Hansard Transcripts 1982-May-25 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

I understand a comment was made in the House last Thursday, May 20, regarding an incorrect reference to my colleague the Provincial Secretary for Justice (Mr. Sterling) in the news release announcing the opening of the new Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Kanata.

I am more than delighted to advise honourable members that the minister is not only a cabinet colleague but also a good friend, and I assure the astute member for St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley) that I do know his name. The error arose from the Xeroxing of a draft news release by a member of my staff. Unfortunately, of the 300 correct copies and half a dozen incorrect copies, the member of the opposition had the misfortune to receive one of the latter.

I would like to thank the member for St. Catharines for his interest in one of the most important projects for the citizens of the Kanata region and to advise him that the ceremony was one of the most successful we have had the pleasure of participating in.

VISITORS

Mr. Eakins: Mr. Speaker, all citizens of Ontario are proud that the Kinsmen Club had its foundation in this province. I am sure we all share in the pride that this year the national president represents Ontario. He is seated in your gallery. I ask all members to join in welcoming Mr. Bruce Glass, the national president of Kinsmen Clubs of Canada. He is accompanied by members of the Lindsay Kinsmen Club.

Mr. Speaker: I ask all honourable members to join with me in welcoming the president of the province of Pordenone, Italy, Mr. Gioacchino Francescutto.

LEGISLATIVE PAGES

Mr. Speaker: Before getting on with routine proceedings, I call the attention of all honourable members to the fact that we have a new group of pages with us today. I ask you to join with me in recognizing and welcoming them. I am going to read their names into the record:

Mary Abbott, Halton-Burlington; Marc Casimir, Niagara Falls; Mary Cousens, York Centre; Garry Cowan, Kent-Elgin; Michael Eppel, Brant-Oxford-Norfolk; Sue Fleischaker, York North; Rhonda Fox, Carleton;

Mary-Catherine Glibota, Sault Ste. Marie; Jim Graham, London South; David Johnston, Perth; Caroline Knight, Scarborough Centre; Joel Laughren, Nickel Belt: Stuart Lessels, Grey; Lissa Mallar, St. Andrew-St. Patrick; Lynn Maxwell, Durham East; Neil McGivney, York Mills;

John Ouellette, Cochrane North; Geoffrey Perfect, Windsor-Walkerville; Lainey Reynolds, Northumberland; Leora Starkey, Huron-Bruce; Jeffrey Symons, Peterborough; Russell Thompson, Scarborough East; Tonya Wong, Quinte.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

MINERS' SAFETY TRAINING PROGRAM

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform the honourable members that my ministry hosted a very successful seminar on common training standards for Canadian miners on April 21 and 22 in Sudbury.

Thirty-three participants from across Canada, representing government, labour and mining, attended the seminar at which Ontario's modular training for mines was discussed. The information conference was a result of a recommendation made, as the members may recall, at the 1981 mines ministers' conference in Victoria. At that time, it was suggested common training standards be employed across Canada.

Ontario's presentation at that conference dealt with modular training programs for hardrock miners, developed to improve the safety and health of underground and open-pit workers, thus raising productivity. Our presentation laid out specific objectives for this training program. We wanted to promote a safe environment and safe work habits and to provide for miners' career aspirations through an industry-wide program.

The common core for the basic underground hardrock mining skills program was completed in May 1977 and printed for public issue in August of that year. It was incorporated in the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act and is mandatory for all new regular underground workers. Requests for this program have been coming in, and continue to come, not only from North America but also from mining countries throughout the world.

We are all proud of our program and sincerely hope it will greatly assist in both reducing the number of accidents and upgrading skills wherever it is adopted. In addition, we feel this program will recognize the skills of mine workers through the certification program, something both unions and management consider critical.

2:10 p.m.

I should also note that industry, government and unions are all determined to see that the use of the program is widespread. This standard training program was made possible through the hard work and unstinting co-operation of the United Steelworkers of America and the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my appreciation.

I would also like to thank the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Labour for their assistance and advice in formulating the program.

Finally, I would like to say that without the perseverance of the tripartite committee, with representation from union, industry and government, the success of the Sudbury seminar would not have been possible.

STRATEGIC LAND USE PLANS

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform the House that a number of open houses will be held this summer to further explain my ministry's strategic land use plan for northwestern and northeastern Ontario and the coordinated program strategy for southern Ontario.

These strategic plans cover the entire province and provide the overall framework for a more detailed planning effort. I will table these plans in the near future. Within that framework, my ministry is preparing district land use plans and strategies for each of the ministry's districts.

The open houses will be held in two stages. Some areas in both northern and southern Ontario have already completed the first stage of open houses, which present background material for public comment. Southern districts which have not yet had these background sessions will hold them in June.

This background material was the basis for optional district plans for resources management in northern districts and district land use strategies in the south.

The second, and more detailed, series of open houses will examine these plans and strategies. They will be held in June in northern Ontario and in August in southern Ontario. A series of newspaper advertisements has begun listing the locations of meetings throughout the province.

The northern district plans are the local components of my ministry's strategic land use plan for northwestern and northeastern Ontario. The southern district land use strategies are the local components of the ministry's coordinated program strategy for southern Ontario.

The different names reflect the fact the north is almost all crown land, directly administered by the ministry. On the other hand, the south is primarily private land where resources management programs must be carried out through municipalities and land owners.

I believe our land use plans should not be looked upon as blueprints. Instead, they should be seen as guideposts, pointing the way in which Ontario's vast natural resources will be managed over many years and into the 21st century.

These local plans will identify more precise targets at the local level and show how we hope to achieve them within the framework of our overall strategy of multiple-use resource management.

We recognize that we are planning for Ontario's people as well as Ontario's natural resources, and we are actively seeking ideas, comments and suggestions on our proposals from the general public and local governments as well as special interest groups.

I will personally study the comments and recommendations from all the open houses. I will do this to ensure that the final plans and strategies which will guide Ontario's management of its natural resources into the future will make the best use of those vast resources for all the people of Ontario.

CO-ORDINATION OF CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the members of this House of a new initiative being undertaken by my ministry to further foster the planning and co-ordinating of children's services at the local level.

In the course of the summer and the latter part of 1982, we will be working with municipalities in establishing children's services coordinating and advisory groups across the province. These groups will assist the municipalities in planning services for children in their areas.

The new groups are being set up to redirect and build on the work of the children's services committees, introduced as test models in six Ontario communities beginning in 1978-79.

When the committees were first set up in 1978-79, it was with the aim of ultimately having the municipalities, through the committees, assume final responsibility and authority over all local children's services, including the allocation of funds.

During the years they have been in place, the six test committees have achieved a great deal in terms of advising municipalities on the care of hard-to-serve children and developing local priorities for program development. They have also developed a better understanding of the more effective use of funds. But there have been problems identified with the concept of children's committees as a result of the experiences with the models.

Some of the problems that have emerged in connection with that plan have been projections for mounting administrative costs, duplication of administrative structures and the concerns expressed by certain municipalities across the province over assuming these further responsibilities.

The idea behind establishing these new coordinating and advisory groups is to preserve and build on some of the best achievements of the committees while eliminating these problems.

The municipalities will have discretion in terms of membership of the groups. However, we expect the new co-ordinating and advisory groups to include service providers and other interested parties.

The responsibilities of the co-ordinating and advisory groups will include: assessing community service needs; advising community and municipality; providing linkage with local health, education and other support services; ensuring services for hard-to-serve children; planning, prioritizing and assisting in the implementation of children's programs.

During the summer, staff of my ministry will be discussing with the existing six test model children's services committees their potential new role as co-ordinating and advisory groups in their municipalities.

By midsummer, the ministry plans to have a full set of criteria for the advisory groups developed and by fall other municipalities should be able to apply to the ministry to set up co-ordinating and advisory groups in their communities.

In conclusion, through the establishment of these co-ordinating and advisory groups, my ministry is demonstrating its continuing commitment to improving services for children across Ontario. This is being done by supporting and encouraging planning and co-ordination at the local levels, encouraging effective use of funds and avoiding the duplication of resources in this very sensitive field.

TECHNOLOGY CENTRES BILL

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, later today I will be introducing for first reading a bill entitled the Technology Centres Act. It is a piece of legislation of central importance to our economic future, for it will help to place Ontario industries at the cutting edge of technologies that are shaping the new industrial revolution.

Microelectronics, robotics, computer-aided design and manufacturing are just a few of the new technologies we must embrace if we are to hold and advance our place in today's fiercely competitive world.

As its name implies, the Technology Centres Act will provide legislative authority to proposals by the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development to establish a number of centres across the province aimed at capitalizing on the opportunities inherent in those emerging technologies.

The locations and mandates of six centres have been announced and represent an estimated expenditure by the Ontario government of $126.5 million during the next five years.

I trust that within a very short time, after the consideration of this bill by the Legislature, we will be able to provide further details on the operation of the centres and the appointment of their boards of directors.

The legislation comes none too soon. The application of high technology can yield and is bringing about immense productivity gains and cost reductions in many of the industrialized countries of the world. As Canada's most industrialized province, Ontario is under intense pressure to find ways of doing the same.

The Technology Centres Act will improve the supply of trained researchers, provide world-class scientific and industrial research facilities and ensure a dynamic climate of innovation in Ontario.

DEATHS AT HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, copies of this statement have been given to the leaders of the opposition parties, and I believe additional copies now are on their way over for our critics.

We all share a deep concern respecting the circumstances surrounding the tragic increase in the death rate of the babies in the cardiac ward of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children between the months of July 1980 and March 1981. I have discussed the matter with the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman) and the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor) and have met with the senior officials of the ministry and Chief Ackroyd and his senior police officers.

There have been suggestions as to the steps that should be taken at this time. These include the preferring of an indictment or the establishment of a public inquiry as two options. I have reviewed all the circumstances in what I consider to be the best interests of the public and those directly concerned. I have concluded that the most effective and just process would be the continuation of the police investigation.

We must establish the facts concerning the tragic deaths and those that are unexplained and may be considered homicides. It is absolutely imperative that we first establish which of these deaths are homicides, for that is essential to the aggrieved parents, the public, the hospital and the administration of justice. The necessary investigations can be carried out most effectively by the police, for they have both the authority and responsibility to pursue these matters as far as is humanly possible.

2:20 p.m.

Chief Ackroyd has advised me that every resource required has been made available to the police in the conduct of their investigations as the new facts have come to light, and further and additional resources will be provided as we continue with this exceedingly important investigation.

The Solicitor General advises me that in carrying out this investigation the police will have the full support of the chief coroner, Dr. Ross Bennett, and the Centre of Forensic Sciences, each of which has been significantly involved in the matter. It has the top priority of both the police and my ministry.

If, upon the completion of the investigation, we find that charges may not be properly laid against any known perpetrators of these acts, then I believe that a public inquiry will be a further process to pursue the circumstances surrounding these deaths.

The results of such a thorough and detailed investigation will be of the essence to such a public inquiry should be it become necessary, and indeed it must be remembered that should such an inquiry produce any new evidence relevant to the commission of any offence, charges could then be laid for any violation of the law arising from any of the circumstances.

I must admit to surprise that some lawyers, who ostensibly appreciate the nature of justice and the rights of individuals, should suggest a public inquiry now, when homicides have been established and the murderers are still at large. Surely in our system of justice it is imperative that we pursue at this time a course that will bring the murder or murderers before the courts without undermining the process by which we ensure every accused a fair trial. It is for this, as well as for other reasons, that I feel our first responsibility is to pursue the identification and charging of those responsible before embarking on a public inquiry.

With respect to the third alternative, the preferring of an indictment, may I say that this will always be available to me as Attorney General should there be evidence and circumstances that warrant such action.

The preliminary hearing has been completed and the investigation will now continue, as I have already stated, as a top priority and with all necessary resources that may be required from any agency involved. The senior crown law officers will be available to the police at all times.

I would like to say in closing that I respectfully agree with His Honour Judge Vanek, where he said in his reasons for judgement in relation to the prosecution at the preliminary hearing:

"I do not want to dwell upon it but say, for instance, in the case of crown counsel, a very able prosecution of this case was made and I dare say all the facts that could be gathered that were relevant were put before the court. In that regard, what I think particularly worthy of comment is, when I say all the facts, counsel certainly went as far as he could to put not only the facts that told for the prosecution but, as well, the facts that he found that told against the prosecution and in favour of the accused."

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, as the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) has indicated, all of us share a profound sense of sorrow and distress at the tragic and unexplained deaths of infants at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. In view of the anxiety and uncertainty which now exists, I believe it is imperative that we undertake immediate action within my authority to restore the confidence and trust of the public that this institution has always enjoyed.

I have reviewed Judge Vanek's findings as they apply to the responsibilities of the Ministry of Health, and yesterday afternoon my associate deputy minister and I met with Duncan Gordon, chairman of the Hospital for Sick Children, Douglas Snedden, its executive director, and J. E. Stibbard, its administrator. We discussed those aspects of the findings, and they reviewed for me the significant changes they have made in their procedures in the past 14 months.

I have also discussed the situation with my colleagues the Attorney General and the Solicitor General, who share between them responsibilities for the investigation and prosecution of any criminal acts which contributed to these deaths.

For my part, my responsibilities relate to the current operation of the hospital and the quality of care which it provides to patients at present. My review and others which my senior staff have had with the hospital administration since the criminal investigation began have dealt significantly with those procedures and practices in the hospital which may have been factors in these deaths.

The administration of the hospital has assured me, and Judge Vanek has taken special and specific notice of this fact, that drug controls within the hospital have been, in the words of the judge, "very considerably tightened." I think it is important to emphasize that there have been no unexplained deaths in the cardiology area in the hospital in the past 14 months.

While this is somewhat reassuring, the judge also referred to another unusual death elsewhere in the hospital this past January and to certain other activities which he described as "curious incidents and mysterious happenings."

The January death which I mentioned is the subject of a coroner's inquest, which is under way at present at the specific request of the hospital board. The other incidents are still being pursued by the police and others under the direction of the Attorney General.

Results from these various investigations, together with the assurances we have received both from the administration of the hospital and from the Canadian Council on Hospital Accreditation, I believe should reassure parents that the Hospital for Sick Children remains pre-eminent among children's hospitals in the world.

I am, however, concerned that the investigation into these deaths may leave many parents uncertain or frightened in spite of the hospital's long record of exemplary care. It would be unthinkable if this confusion or fear caused any parent to deny his or her child the care only this unique hospital can provide.

To guarantee that all current procedures in the hospital are of the superior level expected in a world-class institution such as the Hospital for Sick Children, I have decided to appoint a team of independent investigators under the Public Hospitals Act. They will be directed to review any and all practices and procedures within the hospital which they believe are relevant to patient care delivery available at this time.

The investigators will have the power to inspect the premises, management and operation of the hospital. They will have access to any information about the hospital they may require from the administrator, a member of the medical staff or a hospital employee, and they will be able to examine and audit all hospital books, accounts and records.

I want to emphasize again that these investigators will not be involved in any way with the ongoing investigation of these most tragic deaths. That responsibility, of course, lies exclusively within the criminal justice system.

I am pleased to advise the House that Mr. Justice Charles Dubin of the Ontario Court of Appeal has consented to be chairman of the team of investigators. We are in the process of appointing at least two other members with appropriate medical and health care experience to work with Mr. Justice Dubin. These persons will be totally unrelated to the Hospital for Sick Children, and I expect that at least one of them will be from outside Ontario. I hope to be able to complete the appointments by Friday of this week so that the investigation can begin immediately afterwards.

In my discussion with Mr. Gordon, Mr. Snedden and Mr. Stibbard, we agreed that this type of review is essential, and they have assured me of their complete co-operation and full support. They are very concerned both about the adverse effect this situation is having on the reputation of the Hospital for Sick Children and its impact on staff morale. They are in full agreement with the need to review all practices and procedures in the hospital to satisfy public concern and restore public confidence.

I have asked Mr. Justice Dubin to complete the review at the earliest possible date and to inform both the hospital and my ministry of any recommendations developed during the process of the inquiry which the investigators believe require immediate implementation.

I intend to make this report public as soon as I receive it. In the meantime, I want to reiterate to the members of this Legislature and to the public that the hospital has implemented a number of changes to procedures over the past 14 months as a result of these tragedies. There have been, as I said earlier, no unexplained deaths in the cardiac area in this period. These changes, together with the tradition of excellence for which the hospital is known and the steps we are taking today, should serve to reassure the public, and particularly parents, with regard to the current procedures in the Hospital for Sick Children.

2:30 p.m.

ORAL QUESTIONS

DEATHS AT HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Attorney General. I certainly understand the sensitive nature of what we are all involved in and how we all want to pursue the truth in these matters. I respect the way the Attorney General has chosen to go about it, although in these circumstances I feel he has made an error of judgement.

There are many outstanding questions that will not be reviewed by the police. In fact, there are many questions that will not be looked into by the judicial inquiry constituted by the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman), who I understand will have an inquiry directed to review all practices and procedures within the hospital which are believed are relevant to patient care delivery. We have to understand that this series of events took place a year and more ago. We also have to understand that to this time, at least to the best of our information, the police have not come up with an answer. Members are all aware of the black cloud that hangs over the Hospital for Sick Children now.

Would the Attorney General not agree with me that a public inquiry of all the circumstances involved, including the role of the coroner and the conflicting reports that have come out in the press about his role at various times, would serve better the cause of the Hospital for Sick Children so that we could remove that black cloud as well as find the perpetrators of these crimes?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, there are a number of issues the Leader of the Opposition has touched upon. All these issues that are of public interest and that are relevant not only to the administration of justice but to the Hospital for Sick Children will be dealt with sooner or later. My colleague the Minister of Health has put in place an excellent process to reassure the parents of children who are now there or who will be in the hospital as to the levels of safety that can and should be expected.

In so far as our criminal justice system is concerned, the Leader of the Opposition must recognize that as long as there are unexplained deaths, deaths which might be a result of homicides, there is a fundamental responsibility on the part of the crown to see that these deaths are fully investigated.

I appreciate that this matter has taken some time. It is clearly a case fortunately without precedent in the annals of criminal justice, if not on this continent perhaps in the world, and it is a very complex matter. In our system, in recognizing the rights of all in society, we have always recognized that a high priority, normally the number one priority, is to bring the perpetrators of these criminal acts to justice.

While some people might say: "Why not have a public inquiry? We will bring everybody who has ever been in the hospital within the last two years or any relevant period of time before a public inquiry, and maybe we will get some admission from an individual or individuals that will allow us to lay a charge," as the member knows, this has never been the manner in which we proceed in this province or, generally speaking, in this country. We do not proceed with public inquiries, and we do not proceed with inquests while there are ongoing criminal investigations.

Surely it must have occurred to the Leader of the Opposition that if there is to be a public inquiry, as compared to the task of laying charges, a fundamental purpose of setting up any public inquiry, if the criminal investigation exhausts itself, is to determine how many homicides are involved. Judge Vanek has stated he is satisfied that at least four homicides have occurred. The police have stated, with the concurrence of crown counsel who were involved, that there is the possibility of many more. Surely this is a matter that must be determined prior to any public inquiry, quite apart from the rights of individuals generally in relation to the criminal justice system.

Mr. Peterson: I understand what the judge has said. He said that the crown attorney in the circumstances put forward all the facts. I quote him from your own statement. He said, "... particularly worthy of comment is, when I say all the facts, counsel certainly went as far as he could to put not only the facts ... for ... but against the prosecution ..."

Then we have a quotation from the crown attorney in the circumstances, in the Toronto Sun this morning, saying, "I don't think the full story came out at the preliminary hearing, that's all. I can't say anything more than that." And then we have a highly respected criminal lawyer in this city saying, "They have taken their best shot, and they missed in a fairly dramatic way..."

The minister understands as well as do I the number of conflicting points of view on this very emotional and sensitive topic we are involved in. What I am suggesting is that he will never resolve those as long as he proceeds along a course of action which has been tried for the past year or so and, to this point at least, has not yielded results.

The Attorney General understands the very sensitive position of the parents whose children may or may not have been murdered in that hospital. He can understand their anxiety. He understands, too, that the public inquiry constituted by the Minister of Health today, while it may serve some purpose, is essentially window-dressing in the circumstances because it is reviewing the patient care delivery system at this time. It is not addressing a lot of the broad questions that are involved here.

I appeal to the minister again to reconsider his point of view in the interest of all the conflicting reports that have come out of this question, as well as to put them all together in a sensible way.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: If I were to be a little provoked, which I am not, I might be tempted to say that the Leader of the Opposition is demonstrating a rather superficial, if not very shallow, understanding of the issues involved in this matter. It is certainly quite clear that he has demonstrated, or is voicing today, a fundamental lack of confidence in the criminal investigation process. I just happen not to share that view.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition on a point of privilege.

Mr. Peterson: The Attorney General chooses to crawl into the gutter on this matter. I just do not think it is relevant in the circumstances --

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of privilege. The member for Port Arthur with a supplementary.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Attorney General, with regard to page three of his statement, why he persists in the attitude that the preferring of an indictment against the former accused in the preliminary hearing is always an option available to him, when the judge said in the case, and I quote directly, "There is powerful evidence in disproof of the allegation that the accused is the person who caused the death of the four babies."

Has the Attorney General given any consideration at all, in view of the judge's very powerful statement at the end of his report and because of the special and unique particulars of this case, to giving an ex-gratia payment for legal fees and other compensation to the former accused, Miss Nelles?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, there appear to be several questions involved. I address myself to the issue of the preferring of an indictment because this is a question that many people have asked. I have indicated publicly and again today that it is not my intention at this time, indeed that it is unlikely. I have just acknowledged that that is a course which, pursuant to law, is available to an Attorney General, and of course would only be exercised in the proper circumstances.

We have an ongoing criminal investigation. I have not given any consideration to this matter other than the ongoing criminal investigation, and the need for an ongoing criminal investigation as being clearly in the public interest.

2:40 p.m.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary to the Attorney General who may wish to direct it to the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor):

Since we have had two statements today with respect to the police investigation situation and the hospital situation, can the Attorney General advise if also we are going to have the third area, namely the apparent questions about the involvement of the coroner's office and some possible delays in reporting and various other procedures? Will this be looked into, as well as the circumstances which now surround the matter and the law as it pertains to the investigation of the deaths of persons in public institutions, since it may be that area is worthy of a review, unfortunately under this same general rubric of a very serious and upsetting pattern of circumstances?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, this is something I have discussed with the Solicitor General. The honourable member may wish to direct a question to the Solicitor General.

Obviously, this is a matter that will be part of the review that the Minister of Health has just announced in so far as ongoing procedures are concerned. It may be that the ongoing criminal investigation will also turn up material of relevance to the coroner's office. That is what the member touched upon as the importance of involving the coroner's office when there appear to be suspicious circumstances relating to a particular death. I know it is a matter of great interest to the Solicitor General.

Mr. Breithaupt: Could the Solicitor General comment, Mr. Speaker? It is a most important area.

Mr. Speaker: Was that a referral?

Hon. G. W. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, this matter has been referenced to the coroner's office. The coroner's office in this particular matter acted expeditiously and quickly when it became aware of the problem. I might explain that they only act upon a reference when there is an unexplained or suspicious death involved.

Since the initial deaths involved here took place within a hospital, which would not cause them to initiate an investigation unless asked to by the attending physicians or physicians in the hospital, they would not activate the coroner's office until such time as they are requested. When requested, they did investigate immediately in this situation.

Indeed, when it became known that there was a connection between individuals, as it is stated in the judgement and by the coroner involved in this matter, the investigating police officers were brought into the matter.

The member has heard the Attorney General explain that should the situation in regard to the committee that the Minister of Health is setting up indicate that something more should be done regarding deaths in institutions, then the coroner's office would be interested in those findings. It may be that some of the legislation under which the coroner acts may be reviewed and may be improved and changes made so that all deaths in hospitals come to the attention of that office or are reported to it. That may improve the system.

That would naturally come at a later time, after the initial investigation at present being conducted by the police, so that could be done with all fairness to the hospital involved and with all fairness to any individuals who may potentially be charged as a result of the investigations. I think before we embark on a larger situation or hearing, these particular situations must be investigated more thoroughly so that those individuals may gain the fairness of all the judicial system, rather than, through a coroner's inquest at this time, pinpointing some difficulty in regard to these deaths under investigation.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question for the Attorney General. Given the facts that the investigations have been going on for some period of time, there have been no unexplained deaths in the last 14 months and this is being investigated by the police and others under the direction of the Attorney General, can the minister give some indication of how long this investigation will take before he tries another method to determine the truth in the circumstances?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I should point out that the investigation is not under the direction of the Attorney General. The Ministry of the Attorney General remains available to assist, as we traditionally have, with respect to any --

Mr. Peterson: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Health, on page two of his statement today, says, "The other incidents are still being pursued by the police and others under the direction of the Attorney General." I am quoting the minister's friend beside him.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I can well appreciate that the Minister of Health might say that in general terms, but I think it is important to --

Mr. Bradley: He left you out.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: All right. This is a serious matter and not a high school debating forum as the Leader of the Opposition has been treating it since he took charge over there.

The fact is that the police are in charge of this investigation. We will give them whatever assistance we can, particularly when it comes to legal advice. The Ministry of the Attorney General does not purport to harbour the expertise that is necessary to deal with a very complex criminal investigation. We are confident that the citizens of the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto are well served by their police department, which does possess a large number of highly experienced criminal investigators. Certain judgements with respect to the course of this investigation must of necessity be left with that police department. That is what it is constituted for as a matter of law.

But I can say this, because I do appreciate that the public would probably be dissatisfied by an investigation that dragged on for a large number of months: I discussed this matter with the chief of police this morning, and he does appreciate, as do his senior colleagues, the necessity of concluding the investigation as soon as is humanly possible. But to put this within a time frame would be quite irresponsible. Obviously, as any experienced criminal investigator knows, the discovery of one fact may open up a whole new facet of investigation.

I can assure the House that the chief of police does appreciate the importance of completing the investigation as soon as is humanly possible, but we are not talking about days; we are probably not talking about weeks. Obviously this is a matter where, if there is going to be a public inquiry, as there may well be, it is important to conclude and exhaust the usefulness of the criminal investigation sooner rather than later.

Mr. Peterson: Given the extraordinary nature of these events -- as the Attorney General says, there is no parallel that any of us can recall -- does the minister not feel that a royal commissioner, who would have the power to subpoena, to cross-examine, to examine under oath, which the police would not have under the circumstances, may be an extra influence or power to get to the bottom of this matter as quickly as possible?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: While one realizes that the priorities are to apprehend the perpetrator or perpetrators and to maintain the high level of public confidence in the Hospital for Sick Children, as I said earlier this afternoon, we do have a deeply entrenched system of justice that requires us to conclude a criminal investigation rather than simply set up a public inquiry. For example, in many cases, if we were to go that route, it would be very tempting for the police to avoid the problems of any criminal investigation and simply set up a public inquiry and compel any number of possible suspects to come before the inquiry and answer questions that they would have to answer.

There are certain very fundamental principles involved. That is why we have not followed this process. In another age it was referred to as the Star Chamber.

2:50 p.m.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, understanding that finding the person or persons responsible for the homicides is of utmost importance to protect the children at the hospital and help begin the process of restoring public confidence in the Hospital for Sick Children, can the minister give the public of Ontario any idea how long he expects the police investigation to continue?

Can he explain why on two occasions in his statement he referred to "murderers" and "those responsible" in the plural? What in his briefings and conversations has led him to that conclusion?

Can the minister tell us how long he expects the police investigation to continue and how long he is willing to allow it to continue before he takes what he considers the possible step of a public inquiry further down the road, should the investigation not pan out?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, it would be most irresponsible for me to enter into any area of conjecture with respect to whether the police believe at this point that there were one or more persons involved in these frightening murders. We are not eliminating the possibility there may have been only one person nor are we eliminating the possibility there was more than one.

As far as the length of the investigation is concerned, I really have nothing to add to what I said to the Leader of the Opposition. It is impossible to put a time frame on it, but in view of the enormous importance of this matter and the public interest in it, the police do know it would be counterproductive if the investigation dragged on endlessly.

There are a number of issues involved besides the importance of apprehending the perpetrator. An investigation that dragged on endlessly probably would not be consistent with maintaining public confidence in law enforcement in this province. While I cannot give the honourable member a time frame, I can assure him and other members of the Legislature that the members of the Metropolitan Toronto Police are well aware of the importance of concluding an investigation sooner rather than later if possible.

Mr. O'Neil: Mr. Speaker, I take a particular interest in this as the Nelles girl comes from the city of Belleville in my riding. I thought perhaps the minister or some of his colleagues might answer some of the unanswered questions that have been asked by people in my riding, and by some newspapers and others in this province.

First of all, some of us wonder why the Nelles girl was arrested. Was it because she asked for legal counsel? Why were some of the other people under suspicion not arrested at that time? How long had the minister known about other possible deaths than the three or four? What sort of precautions did he take during the trial hearing to see that no other incidents took place?

I would also like to ask the minister and his colleague the Minister of Health why they did not long ago set up some of these safeguards that they are talking about setting up today.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health has already given a statement, as I did earlier, as to the number of deaths that have occurred since March 1981. Whatever steps the hospital took, and one can speculate about the circumstances, the fact is that since March 1981, the high, frightening number of deaths has decreased to a relatively low figure. It is to be hoped that will be relevant to the individual citizens who are concerned with the level of safety at the Hospital for Sick Children.

With respect to the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Miss Nelles, all I can state is I am satisfied the officers in charge of the case felt they had reasonable and probable grounds upon which to lay the charges.

Mr. O'Neil: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: I do not believe the minister has answered all of my questions. I asked how long ago he knew there were possibly other connected deaths, other than the three or four. He did not answer that.

I asked him what precautions were taken at the hospital to see that additional deaths did not happen. I would also like to know why no one else was charged at that time. It would appear, from some of the newspaper reports over the weekend, that there were people in that hospital who were there during the times of all the deaths of those children and yet those people were not charged.

I would like to ask him why Susan Nelles was the one charged. I do not think those questions have been answered.

Mr. Speaker: I think the Attorney General has answered to the best of his ability at this point.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question for the Minister of Health about the same matter. I welcome the inquiry he has set up. Even though it is not a public inquiry, my interpretation of his statement is that in fact it will become that.

I would like to know whether the inquiry he has set up, as well as making regular reports public to the minister and to the Legislature, will have spelled out for it specifically its terms of reference in more detail than the minister has outlined at the bottom of page 3.

In particular, will the minister inform the House whether or not the terms of reference will include not only the items mentioned at the bottom of page 3 but also the basic questions as to the administration of the hospital, the keeping and handling of records and drugs and, in particular, the relationship between the hospital and the coroner's office? Has the minister been able to determine, for example, why the coroner's office had not been notified of this extraordinary series of occurrences and unusual deaths?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, may I assure the acting leader of the third party that all three matters he mentions would be included. In fact, I tend to look towards a general description of the items to be included in the scope of the investigation because I want to do quite the reverse; I do not want to restrict the investigation. I want to give Mr. Justice Dubin and his fellow investigators the opportunity to review all procedures they feel need to be reviewed within the hospital, including those three mentioned.

I think that is very important to answer all the outstanding questions. Having talked at some length with Mr. Justice Dubin this morning, I am satisfied that will occur. If there are any matters he feels are not specifically included, I would expect him to call and ask for some further guidance. I cannot conceive of any, outside of those that might interfere with the criminal investigation, that we would object to.

I might add that I appreciate the fact the acting leader of the third party appreciates the importance and seriousness of this investigation, as opposed to the rather immature and careless position taken by the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Foulds: Recognizing that there has been -- whether we like it or not -- an extraordinary sense of disquiet on the part of parents of Ontario and a loss of confidence in the Hospital for Sick Children, will the minister make clear the procedures that his inquiry will operate under? Will he also spell out in detail the powers the inquiry will have in order to obtain papers, records and testimony from witnesses?

3 p.m.

I have been assured by the hospital that full access will be available to and provided to the investigators. Under the Public Hospitals Act, the investigators do have full and complete access to those records and information. Therefore, a simple look at the Public Hospitals Act and investigatory procedures under that act will spell out quite explicitly the powers we have given to this inquiry.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, will the minister make clear whether the terms of reference of his judicial commission will include some reference to the fact that the coroners have complained they have not been kept informed as to the unfolding events over these many months, now years, and that the internal investigation at the Hospital for Sick Children did not involve all the relevant departments, including pathology?

Since it is clear from the statements by the judge, the Attorney General and the minister that these were deliberate homicides and the perpetrator or perpetrators are still at large, does the minister feel that commissioning Mr. Justice Dubin and commissioners is going to be sufficient to maintain confidence in the hospital, with which we are all so concerned?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, with respect, I think there were two parts to that question. In the first case, yes, those matters of the relationships and the number of cases that are referred to --

Mr. Nixon: Relate to the specific matters, the coroners' complaint and the pathologists' complaint.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Without repeating it, let me say as I recall here in the questions and answers, yes those matters will be dealt with by three or four investigators.

Second, do I believe this will be sufficient to restore public confidence? I think we find the hospital to be one that maintains a worldwide reputation. It has not had any unexplained deaths in this ward for 14 months; there has been a dramatic change of procedures; it is now controlling the drug in question, digoxin, probably more severely and more securely than any other hospital in the world. On that cursory view, on the basis of that analysis of the facts, one would be somewhat reassured, as I said in my statement.

In order to have full and complete reassurance -- and we all have to face up to the fact that there is a cloud hanging over the hospital as a result of this -- I think it is important that we have the investigators in, that they have full access and that, rather than wait for a report some months or some weeks down the road, Mr. Justice Dubin report to us and to the hospital immediately upon discovering each and every new procedure he might feel ought to be put in place so it can be put in place, not at the end of his final report or several months later, but immediately upon reaching that conclusion. Based upon that sequence of events, I think we have a fair chance that the hospital's reputation can remain intact and parents can be reassured.

As I said earlier, it would be unfortunate if, as a result of this cloud, it was allowed to widen and the public perceptions and confusions surrounding the events that did occur were such that some children were not taken to the hospital when they really could be properly and safely treated only at that hospital.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that both the Attorney General and the Minister of Health will appreciate the sense in which I place this question to the Minister of Health, by way of supplementary to what the deputy leader of this party has placed before the assembly this afternoon.

The inquiry or the investigation, whatever the minister wishes to call it, is not an inquiry with respect to the question of the perpetration of the murders, which are of such intense concern to everyone, but is with respect to the public perception of the administration of the institution of the Hospital for Sick Children.

Therefore, will the minister consider, along with Mr. Justice Dubin, for whom, of course, we all have the highest regard, that it would be better if we, in accordance with accepted procedures in this province, proceeded under the Public Inquiries Act to have this investigation in public under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Dubin, bearing in mind that the Public Inquiries Act of this province contains very specific and precise provisions for protecting persons who may in any way be involved with the parallel course?

It appears to me that the Minister of Health is attempting to come as close as he can to having a public inquiry without having one. I would ask, therefore, specifically to the Minister of Health, will he review with Mr. Justice Dubin and ascertain whether it would be advisable, under accepted and true procedures under the Public Inquiries Act, to proceed with this question of protecting, preserving and restoring to the extent necessary the reputation of the Hospital for Sick Children?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, might I begin by saying that in putting the question the member for Riverdale has talked about the investigation with regard to public perception of the hospital. I should like to make the record clear that this investigation is to deal with not only public perception -- of course, the public confidence is very important -- but also in order to be sure that restoration of public confidence is warranted. So it is a real review with regard to each and every procedure in the hospital and there will be complete freedom given to the investigators to review all of those procedures.

All of the options that he would know well have been canvassed by myself and my two colleagues over the weekend. In view of what the Attorney General has said in terms of a need to concentrate on finding who the murderer is or murderers are in this case, with regard to at least the four cases that are deemed by Judge Vanek to be homicides, is our paramount concern right now and I would not want anything to be done notwithstanding statutory or other protections -- and the Attorney General would not want anything to be done notwithstanding those protections -- that might in any way whatsoever, advertently or inadvertently, hamper the desire of the police and everyone to apprehend the criminals involved in the case of the proven deaths. Therefore, I believe the current procedure for our present circumstances is the most appropriate one.

OHIP PREMIUMS

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question for the Minister of Health. Will the minister comment on -- obviously he does not agree with it -- the report of the National Council of Welfare on Canada's health insurance system? I refer particularly to pages 38 to 51, where the council castigates the Ontario government for its high Ontario health insurance plan premiums:

"Any tax that collected the same amount from a family living on less than half the average income and falling $2,200 below the poverty line as from a household with an income double the average and four times the poverty line would make a mockery of the principle of ability to pay that underlies our income tax system. Yet that is precisely what health premiums do. They shift the relative burden of health financing from the better off minority on to the shoulders of the low and moderate income majority who are already strapped for cash."

Having considered that statement, and another report released this morning that castigates this government for its adherence to a regressive form of OHIP payments, will the minister now approach the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) and ask him to roll back the 17 per cent increase in OHIP premiums that he indicated in his budget last week?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, the answer to the last question is no. May I say very simply that my responsibility as Minister of Health is to ensure that the universality of the system is maintained, and accessibility is maintained to our health care system. I do not believe our premiums affect either of those for a variety of reasons. Those reasons I expect to be putting forward to the federal Minister of National Health and Welfare at the federal-provincial conference of health ministers which begins tomorrow.

As the honourable member may know, I was supposed to be in Ottawa this afternoon at a provincial health ministers' meeting, which I might say I suggested to my colleagues be held today prior to tomorrow's meeting of federal-provincial health ministers in order that we may discuss very many of these items. I, obviously, stayed back here today and missed today's meeting because of the circumstances surrounding Sick Children's Hospital. Nonetheless, I will be heading up to Ottawa later tonight. I expect some of these matters will be discussed in the white paper allegedly being distributed tomorrow by the federal minister of health.

3:10 p.m.

I should emphasize to the member that how those revenues are generated is largely a decision of the Treasurer. As Minister of Health, I do not believe the current system being employed by the Treasurer threatens universality or accessibility. In fact, I think the mechanism chosen by the Treasurer, particularly with the premium assistance program, works fairly well in this province.

Mr. Foulds: Does the minister not recognize that the present policy of the Ontario government curtails accessibility and the universality of our health care system? Does he not recognize that a number of people earning $14,000 or less will now have to make the choice of not paying OHIP premiums and not being covered should they suffer a serious illness and that, therefore, they will be prevented from going to a doctor when they need care? Does the minister not think it is about time to roll back the OHIP premiums and start basing our health care system in Ontario on a progressive system of taxation?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: First, the member knows that the Treasurer is open to suggestions with regard to ways to help fund the health care system, and the paper he put out as part of the budget dealing with payroll taxes is perfect evidence that he is very sensitive to this particular area. I applaud him for that.

If the member has details on any resident of this province who is being denied accessibility to our health care system because of the premiums this province levies, then he should do what he has always felt very comfortable doing, and that is to let us have the names. The member's colleagues always stand up and say, "Are you aware of my constituent, so-and-so, to whom the following happened?" The member does not have to take the time of the House, but if he would forward to my office the name of any single Ontarian who is being denied --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: You do not want to hear it, do you?

If he will forward the name of anyone who is being denied access to the health care system in this province because of the premiums laid down by the Treasurer in his budget last week, I can assure him that appropriate steps will be taken. I will also bet him dinner that he cannot send me the name of a single Ontarian who is being denied access to the health care system because of the premiums.

An hon. member: At McDonald's?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: At McDonald's, with seven per cent tax.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, if the minister refuses to advise his colleague the Treasurer to roll back the increase in OHIP premiums, would he consider asking the Treasurer to raise the levels of eligibility for premium assistance? I would refer him again back to the report by the National Council of Welfare, which points out very aptly that a family of four in Ontario earning a little more than $11,690, $4,375 below the poverty line in this province, is now being forced to pay its whole premium despite an assistance program that he says covers the poor of this province.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I can only say that the Treasurer is always sensitive to those kinds of situations, and in drawing up his budget he takes a great number of things into consideration. Obviously he could have chosen to do a variety of other things to help fund my $6.5 billion budget, of which OHIP premiums cover 19 per cent. But in choosing to find ways to fund the health care system and all the other responsibilities of government the Treasurer was particularly sensitive to other alternatives he had. For example, had he raised the retail sales tax a couple of points the member would justifiably have raised concerns about that being a tax on the poor with no premium assistance available to help that income bracket get by or get relief from the tax.

Those are the kinds of things the Treasurer has to balance, and I must say as a member of this government that all members of this government are fairly comfortable with the kind of budget he brought down last week and the kind of balance he always seems to strike in these matters.

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, in view of the minister's flamboyant generosity with the doctors -- he does not like "$1-billion settlement;" the $748-million settlement, which has raised their incomes 52 per cent after three years to a net income of $122,000 -- does the minister not think the excuse for extra billing is now gone, evaporated because of his generosity?

Does he not think that because of the statement in the National Council of Welfare's report that "user charges interfere with access to health care in the worst way possible by deterring low-income Canadians" -- they are talking specifically about extra billing and they are talking about research studies that document that fact -- the time has now come for him to reverse his policy, to go to the conference tomorrow and to argue, along with whoever else is at that conference who is prepared to support him, that the government in Ottawa and all provincial governments should now put an end to extra billing across this country and restore the integrity and the universality of our medical insurance program?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to say the new Health minister from Saskatchewan will probably be supporting this government on very many items the member disagrees with us on, as indeed his predecessor did just a few short weeks ago, so that we will have a sense of political philosophy of this.

In terms of what the honourable member quotes as the generosity we have shown to doctors, I know the member wants to take the long time frame because that builds up the amount of money we have given to doctors.

To refresh the member's memory, he will recall that last year this government agreed with the Weiler report and gave the doctors a 14.75 per cent increase.

Mr. Laughren: The ministry always gives them what they want.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: This year we did not give them what they wanted.

Mr. Foulds: You gave more.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Does the member for Port Arthur think we gave them more? Does he think that? This year we gave them 11 per cent in April plus three per cent in January, which is an effective --

Mr. McClellan: We know what the figures are.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Martel: You gave them the store.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I will bet the member for Sudbury East does not know.

Mr. Speaker: Never mind the interjections, please.

Mr. Martel: He might stick to the question.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: We gave them 11.86 per cent this year. That is the effective cash flow this year. So in comparison, they got 14.75 per cent last year and this year, notwithstanding all of the strike activity, they ended up with an 11.86 per cent increase. Next year they will end up with something like 9.2 per cent or 9.3 per cent.

Therefore, what the members deem to be generosity, obviously a lot of people are deeming to be more evidence that this government will not put enough money into the health care system, particularly since we are, unlike other sectors, reducing the amount we are paying in terms of the increases to the medical profession. All of that should be put in some perspective.

Finally, it has been acknowledged that there would be a cost of changing the present system since Hall, whose shrine the member worships at, has indicated that if one ends opting out we will have to have a system of compulsory arbitration or something like it in order to make sure that the doctors get fair compensation.

One can only read that as indicating that the present system is not giving them fair compensation and therefore governments, under the member's magic solution, would have to pay more. Those people the member's acting leader was worrying about a moment ago, those at the lower end of the income scale, would end up paying more money for the medical services they are getting, not less.

TAX BURDEN

Mr. Cunningham: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Revenue. In view of the budget's imposition of a seven per cent sales tax on labour costs for the repair of tangible personal property and such items as buses, cars, trucks, computers and all movable equipment, is the minister aware that many municipalities and school boards contract out repairs to other local governments to save money and to avoid unnecessary costly duplication of services? In particular, the government stated one of its objects in establishing regional municipalities would be the more efficient delivery of services at a lower price to the ratepayer.

3:20 p.m.

Can the minister inform the House, and local government across Ontario, whether this eminently sensible and sane practice will now be penalized by his government by forcing them to pay a tax on labour repair costs? If the minister intends to tax municipalities for this --

Hon. Mr. Davis: Never heard you support this before.

Mr. Cunningham: Sorry?

Mr. Speaker: Never mind; just ask the question, please.

Hon. Mr. Ashe: Tell your writer to make shorter questions.

Mr. Cunningham: -- it is a damned good one -- and if the minister will be in a position to penalize the municipalities for the mistakes made by this government over the years?

Hon. Mr. Ashe: No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Cunningham: Can the minister inform this House whether municipalities such as the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, which have different incorporated agencies such as the Hamilton Street Railway Co. and Canada Coach Lines contracting out repairs between themselves, will be in a position where they will find themselves billing each other and therefore be subject to a seven per cent labour tax?

Hon. Mr. Ashe: That is the proposal contained in the Treasurer's budget and will be in the legislation. For service work that is done on an organization's own behalf, it is not taxable. If it is billed from another association, organization or company, it will have to include a sales tax component.

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Labour. Why did the Ministry of Labour in the lead regulations of last August establish 0.15 milligrams for each cubic metre while in the United States the levels are 0.05 milligrams for each cubic metre, or three times lower than those established in Ontario?

When the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration is seeking to have the acceptable lead level of 0.6 milligrams a litre reduced to 0.4 milligrams, why are we prepared to send workers into the work place with lead levels of 0.7 milligrams per litre?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I think the honourable member is referring to an allegation reported in last week's Globe and Mail that the health of Ontario workers exposed to lead is not adequately protected compared with their counterparts in the United States. I simply do not accept that proposition.

Mr. Martel: With lead levels three times higher, I would like an explanation why, but I will ask a supplementary. The Globe and Mail reported, referring to deputy minister Dr. Robinson, "She said workers can be removed from exposure any time they show symptoms of lead poisoning, and this is monitored by employee-management health and safety committees in each of the 600 factories working with lead."

Is the minister aware that last December I asked his predecessor how many companies with 20 or more employees had health and safety committees? The response was that the occupational health and safety division was not aware of any work places in Ontario where there is a legal requirement for a committee in which a committee has not been established.

Based on those two facts, can the minister tell me why charges have not been laid at Wilco, where 19 workers suffered lead poisoning in November and December last year and where there was no health and safety committee?

Is he now prepared to table in the Legislature the names of the 660 companies which are covered under the lead regulation, the names of the union or worker representatives on the 660 company health and safety committees and the up-to-date data regarding whether companies have completed the lead assessment programs or not?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: In the case of the Wilco company the member refers to, I know we took the ultimate step in closing down the operations of that plant. We could have prosecuted it, but that would possibly have left the plant operating in a manner that would not have been helpful to the employees. We took the ultimate step of closing it until it adheres to the regulations.

As far as prosecutions are concerned, in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1982, there was a total of 198 prosecutions in construction, 78 in industry and four in mining sent to the legal branch. I think that indicates the act is being followed and enforced. As for the member's question about releasing the information he has referred to, I will look into that immediately and will have an answer for him tomorrow. At the moment, I see no reason why that information cannot be released.

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I want to return to my friend's first question regarding permissible standards for both lead and other substances.

The minister will be aware that, so far, finalized regulations have been filed only for lead and mercury. It has been almost two years since the proposed regulations were filed for a total of eight substances. Could the minister explain why it has taken so long to file the regulations for the other designated substances?

Further, could he explain why the lead standard, as my friend pointed out, is three times the permissible level in the United States, the proposed asbestos standard 10 times the level recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the United States and, finally, why the proposed vinyl chloride standard is twice the permissible standard in the United States?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, two regulations are now in effect, those for lead and mercury, and two regulations are in the hands of the advisory committee, those for vinyl chloride and coke oven emissions. I am told the advisory committee will be meeting on June 8 to deal with the first two.

This is more or less the final stage in a long period of consultative processes and I am optimistic that regulations will be in effect shortly on these third and fourth substances, vinyl chloride and coke oven emissions.

With regard to the lead regulations, it is my understanding that a detailed examination was made of the existing studies published around the world in respect to setting the standards for lead. There was a very open and consultative approach by both labour and management with regard to setting those standards.

COMPENSATION FOR UFFI HOME OWNERS

Mr. Epp: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Attorney General, I will ask this question of the Minister of Revenue.

In Kitchener-Waterloo, a hearing will be held today and tomorrow with respect to 552 assessment review cases involving urea formaldehyde foam insulation. Given an average of six hours a day, that would mean 1.3 minutes per case. Since the minister is obviously concerned about justice not only appearing to be done but also being done in this province, would he assure this House that he will sit down with the Attorney General to see what can be done to have these cases held in a proper fashion?

I might also point out that the room in which. these 552 cases are to be heard seats only 50 to 60, so that people line the hall, staircases, elevators and every other place in the building. Will the minister please tell us what can be done with respect to these cases and what he will recommend to the Attorney General?

Hon. Mr. Ashe: Mr. Speaker, quite properly, this question should have been directed to the Attorney General. Obviously the member is aware of the jurisdiction. The Ministry of Revenue does not operate the assessment review courts at all; it is really just part of the process, as is the appellant.

I am as concerned as the honourable member about the number scheduled in these two days. I would foresee, and I can really only put it in that context, that the court in its timing and scheduling, considering that the whole issue is the same -- in other words, the urea formaldehyde foam insulation question -- may think that over a period of two days it will be able to get a satisfactory feel for the problem in that area and may very well properly come up with a decision that would apply to all of them. Needless to say, I am not predetermining what it is going to do or even suggesting how it is going to do it. I think that is the only explanation that is probably reasonable and practical.

3:30 p.m.

I see my colleague the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) is not here right now, but I will be happy to discuss it with him and get back to the member or have the Attorney General get back to him. As we know, the two days in question are today and tomorrow; so we may find out the court is able to take care of that significant number on the grouping basis.

Mr. Epp: I might say it was not able to look after them, and it had to defer a lot of cases this morning when I was at the hearing.

Given that I reintroduced a private member's bill here a few months ago which, if adopted, would help to expedite the cases at the review hearing and at the appeal hearing process, and given that this is both a provincial responsibility and a federal responsibility, will the minister take a serious look at Bill 40, which I introduced, and speak to the Attorney General in the hope of introducing a new process that would expedite the hearings?

Second, will the minister assume the responsibility of discussing this problem with both the federal and other provincial ministers so that a national policy could be adopted, or certainly a provincial-federal policy could be adopted, which would deal with this very serious problem involving thousands of cases? Some people have had to sell their homes at a 50 per cent reduction of what they originally paid for them or what the market value would indicate they are worth.

Hon. Mr. Ashe: Vis-à-vis legislation on changing the procedure, I understand my colleague the Attorney General will very shortly be introducing legislation into this House to deal with a procedure on assessment appeals which will expedite the process in the future as well as taking care of some of the backlog. Frankly, I am not too sure that will resolve the question at hand vis-à-vis urea formaldehyde foam insulation, but I think it is something that is needed and something we have been working on for a long time and involving the Association of the Municipalities of Ontario.

As far as urea formaldehyde foam insulation is concerned, needless to say, we are all concerned about that issue. If a certain jurisdiction in Ottawa had not allowed and encouraged it in the first place, we might not have the problem we now have before us. There is no doubt in our deliberations with any of the federal ministers -- I am speaking about the member's federal Liberal colleagues -- we keep pointing out to them the various problems, which include lost potential revenue for municipalities. It should be part of their responsibility to compensate through the province back to the municipalities for any lost revenue that comes out of the assessment review court procedures.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I have a point of privilege of a fairly long-standing nature, which has only just come to my attention in the past few days. It has to do with the tendency of the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Drea) to get up in the House in response to charges, try to find one item, then bluster on about it and try to discredit the role of the opposition. That may be a totally legitimate role for him to play, but he has no right to mislead the House or to give misleading information. That is the charge I would like to put forward today.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I have not accused him yet.

Mr. Speaker: I would ask the member for Scarborough West to withdraw those remarks, please.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I will withdraw the remark that he has been misleading the House and allow you to draw your own conclusions from the information I am about to give you. I withdraw the remark if you interpreted it that I was saying he had misled the House.

On October 29, 1981, in response to a question I had asked about initiatives or the lack of initiatives and incompetence surrounding day care in this province, I had raised the question about $850,000 being put towards television advertisements by the ministry. The response was, as reported at page 2940 of Hansard, "I do not know where he got his information, but an expensive television advertising campaign has never been considered in this regard and will not be done."

Just recently, I tabled a series of written questions. The new deputy minister, who was not around and therefore did not know of this exchange with the minister and was not in a position to know that he should be protecting the minister in the answer that he gave, responded to my question of how much of the $850,000 was actually spent, showing that only $161,000 of the allocation of $850,000 was spent.

He said, "Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars was allocated to this program originally taking into account the possibility of television and radio commercials as part of the dissemination of information." In other words, they could not spend $700,000 of it because they initially planned on putting it into television and radio ads just as I have alleged.

The minister misinformed the House last fall when he got up to bluster. I did not have the information but his deputy minister has just leaked the information and, as I suspected, there was a memorandum which indicated that those were the minister's plans.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, the only reason the honourable --

Mr. Laughren: Withdraw!

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, the only reason the honourable member is up today is he promised people he was going to put on a show and he got cut off by the time.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Oh, no.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Oh, yes. They are outside; they are here. He shot his mouth off and he got caught again.

The particular question put to me at that time was, is there $850,000 for radio and television and other types of advertising? I do not know what there was when the first announcements were made, long before I was minister. There never was and there never will be $850,000 worth of paid radio, television or any other kind of advertising, and the member knows it.

Mr. Stokes: Did you mislead the House?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The answer is yes.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would have to ask the minister to reconsider his remarks in impugning the motives of the member for Scarborough West.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Which motives, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: I think you --

Hon. Mr. Drea: I will not impugn motives to the honourable member.

Mr. Nixon: You can impugn them; you don't impute them.

Mr. Speaker: Impute them, right. The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I am not concerned about the imputing of motives --

Mr. Speaker: Well, I am.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: -- I have begun to expect that from the minister, but I would like you to investigate the obvious contradiction between these two pieces of information --

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is obviously again a difference of opinion and a difference --

Some hon. members: No, no.

Mr. Speaker: Just a minute.

Ms. Copps: It's on the Order Paper.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: He lied to the House. It is straightforward.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not, with all respect, the responsibility of the Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Those were both statements made in the House; one in written form and one orally. The minister can say anything he likes: he lied to this House.

Mr. Cooke: The facts are the last thing he cares about.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

REPORT

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURAL AFFAIRS

Mr. Kerr from the standing committee on procedural affairs presented the committee's report and requested that it be placed on the Order Paper for consideration pursuant to standing order 30(b). The committees report was read as follows:

Your committee recommends that the standing orders be amended by adding thereto the following standing order:

Except as provided in standing orders 2, 63, 64, 94 and 95, when the members are called in for a recorded vote the division bells shall ring until the whips return to report to the Speaker that the members are ready to vote, but at no time will they ring for a longer period than eight hours, at which time the Speaker will call for the recorded vote of the members then present, whether or not the whips have returned.

Your committee further recommends that debate on the report be deferred until the fall sittings of the House.

3:40 p.m.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

Mr. Martel: I want to go back to the point of order, Mr. Speaker, because there is something wrong and I think the situation cannot be tolerated.

Let me quote what was said in the Legislature in October 1981. I am quoting from page 2940 of Hansard. The minister is responding:

"I might add that, in a question he asked, the honourable member recently accused us of planning a $750,000 television campaign as a component of this particular initiative. I do not know where he gets his information, but an expensive television advertising campaign has never been considered in this regard and will not be done."

That is the minister's statement and I put it forward. The response by Mr. R. M. McDonald, the Deputy minister, says, "Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars was allocated to this program originally, taking into account the possibility of television and radio commercials as part of the dissemination of information."

That is not a matter of a difference of opinion; it is a statement by the minister saying it had never been considered and a statement by the deputy minister saying it was considered.

Let me quote it again. The deputy minister says, "Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars was allocated to this program originally, taking into account the possibility of television and radio commercials..."

That is the point of order. The minister shakes his head and says, "No, it had never been considered," while the deputy minister said, "Yes, it was considered." That is not a matter of a difference of opinion. Those are two statements that are directly contradictory, and someone has to come up with the facts as they really are.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, it is very simple. The allegation was made by the member for Scarborough West way back when, and he was wrong on a number of other things, including Metro Toronto not having received one red cent.

Mr. Mackenzie: Come off it. You're sick.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I would ask that that remark be withdrawn.

Mr. Speaker: I think that was just an expression of opinion. It was not unparliamentary in any way.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, the allegation was that we were going to spend $750,000 on radio and television. Such a proposal was never considered.

Mr. Martel: Is your deputy lying?

Hon. Mr. Drea: No, he is not lying. His answer is perfectly compatible with mine.

Mr. Speaker, if you will analyse those words, you will find that the deputy is referring to the matter historically, before I became minister in this portfolio. I became the Minister of Community and Social Services in April 1981, and I can assure the House that at no time was such a paid radio and television campaign envisaged, either by myself or by anybody in my office or in the communications branch of my ministry.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, what does this mean?

Mr. Speaker: I have heard your point of order --

Mr. Martel: Well, maybe you can help me. What does this mean? Would you put an interpretation on it for me?

Mr. Speaker: No, I cannot.

Mr. Martel: Well, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: You have raised your point of order --

Mr. Martel: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: -- and if you will sit down --

Mr. Williams: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the point of order, which at the beginning was a matter of privilege: You asked the member for Scarborough West to withdraw a statement wherein he accused the minister of intentionally misleading the House. He withdrew the statement and subsequently, not once but twice, he said, sitting in his seat, that the member lied to the House. I would ask that he withdraw those statements.

Mr. Speaker: Did the member say that in his remarks?

Mr. Williams: He did, Mr. Speaker. I can attest to that fact. Would you have him withdraw those remarks?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I am sure Hansard will not have recorded the fact that I said that in my presentation. I may have said that as I was sitting down, and I withdraw it because it is unparliamentary --

Mr. Williams: Not "may," Mr. Speaker; he did.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Just go ahead.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I withdraw the term "lie." I let the facts stand for themselves. There is $700,000 unspent because it was intended to go into a media campaign, and the minister obfuscated the issue again and used that technique to do it, as he has done in the past. I believe he should be called to task for doing so.

I do not care if he puts me down on a point where he is right but not where he gives information that is not factually correct.

Mr. Speaker: We are dealing with a point of order that was raised by the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel). It certainly is more than a matter of a difference of opinion. It is a difference of information from two different sources. I am in no position to judge which is right or which is wrong. I will have to take a much closer look.

Mr. Nixon: Are you going to undertake to do that?

Mr. Speaker: I am only going to undertake to take a much closer look because I think there is a use of words in the statement the member read that I would like to take a look at. Okay?

Mr. Martel: And you'll report back.

Mr. Speaker: I did not say that.

Mr. Martel: Well, what's the sense --

Mr. Speaker: As you know, that is beyond my role as Speaker. But I shall indeed take a look and see that the information gets back to the member for Sudbury East.

Mr. Martel: Could I raise what hinges on this, Mr. Speaker, and what I think gets to the root of it? I have said this to you before: I do not think the Speaker should be caught in the position of having to say somebody is right or wrong. Surely we are going to have to start sending these either to the procedural affairs committee or to someone else to sort out.

We cannot have this sort of distortion going on where we get something from the minister when he is trying to drive through and bulldoze everyone out the way -- that is what he wants to do every time he is asked a question -- and we get a response from his deputy minister which is totally contradictory. Then we are supposed to sit here and listen to a tirade against members and let him get away with it. We are not supposed to say he might be lying or distorting or misleading, even if he is. The person who gets thrown out -- I know, because it has happened to me -- is the guy who felt he was right.

There has to be some way of sorting that out, Mr. Speaker, because it is going to reach a point where you are going to be forced to make decisions on whether somebody should be thrown out. This cannot continue.

If a member has to withdraw after he has made an accusation, surely the other person, the one who made the statement, should show a little graciousness and withdraw his remarks. But in no way has the minister done that today.

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is an interesting point that you raise, but there are provisions to get the information.

Mr. Martel: What? Tell me what they are.

Mr. Speaker: During question period, as an example.

Mr. Martel: I have the information.

Mr. Speaker: With all respect, I cannot debate this issue, as you know.

Mr. T. P. Reid: You have been debating it for 15 minutes.

Mr. Speaker: No, I have not, with all respect. But I did undertake to take a look at it on behalf of the member for Sudbury East, and I shall do that.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order --

Mr. Speaker: Not the same one.

Ms. Copps: It refers to the same point of order.

Mr. Speaker: I will listen to you, but I thought I had explained my position.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, just to get some direction from you: I understand that according to the standing orders there is no provision one way or the other for the Speaker to comment on a statement made by a minister. However, if I understand correctly that the Speaker has agreed to take into consideration the point made by the member for Scarborough West, I ask him also to refer to other points of order having to do with the same minister which have been referred in the past and to take those under consideration as well.

If the Speaker is setting a precedent in this matter and is prepared to intervene on an allegation made about a minister, I believe that intervention should not simply respond to a simple point of order of one member but should respond to all the points of order raised by various members of both opposition parties during the last session of the Legislature.

3:50 p.m.

Mr. Speaker: If it is indeed the same point of order, when I look into the matter, as I did say I would, it will include everything.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

TECHNOLOGY CENTRES ACT

Hon. Mr. Walker moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Gregory, first reading of Bill 124, An Act to establish Technology Centres.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, a statement was made earlier today that expands on the bill in somewhat more detail than I will go into now. However, the bill provides for the creation of technology centres whose mandate is to promote and enhance the application of technology to improve the productivity and competitiveness of Ontario industry and commerce.

LIQUOR CONTROL AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Samis moved, seconded by Mr. Charlton, first reading of Bill 126, An Act to amend the Liquor Control Act.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Samis: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this perennial bill is to enable independent grocery store owners to sell beer. I apologize to the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) for not acknowledging his perennial support for this progressive bill.

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS

Mr. T. P. Reid: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I had expected the acting House leader to table some answers to questions on the Notice Paper. I draw to your attention and his that I have had one question on since March 17 on public opinion polls and another since May 3 on the Ministry of Natural Resources. We have had 92 other questions answered but not my two. I know it is nothing personal, but I think the answers are overdue.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure it is nothing personal, and I am sure the minister will take due note of it and endeavour to get the information.

Mr. Wildman: On the same point, Mr. Speaker: I raise the same concern with regard to question 136, which I tabled in this House on May 7 and which, according to rule 81(d), should have been answered on Friday. I draw your attention to this rule, which states: "The minister shall answer such written questions within 14 days unless he indicates that he requires more time because the answer will be costly or time-consuming or that he declines to answer ..." In other words, there should be at least an interim response.

This question was directed to the Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. Walker), who just left the House, and I have yet to receive even an interim answer.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure the acting House leader will take that under consideration and will endeavour to spur the minister on to greater efforts.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

Mr. Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 28(b), the member for Essex North (Mr. Ruston) has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question given by the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Norton) concerning watermain construction grants to the township of Rochester. This matter will be debated at 10:30 this evening.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

CITY OF TORONTO 1981 ASSESSMENTS COMPLAINTS ACT (CONTINUED)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion for second reading of Bill 60, An Act to provide for the Institution of Complaints for Certain Assessments made in the Year 1981 in the City of Toronto.

Ms. Bryden: Mr. Speaker, last Tuesday we discussed Bill 60 all evening. The two Liberal speakers joined this party in being very critical of this bill and the methods used in the reassessment blitz which occurred in the city of Toronto last fall. The Liberal spokesmen, in spite of their criticism of the procedure and the bill, declared they were going to vote for the bill. I find this hard to understand, particularly when an alternative was placed before them by my colleague the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) when he moved a reasoned amendment.

The member for Riverdale also expressed very strong criticism of the bill. He read into the record the views of many of his constituents that the reassessment blitz of last fall was conducted by the ministry's staff in an arbitrary and unfair manner. He suggested that the bill was a tacit admission by the minister that he was wrong in the way the reassessment was conducted in the city of Toronto last year and that, instead of correcting the situation by a rollback of what most people consider an improperly conducted reassessment, the minister was trying to save face by this bill. This bill merely allows those reassessed to appeal to the assessment review court even if they did not appeal before the January 12, 1982, deadline.

The member for Riverdale claims that this remedy would prove to be no remedy for most people and that it might even result in further assessment increases for some home owners after the assessors have had time to do more studies of the assessments they had made and perhaps to collect additional data, because under the Assessment Act the onus is placed on the home owner to prove that an assessment on his home is wrong. The more data that are brought up by the assessor, the more difficult it is for the home owner who is not an expert in valuation methods to refute these data and to prove that his home has been improperly assessed.

The member for Riverdale and our party consider this bill such an inadequate response to a real injustice to home owners that we have introduced an alternative remedy. This is set forth in the reasoned amendment which my colleague read into the record last Tuesday and which I seconded. The reasoned amendment simply says that, because the fall reassessment was conducted on such a shockingly unfair and hit-and-miss basis in the city of Toronto, it should be rolled back for the 1982 tax year.

If the House votes against Bill 60 on second reading, then the House can vote for our reasoned amendment, which refers the bill back to the government for redrafting to provide for the rollback as an alternative remedy. That is why we will be voting against second reading of Bill 60.

We want our alternative of going back to square one on the faulty reassessment blitz put into the legislation and put in place of the present legislation. Neither of the Liberal speakers dealt with our alternative at all. Actually it had not been moved at the time the first one spoke, but the second one did not deal with it.

4p.m.

Since the member for Parkdale (Mr. Ruprecht) objected so violently to the methods used in the assessment blitz and had so little faith in the appeal procedure, as it presently operates, I can see no reason why he and his Liberal colleagues should not also vote against the bill and vote for our reasoned amendment. Presumably, they would not object to a rollback. In fact, the member for Parkdale indicated he would have supported the city of Toronto's request for a rollback and that should have been in the legislation.

It is clear that this legislation is not the usual run-of-the-mill bill. Unlike most provincial legislation that affects all residents of the province or a large proportion of them, it relates only to those who occupy or own certain properties in the city of Toronto designated in the schedule to the bill. Almost 5,000 properties are listed in 34 pages of fine print.

This bill is simply a face-saving bill that tacitly admits the minister has made an error. It is not a property tax reform bill. Heaven knows property tax reform in the city of Toronto is long overdue; great inequities have developed over the years from the outmoded assessment system. Property tax reform is long overdue in the province as a whole. Ever since the province took over the assessment function from the municipalities in 1970, it has been promising us property tax reform.

The inequities in the outmoded assessment system have been well-documented. In municipalities, they are causing an erosion of their tax base from well-heeled commercial operations that are able to successfully appeal some of their assessments on the basis of comparison with other properties that are underassessed. Studies have shown that the property tax is a regressive tax, that it hits the low and middle-income earners more than the rich. It also hits the apartment dweller more than the home owner, but he does not see it because it is hidden in his rent.

As more and more responsibilities have been loaded on to local government by the province, the unfairness of the property tax is magnified. Welfare and social costs are rising due to the recession, which the province is helping to intensify by its failure to create jobs and stimulate the economy. Inflation has added to the costs of all levels of government and increased the burden of this unfair tax. The province has stubbornly refused to relieve property taxpayers by shifting some of the responsibilities, which are not directly related to property, back to the province.

The province has access to other kinds of tax of a more progressive nature. It should use those tax sources to support these social services. Social welfare, health and a greater percentage of education costs should be paid for from provincial revenues.

Instead, the province has increased the burden on municipalities for these services by consistently keeping the increase in its grants for these services below the inflation rate in recent years. As a result the municipalities have to pick up a larger share of the costs or reduce services. In many cases, such as welfare, in a period of high unemployment, they cannot reduce services.

The province has also stubbornly refused to give the municipalities access to more progressive forms of taxation, such as income and corporation tax or sales tax. Other provinces do give a share of these taxes to the municipalities to lessen the load on the regressive property tax.

Since 1970, the province has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on false starts to reform the assessment system so that properties would be valued at fair rates; but every year we are faced with a government bill suspending any change for another tax year because the province's studies have indicated that its new valuation system -- based, presumably, on market value -- will result in a huge shift in municipal taxes from commercial, industrial and apartment owners to residential taxpayers and tenants. The reason is that residential property has been increasing in value at a much faster rate than that of other properties because of shortages and speculation.

As an example, in 1977 the ministry did a market value assessment on sample areas in the city of Toronto to test the effect of moving to this yardstick. In the Beaches-Woodbine area, 264 properties close to Queen Street between Lee and Willow were assessed. The results showed that there would be a 17 to 20 per cent increase in tax in year one on a three-year phase-in, and that by the end of the three years there would be a 26 to 28 per cent increase in taxes on all but eight of the 264 properties. The New Democratic Party is opposed to market value assessment because property taxes would end up reflecting artificially inflated values of property, often fuelled by speculators.

Moreover, market value assessment can never be a suitable yardstick for measuring all classes of properties because there are at least four or five different markets: one for residential properties, one for apartments, one for commercial and one for industrial. These markets have been going up at different rates in recent years, with residential going up the fastest.

Market value assessment would produce a huge shift in the tax burden to the home owners because of this fact. In the fast-growing areas of the inner city and in popular locations like the eastern beaches in my riding, the increase in the tax burden on home owners would be astronomical. It could result in the loss of homes by some people, particularly those on fixed incomes.

Instead of market value assessment the NDP favours a system of economic value assessment, known as EVA. It is based not on what property would sell for, a highly volatile and fluctuating figure, but on what the property is used for. Taxes would then depend on the size and quality of the house and on the current use to which it is put; if the use changed, the assessment would change. Similar family houses would pay the same taxes regardless of location.

Property tax reform does not mean only a new system of valuation. To make property taxes more related to ability to pay, reform must also include an improved property tax credit. Our present one has not been revised to keep up with inflation, and it now gives relief to only a fraction of those who originally qualified and who still need relief because of low income.

As I said earlier, the bill is not a property tax reform bill; we should be clear about that. I am disappointed that it is the only response we have had from this government this session to the need for property tax reform. This bill is part of a plot by the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Ashe) and the government to shift the responsibility for reassessment to the municipalities and let them take the lumps from home owners. The province is running away from its responsibility to bring in true property tax reform, which will value properties on an equitable basis, provide for an adequate property tax credit and reduce reliance on the regressive property tax. Those are the three parts of true property tax reform.

4:10 p.m.

Instead of getting this kind of reform, we have a device known as section 86 of the Assessment Act. It says to the municipality, "If you will invite the province to do market value assessment in your municipality within classes of property, it will see that home owners as a whole or any other class continue to bear the same share of the total tax burden as they did in the past, but some properties will go up and some will go down." In the city of Toronto a recent test showed that 57 per cent would go up and 43 per cent would go down.

In the city of Toronto, there are people who are underassessed; there is no doubt about that. That is why we need a new yardstick to bring in a fair assessment. But bringing in market value assessment is not going to produce an equitable tax system. It will not protect taxpayers against excessively large increases in any one year. It will not allow for adjustments in the burden borne by different classes of taxpayer when the sharing is obviously unfair.

Section 86 is a halfway house, which will produce greater equity than the present system in the city of Toronto, based on ancient 1940 replacement values. But section 86 market value reassessment does not face up to the need for real tax reform of the type I have outlined.

The minister has to date conned 349 out of the approximately 837 municipalities into adopting section 86 reassessment. They are attracted by the desire to reduce inequities within classes and to stop the erosion of the tax base, which I mentioned earlier, by large commercial firms successfully winning reassessment cases on the basis of inequities in the system.

Market value assessment for the city of Toronto would be a disaster. It would result in the loss of homes by many home owners in the inner parts of the city or in the more popular areas where prices have risen much faster than in other places. The city of Toronto has not requested section 86 treatment because it is only too aware of the disastrous consequences to low and middle-income earners if no ameliorating improvement in the property tax credit is granted by the province. So it has said, "Until you do that, we will not ask for section 86 treatment nor will we consider market value assessment." The ball is, therefore, back in the province's court.

The Minister of Revenue is attempting to force the city of Toronto into his bag of municipalities who are taking on the unpopular switch to the new assessment system. So he has devised a system of reassessment harassment for city home owners. Last fall's reassessment blitz was one example, where property taxpayers in some parts of the city experienced increases in their assessment ranging up to as much as 400 per cent.

Also, starting this spring, he is undertaking, at the request of Metro council, a reassessment to produce an impact study for a possible adoption of section 86. This is going to result in further assessment harassment in that he is bringing in 372 assessors from outside the city to join with his close to 200 in the city to knock on every door which has not been knocked on recently in the city of Toronto and to work out a market value assessment.

He has learned a little from the mistakes of last fall. He has sent out a kit to all members of the Legislature informing us he is at least taking into account home owners' concerns about the sudden knock on the door, and about the sudden drop by a postman of a new assessment notice. This time he is notifying all the home owners when he is coming into an area. It is just by householder mail. I am not sure whether home owners will pay that much attention to it.

He is also asking some of his assessors to call between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., to make one out of two calls at that hour if the person is not home. If two calls do not produce any contact with the home owner, he is going to leave a form saying the home owner can phone the assessment office for an appointment.

This is all to the good but it still leaves a great deal to be desired in the assessment system. In the first place, the notice that comes out after a reassessment contains no indication there has been an increase, no reference to the previous assessment and no reason as to why there has been an increase. Of course, if an increase is not mentioned, one would not expect to find reasons. The assessment notice simply says if one is not satisfied, one can come to an information meeting or contact the assessment office.

The information meetings for last December's blitz were all held at city hall, none were in the neighbourhoods. They were held between December 2 and December 16 which is an extremely busy time of the year for most citizens. Most of them did not really realize their assessments had gone up since there were no notices that they had, and therefore they did not avail themselves of the information meetings. Home owners should be notified when an assessment increase has occurred and why it has occurred.

There should be printed guidelines on the reasons for reassessment and how they are arrived at. What is the value of a new patio or cedar deck in one's backyard? Is that a subject for reassessment? What is the value of replacing an old bathroom with a new one? Is that a subject for reassessment? Many home owners think that is normal maintenance.

These principles are something that have to be explained in printing; there has to be more than just calling the assessor, assuming one has time to contact him when he is in his office and when one is at work in many cases.

The reassessment going on right now for the purposes of studying whether section 86 should be adopted in the metropolitan area will create many more fears for taxpayers because the assessor will call, but they will receive no statement of what his findings are for their residences. These findings will be fed to the municipality for study and for analysis, as to the effects on the taxpayer, but the home owner will not realize why he is not receiving a result of that call and may feel very uncertain about his tax position for 1982.

Of course, the new budget is also likely to cause considerable concern among property taxpayers in the city of Toronto. It has loaded on to the municipalities some very significant increases in costs which were not allowed for in their 1982 budgets.

Hon. Mr. Ashe: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I have sat here with great indulgence listening to the ramblings of the honourable member which are not at all relevant to the bill. We went all through the section 86 program which was not relevant. Now we are talking about budget implications which are also not relevant. I would appreciate if the substance of the bill could be addressed by the member.

4:20 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): In making her remarks, I would ask the honourable member to tie them into the bill, please.

Ms. Bryden: Mr. Speaker, I do think the budget is relevant because it is going to greatly increase costs to municipalities. Therefore, there will be additional taxes to be paid on top of the additional taxes due to reassessment.

To get back to the bill which relates to reassessment largely for renovation purposes, I would like to say that I agree that where there is a substantial renovation which adds a room or increases the space of a house, there should be an additional assessment at some stage. However, I do not think we want to discourage home owners from improving and upgrading their property. I think there should be a phase-in for any reassessment that comes from a substantial renovation.

There should be a higher floor on the kind of renovation one is allowed before a reassessment is applied. It was a considerable time ago when the figure of a $2,500 increase in market value was set as the floor below which no reassessment would occur and costs have risen greatly since that time. Something like a $10,000 increase would now be a more reasonable floor in order to encourage renovation. My colleague the member for Etobicoke (Mr. Philip) has introduced a private member's bill to that effect.

As far as improvements which are simply maintenance are concerned, such as putting in new storm windows or energy conservation, I find it hard to consider that those should attract reassessment. They should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

The methods that were used for the fall blitz seemed very unfair in that whole areas of the city were picked where the assessors knew that renovating homes was a popular activity. Then they moved in and did fast assessments, apparently often based merely on external examination. The owners of some homes on the streets said they had not been visited at all but still received a reassessment.

I refer the minister to the case of Mr. Norman Houghton on Kenilworth Avenue in my riding. His assessment went up from $3,046 to $6,355, which is more than a 100 per cent increase. He is a retired pensioner and is expecting to face a doubling of his taxes next year even if there is no increase in the mill rate. It appears likely that there will be at least a 10 per cent increase in the mill rate this coming year in the city of Toronto.

When he asked the assessor why his assessment had more than doubled, the assessor said, "Because of the improvements." He then asked, 'What improvements?" According to Mr. Houghton the assessor said he did not know. Whether he had been told not to specify until they got to court or whether he really did not know is hard to say. Mr. Houghton said he had put in new thermal windows and a deck at the back but he did not think it would raise the value of his house by more than $2,500; and certainly would not double the assessment.

Over 6,000 properties were reassessed in the fall blitz in the city of Toronto. There were 2,400 in ward seven, 1,700 in ward five, over 1,300 each in wards six and eight and about 500 in my ward. If one looks at the list of the homes that were reassessed, -- and I have a copy of it -- one finds that on a street like Kenilworth, at least 40 properties on both sides of the street were reassessed with increases, while on the next street over, Kippendavie, I do not think there is a single one; and on many streets there are only two or three. So this kind of shotgun reassessment was grossly unfair.

Some city residents will have to pay double and even triple the amount in taxes next year, and other city residents who had substantial renovations but were not covered by the blitz will pay no increase in tax because of reassessment.

The deadline for appealing these assessments in the court of revision was January 12. More than 18,000 Toronto residents did appeal this year, about a 50 per cent increase over last year. The Liberal speaker, the member for Waterloo North (Mr. Epp), pointed out that the backlog before the court of revision is so large that a great many of these appeals probably will not be heard for a year, or even two or three years. I believe that in the meantime the person has to pay the taxes and hope for a possible refund.

As my colleague the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) pointed out, many of them may experience not a decrease but a possible increase, because that is certainly allowed in the appeal process. He produced documentary evidence that in the appeals heard in previous years in the city of Toronto there had been an actual increase of several millions of dollars in assessment resulting from the appeals, so many taxpayers found it was counterproductive to appeal their assessments.

I think one has to consider that taxpayers are at a great disadvantage before the appeal courts. Most of them have to take time off, for which they lose pay; if they hire a lawyer it is an additional cost, and the total cost may be more than the extra taxes. On the other hand, most of them do not want to pay another $1,000 or $1,500 worth of taxes.

No records are kept of the proceedings or of the judgements, so the taxpayer has no precedents to go on. All he can do is simply compare his assessment to that of properties he considers to be like properties on the roll in his area. Under the present assessment system in the city of Toronto he is comparing a valuation system that is very difficult to understand, since it is based on 1940 replacement value or some similar yardstick dating back 40 years; he does not know how much of the assessment is for land and how much is for services or proximity to services that might increase the value of the land. So he is at a great disadvantage in his appeal, and his chances of gaining anything from this bill are very limited indeed. As I say, he may actually lose as a result of this bill.

For these reasons, and because of the arbitrary and unfair nature of the assessment and the lack of notice to taxpayers, many home owners and some aldermen in the city of Toronto called for a rollback of the whole blitz program in the city of Toronto. I think they were justified in asking that the assessors go back to square one and do the reassessment the right way, with full public notice, full public information, publication of guidelines and so on.

4:30 p.m.

The minister refused this demand, which came directly from the city of Toronto to him. I think some of the city of Toronto people met with him on this matter. He refused this demand and he refuses to admit the methods were improper. However, by bringing in Bill 60 he has tacitly admitted there was something wrong. His method of notifying home owners a little more adequately about the new impact of the assessment under section 86 indicates that he thought some of the previous methods could be improved upon.

In our opinion, the rollback is the only remedy and that is why we have moved the reasoned amendment. This will enable the Legislature to vote against the present bill and then to vote in favour of referring it back for redrafting to bring in a rollback, a proper reassessment system and a proper system of real tax reform. Home owners and tenants will be infinitely better off with this answer to their unfair treatment than with the Bill 60 response. It is really just a sop to them and may not benefit them at all.

I would like to suggest that if we are going to get real property tax reform we have to go a different route from that of this bill. We have to go the route of a new yardstick based on economic value and not something as volatile and unpredictable as market value. We have to go for a proper tax credit that will bring our tax system into relationship with ability to pay. We have to give the municipalities alternative sources of revenue and move some of the responsibilities that are loaded on them at the present time from the municipalities to the province in order to produce less reliance on this very regressive tax.

So, Mr. Speaker, I will be voting against the bill.

Mr. McClellan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Do we have a quorum?

The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells to be rung.

4:38 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. I acknowledge that a quorum exists.

Mr. Williams: Mr. Speaker, having listened to the former speaker on this subject and having read Hansard with interest in regard to comments made by other members on this particular bill at an earlier time, I felt compelled to participate in the debate this afternoon, given the fact that there appear to be two issues that continue to cloud the real intent and purpose of the legislation before us for consideration.

I was most impressed by the contribution made by my colleague the member for St. George (Ms. Fish) the other evening in the debate on this bill when she elucidated, in such a careful and clear way, the historical development of assessment in the city of Toronto which, for historical reasons perhaps, differed somewhat from other municipalities around the province as well as differing from some of the other municipalities within the Metropolitan Toronto jurisdiction.

She made a fair assessment of the differences and distinctions but, in so doing, came down hard in support of this legislation. The rationale for doing so was clearly set out in her remarks and is certainly most deserving of being read by members from the opposition parties who may have recognized the validity of her comments but have chosen to ignore the logic that has been applied to her thoughts and conclusions.

4:40 p.m.

I addressed myself to this topic earlier on when I had an opportunity to speak in the throne debate. What prompted me to join in the debate at that time was that the member for Parkdale (Mr. Ruprecht) had seen fit to comment on this very subject.

The matters raised by the member for Parkdale at that time might have gone unnoticed except for the fact that he clearly indicated to the House that he was enunciating the policy of the Ontario Liberal Party and was not just expressing his own personal views on some fundamentally important aspects of assessment. Consequently, I felt it appropriate that those comments, stated on behalf of the Ontario Liberal Party, not be left unnoticed or go without comment.

I would like to address two of the main inconsistencies in that speech by the member for Parkdale, which I think in large measure have been restated this afternoon by the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden). The issue appears to have become clouded, perhaps deliberately. Or perhaps it is just a misunderstanding by some of the learned members about the differences and distinctions to be made between reassessment and market value assessment and the application of section 86.

Both the member for Parkdale and the member for Beaches-Woodbine dwelled at some length on the fact that market value assessment has been under review in the Metropolitan Toronto area since the beginning of March, when the assessors aggressively started to act upon the request of Metropolitan Toronto council to conduct a section 86 study in order to provide that municipal jurisdiction with the information it required to determine whether it is appropriate to apply market value assessment in this jurisdiction. I think the issue has been clouded by the fact that both members have tended to blend that and the reassessment process together.

The member for Parkdale, back in March, had suggested that the people of Metropolitan Toronto, and in particular of the city of Toronto where the reassessments had been taking place, were being terrorized by unprecedented waves of assessors being brought in to go about the area and reappraise properties that had additions or other work done to them to improve their value.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that those reassessments to which the bill is directed were all undertaken last year, in 1981, long before a large number of assessors were seconded from other areas to be brought in for the specific and separate purpose of undertaking the impact study requested by the Metropolitan Toronto council.

As I stated a few moments ago, those who were brought in to assist the assessors already within the Metropolitan Toronto area did not go about their work in earnest until early in March of this year. Consequently, their activities are totally unrelated to what happened back in the fall of 1981 in the reassessment process that was undertaken at that time by the team of assessors that is located and works in Toronto out of the assessment office in the Toronto area.

The member for Parkdale built upon that confusion by suggesting the large number of assessors that came into Toronto, albeit not to do reassessment but to do the impact study, was brought in in unprecedented numbers. I had to state at that time, and I think it is important to this debate that it be restated, that there have been a number of instances where, given the circumstances when a municipality has asked the Ministry of Revenue through its assessment services division to do an impact study, assessors have been seconded from other areas and brought in to assist in doing an impact study in the shortest possible time, given the resources available to the assessment services division as a whole.

I point it out to show this was not, as alleged, a new precedent that was being established. In 1978 and 1979, for instance, 80 assessors were brought into the Cambridge and Kitchener areas to assist the local assessors to do a market value impact study. In the same year, 30 assessors were seconded to the Timmins area to do the same thing. It just so happens 110 assessors were brought into that area to do an impact study in the same way there were initially 110 assessors brought into the Metropolitan Toronto area to embark upon an impact study there, in keeping with the wishes of the Metropolitan Toronto council.

I cite a second example which I cited in the earlier debate, but which I think warrants repetition. In 1980, 100 assessors were seconded to go into the district of Muskoka, again to assist the local assessors and reinforce the number of assessors there to do an impact study at the request of the regional municipality. I believe these examples clearly refute the allegation that has been made that waves of assessors in an army-like fashion have been brought into Metropolitan Toronto in an unprecedented way to conduct a market impact study.

The Deputy Speaker: Just in connection with that, I am sure I have missed it but I have been following you closely; how does that tie in to the bill?

Mr. Williams: That was exactly my next comment, Mr. Speaker.

More importantly, those allegations have nothing to do with reassessment, which is what this bill is all about. Yet they went to great lengths to suggest these assessors somehow related to the reassessment process that had taken place in 1981. That is the first cloud on the issue that I suggest was brought up inappropriately back on March 18 by the member for Parkdale as well as this afternoon by the member for Beaches-Woodbine.

4:50 p.m.

The other very important cloud that I think exists and must be spoken to is the fact that to grant a tax holiday, as is being suggested -- and I reiterate that the member for Parkdale suggested this was the policy of the Ontario Liberal Party, not just his own personal point of view; and I believe it is a substantive part of the reasoned amendment that has been put forward today by the third party as well -- does not speak to the fact that should a tax holiday be granted, the logic of which, I must say, escapes me, it would have a prejudicial effect on the rest of the residential taxpayers not only in the city of Toronto proper but in all the other municipalities in the Metropolitan Toronto area.

It would be interesting to see whether the member for Beaches-Woodbine and the member for Parkdale would like to go out into their constituencies and explain to their constituents the fact that their real property taxes would go even higher if this tax holiday were extended to a specific group of people whose properties have been fairly and properly reassessed; or, more importantly, if the tax holiday were granted on an even broader base that would take into account all residential tax classes in the city of Toronto, as I think one can infer from the position that was taken by the member for Parkdale back in his March 18 address, in which he was speaking again on behalf of the Liberal Party of Ontario.

If a tax holiday were granted to the group that is singled out in this legislation under the schedule that is a part thereof, it is my understanding that this would result in lost assessment totalling approximately $14 million, or a loss in taxes of approximately $3 million; however, if the tax holiday were extended more broadly to cover all residential tax classes within the city of Toronto, it would balloon the amount of lost assessment in that year of tax relief to $70 million in lost assessment, or $14 million in lost taxes.

I think the other residential home owners in the city of Toronto would like some kind of accounting of why that type of relief is being granted to those whose properties would appear in large measure to have been underassessed and undertaxed in the first instance, why a tax holiday should be granted to compound the inequity that had been created earlier when people had received a form of tax holiday through a much lower assessment than they really deserved. I would like to hear those members explain to the residential home owners in their ridings why other home owners in their area should bear that additional tax burden to pick up the slack.

Not only does it affect home owners in the city of Toronto other than this group who are being provided with equity in this legislation by giving them the benefit of the doubt that, if they had for any reason missed the opportunity for appeal, they would still be given that right, it prejudices all the residential taxpayers in Metropolitan Toronto: the people living in my riding in the city of North York, in the boroughs of Etobicoke and Scarborough, York and East York. The reason is that the tax levy across the board in Metropolitan Toronto, as it relates to school taxes, is borne by all the taxpayers within Metropolitan Toronto, so that of the 100 per cent of taxes that would be lost through the tax holiday to city of Toronto home owners, 75 per cent of those would also be borne by the rest of the home owners throughout the whole of the Metropolitan Toronto area, because a large portion of their tax bill relates to the school levy and the metropolitan tax levy.

Consequently, as I said at that time and I say again today, I suggest that for the Liberal Party in a very grandiose way to suggest there should be a tax holiday granted, as the third party is now suggesting as well, as a favour to these people is to do an injustice to the residential home owners on a broad base across the whole Metropolitan Toronto area. I suggest that rather than terrorizing the particular home owners designated in Bill 60, the truth is that all the taxpayers across the Metropolitan Toronto area would be victimized if this type of tax holiday were to be granted in the inequitable fashion being proposed by the two opposition parties.

It was for this reason I felt compelled to rise this afternoon and endeavour to put the matter more clearly into perspective. Before people tend to rush forward to take what politically looks like the very desirable approach of granting tax holidays, they had better consider the total ramifications of so doing.

In concluding my remarks, this bill is designed to deal with a specific problem equitably and fairly. I suggest it does so by singling out and providing an opportunity to those people whose homes were reassessed, through renovation or for other reasons, largely within the inner city of Toronto. It gives them in some instances a second opportunity and in other instances a brand new opportunity, which will be extended to no other people, to go before the assessment review courts to have their cases heard if they feel that for any reason they have been unfairly treated in the assessment process.

This may have some legitimate application, and I think perhaps both parties are to blame in this instance, in those limited cases where it may have particular validity, in which an assessor was not able, for one reason or another, after one, perhaps two, or even three visits to a home, to gain access to a property to do as thorough an inspection as would normally be done, leaving that assessor with no alternative but to do an "eyeball" assessment of the property from the outside. We recognize and accept that is not the best way to assess accurately property of any type, whether residential, commercial or industrial.

In those instances in particular, where people were not at home, given the numbers of calls that were made, and perhaps with legitimate reasons, certainly those people will have a second opportunity to have their homes more thoroughly assessed.

5 p.m.

This act recognizes that fact and provides for a new reassessment to be made in those cases where the assessor and the home owner affected can come to terms or, failing that, the home owner will have an opportunity to have his day in the assessment review court if his feelings about the value of his property differ from the reassessment made by the assessor. If they agree, it is my understanding they can participate in a signed agreement that would permit them to file with the court, thereby avoiding the necessity of the home owner having to attend the court.

In any event, the important point is that this bill does give the benefit of the doubt to many home owners who feel they did not have adequate time to file assessment appeal notices for a number of reasons that have been stated by the minister and by others in the debate as well. The opportunity is there and I feel justice will be done, as we have endeavoured to do throughout the whole process and in large measure have accomplished. This will be a conclusion of the implementation of that justice by ensuring that all home owners who have any reason or cause for complaint in this situation will have had their day in court.

Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, I rise to take part in this debate as a person who has spent a number of years in municipal life and watched the assessment system change quite dramatically since I was first elected as a councillor in 1948. The member for Oriole said he rose to put things, in his words, in perspective. I think at least some of what he said was his perspective, not the perspective of the public in general and certainly not the perspective of members of this party.

Bill 60 is symbolic of the malaise, the indecision, the ineptness and the unfairness in the assessment policies and practices of the Ministry of Revenue in the 12 years since it took over the assessment function in 1970 and more particularly in just the last few years. Any examination of the tortuous and devious route followed by this minister and his predecessors since 1970 leaves one bewildered as to any goal or consistency or logic in what has taken place since the assessment function was taken over.

Certainly it has all been done at tremendous cost. Darcy McKeough, when he left quite a number of years ago, admitted that the reassessment program that was done in addition to normal, routine assessment cost something more than $100 million, and nothing substantial has been accomplished by that expenditure of public funds. For at least five or six years they removed the right for municipalities even to appeal their apportionment of the regional or school board assessment, the common cost to many municipalities. They even removed the right for them to appeal that.

It is even worse than that at present. Now what we have is an assessment system whereby we are assessing municipalities under one system, the old system, but we are providing the payment of provincial grants under a new system, and there are two systems in effect which in many respects are contradictory and certainly compound the unfairness of the old original system. Most of the inequities that existed still exist or have even been compounded, and we are now going to spend another $2 million to $3 million of taxpayers' money, in addition to what has been spent and what will be spent here in Toronto, on this reassessment.

Even by this minister's standards, and this is the minister who cannot even give out property tax credits without creating a great deal of controversy and resentment, the mess we have is almost unbelievable.

I remember the predictions made by many municipalities when the province decided to take over the assessment system from the municipalities. They predicted that delays and all kinds of other problems would exist, and perhaps would be caused, by the government assessment system. Certainly that has been proved to be the case.

What is proposed in this bill is really no solution. Like everything else that is being done by the government when there is a problem, it is a political façade. It is really not going to solve anything. I suggest to the minister he knows that it is not really going to solve the problem that exists, and it is going to cause a tremendous bureaucratic tie-up in the assessment review court. I suggest to the minister that he knows, as I know, the great bulk of those people, almost all of them, will not win when they go to the assessment review court. It is just a political manoeuvre that he and his government hope will somehow or other defuse the public resentment in the city of Toronto for the reassessment program here and the tremendous increase in taxes resulting from that program.

I want to ask the minister, and I hope he will answer this, what is going to be the stance of the assessors at the court hearings? Is it true that those assessors will be there defending the assessments they have placed on those properties? Of course, it is true that the assessors were following the directions of his ministry and, therefore, that they were following policies which will be before the court; they will be able to prove that they did follow those policies and, therefore, the assessments will stand. As I say, there will be very few reductions unless there is some direction from the ministry.

I am asking the minister whether he is going to give any direction to the assessors who will be appearing there to defend the assessments or at least to be witnesses on the matter of the appeals which will be before the assessment review court. We know there really is going to be no change on many of these assessments; of the 4,900 -- I guess it will probably end up being 5,500 or 6,000 that are going to be before the court -- there will be no real change, and it will not be any solution to the problem. It will not reduce anybody's taxes.

My friend the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) moved the reasoned amendment that would revert the assessment to last year's assessment. That is the only route. If we are genuinely concerned about those people getting alleviation of those increases in taxes, that is the only route that can be followed.

5:10 p.m.

It is also true that Bill 60 sets a precedent, and it is unfair to other taxpayers in Metro and in the city of Toronto, because these problems exist across the whole province. Once again, the minister must know that. The same volume may not exist in other municipalities, but in every municipality across this province, and I refer particularly to Niagara, there has been the same attempt to pick up those exemptions which have now come to have a value of more than $2,500.

An attempt has been made, and I hope the minister will reply to this when he rises, to pick up improvements which he found under his market value assessments and to tack them on to the old assessments as he has done in Toronto and as has been done throughout the province. But only in the city of Toronto is he giving the property owners who passed the deadline, for whatever reason, the right of appeal. Why is he doing it only in the city of Toronto and not elsewhere in the province? All of us here know the reason. It is because of the political pressure put on him to do that. It has nothing to do with being fair as the Assessment Act requires.

Let us take urea formaldehyde foam insulation as another example. The minister is not permitting those people who have legitimate cases, and there can be no question about that, to have rather massive reductions in their assessments and thus in their taxes because of a devaluation of their homes. When questions have been asked in this House, he has certainly refused them over and over again the right to have their assessments reduced. He will not even take any initiative as he is required to do under the act. Yet he is permitting appeals by this group. As justified as it may be that they should have the right of appeal, the same justification exists for many other groups in our society, and particularly those with urea formaldehyde foam insulation.

The minister stubbornly refuses to let them have the reductions in assessments. I see the minister is smiling about it. Those people who have urea formaldehyde foam insulation in their homes are a big joke to the minister. If he had come to some of their meetings, perhaps he would not be smiling as broadly about it as he is now.

We have this contradiction in what the minister is doing with this bill. This bill shows up the inadequacy of the whole assessment appeal system. It is really no alternative to the fairness and accuracy which should exist in the assessments that are done by the ministry. The simple fact is that people do not use the appeal system. We know that throughout Ontario only something like 20 to 25 per cent of the people who have urea formaldehyde foam insulation in their homes actually appealed that. Knowing how much the value of their homes was decreased, they still did not use the appeal process.

According to the minister's own figures, I believe there are only something like 1,200 people, or the same 20 or 25 per cent, out of the 6,200 or 9,000, whichever figure one wants to use -- 9,000 if one adds the condominiums and 6,200 if one does not -- whose properties were reassessed and where changes were made in the assessments this year because of improvements, who had appealed their assessments by the deadline back on January 14.

It is not a satisfactory alternative to having the proper assessment done as is required by his ministry. Now he has come along with this measure which on the surface has certainly dampened the resentment at present but which will provide no solution.

People do not use the assessment appeal process. First, many of them do not use it because they do not realize they have assessment increases. Second, if they get increases in their assessments, they are not sure whether they apply just to their properties or whether it is a general increase. If it is a general increase, it will not push their taxes up.

More important, they think they do not know enough about the whole assessment appeal process to appeal them themselves, to carry through with it. They feel they have to get a lawyer if there is any chance of being successful; so they do not bother to appeal. They do not think it is worth taking time off work either. The cost of taking time off work and the likelihood of getting the assessment reduced does not balance off their loss of wages.

Finally, they do not expect they are going to win. The majority of them have not won in the past and will not win on this one. Only between five and 10 per cent of all the appeals that are made to the assessment review courts are successful on behalf of the applicant.

On matters of policy, the only solution is that the ministry make whatever changes it thinks are appropriate. It cannot pass the buck to the assessment review courts. The ministry has to make those changes. If these people should have a reduction in their assessment, if it should be moved back, then that should be done by the ministry, rather than turning over 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000 of them to the assessment review court to be bogged down there for one month, two months, six months, or a year or more.

The minister should have the courage to make a decision on these cases and not turn them over to a court that is not really set up for these purposes, in the way the court is set up for dealing with matters such as urea formaldehyde foam insulation. The minister, as required under the act, should be making these determinations and not leaving it up to a review court.

We in this party are not prepared to go along with this bill. We know it will not help the people. We know it comes from the policy of the government and of the ministry. We are not prepared to go along with a bill that does nothing except provide a façade behind which the minister, and perhaps senior personnel in the ministry, are working to try to make a policy that is inappropriate and unfair to the people of this province, trying to add one more Band-Aid in the hope it can fool some people into thinking it is doing something.

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to speak at length on this --

[Applause]

Mr. McClellan: Don't tease the bear, as the saying goes. We are anxious to proceed.

I do have a couple of comments I want to make. I am in the fortunate position of being just outside the minister's swath. While I live on the east side of Bathurst Street and my riding is on the west side of Bathurst Street, my riding appears to have been spared, by and large, but I suspect that is just another manifestation of the minister's incompetence, rather than any special favour.

But I have had some experience with the process of these so-called assessments. When he was making his introductory remarks, the minister described what would happen under this bill. He said there would be a number of reinspections of the properties that are enumerated in the schedule of the bill -- reinspections of 4,992 properties, or some of them. "Reinspections" is surely the wrong word for the minister to use. I do not have any way of knowing how many properties were inspected in the first place, but I know what happened on my own street, for example, and so I can relate my own anecdotal experience to the minister.

My neighbour across the street had his assessment doubled. My neighbour to the north of him had his assessment doubled, and a neighbour four houses up the street had his assessment doubled. What is so remarkable about these reassessments --

Hon. Mr. Ashe: They missed you.

5:20 p.m.

Mr. McClellan: That is not remarkable, if the minister had seen my house. Of course, that is the nub of the problem: my house perhaps could use a coat of paint and, therefore, I was spared. I can be candid here: my neighbours, who have been more diligent than myself in maintaining the external appearance of their houses, were clobbered.

But that is not my point, which is that not a single one of the three neighbours I mentioned laid eyes upon an assessor or spoke to one. So I have to conclude that either the assessors are invisible, that the minister has a squad of invisible people who cannot be seen with the naked eye, or that they were trespassing; perhaps they broke into the houses and did an assessment while the occupants and owners were away at work.

One has the sense, and I suspect it is accurate, that a number of these inspections were done on the basis of somebody driving by and seeing that the house appeared to have been sandblasted, that a new veranda had been attached or that some landscaping had been done. On the basis of the external appearance, a whole set of inferences was made by the assessors with respect to the value of the property. I submit that is a preposterous and totally illegitimate process for this government to impose on any group of citizens.

As I said, we do not know how many of the 4,992 reassessments were undertaken in that manner. I can only speak of my limited experience in my neighbourhood; and, since my riding was spared, not many constituents have complained. However, my colleagues the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) and the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden), as well as the member for Parkdale (Mr. Ruprecht) and other members, have expressed the outrage felt by their constituents who were subjected to this travesty of a process. They have brought their complaints to their MPPs, who have relayed them during the course of this debate.

The minister sits there and says: "These are not the facts. The truth will come out. You have your facts wrong." Well, I am sorry, but we are simply relaying the complaints brought forward by our constituents or, as in my case, speaking from the evidence of our own eyes. The minister can use whatever language he wants to categorize it, but the situation seems to be as I have described it.

That is the first problem that this silly episode illustrates. The question is why these reassessments occurred in the first place. That brings me to the second point I want to make, which is talking about section 86. The government spokespersons have been very upset about that. The minister does not like us to be talking about section 86.

The reason we are talking about it is that we are absolutely convinced the whole reassessment gimmick, which now has to be remedied by Bill 60, was simply one more attempt to try to push Toronto into accepting section 86, or market value assessment. I believe the minister conceded during the debate that he felt Toronto had been dawdling on the question of section 86.1 may be misquoting the minister and he may want to stand in his place and say so, but I do not think I am. I think I heard him say that.

Hon. Mr. Ashe: If the member wants me to correct him, I had better do so. I think I used the word "dawdling," but it was to do with the whole property tax question and not necessarily vis-à-vis section 86.

Mr. McClellan: That is a very neat distinction, which I feel confirms the point I am making. I think this government does want the city of Toronto to accept and implement section 86 as the basis for assessment.

Without belabouring the point, I simply state that we in the New Democratic Party are unalterably opposed to the imposition or implementation of section 86 at present because of the evidence of the final report of the joint committee on property tax reform, prepared by the city of Toronto and adopted, I believe, on January 18, 1982.

A number of speakers have referred to this report. I simply refer to those sections of the report on page 29 dealing with the impact of section 86 on single residential premises in the city of Toronto. Again without belabouring it, the report points out that if section 86 is implemented at present the brunt of the burden will fall on low- and moderate-income home owners with properties of low to moderate assessment value. So it would be utterly irresponsible for the city of Toronto to implement section 86 at present. It would mean that low-and moderate-income families living in houses with relatively low assessments would be driven out of the city. That would be the implication; that would be the impact of the implementation of section 86.

We on this side of the House are absolutely convinced that, for whatever reason, the government refuses to acknowledge this reality. It is determined, for what reasons we cannot fathom, to go ahead and try by whatever means to push, prod, lever, compel or impel the city of Toronto to adopt section 86 assessment.

We feel that the mess we have in front of us today is simply the latest in that ongoing chapter. Now, I sincerely hope we are wrong, because I know that my constituents in the southwestern end of the city of Toronto would be devastated if market value assessment were brought in. I do not live in a trendy part of Toronto; I do not live in a renovated-townhouse part of Toronto; I live in the west end, which has working class housing and a blue-collar community with low assessments. In fact, 90 to 95 per cent of my constituency is composed of that category of people and residences: single-family dwellings. They are the kind of people who would be wiped out if market value assessment were introduced with the present set of arrangements, the present kinds of tax credits that are available, etc.

The minister is proceeding with his section 86 impact study. That is fine. I do not have any doubt whatsoever of what the findings of that impact study will be. They will repeat the findings of the joint committee on property tax reform. They will establish once again that the brunt of the burden of section 86 in the city of Toronto will fall crushingly on low- and moderate-income home owners.

The third and final point I would like to make has to do with the remedy under this bill, which is access by each of the 4,992 victims of the minister's little fiasco to the assessment review court. This is referred to laughingly -- the member for St. George (Ms. Fish) did not refer to it laughingly, but she should have laughed when she said it -- as an independent tribunal, which, if I may paraphrase, would provide justice to each and every one of the 4,992 victims who availed themselves of that remedy.

5:30 p.m.

This sounds very nice. An appeal to the independent tribunal sounds like a nice remedy until one looks at the actual results of appeals before the assessment review court on a year by year basis. The joint committee on property tax reform studied the outcome of appeals before the assessment review court and found that, in 1975 for example, of those residential property owners who took the remedy available through the assessment review court and appealed their assessment, the city won a gain of $30.5 million in additional assessment for an additional tax revenue of $4.25 million.

That is wonderful. This is a wonderful system for the benefit of the tax collector, but let us not fool ourselves as to the likely outcome of the remedy set forward in Bill 60. In fact, the assessments are likely either to be maintained or increased for any of the 4,992 victims who go that route.

If anybody is so foolish as to think that, as a result of a mass series of appeals to the assessment review courts, these assessments are going to be rolled back, they are flying in the face of the experience of the assessment review court. The experience is that the property owner loses and the city wins when it comes to appeals dealing with residential property.

When it comes to appeals dealing with commercial and industrial property, as the minister well knows, it is an entirely different story. Commercial and industrial appellants are the winners before the assessment review court and the city is the loser, the assessor is the loser.

Again, the annual result of review board appeals bears this out. If one is a commercial or industrial appellant one is going to win if one goes to the court. If one is a residential appellant then one will lose. We look forward to the outcome, but I do not think there is any doubt as to what the outcome will be. It is a question of how much money each of the 4,992 victims is going to lose as a result of the remedy under this bill.

It is obviously designed to cover the back-sides of a number of municipal Tories as they go into a municipal election year. It looks very good, sounds very good. It has a certain plausibility about it, but I say that it is one of the most useless remedies that this government could possibly come up with because of the experience with the assessment review court.

Those who may be following this debate and who are affected by Bill 60, should be under no illusions that they are going to get a genuine remedy. It really is an incredibly bad mess that this minister and this government have led us into.

I listened with interest to the member for Oriole (Mr. Williams) arguing against what he referred to as tax holiday for those who had made renovations to their property.

I recall earlier in the debate, my colleague the member for Waterloo North (Mr. Epp) made what I thought was a very useful distinction between maintenance work on a property and renovation work on a property. I thought that was a very helpful and useful distinction that the member for Waterloo North made. When we are dealing with work on a residential property, the assessor should make a clear distinction between work which is maintenance, that is to say work which goes towards maintaining the value of the property and, on the other hand, renovation work which goes towards increasing the value of the property.

A sensible and sane assessment policy would be to encourage, by way of positive incentives, the citizens who do maintenance work on their property. It would make sure that if maintenance work were done the property owner would not be penalized or punished but, in fact, would have some kind of financial incentive to preserve the housing stock of this province.

It is legitimate that if the work is of a nature which increases the value of the property substantially, the assessment process take that work into account, assuming, of course, that there is some kind of fairness in the assessment process in the first place and it is not the kind of clandestine sham we have been subjected to in the city of Toronto.

At any rate, I would hope the minister would take up the suggestion made by my colleague the member for Etobicoke (Mr. Philip) and that made by the member for Waterloo North (Mr. Epp), that this kind of incentive be built into the provincial and municipal governments' assessment policies, and that we use this very sorry episode as an opportunity to stand back from the whole process, and reassess the assessment process itself and the whole process of municipal taxation.

In conclusion, my great fear is that this government is so bullheaded and stubborn, and determined to move towards market value assessment regardless of the consequences, that it is simply regrouping its forces, using Bill 60 to cover up its past failures of omission and commission. That once the dust has settled from this folly, we can expect another assault on the city of Toronto and other municipalities which have refused to knuckle under to its imperious will.

For those reasons, Mr. Speaker, I support the reasoned amendment put forward by the member for Riverdale that the assessments simply be rolled back to their value prior to the reassessment and that we go forward on an entirely new basis once this matter has been cleared up.

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Speaker, I was not going to enter in the debate but I have been listening to the comments of the party to my left. Perhaps some of them were suggesting that we in this particular party supported Bill 60 in order to allow those persons, through reassessment or revaluation of property, to have the right to a fair hearing and to give the property owners or tenants the right to appeal their assessments. I do not think, in a sense, anybody can say that that would not be speaking in the right terms for supporting the bill.

Perhaps one disapproves of the method that the minister has applied in bringing about some form of re-evaluation and reassessment in the city of Toronto. No doubt about it, it has been needed for a number of years. The member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart) has spoken about the assessment that has taken place in a number of municipalities and they made some reflections in the Niagara region. As the critic of the Ministry of Revenue, our position in this party has been that we are forced to have some form of re-evaluation of property throughout the province to bring about some uniformity in assessment practices in Ontario.

I think everybody will have to agree there are a number of inequities that still remain in assessment procedures and practices carried out in Ontario. I have often supported the principle that the place to begin is with proper assessment procedures established by qualified assessors. I believe that we do have qualified assessors in Ontario, who should be given the opportunity to use some sort of manual as a guide in performing their duties and responsibilities in the re-evaluation of assessment on a uniform basis in the province. I do not think any member would disagree with that. But one should be rather critical of the ad-hoc procedure the minister is applying in the city of Toronto, whether it is under section 86 of the Assessment Act or by agreement with the Toronto city fathers. I think they realize that there are problems in assessment practices here.

5:40 p.m.

In the 15 years I have spent in Toronto I have noticed that a number of what we can call renovations to older homes in the city have caused them to become rental units rather than private dwellings. In a number of cases this has increased the rental value of the property. On the basis of the exemption that was applied by the former Treasurer back in the early 1970s, a person could renovate his property or add to it and receive an exemption up to a sum of $2,500 of the assessed value.

I think there were many abuses of that exemption at the time and this, in a sense, has brought about some of the inequities that remain with regard to the assessment of property in municipalities. I think these inequities should be corrected by whatever measure the minister chooses to apply, and I am in favour of some measure of guidance from this government on the subject.

However, the principle of market value assessment has not worked in New York state and I do not think it will work in Ontario. The state Legislature ran into difficulties trying to implement it and I think they have finally washed their hands of the whole matter and said, "Go back and try to come up with some form of assessment practice that will be acceptable in a regional municipality or a county structure."

Just recently I met with an assessor on an appeal by a property owner who thought his assessment was too high. After reviewing the situation the assessor considered that although it may be a new property, there might have been some information that had not been passed on to the assessor and that some corrections could be made without going to appeal.

This was a practice that was always used in the former county of Welland. The elected officials -- the member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart) was on that committee at one time -- thought that this was a good, reasonable approach to take. Sometimes it is a political decision that has to be accepted by all parties involved in the re-evaluation of property.

I must tell the minister, I thought the former county of Welland, now the regional municipality of Niagara, was using market value assessment and I was a little amazed to learn that they were still using the little black book that was agreed upon by members of Welland county council with the county assessor years ago. They thought it was a good, reasonable approach to take to bring in some form of re-evaluation of property. If members of this House want fair assessment in the province, and to pick off the inequities in the system, they will have to come up with some reasonable form of re-evaluation.

I know a certain group of ratepayers in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake who are still not satisfied with section 86 of the Assessment Act. I am sure the minister has had quite a bit of dialogue with those particular people. Their chairman, Mr. Birch, has brought to my attention that there are still inequities in that municipality under section 86, and rightly so.

The description of a property was presented to me. A person with a 35-foot lot, who has a home that is smaller than that of somebody on a 75-foot lot, was assessed much higher than the latter. I would have to question whether section 86 of the Assessment Act, if applied in the right direction, is going to remove those inequities.

But on the question of reassessment under section 86, whichever way the minister wants to bring it in, through the back door, the front door or whatever, there are still inequities that remain within that municipality. That is the matter of the apportionment cost to the region and, I suppose, related to the metro form of government.

It is interesting to note that last July, I think it was, the minister set out the regulations applying to the section of the act which apply to the equalized assessment factor. I want to suggest to the minister, if he follows the principle that is outlined in the regulations, I have noted that all the Metro Toronto municipalities have an equalization factor of 11.3. By going through the list of about 10 pages that make reference to a number of municipalities, regions and county levels of government, one finds a variation from a 4.3 equalization factor to a high of 38 and 48. It varies on down the line.

The question is, why is it Metro Toronto has an equalization factor of 11.3? I understand there may be some benefits from the minister which apply in this factor to the larger Metropolitan Toronto area, but it does not remove the inequities in assessment practices within Metro Toronto or any region.

I suggest to the minister that if he cannot come to some agreement within his government or ministry, with the expert staff he has sitting behind the Speaker, then perhaps to settle the issue of market value assessment or evaluation he should appoint, as I would if I were minister, a committee of the Legislature to review it, let it come back with a political decision and then go to the municipalities to bring in revaluation of assessment. I know in my community, and I am sure it is so across Ontario, there are persons who are paying much more in taxes than their neighbours are paying.

One of the things brought to my attention in meeting the regional assessor was: "If you are not happy with the assessment you can appeal to the courts, but you have to bring forward the information as to what the neighbour's property is assessed at. You have to dig up that information." If the government is going to have an appeal court for assessment purposes, I think all the information should be available to a person in an appeal. The books should be open. The public should know what factors the assessor is using. How does he arrive at a figure of assessment? What are the rental values if they are applied?

At one time there was always a section under the Assessment Act that would apply to depreciation. I think there is no such thing now that is applied to the revaluation of assessment under section 86. I do not think depreciation assessment is used, particularly in the Niagara-on-the-Lake situation where the older homes have been assessed much higher than some of the buildings which have just been built. I suggest to the minister that some place along the line he has to take into consideration that depreciation was always a factor in arriving at a reasonable and fair assessment within a municipality.

I suggest that one way the minister can get out of this and get the heat off himself is to appoint a committee of the Legislature and let it make the political decision as to which way his assessment practices should go. I agree with him that something has to be done to bring about equalized and fair value assessment across Ontario, across a broad spectrum, but there must be a manual for certain regions and counties. Market value assessment cannot be based upon factors, where properties have been sold at fair market value to willing buyers in the city of Toronto, that will also apply to the city of St. Catharines, the town of Fort Erie or even to Brampton. I think they will have to set up certain regions to bring about fair assessment practices in the province.

5:50 p.m.

As my colleague has suggested, we do support the bill in principle. It does give the persons who have been reassessed an opportunity to appeal their assessment before a court. The court will make the decision of whether the value is within the general practice of reassessment throughout the whole municipality.

The first place the minister made a mistake was by not having a number of assessors come through Toronto to do a proper assessment. I give the minister credit now. I understand he has a number of assessors doing blanket coverage. My colleagues to the left may not agree with that principle, but I think the only way one can bring about good assessment practices is to bring the assessors in throughout the municipality so that all appeals come about at one time and one can then judge by the number of appeals whether the assessors are carrying out the principles of good, sound assessment practices. We support the bill in principle.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Downsview.

Mr. Di Santo: For where?

The Deputy Speaker: Yes, I was right. The member for Downsview.

Mr. Wildman: You had better speak up when you say Downsview.

Mr. Roy: That's you, Odoardo.

Mr. Di Santo: Even my friend Albert recognizes me.

Mr. Roy: A good choice. I applaud the Speaker's decision to recognize you.

Mr. Di Santo: Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak against Bill 60, An Act to provide for the Institution of Complaints for Certain Assessments made in the year 1981 in the City of Toronto.

From the description of the bill itself, we realize that in the minister's mind, this is a remedy to a situation that was obviously wrong, because if what the minister had done in 1981 was right there would be no need for Bill 60. We all remember what happened in 1981 when an army of assessors invaded ridings that were held by people who did not belong to the governing party of the province and furiously reassessed property that had not been assessed properly for decades. Then when there was a public furore, what did the minister do? He said: "Okay, I will give you the possibility of recourse. You can appeal the decision of the assessors."

Many of the speakers who preceded me said that routine would not change anything because all of us know if one appeals an assessment, extremely rarely is it successful. In fact, every year dozens of constituents come to me who cannot afford to pay taxes which are unfair by their very nature. They cannot afford their property taxes because they are senior citizens, injured workers, or citizens on Canada pension disability and therefore do not have the ability to pay taxes. They appeal the assessment. I have never seen one single case that has been changed at the appeal level.

With Bill 60, the minister knows very well that the majority of the people who have been assessed and whose taxes have jumped two or three times will not see their taxes rolled back. Therefore, this is an exercise in the best Tory tradition to calm down the furore of the people who are suffering because of this irrational attack from the government, but it will not change the situation.

What the government should do and has not done and will not do is reform the whole property tax system. The government should have come to this House and proposed a change to the property tax system, which is unfair by admission of the government, and by admission of the several commissions and royal commissions and inquiries and investigations that have taken place in this province since 1966.

As a matter of fact, when I came to Canada, I was greeted by a commission that was studying property tax reform. That commission was chaired by a Mr. Smith. That commission made recommendations that seemed sensible even to a person totally unbiased as I was, because I came from a country where property taxes have very little impact on the citizens. Most of the taxes are paid on the basis of the ability of the citizens to pay taxes, which means their incomes or revenues. As a matter of fact, there is a very large group of citizens who are exempted from paying property taxes, either because of their incomes or because of their location. For instance, the minister might be interested to know that all the small towns in the mountains above a certain altitude do not pay property taxes because they are disadvantaged.

Senior citizens are not assessed at all as far as property taxes are concerned. As a matter of fact, my parents do not pay property taxes because they are retired. It is common sense that, since they do not have any substantial income, they do not pay property taxes. Apart from that, we know, and the minister knows, even though he refuses adamantly to recognize the fact, that a part of the property taxes we pay in Ontario is directed to support services that have nothing to do with the fact that a person owns property.

A large portion of the taxes in the municipality of North York goes for education costs that are totally unrelated to property. Despite that, we have a situation where citizens who have no income and, in most of the cases, senior citizens who have nobody in the school system, are forced to pay property taxes. I wonder whether one day the minister, instead of making arrogant and definite statements, will come up with a rational explanation and tell us why it is that in 1982 the people who fall under Bill 60, and all the other citizens of Ontario, must pay education taxes from the property. I have never understood that, and I never will.

I have never had any logical explanation from the government, not from this minister, not from the Treasurer, and we know why, Mr. Speaker. We know that property taxes are the easiest way for this government to dump on the municipalities a burden that otherwise would enrage the citizens. We saw that two weeks ago on May 13 when the Treasurer brought down the budget, a masterpiece of Tory policies. He imposed sales tax on building materials that are used by municipalities, boards of education, hospitals and other public institutions. We know very well that next year that imposition of a sales tax on building materials will be reflected in the bill we will get when we pay property taxes.

Mr. Speaker, I know it is six o'clock and I am going to adjourn the debate, but before adjourning the debate I want to repeat what I said at the beginning. This bill is originated by an error that the minister made in 1981 and it will not redress that situation. I adjourn the debate at this point, Mr. Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: I do not believe the member meant to adjourn the debate. He just meant to sit down.

The House recessed at 6:01 p.m.

May 25, 1982