Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 p.m.

BUDGET DEBATE (CONTINUED)

Resumption of the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, it is a traditional pleasure for members on the opposition side to join in what is known in the trade as a budget debate, where the members have an opportunity to offer an analysis, fair and in all cases balanced in perspective, on the current fiscal policies of the government.

This evening I thought I would take a little time to do what members traditionally do in the budget debate, and that is to make other members aware of some issues of local importance, to exercise some of my responsibilities as the health critic for an opposition party, and, in general, to look at what I would consider to be major items of concern, particularly reflected in the attitudes of this government in the way that it spends the taxpayers’ dollars.

It is reasonable to say there are three major areas that are of concern to me and to the members of the New Democratic Party in this fall session. I think it is obvious to anyone who had even a casual look at a newspaper this summer that the whole matter of the industrial sector of our economy, of plant closures, of layoffs, of plants going out of business for a variety of reasons, is one that has been in the forefront over the course of the summer, and appears to be continuing to be so on into the fall.

We also want to spend a good deal more time than perhaps anyone has spent in the past dealing with the matter of women in the economy, the roles they now play, the expectations they rightfully have which we, as a political party, think are fair and reasonable and ought to be reflected in the kind of budgetary considerations the government goes through.

I also want to spend some time on health care. Although we have devoted a lot of time and effort in this Legislature over the last year or so to matters concerning the health care system, and we have had a federal inquiry, and that inquiry has now tabled its report, the Hall report, we have not yet heard a response from this government on whether it agrees, disagrees, intends to implement or intends not to implement any or all of the recommendations in the Hall report.

The attitude this government has towards our own economy, towards our own people, towards the expenditure of tax dollars is, I think, probably best summarized and is reflected most neatly -- if not most politely or nicely, at least neatly -- in a little boondoggle that was put out this spring about whether or not it is going to change, adjust or put in place a new program to aid senior citizens.

It has a new name for this, and has spent considerable amounts of money advertising in the print media and over the airwaves, over the course of the summer, a new tax program for pensioners. In all of that, if one has watched the ads on television and listened to them on the radio and read them in the newspapers, one would tend to get the idea, at least I did and so did a number of my constituents, that all senior citizens were going to share equally in this new provision of a benefit plan for senior citizens.

Members of this House may know things the public at large does not know. We were aware, when the legislation was put through in the spring session, that there were certain exemptions written into that program. Specifically, there was an argument in here and in committee about whether this government could afford to extend those same privileges to all our senior citizens or whether it somehow had to find a means of restricting it, in theory at least, for budgetary reasons. The government decided it could only provide this kind of service for certain seniors. It said those who are in nursing homes do not deserve to get the tax credit while those who live in their own homes do deserve it.

I have had a series of letters back and forth with the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Maeck), who was implementing this program, about the advertising campaign he ran. A number of my constituents were rather upset and I take it that in other parts of the province the same feeling was shared. They saw an ad on TV. Those in nursing homes watch television as well as everybody else. They saw there that the government of Ontario had a brand new program in place for them. They saw a nice gentleman walking down the road with a dog, and he was showing how happy he was to live here in Ontario. He wanted everybody else to know about it too. That is why this government spent so much advertising money to convince the people of Ontario it really did have the best interests of the senior citizens at heart, that everybody did have a brand new program which was fair and equitable, and that everybody could share it. What it forgot to tell them was that some of those people are excluded.

As a matter of fact, in nursing homes in my area they sent the application forms to people they knew would not qualify for it. They sent letters to the administrators. They gave them little brochures to hand out. They had nice posters for the walls in the nursing homes. All of this was a cruel little twist of fate because all these people are senior citizens and they thought the government would not send them this nice brochure if it did not really mean to come across, if it did not eventually intend to give them a tax credit like everybody else. But nowhere in the advertising campaign, nowhere in the print media, nowhere in the literature mailed directly to the senior citizens did they include a little clause that said “except for these groups.” They forgot to mention that.

I wrote letters to the minister in the spring. I raised some questions in the House. I wrote letters to him during the course of the summer. The minister actually agreed they had forgotten to mention that some senior citizens would not get the credits. But they had spent millions of dollars in advertising in print and mailing material to convince everybody they would get the credits.

Is it true that Ontario could not afford to provide the same benefit to all our senior citizens? I doubt that, although that was part of the argument I heard in the spring session. Is it true they really sincerely feel senior citizens living in a nursing home have got it too good, that the small amount of money they have for a disposable income to last them over a month is too much money, that they are throwing it around? Maybe they do; I am not sure. But in the nursing homes I have been in, and I have been in all of them in my own riding, and quite a large number of them across this province, I have not seen people sitting around with large disposable incomes. I see people there of rather modest means to whom $40 or $50 a month is a lot of money.

Maybe to ministers of the crown it is a fair buck but nothing to be concerned about. Perhaps ministers of the crown do not realize that small amount of money is all some people have. For many of them, when they see a big program announced by Ontario, they suddenly feel that somehow they have a little something they can put away. So in July and August when they see ads saying they are getting a new tax program and the administrator of the nursing home comes around and shows them this wonderful thing sponsored by the government of Ontario with the little trillium there and the minister’s name on the bottom, they believe that.

They have a tendency, too, to start thinking about spending a little bit more than they would have spent previously. The cruel aspect of that is that they will probably not find out they do not qualify until after they have gone through all of that machination of filling out the form and sending it in. Yes, they will get a partial piece of business out of that program which allows them a sales tax exemption of, I believe, an amount of about $50. But they do not qualify for that property tax credit like the other seniors in our society do, and like the television ads, the radio ads, the newspaper ads, the big posters in the nursing homes and the letter from the minister all say they do.

Maybe that, in part, is an example, an unfortunate one, of the kind of fiscal policies this government has. It seems to me, and it seems to a lot of those constituents I just spoke about, that what this government is concerned about is a good public relations program.

8:10 p.m.

If they convince people there isn’t any problem in the health care system, or there isn’t any problem with senior citizens, and they do so using the force and magnitude of an advertising campaign of that size and scope, then that solves the problem for them. They don’t have time for the little person at the other end of the system, they don’t really have time for senior citizens and their needs, they have time for the public relations program. They have time to write back to an opposition member that, “Yes, we did really forget to mention that in the course of our advertising campaign. Yes, we will now put out a big manual which explains to nursing home administrators that we forgot to mention this stuff to your folks. Now you break the news to them.”

On the plus side where the government can pick up some political advantage it has all the power and influence and money it wants. On the negative side when it comes time to say to a senior citizen living in a nursing home, “Sorry, you don’t qualify,” that seems to be a job that is relegated to somebody else. The administrator of the nursing home will be the bearer of bad tidings.

I want to point out how efficient the government is too. I thought for this example I would go directly to the fanciest letterhead in the House, the one that belongs to the Premier of Ontario (Mr. Davis). I wrote to him last January about some local concerns I had, some of which are quite large and extend beyond my own riding, but were concerned about the region in which I live.

I mentioned to him there were probably three priority items in our area. There is a need for an improved transportation service. There is a need for some additional bed space in our homes for the aged. There are a number of other needs which are in place in the area, but some really are priority items. Nine months later, the Premier got around to replying to this. I think the reply is interesting because again it speaks to how this government functions, where its priorities are, and in particular, where its economic priorities are.

For a number of years in our area we had talked about trying to develop in Oshawa and the Durham region a community all by itself, a community where people could live, work and play and get an education and have recreational facilities but which was relatively self-contained. In the mid-1970s this government decided it didn’t like that idea and so it spent considerable time, effort and money convincing people from Metropolitan Toronto that they ought to go and live in the region of Durham. They put in a big housing action program and they announced a go-east program and they did a number of things that would encourage citizens from Metropolitan Toronto to move out into the Durham region.

All of this I suppose is fair game even though I did disagree with it at the time and I know a number of people on the council at that time disagreed along with me. Seven or eight years later we now have a high percentage of our population, about 20,000 people according to some estimates now, who commute regularly back and forth to Toronto.

It occurred to some of us that when you are concerned about the cost of energy, traffic patterns and transportation problems in general, it might be a little more efficient and certainly considerably more convenient if one took an existing facility such as GO Transit, which runs a train service that stops at Pickering, and simply extended that out to Oshawa. For many of us, and I am included in this group, we really didn’t care whether that terminal point was Oshawa, Whitby, Bowmanville or wherever was convenient, cheap and efficient. We saw the railroad tracks on the ground, we saw the trains stopping at Pickering and we saw all those people unloading out of the trains at Pickering into cars and buses to be transported throughout the rest of the region.

Many of us have discussed at great length the concept that I mentioned in my letter to the Premier -- would he consider extending that GO rail service a little farther to the east. There have been a number of suggestions made. The province has gone so far as to appoint another study of whether or not this commutershed serving the Toronto area is going to get rail service. Some of the estimates I have seen from MTC staff say that to do what the province wants to do in providing that kind of transportation facility is going to cost in the order of $58 million at least.

There has also been another proposal made by several people in the area that they use, not the CN lines where there are some problems about the track bed, the traffic patterns, freight patterns and all of that, but the CP line that is there. The cost of that is estimated at somewhere around $1 million.

I think it is worth pointing out that the government of Ontario is not interested in something that could be done that cheaply. It is opting for the larger study and it takes the government nine months to say that. I am still not sure precisely where the government of Ontario stands on that matter because I hear local government members saying they are strongly in favour of that. I have had conversations, we have asked questions and we have all seen what the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) says about that. He says, “Nuts to that idea.” If he is in his polite form, which he sometimes is, he will say, “We will put it off to this study and see what happens with it.” In the meantime they are working up the argument that it is far too costly. That seems to me a strange way to set up your economic priority.

The other interesting point that is mentioned in the letter to me from the Premier is that he is talking about homes for the aged. He says something that is a little remarkable because the Premier of the province says we have more homes for the aged beds per 1,000 population than the provincial average. Somehow this is taken to be a sin. Somehow the region of Durham, in providing for elderly people who need this kind of accommodation has violated the code.

Somehow there is a new formula at work because in the past we have taken time and money out of our municipal coffers -- and a number of volunteer agencies play a large role in setting up these homes for the aged -- and we are going to be penalized, despite the fact we have in excess of 300 people on the rolls right now who need this kind of accommodation. The Premier is saying to me in this letter, “Never mind what people in the region of Durham have done in the past, you have done too much. The rest of the province is a little bit behind you so your people will just have to suffer a little bit longer.”

There are a couple of other interesting lines in here, one of which I would like to point out. He says, “There is a need for a network of services such as senior citizen housing and home support services.” I know that; so does everybody else who lives in the region of Durham; so does everybody else who lives in the province. The Premier is not saying they are actually going to do anything about it; he has simply identified a need that members in this House, I think from all sides, have pointed out to him for some time.

As a matter of fact, once again we might turn out to be penalized for doing something on our local initiative, because you will find most of the kinds of network programs he is talking about in his letter to me are already in operation. They are badly underfunded, they are a little spotty in parts and not every citizen in the region of Durham has access to those services, but the framework is there.

The interesting thing I found is there is not one word of intent on the part of the Premier or his government to do anything about it. He is simply saying to me, “Your people in that area did too much for people who needed that kind of accommodation in the past. Therefore, you can sit and wait until everyone else catches up.”

The last part of the correspondence from the Premier is interesting as well. A number of people in the area, the city, the region, me, several other members in the area have talked about a project called Seaton. This is a project, for other members who may not be quite familiar with this, which has had about five names now. It has gone from one to the other.

It used to be called Cedarwood. The House may recall in the very early stages the minister of the crown found himself in the somewhat embarrassing position of having sold some property to the province and there was a little foofaraw at that time. Well, that little thing got hooked into the Pickering airport and that got hooked into something called the North Pickering project. Now it is called Seaton. This idea is as nuts now as it ever was. A change of name isn’t going to make it any more rational.

We are having some difficulty in our area, even though a number of municipalities have purchased industrial land over the course of the years, even though we now have it ready for marketing and for services which are necessary, attracting new industry to the area. There are lots of good economic reasons why that is a little bit slow these days. The project of Seaton, if anything, is going to damage those municipalities who had the foresight to acquire and to prepare industrial land. Yet the Premier is somehow using this as being a good argument for something that would boost the region of Durham.

I recall the first regional council meeting I went to in the region of Durham. The first order of business that the staff brought in before the regional council was a new plan which the province was fostering called the York-Durham sewer system. It was to be, I think, about the world’s largest sewer pipe, eight feet across and would cost astronomical amounts of money. On the first day of the regional council meeting the members were to look at this. Most of us had never heard of it before. It turned out it was a project that was necessary for the region of York. It didn’t have a great many ramifications for the region of Durham, but would be used in our area.

8:20 p.m.

After all of the machinations, one of the first orders of business of that regional council was to attempt to take the province to court to stop the project or at least to get some negotiating room. It’s interesting to note that now the plant is in operation and at the end of all that time, we have three surplus sewage treatment plants in our area. I am not too terribly sure what should happen to those.

It’s interesting to note that now the plant is in operation, some eight years later, there still is no agreement between the region of Durham and the province about the sharing of the costs for this kind of project. It’s interesting to note that at the end of all this some engineer came down, I think from Guelph University, and said, “It’s all very nice but the design of it is wrong and you have got treated effluent which will go out and get sucked back into two municipal intake pipes in that area.”

We may have created here the world’s largest sewage treatment plant and the world’s largest pipe; we may also have created through the services of the taxpayers of Ontario one of the largest pollution sources for local intake pipes and local water systems in the region, an interesting piece of business, an interesting study on how this government functions, how it co-ordinates its activities with local needs and local desires.

Do you build something of that size for local needs and then do you arrange a shared-cost arrangement for putting the services in the ground in the first place and then operating the facility in the second place? I think, at some point, that one is going to come back to haunt this government although there are those on the other side, I suppose, who would say that it provides the capacity for housing. The interesting questions are what industrial growth and what housing? We may soon hear the government making arguments that this Seaton project which the Premier mentioned in his letter has to go because they have excess capacity in the York-Durham sewer system. An interesting argument one sees with that.

I want to change this a bit because I do want to speak, just briefly but I want to spend a couple of minutes anyway, talking about the industrial sector and the kinds of problems that are going on there.

This afternoon we saw the Minister of Labour (Mr. Elgie) rise in this House and admit once again that yes, there are problems in the industrial sector, and yes, there are problems where plants shut down. There is considerable difficulty in how this government deals with those problems and I think in part there is a philosophy problem at work. They are not quite sure how a government which on one day appears before the chamber of commerce and portrays itself as a champion of free enterprise somehow gets around to the basic work of a government and says the next day, “We may be the champions of free enterprise but we can’t really let them do whatever they want to do.” I think that partially goes back to a problem in Ontario politics. There is no political party in this province which is really a purely free enterprise political party because that doesn’t make sense to the people of this province. That’s essentially why.

The government of Ontario had some embarrassing moments this summer. Some of them were in Oshawa at Houdaille. Some of them were in the Premier’s backyard at a plant called Tung-Sol. Some of them were in Windsor. Some of them were in Atikokan. They were spread generally throughout the province and the problem is of a size now that this government realizes it has to do something. The interesting question is, what are they going to do?

We saw the answer to that this afternoon. We saw that the government of Ontario is concerned. That isn’t really news, but more than being concerned, what are they intending to do about it?

In this Legislature in the spring session we had hearings dealing with the closure of another plant in my area, Firestone in Whitby, and at the end of our committee session I put a series of about seven recommendations for the committee to consider. They weren’t new by a long shot; they were things that have been talked about in our community for a long time. They were things the trade union movement has tried to get in this province for a long time. They were things that workers in general have said were problems for them when a plant either closes its doors or announces it is going to close its doors. They were about things like portable pensions, hardly a new idea in this province, but something which is of vital concern to a worker who is displaced and must seek another place of employment and finds the sad fact that his pension fund can’t go with him, that in fact it may be a useless piece of paper he has there.

They were about things like severance pay which one can’t find in the Employment Standards Act in this province because it isn’t there. There is no such thing as severance pay unless you can play catch-up after the fact and have the union or, in some cases, individuals who may have the power to negotiate something which could be called severance pay. But that concept isn’t recognized by law in Ontario.

There has been some discussion. One of the first positions of defence on the part of the government was to say that if that was important, why did the unions not negotiate that a long time ago. The minister today gave an interesting statistic. I think he said something like 28.4 per cent of the agreements that have been negotiated in the last 10 years or whatever had a provision for severance pay.

I do not know why an organized worker, for example, would want to negotiate his or her own demise. It seems to me that is not something which is in the forefront of workers’ minds. It is also true that a large number of our people, more than two thirds of them, are not organized, and even among those who are organized there are a lot who cannot sensibly put a demand like that on a bargaining table.

They are people who are well behind the industrial average, who maybe are organized for only a few years or maybe it is a first contract. I cannot see going to a membership on a first-contract basis with severance pay as one of the priority items. This is the first organized contract they ever had and what happens if the plant closes its doors?

I am having some difficulty understanding how that is even relevant to the discussion at hand. We saw the cruel facts on Wolfe Street again this summer when a company like Houdaille decided through its American owners to close its plant down. The only protection a worker has is his or her union, and the only thing that comes out of that is if that union has the moxie, the will and the muscle to get in and negotiate or at least create a stink, then there is a possibility that severance pay will come out of it. But if the worker does not have that, there is no hope in hell that anything of the kind that Houdaille workers got will happen for him.

I noticed this afternoon the Minister of Labour said his mediator negotiated the severance pay for the Houdaille workers. I am not sure we all need to be labour lawyers or good students of labour law in Canada, but a mediator does not negotiate anything. A mediator mediates. If one wanted to examine carefully the role of this government in the Houdaille situation, he would be hard pressed to identify what the government did do. Anything that was done was done behind closed doors. Anything that was done clearly was not done because the government wanted to do anything, but simply the fact that it was beginning to stink out the joint. They had a plant in Oshawa with 200 workers inside and some owners somewhere in Florida, and they did not know what to do. After two weeks of occupation of the plant, they decided maybe we should all get together in the hotel rooms in Toronto, which is the normal course for the government to take.

There was a settlement reached in that instance, but it had nothing to do with the government of Ontario. It had everything to do with the union that was involved -- the United Automobile Workers -- and its ability to bargain. This was so, even though there was no provision for bargaining at that point, and even though they had no legislative support or even a framework upon which to hang their hat. It was just brute raw political power that was exercised there.

I think there might be many but I would be one who would say that the UAW is one of the better organized and stronger trade unions in this province. It was not able to negotiate the continuance of that plant. It had to accept the sad fact that an American owner could say “Close the doors” and the doors will close.

It is an indictment of this Legislature that this afternoon we should be treated, through a Minister of Labour, to such a weak-kneed proposal. It may be that in sending that whole matter of plant closures off to committee that some good will come of it. It may well be that when the minister rose this afternoon to explain all of his concerns and good intentions he simply did not know what to do. For us on the opposition side there is no alternative but to accept that as being the truth. He did not know what to do with it, so he will whip it off to committee.

I think there will be numerous suggestions from this side of the House about what specific kinds of legislation ought to be put in place. I want to point out before anyone starts to work on that committee that these are not unusual notions. These are things which are now the practice in other jurisdictions. They could, should and probably will happen in this province. But they will only happen when this government gets pushed to the wall. That is the only way anything ever happens in this province.

8:30 p.m.

I read two things this week which seemed to fall a little awry -- they do not quite jibe. One was the opening remarks the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Grossman) at the estimates of his ministry. This House has a service called Hansard and it records each and every word the members put out. So I was a little taken aback this week when I found on my desk a rather lovely little piece of business in nice green trim with the crest of the province. It turns out that this is the minister’s opening statement before the estimates committee.

I wondered why he went to all the time and bother to have this printed. One cannot even find the union logo on the thing. But somewhere in here is the basic notion that if the province, through one of its ministers, says it in good words and prints it up nicely and flogs it about the land, the problem will be solved -- a simple identification is required. That is not my version of how things happen. I appreciate that the minister’s speech reads well and I like the nice titles that are here so that it is easy to identify all the areas of concerns. It is all very racy stuff but it does not do a damned thing for any of my workers. Not one job is provided by this public relations program that is at work here.

What is interesting is to read the contents of this because it does identify the problem areas. It does say, for example, that in the auto industry we have not done enough research and development. That is not news to me as a member of this Legislature; it is not news to the people of my constituency who work in automobile plants putting cars together; it is not news to people in the industry. What is a little different is that I recall a couple of years ago this same minister would hardly admit that was a problem. At least he is now admitting it.

I want to point out that I also read this week something from Walter F. Light, president and chief executive officer of Northern Telecom Limited, to the Financial Post conference on research and development. It is called High Technology, Now or Never. It is not quite as fancy a piece of paper as the minister put together and it certainly does not take as long to say much the same thing, but it does put on the record the other side of the coin. Though I am not a fan of Northern Telecom or anybody else in that sector, I do give credit where credit is due. Northern Telecom has established not only a reputation but the fact of a Canadian company which does research and development and which does it well and has been successful.

Here is a quotation this gentleman puts on the record in this particular speech: “Japan, rising from the depths of almost total industrial devastation, is in the process of surpassing the United States as an industrial power, and even though Japan’s unionized labour costs have risen to par with those of the United States, Japanese companies have consistently raised productivity and expanded their ability to produce quality products at most competitive prices in all world markets.” From another point of view, from a perspective quite different from mine, someone has come to much the same conclusion. If any country is really to develop its economic sector, to develop its industrial strength, it has to plan and work together. That means that unions, industrial leaders and government must all be headed in the same direction at the same time and they must have clearly decided what their priorities are. They must have clearly established where their market potential is likely to be. Then they have to put all that together in a plan. More than that, they have to implement the plan. If a country does that, Japan being a prime example, it will be successful.

If we sit around and pass out little copies of the opening statements of the minister and hold little seminars here and there, we will never get the job done because we will have time to talk about the problem but not the desire or the willingness to do anything about it. That, I think, is a major problem this government has yet to overcome. It is not that it does not know what to do, it is just that it cannot seem to make up its mind. Some days it is tough, some days it is not so tough, but rarely is it successful at providing any diversity to our industrial sector or any research and development of any size other than some tokenism, and taking something like the auto industry in this country, which essentially is the auto industry in Ontario, and solving some of its problems.

Because of a fair amount of political pressure from this side of the House, this government now recognizes that its industrial, and particularly its auto, sector has some very severe problems. It is now paying some attention to that. I recall three years ago in this House it was a little difficult to get the minister to show much interest in something like the auto pact. Now they monitor it and produce reports, but I am not sure I have really seen any clearly defined plan of action for Ontario.

Another matter I want to talk about this evening was brought home to me the other day in my constituency office. I had a young woman who came into the office and, like a number of young people in my riding, in everybody’s riding, she wanted a job. This woman had been out of the work force for some considerable period of time and did not have the formal training that a number of companies expect from their employees before they even start these days. We went over the job potential in our area, in the Durham region, for women who are in that position. A growing number of women, for economic reasons, for personal reasons, are attempting now to get back into the work force. It is a tough job.

Young men in our area are facing economic prospects which are not very bright either, but in addition to that it seems a woman has an additional burden: the traditional job roles are still laid out for them and the traditional expectations of some differential, especially in terms of wages between women and men, still exist. They not only exist, but quite openly exist, and even though we have had a lot of discussion in this House and even a private member’s bill to deal with this whole matter of equal pay for work of equal value, that bill is still not law in this province. Though God knows we have tried to make it law, it is not a reality in this province.

Mr. Sterling: Do you believe in it?

Mr. Bounsall: Sure he does, but you don’t; you know you don’t but you wouldn’t admit it.

Mr. Breaugh: That is an interesting little exchange, Mr. Speaker. For many people in our society, we seem to think that some measure of fairness is the bottom line. That is where all of the members on all sides would stand. I think it is interesting that in this House in this day and age, a Conservative member can quite openly and freely say that he doesn’t believe in equal pay for work of equal value.

Mr. Sterling: I believe in equal pay for equal work.

Mr. Breaugh: I am sure that Mr. Sterling could give us all a long account and a rationalization of why he would make such an outlandish statement.

Mr. Sterling: Bring your secretary in.

Hon. Mr. Pope: She’s worth more than he is.

Mr. Sterling: She’s worth twice what he is.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Order.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I simply want to point out, and I don’t know what it is like on the other side of the House, that the members on this side of the House don’t have secretaries. I have a legislative assistant here and a constituency assistant back home. One is male and one is female, both get paid roughly the same amount of money and both do roughly the same kind of job.

I think we are into the kind of problem that women face in the work force all the time. Change the title, change the name, give it a different job description, but in reality it is still the same thing. For a woman who is beginning her career in any kind of endeavour, the first problem is probably going to be a substantial wage differential. Somehow, in this day and age, government members seem to think that is okay, are quite happy to speak freely and openly about it and to put as the position of the government party of the day that there ought to be differences in wages between men and women.

Mr. Bounsall: Based on sex alone.

Mr. Breaugh: Based on sex alone, with no other criteria used. I don’t feel that way. This woman who came into my office was more than unhappy that the job prospects for her in that area were extremely limited and that she would probably have to accept the reality of the wage differential if she were prepared to go to work at all.

I can think of very few work situations in my area where there isn’t some substantial differential. In fact, the one which comes to mind readily is among the organized workers, particularly in the UAW local bargaining with General Motors, where there is not any longer a clear wage differential between men and women. There are some in there, but the basic premise that you get paid the same amount of money if you do the same kind of work has now been established and accepted.

There might be those who would accuse the auto workers from time to time of not being terribly much on the side of women’s liberation, but at least they do recognize the basic fairness. That is what I think we ought to be talking about in this Legislature. That is what I thought I saw this entire Legislature support when Bill 3 went through the House, but it isn’t law now because this government clearly doesn’t want it to be law. If it did, I am sure it would have found some way to grab that private member’s bill and turn it into government policy. They certainly did that on a number of other occasions when they saw a good idea emerge from opposition ranks: they stole it and implemented it and said it was their own.

Mr. Sterling: Anything we do that’s good, is stolen!

Mr. Breaugh: There is another amazing admission on the part of the member for Carleton-Grenville that anything good they do is stolen, and I agree.

8:40 p.m.

I think the basic problem women face in the work force -- a stereotyping of roles, a wage differential which is widely accepted, and a limited technique for advancement, and certainly very limited fields -- is a fundamental problem this Legislature has to deal with. We are not alone in not being very successful at this process. If we were to find a prime villain in all of the country we would probably simply look at the federal government itself, which for all of its stated good intentions -- and there at least the minister in charge of this particular program, Mr. Axworthy, has learned the jingle; he knows how to speak the language -- has not been successful at all.

The best example of that is the public service clerks’ strike which we just had. They are essentially a group of people working for the federal government, about 75 per cent women and, to use the member for Carleton-Grenville’s stereotype again, secretaries, with substantial wage differentials between them and a man who would occupy the same kind of position. That is still a sad reality.

For the woman who came to my office and didn’t like that reality, I share that concern. I don’t like that reality either. I do not see, even though I have read all the pious statements I would ever care to read on the matter, this government moving in any concrete way to change the nature of that harsh reality for women in the work force.

I want to say some things about the government’s choices and priorities for health care. This is a matter we have gone at in this Legislature hammer and tongs for the better part of a year or closer to two years. We have gone at it in a number of ways. We have had select committees on it and committees of the Legislature. We’ve referred annual reports. We have had emergency debates and we have used every device I can think of, or that anybody in here could think of, to get the government to change its priorities, to look at how it spends its money.

This afternoon we again had some interesting exchanges. This afternoon a number of members raised the matter that it is now fairly common practice to walk into a hospital in Ontario and see something one never would have seen even two years ago -- people on stretchers in corridors. They are sometimes in a corridor which is not designed to have a patient occupy it at all or sometimes in an emergency ward where clearly the doctors and the nurses and the personnel working in there are dealing with emergency patients as a priority item and really don’t have the facility or the staff to deal with someone lying on a stretcher, either inside the emergency ward itself or a little further down the hall in the corridor.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell) rose in his place in response to questions this afternoon and said, “That’s okay.” He is not shocked that somewhere tonight while we are in here debating this budget speech, there are people stacked up in corridors on stretchers. That doesn’t bother him.

It ought to bother the hell out of him. He ought to be the same guy who can find in that same hospital where they are on stretchers in the corridor, empty beds, wards which have been closed down and staff who have been laid off. Is the minister saying that good health care means one gets to lie on a stretcher in the hall?

His other response this afternoon was maybe too close to the normal for him. He said, “Would you rather we close the door on him and leave him outside?” I am afraid that is clearly the next option for this government. They are going to leave them on a stretcher all right, but they will roll them outside so they will lower the energy consumption inside. That is the only step that is left.

We have documented for the better part of a year and a half now in this House that there are serious problems in our hospitals. We have had committees go at it -- select committees and legislative standing committees. We have had special reports on it. The federal government has commissioned a special study of medicare, but still the problems remain and get worse.

This afternoon we had some discussion about what is happening with the number of bed spaces that are available here in Metropolitan Toronto. An interesting thing has occurred. About a year ago we had this exact same debate. The minister took the position clearly and unequivocally that what he was going to do was to identify that about 10 per cent of our active treatment beds had the wrong kind of people in them. They had chronic care patients in them.

He said that is not right, and perhaps that is true. I don’t think anybody could find fault with that statement. For a chronic care patient, a different level of care is required. What he said he was going to do is crank up more chronic care beds. He also said he was going to cut back on active treatment beds. Somehow we have managed to cut back on active treatment beds all right. There is no question that right now in Metro there are about 700 fewer active treatment beds than there were in January of this year.

The Hospital Council of Metropolitan Toronto has done a little study of this. It said the government has done two things: it has managed to cut down on the number of beds that are available in a hospital and, second, it has managed to make the problem of chronic care patients in active treatment beds twice as bad as it was a year ago. It was failure on both counts.

We have documented on and on what the policies and the priorities of this government clearly are, and the sad realities which they have put in place all around the province. In something like our health care system that reality gets manifested in a large number of ways. This afternoon in the House the Minister of Health listed problems that have been identified in public health units and the method of funding which the government uses. In rough figures, they used to get two per cent of the health ministry’s budget and they now get one per cent.

He identified the kinds of programs that he wants to run, and we all agree. We debated a resolution of mine in the spring saying that we wanted a preventive dental care program. We said it was possible and that it was cost-effective. We were using the minister’s own studies in this regard. This afternoon he stood up and announced that he has a new program -- a range of them -- which he wants to put in. But there is not a dollar here, not a nickel to be spent.

The sad thing is that in a number of parts of this province I found in my visits that public health units at one time offered this kind of preventive care. At one time they had the staff to go around the kitchen tables of this province, sit down with the families and talk about nutrition, and deal with their health care problems before they became major problems. In other words, at one time we did have a preventive health care system. That has dwindled away. It was nicked away at by this government in its spending priorities so we now have to rebuild it.

But we have looked at specific examples such as Windsor where the health council went through all the ramifications of what the ministry so lovingly refers to as rationalization -- here beds were cut out of the hospital system. It was said at that time, “We will cut out the beds in the hospital system where they are improper. We will deinstitutionalize these patients. We will put in place the home care programs they really need which are better, which are more cost-effective and which provide better care.” They still ain’t there.

In a number of parts of this province where the good words have been spoken, that the minister is going to rationalize the innards out of the general hospitals and put in place the home services which have been tried and found to be worthwhile in other parts of the province, we find those programs have not spread. We find public health units that are undermanned and understaffed. We find inconsistencies from one part of the province to another.

In the city of Toronto there is one of the finest public health units in the province -- active, providing care, particularly for something that other people seem not too happy about. That is, if you look at the specific kinds of needs which women need in the health care system, it is beginning to try to establish new kinds of programs to meet women’s needs which few health units in the province are able to do. Although they have some funding problems they have begun to get them under way.

But, again, it is badly financed. It is not the kind of financial security which I think better than 50 per cent of the population deserves. They are not the kind of programs which we know will work and will work in other places. If only someone would finance them properly they would work very well. There are a number of things which the minister said this afternoon. I think we have expressed agreement in general on a couple of matters, particularly on foot care for senior citizens. The minister certainly knows the right words to say; but the question really is, is the minister going to implement them in a fair and reasonable way?

For example, he proposed this afternoon that six nurses will go into some kind of a chiropody program here in Toronto. It may well be that nurses may be able to train themselves in foot care. I do not doubt that for an instant. But are we to accept that six nurses will make any difference in the health care system in this province at all? I do not think so. Are we to infer from the statement which was made this afternoon that the government of Ontario will treat podiatrists in this province fairly?

I suppose if I was asked that question on the first day I was in this Legislature, I would say, “Sure, the guy is a straight guy, is he not? He would not spread stories like that if he did not mean to implement them fairly and properly across the province.” Sadly enough, I have been here a little too long, I guess. I do not accept statements from a ministry now.

8:50 p.m.

The unfortunate thing is that members on all sides have seen ideas presented to the legislative committees. For example, we spoke at great length, kind of a philosophy class, about the whole idea of deinstitutionalization. Many of us who had worked in the health care field or social agencies or education had said for a long time, “You have people sitting in institutions who shouldn’t be there.” We, as opposition members in various responsibilities, go around this province and we visit these institutions. It is clear that in a number of cases in psychiatric institutions, people are badly placed. The irony is that while they may be badly placed at least those who are in there are placed. For many of our other citizens there isn’t even a place to put them.

The minister took the idea of deinstitutionalization, of putting people back into the community, and he went to work on that. He closed Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital. He then went to work on piling the patients from Lakeshore into Queen Street. I would think it reasonable to say that they then went to work at piling them out of Queen Street. People got put on buses and people had prescriptions given to them and they were forgotten.

There is the interesting argument that once a psychiatric patient is discharged from an institution such as Queen Street or Whitby, he or she is no longer the responsibility of the ministry. I accept that in the legal sense perhaps they are not. However, I also put the case that in the moral sense they are still in need of care. If, as was put to the opposition members in the committee hearings around the closing of Lakeshore, we are to accept that the ministry is going to take funds that it saves by closing hospital beds in institutions of all kinds and redistribute that through the system, and build up another system, a better system, one which has home care programs, that is one thing, but to dump them is another.

As someone who sat on a committee here in this House, I listened to the minister say there would be a saving of I believe it was $1.7 million in the closing of Lakeshore and that that would be put back into place in community care programs. I can say we accepted that. In all fairness, we had no choice but to accept it and we did. We let another four, five or six months go by and then we started asking questions from this side of the House. “What happened to the savings from the closing of Lakeshore? Where are the community-based programs that were to come up from that? How does that money get redistributed through the system?”

It is more than a year since they closed that institution and in that time, though the minister at one time did make an attempt to establish the specifics of what community-based organizations were going to be put in place, some of them still aren’t there. Most of them still aren’t there.

I read kind of sadly a booklet put out by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. It is called Ontario’s Mental Health Care Breakdown. I think in a sad way the union which represents the workers who work in our psychiatric institutions, who might be called by many, me included, the primary providers of care, because they are there when the doctors are not, has unfortunately given an accurate description of what is happening in all of mental health in the province of Ontario. There has been a breakdown, a disintegration.

I don’t think any of us are making an impassioned plea that the system we had in place two years ago was a good one, but I think we are saying we were told very carefully that deinstitutionalization did not mean giving people a bus ticket. It meant giving them services in their own community in familiar surroundings, and a support system would go in place.

What makes me angry about this is that I see, for example, in my own area, that the health council in Durham region has looked at the restructuring, rebuilding and refinancing of Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. I think the government is serious about doing something at that hospital; at least the minister has personally come down to Whitby and I announced three times now that he is going to rebuild Whitby. Each time he comes to town to announce this, I always go and ask the staff at Whitby and the people who are working in and out of the psychiatric institution there, “Well, I see Dennis is going to rebuild Whitby again. Does anybody know where?” Oddly enough, not even the administrator of the hospital knows where he is going to rebuild Whitby. “Do you know what size and shape this thing will be?” Well, no, they don’t. “Have you played any role in making suggestions to the ministry?” Well, they tried.

I think the end result is that the health council in the area has made a package of recommendations to the ministry. I read them with great interest the other day and I support them. I think that is the right way to go because he talks about rebuilding the psychiatric institution at Whitby in one manner and then spreading that system throughout our communities.

The problem I see with that is I accepted the exact same premise at Lakeshore and I saw them tear down the institutional care but I didn’t see them build up the community care. It is my concern that although we have identified what we want to do and how we will go about that, I don’t see a government with the will or the guts to implement it. I certainly couldn’t point to one example across the province over the last four or five years where they have carried through on what their stated intentions were. There always seems to be some economic reason which says “First get them out of the institutions,” but then the money never follows to provide the home care services.

I note with great interest again that the hospitals are bargaining for budgets for next year. I note in a statement they put out on September 24 called For Your Information that they said hospitals in Ontario are in serious financial difficulty and many face the possibility of having to cut services or incur a deficit unless they receive additional funds. In this statement they even peg a number to it. The total deficit predicted is more than $61 million.

Quite frankly, I thought last year we had nailed this one down. Last year we called administrators from around the province before a legislative committee and we made the case that the financial proposals of the Ministry of Health to run general hospital services in Ontario were inadequate, were not founded on fact but rather founded on fancy, were dumb, were causing problems for administrators and, more important to people like me, were causing problems for patients. We found documents from the Wellesley Hospital here in Toronto and from a number of other places in the province that the level of patient care had dropped substantively and measurably. Those documents are hard to come by because opposition members don’t get handed them every day. They are internal documents of the hospitals, not the responsibility or the property of the Ministry of Health.

I don’t think there is any question in my mind or in the minds of anybody in this province that the level of health care in Ontario in the last two or three years has dropped substantially. I don’t remember seeing such a number of inquests in the papers over hospital deaths as I have seen in the last three months. I don’t remember seeing a Minister of Health accept the fact that people are being accommodated on stretchers in the hallways and saying that is okay.

In my area a gentleman by the name of Matthew Dymond was once the Minister of Health. I do not believe somebody like Matt Dymond would ever have stood in this Legislature and said it is okay if people are kept on stretchers in hospitals in Ontario and accepted that fact. That is a sad indicator of the deterioration of the health care system in this province. It has a number of difficult areas and there is no arguing about that. There is certainly a raft of things which have to be resolved in there.

The first order of business ought to be that the spending priorities of this government get turned around. Surely it doesn’t need more than what was put in front of that table a year ago this fall, when 278,000 people said exactly what I just said: “Health care in Ontario is important; it is a priority item for us; it has deteriorated.”

Do members know what the government’s total response to those 278,000 people was? I remember because I not only lugged some of them in here, but I went outside to listen to the minister’s response. His first response was he was going to write those 278,000 people a letter and straighten them out.

Of course, he didn’t mean he would sit with his hot little pen in his hand and write 278,000 letters. He meant some of the 15,000 or so people who work for him would be given the job of responding to the people in Ontario in much the same way, I suppose -- as I began with this evening -- as the Minister of Revenue responds to the people of Ontario. A big ad campaign goes out; letters go to all the people in the province explaining that there really aren’t any problems.

9 p.m.

I watched the minister that afternoon squirm and wiggle outside the doors of the Legislature. He said, “Oh, well, now, these 278,000 people are just misinformed.” He didn’t have the stupidity to say outright that he thought they were wrong or dumb or that the things they saw in their hospital with their own eyes weren’t really happening or that the relatives they had who were using the health care system in this province didn’t have valid complaints. What he said was that they were misinformed. They didn’t know and he was going to give them the truth and the light. He was going to write these 278,000 letters.

He never did do that, and I followed it with great interest because I thought that at the very least, because the ministry has all kinds of people on staff who can write really racy responses to anything you can name and probably give us eight or nine very scientific studies on what good things they are doing, surely they will have the common decency to have somebody on the staff sit down and write a reasoned and rational response to all of this. The response by the government of Ontario to 278,000 of its citizens was “We received your complaint.” That was it.

Mr. Bounsall: Did they send those out?

Mr. Breaugh: Not one. Not a letter went out. No big PR campaign went on. Nothing happened.

I think my frustration started to build when I heard the Minister of Health announce in the estimates a couple of years ago that he had a new program to fight alcoholism in this province and then the next thing I learned was that people were calling my constituency office saying, “Why does the Minister of Health sponsor this big advertising campaign about ‘You call your own shots’? What is that all about? I said, “I don’t know.” But I saw a couple of the ads and I happened to ask the minister and he said, “Well, that’s our new campaign to fight alcoholism.”

The ironic thing is that it’s a little tough now, when you watch television, to make the distinction between the Labatt’s commercial urging you to drink more beer and the Ministry of Health’s commercial urging you to call your own shots. They are all that kind of smooth, downtown, chic situation and they are very common and rational. Nobody is actually drinking beer or anything like that and it’s kind of a rowdy situation but the media message is clearly the same and I am not sure that one isn’t reinforcing the other.

I am not sure which is reinforcing which but I do know that the Ministry of Health has spent a bundle of money to put that cute little television commercial on the air and the people who are on the receiving end still aren’t sure, a year later, as to what the message is supposed to be.

Maybe that’s some indication of the spending priorities of this government. If it were prepared to fund treatment centres for alcoholics in this province, we would at least know what it is doing.

Mr. Bounsall: Too subtle by half.

Mr. Breaugh: I am not sure whether it’s subtle or it’s sophisticated or that it’s government by polls or what exactly it is, but I do know this unfortunate bottom line. There are basic needs in the health care system in this province which are not being met, not by a long shot. There are serious problems which have been identified.

I want to also touch on the Hall report because there I think is something which is unique in Canadian history. It is not usual to have, at the beginning of a system as large and as complicated as medicare in Canada, a person of the stature of Emmett Hall putting together the kind of backroom co-ordination between all of the provinces and the federal government and the day-by-day implementation of how medicare will go into place. Emmett Hall played that role at that time and a year ago, when David Crombie was the Minister of Health for a very brief time, he decided -- a federal Tory -- that there really was a serious problem in medicare across the country and he ought to get somebody of the stature of Emmett Hall and put him to work on that.

It wasn’t the grand and glorious committee or royal commission which we often see floating out of here. It was a one-man inquiry and you could hardly find a more qualified person, more eminent in stature, with the breadth of experience that Emmett Hall had. He went from one end of this country to the other and he documented what was right about medicare, what was wrong about it, where the problem areas were and what his own particular recommendations for solutions were. That took more than a year to complete.

The report documented, in fact a number of the things which members of this Legislature have said are happening here in Ontario; it identified that some were problems which are rather unique to this province but that many of them were happening across the country -- problems about extra billing, doctors opting out of the system.

Emmett Hall went on to document as well that there was a need to go back to an earlier theme to investigate the roles that different health care practitioners play. Again Emmett Hall, with, I think, a genius and an insight for words, identified that somewhere around the witching hour, somewhere around midnight, women, particularly nurses working in a hospital, all of a sudden acquire magical powers.

During the course of the normal working day, the doctors, who by and large are men, reign supreme, make decisions about health care, provide the level of care, give orders and run the joint. The premise is of course that they are doctors; not that they are men, but that they are doctors, more qualified to do certain things. Somewhere around midnight, the witching hour, those men get tired and the women providers of health care take over. After midnight they are making decisions which, in the middle of the afternoon, would be thought not proper. After midnight the whole role changes.

About a year ago a surgeon in Hamilton said to me: “If you really want to look at what is the important ingredient in the health care system, it is not the highly trained surgeon. The surgeon provides great skill, uses great technology and probably, for a brief instant, plays a crucial role in someone’s recuperation, but the real people who save lives are those people who participate in the health care team afterwards.”

It is true. If one goes to hospitals in most parts of this province, one will find whole weekends where there is not a doctor to be seen. There is not a doctor inside the hospital. The whole joint, the whole kit and caboodle, is run by nurses, by nursing assistants, by nursing aides and by just ordinary people who work in the hospital.

I will bet that a couple of hours from now in our big, sophisticated, downtown Toronto hospitals where they have the world’s finest practitioners of the arts, where they have the highest technology, one will find again something which would not have been true this afternoon: women in a role which is sometimes traditional, changing their role from being nurses who might in some people’s eyes be looked on as kind of secondary providers of health care to moving into the forefront, making decisions, providing care and doing it effectively, or those people will not be alive tomorrow morning.

The traditional providers will be off to the Granite Club, the Albany Club, the hockey game or watching the ball game on TV tonight. They will be removed from the health care system but the system churns along and the lives will be saved, not because of the high-priced help, but because there is somebody back there to slug it out in the trenches. If there were not, a major component of our health care system would not work and, a little more pertinent, people would not live through the night.

I want to touch on something else which Emmett Hall looked at in his report. We raised in this Legislature a thing which is called, if I may be so bold as to use the government’s name for it, a chronic care co-payment fee. We pointed out at the time that this did not make a lot of sense to us. We did not understand why the government, all of a sudden, found it necessary to tax the sick. They had made such an effective career out of taxing the poor, so why move on to the sick? But they decided they had to, and they put in that program which they call a co-payment scheme -- it actually is a user fee, an escalator clause. Every three months, every time the federal government ups the ante just a little bit, without even blinking an eye -- they do not even have to push a button over there -- up goes the user fee.

I do not know why as an economic priority this government decided it was necessary at this stage in its life to tax the sick. At the beginning of this whole exercise, before this particular program was put in place, we went through a whole exercise with the then Treasurer, Darcy McKeough, who, above all other things, was not inclined to be a recluse. Darcy put it on the line in the committee room just down the hall from here. He said, “This whole premium system is a tax. It has got nothing to do with health care, health care premiums or an insurance fund or anything else. This is a tax, it is the best kind of tax and it is one that is in place already.”

Extrapolated out of that little philosophy lesson comes something like the user fee. It escalates as their pensions go up and the government of Ontario simply grabs a little more. Is it necessary? No. Does it provide a good, ongoing care program for chronic care patients? No. Do hospital administrators like it? Some think it is not too bad. They have set aside a little money in the kitty, but they get about 25 cents on the dollar. The rest of it goes down to Queen’s Park to general revenue. Again, the spending priorities of the government are clearly out of whack with the needs of the society which it is supposed to serve.

9:10 p.m.

A couple of things have come across in the last little while that maybe point out that the problem is more serious than many of us would care to admit.

I watched as the minister rushed to the aid of Connaught Laboratories. I must say I was a little perplexed because I thought Connaught Laboratories was a good institution here in Toronto and it has a history of providing good services to the people of this province, indeed to the people of the country, but I was a little confused when I saw the minister virtually attacking the Canadian Red Cross.

I know the minister rather well by now and I would not have thought that the Minister of Health for the province of Ontario would be anxious to attack the Canadian Red Cross. That is a strange thing for him to do.

I could understand him rushing to the defence of the Connaught Laboratories and I thought, that is a strange argument that is at work there. I found out that yes, indeed, the Red Cross had contracted out some plasma processing to a firm in California called Cutter Labs. I understand at that time it was not possible to get that kind of fractionalization process done anywhere here in Canada. We did not have the capacity to do that. There seems to be a bit of argument about that, but to get back to the initial phenomenon that I witnessed -- a Minister of Health decided he was going to publicly, not privately as he would do with the hospital administrator, at a press conference here attack the Canadian Red Cross.

What in the world is that all about? Frankly, I have followed that with some interest since then and the whole argument is about whether we can do that fractionalization process here in the Connaught Laboratories or whether it really has to go to California. I find there is a sad little tale at work here.

About five years ago, the province and the federal government decided to look at the processing of blood and the fractionalization process of plasma which is the heart of this argument. In five years, the government of Ontario and the government of Canada have not done anything. They have met, that is true, but they have not succeeded in doing anything.

One interesting upshot comes from press reports over the weekend, and that is that in hospitals around the province and particularly acute -- here in Toronto, there is now a blood shortage. The people of Ontario are not too sure what is going on and that uncertainty leads the blood donor clinics into problems. The problem in the blood donor clinics causes problems again back in the hospitals.

I am not sure what the interest of the Minister of Health was in participating in that argument but I do know that he certainly did not do very much to clarify what really was the argument. He did not do anything at all for Connaught Laboratories and he did a great disservice to the Red Cross. The upshot of it all is that we now have a blood shortage in our hospitals again.

I am not sure whether this guy is at work for the good of health care of the people of Ontario or not, but I do know that whether he sets out to do that, whether that is his intent when he begins the process or whether he just stumbles into these holes from time to time and cannot crawl out of them, that is where he is, clearly in a hole. I would not mind him being in that hole. As a matter of fact, I might even help him dig it out a little bit and maybe even put a little dirt on the top of his head for him, but he is dragging the rest of the health care system down there with him and that I think is clearly wrong.

Another interesting thing which was announced several years ago has not happened as yet and seems to be clearly part and parcel of what this government is up to these days. A couple of years ago they announced, as part of a go-east policy, that they were going to move OHIP to Kingston. This has been the subject of a cute little piece of business. There is quite a thick file in my office now.

Mr. Sterling: It is about time you went to eastern Ontario.

Mr. Breaugh: The almost minister from Carleton-Grenville is chipping in again that it is about time they went to eastern Ontario. I have been following this argument in some detail, all the little memos back and forth, and I could not tell you today, two years later, whether OHIP is going to Kingston or Belleville or Oshawa or Brampton. If I were he sitting over there, that far away from the seats of power, representing Carleton-Grenville, and I knew I was competing with Brampton, I would get a little worried because I do not think it is going east at all.

The interesting question is, how did they talk to the staff about whether they want to go and whether OHIP should move to Kingston? It is not at all clear. Two years after the government started this whole process, whether OHIP is going part and parcel to Kingston or not, it would appear that there is an intention of the Ministry of Health which is not really clear. Two years after he started out to do something, it is not clear whether that is really where he wanted to be.

There are a great many items, Mr. Speaker, that could occupy the time of this House. I want to close on one because I think that this is particularly interesting as a political exercise -- as an exercise in the reality of the thing. It is something which ought to be a fascinating little piece when the history books are through with it.

About a week ago, I raised the matter of a number of areas in this province where the ambulance services seemed to be having some difficulties. There is the matter in Picton where the response time was over 30 minutes and a woman died from a cardiac arrest. It is not clear, as it never is in any of those cases, whether the response time was the real problem or whether she would have died if she had been here in the middle of all this high technology medicine. It is clear that a response time for cardiac patients of over 30 minutes isn’t acceptable anywhere.

I went on to document some comments from the director of ambulance services in the Ajax-Pickering General Hospital about difficulties they were having, of a response time of more than 18 minutes. I brought to the attention of the House the rather interesting piece of business which happened to an ambulance driver, a guy by the name of Hank Meyer, who lives in Burlington and works for the Halton-Mississauga ambulance service. He went on a radio program and he spoke out his concern about response time and the fact that in his area, for the ambulance service in which he works, during the course of the evening hours there are two units available to serve a population of 270,000 people, which probably meant a response time of more than 30 minutes, and that really wasn’t proper.

These aren’t alarmist statements by any means at all. They were said quite openly and honestly and corroborated or fitted in quite nicely with two other examples I had used. For speaking the truth, or his opinion on the matter, for presenting what was obviously a fact at the time -- and no one has ever disputed the fact of the matter -- this gentleman was given a 30-day suspension.

I raised the matter in the House and the minister said in response to the question at that time -- I want to quote him so I get this correct -- he said in the Hansard of the day: “first of all the ministry had no part whatsoever in the suspension which was registered against that individual by his employer.” This is not your usual mealy mouthed ministerial statement here. This is straight, direct and not really subject to much interpretation. He didn’t say they played a little role; he didn’t say they were careful observers; he said flat out, “the ministry had no part whatsoever.”

Yet in the letter that was served on Mr. Meyer giving him the suspension, they clearly identify a Mr. R. Armstrong, later found out to be a Mr. Rick Armstrong who is the coordinator of ambulance services for the area, from the ministry as being present at the hearing. The operator of the ambulance service identified him and says he was there.

The minister rose last Friday in the House to say, “Oh, yes, we were there,” and three days earlier he said they had nothing to do with it. I guess I would have let that pass, except that a little while ago the government of Ontario tabled a report, the Williams report on freedom of information. Since then various ministers have had their little to-do about freeing up information and the public’s right to know. I believe I even heard somebody over there say that civil servants in Ontario are now allowed to talk. The same group of people who, on the same day, are announcing they believe in freedom of information and the rights of our civil servants to voice an opinion are seeing that someone is suspended for tooting the whistle on the provision of ambulance services.

There seems to be some problem. Another interesting point is, if one talks to an ambulance driver in Metropolitan Toronto, he will say, “I work for Metropolitan Toronto emergency services.” Is that person a civil servant?

Mr. Sterling: He is not a civil servant. The Ontario government does not hire him.

Mr. Breaugh: To the public that person is a civil servant. Perhaps he might not meet the definition here. If you look at Halton-Mississauga as an example, there is another occasion where that is a private operator providing services, but to all intents and purposes, that ambulance driver is a civil servant of one kind or another. Not in the sense that he is directly hired by and under the employ of the Ministry of Health in this province, but he does provide --

Mr. Ashe: Are you filibustering?

Mr. Breaugh: I understand the member for Durham West doesn’t like to hear any of this stuff and I appreciate why. I am giving the honourable member time for more wonderful, earthy interjections because I appreciate he doesn’t often get a chance to speak in this House.

9:20 p.m.

There are lots of areas where I think the government of Ontario has severe problems. This is one of them. I think the classic was unveiled today in question period concerning the Chatham ambulance services. I have followed this one. It’s one of those things you kind of pick up and it’s hot for a little while and then it cools off and you leave it for a while. It concerns the whole matter of private operators running ambulance services and whether they really are private operators doing anything or whether they really are, for all intents and purposes, employees of the Ministry of Health.

When you talk to the private operators about what they own, they don’t own anything. The ambulance units themselves are the property of the ministry. The ministry buys them, the ministry drives them out there. The radio system is owned by the ministry. In reality you would be hard pressed to define what the private ambulance operator really does own. There have been interesting arguments back and forth about the EMCA standards for the drivers themselves, the conditions under which the operators work and whether they really are a business at work or almost an extension of the Ministry of Health.

A couple of years ago the minister decided he was going to get tough, for some reason, and several raids were established. Once again, the raids were not carried out personally by the Minister of Health. As a matter of fact, I find that quite a comical picture; I couldn’t see the honourable minister raiding anything. Whenever I see him he seems to have a little difficulty walking. I don’t think he’s going to bust down a door.

But obviously, someone in the depths of the Ministry of Health said he thought there was something untoward somewhere. As a result, the Ontario Provincial Police seized some records, one of which was from the operator in the Chatham area.

The interesting thing now is that because the records were seized, other bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health are not prepared to release costing projections for next year. Because the ministry, on the one hand, seized this guy’s records through the OPP, there aren’t any records upon which they can base cost projections for next year, and there isn’t really the occasion to get a cash flow out. In other words, one has a hard time filling out the Ministry of Health forms if somebody has seized all of one’s records.

I found out today that there is now a union at work; the service employees’ union is bargaining. They met with the operator and they have an agreement between those two parties, except that there seems to be a requirement that a phrase be added “subject to the approval of the Ministry of Health.” This is going to cause a strike this Friday in Chatham of ambulance services.

I can’t get over the fact that a couple of years ago the Ministry of Health, in essence, had the OPP seize the operator’s records. The upshot of that was that they couldn’t fill out the ministry’s forms and that we will have a strike, perhaps this Friday, in Chatham because the ministry stole -- in parlance that might he used on the street but I’m sure would not be parliamentarily acceptable in here -- had removed from his premises the records of the operator. It seems that we might have a disruption of service there over something as silly as whether the words “subject to the approval of the Ministry of Health” would he added to this agreement.

It seems to me to be a sad commentary on all we have discussed this evening: the spending priorities of this government; the way this government sets those priorities; the way it implements those things; the health care system; whether women have a fair shot in all of the work force, in the work place, in legislative terms in here; whether this government is really prepared to come to terms with a rather dramatic tearing up of the economy of this province or what it will do when there is a shutdown, as there was at Houdaille, or Tung-Sol, or Prestolite, or a number of other places where shutdowns have occurred in the last few months. This government has got itself some problems, and I think one is an inability to deal honestly and effectively with the economic problems in the many forms and many ways which beset the people of Ontario.

These are going to be the grounds for an interesting session this fall. I think the problems are very clear, and there isn’t going to be a need for a great deal of flushing out of issues for the members of this House to discuss. But I do know that opposition members will continue to provide the government with matters that are of concern to us and to all the people of Ontario. We anticipate that in the course of setting their financial priorities there will be some changes made, that there will be some legislative changes which will aid the economy of Ontario. We have had enough of little presentations by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism which sound good but which don’t mean anything to anybody, except the human being who wrote the speech and the one who printed it up.

Mr. J. Johnson: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight. The budget debate is a forum which allows us to discuss not only the means through which revenues are collected by this government, but also the many ideas, programs and philosophies related to the manner in which it allocates those revenues.

For quite some time now a personal concern of mine, and one which is shared by many members of this House, is the degree to which governments are expected to involve themselves in the private lives of the citizens of this province and, no less important, our economy.

A fundamental problem which many modern governments are faced with today is the result of a shift in political philosophy. It has been said that arbitrary redistribution of wealth and income has become the most important single activity of governments at all levels. One might take issue with the use of the word “arbitrary”. None the less, people in today’s society are questioning the degree of morality or justice that is attached to our system of progressive taxation in which some are forced to pay half of what they earn in taxes and others are not taxed at all. People are beginning to question whether a decent minimum income is a right and privilege if no particular responsibility to put something back into the system is attached.

Regardless, the trend, at least in federal budgets, has been consistently to reduce the tax load borne by low-income earners in relation to the richer classes. I am not disagreeing with the intent of the trend. Rather I am merely stating there has been a profound transformation of public attitudes within the last decade or so, and this is bound to continue. The concept of liberalism upon which our nation was founded over 100 years ago originated from historical concerns for the freedom of the individual. Today we are concerned with social justice as much as we are with individual freedom. Social justice often is stated in economic terms. It is a result of more and more people demanding greater economic equality, so government must assume the dual role of mediator and supplier.

This is a source of the current philosophical dilemma. Government, and we are no exception, cannot play the social justice game and win. If, for example, we guarantee equality of income eventually an inequality of social opportunities will result. Conversely, a guarantee of equal social opportunities will lead to an unequal wealth distribution.

The government, therefore, is left in a quandary since the halfway point between these conflicting demands satisfies no one and at the same time decreases the scope for individual freedom.

Dissatisfaction is becoming somewhat more widespread as certain segments of our society begin to feel they receive few direct social benefits while being required to carry the costs of government. But there is a paradox in all this. Quite simply, it is that while Canadians and Ontarians are complaining about high taxes, socialistic policies and interference by government, they are, as mentioned, constantly calling on it to assist in some issue or another.

People infrequently accept the fact that every time government steps in and does something, particularly those things which might be accomplished by other means, the range or grade of options for society is narrower. In other words, there is less left for people to do for themselves. This in itself is not to be condemned, for no responsible government should abdicate its social responsibilities. What we should consider is the degree to which government should involve itself in the social system.

One of the reasons for undertaking this consideration is the increasing limitation that personal freedom is experiencing. Another and perhaps more practical reason is simply that we no longer have an entry to unlimited resources to pay for increasing expenditures on social programs.

9:30 p.m.

The plain fact is that the cost of social programs is considerably higher than in the past. During the post-Second World War era, which was one of unparalleled prosperity, the public greatly changed its expectations of government. Society demanded the best in both education and health care. The baby boom created an unprecedented need for space in schools and that space was provided. Parents not wishing their children to become blue-collar workers demanded an increase in post-secondary educational spending. The money was there and so it was spent. Nor do I think it was spent unwisely since today many of the facilities we have come to take for granted are almost irreplaceable in terms of what it would cost now to rebuild them.

The economic times we currently face are not reminiscent of the prewar depression years by any means. Nevertheless, one would expect that the experiences which many of us had 30 or 40 years ago might cause us to question the direction that government spending is going. Mind you, over half of today’s society hasn’t had to face the bad times, though perhaps that wouldn’t make any difference since, as George Bernard Shaw stated, “Our conduct is influenced not by our experience but by our own expectation of life.” Our children no doubt have expectations that equal or perhaps even outweigh our own.

The point is, of course, that in the midst of great expectations, whatever we do in an attempt to please others will be considered inadequate. Our task is made particularly difficult because government no longer has the unlimited resources with which it can at least attempt to please.

Predicting the future is a tough job, almost an impossible one in a free society. When governments run off the mark even by a fraction, they are widely criticized. The demands created by the baby boom have largely been met, though not entirely. Hundreds of thousands of those who passed through the education system recently have found jobs because this province created industrial infrastructures necessary for private industry to settle or expand in Ontario. Certainly in a few years, industry will catch up with the baby boom and a sort of balance will settle into the labour market, although it will be quite some time before we re-experience the affluence of the early 1970s.

Meanwhile, as we are all aware, this is the period in which we must reassess our priorities and decide how we are going to respond to the expectations placed upon us. Unfortunately, harsh economic realities have begun to affect our understandable and natural desire to take care of our citizens. There are of course many factors which have caused upsets to the economic system and thereby indirectly contributed to the need for reassessment. Our population is beginning to age; more women are entering the labour market; new systems of business organization have emerged; leisure income preferences have changed, and of course government has grown considerably. Rather than upsets to the system, these are more properly value changes which may necessitate modifications to our economic outlook.

Abrupt shocks to the system, however, have been experienced in recent years with the quadrupling of energy prices on the international market due to exercising by OPEC of its political power. New technological advancements in production techniques and shifts in the location of potential new resources such as offshore oil have taken place. There have been changes as well within the industrial structure of our economy, for example, the increase in services and the decline of the manufacturing sector.

Few, if any, are capable of accurately analysing the total effect of these structural changes within the economy. Certainly there is little agreement over the issues most directly related to the present hardships we are experiencing. Some say inflation is the basic problem in the economy and it should be tackled directly. Others seem to feel the primary emphasis should be placed upon solving the unemployment problem, because that in turn would have a positive impact on inflation.

Some economists see our current situation as being short term; others warn us that our problems are of a long-term nature. There are those who contend that trade unions add to inflationary conditions, while the opposite view is that when times are tough unions form the only protection for many Canadians. Finally, as I have stated, some see government redistribution of income as a major cause of economic woes, while there are those who feel we aren’t yet doing enough in this regard. Nothing is clear and nothing is precise.

Yet from this complex, conflicting picture of our economy, one indisputable fact emerges: our expectations, regardless of how we view the role of government, are for the most part tremendously overinflated.

I mentioned briefly two areas of spending a moment or two ago, those of education and health. Perhaps I might elaborate briefly on both of these social policy fields for which this level of government has direct responsibility. It has been said our current education system, the one which developed largely out of the post-war era of prosperity, has turned out a generation of young Ontarians with too much abstract education and too little motivation and usable skills.

The educational system, combined with our almost overly generous unemployment insurance system, it is said, has added to the chronic shortage or near shortage of skilled labour during the period when, because of high unemployment, the reverse should be expected. Perhaps it is fair to say that teachers and parents are responsible.

Mr. Bradley: Not the government?

Mr. J. Johnson: No.

Mr. McClellan: Tell us about the government’s wonderful apprenticeship program.

Mr. J. Johnson: Perhaps it is fair to say teachers and parents -- not counting you gentlemen -- are partly responsible for the decline of the apprenticeship system in Ontario. University education has been very highly touted in our new society and it may well be that the last decade or so has produced an overabundance of people with an underappreciation of the worth of skilled labour. However, as the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson) reminds us, while the government does subsidize apprenticeship training, it cannot force people into such schools.

Personally I see nothing whatsoever wrong with children receiving university education. In fact, I strongly believe in this, provided the usefulness of university in terms of providing a career and post-graduate income is appraised honestly. Perhaps it is time to resurrect the old traditional concept of a university education. A university used to be seen as a preparatory stage in life which had a social value and not an economic one.

If we were honest, I think we should also place apprenticeship in its historical perspective. If we do this, we soon realize high minimum wages have disrupted the apprenticeship system we knew before the days when every young person had to make enough money to pay for a car as well as expensive food and lodging.

I do not really think we can correlate the education process with unemployment, although we can relate shortages of skilled labour indirectly to post-secondary schooling. In a society as advanced as ours, there is a need to maintain the valuable university institutions. Perhaps the answer to skilled labour shortages lies in rethinking the whole educational process so that an adaptive education process follows the traditional one.

Perhaps, too, our programs of retraining and rehabilitation of human resources should receive even more consideration, particularly in light of the speed at which certain jobs are being replaced by advances in technology. This is an area in which money might be wisely spent. One thing is certain, however; gone are the days of large increases in funding to universities, increases we once took very much for granted. Gone too are the mammoth annual increases in spending within our social programs.

Five years ago when he was the federal Minister of National Health and Welfare, Marc Lalonde pointed out his feelings at the inadequacy of the traditional view of equating the level of health in Canada with the availability of physicians and hospitals. It was about the same time that we in this province arrived at the same conclusion.

9:40 p.m.

Regardless of how health care services in Ontario compare to many other areas, there is little doubt that future improvements in the level of health of Ontarians lie mainly in improving the environment, moderating self-imposed risks and adding to our knowledge of human biology. Perhaps, too, it is our economic awareness that has led us to conclude that successful improvements in the cost effectiveness of the health care system lie in our attempts to decentralize and deinstitutionalize health facilities and planning bodies.

Themes similar to those in health care can be traced in our changing outlook of senior citizen programs. Often in the past, programs for the elderly were designed with the individual in mind but not the family unit. We must do our utmost to permit and encourage home care administered by family members. We must realize of course that those most in need of help will be those least able to afford it. The family which needs a second income most will also not be able to seek alternative means of care for an aged parent. We cannot allow that kind of social outcome to occur. In other words, we cannot let our philosophy of self-reliance become an excuse for avoiding social responsibility.

The member for Kingston and the Islands (Mr. Norton) has been emphasizing that for several years. Nevertheless, this is the time for reassessment. Not only does the trend away from traditional social programs seem inevitable, it has within it the seeds for very positive change. We can look forward to the development during the next decade of systems of mutual sharing and community interdependence which a few years ago were unimaginable.

These then are a few thoughts on social-program-spending by government. The teaching of self-reliance and the levelling-off of government spending patterns are necessary in the shaping of a healthy and prosperous future. However, by themselves, they are not enough to ensure this prosperity. What then are the other economic realities the government must face? If we were to focus only on the kinds of structural change within the economy I mentioned a few moments ago, the future would indeed appear quite bleak, and yet I don’t really feel this is so.

At least two significant spurs to economic growth have appeared on the horizon. First, with the current market price for crude oil so much higher today than in the early 1970s there is a strong incentive to discover new forms of energy or more efficient ways of using the existing energy supply. The future, therefore, should bring a wave of technological innovation within this field.

Second, many of the developing countries of the world are gaining strength and becoming major new markets for industrial goods and services at the same time they are developing industries that will be competitive with those in the industrial countries.

Both these positive forces carry with them challenges for existing industries, but in order to meet these challenges we are going to have to be far more receptive to change than we have been in the past. We cannot afford to offer resistance to this change. Certain sectors of our economy will become extinct or obsolete due to the natural process of evolution. But out of that process, new industries will be developed and the test of a truly healthy economy lies in its ability to shed inefficient and outdated activities for more efficient processes. That ability therefore must be a key characteristic of the economy.

Society has established its support programs to relieve hardship and to make this system more humane. Unemployed workers receive unemployment insurance and are eligible for manpower training and mobility grants to assist job searches in other areas. Such programs are intended to assist people to adjust to change. In that sense, they help to promote change but also we know certain programs can hinder.

Our national industrial policy in previous years, for example, was based on a high degree of protection for plants from foreign competition. Also, we seemed to accept more passively that we would remain heavily dependent on technology, management and entrepreneurship imported from abroad. The combination of protective policies and dependence upon imported ideas may have been useful at one time, but today it fails to foster creative changes within the economy.

Change has also been inhibited to some extent by government decisions to intervene in markets that were producing undesirable results. In other words, from time to time governments have substituted control regulations for natural market conditions. In the past, governments have taken on the responsibility for far more detailed regulation of the economy than they could possibly carry out efficiently, and these regulations have had a negative effect on the decision-making process in the private sector. This is precisely why we adopted the policy of deregulation of business we are following today. Impetus for increased productivity lies within the private sector itself.

There is, however, one conclusion one cannot escape when analysing the productivity of the economy. The most essential ingredient to the process of change is technological innovation. Capital investment is important and so are larger-scale plants. But these are not the keys to economic health, nor is naturalizing our economic production. Rather, it is innovation, and necessity is the mother of invention.

The best incentive for innovation is the marketplace. Innovation does not always fare too well in branch plant industries, but we cannot turn every branch plant operation into a Canadian-owned business, although we should certainly be moving in that direction. Furthermore, the large-scale policies that act on total demand and supply in the economy will never be sufficient to get the country off the unemployment/inflation treadmill.

Government and the private sector must focus their attention on smaller-scale economic questions, the specific ailments of particular industries and sectors of the economy. What we have to do is develop excellence in a limited number of areas. We have to have industries where there is a strong balance of small, medium and large companies where there is a strong Canadian ownership present. We have to concentrate on industries that are natural to Canada and where special measures to support those industries create little tension with our trading partners. These are the industries that are related to our weather, our geography and our resources.

Agriculture is very much an industry and one of our most important renewable resources. A lot in terms of innovative research is going on in this sector of our economy. Currently, the budget for agricultural research alone is $23.4 million annually. Research projects have been undertaken in the areas of livestock, poultry, field and horticultural crops and plant and animal disease.

Ontario’s agricultural research and development programs have contributed to the development of new high-yield, earlier- maturing soyabean varieties and to the development of new strains of barley, oats and wheat environmentally suited to our climate. Pesticide and herbicide research has helped farmers increase their efficiency and decrease their costs of crop production. Corn output has been improved by 37 per cent to over 100 bushels an acre in some areas of Ontario and a total of 1.9 million acres is in production. Milk production in some areas has as much as doubled with the help of research afforded by this province.

Improvements in technology and research are universally essential to economic growth. In terms of illustrating the need for technological development, perhaps a prominent example is the pulp and paper industry and assistance provided there by the employment development fund. I think that pulp and paper manufacturing is worth discussing at this point because it shares a particular difficulty with other industries that is becoming more and more a factor influencing economic decisions today. I am speaking of environmental concerns.

9:50 p.m.

I do not think that in the past we have realistically analysed the economic impact of pollution. Pollution, whether it be the appearance of mercury in our waters, carbon monoxide in our air, or acid rain, can be reduced to dollars and cents. Very simply, we pay to have pollution eliminated in a traditional cost-benefit manner. So far, we have apparently not accepted that the benefits warrant the costs but I think we will reach a point very soon when we can no longer avoid paying our past dues.

No one knows what this will do to our competitiveness since all attempts to improve the quality of our environment will ultimately manifest themselves in high production costs. Paying for pollution is fast becoming one of the most significant of the economic structural changes to which I refer. Certainly, in terms of stabilizing our economy, we are going to have to face this issue and, as we are doing with the pulp and paper industry, supply some of the mechanisms to ensure that our industrial competitiveness is retained.

By way of concluding, the need to promote innovation and to develop technology are some of the economic realities to which responsible government must address itself. But responsible government will also strive, in an economic sense, not to be overly helpful since that will in effect lead only to increased regulation and market intervention.

The healthiest input into the economy has always been and always shall be from the private sector itself. There is such a thing as killing with kindness, and so we must continue to be selective in our approach to assisting truly indigenous industries and we must continue to recognize those industries are facing structural changes causing peculiar hardships.

In the social field, the transition towards cultivating individual independence and community participation has already begun; it must be furthered. This decade, it is hoped, will bring much greater pressure for individual self-reliance at a time when social, political and economic stresses upon many people, especially the disadvantaged, may make it more difficult to cope.

But the challenge for government in the 1980s lies in initiating activities to enable as many people as possible to meet the responsibilities which will be thrust upon them and in ensuring that self-reliance is not a disguised abnegation of responsibility.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to follow the member who just spoke. I have to look his riding up because it is one of those constituencies with three names, in this case Wellington-Dufferin-Peel. I am sure the member would never forget, but some of who do not represent that riding might. It is also a pleasure to follow the member for Oshawa, who, as the health care critic for the New Democratic Party, has a very special concern that he has expressed this evening about the health care system.

I notice, as I rise to speak, that we have the usual large crowd in the galleries, full to the brim, and all the members have now taken their seats. It is always encouraging to know that we have this level of interest in Ontario, particularly when one of the members from the Niagara Peninsula rises to speak.

Mr. Sterling: It only reflects what we expect to hear.

Mr. Bradley: The member for Carleton-Grenville is certainly not as proud of the people in Grenville because he has placed Carleton ahead of it, but he certainly is looking forward with anticipation to a speech which will be, as usual, nonpartisan and full, I hope, of a good deal of logic that the member will accept.

I will launch immediately into an area which I think is extremely prominent at this time, certainly in view of what the public is being exposed to, and that is an expenditure that the government is using to further its own interests. I am, of course, referring to the advertising dollar that is being spent by that administration to promote the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario using the taxpayers’ dollars.

Mr. Sterling: I thought you were going to talk about polls.

Mr. Bradley: The member has drawn to my attention the fact that the government has spent a good deal of money on polls and we had to drag them kicking and screaming, stampeded by the opposition and the media and the Liberal-Labour member for Rainy River (Mr. T. P. Reid), into at long last revealing the results of these polls. Of course, we found they had been basing their administration and their policies on these polls, as results were exposed, and we wonder how many more of these polls are around.

Mr. Sterling: Why don’t you guys release your results?

Mr. Bradley: The member, of course, when it suits his own purpose, will invoke the federal example and indeed, if I were elected to the federal Parliament of Canada, I would be more than pleased to demand the results of any polls that have been paid for with taxpayers’ dollars. My mandate is to speak in this particular Legislature. I am elected as a provincial member of parliament and I will, with the same vigour shown by the federal Tories, demand that the government provide for members of this Legislature and the public on Ontario the results of all the polls.

Back to the advertising program that exists, however, in Ontario, the use of the taxpayers’ money to promote the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. We already are aware that being in government is, in itself, an advantage. It has millions of dollars worth of salaries in terms of civil servants who sit not too far from its benches to advise the members. When we go into the committees, particularly during the time of discussion of the spending estimates, we have a large number of civil servants with their high salaries. Some of them, of course, earn those high salaries. Certainly, if part of their mandate is to make the ministers look good, they would very much be earning those salaries. We recognize that is part of their mandate.

The government has all the levers of power at hand to enhance its own reputation across the floor. Yet it still finds it necessary to go to the media in terms of television, radio, newspapers and magazines to promote its programs, its ministers and its policies, once again using the taxpayers’ money.

It is also the richest political party in the province. Its bagmen go around the province to all the hotel owners who feel they owe it a favour even if they do not. It goes to everybody in this province for whom it has done favours over thee years and gets money from them.

It is already the richest party in this province, one of the richest political parties in this nation, yet it finds it necessary to use the taxpayers’ dollars to enhance the party’s reputation.

Mr. McKessock: Shame.

Mr. Bradley: This indeed, as the member for Grey has pointed out, is a shame which should be exposed to this province.

I am hopeful the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses and its honoured chairman, the Honourable Mr. Wishart, will look carefully into the accusations I have made and will act upon my request that it investigate this advertising fully to determine whether it violates the Election Finances Reform Act. It was my understanding, if I recall the 1977 election, that we were prohibited from advertising in the media until the last 21 days of the campaign. I think we have had a few such campaigns, if we objectively view what has taken place.

Mr. Speaker, for members of the House who are assembled in great numbers this evening, let me reveal once again some of these advertisements. The latest, of course, are those from the Ministry of Revenue. Every advertisement includes at least in two places, “Because Ontario cares, the new grants for seniors program is introduced.”

Mr. J. Johnson: Excellent program.

Mr. Bradley: The member for Wellington-Dufferin-Peel says it is a wonderful program. Certainly many of the senior citizens across Ontario now receiving the cheques are pleased to receive them. They have already received tax credits in the past and some of them might be surprised to find out they do not have those tax credits available. As the provincial Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) said, “This is the way in which we can show the senior citizens of Ontario we are providing the money.” After all, it is very important that the government shows it is providing the taxpayers’ money for senior citizens.

10 p.m.

We recognize that the ultimate goal, which is to alleviate the municipal tax burden on senior citizens, is a goal towards which we all strive. I think we all support that. What is most objectionable is the fact that this is being sold as a Progressive Conservative package with the statement repeated, “Because Ontario cares.” This is blatant partisanship in my view.

I know the Minister of Revenue is a man of integrity. He is a man who is fair, in my view, certainly in dealing with the opposition parties in the House. He must have a pang of conscience when he turns on his television set and watches the partisan ads that are appearing to promote this particular program, the government of Ontario and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

I didn’t hear too much about expenditures for advertisements for the Ministry of the Environment back in the spring. I am surprised we have had as many commercials as we have had, but I suppose there was the election scare. The Premier says there was never any intention of having a fall election until such time as he read the polls after coming back from the first ministers conference and recognized that it might not be too wise to have an election at this time.

We had Ministry of the Environment advertisements which told people, “I came back to Ontario because it’s so clean,” and that Ontario and its people are doing as much as anybody else in any other jurisdiction to clean up pollution. It would be interesting to superimpose on the screen, while the audio is on, the picture of the smokestacks in Sudbury or many other examples of Ontario’s pollution, which continues unabated or only partially abated and is adversely affecting the lifestyle of the people of the province.

We have the Ministry of Energy with that catchy little song, “Life is good, Ontario. Preserve it, conserve it.” The Minister of Energy (Mr. Welch), when we suggest that that has any political connotation, says that is preposterous. I could never say this word, but the member for Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. B. Newman) has always talked about subliminal advertising. This is a prime example of subliminal advertising if I have ever seen it.

The implication is there that life is pretty good in Ontario and people should preserve and conserve the party which has been in power for some 37 years, longer than most Communist governments which have had to stay in power by other methods than what we would use, which are the democratic methods. I suppose there is something to be proud of there.

Prior to that, we had the Minister of Energy himself on. They would say, “Now the Honourable Robert Welch.” The member for Brock is a good friend of mine and a person with whom I co-operate on a local level to assist the people of my municipality in the Niagara region. But I think I can be reasonably critical of the fact that the minister’s voice was used. One would hear him speaking to the law students: “And now the Honourable Robert Welch.” One would hear the applause, and he would talk about saving energy. Once again, this seems to me to be an example of using the taxpayers’ dollar to promote cabinet ministers and ultimately the government.

Then we had the Minister of Health. Probably the member for Oshawa has touched on this at some time or other, perhaps earlier in the evening in his speech. The Minister of Health on Happy Hospital Day took out these big ads in the newspapers, paid for by the taxpayers of Ontario, to advertise how much money he was giving to hospitals this year. Surely a press release would solve that particular problem if he felt he was under fire by the opposition. Once again he was using the levers of power, the taxpayers’ money, to promote the Progressive Conservative Party and its policies.

We also had the Ministry of Labour talking about what it is doing for women in Ontario, almost apologizing for the fact that the government had decided not to proceed on the bill that had been introduced by the member for Windsor-Sandwich and supported, I think, by members of all parties in committee.

The Ministry of Labour went on to apologize for the fact that it had not acted on that, saying that all the rules at present in existence were sufficient. In this House we don’t use the word “misleading,” but they were providing information that we in the opposition do not feel is absolutely correct.

Then we had the Minister of Industry and Tourism. Once again he has a very large budget and we have noticed when one of the rock bands sneaks by into Ontario Place and plays there, that when there is an advertisement we have the name of the Minister of Industry and Tourism listed at the bottom. We still have the minister’s voice, as far as I can recall, with a nice catchy tune, which comes on and tells us how many jobs he has created in Ontario. He has not made any over the last two years because he recognizes the disastrous response to their financial program this year in the creation of jobs. He talks about the fact that he has created these jobs for the people of Ontario.

I merely point out that it is extremely unfair for the government to use this new lever of power, the taxpayers’ dollar, to promote itself when it already has all kinds of money to do so.

I have even had some of my Progressive Conservative friends -- and believe it or not, I do have many friends who adhere to the Progressive Conservative Party -- confess that it is shameful that the provincial government is spending the taxpayers’ dollars to promote itself. I would be hopeful that in its commitment to restraint, instead of cutting down on the number of hospital beds in different municipalities, there could be a cut in the budget and that money applied to those programs which are useful and beneficial to the people of Ontario.

We have heavy expenditures for various offices. Some of us saw that the Globe and Mail this morning had a rather interesting article entitled, “Patronage: Familiarity Breeds Contentment for Tories.” It talks about the number of former Progressive Conservative members of the federal and provincial Houses, those who have been loyal and faithful to the Progressive Conservative Party, Who now find themselves in some very plush jobs paid for by the people of Ontario.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to some of these people because the editorial writers of certain leading Conservative newspapers in St. Catharines take great glee in pointing out the federal appointments that are made. I am told the federal government is involved in some patronage appointments, but once again I would remind members of the Legislature that it is my mandate to discuss things which are of a provincial nature.

We have Mr. Ross DeGeer -- I have heard that name before -- who was the former executive director of the Conservative Party of Ontario, as agent-general in London’s Ontario House at $51,000 a year; Lincoln Alexander, former federal Tory cabinet minister as head of the Workmen’s Compensation Board, $60,000 a year; John Yaremko, former Ontario cabinet minister, as chairman of the Liquor Licence Appeal Tribunal, $51,000 a year; Arthur Wishart, former Attorney General, is chairman of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses, $51,000 a year; Allan Grossman, former cabinet minister -- it also mentions that he is the father of the Minister of Industry and Tourism but I think that is irrelevant -- as chairman of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, $51,000 a year. The list goes on and on of people who have been loyal to the Progressive Conservative Party and who have been rewarded with appointments and the money for their salaries is coming from the people of Ontario.

It even goes down to the local level; you can walk into any liquor store in Ontario and you can spot Progressive Conservatives left and right. Look around the province to see who have been appointed the chairmen of the various regional governments. That is a swear word in my municipality but apparently not in this Legislature. All of these people have been loyal to the Progressive Conservative Party and they have been rewarded not with funds from the Progressive Conservative Party but with the taxpayers’ dollars by placing them in these positions.

No one can tell me that all of those people are there solely on their merit and their credentials. The main credential, in most of those cases, is their adherence to the Progressive Conservative Party and the favours they have done for the party in the past.

10:10 p.m.

Surely we have reached the point in this Legislature in 1980 when a person should not be denied the opportunity to serve in one of these positions because of his political affiliation. That is the case at the present time, but when we take over the government that will be changed.

We also have the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations which has been dealing with a problem which is pretty tricky for it. Certainly there are many people in the Niagara Peninsula, the Hamilton area and the Kitchener area who have been adversely affected by the situation that has existed with Astra Trust and Re-Mor. Many of these people have written me letters to express the fact. Some of them are pensioners or others who have put theft life savings into these two firms -- Astra Trust in one case and then gone further into Re-Mor.

These people have lost their money because of some unscrupulous activities by certain people who have been associated with those companies. One has to wonder how the provincial agency responsible to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Drea) could possibly license Re-Mor under the circumstances that it did with the people who were associated with that company. Yet it was licensed by the province of Ontario and the minister cannot shirk that responsibility.

As a result of that, these people are now suffering the financial consequences, many of them senior citizens who have put their entire life savings into something they thought was guaranteed. It seems to me that the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations and, ultimately, the government of Ontario have a role to play in compensating those people because of the lack of diligence of that particular agency of that ministry.

I am hopeful that when the pressure is on, the government will act. There aren’t that many people. It is not going to be a mass demonstration in front of Queen’s Park such as we are going to see next Saturday. It is going to be a few people in terms of the total population of Ontario who are going to be concerned about this, but I am hopeful that the government will relent and compensate these people for the fact that it has been less than diligent in carrying out its duties.

This government prides itself on being a great financial manager. Both opposition parties have exposed the fact in many cases that indeed they are not the great financial managers they claim to be. They have run deficits year after year, while proclaiming themselves to be the party of balanced budgets.

One prime example I am aware of that is known to those in the Niagara and Haldimand-Norfolk regions is the Niagara regional library system. Here we have the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Baetz) with his officials, who supposedly are overseeing the finances of the regional library systems around this province. Yet, over three or four years, the Niagara regional library system went into debt by more than $800,000. A system supposedly monitored by the provincial government, a system supposedly watched carefully by the provincial government, fell more than $800,000 into debt.

Mr. Sterling: Where do they get their money from?

Mr. Bradley: From the provincial government, of course.

Mr. Sterling: They get it from the municipalities.

Mr. Bradley: No, no. The member should get his facts straight on this. The regional library systems are funded almost 100 per cent by the provincial government. I think the member had better speak to the Minister of Culture and Recreation who recognizes that at the present time.

Mr. Sterling: You know that is not right.

Mr. Bradley: I think the member for Carleton-Grenville had better check his facts. That is how regional library systems are financed.

One would think that when the provincial government is pouring so much money in, it would be diligent in ensuring that this money was being spent in an appropriate manner and that these systems were not falling into debt. They are not supposed to be accumulating these deficits, but perhaps they were following the example of the provincial government which has been rather good in the past dozen years at bringing about deficit financing.

They borrowed money without authorization and they ran up a debt. As a result, when I go to the minister now and say, “You were at least partly responsible for allowing this to happen. Will you now assist the area libraries around that relied on the regional library system for services in providing some very basic services?” As Pontius Pilate would do, he washes his hands of the whole situation and says it is a local problem and they can pay off their debt. He says, “Talk to those people.”

Once again the local people in the Niagara region are asked to pay for a financial mistake of the provincial government, which was, of course, the case with regional government. We know who monitors the board’s finances and that is what is important in this system.

I will discuss the school system that we have in this province a little later, but we have the issue of plant closings before the Legislature. It is an issue which has been here on a continuing basis. I have indicated to members of this House when I have spoken on other occasions that I have some personal experience with plant closings, so I am aware of the consequences of them.

One was perpetrated upon certain employees by International Nickel back in 1957 when International Nickel bought up a local plant, a machine shop, and ended up closing it down. As a result, many people were thrown out of a job at that time with perhaps a week’s notice and perhaps severance pay of a week or two. One of the people who was involved at that time was my father. He had spent 22 years working for International Nickel and the “thank you” my father received from International Nickel was a week’s notice and severance pay of a week or two.

Mr. Laughren: Stop picking on Inco all the time. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know which side your bread is buttered on? They give you $12,000 and this is all the thanks they get.

Mr. Bradley: I shouldn’t respond to interjections, but the members of the New Democratic Party should like the St. Catharines Standard. That would be a first because we all know where their affiliations lie and have “lied” for years.

What they point out is that Inco has probably made donations to both of the private enterprise parties that exist in this House. The one difference we see is that the Liberal Party, having received a donation from various companies, is not beholden to these companies. As a result, if you look at the policies enunciated by the Liberal Party, and if you look at the very strong stand taken by the leader of the Liberal Party on pollution emanating from the plant in Sudbury, you can clearly see that the political donation has not had an effect on this party.

But look across the floor at some of the orders that have been given to Inco over the years and how, when Inco starts barking, the provincial government starts heading in the opposite direction and backing off. This party does not do that and that is the basic difference we see at the present time. We are able to resist those temptations. Of course I speak for the party in the province which sits in this Legislature and for no one else. Others can defend themselves.

Back to plant closings: That is the experience I have had with that. As well, the members of the New Democratic Party would remember, because they attended some meetings in St. Catharines, certainly the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie) did, when Columbus-McKinnon was on the brink of closing. We all know the tragedy that exists in that case for the number of people who lost out on full pension benefits because of the age category and number of years service category they fit into. They did not receive the kind of severance pay they felt necessary.

We now find out Columbus-McKinnon is looking around the province to open up an operation somewhere else. I understand they are looking somewhere east of Toronto at the present time. What in effect we are seeing is a company moving from one area, hightailing it from an area, which is unionized, where the union has been able to win for the workers in that company, and I think significant gains in terms of wages and benefits going to another area to start up a new operation.

10:20 p.m.

I investigated when I heard reports that perhaps they had received money from the Minister of Industry and Tourism through the economic development fund. Fortunately, the government wasn’t that politically stupid to be doling out money to a company that was running from one area to the other for political reasons. But those people who worked in that plant felt the consequences of plant shutdowns.

We in the Ontario Liberal Party feel this is an important problem and has been for some time. We recognize the provincial government, as is its wont, will attempt to channel all interest to a federal budget if they feel there are some items in that budget which are going to be unpopular. We know that. That is the time when the Premier of Ontario will fall off the knee of the Prime Minister of Canada. He has been there for the last several weeks when it was to his political advantage to be there, as well as -- and I give him credit -- believing that.

We in this House certainly have indicated with a good deal of unanimity that we are in favour of a position which is contemplating a strong central Canada. For that reason we in this Legislature have indicated that we are one voice when speaking in the national councils. Surely even the members of the New Democratic Party have embraced this position, which is one that is enunciated by the Prime Minister of Canada. So we have some kind of consensus in this House on that issue.

I think I was talking about plant closings at the time and what we in our party feel is important in terms of some minimum requirements in legislation. We do not consider what the Minister of Labour presented earlier today to be those minimum requirements. The difference between this party and that party to the left is that we are prepared to put our feelings on the line in terms of a no-confidence motion but they will go running, and I recognize why.

I sympathize with the New Democratic Party because I have seen some of these polls as well. I know principle means an awful lot to that party but the polls also are ringing a little bit of a bell within their caucus meetings. Therefore I understand why they will avoid any matter of no confidence. I respect that decision; I respect it as being politically astute, but gone are the principles that used to be enunciated by the Socialist party in Ontario.

I remember when we used to be able to look over to them and say, “We don’t agree with them but at least we admire their principles -- the fact they are able to stand for something.” Now they are hightailing it out the back door to support the government across the floor that they proclaim is somewhat useless to the working people of Ontario. But they will continue to prop up the government so they don’t need to worry about that.

Interjections.

Mr. Bradley: I have obviously hit a raw nerve in that party and the last session was a clear indication of the fact that that party was prepared to support the government no matter what. I am led to believe from listening to the New Democratic Party leader at his press conference before this session of the Legislature opened that he will not support any motion of the Ontario Liberal Party no matter what that motion was -- no matter if it contained those subjects which were dear to the heart of the New Democratic Party.

The New Democratic Party used to be very good at moving motions of no confidence. Members will recall that in the first and second years of this Legislature the New Democratic Party moved a good number of motions. It knew full well that this Parliament was going to last some time. But when it came down to the crunch, when there was actually a chance this government would fall, the New Democratic Party headed over to support the Progressive Conservative Party. Now we call it the Progressive New Democratic Party -- I guess that is favourable -- or the Democratic Conservative Party, a real contradiction; but then so is Progressive Conservative, so what is the difference.

As long as they have that party as friends, that demonstration on Saturday will not really evoke much in the way of legislation. We in this party feel we must increase the period of notice that a company is required to give its workers before layoffs occur; secondly, we must provide fair levels of severance pay for employees who are laid off, and thirdly, we must make pensions a right and not a privilege for workers in this province.

Because we feel so strongly about this issue in this party, we are prepared to oppose the government that will not implement policies designed to bring about a better working condition for the people of Ontario. We feel those in plants that are affected by shutdowns should not have to occupy these plants to get what is only social and labour justice. I have a feeling that eventually in this House the New Democratic Party will feel that heat so much that it will be supporting a motion of no confidence from this party.

Interjections.

Mr. Bradley: The ad hominem arguments now begin as I have hit the raw nerve.

We in this party, and certainly the leadership of this party and all members of this party, are very much concerned about the plight of those who are affected by these shutdowns. We feel that only action on the part of this government can continue support in this Legislature by all members of the Legislature.

If the government is not prepared to bring forward the kind of legislation we feel is for the good of the working people of this province, then we are prepared to move a motion of no confidence or to defeat that bill with the consequences of an election, if necessary, to give the people of this province a choice, whether they are going to have a government which is not going to take any meaningful action on behalf of those adversely affected by plant closings, or whether they are going to have a party which is prepared to take that action and prepared to put its electoral success or failure, whatever it might be, on the line in a provincial election, and not prepared to run at the first sign of a bad poll.

I know the people of my constituency feel very strongly about that and would feel very badly represented if I were not prepared to go to the front lines to defend the policy that we have enunciated and to insist that the provincial government bring about the kind of policies that would assist those adversely affected by these layoffs.

I know members of the New Democratic Party are genuinely concerned about this subject. They have spoken about it before in private and in public; they are on record. One need only read the labour newspapers in this province to know that the leader of the New Democratic Party has spoken about this, and I think with a good deal of sincerity.

I know the member for Nickel Belt has for a long time felt very sincere about this problem and has fought long and hard for working people in this province. I know that if that government is not prepared to bring forward the kind of legislation he feels is necessary, then he is going to feel that he must defeat that government in this Legislature, and if necessary, bring about an election.

Mr. Warner: Right on. Now you are talking. We have time for a motion right now.

Mr. Bradley: Now that we have the commitment from those four members of the New Democratic Party who are in the Legislature --

Mr. Sterling: Let us have the motion.

Mr. Laughren: Put your money where your mouth is. Put the motion right now.

Mr. Bradley: We all know that motion will be placed at the appropriate time, and then the members of the New Democratic Party will have the opportunity either to defend the party of the rich and the established or defend the working people of this province. We recognize where they will stand after the gigantic demonstration on October 18.

I recognize that the time this evening is coming very close to 10:30, Mr. Speaker. We are probably a few seconds away, I would like to take this opportunity to adjourn the debate and promise the members of this Legislature that I will continue in the same vein at a future date.

On motion by Mr. Bradley, the debate was adjourned.

The House adjourned at 10:30 p.m.