The House resumed at 8:02 p.m.
INTERIM SUPPLY
Hon. F. S. Miller, seconded by Hon. Mr. Wells, moved resolution 3:
That the Treasurer of Ontario be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants and other necessary payments pending the voting of supply for the period commencing April 1, 1982, and ending June 30, 1982, such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation following the voting of supply.
Mr. T. P. Reid: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly happy to see, after our recent layoff from this chamber, the enthusiasm with which members have flocked back to the first night sitting. No doubt they knew I would be speaking and that is the reason for the vast attendance this evening.
Before I deal with the substantive matters of the resolution before us I would like to bring to your attention, Mr. Speaker, perhaps by way of a point of order, the fact of the resolution itself. You are aware that we are still dealing with the estimates from the last fiscal year, April 1981 to April 1982, which means, in effect, that we are dealing with the budgetary provisions and estimates, presumably, that we have voted for or will vote for to the end of March 31, 1982. This resolution is asking us to vote interim supply to June 30, 1982, to vote sums of money to pay the expenses of the government with matters which we have not had before us in a budget paper and which we have not had tabled before us in the various estimates relating to the ministry and the overall budget of Ontario.
I know, Mr. Speaker, that you are being besieged by various people, but I am raising a point of order with you that I hope you will deal with. I would repeat the point that in ordinary occasions when we are dealing with interim payments there has been a budget before us, there has been a book of estimates, we have known what the fiscal program of the government is and we have been voting to allow the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) to make those payments for three or six months to deal with them. Yet at this time, we are trying to bridge the gap between the last fiscal year, 1981-82, and the coming fiscal year, 1982-83.
We in the opposition have no idea what the budgetary plan of the government of Ontario is. We are being asked to approve expenditures without any foreknowledge of the direction those expenditures will be taking and the impact they will have on the people of Ontario.
I ask, Mr. Speaker, that you look into that matter because this government, since the realities of March 19 of a year or so ago, has taken to playing somewhat fast and loose with the rules of the Legislature, setting precedents that will come back to haunt all of us. I want to draw to your attention, sir, that this is a unique experience in my years in the Legislature, being asked to vote interim supply for a period before the budget and the estimates are before the House.
Having said that, I get to the substantive part of the motion which is to give the government authority for expenditures until June 30, 1982.
In the history of the democratic process, estimates have been voted after careful consideration by the Legislature where the government has defended its policies and programs, and if the Legislature is satisfied it deserves to have the moneys to carry on the business of the government. That somewhat outmoded principle is still with us. In fact it still retains some of its validity.
I find myself in the position of being asked to give the Treasurer a blank cheque to cover the expenditures of the province for the next three months. We have had today, after a layoff of almost three months, questions in the Legislature on the urgent matters facing the people of Ontario and I would say we have had no cogent answers to those pressing problems.
We in the opposition were asking the Treasurer what he intended to do about the 375,000 people recorded as being unemployed in Ontario, what specific measures he was about to bring in to provide some relief for those people and create some jobs in the province. We were referred vaguely to the speech from the throne which we were forced to sit and listen to last Tuesday. Yet we found the Treasurer, in his responses to our questions today, giving us nothing but a perhaps very positive and accurate description of myself as a member of this Legislature, but little in terms of what policies he and the government are about to bring forward.
It is interesting that we are being asked to give authority to the Treasurer for these expenditures, not only to his ministry but to all ministries. I draw attention to the fact that the Treasurer in all his economic forecasts as evidenced in his 1981 budget was probably as far off the mark as one could get. He predicted there would be 6.6 per cent unemployment in Ontario. The recent figures show 7.6 per cent and I gather there will be figures released tomorrow which will probably indicate that figure is even higher.
I have a number of memos from the Treasurer that were put out under the aegis of his office that make interesting reading for those who are interested in history.
8:10 p.m.
I refer to Ontario Business Magazine, December 1981, which is not that long ago. The headline on page 9 is, "Queen's Park Report." The subheadline is, "Miller Predicts Interest Rates to Fall as Low as 14 Per Cent." "Ontario Treasurer Miller predicts that interest rates in Ontario 'will drop as low as 14 per cent within the next couple of months.'"
Those couple of months have come and gone and the Treasurer's forecasts as usual were not very accurate. It is of concern to us that there are 375,000 people out of work, people are in danger of losing their homes and farmers are in very distraught conditions.
If there is some concern over there that farmers are not having a problem I can tell them farmers in the Rainy River district are having those difficulties. A man is leaving his home and his farm to travel 1,000 miles to North Bay to get a job so he can keep his farm going. We have those problems.
We have problems, as outlined by my leader this morning, about small business and the fact that perhaps up to 80,000 small businessmen consider they may be in dire straits and may have to go out of business. We had the leader of the Liberal Party go through the list of layoffs totalling something like 5,700 in the last few months: 600 at Algoma Steel; 165 at Resnick Canada; 35 at Sara Coventry Ltd.; 140 at Domtar; 1,600 at Polysar; 110 at Wabco Equipment; and 775 at Boise Cascade.
I would just interject there about the $200 million the governments of Canada and Ontario put into the pulp and paper industry and we are now seeing these massive layoffs in that industry. There are 60 people at Pedlar Storage; 475 at de Havilland Aircraft; 270 at Franklin Manufacturing; 170 at Hussmann Store Equipment, 75 at Pamour Porcupine Mines; 40 at Caterpillar; 130 at Silknit; 55 at Canada Sand Papers and the list goes on and on. We had no response today from the Treasurer about what he was going to do about this.
Mr. Philip: The member's federal counterparts would have sold the plant. We would not have had any jobs.
Mr. T. P. Reid: I hear some nattering in the background.
I find after three months away from this Legislature, three months for the 70,000 plus civil servants who are under the direct rule, recall and authority of the people opposite, of the 900 plus in the Treasurer's own department, plus the people in the new Ministry of Industry and Trade Development, all those people who are associated with the BILD program -- and I repeat it is not BILD, it is bilge. We know what bilge is in a ship. There are a lot of holes that let stuff come in and go out and that is about the size of that program.
All of that and a $20-billion budget besides, yet the Treasurer stood in his place today and gave the people of Ontario, particularly those who are unemployed, no answers at all as to what job creation he is going to come up with.
We had the speech from the throne. We all know that under ordinary circumstances that is a vague melange of promises that the government trots out every throne speech opening. But these are not the ordinary salad days of the Conservative government. These are very serious days indeed that we have to deal with.
Politics aside, as other members have said today, we are all disappointed the government of Ontario has not accepted its responsibilities in the way it should to do something about the situation facing Ontario.
Where is the creativity of all those civil servants, all those members opposite and the Treasurer and his staff to do something with these serious problems of interest rates that are affecting small business, the farmers and the home owners and which have put 375,000 people out of work?
I tried to ascertain from the Treasurer some idea of what his priorities are, and whether he saw inflation as still the principal problem that he outlined in some of his previous budgets and subsequent statements. Is it inflation, or is it the unemployment situation in this province? The Treasurer's answer to that was, "I suppose the public of Ontario think it is unemployment." I never really understood where the Treasurer's priorities were, and I think the people of Ontario want to know that. Is he still concerned primarily with inflation, or is he concerned with unemployment in Ontario and the destruction that that is causing to the fabric of our society?
Mr. Elston: Maybe he does not know.
Mr. T. P. Reid: Probably he does not know. I have been reading with great interest a number of the budget papers put out in the name of the Treasurer, including the discussion paper on interest rate policy. It is interesting to read that document because it is at odds with a great deal of the Treasurer's comments about the current economic situation.
But here we are. We are being asked to grant interim supply for three months. I suppose if we divvy it up on the basis of last year's budget, based on very simple arithmetic we will find we are giving the Treasurer authority to spend $5 billion without much scrutiny by this Legislature, and without much idea of how the Treasurer intends to use that money for directing economic policy in Ontario. I would hope that before the debate is finished, Mr. Speaker, you would deal with my point of order as to whether this is the correct procedure, given the fact that these two fiscal years are verging closely.
I pointed out during question period that the Treasury and Economics department has a budget in excess of $2 billion -- $2,134,900,000 to be exact -- in the present fiscal year. As well, Industry and Trade Development has a budget of $122 million. We cannot help but wonder what programs the minister and his colleagues will come up with in this coming fiscal year. If all we have to go on is the throne speech, God help the people of Ontario. As somebody who was not a member of this Legislature but a guest in the Speaker's gallery on Tuesday said, "The government is really hard up when they have to start reading the bus schedule into the speech from the throne."
So it is with some trepidation that I say we will support the interim supply. We do not want to deter the Treasurer and his staff from coming up with some creative measures to deal with the problems facing the people of Ontario, and we hope we will have a budget before the end of April, which I gather is what we are looking at now. However, in any case, late in April or early in May the people will know in what direction we are going to go with a budget.
I would hope that the Treasurer would be able to tell us more specifically when the people may know what we are going to be doing in Ontario to deal with the severe economic strains. As we all know in this assembly and elsewhere, it is the problem of not knowing what is going to happen that often bothers people more than the knowing. The way things are going, however, maybe that philosophy will no longer prevail.
I reiterate that we are not going to block interim supply. We recall this has happened before -- that there has been an attempt to do this. That was because we felt we had not been consulted and that the government was being given too much leeway. There is already too much government in this province by special warrants and by government decree. There is too much secrecy in matters surrounding Suncor and the dividends that we will, no doubt, hear about in the near future.
But we on this side and in this party want the Treasurer to get on with what he is doing. We want to speed up the process so we will have a budget that is going to help the people of Ontario; that is going to help the 375,000 who are unemployed; is going to help the small businessman who may have to go out of business or is feeling the interest rate crunch; is going to help the small home owner who is having a great deal of difficulty dealing with the high interest rates and renewal of mortgages, particularly the instances outlined earlier by my friend the member for Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. Newman) and the farmer who may be forced off the farm because of the high interest rates.
8:20 p.m.
The farmers were out here today, and members may have seen them, complaining that only 25 per cent of them were having problems now. The problems that only 25 per cent have today are going up radically and greatly every day.
We are not going to block interim supply. We want the Treasurer to get on with the business of governing Ontario and creating new programs so that all these people in the province can be assisted.
Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.
Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Boudria: Pretty weak.
Mr. Stokes: I'll say it was.
Mr. Foulds: Are you talking about your colleague's contribution?
Mr. Boudria: No, I am talking about the applause for you.
Mr. Stokes: You haven't heard anything yet.
Mr. Foulds: Let the record show that the honourable member sitting directly behind the Treasury critic for the Liberal Party indicated that his contribution was pretty weak.
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Speaker, to correct the record, that is not correct.
Mr. Foulds: Do you want to withdraw the remark?
Mr. Boudria: No, I do not want to correct the remark but I think the member over there is insinuating that I have made some derogatory remarks about one of my --
Mr. Speaker: Order. The member for Port Arthur has the floor.
Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, we have before us a motion for interim supply, and as the previous speaker has indicated, it comes to us under unusual circumstances. We are being asked to vote for three months' expenditure for the government when really the budgetary year has not started. In other words, we are being asked to vote blind.
I must congratulate the government for bringing in the motion in plenty of time, before the guillotine of the deadline that faced us the last time we discussed interim supply is so sharp and real.
Mr. Philip: They have learned something.
Mr. Foulds: They have learned something in terms of parliamentary process. They have not learned one thing, however. They have not yet learned to be open with the people of Ontario or with this Legislature in terms of what is entailed in this expenditure.
My colleagues in the New Democratic Party and I do not wish to block the vote. We will be voting for interim supply. However, because of the unusual circumstances a number of my colleagues do wish to make statements about particular matters having to do with the budgetary policy of this government. We have had a speech from the throne but we have not had a budget speech, and the indications that we have had from the speech from the throne are not encouraging. The government has decided what the expense side of the government budget will be. That has been set. The estimates are all completed. We are still getting dribbles and drabbles of supplementary estimates for last year, for the year we are about to conclude, which I gather we will not be debating until the new fiscal year begins.
So we get this kind of blending, this kind of phantom budgetary policy and fiscal year. It is as if the Treasurer has taken a leaf out of the book of his friend, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope), the portfolio he himself used to hold. The present Minister of Natural Resources is concerned very much these days with strategic land-use plans in the province, and they are called SLUP for short. The Treasurer appears to be concerned with just a slight change in that acronym; the U becomes an O and he is concerned with slop and slopover with regard to budgetary policy.
We have rumours and almost deliberate leaks from the government, from the Treasurer himself, from the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman), saying, "We are probably going to have to raise the OHIP premiums." We expect that as usual those people who unfortunately have the desire to smoke and have an alcoholic beverage will be paying even greater taxes because no one dares to complain about that. To use a cliché, we are being asked to vote for a pig in a poke because we do not know what is coming up. We suspect we are voting for approximately $5 billion.
The throne speech attack on the current state of interest rates was for me most interesting. I want to quote that page in its entirety. I referred to it earlier today in question period. The text of that one page makes very interesting reading:
"But, more recently, we have been asked by the federal government to bear the additional burden of high interest rates. High interest rates remove incentive, make risk less attractive, particularly to the small business community, and as a result cause homes and farms to be lost or make it impossible for many of our citizens to even contemplate owning a house. They," high interest rates, "limit investment, reduce consumer purchases and reduce the demand for manufactured and other products to which employment in this province is so closely tied."
That is not a bad analysis even if it comes a little late, even if it comes far too late, even if it comes as a sort of gradual repentance and a reversal of policy by the minister who so enthusiastically endorsed the high interest rates of the federal government just a few short months ago.
To continue: "At the first ministers' meeting on the economy, held just over one month ago, the Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance set out the reasons why they were maintaining a high interest rate policy for Canada and suggested that certain consequences would follow if this approach were not maintained. One province after another outlined massive unemployment and slowdown in economic activity that was being caused by the federal policy and stated that the human and social costs arising from such a policy were unacceptable."
I am sure the Treasurer recognizes that 35 cents will buy the people feeling those social consequences a cup of coffee in the Legislative dining room, presuming they can get in there.
"In spite of this united opposition, the government of Canada remained firm in its position that its current monetary policy, with all the hardships it causes, must be maintained if inflation is to be brought under control."
The speech from the throne then went on to engage in a fair amount of fed bashing. What puzzles me is that this Treasurer and this government come up with no concrete suggestions or proposals before this Legislature, now or in the past -- or presumably in the future -- to tackle the high interest-rate problem.
Frankly, if Allan MacEachen has imported into Canada the economic theories from south of the border known as Reaganomics, the Treasurer of Ontario has imported into this province in true branch plant fashion the economics of Ronald Reagan's old movie time buddy, Bonzo the chimpanzee. What we have in Ontario is Bonzonomics. What does Bonzonomics mean? Bonzonomics means just the kind of analysis the government had in its own speech from the throne that it failed to deal with -- it means loss of homes, loss of farms and farming capacity, loss of small businesses throughout this province; and it means ultimately tragic and thorough unemployment.
8:30 p.m.
One of the things we have to keep in mind is that the economy is not some abstract thing out there, not some abstract principle to which we sacrifice people because it is a god that must be served. We have to get back to the basic principle, the basic idea that we create an economy to serve the needs of the people. Neither the federal Liberal government nor this Conservative government have taken any initiatives within the scope of their own legislative authority, within the scope of their own jurisdiction, to serve the needs of the working people of this province, to serve the needs of small business, to serve the needs of farmers or to serve the needs of home owners.
I would have liked the provincial government and the Treasurer to make an opening statement in this debate since we are not going to get a budget and since the Treasurer seems to be like a tortoise, postponing the day on which we will receive a budget. I would have liked to see the Treasurer introduce some programs in his jurisdiction that we in Ontario have the authority to implement to deal with the high interest rate problem.
One of the ways we could do that and one of the benefits that would result if we did that would be that when he went to do his fed bashing, when he went to the first ministers' conference, when he went to Ottawa to tell them they had to do something, he would have had some armour in his pocket; he would have had something to negotiate with. He could have said to Allan MacEachen and the feds: "We have taken action here in Ontario. We have done what we can do within our jurisdiction. Now you beggars at the federal level should take the steps that you can rightly take and only the federal government can take in order to relieve the massive, tragic circumstances that arise because of high interest rates."
If I may, I want just for a few minutes to outline some of the consequences that have resulted in this province from the inaction of both of these senior levels of government. It is a well-known figure, and it has been bandied about many times today already, that the actual number of unemployed people in Ontario was something like 375,000, 17 per cent higher than in January of last year.
This afternoon I used one image; let me use another image tonight. What that means, what that massive loss of jobs is the equivalent of, is simply this: shutting down entirely a city the size of Hamilton -- every corner grocery, every plant, every office, every job in the place gone. That is what unemployment means in Ontario today and that is a major disaster.
Mr. Wildman: Isn't that what Stephenson wanted to do in Windsor?
Mr. Foulds: That is what a number of people want to do, and that is what the government in particular is letting happen to communities all across this province.
The tragedy of that is twofold. It is not only the unemployment and it is not only the job loss because of this stupid, blind commitment to a high interest-rate policy which this provincial government went along with for many months and only now, like a tortoise, is slowly reversing because it is politically expedient to do so but still sits by silently like some guileless and innocent virgin wringing its hands and saying it can do nothing. What it means in real terms is a loss to Ontario families in income of something like $7 billion in wages. That is a loss to the provincial treasury of over $300 million in personal income tax alone.
As well, we have those tragic human costs that my colleague from Windsor, my colleague from Metro Toronto and my colleague from Algoma have documented right across this province -- the tragedy in broken lives, broken homes, broken marriages, broken families, hopes and dreams. What happens to our society when young people -- and there are 171,000 unemployed people under 21 -- are denied the opportunity to work? What happens to the collective morale of a society when our young people lose hope?
We all know what happens, not only to those individuals but to our society, and we know the additional cost to our society, not merely in unemployment insurance, not merely in welfare payments, but in terms of additional vandalism, additional crime and additional costs for retribution in our society. We know those tragic social consequences when towns die, the one-industry towns of northern Ontario that my colleague, the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Stokes), and my colleague, the member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman), speak so movingly about and know so well because in their ridings they are living with those problems every single day.
What happens is that people migrate out of those towns looking for work and eventually they come to the larger cities. Eventually they come to a metropolitan centre like Toronto, and the enormous social costs and social problems build and build. Unless there is action taken by this government, we do not and cannot slough off the spectre that now haunts many of the American cities. Up until now, we have been very proud of saying that could not happen here. The reality is that because of the lack of action and because of the endorsement of American policies we will be inheriting the results of those American policies in our large urban centres. That is not the kind of future I want to see for this province. It is not the kind of future the New Democratic Party wants to see for this province. It is the kind of future we will fight against with every legislative means at our disposal.
I want briefly to outline the key points of what we could do here in Ontario to combat the problem of high interest rates. It is no good pointing a hand at the feds and saying, "You guys do something." It is no good having the feds point back at the provinces saying, "You guys do something." It is no good when they are in the same room, whether they are before television cameras or not, flailing each other because the people who get caught in between are the people we were all elected to serve. I regret to say, with some sense of shame, the government in Ontario has done little to serve the needs of those people.
Other action has been demonstrated in other jurisdictions in this country at the provincial level. I do not want to go into a lot of detail because some of my colleagues will be dealing with each of those programs in some detail, but we could take five simple steps. Number one is the step this party has advocated for a long time in this Legislature. My colleague, the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick), has introduced some private member's bills that would achieve that result.
The governments of Saskatchewan and of Manitoba have indicated some steps that could be taken to deal with the interest rate problem. One is a one-year moratorium on foreclosures. We know this is just buying time; we know this is a temporary measure, but it is something that would give temporary and immediate relief. Two, if it is not beneath our dignity, we could take the lead from a province like Manitoba and introduce a program of short-term interest-rate relief for farmers, small businesses and home owners.
8:40 p.m.
With regard to home owners, we have about 250,000 mortgages coming due in Ontario in 1982. Of these, something like 30,000 home owners in this province will face serious problems in renewing those mortgages. In other words, their housing costs when they renew their mortgages at the rate they will be charged will be above 30 per cent of their gross income. Those will be problem mortgages. A large number of those people will not be able to meet their mortgages and they will lose their homes. Those homes, as is already happening across this province, will sit empty and idle while those people seek accommodation from the social sector, from the Ontario Housing Corporation, and there are no units available there.
We estimate that the program of short-term interest-rate relief for farmers, small businesses and home owners would cost something like $200 million. Fifty million dollars would be spent on the home owners, and that would assist those 30,000 families. Of the $200 million, $100 million, or half, would be spent on Ontario's farmers. The provincial government has already introduced a $60-million program, but there are two significant problems with the Ontario government program. First, the debt equity eligibility criterion is too restrictive, excluding as it does the vast majority of Ontario's farmers. Second, the government's refusal to provide assistance on fixed-interest, long-term loans that are being renegotiated at a much higher rate greatly limits the effectiveness of the program.
The big problem that comes up is, where is the government going to get the $200 million? One of the government's problems is that it has already predetermined or limited its range of action because of some hasty and ill-thought-out solutions.
I would not be surprised to see the Treasurer of Ontario, if he had any sense of principle, resign within the next year because he, like Darcy McKeough before him, is getting his policies and his principles crushed or reversed by the government. First, as is well known, the Treasurer vigorously opposed the buying of Suncor. What his reasons were I do not know, and what the reasons were that the government bought Suncor we do not know to this day. This is one of the very good reasons we should have a freedom of information act in this province.
If the government is going to buy into a resource company that is foreign-owned, it at least had better get the benefits of buying and should go for 51 per cent so it has control. What the government has got is 25 per cent of an American company whose investments are dropping and whose return on investment is dropping. The government has made a very bad investment. It did not tie up its consortium ahead of time so it would get 51 per cent Canadianization. What it is going to get stuck with is a very bad investment. The purchase of Suncor has precluded $650 million that could be used for things like giving the people of Ontario mortgage -- small businesses, farmers -- interest relief.
The third plank in our platform would be the housing sector. What we need to do, as I indicated this afternoon, is to make a commitment to developing housing in this province in the co-op sector, in the social assistance sector, in the apartment sector, so that we can provide places for people who desperately need housing, we can create jobs in the construction industry and we can get the economy of the lumber and sawmill industry towns in northern Ontario stimulated. I do not want any comeback saying the reason is they cannot sell the lumber to the United States. The people in northern Ontario would be glad to sell the lumber from their sawmills to southern Ontario just as easily and just as readily as they would to a foreign market.
The fourth point of the program would be to devise a series of additional taxes, none too great, but speculation taxes, for example, on housing, to get the funding for the program. A most important point is that this program we are suggesting is, we admit, a short-term program. What we need to do and what we will be speaking about when budget time comes, what my colleague from Windsor will be speaking about, is creating a difference in the kind of economy we have in Ontario so that we relate the resource sector to our manufacturing sector, so that we create the jobs here in Ontario and do not create the jobs, as the government is doing because of its predilection for bigness, in other countries.
Finally, and my colleague from Etobicoke will expand on this, we believe a real role could be played by the Province of Ontario Savings Office as a genuine bank. That institution has been around this province for a good many years, something like 40, if I am not mistaken.
Mr. Nixon: No, it is older than that.
Mr. Foulds: It is older than this government, quite a bit older.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: Sixty years.
Mr. Foulds: It is almost 60 years old. My mathematics on my feet are not good, I admit.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: Not almost. It is.
Mr. Foulds: This is its anniversary year as a matter of fact. That is true. It started in 1922.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: Last year.
Mr. Foulds: In any event, what this government has done is systematically downgrade the importance of the Province of Ontario Savings Office. It has downgraded its capabilities, closed branches. We say we should be expanding that to a fully fledged financial institution that would work with the co-operative movement and the credit unions to create competition for the other banks that operate in Ontario.
What we say is that we should get into the business through that institution of providing, perhaps on a more long-term basis, the right kind of interest rates for people in small businesses, for farmers and for home owners on a permanent basis. After all, it is not some wild-eyed idea of a left-wing ideologue. It was created in this province. Alberta has a Bank of Alberta that has more branches in it than any other chartered bank of the country and provides the kind of service that is needed so badly.
I just want to conclude with a few brief remarks about the Treasurer and about the government's economic policy. There is no doubt in my mind that the federal government has a lot to answer for. There is no doubt in my mind that it does no good in a throne speech in this province to take rhetorical flights of attack on the federal government unless this government is willing to bring in some programs of its own to demonstrate good faith to the people of Ontario.
8:50 p.m.
It seems to me that governments have an obligation to take the steps they can take in their jurisdiction. The greatest failure of this government is that it blows a lot of hot air; that it fails to take the steps of action that it is not only morally obliged to take but has the legal authority to take. It has failed the people of Ontario because it lacks the political will, the political skill and the sense of economic direction to take those steps on behalf of the people of Ontario. It is about time we had in this province the kind of government the people of this province deserve, the kind of government that would put people ahead of profits.
Mr. Boudria: A Liberal government. Every province deserves that, as the member will notice.
Mr. Foulds: If I may just say, in response to the interjection from my friend on the right and his party of the far right, the Ontario Liberal Party, it has been demonstrated right across the country that no province deserves to have a Liberal government federally and provincially. That is the great tragedy of Ontario because it has at the present time, in the disguise of the Progressive Conservatives, a Liberal government.
Mr. Nixon: The motion before us, when approved, will authorize the expenditure of $5 billion between now and the end of June. The money will be spent at a rate of about $16 million a day for health services, about $14 million a day for education and somewhere between $5 million and $9 million a day on interest, depending on whether we include the debt of Ontario Hydro in our calculations. It is an interesting aspect, as well, that of the $5 billion we will be authorizing during the next three months, almost $2.25 billion will be collected by the government of Canada and transferred to the government of Ontario with no strings attached.
Sometimes I am amazed, if not appalled, that even though this high level of support for the programs of the province has been established for a good long time and has grown over a number of years, still the governments of Ontario and some other provinces continue with their diatribes of criticism against the senior level of government, which pays half the costs of post-secondary education, including grade 13, half the costs of our total commitment to medical care and, in fact, when the calculations are done for Ontario, it is considerably more than half. Through the Canada assistance program, they pay a substantial share, more than 50 per cent, of a number of our community and social programs.
But it is not for me to defend the government of Canada. Their most recent defence at the polls of their policies and their positions with regard to national policies saw the Liberals returned with a substantial majority.
The whole problem of interest rates is probably summed up, as well as by anybody, by Michael Wilson, who is the federal Conservative critic for financial affairs. It is interesting to note that he supports entirely the interest-rate policy of the government of Canada and of the Bank of Canada itself. Frankly, I do not feel that those policies are good ones, but I say again that it is very easy for provincial oppositions, just as it is easy for provincial governments, to criticize those federal policies.
In many respects I believe Mr. Wilson deserves a good deal of credit for not falling into the trap that most of the provincial premiers have found at least comfortable for the time being. They are trying to solve their own problems and taking the political heat off themselves by pointing the quavering finger and the trembling lip at federal policies when they have none of their own to insert in their place.
I simply want to begin my remarks by reminding members that for all of these years the government of Canada has been collecting about 40 per cent of the revenues spent by the province of Ontario and transferring them to the province with no strings attached. It has actually been for two decades that the present Premier (Mr. Davis) has had an important role to play in our educational and then finally overall administrative affairs -- day by day as another William G. Davis school is opened and the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) opens another bridge over the Grand River at Brantford.
There are new programs to assist the industries of the north and elsewhere. Close to 50 per cent of the dollars are raised by the government of Canada and handed over, no strings attached, to the ingrates who have had the responsibility of governing our affairs in this province for these almost 40 long years. It really is almost a joke to hear the Treasurer of Ontario (Mr. F. S. Miller) warn that he is going to establish his own income tax collection system.
Mr. Bradley: It will never happen.
Mr. Nixon: I would agree with my colleague, the member for St. Catharines. It will never happen. They have been sitting in this beautiful nest of millions of dollars each year, feathered at no political cost to the Tories in Ontario by the government of Canada, even by the Tory government of Canada, going back into Mr. Diefenbaker's years. It is a very easy and in some respects a destructive position for the government of Ontario and other provinces as well to use their cynical approach of calling for a resumption of what they cynically called co-operative federalism, when at the same time they have been using the avails of this particular neat arrangement to bludgeon the government of Canada these many years and using it as a political whipping boy for their own provincial inadequacies.
I am concerned particularly at the response made by the Treasurer to the first question by my leader today with reference to the timing of the provincial budget. For one thing, we are far too late in returning to the Legislature after the Christmas recess. I believe at the very latest we should come back here the last week in January. It seems to me we are far too long here in the Legislature and far too long away.
It does not seem proper to me when the economy of the province is suffering as it does that we adjourn, I admit with great relief, just before Christmas and then stay in our constituencies or in some cases in our condominiums in Fort Lauderdale for the full two- to three-month period until we finally get wound up here at Queen's Park once again. Then we only just barely get started when we close the place down again for a week as we go off with our children -- those of us who have school-aged children -- for the school break.
Frankly, I get as bored and tired of this place as anyone does, but I would think the Treasurer, with his judgement, would realize that having delayed the opening of the Legislature this unconscionably long time, it really is unacceptable for him to continue to delay the introduction of the new budget. I expected that the date of the budget would have been announced almost in conjunction with the speech from the throne. For him to respond to my leader today the way he did with some sort of a putdown about, "I cannot introduce it until the throne debate is over," was unworthy of him. I hope when he gets home tonight his wife will let him know that even from an objective point of view it was an asinine response with a capital A.
As a matter of fact, in trying to determine when the budget is going to be brought down, there is some indication that it will not be until well after the middle of April, and in many respects we will be conducting our affairs here in limbo without knowing the financial plans of the Treasurer and the province of Ontario.
Frankly, I believe it is because he cannot make up his mind. We know we are in difficult times. He knows the money is hard to come by, but still there is going to be in excess of $21 billion for him to establish and spend through various priorities. I do not want to be unkind about this but while I am a personal fan of the Treasurer I am not a fan of his ability in his office.
9 p.m.
I think he would make a great Minister of -- well, I don't know -- not Health, but Correctional Services or something like that. I do not want to be insulting because all those offices are important, but I am frankly surprised that in the cabinet shuffle a few weeks ago the Treasurer was not granted some new, let's say, responsibilities in a lateral shift from the Treasury.
Certainly it is not for want of people who were anxious to move into his job. The Minister of Revenue (Mr. Ashe) is satisfied with what he is doing and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (Mr. Wells) cannot believe he has got such a soft touch, with practically nothing to do but visit his offices in Paris and Brussels and things like that. But I believe the lack of leadership from the Treasury is a matter of serious concern, not only to those of us in this Legislature but to the business community of the province.
He should be champing at the bit to put forward his spending and taxing proposals that will have such an important effect on the economy of this province. Frankly, it was refreshing to hear the former Treasurer, Darcy McKeough, dive into the political waters again to some extent. I cannot believe he is really interested in returning to active politics, although there is the huge vacuum in the federal leadership of the PC party and there is a good deal of stirring in that regard. But when Darcy said we really do have to have some means whereby the federal and provincial jurisdictions can for once separate their responsibilities and get off each other's backs, I have a great deal of sympathy for what he has to say.
This business of passing the responsibility from one side to the other -- and I know it happens at the federal level as well -- is really unacceptable. Maybe it is all right in good times where there are resources we can use to expand our tax base to pay for new programs that are needed in a burgeoning and expanding community, but it is not acceptable when the economic crunch really comes.
For 20 years, I have often felt that what we do in this House is something of a game. We took shots at each other perhaps, but we knew the province and the nation were economically buoyant, our economy was expanding, our opportunities for young people were there and growing. Perhaps for the first time most of us have felt during the last month that that has gone and we might as well look at the concept of depression and look it full in the face, because it is facing us. It is something we have to come to grips with. For that reason, I was delighted that my leader was successful in having a special debate this afternoon, which in some respects is continuing in this debate. Because of the time limitations in the debate this afternoon, many members, and I hope many on the government side as well, were not able to participate then but can participate now.
I want to be rather specific about one or two points and I want to make the first one again. The Treasurer should not delay bringing down his budget. He should indicate a date and he should draw a line under the consultations he has been so proud of having made during the last weeks and months. He is the only one who can assess the value of those consultations. We will be able to criticize them and assess them when he sees the results of those consultations. In fact, it is up to him, essentially him, with whatever direct and political advice he wants to draw from the politicians immediately around him, what decisions are made.
There is a considerable amount of freedom of action. We need only go back to, let us say, 1975 to see that the Treasurer then found a good deal of flexibility in the budget of the day to bring in very popular programs. While they were political in nature, they were designed to stimulate the economy and in some instances they did. This immobilization of the Treasurer in his thought processes is something we cannot afford in this province.
I want simply to reassert that the House has been in recess since December. Here we are in the middle of March and we still do not know when the budget is going to be brought down. I want to say in the strongest possible terms that the date must be set and it must be as early as is practical.
The second point I want to make is a local one as far as I am concerned, but it certainly extends into southwestern Ontario. The economic plight of the farmers is a serious matter indeed. I happen to be a working farmer myself. The fact that I drive a tractor more than I run a pitchfork probably has something to do with certain anatomical problems the members may have noticed.
Mr. Philip: You use the pitchfork in here often enough.
Mr. Nixon: I would say the calluses are certainly not on my hands but probably elsewhere.
Our most recent experience on our own farm in South Dumfries township in Brant county is that the price of corn out of the field a year ago last fall was at $4 and this fall the best we could do was $2.80. The soybeans a year ago this past fall, out of the field, were $10 a bushel. When we sold this year's crop the best I could do was $6.70. There was a small rally over the last few days up to about $6.90, but there is every indication the downward trend for corn and beans will continue.
Those happen to be the crops I am familiar with. My neighbours who are shipping milk and those who are raising beef cattle and swine are in serious straits indeed. The formula pricing for milk -- and I see one or two of my dairy farmer friends sitting up in the back in their comfortable pews -- is quite satisfactory.
My brother-in-law, who has a herd of 40 Ayrshire cows, might kick me if I were to imply he is satisfied with the price, but I believe it is fair and associated with the cost that can be attributable to that particular business. But those people who raise pigs and beef cattle are in terrible, terminal problems.
I talk to my neighbours who operate century farms and they are the newly arrived ones. There are neighbours who have grants from the Indians in the area and have been successfully farming all those years. They are facing bankruptcy in their farm operations. Think of the six generations where the sons and daughters have been educated in the best Ontario had to offer, where the family has had a standard of living second to none in the rural community, who now find themselves under the economic stresses of the present day situation very much in fear of not even being able to continue on the land.
Those of you who are farmers and who talk to farmers know that is not an exaggeration. If, in instances where the master of the farm property is, let us say, 50, 60, or 70 years old, he may very well not have any interest payments to make. He may very well have some money in the bank and is bemoaning the fact he is not getting 19.5 or 20 per cent on his deposit certificates anymore and that the interest rates are way down to 14.5 per cent or something like that.
But most of the farmers, as the property passes from generation to generation, have kept up with the times. They have kept up the capital commitment to the assets of the farm in machinery and so on and they do have high interest payments to make. They look at the policies in other provinces and find themselves competing with farmers in other provinces at a severe disadvantage.
It is clearly not enough to point the finger of condemnation at the government of Canada when all provinces are subject to the same policy. Certain provinces, and Quebec is an outstanding example, have programs that assist farmers which are better than ours.
Hon. F. S. Miller: They are going bankrupt.
Mr. Nixon: It is true there are bankruptcies there as well and it is quite possible that farmers, and car dealers as well, can overextend. A car dealer with a bunch of Sevilles sitting on his lot, paying interest on them until some patsy comes along to buy them, is in trouble. If he is a small car dealer in Baysville or somewhere like that with two or three used Chevettes, he may not be in too much trouble -- two or three used Chevettes and a yellow Corvette I think -- and probably that is okay.
But a businessman, whether he is a farmer or in any kind of retailing, can certainly get into trouble even though government programs are designed to assist him. The minister seems to think it is a justification of the lack of action in this province that some farmers in Quebec have also gone bankrupt. I do not believe that proves anything except there are bad businessmen in that province as well as here.
9:10 p.m.
We intend to put in a crop this year if we ever get out of this place, and maybe even while we are here. So if my seat is empty some time in May, members will know I am trying to feed the world's hungry as well as spend all their money.
But we are already making plans. A good neighbour of mine sells pioneer seed corn, and he delivered -- they do not call them bags or bushels any more; they call them units of corn seed. The price over last year is up just about 18 to 20 per cent in spite of the fact the corn it grows fell from $4 a bushel to about $2.80. As a matter of fact it is lower than that now.
What the devil is going on? How can that be? The price of the spray, the Lasso and all those exotic materials which I never even knew how to pronounce let alone use and which I am now quite familiar with, is expected to go up something more than 25 per cent. I will give the minister a chance to interject and say the price of tractor fuel is going up tremendously as well and is of great concern to those of us who have to pay those elevated prices.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: Federal government policy has caused that.
Mr. Nixon: Right. Thank you.
Mr. Mackenzie: They haven't any policies, either.
Mr. Nixon: I certainly did not want the minister to miss anything like that.
Meanwhile, our municipal taxes are going up by leaps and bounds and so no one reading Hansard will be misled -- and there will be thousands who do read it -- we might as well say that we are very glad indeed the policy of the government of Ontario is to pay back half the tax attributable to the farm operation. I believe there should be no taxes directed on the land at all. There is some indication that as we approach the next election we may even have a program, which has previously been announced, that implements something like that.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: Long before.
Mr. Nixon: The problems in the farm area have been dealt with quite effectively, I believe, by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture special task force on agriculture. One of their recommendations, and it is one of the things the members on the other side pooh-pooh, is the special foreclosure moratorium for a period of six months. I have heard bankers respond to that by saying, "If there is going to be a moratorium the supply of credit is going to dry right up." Frankly, I do not believe that can happen or has to happen.
The people recommending the moratorium are not some wild-eyed radical Liberals. They are people like Everett Biggs, who for more years than we can count was Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food in the days when that ministry had some leadership and some programs that were of some good to the farmer. They are people like John Wise, who was agriculture critic for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and a former Minister of Agriculture for this country. I should not finish a list of members of the task force without mentioning Murray Gaunt, whom some people opposite might think of as a wild-eyed radical; in fact, he is a moderate Liberal and a person with an extensive farm background who was an advocate of this program.
I believe we are talking not of simply cancelling farmers' debts or anything like that but of seeing that for a period of six months, when the maximum pressure is on them, foreclosures should not be permitted and the government should have a program so that the precious banks, who have to pay the window cleaners to clean all that glass on their 80-storey palaces downtown, are not going to lose any of their precious bucks. We will worry about them some other time, but we are concerned about the farmers in this connection.
There are those who believe that Canada has to build tariff walls around itself for protection. But we in this country, particularly with our farm produce and crops, have to have a market much larger than we can find here if we are going to get back to where we have sufficient profits to participate in the economy as a whole in any useful way.
That brings me to my next point. Those members who drive through Brant county into the grand city of Brantford, particularly if they come by train, will pass the largest combine plant in the world. It was constructed by Massey-Ferguson some years ago. Outside it is what is locally called the "Red Sea" because it is made up of huge $100,000 combines parked butt to butt, waiting for a market. There is a good deal to be said about the Massey situation and I do not want to take time for that tonight -- although as you know, Mr. Speaker, there is no time limit on this debate.
I am concerned, however, because of the situation involving the farmers, which I have described briefly, that I do not know very many of my neighbours who are going to go to the bank, with the prospects I have set out facing them, to borrow at 23 to 24 per cent the kind of money from the generous Bank of Montreal operating in St. George to buy a new combine. They are just not going to do it.
They may buy $10 worth of baling wire and a lot of extra grease to keep the old machines together and going for another year. I have often heard people, commenting on farm machinery prospects, saying that eventually these combines and tractors are simply going to fall apart and then the farmers are going to have to buy new ones. But we are a long way from that point. The farmers have learned a good deal of ingenuity. One of the best lessons my dad ever taught me, next to beating Tories, was how to fix up farm machinery with baling wire and keep it working. Both of those have been extremely valuable lessons and both of them have put money in the bank.
But as far as Brantford is concerned, it has very unfairly gathered up the title of the layoff capital of Canada. My friend the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) winces a bit -- I think he did; please wince; he winced -- as I said that, because we feel rather sensitive about it.
Brantford has always had the problems that one-industry towns suffer from, going back to those great days of the prime ministership of the late Honourable Lester B. Pearson himself. Many members may recall the procedure whereby the federal government designated communities which were somewhat financially depressed. Even in those days Brantford got an early designation. The designation was associated with depressed areas and Brantford was a bit embarrassed to be known across Canada as one of the first to be designated a so-called depressed area.
As a matter of fact the designation stimulated a certain degree of secondary industry. The government of Ontario, in its wisdom, decided to build a bypass road, controlled-access Highway 403, and associated with that and the properties alongside it, we got some very good new industries with substantial additional employment. I do not want to go through the rather mixed history of the economic development of the city of Brantford either before or after that, other than to say that when the economy has a downturn, particularly the farm economy, Brantford suffers more than most other communities.
I have said the basic reason is that farmers simply cannot buy the tractors, combines, discs, mowers, cultivators and other machines that are made at Brantford or marketed through the Brantford installations. There is no doubt the products of the farm machinery companies in Brantford are at least as good as others'. There have been those who have been critical of certain aspects of research and development, but these are passing things and I think they can be compensated for.
But last Saturday I attended a meeting of some laid-off administrative workers from Massey-Ferguson and there was anything but a hopeful view of the future. Some of them had been called back, but they were extremely critical of the rehiring policies of the company in leaving certain of the laid-off employees hanging out to dry. The callback had nothing to do with any priority based on length of service and there is some real concern in that respect.
They even feel that the supplementary unemployment benefits payments that are supposed to be paid along with the unemployment insurance benefits are very inadequately administered and naturally they have these substantial complaints. Many of them even feel they would prefer termination so that they could get their termination pay or their severance pay and go about the business of getting a new job.
9:20 p.m.
Those people in the government of Ontario and the government of Canada who have backed the credit of Massey-Ferguson to the extent of several hundreds of millions of dollars will notice that Massey-Ferguson is on the market for additional credit of up to $300 million. The appalling part of it, which I am sure the Treasurer is aware of, is that the main use of that $300 million is apparently to pay severance gratuities. It really is appalling to think the additional debt is necessary simply to straighten up that matter.
I do not want to be pessimistic about the prospects for Massey-Ferguson or any other company that has been under the gun in recent economic downturns. But those of us in this Legislature who were so pleased when the government decided it would back the debts and the notes of Massey-Ferguson, along with the government of Canada, must surely feel a slight cold hand on their hearts when they see the problems Massey-Ferguson continues to experience. Its losses in the most recent business quarter were something like $75 million -- hardly the record of a company that is on the way back to recouping its worldwide position as a leading manufacturer and seller of farm machinery.
I know there have been some successes in the Brantford area. The former Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Grossman) visited and presented the flag of excellence to Dafoe and Dafoe Inc., a relatively new company in my constituency. Mr. and Mrs., or Messrs. Dafoe, manufacture many essential products for the community and they are advertised, not under the name of Dafoe and Dafoe, but under other names in almost every ad on television. However, the stuff really sells. I see I have piqued the interest of the Treasurer and I will refer to the matter in greater detail on another occasion.
My point is simply that we have some successes in Brantford. One of the successes was to persuade the government of Canada, which government has been berated by the Conservatives opposite for not doing anything, to designate the Brantford-Paris area under the industry and labour adjustment program, which gives the same sort of stimulation to job provision and economic expansion that is needed in the area. I do not know of any kind of a significant parallel program that has been undertaken by the government of Ontario.
Hon. F. S. Miller: What about the road, Bob?
Mr. Nixon: Did he say, "What about the road?" Yes, I think he said something about the road. I am delighted the Treasurer has mentioned the road. He means controlled-access Highway 403. Once again, I do not want to spend a lot of time on the history of that road because, while it serves Brantford, it is actually built in the constituency of Brant-Oxford-Norfolk. The damned thing has been on and off again as, let us say, the fortunes of the local Tory party go up and down like whatever proverbial thing one wants to think of. Right now, its fortunes seem to be up.
I am very glad, in many respects, we have a government member here, because for years we have been told that all we need is a government member to get all the things we need in the community. So now we are going to see how the goods are delivered. The Minister of Transportation and Communications, in response to my questions last fall, indicated he was prepared to put out the tenders for the next few miles of Highway 403. He indicated in a very proper way -- and I think he has it well planned in his own mind -- that we are going to have the road completed through to 401 near Woodstock by about 1985 or 1986.
We already have four-lane access to Highway 403 down near Dundas, although because of certain pressures brought to bear on the Minister of Transportation and Communications the speed limit is such that a man with a lantern walks in front of any gas buggies on Highway 2 so the horses are not startled. I believe that is the justification.
Most modern cars, particularly any that I drive, cannot go as slow as the speed limit on that road. It has been turned into a very inconvenient situation, not to say costly for some of us who use that road from time to time. I do not wish the Minister of Transportation and Communications any bad luck, but frankly I thought he too might have gone out to greener pastures or palmier holidays with the cabinet shake-up a few weeks ago. It is very difficult to shake these old dinosaurs out of their comfortable situations. They like the big offices, they like the big cars and they like to be able to move and shake.
Mr. Bradley: The jets. They like new jets.
Mr. Nixon: I guess the Minister of Transportation and Communications has his own plane, as far as that goes. I can hardly accuse him of being after the money because they say he can buy and sell the Premier two or three times a week, if he wants to. Maybe he does, I do not know. One cannot really say the minister is greedy in sticking at his job.
I do feel that here is an instance the Treasurer, by his interjection, has brought to our attention. If the minister really wants to do something to stimulate the economy of Brantford then he should certainly speed up the development of Highway 403 so there is proper access to the Hamilton area and to Highway 401 on the west. The commitment has been made and it was made as a political promise that it would be done in 1986. Frankly, I am glad that at least that commitment is there, but I would say it is not good enough.
I have one last point to make. It has to do with the provision of education services in the Brantford area and the Brant county area. Quite often in these debates the Treasurer and others say: "Will you get specific? You are critical but you don't tell us what to do." The last thing I want to refer to is to bring to the Treasurer's attention, and anyone else's who will listen, a very strange situation that has been allowed to occur in Brantford.
For many years, through no fault of anyone, I would say, Brantford has been overlooked by both the government of Canada and the government of Ontario. Whenever they are bringing out offices and new programs, they put something in London, they put something in Kitchener, they put something in Hamilton and poor old Brantford is sort of left out.
Actually, we are only 15 miles down the road from Hamilton. In many respects, one might say that is handy enough for most of their facilities, but I want to call to the members' attention information that I have already brought to the attention of the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson), who, I understand, is lying on sand in Saudi Arabia.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: She is home. She's ill.
Mr. Nixon: Oh, I am sorry, she is home and ill. She has Muhammad's complaint. No, sorry about that.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: Montezuma's.
Mr. Nixon: No, not Montezuma, Montezuma does not hang out in Saudi Arabia.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): On the motion, please.
Mr. Nixon: Yes, right.
Mr. Bradley: She is Montezuma's revenge.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Nixon: The statisticians of Mohawk community college did a workup of the statistics in the Brantford-Brant county area, a community with a population of 106,000. That is no mean size, a good-sized town for a car agency or anything like that.
Hon. F. S. Miller: I used to live there.
Mr. Nixon: Yes, I know. He used to sell cars on the Paris road. Would members believe that in his previous incarnation as Minister of Health he actually came in his limousine to Paris and called a meeting of all of us local worthies and announced the closing of the Willett Hospital? That was when he was Minister of Health. Now that he is Treasurer we had an announcement just a few weeks ago that not only is the Willett Hospital not going to be closed, it is going to be doubled. Now there is consistency. It is the sort of thing that a good local member in the Brant-Oxford-Norfolk area is able to accomplish by diligent application of the facts in the right place.
Interjection.
Mr. Nixon: I cannot claim all the credit for that myself. As a matter of fact, there are people, even here, who might get up and set the record a little straighter than that because I know the former Minister of Health is very familiar with the community efforts in that connection.
One of the areas where we have not been treated fairly is in the provision of education facilities. When the present Premier, as Minister of Education, brought in the whole idea of community colleges we could not persuade him to build one in Brantford. It is by far the largest community in Ontario without a community college; there is no doubt about that. It is not even close. There are many smaller communities which have expensive and elaborate community college facilities. The only Mohawk College facilities there are rather, let us say, inadequate facilities for the needs of the community. Of course, there is a nursing school in connection with the Brantford General Hospital, which has very high standards and of which we are very proud.
They have calculated something called the participation rate. It deals with young people in the grades 12 and 13 area moving out of there into life after grades 12 and 13. In the community colleges, the college participation rate for Brant county, including the city, for 1980 was 14.4 per cent. I wish a few members would just listen to this because they will never hear a figure like this from anywhere else in the province.
The participation rate in Brantford-Brant county is 14.4 per cent. In Hamilton-Wentworth it is 24.2 per cent and in Ontario as a whole it is 21.1 per cent. So 14 per cent of the eligible young people go to community college from Brantford, 21 per cent as an average from Ontario, and 24.2 per cent from our next community, Hamilton-Wentworth, which is also city-rural.
I would just like to change that to absolute figures. In 1980 there were 572 students at various community colleges, 315 of them new students. If the same statistics had been applied with the Hamilton rate of participation, instead of 572 there would have been 950 young people at college.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: All the rich farmers go to university.
Mr. Nixon: They are not all rich farmers.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Nixon: I will say to the Treasurer that if there was ever a serious statistic this is it. I am telling him that this is something he can do something about, both he and the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Miss Stephenson), as soon as she is feeling better.
The university participation rate has a slightly different basis for calculation, but the calculations are here in the brief from Mohawk College, and I would be delighted to make it available to anyone who wants to pursue this. The university participation rate for Brantford-Brant county is 48.3 per cent; for Wentworth it is 75 per cent; and for Ontario it is 70.5 per cent. In brief, I would say they take the graduates from grade 13 and compare what they have done from the Brantford-Brant county area with the history of the other communities.
I just want to repeat that 48.3 per cent is the participation rate from Brantford, 75 per cent from Wentworth, and 70 per cent as an average from Ontario. I would say that is because for the last number of years we have not participated in any adequate or fair way in the disposition of the hundreds of millions of dollars for post-secondary education, many of them coming from the government of Canada, as the Treasurer well knows. I am not here to criticize the board of governors of Mohawk College, but they might very well long before now have come up with a program to substantially expand our facilities.
Let me put it this way: I would say that many young people in the Brantford-Brant county area have always had the ideal from their older brothers, their fathers and grandfathers, that when they leave school, maybe at grade 12, the thing to do is get a job at Massey-Ferguson or at White's, where the pay rate has always been excellent, certainly way better than one would get on the farm, way better than one can get in most industries in other cities. In other words, they work under the protection of a strong and effective union, the United Automobile Workers. I am not prepared to say the work is easy because I do not know, but I know the hours are limited to 40 hours a week and for anything over that they get time and a half, double time and often triple time.
The incomes were good, and many of those young people did not miss a community college or a university campus. They thought: "Well, it's stupid to go on and get a better education. I can buy my Thunderbird, whip out to Massey and have a job that might not be the greatest job in the world as far as being interesting and entrancing is concerned, but they say there are certain ancillary benefits besides money that make it what you call reasonably interesting and fulfilling."
Unfortunately, that has dried up and many young people have almost given up the possibility of those kinds of jobs. The feeling of negativism and pessimism is almost complete and hangs like a pall of gloom over many areas in the Brantford-Brant county community. The pessimism is probably well founded when they see the record of employment in recent months and years and see the predictions of what is to come. Often those predictions are extremely pessimistic as well. If they turn out to be half as bad as the predictions, they are going to cost the Treasurer a lot of money, and he knows it.
We in the Brantford area need a new post- secondary educational facility. I can see the little marbles in the Treasurer's noggin rolling around saying: "There is no way you are going to get money spent for that up there. We have plenty of capital expenditure at the post-secondary level now." But I tell him that we in the Brant-Brantford area have been robbed over the years because of the injudicious expenditure of those dollars as far as we are concerned.
We have not shared in them and now we are suffering from the lack of post-secondary facilities. We do not need a university there. We do not even want another community college, but we could have something that breaks new ground, something the Treasurer as a politician is looking for, something, I suppose, even the other members of the cabinet would be looking for, some sort of co-operative approach with local leadership which would provide the kind of post-secondary education we need that can once again make Brantford the centre for trained, skilled workers it once was.
It makes me sick to see that the government of Ontario is still advertising in Germany, France, England and Scotland for trained people to come out here to do the jobs our young people should be trained to do. The inadequacies of our educational system have already been referred to in this House.
In closing, I would say there are three things the minister should do. On a short term, he should move to a budget. I mean that. We should not delay this further; the delays are already unconscionable. In our own community he can do much more in a positive and specific way for the farm economy, which is in a state of the most serious recession we have experienced since, I would say, 1939. This, in turn, will give the kind of economic stimulation to Brantford, Chatham and certain other communities that will get those plants working again.
I have already mentioned the need to speed up Highway 403 construction and to come to grips with the need for additional post-secondary education facilities in Brantford and Brant county.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the motion for interim supply. I welcome the pages to their first scintillating evening session. This may not seem like a vital bill. The members may have been nodding off. I noticed one or two of them trying to maintain attention.
Mr. Nixon: Does the member mean while I was speaking?
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Especially while the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk-Haldimand, etc. was speaking.
Mr. Nixon: I can't believe that.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: This is an important event tonight because what we are doing is offering to support or not support, or at any rate speak to, the motion from the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) asking for $5 billion between now and June 30. Since we are not now in a minority situation, it is not an insignificant matter that the members of this Legislature should have to speak to the decision of this government to request funds. It is ironic that we can go for so long a period of time, as we have been out of the House now for several months. However, unlike the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk, I am glad we did not come back earlier. I was too exhausted from other endeavours to want to come back before this.
9:40 p.m.
Mr. Bradley: At least you have a seat to come back to.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Thank you very much. I am sorry that you do. We will remedy that in the next election.
Mr. Kerrio: The member can't say much about that.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Not at the moment, but we will in the next little while.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Bradley: Who is giving up his seat? The member for Scarborough West?
Mr. R. F. Johnston: What a wonderful question. I just want to put to rest for now the rumours about my running for the mayoralty of Toronto at this point. But I am accepting donations from any members who are interested in seeing me leave. I would be pleased to accept the donations.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Scarborough West has the floor, speaking to the motion.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I am glad you reminded me, Mr. Speaker.
I speak to the motion to say that we should give the Treasurer, tonight, tomorrow, or whenever, carte blanche to carry on as he has been doing, to spend the money, as has been indicated in the past and now intimated through the throne speech, for the next number of months. My colleagues will speak, and have spoken this afternoon in the emergency debate, as to how the money could be spent; how we could be creating jobs in this province; why it is not just enough to point the finger at the federal Liberals, although that is very tempting to do and I do not blame the Tories for trying to do that. There is a certain legitimacy to attacking the federal Liberals for their high interest rate policies and their laissez-faire approach to politics.
But it is not the only answer, as my colleagues have been pointing out. Of course the provincial Liberals, to protect themselves from their federal counterparts, have been trying to point it out on a regular basis as well.
Mr. Kerrio: The member will never attack Broadbent as Premier or Prime Minister. He can bet his neck on that.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I do not have to, as yet.
There is much that can be done in the automotive industry, in housing and in taking some action to help people fight the high interest policy of the federal Liberals, but I am not going to speak tonight about that. I am going to speak instead about other kinds of things this government could be spending money on to protect people and this province from the effects that are being felt right at this moment as a result of the federal policies and of this government's policies.
There are 375,000 people unemployed, but the Labour critic, the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie), said today that the figure is close to 500,000 in real numbers of those who have given up looking for employment and who are no longer able to receive benefits. There are cities and towns around this province that are feeling depressed, as the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk has said.
Today a Liberal member from Windsor got up and put into words the fact that all that is left for Windsor is a hope and a prayer. Here we are in the Legislature saying a prayer for Windsor. I believe in divine intervention, but I also believe in political intervention. I believe there is action that can be taken here in Ontario without God descending to help Windsor and Windsorites. That was a wonderfully symbolic statement today, that that was what we are driven to in Ontario, to start --
Mr. Cooke: If you had three Liberal cabinet ministers, you would resort to prayer too.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I can understand, as you say, why they would be driven to that.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Many people are being affected very severely. There are the unemployed, those who are trying to get by on public assistance, the low-range family benefits, and general welfare recipients and pensioners. Look at where they are and what they have to look forward to in this province over the next few years and put that in the context of the Treasurer's statement of today. I thought it was incredible. He stood up proudly and said we were spending a smaller percentage of our gross provincial product than any of the other provinces.
While he was saying that, we have 500,000 people unemployed; we have people who are on family benefits assistance who are living 39 per cent below the poverty level, below the lowest poverty level that is talked about in this country. A mother with one child receives $5,676 to raise her child, feed herself and clothe herself in Ontario today. This is what we are approving as we approve this interim supply; that this should continue; that those people should be maintained at this level in Ontario.
Why are they maintained at this level? It goes back to the failure to create jobs and to keep the economy buoyant. While that is the case and there is no action on that front, the least we can do is to make sure that these people do not have to live in abject poverty in this province.
Since 1975 recipients of family benefits in this province have received a 46 per cent increase. What has been the increase in the cost of living in that same time? Seventy-seven per cent.
Mr. McClellan: That is a real accomplishment.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: This means that in the last five years they have lost 30 per cent of their purchasing power. This is what it means to approve this interim supply and just let it run through until the end of June without standing up and saying: "My God, this is not enough. This is inadequate."
Last fall, while family benefits recipients were being raised to 39 per cent below the poverty line, people on general welfare were told there would be no increase at all; so an average general welfare recipient in Ontario today is living on an income that is 48 per cent below the poverty line, half of what one needs to live on as a basic.
Mr. McClellan: That will really fix them. That's a real accomplishment too.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I am really glad we are spending a smaller percentage than the other provinces. I feel really wonderful about that when I know that this is what we are asking people to live on in this province.
Well, there is some good news. The Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Drea), my responsibility in the House, announced some good news the other day: 1,600 women between the ages of 60 and 64 are now going to receive more money; they are going to move up from about $318 to $368 a month, depending on circumstances.
There is a wonderful line in the news release of that day from the Minister of Community and Social Services. It is a fantastic thing. He said, "When I discussed the situation of women in this age group with Health and Welfare Canada Minister Monique Bégin, I found her most sympathetic." I am surprised that he did. She announced that this should be done nine months ago -- not to give her too much credit. Stanley Knowles has been talking about the fact that this age group of women has been living at the lowest level of income across the whole country and he has been doing that for the last eight years. It is nice that the honourable minister would be so nice as to say that he found the federal minister sympathetic, especially when she is putting most of the money into this new allotment of funds to these 1,600 women.
Nothing has been done about female senior citizens over 65. Every study that has been done in Canada in the last five years has shown them to be living below the poverty line. Nothing has been done in that area at all. This is a government that has been very proud of the programs it has brought in for senior citizens; this is a government that has brought in this gimmick of giving out cheques spring and fall. It is not quite spring and fall -- mostly winter and summer -- because they are supposed to be spring and fall but they sort of get delayed.
Mr. Foulds: Ever since George Ashe took over.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I got a call the other day, asking me if I still had any left from last fall's group and saying they would like to try to clean them up by the end of the month. I thought that was very generous of them.
9:50 p.m.
Look at housing, not from the side of helping the poorest industry and helping the construction industry in this province, but from the position of people who need housing. My riding is made up of a lot of people who are in the income range of, say, between $17,000 a year and $24,000 or $25,000 a year in family income. Those people have been able to afford homes in Scarborough West up to this last year and a bit. They have had to scrimp a lot to afford those homes, but they have been able to do it. But I am getting a steady stream of people coming to my office now in the riding saying: "In three or four months' time my mortgage is coming up for renewal and I know I can't meet those new payments because they are going to be $300 a month more than the ones I am paying now, and we are going to have to sell. We are going to have to move and try to find rental accommodation."
Quite frankly, up to this time a lot of the housing in my riding has been amongst the cheapest housing in Metropolitan Toronto. But when people go to try to find housing in Toronto today. they discover the vacancy rate is almost nil and they cannot get rental accommodation. So what do they do? They move to Whitby and commute in. That is what is happening with a lot of the people in my riding. There are a lot of others who are in need of public housing because they cannot afford the rents available now in Toronto. If a person is on a fixed income and tries to get a place in the private market in Toronto, tries to get a one-bedroom apartment, essentially he will be paying between 80 and 90 per cent of his income for that accommodation, for average rent in Toronto now. That is right. Even in Scarborough, even in West Hill, that is the case.
One-room housing, which is disappearing in Toronto but still exists, has jumped by 80 per cent in the last year. It now takes up almost an entire welfare cheque for an individual male, a single person on welfare. Where do those people go for housing? They apply to Ontario Housing Corporation.
When I was elected in 1979, I felt relatively confident, as I went through the cases coming into my office, that if I chose the hardest cases, the ones most severely in need, and went to Ontario Housing I would be able to speed up the process by stressing the need for these people to get into Ontario Housing. Sometimes it would mean they would get in within two to three months and would just suffer hardship through that period of time.
I have a case of a woman who came to me, who had just been deserted, had one child, was pregnant with another and was living illegally with another woman, who also had two children, in a two-bedroom apartment in Ontario Housing. She was basically told -- this was last November -- there would be no vacancies available to her until this spring. The average wait to get into Ontario Housing now is something like 18 months.
Mr. Philip: Much easier to get her a job in the liquor store.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: If you have any success with that, let me know. I am having trouble with that too.
The difficulty is, where do these people then go? One cannot stay in an illegal situation, as this woman was. She went to a hostel. She was lucky she got into a hostel because most of them, as members know, are full. She was told she could only stay two weeks and then she had to find something else. She went through the housing registry and could find nothing because the rooming places would not take mothers with children. They discriminate on that basis. They discriminate on the basis of people who are in receipt of public assistance. They will not take males under the age of 65. Even with three housing registry agencies working for her in Toronto, she could not find a place she could afford. Her children are now in the care of the children's aid society and she is living in a one-room place in Parkdale waiting for that opening in OHC to appear, she hopes, in April or May.
The Treasurer is pleased to tell us we are spending a lower percentage of our gross provincial product than any other province in this country. I am not proud of that one iota. It is time we did something about it. I have talked about Metro, but the situation is not just in Metropolitan Toronto. The member for Hamilton East will tell stories of public housing needs and hostel crises in Hamilton. The same situation applies in Ottawa. It is not just an isolated incident.
It is ironic that yesterday we turned to another area of the ramifications of economic malaise and lack of planning. I was fascinated that in the throne speech the other day there was no mention of mental health care. There was no mention of the fact that there might be some difficulties in the mental health care system in Ontario at this point. My God, that is just incredible. We have reports coming out of northern Ontario that there are hundreds of miles of territory where there is no psychiatrist.
Interjection.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: There is no one from northern Ontario here at the moment except for the member who interjected, is there?
Mr. Wildman: I am here.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: On the other side. Of course, the member for Algoma is here. Let it be noted that our northern members are all here.
Psychiatric and mental health care services in northern Ontario are grossly inadequate. We send people to Quebec for French-language services they should have as a basic right in Ontario. In Toronto we have the tragedies at Queen Street Mental Health Centre. We have a total lack of community support programs for people coming out of Queen Street. We have ex-mental health patients sleeping on the floor of All Saints Church. They are only sleeping there now because when the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) and myself happened to show they were sleeping in the stairwells at City Hall, the police started opening the doors to the parking garage so it would be too cold for anybody to stay there.
One night when I went to All Saints there were 275 people sleeping on the floor, and that was not a peak night. Ask the Ontario Public Service Employees Union workers at St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital or at Whitby Psychiatric Hospital if there are not problems in our mental health care system. Ask the members from Windsor if there is no crisis now in terms of mental health needs, a lot of it directly related to the layoff situation there.
What about children's mental health centres? The member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. Cooke) raised the case of a 14-year-old being kept in the St. Thomas psychiatric facility for adults without a proper program. Although we got a blustering reply from the Minister of Community and Social Services, the facts spoke for themselves. We will soon have released to us again this year the waiting list for children trying to get into children's mental health centres. I am willing to predict right here and now that it will be as high, if not higher, than last year. Last year there were 2,000 children on waiting lists for children's mental health centres in this province.
What does this province do? It closes down White Oaks Village and pretends it will have the same kind of facilities in London when, in fact, it has decimated that program to save money. It has certainly not put comparable facilities into place. The minister is pleased we are spending less.
10 p.m.
There are needs in this province that are not being met. These are needs that are very painful to families, that are impeding the development of young children; that are not being met because this government has not got the decency to spend the money for those facilities. When I stand up to speak on interim supply I am speaking against that unwillingness.
I do not know whether to cry or laugh about the decision of the past Minister of Health about prosthetic devices. One, he announces a half- developed, half-baked program because he knows he is going to trade ministries soon and he wants to get the credit for prosthetic devices being covered under OHIP. Two, he brings it in to just cover prosthetic devices for children as if adult handicapped people do not need coverage for that kind of assistance as well. Then, the ultimate is he provides funding for three quarters of what is needed. I mean he funds three quarters of a crutch.
As I say, one does not know whether to laugh or to cry. We are glad something is coming, but my God, if he is going to do something he should do it in a planned fashion. He should do it in a way that meets the need. He should not offer 75 per cent of the cost of something. We do not do that with other things, why have we done it with this? That is part of this interim supply. That program is supposed to be operational before the end of June. We are supposed to be spending money in that area, but there are inadequate funds to meet a very real need for handicapped people.
I will come back to the elderly for a minute, if I might. Homes for the aged were once the pride of this province. During the 1960s there was a major building boom in homes for the aged when we decided we would build institutions for our elderly people instead of trying our best to maintain them in the community.
What we are finding is that consistent underfunding of those institutions around this province for the last seven years has come to the point where we can actually attribute deaths to that underfunding without being outrageous.
The report on Greenacres Home for the Aged in Metropolitan Toronto should be must reading for every member of this House. There are not enough blankets for the beds. It is a publicly-funded institution and there are not enough blankets. It is hardly meeting the basic quota for nursing care that is expected for people requiring normal care and these are 96 per cent extended care residents. They barely had the kind of staffing there that would meet the needs of normal ambulatory care people in a home for the aged.
We all thought this was a specialized institution which people like to shy away from because it is a very painful place to go and visit. I do not know if the members have ever been there, but it is an institution where the vast majority of people are confused, are suffering from various forms of dementia and senility and it is not a pleasant place to be around. It is a very hard place to work in as well.
Maybe it is the kind of place -- if it is put out of sight, out of mind -- that would deteriorate like that. But there has now been a new study of the other homes in Metropolitan Toronto. We find the understaffing problems are enormous and that millions of dollars needs to be spent right now to meet the needs of those institutions.
Some examples: In Castleview-Wychwood Towers, there are two nursing attendants for every 40 patients. In Cummer House there are two nursing attendants for every 130 patients. Those nursing attendants do not have the time to hand out the proper dosages to patients for their nightly sleeping pill, let alone to do any proper work with those people. What are we setting up in this province, a place where people can go to rot and die?
Those institutions were begun as places that would be about 50 per cent ambulatory care and 50 per cent extended care when they started in the 1960s. The average age was around 67. The average age today is 83, 82.5 -- something like that. The number of people who need extended care in those facilities has jumped enormously. Greenacres Home for the Aged is a special case with 96 per cent, but Castleview is 62 per cent and Kipling Acres is 77 per cent. This has happened everywhere around the province. The average is around 70 to 75 per cent of the people in those institutions who now need extended care. We have not changed the staffing, we have not changed the physical surroundings, we have not changed the kind of equipment that is in those institutions to meet those needs.
If one reads this report on the Metro home one learns that they do not have enough staff on at night to handle a fire emergency, even after the tragedies we have had in this province. The Treasurer can take no solace in saying we are spending a smaller percentage of money than other provinces are. How the hell can he? We are threatening those people's lives, people who built this province.
I will not deal with home support services, which are now supposedly coming into place. This replaces the need for more homes for the aged that is facing this province. Suffice it to say that by announcing it again in the throne speech after it has already been announced three to five times -- and we have not seen one dollar for it yet -- I am really not worried about it being covered by interim supply at all. It is just a farce. By 1986 we will have it in six communities. That is great. I am really pleased that we are meeting the needs of our elderly people in this province.
The fact is that social service agencies around this province, especially those that deal with the elderly, have been kept at a $15,000-a-year grant by this province since the mid-1970s, and they are now going bankrupt. The United Way agencies can no longer take that increasing load upon themselves just because the province will not pick up its share any more. The Treasurer may be pleased that we have done this and held the line, held down those darned voluntary social service agencies that are out there spending the public money. He may be pleased that we are showing good fiscal restraint, but I am not.
What about day care? One might not look at day care, as I do, as the obvious extension of our education system for the 1980s and 1990s, as we developed the education system 50 or 60 years ago. One might not look at it that way and see early childhood education as a valuable thing to add to our society. But even then one must look at it as an economic necessity for families that have two people working, because federal programs and interest rates require two jobs to carry the kind of costs we have today because of inflation. It is just for that reason we need more money in day care than we are getting in this interim supply.
I had a call yesterday from a person in my riding who had a chance to get a job that would have been a $5,000-a-year increase and would have brought her up to $24,000 a year -- the sole income in that family. The only difficulty was that her shift is from 12 o'clock at night until eight in the morning and she needed to find some place that took 24-hour day care. We looked high and low to find a place where she could get 24-hour day care, even paying for it. We could not find a place that had a waiting list of less than seven months.
10:10 p.m.
There are certain ironies in the spinoff of the government's lack of funding of jobs and the deterioration of our economy. Sitting back and saying, "These darn feds are doing it to us," means the price comes in terms of child abuse. The cost shows itself in child abuse. This province has not only underfunded children's aid societies; in my view they have even turned their backs on children's aid societies where workers are now being attacked and judged through the legal system rather than under the Child Welfare Act. They have left those people out there saying, "We will wait and see what the courts decide," but they have actually taken money out of child abuse projects in this province.
I think there is one in Hamilton that has just gone down the drain plus the one last fall here in Toronto. The splendid contrast of that is they are paying this guy, Judge H. Ward Allen, $72,000 a year to write a report on child abuse on the death of a child, Kim Anne Popen, who died in 1976. He started his investigation in 1978. We have not been able to ask any questions about it because it has been sub judice throughout. We are always told that by the various ministers.
Mr. Nixon: And the CAS worker who lost his job and had to leave his home and all the rest of it.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Totally discredited; this judge has been working on this report writing it full time. He was taken off the bench last April. We have spent more than $250,000 on this guy already. The other day he had the nerve to say he was past page 1,000 at this point. He did not know quite when it was going to end. When he got going he wrote more and more.
I do not know if he is aware of the fact there have been changes in child abuse regulations since 1978, but there have been. I do not know if he understands there are people in children's aid societies who are going through major crises at the moment because their jobs are not only on the line but they may go to jail while he is sitting there writing the great 16-volume report -- the great 16-volume irrelevant report I am sure by the time it comes out. We are funding that at the same time as we withdraw money from active child abuse projects.
I am pleased the Treasurer feels it is a good thing we are spending less than other provinces, but I do not think it is a good thing. I think it shows a total lack of imagination on the part of the government. It shows a total lack of commitment and compassion. I wanted to use tonight to harass the government a bit about that, to say that I am going to remind them about this again and again.
The government cannot just say, "Times are tough and the feds are not doing what they are supposed to do," because it has a responsibility to the people of the province, especially to the people who need the most protection -- the kind of people I have been talking about. The government is not doing it. We are going to remind the government about that and tell the people about that so that in a few years it will not have to be burdened with a job that is obviously too much for it. We would be glad to take it over and show a bit of imagination on the other side.
Mr. Mancini: Mr. Speaker, I have been here all evening listening to these interesting speeches. The most interesting speech was given by my honourable colleague, the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon). Certainly his penetrating thoughts and remarks have shown up the Conservative government for what it is.
I would like to say, after having had a long recess of almost three months and after not having seen many of my colleagues here in the House, it certainly is nice to be back. Many of my friends and colleagues in the House have asked me why I have shaved off my moustache. I must say there has been more discussion on and more interest in the reasons why I shaved off my moustache than in the government's throne speech.
An hon. member: Tell them you will not shave until they do something about the economy.
Mr. Mancini: That is right. I will not grow my moustache back until the government does something about the economy and puts the 400,000 unemployed back to work.
This debate this evening is on the motion for supply. I personally object to giving this government more money to spend. In my view, this government is not interested in careful expenditure. It has proven that to us time and time again. It has not sent any signals at all to the bureaucrats and to the managers of the government departments that they must be conscientious.
You say to me, Mr. Speaker: "How is that so? What signal have they not sent, or what signals have they sent, to these bureaucrats that they can spend at will?" When last April this government brought in the ad valorem tax that just keeps reaping tax dollars without any accountability to the people and to this Legislature, it shows the bureaucrats the pit is bottomless and they can spend the money as they will with absolutely no repercussions.
As I am speaking, I am looking at the member for Leeds (Mr. Runciman). From what I can understand from press reports he is gathering up public support to create a storm over the federal government's metric commission. I would advise the member for Leeds to spend his time working on provincial matters, to spend his time encouraging the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) to get Ontario's economy moving again. I would encourage the member for Leeds to tell the Treasurer to send the jet plane back and save the people of Ontario millions of dollars. I would encourage the member for Leeds to tell the Treasurer not to spend $650 million and billions of dollars of interest for Suncor. If he wants to be a member of the Legislature, those are a couple of things he could be busying himself with.
Frankly I object to giving this government more money to spend. But there are a lot of other things I object to about what this government has done in the past and what it is doing right now.
I am glad the member for Lincoln (Mr. Andrewes) is here, because this concerns him also. We have a very sophisticated and successful greenhouse floral industry in this province. In my riding alone we have at least 400 people working in that industry. That industry has a farm-gate value of $100 million and exports of $10 million. All this information is well known to the member for Lincoln who, as did many other candidates in the last general election, told his voters to vote for him and they would have a member on the government side who would speak for them and everything would unfold as it should. There would be prosperity in every Tory riding. That member represents a significant portion of the greenhouse floral industry.
The Ontario Conservative government introduced its Ontario farm assistance program, wanting to help farmers who are in dire straits. In my view the greenhouse floral industry is part of the agricultural community and is important to this province. There are people working in that industry. I have written a letter to the Premier (Mr. Davis) objecting that the greenhouse floral industry is excluded from assistance in that program -- a shameful thing to do indeed. The Premier wrote back to me, saying: "Mr. Mancini, this was not an oversight by our government. It was a deliberate policy decision." Shame.
10:20 p.m.
Where was the member for Lincoln when that deliberate policy decision was made? The Premier told me in his letter he has limited funds. Where was the member for Lincoln when they were buying jet planes and Suncor? Where was his voice then?
We on this side of the House believe the farm community should be treated as equals. If there is a program to be set up to assist the farm community it is highly unfair to exclude a particular segment of that industry. I say to the member for Lincoln and all of his Tory caucus members, if these people in the greenhouse floral industry go bankrupt, if jobs are lost, it is because of a policy decision that his people made. They will have to live with the consequences; they will have to explain that to the people of Ontario.
Mr. Wrye: And the people of Lincoln. Now we know what the Premier thinks of them.
Mr. Mancini: This government, from what we heard in the throne speech, really does not know what to do. They ran their last campaign on jingles and slogans. There was really no thought-out policy as to what should be done to get Ontario moving again. That is why they are lost today. I suspect that in the next two or three months we shall be hearing some new jingles and some new slogans, and they will hope, in that fashion, to try to keep public support from turning against them in a very dramatic fashion.
But I suspect they are already too late. I suspect that, no matter what jingles and other types of advertising they attempt to put on the airwaves in the next two or three months, it is already too late to stop the turning of public opinion against this government. I want to give them a couple of suggestions for getting Ontario moving again.
The government already knows the food processing industry in this province could provide a bonanza of jobs. But I suspect they have not done their homework. They are really not familiar with, or aware of, the present conditions of the food processing industry. They do not know how they should spend money to expand this industry and attract new jobs and new exports. Just in my part of the province alone there have been successful food processors, small businessmen, who over the past several years have been able to expand their businesses, create new jobs and make our agricultural land more productive, by being able to supply the farmers with contracts.
I am curious and want to know why, with all the bureaucrats they have at their disposal and having been in government for so long, it is so difficult for them to say: "We are going to be moving quickly in the food processing field. We know who is in the business now and we know that our farmers can produce more. We know there are farmers on waiting lists to get contracts and we are going to use government funds to involve ourselves in this particular segment of the industry. We are going to get Ontario moving again."
Did we hear anything like that in the throne speech? No, we heard meaningless words, fed bashing, that it is everybody else's fault but ours. Frankly, one gets a little tired. One always hopes the government will do a good job because the citizens each member represents are very important to that member. All of us are concerned that the future of our children and the future of the constituents we represent are being looked after.
I have completely lost confidence in this government. It has come to the point where its only concern is political survival. It is a sad thing to say but that is the point the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has reached. Political survival is its only concern. That is why they put in place jingles instead of policies.
We will be hearing from the Treasurer in the next few weeks. He will have to face the Legislature and the people of Ontario. He will have to table his budget and his expenditures. We will know then what plans he has and in what direction he wishes to take this province. We will know then for certain whether or not the Conservative Party and the Conservative government of this province have fallen apart altogether or whether they think there is something they can do. That will be the opportunity for the people of Ontario to be able to judge.
I want to say to the Treasurer that we in this province cannot afford any further tax increases. He socked it to us last year. The Toronto Star stated after his budget of last April that his tax increases were at least $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year. The taxpayers of Ontario, the unemployed workers, the people making minimum wages cannot afford further tax increases. This government campaigned on a mandate to avoid tax increases. It broke that promise in last year's budget. Surely the Treasurer must have been made aware by the many community groups, the businessmen and associations he has met with over the past several months that the working people and the business community of this province cannot at this time afford tax increases.
My colleague, the member for Windsor-Sandwich, has mentioned interest rates.
Mr. Wrye: Windsor-Riverside.
Mr. Mancini: I'm sorry -- the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. Cooke). The member for Windsor-Sandwich is quite astute.
The member for Windsor-Riverside said something about interest rates. What he failed to remind the House about is that around 1980, a year or so before the provincial election, when the Liberal Party introduced an interest-rate relief program, his party voted with the Tories. As a result the farmers, the small businessmen and the home owners did not get an interest-rate relief program. He forgets that, does he not?
He forgot to tell the people of Windsor-Riverside about Chrysler. The member for Windsor-Riverside said he wanted the government to invest in business but when the federal government was helping --
Mr. Speaker: I would direct the honourable member's attention to the clock.
On motion by Mr. Mancini, the debate was adjourned.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I would like to outline the business of the House for tomorrow and for next week. Tomorrow morning we will continue the debate on this motion for interim supply.
On Monday, March 15, assuming that this motion may be completed, we will go on to consideration of the throne speech with the mover and seconder making their contributions to the debate. That of course will continue until 6 p.m.
Next Tuesday the address in reply to the throne speech will be by the Leader of the Opposition. Next Tuesday evening the House will consider second reading of Bill 10, an Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act.
On Thursday, addresses in reply to the throne speech will continue with the contribution by the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party. For the balance of Thursday afternoon and evening and for Friday, we will continue debate on the throne speech. Then, of course, the House will adjourn on Friday until Monday, March 29.
The House adjourned at 10:30 p.m.