Multicultural Society, in Toronto this coming summer, 1976.

This leads me to some of the terms that have been used in our discussions of the past few days. I would like to define what we mean when we say that we subscribe to the concept of education in our multicultural society. It is an education in which the individual child of whatever origin finds not mere acceptance or tolerance, but respect and understanding. It is education in which cultural diversity is used as a valuable resource to enrich the lives of all. It is education in which differences and similarities are used for positive ends. It is education in which every child has the chance to benefit from the cultural heritage of others, as well as his or her own. If the hon. members will look again, this statement is one of the aims and objectives of education in the first six years of the elementary school as set out in “The Formative Years.”

One of the first needs of the immigrant child is a good English-as-a-second-language programme. Last year 228 teachers took the Teaching English as a Second Language summer course; this year we hope to double that number. There is an active committee working on a Ministry of Education guideline for the teaching of English as a second language, and a programme in which we are working with the Ministry of Culture and Recreation which carries on a programme for adults in this area.

A question always asked at this stage is: Should we use the child’s own language when teaching him or her to read or to deal with mathematical concepts? I think that my friend from Oakwood argues for this position. However, for many people the issue is still a matter for debate, as I shall show later. So we have left a degree of freedom with the boards and their teachers.

In this province the child’s own language may be used for transitional purposes -- to ease the cultural shock of learning and to ensure that the child understands what is being taught. However, we should make sure that there is no misunderstanding in the way it is done. The majority of parents still feel that the first priority for their child is the learning of English. Therefore classes such as my friend has been taking part in, where it is possible to use language as a transitional learning tool, is what we are encouraging as a ministry. But we are also not in any way shirking our responsibility to be sure that what we feel is a priority for a majority of parents and that is that their child learn English. This must be done in a very excellent way in the school system.

Once the child has what the parents feel is a useful proficiency in English, I think that the same parents who place this as a first priority then begin to worry about the maintenance of their child’s primary language. It is on this issue -- What is the role of the public school in maintaining the primary language? -- that I think opinion is divided.

I appreciate the sincerity and concern for the child which the hon. member for Oakwood has demonstrated and the eloquence with which he has presented his arguments for the teaching of a child in the child’s primary language for both transitional and maintenance purposes. I believe that that was what he was suggesting.

I would like, however, to draw his attention to the extensive review of the research pertaining to bilingual education, for instance, undertaken by Patricia Lee Engle and published in the Review of Educational Research, Spring 1975. As the researcher points out in that article, bilingual education has become a political issue with world-wide ramifications. Her purpose in her research study -- I am sorry, I guess it is time to adjourn this.

Mr. Chairman: I would say to the minister if his reply was going to continue --

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, it is going to go on for a bit.

Mr. Chairman: Then we should continue the debate after the dinner hour.

The House recessed at 6 p.m.