Hansard Transcripts 1982-Jun-30 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr. Speaker: Before the routine proceedings, I would like to remind all honourable members that the presentation of the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship is being held in the front lobby at six o'clock this evening, and it would be appreciated if all members would use the elevators and not the great staircase at adjournment this evening.

HIGHLAND DRESS

Mr. Riddell: I wonder, Mr. Speaker, if you would permit me a minute or two to draw to the attention of the House an interesting bit of history that took place 200 years ago tomorrow, since we are going to be celebrating Canada's birthday tomorrow.

All Scotsmen are aware that in 1746, after the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion at Culloden, the Parliament of Great Britain imposed a ban on the wearing of Highland dress. This ban is no longer in effect, but comparatively few Scotsmen seem to be aware of precisely how and when it was lifted.

An hon. member: So to speak.

Mr. Foulds: The ban or the kilt?

Mr. Riddell: So to speak. This year marks the bicentenary of the lifting of the ban. Two hundred years ago the head of the house of Graham, the Duke of Montrose, introduced into Parliament a bill to repeal all those provisions of the acts of 1746 that prohibited the wearing of Highland dress.

After passing through both Houses, the bill received royal assent from King George III on July 1, 1782. During the past 200 years the multicoloured patterns of tartans, genuine and otherwise, have become increasingly popular everywhere, with the result that it can safely be said that the repeal of 1782 has had a greater visual impact in more parts of the world than any other event in recorded history.

July 1 is, of course, a day of commemoration for all Canadians, but this year those who are of Scottish descent will have a second event to commemorate.

DEATH OF JAMES AULD

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Premier (Mr. Davis) it is my sad duty to inform the House of the death of James Auld. He was found unconscious in his office this morning. Efforts to revive him in hospital were unsuccessful, and the doctors suspect he died of a heart attack. He was 61 years old.

Of all the members of this House in the history of the Legislature, Jimmy Auld is one of the few who commanded the respect, indeed the affection, of political allies and opponents alike. He was well known for his concern, his caring, his courtesy and his tact. He was dignified and gracious. Even by middle life he had taken on the mantle of the statesman.

A reporter once wrote that if there was a ministry with a burning issue, Auld was the one appointed to find the solution. He had the capacity to bring peace and tranquillity to issues because everyone knew that Auld would do his best. Yet he did not deal with a heavy hand. He was every inch a gentleman, a gentle person. He personified the ideal of what people in public life should be. His staff used to say that he was like someone sent over from central casting.

A wise person once said that you could tell how old someone was by how many friends he had. Jimmy Auld had a lot of friends. After all, by the time he left the House last year he had been around this place for 27 years. His life reads like a textbook case for someone wanting to study a career in politics. Indeed, his is an example for all people to emulate.

He was first elected to public life as an alderman in Brockville in 1951. After George Drew spoke to his father, Auld was persuaded to run in the provincial by-election in 1954. He was very proud of his eastern Ontario roots and he worked to protect the heritage of that region. He served as vice-chairman and acting chairman of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.

He moved steadily through a series of cabinet posts including Minister of Transport, Minister of Tourism and Information, Minister of Public Works and Minister of the Environment. He was responsible for the Ontario Science Centre, which was Ontario's centennial project, and the reconstruction of Old Fort William. He also created the Ontario Heritage Foundation. He went on to serve as Minister of Colleges and Universities, as Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet, as Minister of Energy and, finally, as Minister of Natural Resources.

As all members of the House will know, he served with distinction in the Second World War with the Queen's Own Rifles and landed in Normandy on D-Day. In 1978, he was appointed honorary Lieutenant-Colonel of the Brockville Rifles.

Although James Auld retired from this House last year, he did not retire from public service. Instead, he continued his tradition of public service as chairman of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission until June 1 of this year, when he was appointed chairman of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses. He was at work in that office this morning.

The list of positions held by James Auld and the contributions he made to life in Ontario could go on as long as a James Auld story. He will be remembered by all of us for having the incredible knack of turning an ordinary shaggy-dog story into a full-length novel. Had he ever been in the opposition, he would have been devastating in a filibuster.

Many of us know that James Auld was also a jazz drummer, and a darned good one at that, and was probably the foremost authority on jazz music ever elected to the Legislature. He was, above all, a loving husband and father. He liked nothing better than to be with his family at their home overlooking the St. Lawrence River, or out on his boat with his wife Nancy, his daughter Alexandra, and his son James Jr.

A talented, gracious, sensitive, dedicated friend has died. We will miss him dearly but we will keep his memory very much alive. On behalf of this government and the members of the Legislature, I extend our deepest sympathies to his wife and children and to the entire Auld family.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, obvious and genuine affection comes through in the Deputy Premier's beautifully written commentary on this good friend of us all. The untimely death of James Auld so soon after his retirement from the Legislature comes as a shock to all of us and to all of his friends from all sides of the House. He was one member who did have friends on every side of this House. He was admired, respected and well liked, and we could have used him in the filibuster.

Jimmy Auld showed none of the scars from the cut and thrust of partisan debate. He had style and an engaging smile, he was a genuine gentleman -- as the Deputy Premier stated so well -- all transcending political ideology. He was a true-blue Tory, there is no doubt, but Liberals and New Democrats liked him also.

2:10 p.m.

Typically, Jimmy Auld died this morning in the service of Ontario and the citizens of this great province. A native son, a military veteran, a politician of style and substance, James Alexander Charles Auld will be missed by all involved in the provincial scene.

On behalf of my Liberal colleagues, both past and present, all of us who knew him and served with him, I extend our deepest condolences to the members of his family.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, there is not much more that can or needs be added to what has been said by the Deputy Premier and by the Leader of the Opposition. The shock that reverberated throughout this building this morning with the news of Jimmy's death is perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the esteem in which he was held by everybody. If Jimmy were here he would be the first to say, "Let us share some of the stories with regard to Jimmy Auld," and they would be delightful.

I think the member for Wellington South (Mr. Worton) and I are the only persons in the Legislature who shared 25 or 26 of those 27 years with Jimmy. We would agree with everything that has been said about his gentlemanliness, about his humanity and about his exasperating capacity to take an attack and turn it, I am not sure into what, but certainly he turned it.

During the first four years that I shared this Legislature with Jimmy Auld, three members who were fondly dubbed "the three musketeers," John Robarts, Jimmy Auld and Ernie Jackson, shared an apartment in a building on Avenue Road. The stories that came out of the delightful goings on, the joie de vivre, should really be set down some time because they are a tribute to James Auld's humanity, his sensitivity and his willingness to have rapport virtually with everybody with very great ease.

We are all saddened today, and I join with the Deputy Premier and the Leader of the Opposition in extending our sense of deep bereavement to his wife Nancy and their son and daughter.

Mr. Runciman: Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Leeds to extend our sympathy to Nancy, Alex and Jamie and other members of the Auld family.

Jims personal relationship with my family goes back into the 1940s when he and my dad were partners in several business ventures. That association in no small way encouraged me to follow Jim's political career with almost the interest of a family member.

It is extremely difficult to accept Jim's passing. He seemed indestructible as far back as when, as a young man, he stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and was the lone survivor of his platoon.

Jimmy not only received the respect and admiration of the people of Leeds during his almost 27 years as an MPP, but also, from many, their love. He was a unique individual and, just as he never forgot us, we will never forget him.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

EMERGENCY PLANS BILL

Hon. G. W. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing for consideration of this House the Emergency Plans Act.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in emergency planning and response by municipalities and the provincial government. This interest was sparked by such incidents as the train derailment in Mississauga. My own involvement in the recent derailment in Medonte township dramatically brought home to me the need for emergency planning legislation.

To review the initiatives taken by the government, in early 1980 the cabinet committee on emergency planning directed that umbrella legislation be drafted. The aim was to provide a comprehensive framework for emergency planning and response by municipalities and the province.

An interministerial committee subsequently prepared draft legislation. In June 1981, my predecessor as Solicitor General released for public comment a discussion paper which included the draft legislation. Public response was received, particularly from municipalities. The suggestions were reviewed by the ministries of the Solicitor General and Municipal Affairs and Housing. Amendments were made as a result of this public comment and a draft Emergency Plans Act was tabled in the Legislature last December.

Further input has come from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario this spring. AMO staff met with officials from the ministries of the Solicitor General and Municipal Affairs and Housing to resolve further outstanding issues.

The members can see that the proposals have already been the subject of extensive consultation. We look forward to further contributions from the members of this House as the bill proceeds through the legislative process. We are confident the proposed legislation will provide the foundation that is necessary for effective emergency planning and response.

We have worked closely with municipal organizations and municipalities in the formulation of this bill because it is designed to encourage local initiatives and planning in this very important field. The most immediate and effective response to most emergencies should come from the municipal level.

I intend to introduce such draft legislation for review by this Legislature later this afternoon.

INTERN INQUIRER

Mr. T. P. Reid: Mr. Speaker, I have two points of order. I draw to your attention, in case you have not seen it, the Intern Inquirer which was published by this year's interns. I respectfully suggest that, because some of these bright young people will no doubt lose some of that brightness and perhaps run for public office, their names should also be suitably inscribed in Hansard as we go from year to year. You might wish to take that under consideration before the end of the session.

BUDGET STUDIES

Mr. T. P. Reid: Mr. Speaker, I have another point of order related to the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller), who looks as if he is taking orders for pizzas over there to add the seven per cent on.

I had a question on the Order Paper pertaining to the budget papers or the background studies relative to the expansion of the base of the retail sales tax. I asked in that question, which was actually tabled on May 26, "Would the Treasurer please table any background studies, tables, calculations and memoranda which would clarify how this estimate was made?"

The response was that there were some very superficial tables of data drawn up from Statistics Canada. The answer from the deputy minister was, "In the interests of budget security, I feel it would be inappropriate to table background studies, tables, calculations and memoranda that relate to the formation of budget policy."

This morning in the standing committee on resources development, the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) and others, myself included, consistently asked the Treasurer if he had any studies on the impact of a seven per cent sales tax on the restaurant and food services industry. The Treasurer's answer was, for him, brief and to the point. He said, "No."

There is another contradiction here. I do not know whether we are supposed to believe they had budget studies they would not release, or to believe the Treasurer that there were no budget studies or impact studies. Perhaps the Treasurer would like to respond.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I heard the honourable member referring to his written question on the Order Paper and the questions in committee this morning. The questions in committee were quite specific in terms of impact on sales, not whether I had basic background information to help me formulate a budget. Of course I have basic background information to formulate a budget, but part of that information was not specifically the effect upon sales.

MINING ACT REVISIONS

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, today I would like to announce the publication of a discussion paper on the Ontario Mining Act.

Mr. Nixon: I thought it was the delivery of the

jet.

Hon. Mr. Pope: That is coming.

Mr. Ruston: Where is that jet?

Hon. Mr. Pope: The member was in the estimates last September and turned with his tail between his legs when we discussed that matter.

Mr. Nixon: Are you paying parking on that?

Mr. Ruston: Did you pay customs duty on it to bring it back from Texas?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Pope: By the way, why did he approve the jet in the estimates? I do not understand that. And he did.

Mr. Speaker: Never mind the interjections please.

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, today I would like to announce the publication of a discussion paper on the Ontario Mining Act.

The paper contains a number of proposed revisions which are in response to new exploration technologies developed by the mining industry. Once incorporated into the new act, they will enable individuals and companies to operate in Ontario along simpler lines and with less regulatory interference.

For the convenience of the members, I will touch briefly on some of the highlights contained in this paper. A staker's licence will be valid for life; block staking or enlarged claims may contain up to 640 acres each; allowance of assessment work credits will be based on dollars rather than man-days, and a lease will be issued for mining rights only.

Also, claim holders intending to assess or develop land must give a written notice to the surface rights owner 30 days before starting work. If any damage results from this work, the claim holder must compensate the surface rights owner. These changes will enable the prospector-developer to plan more effective exploration programs.

I would emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that the revisions are suggestions only. We do not want to legislate anything without full public awareness and support. My ministry is a firm believer in public comment being a part of all of its programs, and these proposed revisions to the Mining Act are no exception.

Therefore, I encourage all members to comment on these proposed revisions and to urge their constituents to make us aware of their views. A copy of the discussion paper may be picked up at any office of the ministry on or after July 16, 1982.

In order that early revision may be made to the existing act, we have requested that submissions be made before September 30, 1982. These should be in writing and sent to my attention.

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTION

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: To the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) with respect to the question asked by my colleague the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini), which is 195 on the Order Paper. The information there states, "Approximate date information available June 17, 1982," which is two weeks past. The question was initially asked on May 28. Can we be assured that an answer to that question may be available before the end of the session? Is that the appropriate thing to do?

Mr. Speaker: I am sure the minister will take note of that and make the information available.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, on a point of

privilege: I can look after that matter right now.

I can recall signing that answer at least a week to 10 days ago, I am sure. I do not know where it is.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure it will appear.

ORAL QUESTIONS

DEATHS AT HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question both to the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) and to the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman), and since it looks as if they are dancing over there at the moment, perhaps they would be happy to answer it together.

Perhaps the Attorney General would be good enough to bring this House up to date as to the status of the police investigation into the Hospital for Sick Children? What is happening? What is the interface of that with the Dubin inquiry? What is the state of the information the minister has or various officials have at this point?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, all I can tell the Leader of the Opposition about the police investigation is that it is ongoing. Obviously, a police investigation is not going to be effective if there are regular public announcements as to what is happening. As I indicated earlier, the police are well aware of the importance of concluding their investigation as soon as is reasonably possible. I cannot say anything other than that the investigation is still active.

Mr. Peterson: There appears to be a cloak around what is happening. This question could just as easily go to the Minister of Health, if the Attorney General would like to redirect it. My concern is that the Attorney General is now starting to respond selectively to various questions put to him by journalists from newspapers. He is, I gather, vetting those answers through the law officers of the crown, answering certain questions in varying amounts of detail.

Some of the answers to those questions are not correct. They do not conform with the facts. I point out, for example, a particular answer saying that no one had requested a public inquiry when, in fact, the Attorney General has correspondence, as we have correspondence, requesting a full public inquiry into the entire matter.

My question is this: Is the Attorney General going to continue selectively responding piecemeal to questions put to him by journalists and let the pressure mount from articles in the newspapers every day, or is he at some point going to make this thing public, recognizing it will probably ultimately end up with a public inquiry anyway?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I really have nothing to add. Without being somewhat repetitive, surely the Leader of the Opposition is aware that if there is going to be an effective police investigation it has to be done in a relatively confidential manner. A public inquiry at the same time as a police investigation is almost abhorrent to our system.

Quite apart from undermining the effectiveness of the investigation, it could also be very unfair to individuals who might be suspects and who, at the same time they are being investigated, are asked to give evidence in a public inquiry. Even the Leader of the Opposition would appreciate that is not the proper course of action.

The Minister of Health certainly does not require me to answer for him. He has attempted to give answers in relation to questions that are directed to maintaining a high level of public confidence in the Hospital for Sick Children. If the member says that is selective answering to selective questions, yes it is, in so far as the answers are obviously calculated not to interfere with or undermine either the police investigation or the Dubin inquiry, which is really a form of investigation and a form of inspection itself.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, would the Attorney General not admit there are extraordinary circumstances in this case because of the enormous public interest and the enormous steps taken in making statements here in the Legislature? Does he not at least feel a responsibility to report occasionally to the Ontario Legislature, and through the Legislature to the public of Ontario, whether progress is being made in the investigation and whether he sees an end in sight to the police investigation?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Not necessarily, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Peterson: It is obvious that the Attorney General and I disagree fundamentally on how the police investigation and an open public inquiry, which has the capacity to have hearings in camera, could complement each other. In the absence of information and with the pressure developing every single day -- the newspapers obviously have a great interest in this story and a number of parents are still not satisfied by the responses and are very upset about it -- I would suggest that the ultimate aim we all want to achieve, clearing the reputation of Sick Children's Hospital, is not being achieved by the method he has chosen.

Since the Attorney General will probably end up with a royal commission inquiry or a public inquiry of some type or other, could he give this House an indication of how long he is prepared to wait, operating under the present systems he has instituted, before he takes the next step?

2:30 p.m.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, on the advice of the Minister of Health, the government has selected one of the most distinguished jurists of this nation to head and conduct a very careful investigation into the current procedures at the Hospital for Sick Children. Obviously Mr. Justice Dubin will want to make public his first report, if there is more than one report, as soon as possible.

I understand the concerns, but I would think any rational citizen would appreciate the fact that we have a very distinguished Canadian citizen who is looking at the very issues that are relevant to the concerns of parents of patients in that hospital. Surely that is the responsible approach.

Mr. Peterson: I do not disagree with his great reputation. That was not the question I asked. However, perhaps I did not ask it very well, or perhaps the Attorney General chose not to answer.

TAX BURDEN

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Treasurer. The Treasurer was at the committee last night and listened to the various municipalities of different sizes and with different problems coming in from all across this province, all making two fundamental points to the Treasurer.

The first point is that the municipalities cannot accommodate some of the cost increases resulting from the expansion of the retail sales tax. It is going to affect their property tax base and increase their taxes in a variety of municipalities.

The second point, and probably the one that makes them even angrier, is the lack of discussion and the unilateral imposition of these taxes on these municipalities, which have caught them short after their budgets have been set.

The Treasurer understands what they are saying. What is his response to these municipalities and these beleaguered taxpayers whom he has put under so much pressure?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, there was quite a bit of discussion on that matter at the committee last night and at other meetings too. Tax changes can be of two types. I suggest to the honourable member that a fundamental tax change does not involve sales tax application. I suggest that the kind of discussion we have had with municipalities before was aimed at finding whether there were formulas that could be used for basic funding of municipal and educational expenditures. That kind has gone on, not necessarily with success, but at least it has gone on over a period of years. I do not believe it is currently going on.

What I did was the kind of thing that treasurers past and present have done; that is, increase either the rate of a tax or the application of a tax that was already in existence. It was not a fundamental tax change.

Mr. Peterson: With great respect, a great number of people disagree with the Treasurer that it was a fundamental tax change, because he is taxing items previously exempted. That is the reality.

The Treasurer has made great speeches criticizing the federal government and he has said in his own budget that when the tax laws are changed fundamentally one has to work together with citizens and businesses in a co-operative manner; those directly affected, not just the bureaucrats and politicians should have a real say in these matters.

Given the fact that his colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) has called for a new consultation process, and given the fact that these people view it as fundamental, whether the Treasurer does or not, surely that should speak to him and prove to him that he mishandled this situation and that he should have been involved in the consultation process.

At least he owes them the deferral of the tax to the next tax year so they can make the adjustment when they have some knowledge of it. Is the Treasurer prepared to postpone that this year?

Hon. F. S. Miller: No, I am not prepared to. On the other hand, I suggest that where there are fundamental changes such as property tax reform, broached back in the early 1970s, or such as total reassessment changes, then there has been very extensive negotiation and discussion.

For example, at present and since my budget of 1981, we have been talking about changing the methods by which farmers are taxed for property taxes. That kind of change has been subjected to multilateral discussions and I believe is just now, about a year later than we predicted, being finalized, not to the total satisfaction of everyone but to general satisfaction.

Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, last night the Treasurer stated to the committee that he felt these municipalities had enough flexibility within their budgets that they could pick up the $2 million, I believe it was, in Hamilton's case, the $1.7 million in Windsor's case and those of the other municipalities that came before us; yet the representations before the committee were very clear that they had squeezed every single cent they could out of their budgets.

How can the Treasurer possibly justify not withdrawing that part of his budget or at least providing interim financing for those communities until they can properly budget for it in 1983? How can he justify this in view of the fact that he criticized the federal government for doing the same thing to the province that he is now doing to the municipalities? It is almost exactly the same amount of money.

Hon. F. S. Miller: No, Mr. Speaker, I think we talked about the percentages. I pointed out that on average it was 0.5 per cent for the municipalities. I pointed out last night that in their case their prediction of revenues is far more secure than mine. I am facing not only a reduction in revenues but also a potential increase in costs because of social service cost increases that are open-ended. Most of us who try to estimate a spending pattern seldom estimate within the percentage of change this tax caused.

Mr. Peterson: While the Treasurer may not feel that these tax changes are fundamental, all the municipal politicians in this province, with very few exceptions, believe that they are fundamental and that they should have been involved in the consultation process.

We can get into a semantic debate about what is fundamental and what is not; but would the Treasurer not agree that this whole exercise we are going through speaks to the deficiency of the budget-making process? He and I and everyone in this House should be working on new methods to share these kinds of decisions with the people affected, as we have suggested before, through the issuance of a white paper and through a standing committee on budgetary matters of this House, to avoid the kind of accusations that have been levelled against the Treasurer day after day, by person after person, in that committee he is sitting through.

That kind of process would have prevented the abuse he is taking now and rightly deserves. Does he not think it speaks to the need to clean up the budgetary process?

Hon. F. S. Miller: No, I do not. I suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that immediately after the budget was presented there was a columnist -- I cannot recall just who; I think it was perhaps one in the Toronto Star -- who commented on my proposal, through the budget paper, to look at personal income tax and Ontario health insurance plan collections. He said the white paper route was the kind of thing that should have been done in other jurisdictions, such as the federal government, before established programs financing was changed.

Mr. Peterson: Why don't you take responsibility for Ontario? You can sit here and criticize him all you want.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Just a second now. Where we have a major change, we are doing that. The member is trying to imply that a sales tax change is a fundamental, major change. I can assure the member that I understand how municipal councillors feel. At no time did I expect any single municipal councillor, no matter how loyal to this government or this party, to stand up and say he agreed with me.

FUNERAL OF JAMES AULD

Hon. Mr. Gregory: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: I wonder if I might ask the indulgence of the House. Some members have expressed an interest in the funeral arrangements for Mr. Auld.

James Auld will be resting at the Irvine Funeral Home, 4 James Street East, at the corner of Victoria Avenue and James in Brockville. Visitors will be received on Friday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The funeral will be from St. Peter's Anglican Church at 2 p.m. on Saturday, with donations to St. Vincent de Paul palliative care fund, Brockville, care of the Irvine Funeral Home.

2:40 p.m.

CIVIL SERVANTS' WAGE SETTLEMENTS

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Chairman of Management Board with regard to the wages of Ontario's public employees. The government has already negotiated seven out of nine contracts covering 83 per cent of Ontario Public Service Employees' Union members. Does the minister believe that any of the settlements he has negotiated will fuel inflation?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, that is a dandy.

Mr. Foulds: I thought it was pretty good.

Hon. Mr. McCague: I presume the New Democratic Party agrees that the settlements arrived at to date are reasonable.

Mr. Foulds: I wonder if the minister would mind taking another crack at the first question while I ask him a supplementary.

Surely the minister is aware that, of the OPSEU membership of 52,000, 1,700 of those people will earn less than $15,000 in 1982, 13,235 will earn between $15,000 and $17,500, and another 13,157 will earn between $17,500 and $20,000. In other words, 54 per cent of all OPSEU members will earn less than the average industrial wage in Ontario.

Can the minister explain what possible relationship exists between a worker in the public service of Ontario trying to raise a family and pay a mortgage with an income of $15,000 to $18,000 and Mr. MacEachen's inflationary spiral? If he cannot explain that connection, why has he not made a statement opposing wage controls for those workers?

Hon. Mr. McCague: I will only say that --

Mr. Laughren: Don't mumble. We are here to

help you.

Hon. Mr. McCague: Thank you. I was not going to answer the first question, because that was only going to fuel the member's lust for questions; however --

Mr. T. P. Reid: What are you reading over there?

Hon. Mr. McCague: I am not reading anything.

Mr. Foulds: What are you smoking?

Hon. Mr. Ashe: Better yet, what is he drinking?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The lust for answers --

Hon. Mr. McCague: I find it difficult to look over there all the time.

All the settlements made to date have been achieved either through negotiation, mediation or arbitration. I believe only one has gone to arbitration. I think six categories were voted on. I presume those people were quite satisfied with what we were able to offer them. I presume they were satisfied through the mediation; and arbitration is binding, as the member knows. I think his question is rather silly, especially following the federal budget.

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, given the wage levels read out for the public service employees in Ontario and the fact that the negotiations have been tough enough that the average increase for all the workers in the province for the year 1982 is only 11.4 per cent, which is less than the rate of inflation, why can the minister not give us a public statement rejecting the rather false premise of worker responsibility and the need for wage controls that we have from the federal people? Why can the minister not give us an assurance there will not be any threat to these wages increases for the workers in the province?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, the honourable member knows very well the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) has said he is not going to make any public statements until after the meeting today. The Premier (Mr. Davis) has also said that. If the member thinks he is going to sucker me into it, he is nuts.

Mr. Foulds: What we have here is a government --

Mr. T. P. Reid: Would you ask him another question?

An hon. member: The last two words were most appropriate.

Mr. Breithaupt: Next year they will ask you another one.

Mr. Breaugh: There is a reason we asked you.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Foulds: At least the minister recognized the possibility of being suckered, did he not?

OLD AGE SECURITY REDUCTION

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Treasurer a question if he is not busy hustling raffle tickets with the seven per cent sales tax attached to them.

Mr. Speaker: Ask the question.

Mr. Foulds: As the Treasurer is aware, Mr. MacEachen's federal budget the other night has conscripted Canada's pensioners in its fight against inflation. Since the federal Liberals intend to reduce the pensions of 530,074 Ontario senior citizens, is the government prepared to tell the Liberals in Ottawa that Ontario pensioners should not be made to pay for Ottawa's mistakes? Is that one of the messages the Premier is bringing to Mr. Trudeau today?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I do not know what message my Premier is taking to Mr. Trudeau. In fact, it was my understanding that Mr. Trudeau was giving the Premiers a message rather than the reverse.

Mr. Wildman: You mean you haven't consulted about it?

Mr. J. A. Reed: Does Hugh Segal know?

Mr. McClellan: That is usually how it is, isn't it?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I cannot yell hard enough today. I am losing my voice.

Mr. T. P. Reid: You have lost more than that.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I have learned also, as I told the honourable member the other day, that it is very difficult to sort out all the nuances of a MacEachen budget and that we all need some time to digest it all -- on the assumption that it is at all digestible.

All I can suggest is that Mr. MacEachen appears to have limited the old age security increase to six per cent and appears not to have limited the guaranteed income supplement increase to six per cent. It will take us some time to digest all that. After we do, I am sure my colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Drea), or any other minister involved in assessing the sum total of the needs of the elderly, will be making his or her recommendations to cabinet.

Mr. Foulds: The Treasurer will remember that last November, when the federal Liberal government reduced the tax writeoffs to Ontario's corporate sector, he spoke up on behalf of the private sector in Ontario and, in fact, put his money where his mouth was in forfeiting an income of $135 million by not paralleling the federal action.

Will he not now tell Ontario seniors that no pensioner living in Ontario will see reduced even further what little income they have? Will he make the commitment, here and now in this Legislature, that Ontario will not stand idly by, and will he say that he is willing to spend as much money to protect Ontario's pensioners from the federal Liberals as he was willing to spend to protect the corporate sector from the federal Liberals?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I do not think I have to talk about the future. I can talk about the record. I do not know of any province in Canada that can match the overall programs this government has for the elderly, whether it be the $500 that we pay towards their property taxes, the $50-per- person sales tax exemption, the free drugs or the additional programs we have for them across this province in chronic health care and in other forms. I would say that Ontario, compared to most places -- Quebec, for instance -- is heaven.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, is the Treasurer's reluctance to talk to Mr. MacEachen about how, in the opinion of the New Democratic Party, he has dealt so harshly with the senior citizens, caused by the fact that Mr. MacEachen would justifiably tell him where to go because of the way the Treasurer treated senior citizens so harshly in his own budget?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, there was no measure in my budget aimed at hurting senior citizens.

Mr. Roy: Can the Treasurer explain why his government seems unwilling at this time to take strong steps to ensure that senior citizens do not take a cut in income, since he was so willing a few months ago to settle with one of the highest-income groups in the province, the medical profession, for three per cent plus inflation? Why is he not willing to say he will protect the seniors against the ravages of inflation even if the federal Liberals attack them on that ground?

Hon. F. S. Miller: My colleague seems to have missed the import of what I believe Mr. MacEachen has done. If I understand correctly what he did -- and I have to qualify this answer, because I am not sure that I do at this point; I have asked for a review of his budget papers and his proposals to make sure that I am right. He has said that people who get OAS alone will get the same kind of increase he is passing through to the balance of the retirees of government programs and the employees of the federal government. If they do not have any other income to bring them up to what the federal government has seen to be the necessary minimum level, he will be indexing the GIS to account for it, so that A plus B remains equal to K, a constant. If A does not grow quite as fast, B grows faster; but you still get the same result.

If that is the case, then he has protected the lowest-income people. He has done something I would have thought the member would have agreed with as a person who believes we should help low-income people, as I do. On the other hand, he has basically said he will not raise everybody automatically, regardless of need.

2:50 p.m.

ALBANY CLUB RECEPTION

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a new question of the Treasurer before he gets back to selling his tickets. The winner is already sold. I bought it last night.

I would like to ask a couple of questions concerning answers tabled yesterday to Order Paper questions of mine. Given that the taxpayers of Ontario paid $2,500 in American funds for a public speaking course for the Treasurer last summer, I am sure he will be in fine voice to supply answers.

The Treasurer indicated that the total cost of the reception at the Albany Club following presentation of his May 13 budget was $6,425.76. Since we tried diligently all morning to get an answer to this question and since the press has tried as well, so far without success, let me ask the Treasurer to answer this question: After the taxpayers of Ontario were asked to swallow a budget that asked them to endure a harsh new set of taxes, who paid for the Treasurer's guests to wash down the bad after-taste with $6,500 worth of good drink and food at the Albany Club? Where did the money come from?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, that would have come from the budget of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics.

Mr. Wrye: The Treasurer is indicating that after he hit senior citizens, after he hit every wage earner in this province with unprecedented new taxes, this government then squandered $6,500, which it claimed all evening it could ill afford, to entertain a bunch of Tory hacks.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary, please.

Mr. Wrye: Will the Treasurer ask the Progressive Conservative Party to write a cheque to the Treasury so the taxpayers will not be asked to pay for him to entertain his friends?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I am glad the honourable member asked that question. I do not know when the tradition of having some kind of entertainment following the budget began. As far as I know, it has been a fixture of this Legislature for many years, as have the receptions following the throne speech and following the opening of the House.

The idea that people at that meeting, and most of them were in this room, were all chosen by the Conservative Party of Ontario is foolish.

Mr. T. P. Reid: Let us have a list of who was there.

Mr. Wrye: Give us a list of who was there.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I would not be able to give the member a list, because I did not take the names at the door. But I want to say the fact that the majority of thinking people in this province happen to be Conservatives makes the majority of thinking people at that reception Conservatives before we begin.

Mr. Wrye: They don't happen to be in the majority.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, does the Treasurer not think that in this time of economic restraint and his preaching about it, a reception such as the one held at the Albany Club should have been cancelled as a symbol of good will to the people of Ontario?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, one could look at the reception you hold, sir, or those held by the honourable member or by his party or by any of us around here. I simply ask whether he really wants all kinds of public involvement by this government simply stopped? We did that, I suggest, at very low cost per person, and I do not feel in any way apologetic for what has been a tradition.

FOREST RESOURCE INVENTORY

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Does he recall that during the consideration of the estimates of his ministry, which concluded last week, he confirmed that ministry personnel were going to do a forest resource inventory of the Black Bay peninsula area and that operational crews would be established and put out to tender to determine an appropriate inventory of wood for that area? That is exactly what the forester Mr. MacAlpine wanted when he was fired for speaking out and demanding it.

Can the minister confirm that the tenders were opened on Monday of this week, that the lowest bidder was Mr. MacAlpine and that when this was discovered the tenders were withdrawn or cancelled and the ministry then decided it would form the operational crews itself with firefighting crews rather than have it done by a professional forester?

Why this sudden change in behaviour? Is it normal for the ministry to put out tenders and then cancel them? Was the minister afraid of being embarrassed about who was going to get the contract?

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, first of all, the honourable member is incorrect in his reason for the firing. Second, he is incorrect when he says fire crews are to do the survey. Third, it is normal and it is done routinely, depending on the manpower available.

If that member and others had been so concerned about it, why did they not go to the open house on the 26th in Thunder Bay about forest management in that area?

Mr. Laughren: The Legislature was in session then, Mr. Speaker, and the minister did not answer my question.

Will the minister tell us how he is going to assure us that there is a proper inventory done in the Black Bay peninsula area if he is not going to use professional people to actually do the inventory? Further, will he assure us that if a block is assigned to a user such as Mr. Buchanan, there will be adequate timber left for the traditional users in that area?

Hon. Mr. Pope: Provision always has been made for the local operators in that area. The argument all along has been over whether it should be increased.

I would like to say, first of all, that the honourable member has repeated the inaccuracy that non-professionals will be doing this work. Second, I can give no assurances until we

have concluded our surveys.

FIRE TRUCK LICENCE

Mr. Van Horne: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Natural Resources in the absence of the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier). I am directing this question to the Minister of Natural Resources because his ministry is indirectly involved and because of the timing.

In the community of Aweres township, an unorganized community in the north with a population of about 3,500 which increases to about 10,000 in the summer, the citizens in that area have taken the initiative to acquire and update a fire truck to give themselves fire protection. If this had been done through the fire marshal's office, there would have been no fee for the licensing of this truck; if the community were an incorporated municipality, it would have had a $25 fee, as I understand it. However, these people, who have taken considerable initiative, are facing an annual licence bill of approximately $350 for their initiative.

Is there any way through the Ministry of Northern Affairs or the Ministry of Natural Resources that this fee can be waived?

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, I do not believe so, but I will discuss the matter with the Ministry of Northern Affairs and get back to the honourable member on Tuesday.

Mr. Van Horne: The people who called were concerned that they were not being given any direction from the ministry office in Sault St. Marie, and they wonder whether there is some publication or communication that would inform them of whatever grants might be available, particularly in these unorganized communities.

Hon. Mr. Pope: I will get that information together as well on Tuesday, give it to the member and communicate with any individual he might indicate to me at that time.

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, for the information of the member asking the question, the name of the township is pronounced "Aweres," not "Aweers."

And for the information of the minister, this comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Is he prepared, along with his colleague the Minister of Northern Affairs, to approach the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) and ask that minister whether he will stipulate a basic fee for fire protection vehicles in unorganized communities, as he has done in municipalities this year, so they will pay the straight $25 fee and no more? Rather than having the dichotomy of municipalities having a break on the licence fees but unorganized communities with fire brigades that are on a volunteer basis having to pay $350.

Hon. Mr. Pope: I think the Minister of Transportation and Communications has heard the question. The member for London North (Mr. Van Horne) requested whether or not I or the Minister of Northern Affairs could find some way around the licensing provisions. That is what we will look at and of course we will advise our colleagues.

3 p.m.

GENDRON INDUSTRIES INC. SHUTDOWN

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Labour. Gendron Industries Inc. here in Toronto, is closing today with a loss of 125 jobs. Could the minister explain to the House why his ministry lacked the ability to delay the closure at least until the feasibility study, financed by both the federal manpower department and the Ontario Ministry of Labour, could be completed in an effort to save jobs in a business which would have been viable given better management?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, my ministry officials looked into that matter at considerable length and found it would not have been possible for us to delay the closure.

Mr. Mackenzie: Then could I ask the minister in all seriousness if he is prepared to introduce legislation into this House which would set in place some mechanism to prevent the sell-off of the assets of a firm which is facing receivership until alternatives to maintain the workers' jobs and the operation have been examined?

Would he also give us an update on the provincial-federal talks, if indeed they are still going on, concerning efforts to give some protection to workers in the cases of receiverships and bankruptcies?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: To answer the last part of the question first, it is my understanding there is legislation just about ready to be introduced in the federal House that would assist us provincially to guard against circumstances such as the honourable member has just described.

I am sorry, the other part of the question?

Mr. Mackenzie: Is the minister prepared to introduce some kind of legislation?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: I cannot give that assurance at this time but I can certainly give the assurance that we are looking very seriously at circumstances such as those in this particular case so that in some way we can guard against them and in some way protect the workers.

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, is the minister satisfied with the tone of the legislation which will be introduced in the federal Parliament to protect workers in bankruptcies? Does he feel there would be any need for similar provincial action?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I cannot say that I am completely satisfied with the "tone," to use the member's expression, of the proposed legislation. It is not as adequate as I had hoped, but certainly it is a step in the right direction and something which I think we can build on here in Ontario.

BURLINGTON SKYWAY

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I have a question which, appropriately, is for the Minister of Transportation and Communications. Appropriate in the fact that they had to wake me up over here.

It is on a favourite subject of his, the Burlington Skyway. Has the minister now sorted out the argument between his ministry and the Ministry of the Environment and I think the Ministry of Treasury and Economics -- there is an individual in that ministry as well -- over the advisability of constructing either a tunnel, which we feel would be preferable, or a second skyway at Burlington in order to relieve the tremendous traffic problems which beset the people of Burlington, Hamilton, the Niagara Peninsula and probably other places, who happen to use that very narrow facility which, for one reason or other, is often down to one lane?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any disagreements at this time between the Ministry of the Environment and my ministry with regard to that project. We submitted our new environmental assessment a couple of months ago, I guess it would be, or three months ago, to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Norton). It was processed through his office. His recommendations were published and I believe the 30-day waiting period was to be up on July 9.

The region of Halton and the city of Burlington, which want to have their responses approved at their council meetings on July 7 and 12 respectively -- a great day, July 12, my birthday -- have asked for a five-day extension to the 30-day period, which puts it on to about July 14, when the responses should be returned to the minister. Then it is up to him to make his decision as to whether he approves the project, orders a hearing, approves it with conditions or whatever position he may take. I do not think there is any disagreement.

I am still concerned about one comment in the review of the report. It is an absolutely ludicrous, stupid comment. I do not know whether it came from the Ministry of Treasury and Economics or the Ministry of the Environment, but it came from one or the other. It said we had not yet substantiated the need for additional capacity across that corridor.

I might tell the honourable member that the work is progressing very well on the level crossing. We have one contract out to tender, which is closing today. So the first contract, for the level crossing, will be awarded within a few days, unless something is wrong with it or unless there is an extension; but I believe the tender call was closing today. There are three more contracts to be called within the next two to three months on that project. We have settled property problems with the Hamilton harbour commissioners, so I do not foresee any delay on that. If there are no major concerns or delays on the second bridge, our hope is still to put that project out to tender in 1983.

Mr. Bradley: A slight prelude to the supplementary is that I think we should send whoever it was who made the recommendation that we do not need the bridge back and forth over the bridge at the peak hours, and that person might change his or her mind.

Recognizing that the minister is going to be in a situation where he is probably going to have to repair the decking on the present bridge -- I do not know how it is going to be done, because the whole bridge will probably have to be closed to do it -- and recognizing that situation may be upcoming in the fairly near future, can the minister indicate whether there is any chance of advancing the work at all, if all the obstacles from the other ministries are cleared, so that there will not be the situation where the Burlington Skyway will have to be closed completely to get this work done?

Hon. Mr. Snow: The first priority is to get these four contracts under way. That will improve the access at the Street level or ground level, whatever one wants to call it. We have been successful in working with the Canadian National Railways. The railroad tracks that go across the beach strip will be removed as they are no longer needed. The tracks were only serving one industry, a food company -- I cannot remember its name. Alternative transportation arrangements have been worked out with it, so the tracks will be removed; there will not be that conflict, although there was only one train a week, in any case. But the widened bridge over the canal, the lift bridge, will not have to accommodate the railroad now as well as the cars. That tender is to go out this fall, as well, for the widening of the bridge. That is our first priority.

The second priority is to get the new bridge built. Unless there is some delay that I do not anticipate, because basically on our assessment, and I have not heard of any adverse comments --

Ms. Copps: A tunnel.

Hon. Mr. Snow: The lady wants to talk about a tunnel.

Mr. Speaker: Never mind the interjections.

Ms. Copps: Your own study suggests a tunnel.

Hon. Mr. Snow: We rejected a tunnel and we will continue to reject a tunnel.

Ms. Copps: Your study suggested a tunnel. It did not reject it, it recommended it.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I do not know where "yappy" is getting her information, but certainly the recommendations are for the twinning of the bridge.

3:10 p.m.

We know we have to do major maintenance on the deck of the existing bridge. The plan is to build the new five-lane bridge to take all the traffic off the existing bridge and put it on the new five-lane bridge for one construction season. This will allow us to remove the deck from the old bridge, put the new deck on and remove the median barrier. That will make it a five-lane bridge northbound. The new bridge will be a five-lane bridge southbound.

We have that all co-ordinated and hopefully no major maintenance, other than what we have to do, will need to be done on the old bridge. That is one of our urgencies in getting the new bridge built, so we can repair that deck before the crisis the member mentioned hits us.

NURSING HOME CARE

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question for the Minister of Health with respect to the Chateau Nursing Home in Kirkland Lake. It is a home for special care accommodating about 77 people of whom 34 are developmentally handicapped children who come under the aegis of the tri-ministry project designed to rescue these children from a condition of program neglect.

Is the minister aware of the conditions at the Chateau Nursing Home which, as a result of staff cutbacks, included children not being changed or bathed, children locked in their rooms, I gather, and children experiencing high rates of absenteeism from school because there were not enough staff to get the children up, dressed and off to school?

Since the place was inspected on May 19 and a work plan was submitted to bring the place up to an adequate level of care, could the minister tell us what action has been taken to make sure staff care in this home for special care is adequate?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right that certain inspections have been done and work plans put in place. I cannot give him the information as of today's date, but the last time I was informed about this and checked it, which was last week at the request of the member for Timiskaming (Mr. Havrot), our staff was satisfied the work plan was being adhered to. I am expecting a further report today, I think, on that situation.

Mr. McClellan: I would like to ask the minister to intervene directly in this situation. I asked the minister whether he is aware that officials of the tri-ministry project did the program assessments of the children at the Chateau Nursing Home last fall and the service plan was completed in the fall of 1981. It has not been possible to implement the service plan for the retarded children because of the failure of the Ministry of Health to ensure the level of direct care even conforms with the requirements of provincial legislation under the Homes for Special Care Act.

May I ask the minister to intervene directly in this matter and assure himself the quality of physical care is adequate and that the programs which have been waiting since last fall for the children will be quickly put in place?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The short answer to that is, yes. As we have indicated by virtue of our rather direct action in the case of the Wilson Nursing Home in St. Thomas, I am prepared to make sure immediate action is taken where necessary. Hence, there will be a further report to us this week.

Without commenting on the accuracy of some of the details the member might have presented, none the less if immediate action is required by the ministry as of today's date, the answer is yes, we will intervene to make sure that is done immediately.

PROVINCE-WIDE BARGAINING

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of my good friend the Minister of Labour. The minister will know that since the institution of province-wide bargaining for trades, a real problem crops up in some major projects.

If there is a situation where there are 10 or 15 different trades and there is province-wide bargaining, the minister will know there is a possibility that, as one trade negotiates, bargains, settles or strikes, it can effectively delay the project, either through a strike by setting up picket lines preventing the other trades from working or, alternatively, by slowing down the project because the other trades need that trade's work to be finished to proceed with the project.

Would the minister advise us if he is monitoring this situation? And would he tell the House what solutions he has for people such as those in Ottawa who are working on a major project, the Rideau Centre, and who are involved in this type of delay where a major project is being slowed down or, as in this case, is months behind because of these problems with the various trades?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the problem. On the positive side, first of all, I would advise that the roofers have just reached agreement on a new contract, which leaves just one component of the construction trades still on strike, that is the plumbers. We are hopeful that this strike will not last much longer and that the problems the honourable member has described, for this year at least, will have been resolved.

Mr. Mackenzie: What are you suggesting? The lack of the right to strike?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: No, I am not suggesting that at all.

Mr. Mackenzie: That's what Albert Roy was suggesting.

Mr. Roy: I suppose the minister was interrupted in his train of thought and that he had other comments to make as to whether he has encountered that problem on other projects in Ontario. Surely the minister will know that in a busy construction season -- which is not the case now -- he could effectively run into very serious problems of delay.

May I ask a further question? I would like the minister's response to complaints I have received from some contractors in the Ottawa-Carleton area. Their complaint goes something like this, as I understand it, that most often the negotiations take place in Toronto and often centre on Toronto-area issues. It may be that business or the industry here is relatively slack, so sometimes the contractor may try to start playing hard ball and not mind the fact that the trade may go on strike when other areas of the province are much busier and are feeling the effects of the hard-nosed bargaining that is taking place for another area.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: As I am sure the honour- able member is aware, the matters he is bringing to the attention of the Legislature this afternoon can be appropriately addressed by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and in some cases already have been, including a recent circumstance just about three or four weeks ago.

BOARD OF FUNERAL SERVICES APPEAL

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a private member's question for the Minister of Health.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: What is a private member's question?

Mr. Foulds: Can the minister confirm the fact that a complete and serious review of the Funeral Services Act, 1976, is being undertaken in his ministry? If that is so, can the minister explain what appears to be a very vindictive action on the part of the Board of Funeral Services in taking the Co-operative Memorial and Removal Services of Thunder Bay an Mr. Eric Gowen of Thunder Bay to the Supreme Court of Ontario in order to overturn the decision of Judge P. A. FitzGerald in the district court of Thunder Bay, which exonerated Mr. Gowen and the Co-operative Memorial and Removal Services in a very well written and carefully argued judgement?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to clarify in this private member's answer, as it were --

Mr. Foulds: Now, now; it is the minister's answer.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Minister's answer to a private member's question. I would like to clarify that the appeal was launched by the board, which is empowered to act totally on its own and must act on its own. It was not done on the advice of or the instruction of the Ministry of Health or the government. The board was exercising what it deemed to be its responsibilities under the legislation.

This matter will ultimately be determined in the courts, once again, on appeal. But I wish to emphasize that this should not be taken as indicative of government policy. It is simply the board exercising its responsibilities as it saw fit.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, can the minister confirm that the ministry is undertaking a serious review of that act? In that light, because they have contacted me about my intentions with my private member's bill on the matter, does the minister not think it is an act of harassment on the part of the Board of Funeral Services and the registrar, Mr. Steenson, and an act of personal vindictiveness against Mr. Gowen and the Co-operative Memorial and Removal Services of Thunder Bay when they were providing a service that no funeral director or funeral home in Thunder Bay would provide?

Does the minister not think it is his responsibility as the Minister of Health at least to have a little chat with the Board of Funeral Services and get them to withdraw this harassing action of taking a small group of people through a very expensive court action in the Supreme Court of Ontario?

3:20 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It is a difficult thing. The ministry sets up these boards to exercise certain powers independently. If we have a situation where the minister or the government is uncomfortable with a certain action taken by the board in exercising its responsibilities, we threaten its independence by picking up the phone and making a phone call.

In this case, the member would find that action acceptable because he is sympathetic to the other side of the case. However, it creates a precedent that is unhealthy for the government.

The appointees on that board, whether one agrees with their decision or not, took their responsibilities very seriously.

Mr. Foulds: You appoint them.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Yes, that is correct.

It is probably extreme to suggest, as the member is free to do, that the tactic they have taken is tantamount to harassment. I believe they are exercising their rights and responsibilities as they see them under the legislation. That should not be taken to indicate that the government or the minister shares that view, nor should it be taken to indicate that we do not share it. They have simply been given certain powers under legislation passed by this assembly.

If the government picks up the phone, calls the board and says, "We order you, encourage you or would like you to withdraw the appeal you have launched in exercising your statutorily granted powers," it raises severe questions as to whether we should bother with that board or a whole series of other boards that are put in place.

Mr. Foulds: That's true. Perhaps they should be abolished.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member might well argue that case with regard to individual boards but I know in other cases he would want to keep those boards in place.

With regard to the matter the member raised, let me be --

Mr. McClellan: Very brief.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- fairly direct. First, there were no calls from the ministry, nor do I think that would be appropriate.

Mr. Di Santo: Order.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Second, the activities of the board should not be taken to reflect government policy, only the view of the board in terms of its view of the legislation.

Mr. Laughren: Time.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: If members do not want to hear the third part of the answer, I will not give it.

Ms. Copps: I wish the minister would take the same arm's-length approach with the district health councils in terms of making phone calls.

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary gets back to the original question which the minister in his usual circuitous manner did not answer. Is the government considering the implementation of any changes to the Funeral Services Act as a direct response to the judgement in court that this particular memorial society was able to carry on its services ultra vires or outside the normal funeral services and funeral directors of Ontario?

That question will have an impact not only on this particular memorial society but on funeral services all over Ontario. Is the minister considering any changes to the Funeral Services Act? I wrote the minister a letter in this regard earlier this week so I am sure he is apprised of the situation.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I am apprised of the situation because of the concern raised by the member for Fort William (Mr. Hennessy) arising out of the circumstances referred to by the acting leader of the New Democratic Party.

Before I was so rudely interrupted by the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren), I was about to point out in the third part of my reply to the previous question that we are going through a series of projects during the summer to decide which ones we want to mount this fall.

In fairness to me and my ministry staff, there are a number of things we wish to review and we have to spend some time this summer making some difficult decisions. This will be one of those we will be reviewing. I cannot tell what we will ultimately decide, because it is a complicated matter and we want to make sure this minister has had the chance to go through all the implications with regard to that and a variety of other matters before we select which matters we want to mount this coming fall.

We will be reviewing the situation. Quite frankly, I cannot tell the member right now what we will decide to do this coming fall. I will say that, in regard to what we might decide this summer, the outcome of that court case will certainly be studied by us at that time.

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS

Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, I have a real point of order. I would like to point out that I tabled a question of inquiry to the Minister of Health regarding Wilson Nursing Home on June 11. It was a fairly simple question asking the minister to file the nursing home inspection reports between May 1, 1982, and June 10, 1982. I have received no response and I think that is a violation of the standing orders.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure the minister will take note and will comply.

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the point raised by my friend the member for Windsor-Riverside and to raise the matters which I and my friend the member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman) raised yesterday. My friend the member for Algoma, and he may speak for himself, had asked question 216 on June 9. I asked questions 217 and 218 on June 11.

Standing order 81(d) says interim answers must be supplied within 14 days. I wonder how much longer we are going to have to sit idly by and allow this government simply to ignore the standing orders when it is to its benefit to do so.

Mr. Speaker: Undoubtedly the minister will take note and will reply at the appropriate time.

TRANSLATION SERVICES

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to rise on a point of personal privilege so I may correct the record. On Tuesday, June 29, I was asked a question in this House by the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) regarding the Social Assistance Review Board decision which was forwarded by the board to our translation bureau for translation.

In my response, I stated the last document received by the translation bureau from the Social Assistance Review Board was on June 7 and was returned on June 14. Those dates are incorrect. The correct dates are June 15 and returned on June 22. This is the one the honourable member was concerned about. He told me the name of the person concerned after question period. I must emphasize that these documents were processed within the standard five working days' turn-around time.

Mr. Boudria: Mr. Speaker, if I can speak to the same point of privilege: The information that a delay of three weeks was caused by awaiting the translation was given to me by the secretary of the chairman of the Social Assistance Review Board.

I note the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch) is in this House at the present time. I hope she will take note that this erroneous information was given by officials of a ministry for which she is responsible. I hope that excuse is not given again for delays in providing information to honourable members of this House.

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the point of order that was raised earlier, I would like to know if we could get some kind of explanation from the acting government House leader as to the reason for the holdup in the provision or at least interim answers as required under standing order 81(d).

Earlier, the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) made a statement that he had signed an answer to a written question some time ago. It has yet to appear at the table and be put in Hansard. What is the holdup? What is the problem with the Cabinet Office?

Mr. Speaker: I think that might be more appropriately asked during oral questions.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, with great respect, it has to do with the procedures of this House which are not being abided by. There is a holdup on answers provided by ministers to the Cabinet Office. They are not being filed and presented in this House in the time period clearly outlined in the standing orders of the House; therefore, there is a violation of the processes, procedures and standing orders of the House. It is not a question for question period. It is a question of getting the processes working properly.

3:30 p.m.

Mr. Speaker: You are absolutely right. I meant the question might be more appropriately asked during oral questions.

Ms. Copps: It's a standing order.

Mr. Speaker: Right. I assume the appropriate ministers have taken note.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, we have an Order Paper upon which we as members are allowed to put questions. Why should you suggest that we should be asking questions in question period when we have a forum for Order Paper questions?

Mr. Speaker: Quite obviously, that is not what I suggested.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, the obvious answer is that with the number of questions filed by the opposition, it takes some time. It is not a matter of saying the question is a simple one. They pile up and the same staff is required for answering all those questions.

If the member for Windsor-Sandwich (Mr. Wrye) had stayed, rather than rising on a point of order and leaving right away, he would have noticed in a moment that we have the answers to the very questions he asked about. He obviously was not that interested. He ran to get out of the House right after he made his point of order.

TRANSLATION SERVICES

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have two brief points of privilege. The first one has to do with the question raised by my colleague the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) and responded to by the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Wiseman).

I fully accept the minister's response that the service which was complained of by the member was not the reason for the delay. I would ask the minister to investigate this situation. Members who require translation services are starting to get excuses from other people within the civil service. I do not know what is going on, but the reason given for the delay is translation services.

He will appreciate this can be fairly touchy. If people start using that as a crutch for delays in answering, not only does it do the member a disservice, but it does a disservice to the translation services people who are rendering, we hope, an effective and efficient service. It does them a great disservice and it does the process a disservice to use that as an excuse when it is not.

I hope that will be investigated and we will not get that as an excuse when it is not.

WITHDRAWAL OF UNPARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, my second point of privilege is this: You will know me as a parliamentary purist. As one who wants to use accurate vocabulary in this place, I thought I heard earlier in question period the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) call my colleague from Hamilton "yappy."

I thought that expression was unparliamentary, just like such words as "hypocrite," "bandit" and things of that nature. I am sure the Speaker will rule that for the minister to call my colleague that particular word is unparliamentary and he should apologize.

Mr. Speaker: I think, with all respect, it was not unparliamentary. I think if you were to look at the standing orders, you would find that all interjections are out of order.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Hear, hear. I can say that's preposterous.

Mr. Roy: Can I call the Minister of Health "yappy" then, because that is what he is?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: You are misleading the House.

Mr. Speaker: I have heard worse.

NURSING HOME CARE

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. Cooke) has raised the fact that we have not yet responded to question 219. The acting House leader has indicated that questions 216,217 and 218 will be responded to in a moment. The answers will be tabled.

On question 219, I would like to apologize. We do like to get the answers in on time even when it is only an interim answer. I would like to indicate to the House that the delay is because a great deal of the information contained in nursing home inspection reports is confidential and would indicate certain health related matters as they related to individual residents of the nursing homes. In other words, it would impinge in some way on the secrecy surrounding their own health conditions.

We have been working on a way to answer that question satisfactorily for the member which may get around that problem of confidentiality while still satisfying the request. We did think we would have that problem solved so we could table, or at least so I could forward to my friend, the appropriate information, thus obviating the need for this answer.

However, that does not explain the fact that we have passed the time limit, and I apologize for that, other than to say it was an effort in good faith to supply as much information as possible without betraying a confidence.

As a point of privilege, I should also like to take this opportunity to invite the same member to reflect upon the statement he made on June 4 with regard to that same nursing home. He indicated that the condoms being worn by the patients in that nursing home were ordered by the physician who was the owner of that nursing home. With respect, that information is not accurate. In fact, in each case the condoms were ordered by another doctor.

Since that would imply, as I indicated at the time, some very serious allegations against the owner of that nursing home, I would ask the member to reflect upon that circumstance. I would ask him to take the opportunity, if not this afternoon then next Monday, to correct the record in fairness to the owner of the nursing home whom, as he knows, we have been very direct with and not very easy on in terms of operating the home. I am not here to defend that operator, whom we have been cracking down on quite severely, but in fairness to all those affected by the parliamentary record, I invite the member at least to correct the record.

Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, on the alleged point of personal privilege, I appreciate the first part of the minister's answer. If he is attempting to design a way we can get nursing home inspection reports in a way that does not violate confidentiality of individual patients, I would appreciate that. I think that would be a good move on the part of the Minister of Health.

It could have been supplied in the form of an interim answer so that I would not even have raised this matter but, none the less, I appreciate that effort on the part of the minister.

On the second part of his point of privilege I think, and I will review Hansard, the question was raised in a way which indicated: "This is information that was given to me. Now go and do the inspection and report back to the Legislature."

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS

Mr. Grande: Mr. Speaker, I too, like the other members of this Legislature, have put questions on the Order Paper -- numbers 144 and 145, which date back to May 12, 1982. I received interim answers on May 27, which indicated that the approximate date information would be available was June 20, 1982. Up to this day I have not received answers to those two questions. I would hope that you will look into the matter and get those answers prior to the Legislature adjourning.

Mr. Speaker: As the member may appreciate, it is not my responsibility, nor my duty, to look into it and report back. However, I am sure the House leader has taken note of the member's complaint and will comply with it.

LEGISLATIVE INTERNS

Mr. Speaker: If I may have the indulgence of the House, at the request of one of the members I would like to recognize the services that have been supplied by the legislative interns for 1981-82. I understand this is their last day, so I would like to take this opportunity of reading their names into the record.

Daniel Cayen, Sturgeon Falls, Ontario; Elizabeth Deichert, Zurich, Ontario; Robert James Donelson, Hamilton, Ontario; Mary J. Gibbons, Ottawa, Ontario; Leona Constance Lang, Thunder Bay, Ontario; Monica Carol Neitzert, Thornhill, Ontario; David John Pond, London, Ontario; Robert Steven Speller, Hagersville, Ontario.

I am sure all members will join with me in thanking them for the many services supplied.

[Applause]

MOTIONS

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Hon. Mr. Gregory moved that the standing committee on administration of justice be authorized to sit the afternoon of Tuesday, July 6, 1982, to consider Bill 62, An Act to amend the Municipal Boundary Negotiations Act, 1981, and that the said bill be reported back to the House by the committee on Tuesday, July 6, 1982.

Motion agreed to.

3:40 p.m.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Gregory moved that when this House adjourns today it stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Monday next.

Motion agreed to.

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

EMERGENCY PLANS ACT

Hon. G. W. Taylor moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Eaton, first reading of Bill 167, An Act to provide for the Formulation and Implementation of Emergency Plans.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I have no further comments on the bill in addition to my statement earlier this afternoon.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE PAPER AND RESPONSE TO PETITION

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the answers to questions 85, 152, 190, 216, 217,218,220 and 225 on the Notice Paper, and the response to a petition presented to the House, sessional paper 139 [see appendix, page 3392].

ORDERS OF THE DAY

THIRD READINGS

The following bills were given third reading on motion:

Bill 15, An Act to amend certain Acts respecting Regional Municipalities;

Bill 92, An Act to amend the District of Parry Sound Local Government Act, 1979;

RIDEAU CENTRE MORTGAGE FINANCING ACT

Hon. Mr. Sterling moved third reading of Bill 105, An Act respecting the Mortgage Financing of Rideau Centre in the City of Ottawa.

Mr. Speaker: All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Motion agreed to.

THIRD READINGS (CONTINUED)

Bill 120, An Act to amend the Certification of Titles Act.

Bill 143, An Act to amend the Operating Engineers Act.

Mr. Nixon:. On a point of order, Mr. Speaker:

The member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell) moved third reading of Bill 120. Is it not usual for a minister of the crown to move government bills?

Mr. Speaker: Not necessarily. No.

Mr. Kennedy: That is our job, Bob.

TECHNOLOGY CENTRES ACT

Hon. Mr. Walker moved second reading of Bill 124, An Act to establish Technology Centres.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, we will go into committee to consider an amendment related to the annual report, which has been the more recently agreed upon position in this Legislature as it relates to the report being submitted. I will be asking at some point to go into committee for that purpose.

There should be a statement delivered to honourable members and this is an opportunity to bring members up to date on the technology centres.

Members of the Legislature will recall that in the economic development strategy of the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development we proposed to establish a number of centres across the province designed to capitalize on the opportunities inherent in emerging technologies.

Since that time we have announced the location and mandates of six high-technology centres, representing an estimated expenditure by the Ontario government of $126.5 million during the next five years.

The six spheres of the development to be served and the locations of the centres respectively are: microelectronics in Ottawa, computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, CAD/CAM, in Cambridge, robotics in Peterborough, resource machinery and equipment in Sudbury, auto parts in the Niagara Peninsula near St. Catharines and farm equipment and food processing in Chatham.

We currently have advisory boards for most of these centres and on the passing of this act we will begin to appoint boards of directors. Each board will consist of no fewer than five and no more than 15 people drawn from a cross-section of those areas of business associated with the activities of each centre. The boards will reflect the local communities, the province at large and various interest groups.

The boards' first task will be to recruit a president for each centre and it will be the directors' continuing responsibility to supervise the management of the centres.

The centres are to be established as crown agencies with a high degree of sensitivity to the needs of the private sector and will be commercially responsible in their business dealings.

The chairman of each of the centres will report to the Minister of Industry and Trade and will be responsible for the submission of an annual report to the minister. I intend to report annually to the Legislature on each centre's progress.

A sunsetting factor is implicit in the act in that every second annual report will have to justify the existence of the centre. The centre will end its business when its mandate is complete.

As for the mandate of the centres, it will be primarily to adapt and demonstrate technology useful to both industry and commerce and to advise industry on how best to apply this technology. This activity will be directed primarily at specific industries, but will also serve small and medium-size businesses in general.

While general technical and market information available to the centres will be made known to business and industry across the province, proprietary information developed with a client will be treated as confidential. While it is the intention of the government to fund these centres through their start-up phases, it is intended that the centres will be at least 50 per cent self-funding by the end of their fifth year of operation.

To that end, it is incumbent upon the centres, through their boards of directors, to enter business deals with individuals or companies in an undertaking that will benefit the centres themselves and promote diffusion of technology throughout Ontario. In general, however, the major source of self-funding will be revenues derived from fee-for-service work.

Central to the philosophy of this act is the fact that as Canada's most industrialized province, Ontario faces intense international competition for the provision of goods and services. The world's economies are undergoing massive structural readjustment aggravated by a protracted international recession and punishing interest rates.

3:50 p.m.

To meet those kinds of challenges calls for some very tough decisions, decisions that must lead to increased productivity and reduced costs. The application of high technology can and is bringing about huge productivity gains in many of the industrialized countries of the world. It is those self-same developments in new technology that will place Ontario at the forefront of the new industrial revolution.

I would like to outline to the members details of each of these new centres. At the very heart of high technology is microelectronics. It is with this in mind that we committed a total of $28 million to build, equip and operate a centre for microelectronics technology in the heart of Canada's high-technology industrial sector, Ottawa.

I want to be specific about the money being established here. The $28 million is basically a ball-park figure. It is impossible to ascertain the precise amount until our business plans are in the approval stage, but it is merely an intention of providing some form of comparative definition that we have established the figure of $28 million. It does not mean there is going to be a $28-million building erected in Ottawa.

What it means is that over five years $28 million has been set aside in general terms for the purpose of the funding of the operation as we envisage it. A building might be established that might cost under $3 million, perhaps under $5 million; the figure is yet to be determined. However, it must be kept in mind that we are not specifying the amount of $28 million to a building, but rather to an entire five-year process. That will apply when I make reference to each of the centres here.

The mandate of this centre, the microelectronics centre in Ottawa, is to assist small and medium-size manufacturers to obtain, understand and adapt the essential custom-made semiconductors, or chips, for new product innovation. The centre will also help generate a general awareness of the innovative potential of microelectronics and provide a focal point for the development of educational resources to meet the training challenges of microelectronics technology.

Coupled with the development of microelectronics are two other leading-edge technologies. One is computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, known as CAD/CAM, and the other is robotics. Peterborough was chosen as the site for a facility to assist Ontario's industries in adapting appropriate robotics technology, while Cambridge will be the location of the centre for the development of CAD/CAM technology. Together they represent a $40-million component, again over five years, of the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program, aimed at helping Ontario industries achieve significant increases in productivity and international competitiveness.

The robotics centre's first major program will be equipping and programming a mobile unit to tour the province to show manufacturers robotics and CAD/CAM technologies and equipment. The Cambridge CAD/CAM centre's role will be to promote and encourage the adoption of leading-edge, innovative manufacturing technologies, especially among small and medium-size firms throughout the province.

In Sudbury, a $19-million centre, again over five years, will be built to investigate opportunities for developing domestic machinery and equipment manufacturing capability for our resource-based industries. As well, the centre will identify the capabilities and needs of machinery and equipment manufacturers supplying the resource sector.

While Canada is a leader in mining and forestry production, it is well below its potential in development of resource machinery and equipment. This centre will work to secure new markets for mining and forestry equipment, and create jobs in those sectors.

I should not have to remind members that the long-range competitiveness of Ontario's auto industry must remain a cornerstone of our economic development strategies. To assure and enhance this industry's competitiveness, we have announced a $25-million auto parts centre, again over five years, to be built in the Niagara Peninsula near St. Catharines.

This centre will be the focal point for bringing together the interests of parts suppliers, automotive companies, unions, universities, research organizations and governments to develop programs to keep pace with the rapid evolution of parts technology, both within North America and abroad.

The auto parts centre will also promote and stimulate technological developments in the industry, and disseminate information on international markets and future trends and development. In so critical a sector of Ontario's economy, auto parts manufacturers must produce increasingly sophisticated products in a cost-effective manner while meeting top quality control standards if they are to survive. The auto parts centre will help this sector meet those goals.

Agriculture and food is a $10-billion-a-year industry in Ontario, employing 73,000 people in food processing, more than 10,000 in farm machinery production and 85,000 farmers. Under BILD, we have announced a $14.5-million farm equipment and food processing technology centre in Chatham, the heart of Ontario's most intensive farming area and the centre of the food processing industry.

This world-class centre will work closely with Ontario-based research institutions, food processors, manufacturers and growers to adapt and introduce state of the art technology for use here and around the world. The centre will adapt and demonstrate farm and food processing machinery. Assisted by the Ontario Farm Machinery Board and the Ontario Farm Safety Association, the centre will also test the operation and safety of farm equipment submitted by the manufacturers. Further, it will provide information on farm and food processing machinery and give food processors a consulting service of extension specialists and technicians.

Vital to the industrial technology development in this province is the role of the Innovation Development for Employment Advancement Corp., a crown agency reporting to the government through the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The corporation is charged with identifying the future technology development needs of industry in Ontario and serving as a broker among private, public and university research interests to ensure that the great promise of technological advancements is fulfilled to the benefit of Ontarians.

While not a high-technology centre, as are the six covered by this act, the IDEA Corp. has the responsibility to approve funding for external research and development activities associated with the centres. When suggestions come from the technology centres for basic research to be conducted on a new piece of technology, they will be forwarded to the IDEA Corp. for consideration. In this way, there will be a regular two-way flow of information between the IDEA Corp. on the one hand and the technology centres on the other, with respect to their complementary but separate functions.

All these BILD projects taken together will ensure not only that Ontario remains at the forefront of technological innovation, but also that the consequent industrial applications are brought into use. These centres will improve the supply of trained researchers, provide world-class technical and industrial facilities and ensure a healthy climate of innovation and essential economic adjustment in our economy.

As I am sure members of this Legislature are aware, the announcements of the technology centres have been received most enthusiastically both by the municipalities where they are to be located and by the specific industrial sectors involved. However, I have heard some expressions of concern about the centres competing with the private sector. I would like to give this assembly my strongest assurance that the centres are being created to encourage and to assist Ontario's small and medium-sized industries to adopt and use these new technologies to their fullest advantage. They will not duplicate or supplant but will, in a spirit of partnership, assist our private sector to meet successfully the unprecedented risks and challenges before us.

To date, we have made considerable progress in establishing these centres. The first requirement for each centre is to develop a business plan or a detailed proposal that will translate the centre's mandate into a plan for action. These business plans include the centres' financial requirements and revenue estimates, capital requirements, staffing and proposed start-up activities. The plans will serve as blueprints for the incoming management and ensure that a centre can start immediately once it is formally established.

4 p.m.

For four of the centres -- microelectronics, CAD/CAM, robotics and resource -- business plans already have been drafted. These plans are now being studied by my officials, and I expect that all four will receive final approval by the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development and the government by the end of July. Meanwhile, planning for staff recruitment and the appointment of boards of directors are well under way. Advisory boards, which are ad hoc groups of knowledgeable people who represent the range of interests covered by each centre and who have helped in the start-up process, are in place for these four centres and are assisting in the preparation of our five-year business plan.

The other two centres -- auto parts and food processing -- which were announced this March, have not yet progressed as far as the first four. However, work is under way to develop business plans and appoint advisory members for both centres, and this should be completed by the end of this month. In fact, just last week the Auto Parts Manufacturers' Association of Canada was chosen to develop a business plan for the auto parts centre.

I might add that in the case of the food processing centre, I am working closely with my colleague the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Timbrell) and his officials. Of course, I am also working closely with the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope) to bring the resource centre on stream.

Earlier I spoke of a spirit of partnership between the private sector and the centres themselves, which is essential to the vitality of this undertaking. This spirit of partnership is already well manifested in the tremendous assistance given to the ministry by private companies, both individually and through industry associations, in the shaping of these technology centres.

I especially want to acknowledge the support and involvement of Bell-Northern Research Ltd., the Canadian General Electric Co. Ltd. and the Auto Parts Manufacturers' Association of Canada, as well as individual business and technical people too numerous to mention in the planning and start-up phases. We have also received generous support from academic institutions and the local communities in which these centres will be located; we could not possibly have moved as far forward as quickly as we have without their help.

Lest any questions exist about the government's intent and concern, let me emphasize that it will be the responsibility of the boards, through annual reports to my ministry and to the Lieutenant Governor in Council, to enunciate clearly that the mandate of these centres is being fulfilled and, later on in the operational period, to assess whether the mandate is still appropriate or whether it should be changed to reflect realities in the economy.

It is no coincidence that economic progress is most visible and real in those countries where government, labour, industry and academia work together. These Ontario centres for the advancement of high technology and innovation are possibly unique in North America in their intent to bring together the tremendous expertise and energy of these four sectors. I believe they will help move the province towards a new era of technological advancement, greatly assisting our industries to reap the full benefits of high-technology innovation and its industrial applications.

I am confident that the Legislature shares my enthusiasm and support for this new venture in public leadership. After legislative approval is granted, I intend to provide members and the public at large with regular progress reports on the centres during the critical months ahead.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for that statement.

Let me say at the outset, speaking on behalf of my party, that we will support this legislation, because it is an initiative that we ourselves had recommended in times past. I do not say this in any partisan sense, but there is an obvious need for this kind of initiative.

We would have done it slightly differently, however. First of all, we would not have done it with the so obvious partisan political ramifications; and I will speak to that in a couple of minutes. We would have associated it much more strongly with the research universities in Ontario than the minister has, particularly given the fact that the research centres in our various institutions are at present suffering rather grievously with the reduction in funds by the minister's colleague in the Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

Having put that aside, let me also say very clearly that the minister should not expect any congratulations from us. What has been done and what is being done is something that should have been done long ago. As a matter of fact, if we were not in such desperate economic straits in Ontario, if we did not absolutely have to do something to turn the economy and the industrial base of this province around, I would almost be tempted to say that it is too late.

The minister is well aware of the fact that every economic indicator that has been examined for the 1970s has shown nothing but a downturn and a decline of the economy and industry of Ontario.

It is all very well for the Premier (Mr. Davis) to berate members of the opposition as doomsayers and to reflect on our negative attitude, as he sees it; but the facts speak for themselves. Every reputable economic board, agency or conference -- whatever you will -- that has examined the economy and industry of Ontario during the decade of the 1970s has said we have not fared well. As a matter of fact, on a list of indicators that included something like 15 or 16 items, Ontario was either at the bottom or near the bottom on 12 out of the 16. That is not a very good picture.

The point I am obviously making is that, as much as we support this action now, it is a scandal and a tragedy that this action was not taken almost 10 years ago. The minister will probably say in rebuttal, "But we did not know about all these things 10 years ago." I would challenge that. We could go through each one of these centres and show where an indication was clearly evident that Ontario, as the industrial heartland of Canada -- the minister himself has used this phrase so often -- needed to move in these directions.

We have said for a long time that Ontario is weak industrially and economically, far weaker than it ought to be or needs to be, because of the lack of a clear-cut industrial strategy; and flowing from that is the very high price we are paying in human terms because of a lack of manpower strategy.

The minister will be well aware of the fact that you cannot have an effective manpower strategy if you do not have an effective industrial strategy first. You cannot give guidance and counselling, particularly to young people who are still in our schools, as to what the industrial, economic and commercial future of our province will be if you do not have some sense of where you are heading and where you are going to put your priorities, your research, your marketing technology and your marketing expertise. That is what has been sadly lacking in this province.

So the minister should not expect any congratulations from us because he is now taking this action; it should have been done long ago. We have paid, are paying and will continue to pay a very high price indeed in economic and human terms for that neglect.

I point out that there are other jurisdictions in the competitive western world which have done so much better than us primarily because they took a position of leadership rather than of followership. All we need to do is look at areas such as Japan, West Germany and some of the Scandinavian countries to recognize that they had an industrial strategy which anticipated these very kinds of needs; that is why they got the jump on us.

4:10 p.m.

I support this legislation at this time because it is something we must do -- our economic and social survival are at stake -- but it is something we should and could have done long ago.

We have waited until the industrial base of this province is at flat bottom and our industries, one after the other, are toppling. Those industries that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth are underfinanced and, in many cases, undermanaged and grossly underresearched.

There are a few that are doing quite well, for the most part because of their own initiatives and not because of the initiatives of this government and, I am sorry to say, iii many cases not because of the initiatives of the government in Ottawa.

The fact remains that we are the parliament of Ontario, we are Ontario legislators and our first responsibility is to this jurisdiction. We must look to what we have not done, what we ought to have done, what we could have done and what we should have done.

I have indicated that we are paying also in human and social costs. I hope we have learned some lessons. As we move ahead, it is obvious that the new technology endorsed by this legislation is going to mean a massive shift in the employment opportunities of our people. That massive shift will be in two areas.

First, many of the existing jobs and those that existed in the recent past will no longer be there. If we proceed with this new technology and to apply this new technology, we are simply going to exacerbate that very problem. Let me make it very clear that I am not suggesting we should not move ahead. I am only suggesting that in the movement, in the progressive steps that we are taking, we must recognize the human dimension. We must recognize the price that is going to have to be paid by the people in this province who have recently held jobs and who do now hold jobs.

I must tell members that as yet I have not heard or seen anything in the legislation to indicate that the government recognizes the human dimension, the employment dimension, of this entire operation. I have not seen it in the five, six or seven press releases and copies of speeches that were made either by this minister or by the previous minister, or by the member for Algoma-Manitoulin (Mr. Lane), the parliamentary assistant.

I just want to be sure that we take cognizance of that now, while we are debating the implications of this legislation in this parliament. The first thing we have to do in preparing our people as we move into this is to keep several steps ahead. For example, the minister talks about the robotics research centre in Peterborough. We know that our industry is going to move into robotics; it has to move into robotics if it wants to remain competitive in the western world, particularly with some of our more influential trading partners.

I have to ask the minister, not who is going to design these, because we have the engineers to do that, but who is going to build them? Do we have the technological expertise and the skilled people to build these robotics? Who is going to install them in the plants? Who is going to maintain them? Who is going to change the programming from time to time?

I suggest that we do not have those kinds of people in this province; we do not have nearly enough of them. What are we doing about it? I have not heard a thing about that. That is the human dimension. That is also the dimension that is either going to make this thing work or not. The minister well knows he can put all the machines he wants into place, he can put all the technology he wants into place, but if he does not have the skilled human beings who are going to build, install, maintain, reprogram and keep them competitive, then it will not work. Therefore, there is very much a human dimension to this whole issue which I have not yet heard anything about.

I spoke earlier about the political gamesmanship that has been rampant in this whole issue. I draw attention back to the 1981 election and to the tug of war that was exerted, for example, between Peterborough and Cambridge, as to which was going to get the robotic CAD/CAM centre. At that time, they were thinking of only one centre. Both cities were told, "Be good boys, do the right thing, make the right choices, and you will get your reward."

The same thing happened between Chatham and St. Catharines, as the minister will well remember, with respect to the automotive centre and the farm machinery centre. It was the same story; in fact, the joke going around was that maybe they should put the centre on a railway car and let it shuffle back and forth between the two of them.

I want to tell the minister that was not a very pretty sight. It might have been politically popular or politically effective, but I really wonder what priority there was on the matter at the heart of this whole issue, the industrial future and the industrial strength of this province, when that kind of gamesmanship was going on. Is it not strange indeed, or maybe it is not, that every single one of these centres, without exception, is in a Tory riding? That is true of every one of them, despite the fact that, if I remember correctly, the Tories in the 1981 election got 25 per cent of the potential vote of this province.

The centre in Ottawa just happens to be located in Kanata, a Tory riding. Peterborough, Mississauga, Chatham

Hon. Mr. Walker: What about St. Catharines?

Mr. Sweeney: The minister mentions St. Catharines; but it is not really in St. Catharines at all, is it? It is in the Niagara Peninsula, in what happens to be the riding of the member for Brock (Mr. Welch). We can talk about Sudbury, despite the fact that the government party has only one member up there, and, by golly, that is where it is.

The minister says that is just an accident, a coincidence, but we really have to question the minister's sincerity. As a matter of fact, one of the notable exceptions in the minister's statement today --

Hon. Mr. Walker: Tell me where we put the

Ottawa courthouse?

Mr. Sweeney: That is not quite in the same category.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Which Liberal riding did we put the new Ottawa courthouse in?

Mr. Sweeney: What has that got to do with technology centres?

Hon. Mr. Walker: It just goes to show you how fair we are.

Mr. Sweeney: There is a courthouse in every county in the province. That has nothing to --

Hon. Mr. Walker: In every Liberal riding.

Mr. Sweeney: Never mind. The minister knows it is more than coincidence; it really is. He is really stretching it. He is playing political games with this issue. I have to wonder sometimes why, even on an issue like this, that is so important to the future of this province and so necessary to our economic and industrial future, the government plays partisan political games.

I really have to question why the food processing centre would not have done just as well located in Guelph, next to the agricultural college. That just happens to be a Liberal riding, so the minister would not want that. Or why the automotive centre was not located in the city of St, Catharines, which is a Liberal riding; or in the Windsor area, which is mostly Liberal; or even in Oshawa, which is a New Democratic Party riding.

4:20 p.m.

We could go down through the list and check them all. Why, for example, was the computer- aided design robotic centre not located in Waterloo beside the University of Waterloo, which has the best engineering and the best computer school in all Canada? Why?

Hon. Mr. Walker: It's halfway between McMaster University and Waterloo.

Mr. Sweeney: Balderdash.

The Deputy Speaker: Let the record show that the Deputy Speaker represents half the city of Oshawa.

Mr. Sweeney: Does he? Okay, we will put it in the other half then.

Mr. Wildman: That is an interjection from the Speaker. How did that happen?

Mr. Sweeney: The point remains that there is no good reason why these could not be located in other centres which would have been just as effective and in some ways perhaps even a little bit more so.

Mr. Nixon: Like Paris.

Mr. Sweeney: I do not know what the blazes we would have put in Paris. I withdraw that remark. I think Paris is well represented at present.

I was just going to observe that there was a notable exception; and I was going to point out that the member for Mississauga South (Mr. Kennedy) was here a few minutes ago but he has now gone. In several of these statements that I have with respect to these centres, reference is made to a biotechnology centre in Mississauga. What happened to it?

Hon. Mr. Walker: That is Allelix, located up on Dixon Road.

Mr. Sweeney: It is not mentioned in this, though.

Hon. Mr. Walker: It is a different kind of centre than these five.

Mr. Sweeney: Oh. I think the minister should refer to that. The one he did not mention, as a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, was one of those that was announced way back, a fairly long time ago, and it has been missed out. I believe the government has three or four members in Mississauga now. It is bound to be in one of their ridings.

I am genuinely concerned about some of the observations that were made in some of these speeches, because they reinforce the very point I am trying to make.

For example, in a speech given by John Lane in Peterborough on February 18, 1982, he talks about the advancement that the Japanese have made ahead of us. Let me just quote one paragraph and one sentence:

"The Japanese now require only 80 hours to design, assemble and market a car, while the North American industry requires 144 hours to do the same job."

Let me go on to this one: "It is not just the wage differential that helps the Japanese. Their production system is leaner, and it is leaner because they jump in ahead."

That is from Mr. Lane. Here is another point that he makes in the same speech.

Hon. Mr. Walker: That is the member for Algoma-Manitoulin.

Mr. Sweeney: Oh, it is that John Lane. I did not know who it was. Is he the minister's parliamentary assistant?

Hon. Mr. Walker: Yes.

Mr. Sweeney: I congratulate the member for Algoma-Manitoulin. I would not knowingly have bypassed him in that way. I ask him to excuse me.

The honourable member, who is present, went on to say: "The second point, the social factor, indicates a rapidly declining percentage of the work force will actually be involved in manufacturing by the turn of the century. In 1947, 30 per cent were involved in manufacturing. Today, the figure is 21 per cent, and projections to the year 2000 range from a low of two per cent to a high of 10 per cent."

"A low of two per cent"; did the member really say that?

Mr. Lane: If it says so.

Mr. Sweeney: I do not know whether he is right or not -- I do not know who wrote the speech for him; I expect it is the same guy who writes the minister's -- but does he realize the horrendous implications of a labour force dropping from 30 per cent following the Second World War to two per cent by the year 2000? If we really wondered about the human and employment implications of what this is all about, then that points to it.

I talked about the juggling that takes place. I have a copy of a speech given by the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman), who was then the Minister of Industry and Tourism, on December 18, 1981, to the Legislature. He talked about CAD/CAM and robotics and pointed out clearly how integrated they are. He made several points. He said, for example, the mandate of the manufacturing technology centres would include:

"To provide demonstrations of advanced manufacturing systems to industry through orientation seminars for management.. . (prime responsibility, Cambridge; robotics responsibility, Peterborough);

"To conduct surveys of industrial plants to help identify potential applications...(prime responsibility, Cambridge; robotics responsibility, Peterborough);

"To undertake fee-for-service development projects in areas where no commercial capabilities exist (CAD/CAM responsibility, Cambridge; robotics responsibility, Peterborough)."

Three more statements like that follow. Clearly the minister was saying that in those mandates the two operations are intertwined and meshed. One has to ask for what reason, other than partisan politics, they were separated. As a matter of fact, the computer technology and the microelectronics could have been blended in at the same time as well.

Therefore, I have to ask a question. To what extent was the government taking into consideration the strategic effectiveness of keeping these things as intertwined and as meshed as possible at fewer sites than those it has now? It would have been more economically effective, more research-effective and probably more industrially effective.

That is why I spent a couple of minutes talking about spreading them over seven different Tory ridings. That is what I was trying to get at. If they need seven of them, they are going to place them where their supporters and friends are, I understand politics too, but the question I am really asking is was that the best way to do it? Is that the most effective way to do it? Is that where we are going to get the best return on our investment?

Hon. Mr. Walker: We were thinking of 70.

Mr. Sweeney: Oh, my God! I realize that is a facetious remark, but it probably would not have surprised me.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Even then you would have complained.

Mr. Sweeney: It depends on which 70 are going to be picked, although I can guess quite quickly.

I have another reference; again it is a statement by the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick. That man did get around, did he not? As a matter of fact, I bumped into him in one of those places. He and I were on slightly different tours at that time.

This statement was made on January 19, 1982, and the point he was making was that "Canadians are not on the leading edge of either the technology or the equipment manufacturing side of this vital and expanding sector." Let us translate "Canadians" to "Ontarians," which is what it should be.

He goes on to say: "Import penetration in the resource machinery sector is now 75 per cent of the total Canadian market. That's worth $1.4 billion." Finally, he says: "Canadians" -- and let me put in their stead, "Ontarians" -- "should have responded to this situation, this opportunity, many years ago, but the opportunity was missed."

There again is the point I am trying to make. The minister should not feel any great sense of elation or strain his arm patting himself on the back for doing this now. It is good to do it now, before we fall completely, but it should have been, could have been and ought to have been done a long time ago.

4:30 p.m.

I made reference to the need for training associated with these centres and for their affiliation with the universities. I have a paper dated January 27, 1981, given by the Premier. I think the title is, "Building Ontario in the 'Eighties." It makes reference to the IDEA Corp. which the minister also referred to in his opening statement.

There are two references here. One, on page 27, is, "To increase the supply of skilled manpower." The second is, "To foster the interchange of staff among universities, industries and research centres."

I bring those two out because even the Premier of this province recognizes the twin need to associate this high technology research with our universities and also to associate them with training for skilled manpower.

I notice in the minister's comments today and in the comments from all these other individual papers the point was made, "You know we are still in the process of doing this." I would urge the minister then to make two other changes. One is to associate them much more closely with our research universities and the second is to build in a skilled training component.

I do not mean just for researchers. If we are going to move into these technological areas, and should, then at the same time let us build in a training component for our people, so we do not have to import people from Berlin, Paris, London, Stockholm or, God save us, one of these days from Japan as we just did in Elmira with the minister's own announcement for Sanyo.

We do not need to bring those people here to do these jobs. We do not need to import into this country and this province 20,000 to 30,000 skilled people. We need to train our own people. We no longer can accept the economic price, the social price and the human price of so many of our people being unemployed when they could be trained for the skills that are going to be required for the very kind of technology this government and this minister is now endorsing.

I urge the minister seriously to consider that component to this because it is not there now, or if it is it is one of the best kept secrets of his government.

If we look at the food processing centre, for example, one of those statements, I cannot remember which one, makes reference to the fact that we now import $2.3-billion worth of food. Our research has indicated at least half of that, if not more, is food that could be grown and processed in this province. Yet that has been happening for two decades, not for the last few years; for two decades that decline has been taking place.

Why did we wait so long? Why did we let our processing in particular get into that situation? I have already referred to the resource machinery centre that is going to be located in Sudbury. We have known for decades that we should have been producing that machinery and we did not. Why did we wait so long?

All we had to do was look beyond the ends of our own fingertips to know that electronics was the wave of the future. Why did we wait so long? We have known through places like the University of Waterloo and its computer centre that computers were also the wave of the future. Why did we wait so long?

Those are the questions we have to ask ourselves as well. It is good that we are moving at this time, but we are paying an awful price for our wait.

I support the legislation. I have a number of questions on particular sections of the act which I will deal with as we go over the bill clause by clause.

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, I want to state at the outset that, while I have great respect for the minister, I emphasize I am most disappointed with the compendium of information that was provided. I recognize a compendium was provided, but only the speeches of this minister and his predecessor announcing the various technological centres and the announcement of the BILD program were in it.

My colleague from the Liberal Party has gone on at great length about what he perceives to be the partisan political aspects of the location of the various technological centres. Our party is less concerned about location and more concerned about what these centres will do, what their mandates will be and how they will achieve their goals.

With respect, the compendium does not in any way make that clear. The ministry itself is unsure, or at least has not yet completed the determination of the various mandates of the centres involved.

Hon. Mr. Walker: That is correct.

Mr. Wildman: If that is the case, and the minister confirms it, it is very difficult to deal with this bill.

Hon. Mr. Walker: That's what the five-year plan does.

Mr. Wildman: Right, a five-year plan; it is ironic that this minister with his ideological bent discusses five-year plans.

It is rather difficult for those people who support this legislation, or are critical of it, to deal in any comprehensive way with something that is not yet developed. In essence, what we are asked to do is to approve the formation of a number of centres which then will develop mandates and have them reported on by the minister to the House.

I suppose it makes for an interesting debate. We could be talking about all kinds of things because we do not know whether the things we are discussing will actually be mandated or not. It is also interesting that we are discussing the bill to provide for these particular technological centres prior to the second reading of the bill that will establish the ministry which is responsible for these centres. It is a rather ironic situation --

Hon. Mr. Walker: You know the answer to that one.

Mr. Wildman: I certainly know the answer to that. I believe the policy of this government with regard to development of an industrial strategy and the provision of jobs which, as the minister has said is his main role: jobs, jobs, jobs -- he should have continued saying it six more times and then he would have said it once for each job he provided in Elmira.

At any rate, the position of this party is well known with regard to the serious economic problems we face in Ontario and Canada because of the de-industrialization that has taken place through the 1970s and before.

It is somewhat ironic that my colleague the critic for the Liberal Party said so often during his presentation: "Why so late? Why not earlier?" With respect, he would probably agree with me those questions could be directed to his colleagues in Ottawa as well as to this minister.

It is also interesting that in neither the minister's comments nor in the comments of my colleague the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney) was the fact of our branch plant economy even alluded to.

4:40 p.m.

When innovation and technology in this province and in the industries of this province has been talked of, it has been well established that the branch-plant, truncated nature of our industrial sector is one of the main factors for the small amount of research and development that has gone on in our industry. It is very difficult to discuss that very serious situation of deindustrialization without talking about the branch-plant economy and the role of the multinationals in it.

I can understand why neither of the previous speakers wanted to talk about this aspect of our economic problems, since the minister has made it quite clear, as his predecessor and the other members of his government have, that they view increased foreign investment as an integral part of their so-called industrial strategy.

I have said before that in our view this approach is self-defeating. One of the reasons we have had such unproductive management in our economy is the branch-plant nature of our industrial sector; therefore, this government is carrying out a self-defeating policy. And this is shown when one compares, for instance, the steel industry with other sectors of our economy. Steel is Canadian owned, and we have seen the innovation that has taken place in Canadian-owned industry as opposed to Canadian parts of foreign-owned industries, such as the auto industry. I will deal with that matter at length later.

I suppose it is also natural that the Liberal critic would not deal with this, coming as he does from the other governing party, which has just announced a new budget that again accepts the arguments made by this governing party with regard to foreign ownership. Probably the Liberals have not gone as far as the minister would have liked to see them go with the Foreign Investment Review Agency; probably they have not weakened FIRA as much as he would like in view of his comments to the effect that we should streamline FIRA because of the need to encourage more American and other foreign investment. Obviously the Liberals did not restrict the categories with which FIRA is involved; they simply raised the base limits for exemptions.

But when both governing parties have more foreign ownership as an integral part of their so-called industrial strategies it is not surprising that neither of them wants to deal with it when dealing with the need for innovation, research and development, and the development of new technology. For that reason we have before us a bill that deals with this problem but ignores one of its basic causes.

What is the problem? I said we have had de-industrialization during the 1970s and before. We know that manufacturing as a percentage of total employment in 1971 was 27.3 per cent; by the end of the 1970s it had dropped to 25.2 per cent. In the key industries of machinery and electrical products we had lost 4,400 and 3,500 jobs, respectively, in the five-year period between 1975 and 1980.

Both in Canada and in this province we suffer from very high import levels of manufactured goods. One third of all of the manufactured goods sold in Canada are imported, which in 1979 created a trade deficit in manufactured goods of $17 billion. Of all of the industrialized nations, Canada imports more of its manufactured goods. In some ways, our trade pattern in terms of raw materials as opposed to manufactured goods has more in common with the Third World than it does with the industrialized world.

This trade deficit is primarily in the technology groups. What is tragic about that is that many of the goods that make up that trade deficit could be produced in this country and in this province. Certainly that is true in terms of manufactured machinery and the processed food industries. Because of the very serious import penetration in those sectors, we calculate there have been 350,000 jobs lost in this country. And as we all know, as this province has been the industrial heartland of the country, most of those jobs could have been developed in this province.

Today in this province we have the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. As I alluded earlier, when this minister was appointed he said in response that he saw his main role as jobs, jobs, jobs; the creation of employment in this province. Yet the only major statement made by the minister since he took that position was a long-winded statement about a Sanyo plant. He ended having to admit it was only going to provide nine jobs, eight of them for non-citizens. I suppose the security guard will be the Canadian.

To be fair, we are told that the number of jobs in that plant will triple in three years.

Mr. McClellan: That will be three jobs.

Mr. Wildman: Triple; that is a tremendous record. There would not have been derision in this House about that statement if the minister had just risen and said he was very happy to announce that Sanyo, a Japanese firm, for the first time had decided to establish a plant in this province and it would be located at Elmira, and just sat down. Nobody would have made fun of it. We might have asked him how many jobs, of course.

If he had made it such a simple statement, even if there were not very many jobs, I suppose it is something that would be important to a small town like Elmira. Instead, the minister got up and made a long speech about how this indicated the Japanese people and industrialists had seen Ontario as the province of opportunity as this project as the beginning of a new development in relationships between Japan and this country, and how Ontario was the gateway to the American market for Japanese goods.

When we heard him making that statement, and until we had read far enough ahead in his printed statement, all the members on this side believed that he was talking about something like 1,000 jobs. He made such a fuss about it; nine jobs. Obviously, this is not the kind of industrial strategy we talk about when we discuss it.

4:50 p.m.

I suppose this minister is encouraging more foreign investment in the economy, but when he does get foreign investment it does not even provide jobs for citizens of this province. When he made that statement, we calculated he lowered the unemployment rate in this province by 0.0000002 per cent. But we over-calculated it because at that time we thought the nine jobs would be for people in this province, instead of just one job.

When we look at the relationship of foreign investment to the need for technological innovation in our economy, we are horrified to realize that in the 1979 Foreign Investment Review Agency report, it was shown that the greatest number of takeovers took place in the high technology sectors of our economy.

The Liberals and Conservatives have lost control of our economy. We have become so dependent on the United States that in the last couple of years we have had to go along with this incredible interest rate spiral. The federal Minister of Finance makes a budget statement that is supposed to turn the economy around and set it in a new direction, and reconfirms that high interest rate policy. It indicates the defencelessness of Canada and Ontario and how little control we have of our economy.

Will this piece of legislation turn that around? Will the changes to FIRA advocated by this minister, and in some ways accepted by the Minister of Finance in Ottawa, turn that around or will they simply continue the ebb of our industrialization?

It is quite true that we should have been moving much sooner than we are doing in providing jobs in the industrial sector through the development of new technology. Jobs that could have been created in the 1960s now have to be won in the very difficult economic climate of the 1980s.

In our view, there are a number of choices for governments in this situation. The first choice relates to the discussions that have gone on about FIRA, that is, further integration into a continental economy. I believe this is in line with the attitudes of the minister. I think he sees the future of our economy as being an industrial gateway to the American market.

There is no question foreign investment can provide short-term employment in this province and it can neutralize the actions of branch plants that have led to the shutdown of so many profitable as well as unprofitable plants in our province over the last few years. In other words, we will be replacing some of the thousands of jobs that have been lost in this province as a result of the heavy concentration of foreign ownership in our industrial economy. However, that does not deal with the long-term structural problems that have led to those very shutdowns and layoffs.

To be fair, I should say the Tories in Ontario have recognized the problem. This bill is an example of an attempt by the Conservative government to speak about the serious difficulties in our economy that are related to the lack of research and development, the lack of technological innovation and the dependence on imports of manufactured goods, which are a result of the branch-plant nature of our economy.

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are unable or unwilling to challenge the transnational corporations. They talk about technological development and the need for technological innovation

but they do not talk about import replacement. They do not talk about direct positive investment to promote new technologies and new development and production in this province. This government responds in a piecemeal manner.

We have seen other approaches it has used in the past. It gives grants to the corporations without taking equity or obtaining job guarantees. It gives loan guarantees to stumbling industrial giants, again without equity and without job guarantees. It gives tax incentives to promote R and D and then admits afterwards that the tax incentive route does not work; but it has no other ideas so it continues tax incentives and asks Ottawa to increase them.

The minister's predecessor made a great to-do about global product mandating. I have not heard this minister talk as much about global product mandating. The Tories do not talk about import replacement in the domestic market, which in our view is the first step, an imperative first step, towards becoming competitive on a world scale. They do talk about the problems. That is what the whole BILD program was: a lot of talk, a lot of show and a few grants, the development of a few institutions that would respond to the concerns people had about the de-industrialization of our economy in a political way. The question is: is it going to have any real economic results?

In our view, the government must take a direct, positive and active role in the economy in determining the key sectors. I believe this government does deal with those sectors in its piecemeal way. Rather than following the approach it takes, we believe the government must become involved in providing direct investment in a way that will deal with import replacement in those areas where we have the greatest potential for it.

We should be promoting the linkages that, largely because of the domination of the multinationals, have been missing between our resource economy and the need for machinery. There should be both forward and backward linkages so that we can become competitive and the products we are now importing can be produced here. Obviously, the major component in becoming competitive is the new technology that is required. We have been very far behind in developing new methods, advanced processes, new materials and new designs. We have lost jobs because we have imported technology, not new technology for the most part. The level of research and development in this country is approximately the same as that of Turkey.

5 p.m.

The areas dealt with in this bill are areas of major importance to the economy. The automobile industry is responsible for one in six jobs in Ontario, or at least it was. The food processing and beverage sector of the economy is responsible for 10 per cent of our labour force; and because of the concentration in control, largely by Del Monte, since the 1950s we have lost about 6,000 potential jobs in that sector in this province.

The machinery industry employs about 70,000 people in this province, which sounds very high. But when one considers the large numbers of imports in that area we can calculate that we have lost about 45,000 jobs which could have been developed in this province but have been developed elsewhere because of our imports. In 1978, we imported 73 per cent of our mining machinery, and, as the minister himself has acknowledged, we are one of the largest importers of mining machinery in the world.

What are these centres going to do? How are they going to resolve these problems? Or are they, indeed, intended to resolve these problems? The description of these centres given by the minister does not lead me to believe that he sees them as the major instruments for redirecting investment in our economy in those sectors.

The New Democratic Party has advocated direct investment through crown corporations, direct public investment in the very sectors that are dealt with in this bill, not the very restricted view that appears from the vague descriptions of the mandates that are going to be developed which this government wants.

We believe we should be using a number of possible methods of directing investment in these areas. We could be using equity participation in projects, joint ventures with the private sector, contractual agreements with the private sector and even loans to the private sector. But we do not know what the roles of these various technology centres are going to be in that regard.

This government talks about wanting to bargain with the multinationals. It appears that this government wants not to create wealth directly or even to develop windows on the industries, but rather to somehow bring the industries together with academia to try to determine possible markets for some industries, to bring machinery producers together with resource industries and so on to try to interest them in developing certain areas; but we do not have any indication that this government is going to be actively developing them itself in conjunction with the private sector.

In our view, this bill does respond to some of the very serious areas of concern that we have expressed over the years, but these technology centres are just halfway measures, if they go even that far. The minister has told us he is going to be spending $126.5 million on these centres during the next five years, but we do not have any indication of how many jobs that expenditure is going to produce, either directly in the centres or through the development of the technologies in the various industries that he is discussing.

I want to allude to one example, the resource machinery centre in Sudbury. That centre is going to be, I believe, a total of 10,000 square feet in size. It is located by a tourist trap called the Sudbury Science Centre. That is what it is; the Sudbury Science Centre is not an ongoing scientific research centre but a tourist operation.

The resource machinery centre is not, as I understand it, going to employ any scientists. What is it going to do? What is it going to produce? Obviously, there has been the indication from Inco and others that they are interested in co-operating. Mr. Jarvis has been involved. He has indicated he has some ideas of what he wants to develop. There have been indications that Laurentian University may be involved, and so on; but we do not know and the size of the operation does not indicate, that, what we think is necessary is going to take place.

We have a tremendous potential -- the minister himself admits it -- to produce jobs by producing the large amounts of now imported machinery that is used by Inco, Falconbridge, Denison, Rio Algom and all the other mining companies in northern Ontario. But is this kind of centre going to produce it, or even develop the corporations that will produce it?

The minister nods; yes it will. I wish he would tell us how. By that I do not mean I do not think that is going to happen; I just do not know.

When one looks at the other technology centres that are proposed in the bill, it seems to me that some of them are even smaller in conception than the resource machinery manufacturing centre.

My colleague the member for York South (Mr. MacDonald) is going to be talking on the food processing and agricultural machinery centre.

Mr. Nixon: We will have to come back after supper for that.

Mr. Kennedy: Is that how long you are going to speak?

Mr. Wildman: There seems to be some argument about how long we are going to be here, Mr. Speaker. I realize that we are going home for a holiday weekend and we want to finish off as early as possible.

Mr. Nixon: It is only 5:10 p.m. so the member is all right.

Mr. Wildman: I have almost completed my comments, but I would like to know if, in the food processing centre, this ministry is going to actually produce the kind of thing the new Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food indicated was necessary if we were going to start producing jobs in the food processing sector in Ontario.

The most alarming thing for us in the minister's comments about the technology centres in the last few weeks is his statement that when and if these centres become going concerns, when they are no longer dependent on the government for start-up funding or for the 50 per cent funding that he envisages later on, when they are producing and self-sustaining, he intends they will be privatized. It is stated in the bill that the ongoing mandate will be reviewed.

Obviously, we again have the minister, who is stuck with his ideological blinders, believing that anything that makes money should be in the private sector and, I suppose, anything that loses money should be in the public sector.

5:10 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Is it not your view that anything that is losing money should be nationalized?

Mr. Wildman: No, that is the way Liberal and Tory governments have operated in the past. We have seen that people who are really interested in producing wealth are interested in the winners, to use the Treasurer's phrase, rather than the losers.

I would like to know exactly what the minister means by privatization. When I asked the question in the House, he said he was talking about control of the technology centres, not necessarily ownership. At least I think that is what he said. Could he please explain what he means?

Obviously, we are opposed to socializing the costs through the development of technology centres which, when they become active and productive and start to make money for the people of this province who have invested in them, are turned over to the private sector.

The minister said in his statement he was interested in start-up activities. He said, "The plans will serve as a blueprint for the incoming management and ensure that the centre will start immediately once it is formally established." That is what we are asked to vote on here. We do not know what the mandates are; they have not been developed. Everything is vague. We cannot very well vote against this thing, but we do not really know what we are voting for.

Mr. Kennedy: Read it.

Mr. Wildman: Read it? I read it along with the minister as he read it and there are not even nine jobs at the end of it.

Mr. Kennedy: More like nine million.

Mr. Wildman: Nine million jobs; I suppose it is so vague one could read nine million jobs into it. It is a little unrealistic but I suppose one could read anything into it.

Our caucus will be supporting this legislation but we are highly critical of it. We do not think it goes nearly far enough. It is another example of how Liberals and Tories, at both levels of government, have a lot of rhetoric about the development of our economy, but continue their dependence not only on the private sector and the multinationals but on the United States to solve our economic problems.

Mr. Kennedy: Mr. Speaker, I wish to comment briefly in support of the bill. I was outside when I heard the member for Kitchener-Wilmot make some reference to remarks I had made earlier in response to the throne speech debate. I believe the minister responded that those remarks were in support of the establishment of a trades training centre to turn out skilled tradesmen and retrain people, rather than the research and development which this bill promotes.

The object of the bill is set out in section 9 where it gives the objective of each centre. There it is. "To promote and enhance the application of technology in order to improve the productivity and competitiveness of Ontario industry and commerce." I suggest this is one of the areas which we do need to address because we are in a fiercely competitive world situation with respect to technological production. I believe this bill addresses that problem by the establishment of these centres.

The member for Kitchener-Wilmot was somewhat concerned as to the location of these centres. I do not think that is too vital. I think it is a good idea to disperse these centres across the province. That will enhance the balance of employment and the dispersal of technical people across the province. I cannot see any great hang-up about that.

I am wondering about a couple of points. The first is the relationship between these institutes, or centres as they are called in the bill, and the producing and operating factories across the province, just what the tie-in --

Mr. Wildman: Right on, that is what I said.

Mr. Kennedy: I was listening to the member's speech, I know that.

I presume there will be a relationship, a co-operative effort, a joint effort if you like, with one supporting the other and leading to this balance, to this competitiveness we must face up to. They will work together to the betterment of the employment situation across the province. That only makes sense.

The other point I thought I would inquire about is whether there is any thought that there might be contract research undertaken, somewhat similar to that undertaken by the Ontario Research Foundation at the present time, whether there would be revenues coming to these centres through work such as that or whether it is a general public effort with public financing to develop these ideas. The spin off, or the bottom line of where the profitability comes, turns up at the end of the line when we turn Out products that do have an attraction to the marketplace and enhance not only our own domestic production but also our exports.

I was interested in one sentence of the member for Algoma. He wondered whether the centres would have any real economic results. I underline the word "real." I suggest to him and to this House that is exactly what these centres will have. They will have real economic results, because they will be establishing meaningful productivity by virtue of the work they do, rather than having government grants and handouts to try to compete, perhaps repeating or instituting production on the basis of something we already know. I suggest that very strongly, as I interpret the bill, and I support the idea that actions such as this will lead to real economic results, as we go towards the end of this century and into the 21st century.

It is through actions like this that we are going to maintain our competitive position in world markets. So I rise with enthusiasm to support this bill. I am very interested in it and interested in knowing that we will tie this together with the production of skilled workers, which has been a problem that is being addressed with considerable vigour by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which is sponsoring this bill. I strongly support the bill.

Mr. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I rise to make a few comments on Bill 124, An Act to establish Technology Centres. At the outset, I would like to state that I will support the bill. I think it is a step in the right direction, if only a small step. I would like to inform the minister that originally the technical schools in the province were set up to take care of something similar to what he is doing here, and they did not work out in the fashion originally intended.

5:20 p.m.

I think this bill is a good bill. There could be some improvements in it, and it is likely that amendments will be presented by members on this side of the House.

One of the things I am disturbed about is the location of the various centres. In deciding the location, the government should have taken into consideration whether there are the educational facilities in that centre that are required to produce the necessary skilled personnel, or the academic, scientific and technological expertise and so forth.

I understand that the centres are located geographically, but one would also think that in placing a centre, one would consider the index of unemployment, the types of employment in the centre and the types of job skills required in the centre.

Centres will be located in Ottawa, Cambridge, Peterborough, St. Catharines and Chatham. There is not one of them that I would say does not deserve the centre, but the city in Ontario that put us on wheels originally is the city I come from, Windsor. Had it not been for Windsor, we would probably still be in a carriage behind a horse.

We have a university, and we have a community college; so we have two of the requisites. We have the skills from the various skill-developing shops and industries in the community. In addition, we have extremely high unemployment. One would have thought the government would have considered all this and placed a centre in my community. The minister possibly will say that Chatham is more centrally located; but when one considers population, one would have to take Windsor rather than Chatham.

Further, we are directly across the river from what is probably the fourth largest city in the United States, the city of Detroit, and within 24 hours of more than 50 million people in the midwestern United States. So we would have a catchment basin that would include well over 50 million Americans to whom we could sell the products developed in the technological centres.

In locating a centre, I think it is incumbent upon the government to consider the index of unemployment, especially when the unemployed work force has many of the skills that would fit perfectly in the development of the new types of tools, the new types of machinery, the automation and the miscellaneous procedures and equipment that would be developed by the centres.

The industrial promotion commissioner in the city of Windsor, I understand, made an excellent presentation to the ministry at one of the meetings in which a series of municipalities were vying for these technology centres. Only flattering comments came from the government; but, in spite of that, the ministry or the government made the political decision to locate the centre in Chatham instead of in Windsor.

When one sees that the five centres will be located in Ottawa, Cambridge, Peterborough, St. Catharines and Chatham, it makes one suspicious when all these centres are essentially represented by members of the government party. I do not like to say that, but I would like to hope that we, in my community, would always get our fair share from the government, even though we might not necessarily support the government when it comes to political decisions.

In this instance, the ministry did not play fair ball with my community. The ministry knew well in advance that it was going to develop technology centres, yet there was no preparation through the educational system. Because of that, the minister is going to find a lot of serious problems developing.

I want to read an article in the Detroit Free Press, dated January 22, 1982, and written by a Washington staff writer for the Detroit Free Press, a gentleman by the name of Carl M. Cannon. Wherever the article mentions the United States, we can automatically just put in Canada or Ontario where it fits.

"The Labour department is producing brochures advising high school vocational students of job opportunities as welders, spray painters and machinists, even though the industry is increasingly using robots for such tasks." It is almost the same here.

"By the 1990s, when today's high school vocational students are in their late 20s, wanting to start families and buy homes, robots probably will have claimed millions of those manufacturing jobs.

"Officials in the Labour department's occupational outlook division" -- they apparently have a division that attempts to foresee manpower needs -- "say they are familiar with the one definitive study about robotics but downplay its importance." Imagine them downplaying the importance of robotics.

"The study predicts that in the next decade two million American workers could be displaced by robots and that the number might double in 20 years." Proportionately, it would be the same in Canada.

"This study, done at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, predicts that the greatest loss of jobs will occur in California and the industrial Great Lakes states.

"Yet the federal government continues to encourage preparation for jobs already destined for extinction." It is the same thing here.

"'That is one of the biggest frustrations,' said Paul von Jankowsky, administrator of the Robot Institute of America, a trade association based in Dearborn. 'We think. "C'mon. you guys. Come out with stuff a little more up to date."'" When talking about what we now have being developed, it is not even up to date as far as the robotics are concerned.

"A UAW official, Thomas Weekley, agrees. 'The government has no policy for the future,' he said. 'The government has no program, no plan, to prepare people for the new jobs.'" We are like that right here in Ontario.

"Wendell Larsen, a Chrysler vice-president, added, 'I doubt that anyone in government in this country is planning for the social implications of robotics. This administration doesn't believe in national planning. Its attitude is, "Free enterprise forever, and the devil take the hindmost."

"Carnegie-Mellon researchers concluded that no one, Chrysler included, is preparing for what might be the most important labour issue of the future.

"'Since private industry, the Department of Labour, public education and non-profit institutions have all taken some responsibility for training and retraining (displaced workers) in the past, it is curious why very few of these entities are pushing forward, preparing for the increased use of robots,' the study said.

"In January, Labour Secretary Raymond Donovan, borrowing from the Carnegie-Mellon study, predicted that by 1990 half of US factory workers will be specialists who maintain and repair robots. His remarks attracted little attention and, within his own agency, brought no discernible change in attitude.

"Neal Rosenthal, chief of the occupational outlook division, downplayed the Carnegie- Mellon study. He said the agency has never discussed robotics or its social implications in any of the brochures for vocational workers. The first robotics article still is in draft form, he said.

"Rosenthal added that he knows of no government agency that has studied the effects robotics will have on workers.

"'It will take time before robotics has an effect on large numbers of workers,' said Rosenthal. 'Even if it affects five million people, it's a small percentage of the total work force.

"'Basic manufacturing is only 20 per cent of total employment, and (robotics involves) a small percentage of that. You don't automate the managers.'

"But industry and labour officials and those involved in robotics say such attitudes reflect a lack of understanding.

"Steve Beckman, a Washington bargaining official with the AFL-CIO, said robots 'have the potential to be devastating to workers, yet there has been very little study about what the effects would be about having that kind of system. Where would people move? Where would the jobs be? Who would retrain? These are all important social issues that no one has even discussed,' Beckman said.

"'Robotics is a wave that is coming upon us rapidly,' said Chrysler's Larsen.

"The auto industry has nearly half of the 4,700 robots now used in America. General Motors, with 1,200, has more than any other firm. Chrysler has 240 robots in its assembly plants and expects to have 350 by next year.

"'It's one of our biggest issues right now,' said Larsen.

"While the US government is saying robotics won't happen quickly, the Japanese government is assisting its corporations in rapidly converting their plants to robotics technology.

"Japan has about 14,250 robots, three times as many as the United States.

"Many of these robots are produced with US technology. Unimation Inc., the Connecticut-based firm that is the largest of the American robot manufacturers, has a licence to import robots in conjunction with Kawasaki, a huge Japanese concern.

"'In a short period of time, they (the Japanese) have taken hold of that technology and have pursued implementing it more aggressively than the United States,' said Steven Miller, one of the Carnegie-Mellon researchers.

"Miller added, 'The greater benefit of robotics is that it makes our factories more adaptable. It allows them to respond more quickly to changes in the marketplace and continuously innovate and make new products.'"

Mr. Speaker, I could continue at some length concerning this piece of legislation but, since I am limited on time, I will say that I support the bill and that I hope the minister will reconsider the decision for the next robotics centre, or the next centre of high technology, and place it in the community of Windsor.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, the general case for this bill has been put by the minister, and general criticism of it has been made by the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney) and by the member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman). I do not intend to repeat any of that general assessment of the situation. I want to focus rather sharply on one technological centre, namely, for farm equipment and food processing.

The use of emerging technology is the key to the future. That is almost a motherhood statement; it is repeated so often these days that one wonders why more has not been done up to this point to implement it.

When I focus on this one technological centre, which has been established in Chatham, I have a particular concern because I have difficulty in figuring out how we are going to avoid rather serious duplication. I do not know where research ends and technological development begins. I suspect there is a significant overlap.

We all know that in the agriculture and food field, particularly in the agricultural field, there has been a significant amount of research down through the years. Indeed, I think for the past decade or so the criticism has been that we have focused all our research on how to produce more food, on how to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, and not enough on marketing to be able to get that produce to the appropriate market for the appropriate price once it has been produced.

I will not go into excessive detail, but I remind the members that every year the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario produces a report. It is a body that presumably co-ordinates to some degree and perhaps adds to the research that goes on at Guelph, at the economics branch, at the Horticultural Research Institute of Ontario, and at the colleges of agricultural technology at Ridgetown, Centralia, Kemptville and New Liskeard.

I am surprised that the institute's latest report is pretty thin. For years it used to be half an inch or three quarters of an inch thick.

It says in the introduction, "The Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario was established in 1962 to inquire into current programs of research and to recommend areas of research that should receive priority." I notice in the estimates this year that in the Agriculture and Food field there is $21.2 million in the education, research and technical services contract with the University of Guelph.

We are aware of all the work of Dr. Rennie, who has been heading up research work in that ministry for quite some time. We know that on some occasions research work has been allocated out and has been handled by the Ontario Research Foundation at Sheridan Park.

We have the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ontario Research Foundation where a significant degree of research has been going on. When the government is going to set up a technological centre, what will be the relationship with the research that has gone on for years and to what extent will there be an overlap? This is of particular importance as far as I am concerned.

I want to draw attention to the fact that the research centre in Chatham is sharply focused on farm equipment and food processing technology. That is not a broad field. When the minister went down there to cut the ribbon or turn the sod or whatever he did to launch that project under the kind and benign eye of the local Conservative member, he noted he was there to make an important BILD announcement.

I have some suspicion about BILD announcements. There is a lot of window dressing and repetition of what has gone before; there is a lot of recycling. Frankly, with this particular technological centre, I am even more concerned.

We have talked for years in the Agriculture and Food estimates and in farm circles about what this government has done or, more important, what it has not done, on the necessary research with regard to farm equipment. This government and this province have tended to coast on the work done by the prairie provinces, which have had testing and through their testing they have had correction and guidelines for development of farm machinery. We have done very little of that.

5:40 p.m.

I know we have a board and an individual out in Guelph who heads up the board and receives complaints. If the complaint is one in which some arm-twisting can be done with the ministry, such as when a farmer has been sold a lemon or piece of equipment that did not live up to the prescriptions that were given to it in its advertising, some measure of compensation has been given. It has all been very piecemeal and not very adequate. There has been nothing of the kind of intensive research and testing that would be of assistance to development as has been done in western Canada. We have been able to coast on what they did in western Canada to some extent, but in some instances we found ourselves in difficulties because conditions in Ontario are different from what they are in western Canada.

I trust we are finally going to use this farm equipment and food processing technology centre down in Chatham to tackle this problem. I am only hoping because, as my friend the member for Algoma has said, we do not know exactly what is in this bill. Section 9, which spells out the terms of reference for each one of the centres, is rather general. One can fit anything into it in future years. I am hoping that we will finally get around to doing what this province should have done a long time ago with regard to farm equipment.

When the minister was down there he cited, as an example, the encouragement that can be given new products, and increased incentives for farmers to produce. He cited peanuts and strawberries as crops where with the appropriate kind of marketing machinery and food processing machinery one could have a new crop that would be an added incentive for farmers to increase production in Ontario. All of that could have been done a long time ago.

Let me move to the second item which is the food processing aspect of it. I am a little intrigued. My friend the member for Huron-Middlesex (Mr. Riddell) remembers that during the Ministry of Agriculture and Food estimates, I and a number of other members really zeroed in on the deputy minister and said: "What are you doing with regard to the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development in an effort to establish some rebuilding of the food processing industry in Ontario?"

May I remind members that in the last two decades this government, for practical purposes, has sat idly aside while one half -- 1,369 -- of the food processing establishments in the province have disappeared. Some of them were small, I acknowledge that. Those delightful home bakery establishments that one found in every village and every town have been replaced by the great mass production of that gooey bread that is trucked out in monstrous trucks from some factory and delivered all over the place.

A lot of them were the cream factories and so on. A lot of them were small but many of them were big. The 37 food processing plants that were bought by Del Monte when they bought out Canadian Canners have been reduced to five or six. We sat on the sidelines and we have watched the destruction, the gradual dismantling of a very extensive and important food processing industry in the province.

We pressured the deputy minister -- who, may I remind the House, used to be the head of BILD; he created the program. He was one of the great architects behind this whole effort that was such a centrepiece in the government's last election campaign. We said to him: "What is being done? Is the minister sitting there and waiting for people to come in with proposals?" For the most part one suspected that was the case. He said, "No, we will also go out and seek the prospect of people who are willing to enter into joint ventures. We will seek others who might be willing to do something by way of rebuilding."

Indeed, there was that inimitable occasion when my honourable friend the member for Haldimand-Norfolk (Mr. G. I. Miller) inquired as to why he could not get a little tomato paste establishment in this area to encourage the growth of tomatoes. The minister, in a very vehement way, indicated that what we needed was a big establishment, something that could compete with the multinationals, and what we needed was to get a co-operative or even some public enterprise to move in.

We know what happened. They went down and engaged -- the minister admitted this -- in a fair amount of arm-twisting and the handout of a grant of $3 million or $4 million to Heinz in Leamington, in order to get the tomato paste factory established there.

What is going to be done at the technology centre in Chatham that is not being done in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food? Is OMAF going to back out of this field altogether and leave the technological centre to do most of the background research? Where do the duplication and overlap begin and where do they end? I have some concerns about this. We have here an area in which there can be excessive duplication because of the gradations between research and technological development, between all the research work that is going on, in all the areas I indicated earlier, and all the work OMAF has presumably been doing on rebuilding the food processing industry. It now has some tens of millions of dollars and has had a general allocation of $100 million of the $400 million that was available for resource development. Agriculture was thrown in with minerals in the ground and with trees up north as an area for resource development.

I repeat that nobody can object in principle to the proposition of technological centres, but the government is late. It is not only late, as has been pointed out by previous speakers, but in this instance it is picking up on the area of farm equipment, which has been grossly neglected for years by this government. One wonders whether there will really be a new and important chapter in that area. It is picking up after even more outrageous neglect in the food processing field, because the government sat idly by while the whole food processing industry, or half of it, to be more accurate, was dismantled in terms of actual numbers of establishments.

If, in this centre, we are going to have now a recycling and a more effective tackling of these important areas, and if in the process we avoid duplication and the waste of public moneys, it will be a step in the right direction, but it will have to be watched carefully because there are serious dangers in the process.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I indicated that in the interests of time I would make a very brief contribution to the debate this afternoon. I simply want to draw to the attention of the Minister of Industry and Trade the fact that on March 4, at the Parkway Inn, sometimes known as Tory headquarters, an announcement was made about the automotive parts technology centre to be located in the St. Catharines area; in fact, in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, but adjacent to St. Catharines and near the General Motors plant, near the racetrack that is now closed down, and on land which I believe was donated by the regional municipality of Niagara in an attempt to lure the technology centre to that location.

As I indicated, there was a good deal of fanfare on that occasion, a lot of hopes were raised, and in discussing an earlier bill I expressed my pleasure that the minister and his government had accepted one of the suggestions of the official opposition, the Ontario Liberal Party, and established an automotive parts technology centre, which I think many people in all parties were in favour of.

My question to the minister this afternoon, or my admonition, is that he should proceed with dispatch to establish this centre, that we should have a clear indication it is online and will be in full operation, not just with the initial five employees, before the time anticipated by the announcement itself. We recognize its importance, not as a direct job creation activity in the peninsula, although it will be good for those who are specifically geared towards the area of research, but, most particularly, for the help it can provide to the automotive parts technology centre in competing with the offshore suppliers. It can make us a viable industry, or continue to be a viable industry, in North America.

I think we have to move very quickly in this regard. The competition is getting stiffer all the time. We cannot continue to hide behind protection if we are inefficient, and we will be inefficient unless we are prepared to move forward as quickly as other nations in the field of automotive technology.

5:50 p.m.

I urge the minister to proceed with dispatch in establishing the centre. I hope that in the few minutes he has for a reply he will indicate the progress that has been made to this point, and the specific plans for movement in the establishment and completion of the automotive parts technology centre in the Niagara Peninsula.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, the members have made some significant contributions, and all members have indicated support of the tech centre bill which has been submitted. Many have put forward submissions and considerations which will be reviewed by us in the ministry. I am cognizant of the fact that one or two of the members have departed because of the lateness of the hour and it would be unfair, I think, to review in detail their specific comments.

However, the member for Kitchener-Wilmot is here. He commented on the human dimensions question. That, undoubtedly, is to be considered seriously in connection with robotics. We appreciate the concern one might have for the displacements which may be caused by new technologies. I think his observations were two-pronged, one being the displacement of people.

The member for Windsor-Walkerville also made comments along that line. Displacement is a serious consideration, and there will be labour components to those boards that are particularly and directly involved with microelectronics, with robotics and with computer-assisted design in the auto parts area. So we will have the kind of involvement that I think will allow us to take those into consideration. The mandate is very much a part of that; it will be a mandate of the groups.

Many members referred to the locations. We can talk about locations and say that one is better than another, but that would probably not lead us down a very successful trail. I would not want to cast any aspersions on any of the communities that supported and put forward bids for these proposals. Many of them are extremely good. I thought of my own community. While it did not put forward a formal submission, it was anxious to have a centre, but it did not get one.

One cannot put six centres across 125 ridings in this province, nor across the 900 municipalities. They have to go somewhere, but each centre is capable of being used throughout the province. So what is invented and conceived in Chatham, a centre of agricultural technology, will be applicable in Hastings county as much as it is in Kent county. We can have total transfer there.

Members will appreciate the significance of the comments that were made. I certainly do. But we have tried to locate the centres as best we could. I think we have related them very closely to the industry they are connected with: Ottawa, in microelectronics and Chatham, which is an agricultural centre. Of course there are many places they could have gone. They could have gone to Cambridge because of its relationship with computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing at McMaster University, and in many other areas as well.

Members have put forward a number of significant thoughts here. I will take all of those into consideration in moving second reading.

As to going into committee of the whole House, I have only one amendment to make. It relates to the annual report, and I would be prepared to do it very quickly if members would concede to that.

Motion agreed to.

Ordered for committee of the whole House.

House in committee of the whole.

TECHNOLOGY CENTRES ACT

Consideration of Bill 124, An Act to establish Technology Centres.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Chairman, allow me to give the intent of the amendments that I propose for this. One will be an amendment to section 14 of the bill.

Sections 1 to 13, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 14:

The Deputy Chairman: Mr. Walker moves that section 14 of the bill as printed be amended by striking out "by the Provincial Auditor" in the second line.

Hon. Mr. Walker: My reason for doing this is to allow each of the individual establishments to retain their own auditors.

Motion agreed to.

Section 14, as amended, agreed to.

The Deputy Chairman: Mr. Walker moves that the bill be amended by renumbering sections 14 to 17 as sections 15 to 18 and by adding thereto the following section:

"14. The minister shall, after the close of each fiscal year, submit to the Lieutenant Governor in Council an annual report upon the affairs of the centres, which shall include their audited financial statements, and shall then lay the report before the assembly if it is in session or, if not, at the next ensuing session."

Motion agreed to.

Section 14, as renumbered and as amended,

agreed to.

Sections 15 to 17, inclusive, as renumbered, agreed to.

Bill 124, as amended, reported.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Gregory, the committee of the whole House reported one bill with certain amendments.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, before the adjournment of the House I would like to outline the business for next week. On Monday, July 5, the committee of the whole on Bill 46; then second reading of Bill 38; then, if there is time, second reading of municipal bills in this order: 119, 11 and 29.

On Tuesday, July 6, I expect we will be completing municipal bills in committee of the whole as well as committee on Bill 38, if required.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.

June 30, 1982