THRONE SPEECH DEBATE (CONTINUED)
URBAN TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT CORP.
The House resumed at 8:02 p.m.
THRONE SPEECH DEBATE (CONTINUED)
Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the amendment to the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.
Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I will not be much longer, but I would like to tidy things up. We were into a fairly freewheeling effort before supper. Maybe the members have lost the thread of what I was attempting to say and I want to make certain I re-establish that thread. The thread was simply that while there is a measure of promise in the new team in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, unfortunately the throne speech does not give much confidence that it is yet winning the battle.
I cited, for example, the farm adjustment assistance program announced just before Christmas -- it is no less than three months old -- for which a price tag of $60 million had been attached. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture pointed out that with the original guidelines no more than $30 million would be ultimately paid out. The government itself concedes in the throne speech that the program was inadequate and now announces that the guidelines are going to be broadened somewhat.
Just let me conclude that point, Mr. Speaker, with what I think is a pretty devastating set of figures. Would you believe that in 1980 the net farm income in Ontario was $536 million? That is the net, what the farmers had left for themselves after they had paid all their expenses. In that same year the farming community paid $436 million in interest payments. In other words, the interest payments were 80 per cent of the net income the farmers earned through all their work.
Last year, 1981, net income had jumped to $843 million. As you are undoubtedly aware, Mr. Speaker, these figures at the end of the year are projections and are subject to confirmation at a later date. I must confess I find it a little bit surprising that the net income went up from $536 million to $843 million, but it is likely a relatively accurate ball-park figure. However, the point I want to draw to your attention is that the interest payments the farmers paid in 1981 had gone up from $436 million to $621 million. So, once again, the proportion is roughly the same. The interest payments the farmers are making are about 80 per cent of their net income.
That is a situation that clearly reflects a much broader crisis in the agricultural community than the results that are slowly dribbling out of that pipeline in which somebody said there were a lot of applications, because up until the end of the first week in March no more than 46 farmers had received any payment at all. Indeed, the total payment was a mere $300,000 of the $60 million that had been dangled before them last Christmas.
The second item I want to draw attention to is one that got fed into the debate as a result of an interjection from one of the government backbenchers; namely, the fact that the speech from the throne promised a program of capital assistance to young farmers to help them get established. Again, that is a very commendable proposition. But I would remind the House that in 1975 such a program was established with a $25-million price tag attached to it. No more than one third of that has been paid out. So there was another ineffective program. We look forward with a measure of anticipation as to whether the new version, whatever it may be when it is finally detailed, will be any more effective than the last one we had.
The third item in the throne speech is legislation to protect producers from buyers in default. Periodically when the buyers of farm produce have gone bankrupt, farmers have found that they are empty-handed. First claims on the bankrupt company go to the preferred creditors, including the banks and, indeed, federal and provincial governments for any money that may be owed to those governments, and not to farmers. This is something we have talked about in this Legislature for three or four years in an intense way, since the bankruptcy of that meat packing plant or abattoir or something in Guelph and in the Hamilton area, if I recall correctly. So, once again, we look forward with pleasure or anticipation as to what is going to happen. But so far it is nothing but a regurgitation, a retread of an old policy and an old issue.
Fourth, the throne speech promised efforts to reduce dependencies on imports and the encouragement of sales of Ontario farm produce through further boosting of Foodland Ontario. Again, this is an admission that the current programs are not adequate. In fact, as far back as 10 years ago, Bill Stewart, the then Minister of Agriculture and Food, was warning that if the trends continued, by the end of the century we would be importing 60 per cent of our foodstuffs.
Ontario has now become a net food importer. We are importing more food than we are exporting despite our very great capacity for production of food in this province. The trend has not been reversed, let alone achieving the objective that the farm organizations have been proclaiming for quite some years now, namely, that Ontario should become self-sufficient in food.
Nobody is arguing that we have to become self-sufficient for certain tropical foods, fruits and things of that nature. But there are literally hundreds of millions of dollars of produce that we are importing more and more, for a variety of reasons, which could be produced in this province. We are not reversing that trend. I look forward to seeing whether the new team is going to do anything more effectively than we have done in the last four or five years.
Finally, the throne speech speaks of promoting a stabilization program for national commodities to provide improved income security for farmers. This is the oldest and weariest of verbal buck-passing between Queen's Park and Ottawa. Federal stabilization is tied basically to 90 per cent of the average of the past five years. We all know that these historic price levels are wholly unrealistic in the light of the current price levels that farmers have to face. So the federal program is inadequate to begin with. Gene Whelan has announced -- he announced it last year and I presume it still stands -- that last year was the last year in which they were going to permit provinces to top-load the inadequate federal stabilization program with the kind of extra five per cent that Ontario was adding to it in any payout.
8:10 p.m.
Members will recall that last year there was quite a confrontation, which went on for some weeks, when Ottawa was declaring it was going to deduct from its payments the five per cent Ontario gave. They backed off that because they were not doing it in Quebec, but I would remind the House that the federal Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Eugene Whelan, said in future years they were not going to tolerate or permit that kind of top loading.
In addition, the federal government has often refused to name as national products many Ontario products that are desperately in need of stabilization. Because they do not happen to be as important in other provinces outside Ontario, there is a great resistance on the part of the federal government to name them as national products, so they do not get the basic 90 per cent. Then the five per cent top-loading Ontario offers becomes ridiculous.
The much-needed stabilization in farm income levels, and I emphasize this, is so much rhetoric, more rhetoric than substance. If the Conservative government and the new team in Agriculture and Food have a more adequate program in mind for this, as for all these other items, it will be interesting to see what it is. Once again, farmers have been waiting for years and they have been short-changed. They have been let down by both the Liberals in Ottawa and the Tories at Queen's Park.
I could go on at considerably greater length in spelling out positively what the New Democratic Party's policies are in response to, or as an alternative to, the inadequacies of what the throne speech offers, but I will let the matter rest there tonight. There will be plenty of opportunities in estimates and elsewhere.
Indeed, we are taking the story out to the hustings. When we have meetings in Hanover, 1,000 people turn up and the press release says, "Rae a hit in small-town Ontario." That is the kind of message we are carrying, a positive alternative to the inadequacies on the other side of the House. It may be more important to take it out there than to waste our words here because they obviously have not been very effective here.
Mr. Gordon: Mr. Speaker, I notice there are some young people in the gallery. You are probably wondering why I am changing glasses. I can tell you it is due to age. That happened to the member for York South (Mr. MacDonald) a long time ago, did it not?
Mr. MacDonald: You change glasses as easily as you change parties.
Mr. Gordon: It happened to the member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart) too. I noticed he was doing the same thing.
Mr. Boudria: You used to change parties; now you change glasses.
Mr. Gordon: I wonder, Mr. Speaker, if you would do something about these people who are interrupting me.
Mr. McClellan: You are only interrupting yourself.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
Mr. Gordon: I would like to begin this evening by saying that I certainly welcome this opportunity to participate in the throne speech debate and to express my views on a topic of great consequence to the present and future prosperity of all Canadians. First, I would like to remind the members on the other side, if I may be so bold, that this government has a proven record of job creation and of caring for its citizens.
Mr. Mackenzie: How many goat herders in Sudbury?
Interjections.
Mr. Gordon: If I might have the floor for a moment, I would like to tell these gentlemen about my glasses. One of the nice things about them is they help me to read my speech, but I cannot see much further than that row down there.
Mr. MacDonald: You are not the first Tory who has been short-sighted.
Mr. Gordon: Once I put them on, it does not matter what those members do. This evening I would like to address the positive steps taken by this government to create jobs in Ontario and in Canada. Our government, through the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development, has launched an aggressive policy to deal with our economic shortcomings, job creation and the temporary setbacks in our manufacturing sector.
BILD is a bold initiative which was created to build a strong foundation for the future and for prosperity in Ontario, and it is a bold initiative which will progress because of the strengths of the people, the resources and our strong manufacturing base in Ontario. The cornerstone of BILD is technology and people. To ensure economic growth and international competitiveness, our government, through BILD, is promoting R and D, encouraging high technology and expanding markets for Ontario products.
The era we live in has ushered in another industrial revolution and, make no mistake about it, it is a revolution based on microelectronics. The application of microelectronics is truly revolutionary. In manufacturing, microprocessors control and will improve the performance of a wide range of products from home appliances to heavy construction machinery and cars. Assembly lines can be automated by the use of robots fitted with microelectronic sensors that enable them to be used in a range of difficult tasks. The use of microelectronics at home, at work and at school will ultimately improve the quality of our lives.
At the same time, the National Research Council has estimated that if the existing 1,000 high-technology firms doubled their gross output by 1990, the net benefit to Canada's balance of payments would amount to $12 billion and would create 650,000 jobs. As a matter of interest, 650,000 jobs are five times the present number of workers employed in the Canadian auto industry. Ontario is an industrialized province accounting for 49 per cent of the manufacturing in Canada. Therefore, the adoption and diffusion of microelectronic technology is both a necessity and an opportunity.
Canada's research and development effort is recognized as being inadequate. Ontario's performance is only slightly better. Recent studies show that Canadian industry is not only slow in the application and diffusion of technology, but lags behind most industrial nations in the utilization of technical innovations. In a world characterized by tariff reductions and strong industrial competitors, rapid advances in technology have become a prerequisite to the growth and survival of many domestic industries.
We cannot escape the realities of the technological revolution. Our competitors are spending significantly more money on R and D as a percentage of their gross domestic product. What is strongly needed for the growth and prosperity of Canadian industry is a coherent policy that links social and economic policies to a policy of technological advancement. The time is right for us to build on our strengths.
In the past decade Ottawa has failed to implement such a policy. As a result, Canada is now facing industrial setbacks. Our trade performance shows a deficit in manufactured goods and in high-technological items. This trade deficit in high-technology manufacturing has also been paralleled by the growing dominance of high-technology imports into the Canadian market. Even in mineral resources, for which we are one of the world's principal sources of supply, we are net importers of the manufactured forms of these minerals. This general weakness of Canada's trade performance is also mirrored in our employment trend. For example, the poor technological performance of our industry has resulted in lower employment opportunities because of industrial inefficiency, low productivity and competitiveness.
8:20 p.m.
We are facing difficult times, and our government is the first to admit that we are encountering new challenges. We live in a period of rapid change. Events such as the OPEC crisis of 1973, coupled with new technological advancements, have serious implications for our society. Our Progressive Conservative government is not only prepared to deal with changing economic trends, but is laying the foundation for future growth and prosperity. There is no doubt that Canada's economic performance is in trouble, especially when viewed in the context of global change. The industrialized nations, particularly the US, Japan and western Europe, are concentrating on high-technology industries and shifting the location of their labour-intensive manufacturing activities to industrializing Third World countries such as Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan.
It is obvious that these countries are concentrating on industries that require extensive contributions to research and development efforts. I need not point out the negative implications of this global trend for Canadian industry if we do not concentrate our efforts on high-technology manufacturing. In order to remain competitive, we must also concentrate our efforts on research and development.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to give you and my colleagues an example of the significant impact of technology on the structure of industry. Recent advances in the application of microprocessor technology to textile design procedures are allowing a number of Japanese clothing manufacturers to maintain production activities within Japan which, due to high labour requirements, would have had to be located in low-wage countries.
Applied to Canada, this microelectronics revolution could increase demand for skilled labour and allow Canada to customize production processes so that the cost of products with short production runs destined for our smaller domestic market would make economic sense. In addition, productions cost could be reduced to the extent that some mass-market consumer goods would be produced in Canada at prices competitive with low-wage economies. However, if Canada does not initiate policies to take advantage of the benefits of technology in the early and growth phases of the advanced technology product cycle the implications of the global industrial revolution can be quite detrimental to the Canadian economy.
If Canadian industries do not stimulate economic growth by improving their technological capacity, they will be unable to compete either in terms of labour costs or modern production facilities and thus be unable to maintain their domestic and export markets.
A good illustration of this point is our auto industry. For 1981, vehicle production was 807,000 units, the lowest since 1967. This reduced production level has forced major layoffs. Certainly the measures advocated by our government in the throne speech are necessary as a first step in aiding the auto industry. Volkswagen-type agreements must be pursued. Future negotiations with foreign manufacturers must guarantee 85 per cent Canadian content. In order for the auto industry to become competitive, both production and production processes must be innovative.
In general, Canadian manufacturing plants have been much slower in incorporating microelectronic technology into their production lines. Our reluctance in adopting robotics in the manufacturing process is a case in point. The greatest obstacle to the adoption of microelectronics is the fear of massive unemployment. The truth, however, is that unemployment is not necessarily a result of technological changes. Far from destroying jobs, rapid technological advance has generally been accompanied by high rates of job creation.
The period following the Second World War saw the industrial economies flooded with new technologies, while the number of jobs increased steadily and unemployment shrank to exceptionally low levels. The Japanese recognized in the early 1970s that microelectronics would be a cornerstone of industrial progress in the coming decades. As a result, their steel, automobile and television assembly plants are among the most highly automated in the world, which is one reason they have captured such a large share of the world markets for these goods.
Despite Japan's extensive use of automation, their unemployment level in 1980 was only 2.1 per cent. In order for microelectronics to be accepted in our industries, there must be understanding and co-operation between management and unions. A form of industrial democracy is necessary to establish trust and co-operation in initiatives to incorporate technological advancement. Our government is doing everything it possibly can to encourage healthy labour-management relations.
Skills training is another area where our government has taken the initiative to prepare our people to meet the changing needs of business and industry. Our universities, colleges and apprenticeship programs are providing the bulk of our trained graduates. The growth of our educational structure in the 1960s and 1970s has put Ontario among the leading industrial jurisdictions in the creation of a talented and highly educated work force.
We recognize that Ontario's future depends in large measure on its strongest asset, its human resources. To build upon this base, our government is investing some $200 million over the next five years on long-term manpower initiatives which will focus on developing our own skills, retraining existing manpower to adapt to changing technology and achieving a closer link between our educational institutions and the needs of the work place.
In particular, the training in business and industry program, which last year was increased from $3.5 million to $8.5 million after BILD strategies were announced, has been granted a further $5 million for 1982-83. I was also pleased to see that emphasis was placed in the throne speech on the introduction of a wage incentive program for the training of high-level software development specialists.
This government cares about people. We provide programs to deal with our changing environment. Our government recognizes the needs of our people. We realize that what is needed now is the adoption by Ottawa of a Canadian technology development strategy in order to improve our trade performance, increase the competitiveness of our industries and create jobs. Such a strategy must be based on our existing strengths and on sectors in which we enjoy an international competitive advantage.
8:30 p.m.
These strengths include, first, the development of natural resource extraction and processing technology to take advantage of Canada's wealth of minerals, forests and agricultural products. At the same time, we need to develop new technologies for the efficient manufacture of uniquely Canadian products from our resource wealth. The time has come for us to shake off our image of hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Second, we need to develop technologies --
Mr. Breaugh: Point of order, Mr. Speaker: I really feel that more members should be subjected to this kind of abuse and I am not sure there are enough of them here. Would you take a look around and see if we have a quorum for this auspicious occasion?
The Deputy Speaker: I report to the honour- able member there is a quorum.
Mr. Wildman: We want to make sure they are all here to hear you.
Mr. Gordon: I appreciate that very much. I think that is really a sign of approval. We call that stroking, in the north. I don't know what they call it down here.
Interjection.
Mr. Gordon: I know it is not polite. You cannot use it in the Legislature.
Second, we need to develop technologies in which Canada clearly has a strong capability, such as electricity generation, nuclear energy, wind energy -- and there is plenty of that on the other side -- telecommunications, geophysical exploration and remote sensing.
Finally, we need to develop new technologies to capitalize on the spinoffs from the megaprojects Canada will be undertaking in the next decade. For example, the tar sands and pipeline developments will require new breakthroughs in machinery and tooling equipment technology. A rational, effective effort at developing and using microelectronics space technology in the development of products, processes and systems can lead to the creation of Canadian products that are innovative and internationally competitive.
BILD is the first step in the formulation of such a strategy. The essential component of the BILD program involves building on our strengths and creating the conditions necessary for enterprise, innovation and investment. Despite foreign penetration, Canadian industry has substantial strength in many high-technological sectors that have the capacity to expand in the 1980s.
Many small to medium-sized Canadian firms have demonstrated their innovative capability and have emerged as major players in the electronics industry. These companies include Northern Telecom, Mitel Corp., Gandalf Data Communications Ltd., Norpak Ltd., Epitek Electronics Ltd., and on and on. Our government's goal is to ensure that these and other emerging Canadian industries grow and prosper. I want to emphasize here that it is our role, our responsibility, to encourage as well as assist our industries to be more successful.
I would like to discuss briefly some of the initiatives launched by this government to assist our industries in improving their productivity. BILD has allocated $28 million over the next five years to establish a microelectronics technology centre in Ottawa. This is a major initiative, injecting sophisticated miniature electronic technology directly into the Ontario manufacturing process. The centre will build on the electronic strength of Ottawa's Silicon Valley. It will service our emerging microelectronics industry by assisting manufacturers to obtain the essential custom-made chips for new product innovation.
The centre's unique position in Ottawa will also enable it to foster co-operation between the federal and provincial governments to ensure maximum benefits to our industries.
Computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing and robotics centres have been proposed for Cambridge and Peterborough respectively, with combined funding estimated at $40 million over the next five years. These centres will assist Ontario industry to adopt new technologies in advanced manufacturing and robotics. The North American automotive industry is currently undergoing rapid change as a result of modernization and shifts in demand.
To help the industry take advantage of the long-term opportunities in this sector, our government has proposed the establishment of a $25-million auto parts technology centre in St. Catharines. This centre will provide production services, an information centre and training and education, as well as testing facilities for small to medium-sized auto parts manufacturers. I am convinced that this important centre will play a pivotal role in assisting our auto sector regain its competitive edge.
To capitalize on our resource wealth, to create jobs in Ontario and to reduce our imports of resource machinery, our government has allocated $19 million for a resource machinery development centre to be located in Sudbury. We have a strong mining industry but a limited capability in mining equipment and technology. We have a strong pulp, paper and forest products industry, yet we have never maximized the potential to supply this industry with Canadian-made technology and equipment.
Indeed, import penetration in the resource machinery sector is now about 75 per cent of the total Canadian market. In 1979, the national deficit on resource machinery equipment stood at over $1.4 billion. Our government is determined to change this scenario for the people of Ontario, to ensure that jobs are created in Ontario, not in West Germany or the United States. The new centre will encourage mining and forestry research and development, which will increase Ontario-based manufacturing of resource machinery and equipment and provide a focal point for the development of projects to supply our growing equipment needs.
With the establishment of this new centre, a wide range of projects will be developed. For example, projects to share the risks with industry in making use of untried, experimental machinery; projects to replace existing imported machinery by new and superior machinery embodying new technology leading to productivity and operational cost improvements; and projects to develop working prototypes for equipment having substantial market potential in Ontario and in other major markets. The resource machinery development centre is also important in that it will provide a forum in Sudbury for the resource industry and its manufacturers to co-ordinate their efforts.
The centre will have access to funds for joint ventures with organizations on project proposals that can lead to new domestic machinery and equipment manufacturing. Our goal is to foster closer co-operation between manufacturers and resource companies. This co-operation will go a long way in ensuring the prosperity of both industries, thus providing jobs for the future. A good example of BILD funds and the private sector is the multi-million dollar mining machinery and equipment manufacturing plant that will be established in Sudbury. This plant, the first and only completely Canadian-owned manufacturing plant in Canada, will be a joint venture shared by the provincial and federal levels of government and three private groups, Inco, Noranda Mines Ltd. and John Clarke Investments.
The other centres that will be established in the province include the biotechnological centre in Mississauga and the food processing centre in Chatham. BILD funds will also assist the creation of the Ontario Institute for Biomass Research at Maple. These new centres will lay the foundation for future growth and prosperity in many sectors of our economy. Ontario intends to be in the forefront of this new age of high technology and the establishment of these technology centres will help us achieve that goal.
8:40 p.m.
New high-technology enterprises tend to be high-risk ventures. A key requirement for their viability is access to funding over a sustained period of time. Our government is prepared to accept equity-risk positions in new high-technology enterprises in the expectation that these ventures, in time, will become commercially successful and self-financing.
Mr. Martel: Tell me who has been advocating it for 10 years?
Mr. Gordon: It did not take very long, did it, for the member for Sudbury East to start having some influence.
Through the Ontario Development Corp., BILD provides start-up funds for Canadian-owned high-technology companies that already have a viable business plan and a structured financing plan. BILD funding totalling $1.7 million has been approved for nine such companies. Associated financing includes $4 million in private funds and $1.7 million from federal sources. Some 2,300 jobs are expected from these potentially high-growth companies during the next five years.
In the area of education, BILD is funding an educational microtechnology program. It will sustain initiatives already under way in the field of computer-assisted learning, as well as promoting the development of Ontario's educational microtechnology and computerized learning materials industry. BILD also supports the use of Canadian technology in two new major government projects -- I am sure my colleague the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie) will be interested in this one -- the liquor control board's new warehouse --
Mr. Martel: Is that in Timmins?
Mr. Gordon: -- in the Durham region, and the Ministry of Revenue's offices in Oshawa.
Special planning and purchasing procedures have been laid down by BILD to ensure both maximum and top-grade Canadian content of these projects. Ontario industries have made tremendous investments in communications technologies, broadcasting, satellites, digital switching, cable television and software production. Videotex, or what is better known as two-way TV, is a product of the marriage between the computer and telecommunications technologies.
The Canadian videotex system, Telidon, is considered the most advanced such system in the world. Telidon, in fact, has beaten out its major international competitors to become the AT and T standard for videotex. Projections suggest that the Canadian market alone for videotex may reach $750 million a year and that 400,000 sets a year could be sold in this country by 1985. Some American estimates indicate that by the end of the decade one quarter of all US homes will have videotex services and that an American market of $75 billion will exist for residential telecommunication services.
In order to promote Telidon and maintain its lead in videotex technology, our government purchased 2,000 Telidon units, programmed them with tourist information, and is having them installed in public places throughout Metropolitan Toronto. This commitment by the Ontario government to promote Telidon will provide us with the opportunity to tap a larger North American market, creating thousands of new jobs in Canada.
Telidon is not the only Canadian success story. We developed the Candu reactor, one of the best nuclear systems in the world. The Atomic Energy Commission pioneered cobalt therapy for cancer patients, and there are now 1,400 cobalt therapy units in hospitals around the world. In aerospace, we developed the remote manipulator arm for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd. has developed the Dash-7 and Dash-8 aircraft, leaders in their field. The Urban Transportation Development Corp. has developed world-leading light rapid transit vehicles.
Clearly we have strength in this province that we can build upon. We have on numerous occasions demonstrated our ability to build on the strength of our people, and we will continue to build on their innovative capability in order to shape a better tomorrow.
Our government is also preparing Ontario for the transition to an economic system based increasingly on electric power and nuclear technology. By encouraging the substitution of electricity for oil, our provincial government is providing greater energy security for Ontario's economic future while keeping Ontario in the forefront of electric power technology. For example, the nuclear generation of electricity is a lower-cost alternative to generation by oil or coal. As a result, Ontario Hydro has been directed to accelerate the completion of the Darlington nuclear generating station.
Ontario Hydro's nuclear generating stations technologies that are under construction at Bruce, Pickering and Darlington will also provide thousands of construction jobs as well as ensure the wellbeing of many sophisticated supply industries. A specific objective of the nuclear generation program is to reduce Ontario's use of coal for power generation and thereby reduce acid gas emissions, which have serious environmental effects.
I am pleased that initiatives will be taken this year to advance the agricultural and industrial potential of the Bruce Energy Centre. Low-cost and secure steam energy from the Bruce nuclear generating station will be used to heat a greenhouse complex designed to replace imported products and expand Ontario's greenhouse industry. At the same time, the park can be used for industrial purposes. The Bruce Energy Centre should create about 3,000 jobs in the area during the next 10 years.
To prepare Ontario for the longer term, our government has also initiated programs to tap our renewable and essentially inexhaustible energy sources. A fuel of great promise is hydrogen. In 1981, our government established the Institute for Hydrogen and Electrochemical Systems as a focal point for advanced research and development in these new energy systems.
Ontario faces both considerable challenges and massive opportunities during the next decade. In order to ensure that we achieve continued economic growth and create new jobs, initiatives in technology must be encouraged. We need to capitalize on our strengths at every opportunity and the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development is a bold first step.
In conclusion, it is about time the federal government got on the bandwagon and implemented a coherent policy of technological advancement. The reality of the employment situation for the 1980s demands that all levels of government develop policies which relate more directly to the new, changing requirements of our technological era.
8:50 p.m.
Mr. Van Horne: Mr. Speaker, it is a distinct pleasure to stand here on this eve of the first anniversary of Ontario's most recent disaster and make these remarks. I do not have to remind the House of the reality of March 19, 1981.
By way of a few introductory comments, I would point out to the member for Sudbury (Mr. Gordon) that he almost outdid a lady colleague of his, the member for St. David (Mrs. Scrivener), who last year spoke prior to me in response to the throne speech. She had been heavily involved with a study on rail transportation and went on and on.
When I got up to speak, I observed that had my ancestor who was a railroad man taken the same time she did, he could have laid 100 miles of track in the length of time it took to make her speech. I observe tonight that I cannot say that of the member for Sudbury, but I point out that during the course of his speech the style of my clothing went out; it took that long.
At the outset, I have to say how proud I am to be associated with our party, to be able to represent the citizens of London North and to be working with our fine new leader, the member for London Centre (Mr. Peterson). It has been pointed out by earlier speakers from our party, and I am sure it will be pointed out by those who follow me, that we have a renewed dedication not just to the process we see in the House on a day-to-day basis, but a dedication to the ongoing need to serve the needs of the people of Ontario.
Mr. Philip: It took a lot of corporations to engineer his election.
Mr. Van Horne: In spite of the observation made by one of my New Democratic friends, the member for Etobicoke, I would also pass on a favourable comment to the new leader of the New Democratic Party. We do not know when he will join us in the House but I am sure they, too, have a renewed vigour. I would like to pass on my congratulations to them.
My remarks this evening will be put to the House in three themes: First, to observe in general terms on the speech as it was presented to us a week ago; second, to observe on it as it is perceived by the people in my community of London; and third, to observe on it as I think it is perceived by people in northern Ontario, an area for which I now have responsibility as our party's critic for Northern Affairs.
Mr. Piché: You will have to learn where northern Ontario is first and I will give you some lessons. You have never been there.
Mr. Van Horne: The member for Cochrane North is observing that I have never been to the north and he knows not whereof he speaks. I have made many trips to the north, not just in the last few months but in the course of my stay in the Legislature, which has extended over five years.
Beyond that, I have some observations on the north from a book called Youth Goes North, a book that features me as a person who spent some time in the Temagami area. The member for Sudbury realizes my sister lives in Sudbury. I have paid many visits to that part of the country. The member for Cochrane North is not aware of the various other activities I have been involved in north of Sault Ste. Marie, but he will find out as we go along how much I do know.
The thrust of the throne speech is very disconcerting to me because it did not address itself adequately to the basic concern of all Ontarians, the concern we should have for the very high level of unemployment in this province. That is why my leader moved the other day to have an emergency debate on that topic.
It was pointed out in the course of that debate that there have been 21,565 permanent or indefinite layoffs in Ontario in the last year. At Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, 500 people have lost their jobs; 850 jobs have been lost at Inco in Sudbury; 1,700 Canadian Admiral workers in Cambridge and Mississauga are out of work; and 500 workers at de Havilland in Toronto will be laid off next month. I could mention the mine in Pickle Lake that was brought to our attention in the Globe and Mail just two days ago. It too will be closing.
The response of this defeatist government to this situation has been to throw up its hands, to shrug off its economic responsibility and opt for laissez-faire conservatism and inaction. This government has lost touch with the average Ontarian. It clings to a naive faith in the invisible hand of the market.
When one looks at the throne speech and follows it from page to page, one would have to conclude that it was written by a schizophrenic. This government in one breath condemns the federal government for every ill that befalls this province and then in the next breath says, "But we must seek co-operation or aid from the federal government." They cannot have it both ways. They cannot fool the people forever by suggesting the fault is solely that of the federal government.
I will go though the throne speech a page at a time, note the highlights that appeared in the press the following day that have stuck in our minds, and comment on the points in general terms.
The first page suggests that the Conservative government in Ontario has urged the federal government to join them in a program of economic recovery. If they are doing that seriously, how can they, on a day-to-day basis, here and in the press, continue to hammer away at the federal government for all its "inadequacies"?
They continue with this theme on the second page: "In spite of this united opposition from Ontario and other provinces, the government of Canada remains firm in its position of current monetary policy." They go on to say that attempts by the federal Minister of Finance to transfer a larger share of federal responsibility for the costs of health and post-secondary schools and social services to the provinces has created problems for the provinces. I would submit there is no reference made there at all to the excellent job the federal government has done over the years in providing those funds not only to Ontario but to the other provinces.
As my colleague the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) has pointed out many times in this House, and as recently as a few nights ago when he spoke, the federal government gets no credit for this.
I have to wonder if Ontario is reflected in the words of Jean Chrétien, who said he could not be a Tory because he could not speak out of both sides of his mouth. That is what Ontario is doing when it asks for co-operation on one hand and on the other hand condemns it.
Let me go on a few pages to the point at which the throne speech brings to our attention that global funding for youth employment will be increased and greater emphasis given to creating job opportunities for out-of-school youth on a year-round basis. How long have we heard this theme of providing assistance for youth who are out of school? What are the specifics of the money going to be here? When we see the budget in another few weeks, when we look for funds, specific and in large quantity, I would wager we will not find them related to this program. What the government will likely do is redecorate a couple of old programs they have been booting around for some time and throw them out as something brand new, just as was done with the BILD program.
9 p.m.
To get into another area of sensitivity in this throne speech, we note on the fifth page that this government is going to increase the stock of rental housing, particularly in the area in and around Metropolitan Toronto. There is no reference there, of course, to the theme, or the thorn, if you will, of rent control and what that has done to the development of housing units not only in Toronto, but in other parts of the province. We have to admit that all parties have mixed emotions on this particular theme. Yet the government does not address itself to that, but rather to throwing some money in to provide a Band-Aid to accommodate that problem.
We next go on to the first mention, not of northern Ontario specifically, but the forest industry. By the way, I would point out to my colleague the member for Cochrane North, who was poking a little fun at me a few moments ago, that the influence of the northern members from the government side of the House has to be considered as precious little, because when we look for other than this reference on page 6 in the throne speech, there is not another reference to northern Ontario until page 19. On that page we find three lines referring to the north.
Mr. Martel: That is better than last year. There was none then.
Mr. Van Horne: That is better than last year because there were none then. The priorities of northern Ontario are virtually non-existent for this government.
The reference we do see on page 6 -- and here again I would like to underline this theme of duplicity, of speaking out of both sides of the mouth -- states, "The recently announced forest improvement project will be expanded." Is that the one we find mentioned in the Globe and Mail about three weeks ago, "Forest Industry Job Plan Unveiled: A Joint Federal-Provincial Program"? There is no mention of that in the throne speech, and I have to suspect duplicity from the bit of research my assistant and I have done.
By the way, I would like to get her name into the record because we are blessed with some excellent people in this building. The researchers and the interns who work with us are very good people. I have the pleasure of having a young lady from Zurich, Ontario, Elizabeth Deichert, working with me as an intern now. She is here in the gallery. She has been helpful to me, as have other interns to other members, in trying to get to the bottom of some of these government programs or announcements. In this instance, when the provincial government says it is going to expand on this program and makes no reference whatsoever to what the federal government is also doing, I call that duplicity. Within a breath or two we find this throne speech again attacking the federal government. I tell them they cannot have it both ways.
Let me go on to another little theme that appears on the sixth page, "Special employment initiatives will be adopted by the Ministry of Natural Resources to upgrade and accelerate construction of resource access roads: it goes on to talk briefly about another program with federal authorities that will be encouraging the consideration of new programs by which funds normally paid as unemployment insurance can be directed and supplemented to provide employment in other areas of worthwhile endeavour.
I submit that is not a new program. For the record, if anyone chooses to examine the news broadcast of CFPL radio from London, Ontario, yesterday evening, they will find recorded there the statement of a civil servant, a gentleman I know because he and I both served on our public utilities commission at one point. I am referring to Larry Glass' comment about a program such as this, which has been in existence for the last three years. This is new? This is a new deal in the throne speech? This is a smoke and mirrors exercise.
I am going on now to another theme that has been a great concern to our party, the theme of agriculture. We find on page seven that the government is saying it is going to bring forth a package of additional measures to further assist agriculture. Here we are, heading into the third week in March. We know full well that all kinds of farmers are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. They may still have their property, they may still have some of their equipment, they may still have some of their livestock, but a lot of them are hurting.
We heard this afternoon in one of the presentations in this House the number of applications made for the assistance program. It is a very low number. As my colleague the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) pointed out, the time for buying the seed, for buying the insecticides, for buying the fertilizers and for getting those pieces of equipment ready to do the field work, etc., within the next few weeks is here now. If these people are having a tough time, if they have not got the money, the seed will not be in the field and the crops will not be there to be harvested. Ontario's agricultural community is hurting. I had hoped, given the amount of exercise we heard and felt in this House last fall, the government would be quicker to move and more generous when it did move. I do not think what we find in the throne speech is adequate.
The same reference is made again on page 8. I will not get into that any more. The next theme in the throne speech is the BILD program. We all know that it is basically a repackaging of old programs that the government had varying degrees of success with over the years and now they are saying to us it is the cornerstone of their approach to improving the economic situation here in Ontario.
That in itself is not enough. If we could have another general phrase for the government's ills it would be, "Plan ahead, master plan, blueprint." What is the master plan or blueprint for Ontario? If the government is going to tell me and my colleagues that it is the BILD program, I would have to say that Ontario is going to go nowhere because that in itself is not adequate.
I am going to move on because the throne speech, in my view, gets bogged down at that point. They stress a little bit the buy-Canadian theme, the fact that we must be more emphatic in presenting that theme. They get into talking about preserving existing jobs as well as creating new job opportunities and enhancing our industrial capacity in developing new market opportunities throughout the world.
Let me stop at that point and submit that one of the areas we have to be concerned about -- and this is pretty vague and general -- with respect to creating new job opportunities and enhancing our industrial capacity is northern Ontario. Again, there is precious little in government policy or in this throne speech that accommodates that part of our province. If we have a problem, I would say to my friend from Cochrane North, it is because we have a we-they attitude: we here in the south, and they there. It is almost as if we had another colony. That kind of we-they attitude, that kind of we-they approach to northern Ontario, is not going to bring Ontario together. That is where we are going to sink or swim as a whole province. We have got to put the nonsense aside on this we-they, north-south attitude and bring it all together.
We get into the next theme in this throne speech, the new IDEA Corp. The IDEA Corp. could be taken almost as a carbon copy of something we submitted a couple of years ago. My colleague from London Centre, my former colleague from Lincoln, a couple of other members of my caucus and our former leader, Dr. Smith, worked on what was known as An Industrial Strategy for Ontario. That was a paper we were very proud of as a political party because it was such a forward-looking document or blueprint for an industrial strategy for this province.
9:10 p.m.
The civil servants in this province quickly learned how important that document was. The standing bit of humour around here a few years ago was, "You will find two things in the upper lefthand drawer, the telephone directory and a copy of the industrial strategy paper." They had to know what was in it. It was a good paper. One of the themes was this business of co-operation between industry and education. This was part of our platform in the last election. Not too many people listened to it, unfortunately, but now the government of Ontario is saying it is not all a bad idea.
Getting to the Urban Transportation Development Corp., those members who were in the House earlier today are aware of some of the problems of UTDC. Our critics over the years have suggested that the various enterprises of UTDC should better be left with the private sector. When one gets into the argument of research and the development of things that will help the province, and the argument of where the government should step in or out, one would have an ongoing argument with good points to be made on each side. But when one sees abuses of UTDC, such as the provision of X number of automobiles and over $1-million worth of housing for a branch of government that will be using the services of UTDC in another province, I call that an abuse. Somewhere along the way the government will have to reassess just where and how far it is going to try to go with UTDC.
Reference is made in the next breath to the Toronto Stock Exchange and the need for the exchange to get more involved with what is known as venture capital. This is the sort of schizophrenic approach the government has, getting involved in one area and then saying to private enterprise in another area, "You take over." I am not sure if I am overplaying this blueprint thing, but the government of Ontario lacks a major plan of development in all areas for this province of ours.
The New Democrats who spoke in the throne speech debate today have commented on the next item I want to dwell on, particularly the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds), who spoke very well. He pointed out there was considerable verbiage in the throne speech related to the tourist industry. We find references on pages 15 and 16, etc., on the tourist industry. We have to wonder, with all the good things said about it, why the tourist industry is now so absolutely angry with the government.
A point not made earlier today, which I delight in being able to make, is that as of January 1 the seven per cent sales tax went back on for rooms in motels and hotels in Ontario. If we marry that to the cheaper cost of gasoline, particularly in the United States, the ripple effect could well be that the swing will be away from Ontario.
When an industry is doing so well and when the taxing of it will not have any great impact on government revenue, why bother? Why stick one's nose in and foul up something that is going relatively well? I would have to wager again that the tourist industry could well suffer from the government's meddling in and out of this sales tax proposition. Rooms are costly enough in Ontario compared to other parts of North America, as any members who travel know well.
I want to move from the part of the throne speech that deals with northern Ontario to another theme, the proposal that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications will be introducing a child restraint program in the form of legislation. We are all mindful of the controversy we had in this House not too many years ago about mandatory seatbelts. The evidence is there that, despite the objections of some, that program has been relatively successful. The child restraint program will likely be successful also.
Then why does this government not demand that young people going into our school system be immunized against such communicable diseases as measles? Last week I presented a private member's bill to amend the Education Act, which would make it mandatory for young people coming into the school system to be immunized against measles, very specifically, because measles is a killer. The United States has mandatory immunization against measles and the incidence of measles there is about one tenth of what it is here in Canada or in Ontario. Ontario is the leader in Canada.
I could give any number of statistics to prove the need for going back to immunization, but what is the government saying? Last fall it said:
"We have a new card, a piece of paper the school will complete when young Johnny and Susie are brought in for a preliminary interview at age 4 or 5 whenever they go into kindergarten or grade 1. We will impress on the parents the importance and significance of having the child immunized by the family doctor, or whoever."
The school system will not make it mandatory. It is left up to the parents. I am sure all parents have the very best of intentions, but the fact is that a lot of our children are not immunized. A lot of them get measles and suffer needless damage as a result of the infection. Why can we not expect to see that kind of good thing in the throne speech when we see such items as the child restraint program coming in the form of legislation? I think they almost go hand in hand.
With regard to the observations in the throne speech about diagnostic equipment for cancer, that terrible affliction in North America, and for heart disease, that kind of presentation simply cannot be criticized and I commend it. At the same time, and now I will sound like the government because, while I commend them, I am also going to criticize them for a moment, I have to ask what is the government of Ontario's overall plan to encourage medical research in this province. Ontario has some of the finest universities in North America. We have some of the very best medical researchers in the world. Yet when we look for a description or plan for medical research we find a hotchpotch.
Let me give the House one specific. I am sorry the member for Armourdale (Mr. McCaffrey) is not here because I want to pay him a compliment. He might read Hansard and get that compliment. A couple of years ago, he and I had the pleasure of sitting together on the board of directors of a charitable organization known as ALSS, that is, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Society. What is ALS? That was Lou Gehrig's disease. It is a devastating disease, and it is here in Ontario.
The ALS Society is a relatively new society. The member for Armourdale and I got involved for different reasons. Once we got involved, we had hoped, as members of the Legislative Assembly, we might know our way around and be able to find out how a charitable organization goes about seeking assistance for funding. We wanted to try to encourage medical research in this area. However, I have not been very successful.
9:20 p.m.
The member for Armourdale has had to leave the board because he has been elevated to the cabinet and that would have been a conflict of interest. But the point is that he and I together, opposite members, tried to work together to find out what the blueprint was for medical research here in Ontario and even though this is 1982, we could not find it.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman) does not put someone aside and say: "All right, this is your job. Put together a program. We will bring it back and if cabinet buys it, away we go." They have not done it. I say shame on the minister for not doing it. He has been here long enough. He should have taken the initiative and run with it, but he has not done that.
I am going to stop with the direct references to the throne speech because that pretty well covers the main items. The next thing I want to do, briefly, is to make reference to my community of London, Ontario, and to what they perceive to be some of the needs here in our province and what they feel about a handful of issues that have come to the attention of people in Ontario in this last year or so.
I did a little survey when we got into the Suncor issue. Members will recall that the Speaker of the moment is the gentleman who had the pleasure, or misfortune, to ask me to leave the chamber last fall when I objected to the government bringing in closure on our debate. I felt very strongly on that, but did not have the opportunity to speak as I had to leave the chamber.
Sixty-eight per cent of the people in London, Ontario, who were asked said they were not in favour of the Suncor venture. However, 90 per cent said they would be in favour of manufacturing industries in Ontario being required to participate in training programs to produce skilled workers, rather than relying on the import of such skilled labour. That, of course, gives some support to the recommendations in the throne speech.
When asked if they would be in favour of a new industrial strategy for Ontario which would give preferential treatment to Canadian-owned and managed businesses, 77 per cent of them said, "Indeed we would." When asked if they believed that research and development in Ontario should be funded at a higher level to lessen our dependency on foreign control, 79 per cent said, "Yes, indeed we would." Almost half of those asked were in favour of the curtailment of government services as a way to lower taxes. They were also asked if they were in favour of the Ontario government's spending over $10 million for a new jet. Members will not be surprised to hear that 89 per cent said no.
Last year's throne speech spoke in very glowing terms of the encouragement the government of Ontario was going to provide for the community of London through promoting a plant known as the energy-from-waste plant. For the information of those not familiar with our community, our large municipal hospital is being relocated on the groundsite of the federal veterans' hospital. Victoria is moving over to Westminster. It is the biggest single health project and the largest hospital expenditure of this decade in Ontario. It is a very significant program.
The government was going to take the lead, but then some citizens started to say, "If they are going to create energy from waste, what will the effect be on the environment?" Then it became a question of whether there should be an environmental impact study or an assessment. Unfortunately, the Minister of Energy (Mr. Welch), who should have taken the lead here and in a sense should have taken the heat off the member for London South (Mr. Walker), sat back and did not do that.
For the record, let me pass on to the House the observations of our city council which, through its mayor, sent a letter to the Minister of Energy that reads in part as follows:
"On February 4, 1982, your parliamentary assistant, Philip Andrewes, spoke at the London Chamber of Commerce, where he gave strong support to the proposed energy-from-waste plant at Victoria Hospital. While it was pleasant to hear of that commitment, it would have been more reassuring had such words come from the minister himself. There is a strong feeling here that the Ministry of Energy, which should be the lead ministry in this exciting concept, has failed to provide the initiative expected."
There was a little bit of heat from the community and the ministry seemed to back off. If the government is convinced that it has a good project, then it has to have the intestinal fortitude to stand with it and not back off and shilly-shally as it has done in this case. It has made a commitment and the city now is feeling very concerned that they might be trying to walk away from the commitment. The mayor's final few words were:
"I hope that Mr. Andrewes' statement is indicative of a new trust and that your ministry will now commit itself to this project. Such can be demonstrated by assuring the financing to Victoria from the Ministry of Energy. Until such financial assurance is given, the energy-from-waste project cannot proceed."
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): I must ask the members who are having loud conversations to do so in another place or to lower their voices.
Mr. Van Horne: I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker. Of course, the things we say, on the strength of the feeling from the home base sometimes do not have that great an impact on people who perceive themselves to be involved just with the largess of Ontario and not the individual parts that make it up.
The other observation from my community comes from the academic community. I would point out to members that there is considerable worry at the University of Western Ontario, which is in my riding and which I am proud to represent, as there is at Fanshawe College, which is also in my riding and which I am also very proud to represent. It is a worry that says to the staff, "We, the staff, are not sure where we are going during this next decade because of the funding problems and the problems that Ontario and other provinces have had in trying to renegotiate the established programs funding agreement."
The other side of it is students and the effect this ongoing funding problem is having on them. We all know there is going to be a tuition fee increase next year; the students are quite aware of that. How much they can bear is another issue. Beyond that, one has to keep in mind the final spinoff of this increase in tuition fees and the effect it has on those who are less able to pay.
I would like to quote something that Leonard Shifrin said very succinctly in an article in the London Free Press. He said: "Calculating the respective contributions of various income groups to the tax-supported costs of universities and comparing that with the distribution of benefits, the Carleton study finds the results decidedly regressive. Lower-income families contribute proportionately less than higher-income families to the cost of universities, of course, but so few of their children derive any benefits from them that the poor wind up subsidizing the children of the rich to become the next generation of top income earners."
I am not sure this is the commitment any of us want to see this government make, that is, that the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, that universities become accessible only to those who can afford it financially and that colleges become available only to those who can afford it. If that is the direction, it is time for a change.
9:30 p.m.
My final comments are on the North. I have to ask, where does the north fit into the government's system of priorities? From listening to the throne speech I would say it is not very high. Of the approximately 710 lines printed in Hansard, a whopping 22 lines referred to program initiatives specifically for the north. Of these, two issues were directly addressed: pilot projects using peat and waste wood and extended care services for the elderly. Of course, I cannot quarrel with either of those; of themselves they are good programs.
With escalating energy prices we need to turn our attention to alternative fuels. My colleague the member for Halton-Burlington (Mr. J. A. Reed) has been singing this song and beating this drum trying to get this theme across for years, as has all our party.
Peat is an obvious alternative in Ontario. Although we have few conventional hydrocarbon resources we do have vast peat land areas. The peat land area of Ontario is estimated to be about 26,000,000 hectares according to the study last year by Mononco Ontario Ltd. for the Ministry of Natural Resources. About 9.9 million hectares, corresponding to about 41.7 billion tons of peat, is estimated to be south of the permafrost limit. This is roughly equivalent to 72 billion barrels of oil if all the peat land were considered available for energy production.
The study shows peat land development is not expected to have a severe or significant impact on the environment. However, it warns that experience in this area is still lacking and that this developing technology needs to be monitored in regard to its possible environmental impact. To alleviate environmental concerns requires careful research programs, including a well-planned system of guidelines and regulations to ensure wise and orderly development. When we look through the throne speech I am not sure we find that.
Next I would commend the government's commitment in the throne speech to deal with the needs of elderly people living in small and remote communities in northern Ontario. Adequate health care continues to be a problem in the north as it does in many areas in the south. It is difficult to have a sophisticated hospital and backup medical and paramedical personnel system in every small community or hamlet in the north.
The intention to establish small facilities suitable for the provision of extended care services for elderly people, allowing them to receive the care they need closer to home, is one I wholeheartedly support and I am awaiting the development of this program.
What is of concern to me is the sin, not of commission but of omission. In the throne speech it said, "We in the government of Ontario have always believed that the creation and maintenance of productive employment must be our central concern."
This speech says nothing about a strategy to stimulate economic development to provide jobs in the north. Lack of diversity in northern Ontario's industrial development is largely responsible for the area's weak economic structure. Job opportunities are limited and the principal source of employment continues to be the capital intensive mining and forestry sectors.
Yesterday, my colleague and I telephoned the district economist for northern Ontario to learn that 33,000 of northern Ontario's total labour force of 333,000 were out of work. This is a marked increase over 1980 when 25,000 of the total labour force of 328,000 did not have jobs. Comparing these statistics with those of 1976 the difference is even more arresting. That year, northern Ontario's labour force numbered 297,000 with 21,000 unemployed.
Employment opportunities simply have not expanded despite substantial increases in productivity. With automation and mechanization in the mining and forestry sectors, the lack of job opportunities will continue to exist. It is my hope that in this government's upcoming budget, job creation in the north will be a priority. To neglect to do this will be seen by northerners as blatant disinterest in their economic plight at this time.
In the throne speech, a commitment was made by the Ministry of Natural Resources to upgrade and accelerate the construction of resource access roads in the north, thereby creating new jobs. I would like to point out to the minister this construction will only provide temporary employment. What is needed in the north is the establishment of secondary and tertiary industry so that these jobs will remain in the north. In other words, we do not want to see that ongoing migration to the west or to the south which unfortunately is a fact of the north.
Another commitment made in the throne speech was provision of GO rail service as far north as the Bradford area. Further, bus service will be improved to carry passengers north to Barrie from the end of the rail service. This will satisfy those who commute to Toronto from the places where the rail service was trimmed by last year's Via Rail cutbacks. What of the rail services that were discontinued or reduced in the north, such as the Capreol, Hornepayne and Sudbury-White River runs? What is going to be done with them?
To some people living in small communities along these lines the train represents their only means of transportation. Catering only to the Barrie area underscores this government's lack of concern for the people living in what they might call the true north or certainly the north beyond Barrie. It remains my hope that a greater commitment in the way of job creation programs and other services in the north will be evident in the budget.
I am proud to be our caucus member working in the area of northern affairs. I want to be part of a Legislature that works to help the north, and I use that word very carefully, not just a political party but a process of the Legislature that works to help the north. I am afraid when I asked a question of the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope), such as I did this afternoon about the closing of the mine in Pickle Lake. I was rather summarily dismissed by the minister. He said the committee that was looking into single-industry communities was talked about in the estimates last year. That is not good enough.
We can have it with the gloves on or with the gloves off. If that is the way the ministry or the government wants to take the attack, that is fine with me. I would rather we tried to work together with the problems of the north, but if they want to put the gloves on, okay, that's fine. I am going to work to represent my community in London, Ontario, and I am also going to work to represent and to speak on those issues that affect northern Ontario. I will continue to do that until I lose my place in this chamber.
I hope the government takes this to heart; it takes two to tango. We are prepared and willing to work but at times it is tough to dance with a corpse. I am submitting to the government that it must get some life into itself, it must breathe some life into this throne speech and show some real evidence of its sincerity through the budget and through what it is going to do in this next year.
Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to speak in this debate on the speech from the throne. As other members have stated, I too recognize in speaking on this that generally there is not a line of print given to any of the members except to the leaders of the parties. I also recognize that there is not going to be any change whatsoever made in the policies of the government by any of the speeches that are made.
In spite of that, I am particularly happy to rise tonight if it is only to give recognition to the fact that my grandson, Spencer Snowling, is a page at the present time at Queen's Park, and his mother, father and paternal grandparents are in the gallery this evening to see him perform, not me.
9:40 p.m.
There is another reason I am glad to comment on the speech from the throne. It does give us a chance to talk, if we want to, about some of the basic issues in our economy, in our society and in our party. Certainly the throne speech we are debating tonight is being debated at a time when the Canadian economy in general and in this province in particular is at its worst crisis since the Great Depression. I remember that depression very distinctly, and I and others who experienced it see the parallel pattern that is emerging at the present time.
We have massive unemployment. Statistics Canada figures show there are really something like 560,000 people out of work in this province, and in this nation as a whole it is up to about 1.8 million at the present time. Those of us who move around our communities know that young people are disillusioned now, as they were during those depression years; that small and even large plants are idle or working only part time; that people are losing their homes, as they were in those depression years; that there are all kinds of bankruptcies, both business and personal; that the social consequences, the family breakups, the excessive alcoholism and even the animosity directed against immigrants in our society are all taking place to a greater extent than they otherwise would. It is because we have this depression and people are unemployed.
Once again, as in that depression, it is really want in the midst of plenty. Many people desperately need the goods and services we could be providing from idle plants, idle hands and idle skills, but the system prohibits us from doing so. We have all the ingredients, but we do not have the economic system to put them together, provincially or federally, so as to have full employment and full production.
The ultimate worry to me in this deplorable situation is that the governments of today -- it does not matter whether it is the Liberals in Ottawa or the Tories in this Legislature -- 50 years after the last depression are floundering in the same way they did in the 1930s. They are taking exactly the same attitude towards massive unemployment and refusing to make the fundamental economic reforms that are necessary to deal with the problem.
The throne speech is a visual demonstration of that ineptness, the blinkered mind, the outdated philosophy, the Band-Aid approach of this government. There is no fundamental move or change of any kind in that speech. They are the same sort of Band-Aids we have been getting year after year. Some of them have a bit of adhesive left, some have none, and they disappeared when the Lieutenant Governor closed the cover on the throne speech.
Each year we get these little tidbits packaged in glowing terms, and each year the economy of the province gets worse. That has been the situation ever since I have been in this Legislature. We get these tidbits in glowing terms in the throne speech, but there is the same paucity of anything real in the document we have before us. They say:
"Global funding for youth employment this year will be increased and greater emphasis given to creating job opportunities for out-of-school youth on a year-round basis.
"Capital works programs supported by this government will be accelerated, thus providing employment in the construction industry. . .
"The recently announced forest improvement project will be expanded . . . special employment initiatives will be adopted by the Ministry of Natural Resources to upgrade and accelerate the construction of resource access roads. . . federal authorities will be encouraged to consider new programs by which funds normally paid as unemployment insurance can be directed and supplemented to provide employment in other areas of worthwhile endeavours. . . the government will attempt to determine which companies can be saved through our highly successful buy-back programs."
The throne speech also stresses that the farm assistance program will be broadened to help a greater number of farmers; that the government places a high priority on continuing to attract young people to establish themselves in this vital sector of our economy and will introduce a new measure to provide them with startup capital assistance. They are going to stimulate sales of Ontario food products and reduce our dependency on imports.
The throne speech goes on and on, but when this year goes out the economic situation in this province will be worse than when the year began. While they may be providing handfuls of jobs here, bushel barrels of them will be disappearing because of the economic policy and philosophy of this government. Make no mistake about it, putting another nail here or there in a crumbling structure will not reverse its condition. Major rehabilitation must be taken from the foundation up, and the government must give that kind of leadership, or give way to a party that will give that kind of leadership and that kind of program.
Our massive economic problems -- and I am sure everybody in the House must realize this -- are not due to an act of God or of some supreme being. They are the direct results of human decisions, of government decisions. I will admit that no country can isolate itself totally from world economic conditions, but our problems are mainly the results of the action and the inaction of our federal and provincial governments.
The goal of the NDP is government action to ensure that the major economic decisions are made on the basis of what is good for Canadians and Ontarians, what is good for employment and what is good for production. But the Liberals and the Conservatives traditionally leave these major economic decisions to the private sector, mainly to the multinationals, to be made on the basis of what is good for them and their shareholders, which is really on the basis of what is good for profit.
What is good for Canada, what is good for employment, what is good even for production, is a secondary, perhaps even third or fourth, motive. The real motive of the operation of our economy and the real motive of the economic decision-making process is profits. If we are to get out of this problem we are in, the primary goal has to be jobs and maximum production. There can be no prosperity unless that is the goal that is set.
High interest rates are a typical example of our government's refusal to intervene for the public good. Although technically set by the Bank of Canada, in reality interest rates are and have been determined by private financial institutions. The public, including much of the business sector, knows we would be much better off with dramatically lower interest rates. We all know that more houses would be built and would be sold.
Our research department computed what the difference would be in annual cost per year of all the mortgages in Canada if the rate was 10 per cent vis-à-vis 20 per cent, and found that it would cost home owners an additional $5 billion to $6 billion annually on their mortgages at the latter rate.
Surely we must know what that does not only in the purchase of homes but in the use of the society. Think how many more cars could be bought if that money was available for those kinds of purchases, or even if money was available to buy the cars at interest rates at half of what they are at the present time. Farmers would buy more machinery and small business would expand.
9:50 p.m.
John Bulloch of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has never been considered to be a left wing person or to represent a left wing organization, but his association did a survey of small business. I quote from the Toronto Star, January 12 of this year: "Close to one third of a sample of the country's small businesses say they will close down, sell part of their business or be forced into bankruptcy if interest rates remain at current levels throughout 1982, said the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. 'This information clearly shows that the independent business sector is being severely hurt by high interest rates,' John Bulloch said."
Here we have an organization which certainly is not against free or private enterprise saying the government must intervene to bring down interest rates. Yet nothing is done about it. There would be some negative consequences of a lower interest rate such as paying more for imports, but we could use more of our own products and make more here. We could use export controls to control the flight of capital, as many other countries have done. That is not difficult. On balance, the advantages of lower interest rates far outweigh the disadvantages.
I have to deal with one statement that is frequently made with regard to interest rates and why we must keep them up. Prime Minister Trudeau says we must keep them up. He says, "The main objective of the budget and high interest rates must be to keep inflation under control."
That is the phoniest statement that could possibly have been made. Anyone who examines the effect of high interest rates knows they are built into the structure of the price. For example, if it is a farmer who has to borrow money at high interest rates -- I know the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) does not have to borrow any money, he is on the other end of that, but for those who do have to --
Mr. Nixon: I think you have your whole salary invested at 19.5 per cent in those federal bonds.
Mr. Swart: The majority of farmers are not in the position of the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk and have to borrow money for their seed. That finds its way into the price structure. It certainly finds its way into the price structure for homes. At the present time I am handling a number of rent reviews and some of those have been awarded increases of 35 per cent.
There is only one reason the landlord is getting 35 per cent and that is because he has had to refinance his mortgage and that is built into the price structure. It is a totally phoney argument to say that interest rates are kept high to fight inflation. We have inflation as high as we have because of high interest rates. If we keep interest rates at the level they are now, they are going to be built in more and more and it will become more and more difficult to bring down inflation, or what is really price escalation.
Lately we have had the government of this province saying these high interest rates are hurting our economy. In the throne speech it states clearly: "We have been asked by the federal government to bear the additional burden of high interest rates. High interest rates remove incentive, make risks 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 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 a factual statement, there is no question about that. But do the Conservatives really want to take the necessary measures to intervene to lower the interest rate? Do the federal Conservatives? No, they say so quite frankly. This government across the floor here has told us -- the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) has told us repeatedly -- that it cannot intervene on high interest rates. Now the government is saying -- I suppose the polls have shown that high interest rates are unpopular -- there should be a policy whereby interest rates will be lowered.
But it is significant that they do not say the federal government should take direct action and intervene with the Bank of Canada to force interest rates down. When they talk about lowering interest rates, really all they are saying over there is: "The federal government does not manage the economy very well. That is why we have high interest rates. They had better manage the economy better." They do not want to intervene. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives want to intervene to force interest rates down even though they know, as everybody else knows, that would be a substantial benefit to our society. No, they will not intervene, and that is the real reason interest rates are so high. They have a hands-off attitude to the economy.
New Democrats believe in an economic strategy and we believe in intervening. For instance, Canada desperately needs a resource machinery industry to produce the mining, forestry and oil extraction machinery we now import. We must take responsibility to ensure that our natural resources are processed here, that the capital is reinvested here and not shipped abroad, that there is sufficient purchasing power in the hands of the consumers to buy the goods we produce. In short, there must be an enforceable overall economic plan. Without that framework, economic chaos is inevitable. Like the United States with Reagan and the United Kingdom with Thatcher, we are experiencing that chaos in this nation and in this province at the present time.
The Liberals and the Conservatives also talk about economic strategy. I think perhaps superficially they believe in economic strategy, but neither of them will intervene and make the hard tough decisions necessary to enforce it, as they have done in a place like Saskatchewan.
When the private sector out there decided it was going to control the potash industry because it owned it, even though it was a natural resource, the government of Saskatchewan said, "That natural resource is going to be used for the benefit of Saskatchewan, and, if you do not follow those policies, the government of this province will intervene and see they are followed." The end result of that was that the government of Saskatchewan took over 50 per cent of the potash industry and it has been a tremendous success since that time. The important thing is that the benefits of that natural resource have accrued to the people of Saskatchewan and not to some multinational corporation.
We say we must have this overall economic framework and within that framework the private sector can perform effectively and most often, and I say this advisedly, more efficiently than public enterprise can. But government certainly must intervene to establish the overall economic plan, to make the overall economic decisions, to ensure that those decisions conform to the public good. The Liberals and Conservatives philosophically will not take that necessary step, and that is a basic reason our economy is in the mess it is in today.
Last evening in this House I had a debate with the new Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Elgie), which also dealt with the matter of intervention on behalf of the public. His comments are a further indication that his government, like the federal Liberals, will not intervene to protect the public, even where there is overwhelming evidence. We were debating my request for the minister to intervene in the massive increases in home heating gas rates. I pointed out to him in question period that the average home heating gas costs will increase from $657 in 1981 to more than $900 in 1982, an increase of somewhere between 35 and 40 per cent.
10 p.m.
Mr. J. A. Reed: It is all because of the tax.
Mr. Swart: No, it is not all because of the tax. If the member had been here last night he would have heard me state the breakdown of the reasons for the increase. The Ontario Energy Board allowed a 65 percent markup this time, four times the amount it ever allowed before. It allowed a 65 per cent markup over the taxes and the wholesale cost of the gas. That was all passed through and allowed.
I pointed out to the minister that the profits to Consumers' Gas Co., which got this increase as well as the other companies, had risen in 1981 from $90 million to $107 million. That was a 19 per cent increase, so it is not doing too badly. The new increases would give the company an additional $77 million. I suggested that perhaps this was worth taking a second look at.
The Ontario Energy Board said it was giving these amounts to guarantee a 16.25 per cent return on equity at a time when many other businesses are not even breaking even, they are going broke. Last year in Canada a survey showed that the utilities had a 40 per cent increase in profit. When almost all other sectors of our economy had a reduction the utilities, whose rates are set by the Liberal government and the Conservative government, had a 40 per cent increase in profit.
I suggested to the minister that maybe the hearing that had set these new rates had not been entirely fair. The Ontario Energy Board at its hearings, like most of the other hearings, sits as a court and hears the evidence from each side. At the 19-day hearing that set these rates -- I checked into this -- Consumers' Gas Co. had a raft of lawyers there and 20 expert witnesses to testify for the gas companies.
Mr. Philip: Where was the province?
Mr. Swat: As always, it was not there. On the other side, there was the Industrial Gas Users Association, the industries in the province that use gas, which had one witness there. They are getting a pretty good deal on it. There were the manufacturers of the heat pumps, who were there to protect their interests so they would not have to pay more because they installed heat pumps -- there is less consumption of gas; they had one witness there. Then there was the Urban Development Institute, which had a watching brief. There was not one single person at the hearing representing the consumers, and this kind of decision was made.
So I said to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations that he has responsibility for protecting the consumer and under the authority that exists to appeal within 28 days, he should appeal this and have cabinet look at it further. Those members who were in the House the day before yesterday know that his only answer to me was, "I will refer your question to the Minister of Energy." Because this answer was unsatisfactory we had a special debate in the House on Tuesday night. The government simply refuses to intervene on behalf of the public. I have said before and I say again today, hearings like that are like the elephants dancing among the chickens and saying, "Everyone for themselves." That is exactly the way it is.
The same thing holds true for Bell Canada. Last year Bell Canada applied for a massive increase in rates on services which would bring them $550 million. It said there was a desperate need for this additional revenue. After a lengthy, again one-sided hearing, it was awarded a $440 million increase. I protested the award at the time. I wrote to the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) and said this increase was unreasonable. He said, "We will take a look at it, and if it is unreasonable then we will appeal it." The profits of Bell Canada came out around the end of January, and we found then that their profits had more than doubled from the previous year, up 105 per cent to $559 million net profit; 25 per cent higher than it ever was before in their history.
Not only that, but they were going to apply an additional eight per cent increase to the telephone users in Metropolitan Toronto to be effective May 1. I immediately wrote to the minister again and said: "Say no. Contact the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and say, 'No, we will not put up with that increase of eight per cent with the profits they are making and with the likelihood of far higher profits this year;'" because most of that $440 million had not even applied to last year. I also asked him to do what they had done in Florida, where the telephone company had made excessive profits: and to order the telephone company to return them to the users.
I calculated that it would have been perfectly reasonable to give one month's free telephone service to every telephone user in Ontario. I asked him to do that, and he wrote back a snarky letter defending Bell and refused to consider it, even though he has the record that in places like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta the same telephone service is given for 20 per cent less because, of course, out there it is owned by the provinces. If they can run it for those rates, surely Bell Canada should be able to do the same thing here.
Why does a government refuse to intervene on these matters? Some say, of course, that it is because they get political contributions from these big corporations, and there is some validity to that. Some say it is because they have friends, that those people who operate those corporations are very close friends of theirs. Some say they do not police gas rates as firmly as they should because they have people there like Darcy McKeough, who used to be a cabinet minister here; there are very close associations with the government here.
I think there is some truth to all of that, but the main reason they do not intervene is their philosophy that they will not interfere with the private sector. It does not matter to them that these are monopolies, that there is in fact no competition. They will not bring them under public ownership, as many of them should be when they are natural monopolies, when they are essential utilities. They will not even appoint a public advocate, as they have in so many places in the United States, where they fight the rate hearings on behalf of the consumers. No, they just let these companies set their rates almost at will.
In fact, competition in our society, not only in those areas but in other areas, is rapidly disappearing. The government will not even intervene to ensure that there is protection for the consumer in that respect. I have done quite a bit of investigation with the help of research people on many consumer items, such as milk. We know that the number of dairies processing milk has dropped from something like 165 to 35 in the last 12 years, that very few cities in this province have more than one dairy. A great many cities do not have any dairies left at all. The competition in that area is rapidly disappearing.
I did an investigation into ethylene glycol, Prestone. There are only two companies that make it in Canada. They get fabulous profits from it. They admitted quite frankly that when there is a shortage they raise the price 75 per cent in one year. They tell me they would have raised it a bit further -- in fact, they did raise it a bit further -- but there was some consumer resistance so they lowered it again. There are only three companies in Ontario that supply salt. They have submitted the same bids per ton of salt to all municipalities in this province for the last 10 or 15 years.
Mr. Haggerty: If I go over to the US to buy gas for my car it is cheaper.
10:10 p.m.
Mr. Swart: That is your problem if you wish to go to the US to do that, but I guess you are right. Before too long it is going to be quite a bit cheaper, even with the dollar differential, than it is here. But that is not the point. The point is that we should have governments that are giving some protection to the consumers of this province. That is true of breakfast cereals as well.
The concentration of the control of the economy in specific areas, and in fact as a whole, has grown and is growing rapidly so that consumer protection through competition is rapidly disappearing. Those are not only my words. Those are the words of Mr. André Ouellet, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs in Ottawa. He says that our combines legislation must be toughened because there is price fixing and we cannot get at it. So he has proposed, as he has been proposing for the last 10, 15 or 20 years, that the act should be amended to give that kind of protection.
I quote from the London Free Press of June 16, 1981: "Canadians can expect tough new legislation to control business mergers, monopolies and conspiracies that are not in the public interest, federal Consumer and Corporate Affairs Minister André Ouellet told the annual meeting of the Consumers Association of Canada here Monday. Ouellet said there is considerable urgency for such legislation. It is vital for Canada's future to act now, particularly in the area of mergers. He said he hopes to introduce legislation this fall." Of course, that was last fall.
Let me read another quotation of his. On June 15, 1981, André Ouellet said: "Canada has the highest concentration of corporate power of any of the western democracies but the weakest anti-combines legislation," and therefore he is going to bring in legislation to improve that.
Mr. Wildman: The Liberals have been in power for a while in Ottawa.
Mr. Swart: Yes, I think they have been in power for a while and I have all kinds of newspaper clippings where they have talked about toughening the anti-combines legislation year after year, decade after decade. That statement by Ouellet, after they have been there for 30 years with minor exceptions, condemns them.
Robert Bertrand, the former director of our federal anti-combines branch, was quoted in the New York Times. He said: "What we will have if this march of increased concentration continues is a national oligarchy in which a few dozen people will interact to bargain about the economic future of millions."
That ought to scare us just a little bit. Then Mr. Ouellet himself, speaking to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce again, said: "Time is short since we are presently witnessing a new outbreak in the area of mergers and acquisitions in the country. If this phenomenon should continue for another three or four years at the same pace, the control of the entire Canadian economy could be literally in the hands of six or seven people."
That ought to be a little bit frightening to us because Mr. Ouellet is no radical. He is not a member of the New Democratic Party. He is way over to the right of that and yet he is making statements like that.
The present legislation that is on the federal books requires that if a prosecution takes place they have to prove that competition is unduly lessened because of a merger. They have to prove intent to lessen competition and they also must prove that there is an actual conspiracy to set prices. They have to prove all three of these things. It is just impossible. So they want to change the legislation and, of course, they are running into problems now, even in their own ranks.
What I really want to refer to here -- I will be finishing by 10:30 p.m., Mr. Speaker -- is the attitude of the government across the way to anti-combines legislation and to the whole principle of competition.
I have here a speech made by the Minister of Industry and Trade Development (Mr. Walker), when he was Provincial Secretary for Justice and Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, to the federal-provincial consumer ministers' conference, September 3, 1981. He talks about this proposal by the federal government to toughen anti-combines legislation to give protection to consumers. This is what he says:
"This policy will break the back and spirit of Canadian business. We do not see a compelling need for substantial change in current combines legislation, nor do we consider a new competition policy to be a priority at this time. We fail to understand how a numerical computation of market share can conclude that a company is acting or likely to act against the public interest."
Let me read some more of what the minister had to say in that speech: "We also object to the presupposition that just because a company is dominant in its industry its market power is therefore detrimental to the consumer interest. Large and dominant companies are increasingly sensitive to the dangers of antagonizing not only governments but also their own suppliers and customers. It is simply contrary to good business practice in an environment where governments, news media, consumer groups and analysts are ever vigilant. Market share, as already noted, is not a logical or a fair test."
Then there is this significant statement, and I am sure this must be government policy: "We believe that conscious parallelism" -- that is the same price for all the companies -- "should not be subject to conspiracy provisions" -- it does not matter how long it goes on -- "as long as they have no written agreement." The minister is telling us it is government policy that it should not be subject to conspiracy provisions. Finally he says, "For these and other reasons, Ontario must oppose the proposed competition policy." Let me tell you --
Mr. Wildman: Who said that?
Mr. Swart: It is the former Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, who has some reputation but is also speaking as a member of the government. In this 10-page speech on the competition legislation of the federal government he does not state one word on the need for competition. Nowhere in the whole document did he say there is a need for competition.
Mr. Wildman: You would think a free enterpriser like him would want competition.
Mr. Swart: No, you see there is a real change in right-wing private, not free, enterprisers, a real change in their attitudes. Not so many years ago competition was the lifeblood of the economy. That has gone by the board. It is not their thrust or belief any more.
I have an article in front of me by John Kenneth Galbraith which talks about this very subject and I want to quote from it. It says:
"Generations of conservative economists at the University of Chicago and elsewhere were educated by the late Henry Simons and his brilliant and uncompromising tract, A Positive Program for Laissez-faire, to the belief that a vigilant government and citizenry could defend competition and the market against monopoly and the ultimate debacle. Simons's students, those of the revered Frank H. Knight, his colleagues and those in further descent therefrom, made the competitive market a totem. Indeed, no totemic symbol ever so marked a tribe as those free enterprisers.
"Coming now to the present, these are the men who are now prominent in public positions of moral suasion in the Reagan administration. From none elsewhere in the world could one expect a more powerful defence of competition and the market. Coinciding with the arrival of the dedicated defenders of the competitive market and the entrepreneur in Washington, has come a terrific assault on both, an assault on competition. It is probably the most massive such attack in history."
10:20 p.m.
The papers each day tell the story. During the first six months of 1981, the dollar value of American corporate acquisitions at $35.7 billion was nearly as great as for all of 1980. This was before the recent really great acceleration. Even the largest companies such as Conoco, the ninth largest oil company, are no longer immune from takeover. This assault, this merger, this takeover frenzy, as it is being called, was occurring with the evident approval of the very administration on which the hopes of the defenders of the market and of the entrepreneurs were centred.
So we have this shift in the United States, this Reaganism. The Minister of Industry and Trade Development was a great admirer of Reagan at that time; he was studying Reaganomics. This government, and for that matter the government in Ottawa, are applying the same kind of policies.
Mr. Boudria: The member should not exaggerate. They have the same interest rates in Germany. He knows that.
Mr. Swart: The government in Ottawa is not going to pass the new anti-combines legislation, in spite of what Ouellet has said. The rightwingers in the Liberal Party there are going to prevent it from being passed --
Mr. Mancini: Name one; just name one.
Mr. Swart: -- and they are going to let competition slip away the same as it has been slipping away in the United States. It is probably fair to say that the NDP does not only want to assure that major economic decisions are made on the basis of what is good for society, but that we have become the defenders of competitive enterprise.
Mr. Mancini: The member believes in state enterprise only.
Mr. Swart: We believe in, and we are fighting now to defend, free enterprise because competition is going. We want to keep competition in our society and working in the framework of overall economic decisions to see that they are made on the basis of what is good for Canada and for Ontario.
Let me conclude by referring briefly to just one other area, foreign control of our economy. Most people and institutions recognize the danger of foreign ownership. Even the Tories in Ottawa were forced to reverse themselves on Petrocan. There is the realization that foreign ownership is part of the cause of our major economic problems here at the present time.
More of our economy is owned outside of the country than that of any democracy on the face of the earth. We have the Foreign Investment Review Agency, which the federal government put in to exercise some control. The members know what the Ontario Conservatives said about that in the throne speech; I am sure all the members read it. This is what the Conservatives said, when two thirds of our economy is owned outside the country:
"Ontario will therefore continue to press the government of Canada to develop a fiscal strategy more appropriate to the need for renewed economic confidence, investment and growth. In this context we will continue to ask for a streamlining of the administrative procedure of the Foreign Investment Review Agency to ensure that beneficial investment is not prohibited from entering the country." After I was in this House six months I knew what phrases like that mean. What they mean is, "Open up the floodgates to any kind of foreign investment."
Our economic problems are due, largely, to the outdated philosophy and policies of both the Tories and Liberals and their refusal to intervene in the economy. We can no longer afford that outdated, doctrinaire philosophy. Our deputy leader touched on that just this afternoon. It is not this party any longer that is, or ever was, doctrinaire. Those are the doctrinaire people with the blinkers on and the fixed position.
Whether it is democratic socialism or private enterprise, we have to use whichever policy works best. The present policy of the federal and provincial governments is not working. Short of war, we are not going to solve these economic problems without that fundamental change.
I know the Tories and Liberals are not going to change and so does the public. That is the reason Saskatchewan has had a New Democratic government for the length of time it has. That is the reason Manitoba re-elected the NDP government there with a huge majority. That is why the Gallup poll shows us leaping ahead at the present time. That is why we are going to take British Columbia in the next provincial election, and that is why Ontario is at last due to have an NDP government shortly.
On motion by Mr. Kolyn, the debate was adjourned.
URBAN TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT CORP.
Mr. Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 28, the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini) has given notice of dissatisfaction with the answer to his question given by the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) and I now recognize the honourable member.
Mr. Mancini: Mr. Speaker, earlier today I questioned the Minister of Transportation and Communications concerning some expenditures made by the Urban Transportation Development Corp.
I am highly incensed and outraged that the minister shows so much disrespect for this Legislature that he does not even have the common courtesy to be here this evening. Lest anyone think I use this rule frivolously, in the seven years I have been a member of this Legislature this is only the second time I have felt it necessary to bring a minister back after the regular proceedings of the House.
Today I questioned the minister concerning the managerial activities of UTDC. I am shocked, truly shocked, that this government would let that crown corporation provide executive luxury cars for 26 of its top executives. That crown corporation has approximately 450 employees. By my calculation, a full six per cent of the employed force of that corporation are provided with executive luxury cars at a cost of approximately $10,900 each.
When I asked the minister if he was going to intervene with the corporation, if he was going to speak with the president to inform him that in these tough economic times we could not go happily and merrily along providing cars for every executive from a consultant all the way up to the president, the minister tried to make light of my comments. He tried to fool around with the question, he tried to say that this information had been known for some time, he did everything except say that he would try to protect the taxpayers of Ontario.
My supplementary question had to do with the fact that this same crown corporation, UTDC, in the past year had purchased four very expensive pieces of property in Vancouver for their highly paid executives. The homes cost as follows: the first home, $335,000; the second home, $252,000; the third home, $200,000; and a home purchased two weeks ago, a further $250,000.
I brought my concerns to the attention of the president of this crown corporation. He has given me several pieces of information. Most of it conflicts with what he had already said and what he has put in writing to me. Back on January 4, 1981, he told me the corporation had purchased three homes in Vancouver and would be entering into equity-sharing arrangements on each property with three senior project officers. On January 27 he told me something completely different. He told me UTDC has purchased these homes, it has paid cash for them and there are no mortgages in existence.
The houses are rented to the employees at fair market price. The current figure for fair market price, as quoted to me by Mr. Foley, is eight per cent of the value of the home. I was informed today by Mr. Foley's executive assistant that on the $335,000 home, rent of $871 a month is being paid. According to Mr. Foley's figures in his letter of January 27 the rent should be $2,400. The figures are the same for the rest of the homes. We are not getting eight per cent of the value of the homes; we are getting in the neighbourhood of three per cent.
I brought this to the attention of the Minister of Transportation and Communications. I want to know why we are providing luxury accommodation at a very cheap rate to highly paid executives when all across Ontario people cannot keep their homes, cannot keep their farms and are closing down their small businesses.
Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired.
Mr. Mancini: The fact that he is not here this evening is an outrage. It is an outrage to this Legislature, it is an outrage to the taxpayers of Ontario, and that minister should be relieved of his responsibilities.
The House adjourned at 10:30 p.m.