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

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: Last Tuesday I raised the matter of lead levels, particulate matter and solvents with respect to Westinghouse in Hamilton.

Mr. Stan Gray had provided me with that information. That afternoon, while on his washup time and lunch break during the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, he went out to read lead levels in the paint cans that were around the plant. On Wednesday he was suspended for one full shift, and the reason given was that he was wasting time on company premises and leaving his work station without permission.

Having given me that information and after my raising it here, it seems to me this is a form of reprisal against that worker. I think it is incumbent upon the minister to apply section 24 of the act against Westinghouse for this form of reprisal. Otherwise, members in this Legislature will never get material with which to document problems in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, if that is correct -- and I have no reason to believe it is not -- if it was done on a reprisal basis, I will certainly look into the matter immediately.

I have been looking into the whole Westinghouse matter on a personal basis since the honourable member first brought it to my attention in this Legislature last Monday. I must also admit there are some unanswered questions and I am endeavouring to get those properly attended to.

I am desirous of bringing this whole matter to a successful resolution just as expeditiously as possible. The member did say there was more to the situation than met the eye and I am inclined to agree. I am working on that premise, and I hope to be able to have something of a substantive nature to report to this House in the not too distant future.

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I am sure you are aware that for some reason during this present session there has been an unduly large number of printed questions on the Order Paper that have not been answered in the time required under our rules.

I have a feeling that the ministry is having some difficulties with these matters, since they can be time consuming; but naturally it is important for the members of the House, particularly those in the opposition, to have specific information before these matters are raised in various committee hearings. I draw your attention to the fact that at least some of the questions, numbering approximately from 480 to 580, are substantially overdue.

I do not know what your responsibility is in this matter, Mr. Speaker, other than that the rules do require an answer within a specific period of time. It may be that you might have to bring this to the attention of the individual members of the government or to the House as a whole if other facilities must be made available to see that this information is tabled in the House in time for the sorts of discussions and debates that I feel they should be available for.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Speaking to that point of order, Mr. Speaker, I grant that there are quite a number of unanswered questions on the Order Paper. I am sure the opposition House leader recognizes the extremely high number. They take a great deal of time and, as the House leader has indicated before, we are proceeding as quickly as we can and the answers will be forthcoming.

Mr. Nixon: Further to the point, Mr. Speaker, it is customary if the time limit is surpassed for the minister or the House leader or someone to make a statement to the House more or less indicating, or getting unanimous consent that the time limit be waived in specific instances. It might save some discussion if someone were in charge of doing that so that we would not feel the government was simply letting the rules slip by and leaving the questions unanswered.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): I trust there will be sufficient response to this point of order.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, I just received word that some answers will be tabled today and more are coming. I will discuss with the House leader on his return a report on the status of these questions.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO TECHNOLOGY CENTRES

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a brief statement on a specific aspect of the Ontario technology centres program.

As honourable members know, this government is committed to ensuring that commercial enterprises throughout Ontario, particularly small and medium-sized ventures, are able to survive and remain competitive by adopting new technologies in their products and in the processes for making those products. A significant part of our technological commitment is expressed through the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development, and it is graphically evident in the network of six technology centres we have announced across the province.

I am now pleased to advise this House that the first of those technology centres, the Ontario Centre for Microelectronics in Ottawa, is now ready to start business and in fact has been in business for about two months.

I am also pleased to announce the appointment of the board of directors for that centre. They are 14 individuals distinguished and experienced in business, industry, labour, the applied sciences and the academic community, and they include such names as Mr. Gordon Gow, senior vice-president of Nabu Manufacturing; Dr. Walter Pieczonka, president of Linear Technology; Mr. Glenn Pattinson, president of the Canadian District, International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers; Dr. Elizabeth Parr-Johnston, manager of macroenvironment at Shell Canada, and a host of people who have disciplines that are very important.

The chairman will be Mr. Gordon Gow, senior vice-president of Nabu Manufacturing in Ottawa. Mr. Gow chaired the advisory committee that guided the development of the centre. The advisory committee had been in service since about April or May of this year.

I want to express to Mr. Gow and members of that committee our deepest gratitude for their dedication and effort these many months. The names of the new directors are being sent to members. I would like to thank these individuals for being prepared to give their time and talents to this service. I also want to thank the members for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell) and Carleton East (Mr. MacQuarrie) for agreeing to sit on the board in an ex-officio capacity.

2:10 p.m.

On another aspect of the microelectronics centre, all members will have received by now their invitations to a program of activity scheduled for Carleton University this Thursday to launch the centre and the overall technology program. All members will be most welcome to join us in Ottawa and I hope that as many as possible will attend, given the exigencies of this Legislature and the requirement to be here.

The Ottawa event will include exhibits by many of Canada's leading high-technology firms. These working displays provide an extraordinary glimpse of our country's ingenuity and innovation in creating sophisticated products and processes that will have pervasive economic benefits. They will contribute immeasurably to the competence of private enterprise in making productivity gains to remain competitive at home and abroad for decades to come.

For those members unable to join us in Ottawa, we have an alternative to offer. At around three o'clock on Thursday we intend to link Carleton University, the site of the official opening, and Queen's Park by interactive television. The screen will be at the bottom of the stairs in this Legislature in the main lobby. We will have a two-way video conferencing arrangement and will, technologically, launch the program in Ottawa by pushing a button here in Toronto.

I hope those members who cannot be with us in Ottawa will participate here in the Legislature. Like those in Ottawa, those here will be served coffee.

Finally, the technology centres program is moving ahead. All six centres will be open on schedule -- microelectronics this week and the remaining five by the end of January.

I am pleased to announce as well that startup funding of $3.85 million for the robotics centre in Peterborough and the computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing centre in Cambridge has now been approved. This is part of the $120-million commitment over five years behind the overall technology centres program.

Business plans for the automotive parts, resource machinery and agricultural centres are being completed on schedule for submission to the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development and to cabinet. These plans are detailed operating blueprints and are essential to the viability of each centre. Our talent hunt for executive and technical staff is moving ahead and we expect to announce appointments shortly. As members can see, the program is progressing. I will report to the House from time to time on the expected developments.

VISITORS

The Acting Speaker: On behalf of the House, I would like to welcome some special visitors today. The Honourable Sam Uskiw, Minister of Highways and Transportation for Manitoba, is in the visitors' gallery as the guest of the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier). We are very pleased to have him with us.

Also in the visitors' gallery is a group of visitors from Sweden, representing the Swedish Employers' Confederation and the Swedish Supervisors' Union-Confederation, the SAF and SALF committees for supervisory training. They are here in Canada examining training programs in colleges and universities. We welcome them too.

ORAL QUESTIONS

METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE PRACTICES

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Attorney General with respect to the recent developments in the Neil Proverbs videotape situation and the Ontario Provincial Police investigation announced into this whole affair.

We understand that the OPP has been examining about five hours of the supposedly 37 hours of tapes which are said to exist and last Wednesday Mr. Proverbs handed over more portions of these tapes to Crown Attorney Robert McGee.

Can the Attorney General now advise us whether a search warrant has been issued or executed to retrieve the remaining portion of the videotapes, whatever does exist and has not yet been viewed by the police, so that at least we can have all of the information and not this piecemeal approach?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I cannot advise the member now with respect to what search warrants have been issued, but I know every effort has been made by the OPP to obtain the total number of hours of tapes, if they still exist, and they are pursuing their efforts in that regard.

Mr. Breithaupt: In the initial comments announcing the investigation, the Attorney General stated: "I want to stress that I am profoundly distressed by the latest activities of the two police officers in this matter. I do not believe their actions were in the interests of justice, the police force or the public." He went on to say, "I want to inform you that I have asked the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate every single allegation and innuendo made by Mr. Proverbs or the officers whom he met."

How can this investigation possibly continue unless all the material is available to the people doing the investigation? How can we have a proper trial conducted if we do not have the total series of tapes, whatever may exist?

Are we not just wasting a lot of time trying to piece together bits and pieces of tape to see whether they have been patched or amended or spliced rather than getting the whole story so that this problem will be resolved, and allowing this apparent abuse by Mr. Proverbs to continue whereby he feeds what bits and pieces he wants to the investigating authorities?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Proverbs' case is scheduled to proceed to court next week. All I can say at this time is that every reasonable effort has been made by the OPP to obtain those tapes. I do not intend to discuss at this time the details of those efforts, because the matter is still under investigation.

COURTS OF JUSTICE BILL

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, I have another question to the Attorney General, this one on the Courts of Justice Act, which is apparently draft legislation we can expect before the House soon.

We have been told there is substantial dissatisfaction among a number of judges with respect to the proposed recommendations, particularly from Judge Kirkland, who is reported to have said that the proposed change goes even further and effectively takes away legislative authority from judges at all levels of the courts. There are apparently, as well, substantial fears that traditional rights and freedoms of the bench, such as security or independence, may be somewhat diminished.

Will the Attorney General now table in the House a copy of this draft legislation and the accompanying report?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I have not heard that statement attributed to that particular provincial court judge, but certainly that does not reflect the attitudes of the judiciary generally. I simply say that the judges are being very carefully and extensively and comprehensively consulted with respect to this very important legislation, and the consultation process is still ongoing. We hope to have the bill introduced for first reading this fall. I certainly do not intend to table any draft legislation during this consultation process.

Mr. Breithaupt: Since Judge Kirkland is chairman of the law reform committee of the Family Court Judges Association, and was also reported to have expressed surprise that the ministry would propose legislation that contradicted the recommendation of a report last year by the Canadian Judicial Council calling for greater control by judges over court administrators, can the Attorney General advise us just which judges were involved in preparing or dealing with these recommendations?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: There was a committee of judges involved. A number of all the senior judges, the chief judges, have been consulted in the various courts. I am sure that if Judge Kirkland and his committee were concerned they would communicate with me. To date, I have heard nothing from them.

Mr. Breithaupt: If the Attorney General intends to introduce this legislation this fall, will it be made quite clear at that time that committee hearings are going to be available so that not only members of the public but all those other groups involved in the administration of justice will have the opportunity of presenting their concerns once the draft legislation has received approval in principle in the House?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Certainly, if they are interested in having this matter sent to committee I would be very happy that it be done. The reason we want to introduce it, even knowing it can only be introduced for first reading and therefore die on the Order Paper, was to make it clear that we want to proceed with this legislation. We want it to receive first reading in order to encourage that type of dialogue and participation with respect to this important legislation. I would be quite happy to see it go to committee if that is thought to be appropriate.

2:20 p.m.

CHRONIC CARE COPAYMENT FEE

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Health. I would simply ask him, is the chronic care copayment fee going to go up on November 1, and if so, by how much?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, that has not been determined yet.

Mr. Foulds: Is the minister aware that the chronic care copayment fee over the past year, between August 1, 1981, and August 1, 1982, has risen by 13.9 per cent, whereas the old age security payments that trigger such increases have risen by only 11.57 per cent? Because the chronic care copayment fee takes $433.43 or 79 per cent of the income of a single person in those institutions who is dependent on OAS, guaranteed income supplement and guaranteed annual income supplements, is he willing to have those fees frozen at their present level?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I cannot add anything to what I said earlier, which is that the issue has not been determined. We will, of course, notify the House when it happens.

Mr. Foulds: If the minister is not willing to reduce or abolish those fees -- I believe they should be reduced or abolished because they hit at the most vulnerable of our society -- will he at least make the commitment in the House that they will be brought under his administered prices program under Bill 179?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I have nothing to add to my previous statement.

URBAN TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT CORP.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development, in the absence of the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) and the Premier (Mr. Davis).

As the minister responsible for the policies in the resources development field, particularly in the field of transportation and communications, can he explain how and why the Urban Transportation Development Corp. has apparently killed negotiations for a proposal of 26 to 60 subway cars to be supplied to the Toronto Transit Commission by Hawker Siddeley Can-Car plant in Thunder Bay by UTDC withdrawing from the project?

Can he find out why UTDC withdrew from the project, since the general manager of the TTC was quoted at 6:30 this morning on Thunder Bay radio as saying that financial considerations were not an impediment to the proposal?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: Mr. Speaker, there has been considerable dialogue between the ministry and this company. To get the member an up-to-date report, I would like to let the Minister of Transportation and Communications answer the question. I have not been involved in the dialogue and I have only had reports from the minister. So to be fair, he would be the appropriate one to answer the member.

Mr. Foulds: Could I ask the minister whether he believes as a matter of policy that UTDC, as an agency of government, should be used to create jobs in Ontario, particularly at Hawker Siddeley's plant in Thunder Bay, rather than destroying jobs in one of the few secondary manufacturing industries we have in the north?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: I am sure the member knows that the transportation company here in Toronto is trying to help everyone. I do not accept his argument that they are destroying jobs.

Mr. Cunningham: Mr. Speaker, when the minister is taking it upon himself to have a dialogue with the Minister of Transportation and Communications, would he inquire why this government would impose a policy that would see the UTDC having to be part of the bid process with Hawker Siddeley, the company the member has referred to, in competing in the open market in providing the transit cars for the TTC? Why would it be a necessity that the UTDC has to be a partner with Hawker Siddeley in this? Why would such a requirement be imposed?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: Mr. Speaker, we will make this part of the response.

Mr. Foulds: Do the minister and his government understand that in effect UTDC appears to have veto power over every transit contract that is let in Ontario? Do they understand what a severe blow the falling through of this proposal is to the 1000 workers who have been laid off at that plant since the "Keep the promise" election of 18 months ago?

Do they know what a severe blow it is to the collective bargaining negotiations currently going on between the 200 workers at the Can-Car plant and their management? Do they not think it is about time UTDC was brought to heel and made an instrument of job creation instead of an instrument of job destruction?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: The statement by the honourable member is not acceptable, from my position as the minister, nor to the Minister of Transportation and Communications. I can assure the member that the minister will make a suitable reply and one that he will accept.

ONTARIO MUNICIPAL BOARD APPOINTMENT

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Attorney General. Some months ago he made a very eloquent speech in France, I believe, about the need for the public to maintain a high regard for our judicial system. I thought that speech rang with great eloquence and commitment -- no doubt outlining the Attorney General's very strongly held views about the need for the public and for politicians to do all within their power to maintain a very high regard for the judicial system.

In view of that great speech in France, and in view of the proceedings concluded not that many days ago in the justice committee, can the Attorney General live these days very easily, very happily or at all, in the knowledge that on January 3, 1983, there will be appointed to the quasi-judicial Ontario Municipal Board a self-confessed liar, who by his own admission is given to fits of confusion and frustration?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, this matter has been discussed somewhat in the House and I do not intend to pursue the dialogue, because I think what we are hearing from the other side is not just legitimate criticism about the appointment process but nothing other than character assassination. I am not going to encourage that type of discussion.

Mr. Conway: In view of the fact that the Attorney General has stood in his place and announced to all who care to listen that as chief law officer of the crown he can live with the appointment by his government of a self-confessed liar to the quasi-judicial board, at some public variance with his great and eloquent speech in France this past summer, and in view of the fact that very learned members of the bar -- learned members like Mr. Edwin Goodman, QC, and, God knows, maybe even Mr. William Hoskinson, QC -- will soon have to appear before the former mayor of Kitchener in his quasi-judicial role as he discharges and dispenses justice from the high chair of judgement, does the Attorney General not think it would be in the public interest for him to arrange some public accounting of the former mayor of Kitchener, Mr. Morley Rosenberg, QC?

Does the Attorney General not think it would be proper for Mr. Rosenberg to be brought to some public hearing so that he might give an account of his stewardship in this matter and so that the public might have some better understanding before this treacherous turncoat lays his clammy hands on one cent of that $60,000 job the government has just given him?

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I am not going to risk dignifying that question by answering it.

2:30 p.m.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, does the Attorney General feel it would serve the best interests of the people of Ontario if he and those responsible for such appointments as that of Mr. Rosenberg would table in this House the criteria they use in making such appointments?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I am told this matter of appointments to quasi-judicial bodies is going to form the subject of some discussion during the estimates of the Ministry of the Attorney General. I will be happy to pursue that aspect of the dialogue at that time.

Mr. Roy: A supplementary --

The Acting Speaker: A new question; the member for Sudbury East.

Mr. Roy: He is refusing to answer. We are allowed a supplementary.

The Acting Speaker: No. I have allowed the correct number. The precedent is set.

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Labour regarding Trailmobile Canada Ltd. As the minister knows, for 12 years his ministry has been aware of the health problems of the workers exposed to isocyanates at Trailmobile Canada.

The tests indicate that for 12 years the threshold limit values have been exceeded constantly, and ministry officials as early as 1970 described the protective devices worn by the employees as very primitive, merely a hard hat and a plastic bag. These were still being used some eight years later, and now the workers are supplied with questionable respirators.

The first Workmen's Compensation Board claim was filed in 1971 as a result of exposure to isocyanates, and in 1980, according to Dr. Tidey's report, 10 of 35 employees examined were suffering from lung function abnormalities.

Can the minister tell us why after 12 years there has been no action to correct that problem successfully?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I have a prepared response to that question. It might take a moment or two, but I think it would be worth while in that it will put on the record in an appropriate fashion the information that has been requested by the honourable member.

I am aware of the current concerns about the exposure of workers to isocyanates at Trailmobile Canada and the potential serious adverse effects to health that may result.

All the present evidence relating to the human toxicity of isocyanates relates to the effects on the respiratory system. Isocyanates are irritant and they may cause an acute asthmatic attack in previously sensitized individuals. Exposure can cause abnormal performance of lung function tests which may not be entirely reversible.

Isocyanates have been widely used in manufacturing processes in North America since the 1960s. At this time, there is no evidence that isocyanates cause cancer in animals or man. I have asked my officials to provide a further review of the recent scientific literature to verify this conclusion.

There are a number of other potential hazards to the health of workers at the Trailmobile plant, including welding fumes, noise, solvents and wood dust. Despite constant improvements to ventilation since the early 1970s and the use of improved personal protective equipment, there nevertheless is an allegation that there is a persistent problem with respect to adverse effects on the health of some workers.

I share the concern of the members that more effective measures may need to be implemented at this company to protect the health of workers exposed to isocyanates by means of (1) engineering controls, (2) the use of appropriate respiratory protection and (3) a review of work practices.

At present, the medical records of all employees who are or have been exposed to isocyanates are being reviewed by the chief physician of the occupational health branch and additional lung functioning testing will be made available to all those currently or formerly exposed at the plant.

A further assessment of ventilation is being undertaken by an industrial hygienist, and the plans for modification that have been proposed by the company are being reviewed by an engineer from my ministry. Because of the confined area within which the workers are exposed to isocyanates, particular attention is being directed towards the effectiveness of respiratory protection with respect to both fit and the provision of air that is not contaminated by isocyanates.

I expect to receive an early report from my officials of the effective action taken that in any case will reflect the requirements of the proposed regulation for isocyanates as a designated substance.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, does the minister understand that what he has just read is an indication of the problem and concern we are trying to drive home? The file in his ministry is well over five inches thick; workers have been exposed for 12 years; one Dr. Tidey has been involved right from the beginning and, just in the past week, Dr. Pelmear has stated, "It is up to management and the work force to evaluate toxic substances."

Because there is no way the workers have been able -- despite the fact there are now 14 of them ill -- there is no way they have been able to get that problem resolved, what is the minister trying to tell me by that statement? Is he prepared to give the employees the right to shut an area down until management has made the modifications necessary so that they will not have their health jeopardized?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Perhaps I could respond to some of the allegations that have been made.

First, there is an indication that since 1975 workers were denied the opportunity to accompany an inspector. Since October 1979, when the Occupational Health and Safety Act was proclaimed, workers or their representatives have had the right to accompany inspectors in their inspection of the work place.

It has also been alleged that workers were not made aware of emerging occupational health problems at Trailmobile Canada. Since 1972, the workers exposed to isocyanates have been provided with a medical surveillance program -- and this pertains to what the member is saying -- first, under the aegis of the Ministry of Health chest disease service and, since 1976, under a company program. I am advised that the individual workers have been informed of the results of their medical tests.

In addition, it has been alleged that workers have been denied access to information. Since the Occupational Health and Safety Act has been in place, the inspection reports are required to be posted in the work place and the employer is required to provide a copy of these reports to the joint health and safety committee. In the case of Trailmobile, I am advised that these provisions have been complied with.

An impression has been left with the public, not by the member but otherwise, that the Ministry of Labour relies solely on Workmen's Compensation cases as a means to initiate work place investigations. That simply has not been the case. To the ministry, the Workmen's Compensation Board claims serve as a trigger of last resort.

Mr. Martel: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I ask you to check the record. At no time did I suggest that the workers could not accompany management. That is a prepared statement, made God only knows where; based on a newspaper report, I suppose.

The second part is with respect to who is making the allegations as to whether the Ministry of Labour itself knew about the number of cases and whether it was reported to the Workmen's Compensation Board. In fact, Dr. Pelmear has made the statement, "There is no legal requirement that employers report disturbing health patterns to the ministry." I suggest the minister start housecleaning and the first to go should be Dr. Pelmear.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member has made his point of order.

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, let me go back to the first of the minister's prepared statements to see if I can get a response on this. The minister said in his prepared statement that "more effective measures may need to be implemented ... to protect the health of workers." My question is a simple one, and I think it is what my friend the member for Sudbury East was getting at. How much longer is the minister going to wait for the company to take those more-effective measures before he steps in and orders them to be taken?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, a very short period of time.

2:40 p.m.

HUNTING REGULATIONS

Mr. Pollock: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. The minister is well aware of the regulations in regard to moose hunting, which allow one moose to two hunters and two moose to four hunters. The regulations also stipulate that they are to be hunting together. If they go hunting and are hunting in the same area, I would say they would be together. Surely the minister does not mean they are supposed to be holding hands. Will he clarify that?

Interjections.

Mr. Acting Speaker: Order. The minister will respond to the question.

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, there are regulations in effect with respect to hunting in groups or in parties. Those regulations do not change, and we do expect some reasonable effort to be made by the hunters to maintain the party units when they are out hunting. If they do not, they will be prosecuted.

Mr. Pollock: Will the minister regard them to be hunting in a group if they are within gunshot range of each other or within hearing range of a gunshot?

Hon. Mr. Pope: No, because you could have howitzers and have a 50-mile range.

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, the member for Hastings-Peterborough raises a very valid concern shared by many of my constituents. I just want the minister to be clear on the point that he will give the member a commitment to --

The Acting Speaker: Is this a supplementary question?

Mr. Conway: It is a supplementary; absolutely, Mr. Speaker. I want to know whether the minister will give an undertaking to communicate to the district offices in the very near future his definition of reasonableness in this case, since a number of hunters have communicated to many of us over the course of the last few days that some of the interpretations have been very severe, if not harsh.

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, the member for Hastings-Peterborough wrote to me last week on this matter and has discussed it with me over the past few days. The fact is that the party licence system is in effect. We have a responsibility to enforce the party licence system. We have announced a new moose hunting system for next year which is similar to the deer system we have in place in the southern part of Ontario. That should alleviate some of the conflict and some of the problems.

This question arises, I understand, around this time every year, and it relates to the hunting season. There is always some unhappiness both with the party regulations and with the hunting zones. We try to give as much flexibility to the staff as we can to deal with these problems, and by and large they are doing a darned good job of dealing with them.

GOLDMAN CASE

Mr. Spensieri: Mr. Speaker, my question is of the Attorney General and has to do with the administration of justice.

I wish to remind the Attorney General of a commitment made to me and to members of this House on September 30 in response to my question concerning the observations of His Honour Judge O'Connell in the police misconduct allegations during the Goldman trial and on the wider issue of the public's perception of declining standards among police officers in the administration of justice and in their role in it.

The Attorney General promised to report back, possibly through the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor), on the judge's comments. Is he prepared to do so today or, as an alternative, can he tell us when he will instruct the Solicitor General to do so?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to instruct the Solicitor General today or any other day as to what report he would like to give to the Legislature.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly had intended to respond in the House to the honourable member's question. I had asked my own staff to report and to communicate our concern to the Solicitor General. I do not yet have that report on the Goldman case. I hope I will have it in the near future, but I will be responding to the member's question.

Mr. Spensieri: On the same date the Attorney General was questioned about the 16-page report prepared by the Provincial Secretariat for Justice on the administration of justice in which the government was urged to improve the system. The Attorney General stated that he did not know of such a report, and I ask him once again, has he now had the opportunity to see the report or to determine its existence? If he has it, will he table it?

If he has not seen it, can he explain to the House why the chief law officer of the crown has been kept in the dark about such a fundamental document, especially in the light of the fact that such a document takes on a new sense of urgency after the revelations in the Goldman case, the revelations we have had in the Marafioti ticket-fixing case, and the further revelations this morning at the adjournment of the Proverbs case, especially since the Attorney General has himself been forced to concede that the traditional methods of dealing with alleged police misconduct through the Criminal Code have proved insufficient and unenforceable?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I have made no such statement or concession that traditional means are unenforceable or inappropriate. I do not know what the member means by that. I have not seen this report, which he now describes as a 16-page report. I do not know whether it exists. I am sure the member is interested in the report but I would have thought, if he were truly interested, he would have asked the Provincial Secretary for Justice (Mr. Sterling) whether such a report exists. I simply have not seen any such report.

METRO TORONTO BILL

Mr. Grande: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Education and it has to do with Bill 127. Now that she has moved to appease the political needs of her cabinet colleagues, namely, the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman), the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (Mr. Wells) and the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry), and some of the back-benchers, through the 1.5-mill local level amendment, by which she accomplishes in three years what she stubbornly wanted to accomplish in one year in the original bill, will she move to alleviate the fears of parents and teachers and withdraw Bill 127? If implemented, this law will do serious and irreparable harm to children in Metro Toronto.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, the hyperbole of the honourable member is interesting. There is no rationale and no logic that can be put forward by anyone to support the final statement in his so-called question. Modifications have been made to Bill 127, in response to the concern expressed by parents, to provide school boards and teachers with the opportunity to bargain appropriately to ensure that a very significant degree of total autonomy will be retained at the local board level to deliver programs. Those provisions already have been made in the amendments and it seems to me they are appropriate.

Mr. Grande: Given the demonstration outside the Legislature recently by more than 5,000 parents and teachers, given the more than 10,000 signatures on petitions the minister's office and the office of the Premier (Mr. Davis) have received in the past couple of months, and given the arrogant, undemocratic and politically unaccountable Metropolitan Toronto School Board level, when is the minister going to realize that John Tolton, chairman of the Metro board, and Charlie Brown, secretary-treasurer of the Metro board, are leading her directly by her nose on this issue?

When is the minister going to remove the political blinkers she put on about four months ago and realize and feel and see that the bitterness she is creating in Metropolitan Toronto over this issue is not worth it?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Since I am not the author of the bitterness, nor am I the author of the confrontational methods that have been developed, nor indeed could it have been said that the hearings were not held in good faith to hear the concerns expressed by those who were present, I wish the member to know, first, I do not have a nose that is long enough to be led by, and, second, there are other chairmen, other members of school boards and many other citizens who are very strongly in support of the bill, even as amended.

2:50 p.m.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that very strong representations were made, albeit the minister got her way in committee in terms of the negotiating process and the surplus-deficit aspects of the bill, would she be prepared when that bill comes to the House -- I hope the minister will withdraw it, but if she insists on bringing the bill to the House -- to rethink her position and provide for a discretionary levy of two mills without any stipulations as to how that money will be spent, since the amendment she put forward in the committee did not have much genuine effect on the amount of money available because she used the base of the 1981 assessment?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, the 1.5 mills does have a very significant effect on the amount of money that would be available in terms of the ratio of the amount which is yielded by that levy at the various constituent boards. To ensure that there would still be some expansionary capacity as well as a reduction in the disparity, the amendment was made.

The honourable member has suggested that we should make other amendments to the bill when it comes back to the House. I think we have made significant amendments, and I think it would be worth while to have that legislation operative for a period of time.

As the member knows, I have made a public commitment to a review of the discretionary levy within three years to determine whether it is at the appropriate level, whether it is being utilized appropriately and whether there are changes that should be made to it. I stand by that commitment, and I believe the government will stand by it as well. I believe the bill should go forward now.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of questions for the Attorney General dealing with the conduct of certain members of the legal profession.

I want to deal first with a situation that occurred in Ottawa last week where seven people, including the former president of a caisse populaire and a former, disbarred lawyer and self-confessed fraud artist, were charged with fraud involving some $5 million.

Without dealing with the matter, which is currently before the courts, will the Attorney General look at the legislation dealing with credit unions and caisses populaires and possibly deal with his colleague the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Elgie) with a view to having legislation that is stronger than the present section 69 of the Credit Unions and Caisses Populaires Act, which forces disclosure on the part of professionals when they have a conflict of interest between their personal interests and the interests of the institution which they serve?

Will the Attorney General undertake to review this matter with the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations to see to it that situations causing conflict of interest not only are disclosed, which apparently does not work, but also are eliminated?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am happy to give that undertaking.

Mr. Roy: Let me ask a supplementary dealing with another situation involving a member of the legal profession. This is again a matter of some concern in eastern Ontario.

The minister will recall that a few years ago, the so-called Mad Canadian, Ken Carter --

The Acting Speaker: This sounds like quite a different question to me.

Mr. O'Neil: He is talking about lawyers.

The Acting Speaker: Oh, it is about lawyers. I respectfully ask the honourable member to tie it into the first question.

Mr. Roy: I will spell it out. I do not want to confuse you in any way, Mr. Speaker, so I will be as charitable as possible. I was talking about members of the legal profession and I am going to relate this particular situation.

This so-called Mad Canadian, Ken Carter, had a promoter, a member of the legal profession in Ottawa, who went bankrupt and apparently involved creditors from all over eastern Ontario. The Attorney General will know that some complaints have been made to the law society.

Among the responses, a Mr. George Hargraft, the claims manager for such claims, stated, "It would appear that there is strong evidence of fraud on the part of Mr. Kennedy" -- this is the lawyer who was the so-called promoter -- "and the cause of the creditors' loss appears to stem from fraudulent behaviour on the part of Mr. Kennedy." He is a member of the legal profession, Mr. Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: So the question will be on the legal profession and lawyers?

Mr. Roy: That is right. May I continue?

The Acting Speaker: Yes.

Mr. Roy: Will the Attorney General undertake to advise whether this matter is being investigated by the police, in view of the allegations of fraud on the part of this individual, whether this matter has been referred to the Ontario Provincial Police for investigation and, finally, whether it is proper for a bankrupt lawyer, after he apparently gets his discharge, immediately to be given the responsibility of handling trust funds?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I do not know about these allegations against Mr. Kennedy. All I can say is that I will look into the matter and report back to the member for Ottawa East.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Health. I wonder whether the minister will be interested in knowing that our research office did a survey of 10 hospitals in Metropolitan Toronto and found a familiar litany of problems in our hospital system.

These conditions are becoming chronic, particularly as follows: The 10 Metro hospitals were facing a cumulative deficit of $10.5 million as of the end of September; occupancy rates ranged from 85 to 98 per cent; in these 10 hospitals, 350 patients were in active treatment beds awaiting the availability of chronic care beds; one of the hospitals, Toronto Western, which happens to be in the minister's own riding, had patients waiting in the emergency corridors on an average of two to three times per month.

Will the minister not agree that this litany of problems is becoming a chronic condition, that the existing policies which have been in effect for more than three years are not working or solving these problems, and that the time has come to direct more health care dollars into more effective preventive health care services and especially into the development of a major program of community health centres to take some of the pressure off our hospital care system?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, we are concerned about the deficit situation. I know the honourable member shares our concern that if all the hospitals in the system ran at about 10.5 per cent over budget -- I think that was the figure he cited -- that would cost the taxpayers about $340 million. Obviously that is an enormous amount of money and we want to do something to get out of that chronic deficit situation.

Accordingly, with the great assistance of my colleague the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) and the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. McCague), we have been able to come up with a slightly adjusted formula this year for funding hospitals which will go into effect immediately, shortly after we send out letters to all the hospitals in the province. That will occur later this week. It will not solve all the problems, but it will act to make 1982-83 a bit of a turnaround year.

To give the member a look at that sort of situation, may I say it has required a great deal of new money to be allocated to the hospital system by the Treasurer and the Chairman of Management Board. They have been most accommodating in doing so to allow us to get out of this chronic deficit situation.

May I also say it is important we have an opportunity to see how successful some hospitals will be, and they will be the ones in large urban centres, at fully utilizing the business-oriented new development program to achieve some of the things they have wanted to achieve for a long time.

I know the member has been reading my speeches carefully in the last little while. In so doing, he has seen me address literally every one of the issues he has raised. With a view to confirming that we are moving ahead on those, I am meeting during a two-day session with the senior officials of the Ontario Hospital Association to look at the issue of hospital funding and how we might adjust the current formulae.

I know the member is aware of the speech I am giving Thursday morning to those people involving community health centres and health service organizations which may or may not have prompted this question; I cannot be sure. At that time, I hope to indicate a firm ministry direction in support of those kinds of alternatives.

3 p.m.

Mr. McClellan: I am not aware of any speech on Thursday, but I am aware that the minister has commissioned Fraser Mustard to work on a task force, studying community health centres, among other things. Fraser Mustard told the government over 10 years ago to establish community health centres as a way of taking pressure off the hospital care system and the minister has done absolutely nothing about it. That was in 1972, I believe.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I was on the committee, and that was not what he said. It was in 1973.

Mr. McClellan: That was only nine years ago. When Fraser Mustard makes his report in a few weeks or whenever it is, since it is inevitable what his report will say -- it will say what he said nine years ago, which the minister has ignored for the last nine years -- can I have the assurance of the minister that he will change the allocation of funds? At present, I believe, $15 million out of a $6-billion health budget, or 0.2 per cent of the total budget, is allocated for community health centres and health service organizations. Can we have some assurance now that there will not be another nine years of hot air and rhetoric, but some meaningful program, matched by dollars, to take some pressure off the hospital care system?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: May I say, without debating for the rest of the afternoon what Fraser Mustard said or did not say in 1972 or 1973, the reality is we have a number of health centres in this province, together with a number of HSOs. In large part, that is due to the excellent work done by Fraser Mustard and, I must add, my colleague the present Minister of Education and Colleges and Universities (Miss Stephenson) at that time and subsequently. To the extent that we have some very fine organizations of that type in existence in this province --

Mr. McClellan: Nineteen of them.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Nineteen big ones.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That is correct. The extent to which we have a lot of successful enterprises such as those in this province is largely due to the funding and program devised by this ministry as well as the people running those centres and those HSOs. It is our intention this Thursday to try to remove any sense those people may have that they are on a trial basis or a pilot project basis, to tell them they are in the mainstream of the ministry's funding on a firm basis. In doing so, I can assure the member we will be listening very carefully to the report of Fraser Mustard. I know the member was reassured by the appointment by me of Dr. Mustard to that job several months ago. I obviously will not do with this report anything I would not do with any other report. I am not going to marry myself or the government to all the provisions of that report until I have read it. When I read it, I will be responding in part on Thursday and more completely at a later time.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, the minister will no doubt be aware that the new formula funding, which will result in a possible increase of two per cent in hospital budgets and which will come about on Thursday, was alluded to or announced by his colleague the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Ashe) in Saturday's issue of the Toronto Star. I wonder if the member for Durham West (Mr. Ashe) was commenting in his capacity as the Minister of Revenue or as a result of a letter he sent to the minister in his capacity as the member for Durham West.

In that letter, he said that the situation in the hospital is so bad there are weekly, if not daily, reports in the newspapers of people who are forced to spend up to four days on stretchers in hospital corridors, because the Minister of Health and his government have not come to grips with the problems in this area. Is that why the Minister of Revenue was privy to that information on the weekend?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: May I make two points? First, as is becoming a habit around here, the member's information is totally incorrect. The new formula does not involve a two per cent increase in hospital budgets but, like everyone else, she will just have to wait to see what it does involve. I regret she relied on whatever sources she relied on for that information.

Second, there are two reasons I have shared details of the new formula with my colleague the Minister of Revenue. First, he is part of the cabinet that agreed to dedicate substantial extra millions of dollars to this project, to assist in the operation of hospitals. As such, he, of course, has agreed, along with all my colleagues, to contribute to trying to resolve this problem. Great credit is due to my colleagues who all have had to sacrifice some money from their own budgets to try and solve the hospital problem.

The second reason is my colleague does not have the luxury that many across the floor have of going to every hospital in the province and saying, "I would give you more money if I could just because you would like some." My colleague, above and beyond all the rest of us, went through many weeks of hearings last June and July fighting to raise the extra revenue pursuant to the excellent budget of my colleague the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) last May, where he raised substantial extra dollars to do that. I might add that the Liberal Party fought each and every one of those revenue-raising devices while the Minister of Revenue fought for them.

We have money to solve those problems because of the courage of my colleagues, not the namby-pamby "we oppose all revenue raising" that we get from the opposite side. All the expletives the member can give are not going to change the situation.

COURT DELAYS

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question for the Attorney General that deals with the case of Mark Allen Burns, whose five charges of breaking and entering, theft and possession of stolen property were dismissed in county court in Windsor last week.

I would like to refresh the Attorney General's information by reminding him that on January 27, Burns was taken into custody. At that time bail was denied. On April 29, he escaped police custody while being transferred to jail after an unsuccessful bail review.

On June 17, after a further bail hearing and review, he was again remanded in custody until trial. His trial began on October 19, fully 10 ten months after he had been brought into custody on these charges.

Applying the Charter of Rights, the trial judge felt he had no other reasonable course but to release the accused and throw out the charges. In his view there had been, and I am quoting the trial judge, "Such a fundamental violation of rights it is the only appropriate remedy." Finally, I would remind the Attorney General that the man who was released, Mark Allen Burns, has 21 previous convictions for break and enter, theft and other offences.

I would like to ask him what is going on in the office of the crown attorneys in Essex county that they can allow this type of scheduling foul-up? Is no one watching to ensure that these situations do not happen?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, I am not familiar with the case of Mark Allen Burns. I have made a note of it and I certainly will be obtaining additional information. I think we have an excellent crown attorney, Mr. Brian McIntyre, who must be known to the member opposite; a very committed public servant of this province who does an effective job as the crown attorney.

We do have some problems with respect to scheduling cases in Windsor, and that is well recognized. I am not going to go into all the details of this issue, but part of the problem is that the number of lawyers who are active in the criminal courts is relatively small compared to the work that is available and compared to the size of the profession in that area. As a result, there are a lot of scheduling conflicts which have led to delays. They may or may not have led to this particular delay.

We have had a number of discussions about dealing more effectively with the work load in Windsor, and I think some solutions have been found. We will be appointing another provincial court judge, I hope, this fall. So far as the case of Mark Allen Burns is concerned, I just cannot tell the honourable member what has led to the number of adjournments, but it is something I will inquire into.

Mr. Wrye: While I appreciate the comments of the Attorney General, I would suggest to him that the competence of the crown attorney in that office in Windsor is really not at stake. I agree that the crown attorney and his staff are excellent, though a little overworked. If the Attorney General is so familiar with the overloaded and overburdened trial lists, I would remind him that there is at the moment a backlog of over 300 cases on the criminal jury list alone, not to mention nonjury criminal and civil trial lists.

What will the Attorney General do to assure the public of Windsor, which is very concerned about what has happened in this case, that a Burns-like situation will not recur? And what will the Attorney General do to assure the judges and the crown attorneys that they will have sufficient resources to prevent these Burns-like situations in the future?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Again, I do not know enough about the Burns situation to indicate whether I can give any assurance with respect to its repetition or not. I am not going to say at this time if I even agree with the manner in which the trial judge disposed of that particular case.

I happened to be talking with our director of crown attorneys about the Windsor situation in general as recently as this morning. I will be in Windsor next week and I will be meeting with the crown attorney's staff there. We have had problems in the scheduling of the cases in that area and it is a matter that is going to continue to occupy our attention.

3:10 p.m.

UNIVERSITY FUNDING

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Education, Colleges and Universities. During the past week the minister had what can be called a privilege that I did not have, which was that of meeting with the ministers of education of the various provinces. The member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway) and I, as critics of universities and colleges, were not invited to that event so we are not privy to its proceedings.

However, given the crisis in university funding which stalks this land, and this province in particular, with which the minister is extremely familiar and which jeopardizes our potential as an advanced industrial let alone a civilized society, and given the possibility that in moving away from the established programs financing arrangement, it is obviously an open option for the federal government to simply divert its higher educational funding into the economy at large and force the universities into a financial crisis and this province into a university funding crisis which will make the present seem child's play, will the minister inform the House as to any progress which she and her fellow ministers made on that particular question and any leadership she provided in guiding that conference? Will she hazard a guess as to the time frame for resolving this particular issue?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, it is simply dreadful that the opposition critics did not attend that conference. The conference was not organized by the province of Ontario. It was organized by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. Its organizing team was chaired by a former deputy minister of the province of Manitoba. There were provisions made for a fairly wide-ranging attendance.

It was felt it would be most appropriate if those attending were those who were directly involved with or had direct interest in educational matters at the post-secondary level. It was related to the members of the steering committee that those to be invited should represent the university community, the college of applied arts and technology community, the faculty associations of the provinces and the student associations of the provinces. Those were the people who were represented.

I regret that no one at any provincial level saw fit to invite a member of the opposition of the provincial government to attend the conference. That was obviously an oversight on the part of the organizers and I shall draw it to their attention.

It was a very interesting conference in that it did provide an opportunity for all of those communities that are concerned about postsecondary education to at least meet face to face and to exchange views and to carry on some discussion about four items related to post-secondary education.

The question asked by the honourable member however, is one which at this point I cannot answer. As I said earlier, I met for the first time on Wednesday evening of last week, with the fifth Secretary of State with responsibilities for universities in four years. I am very much encouraged by the obvious understanding of the new Secretary of State of the whole university community and of his obvious concern to that community and the fact he was once a part of that community. He has expressed a willingness to discuss with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, matters related to the paper developed by his predecessor, the establishment of national goals and some mechanism for ensuring that there will be participation of all sectors in the examination of the problems of post-secondary education.

It is my understanding that all of the ministers of finance in Canada are unanimous in declaring that the matters related to established programs financing should be discussed between the Minister of Finance of Canada and the treasurers of the various provinces. I hope, and it is my understanding, that conversation will occur in the not too distant future.

PETITION

WAGE AND PRICE RESTRAINT PROGRAM

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present to the table a petition from 584 members of the Hamilton Teachers' Federation, the Hamilton Women Teachers' Association and the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation in Hamilton that reads as follows:

We the undersigned are totally opposed to Bill 179, the proposed Inflation Restraint Act, which would limit our rights to free collective bargaining as guaranteed under Bill 100.

MOTION

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Hon. Mr. Wells moved that the subcommittee of the standing committee on administration of justice be authorized to meet this afternoon, Monday, October 25, 1982.

Motion agreed to.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE PAPER

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day I would like to table the answers to questions 238, 239, 242, 243, 247, 249, 254, 494, 495 and 512, the interim answer to question 535 and also the answers to questions 255, 496, 497, 498 and 509, all of them standing on the Notice Paper.

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTION

Mr. Boudria: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out to you that question 159, dating back to May 18 with an interim answer on June 30, has not yet been replied to. I waited for the minister --

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): That was registered earlier, when the House met this afternoon.

An hon. member: Not that one.

The Acting Speaker: Not that one? All right. You have now made your point.

Mr. Boudria: I recognize that this was discussed earlier. I did not bring this matter up because I thought it would be one of the questions that would be answered today, as was indicated by the chair earlier. The question has not yet been replied to. As I said previously, the last information I received on it was that the date of information available would be June 30.

The Acting Speaker: Your point has been noted.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF GOVERNMENT SERVICES (CONTINUED)

On vote 501, ministry administration program:

Mr. Chairman: We are continuing with the estimates of the Ministry of Government Services, and someone will have to refresh my memory as to where we were.

An hon. member: The minister.

Mr. Chairman: We were with the minister.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, may I ask permission to sit in the front row here?

Mr. Chairman: Sure. I think that is allowed. Agreed? Thank you. Are we going to go item by item? Yes.

3:20 p.m.

Mr. Haggerty: I thought the minister still had a number of comments in reply to the leadoff speeches made by myself and the member from the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Chairman: I thought he did that.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: There were one or two I mentioned on Friday. Perhaps we could go ahead and the other points will probably come up again in conversation on the particular votes. I think there were one or two, but I just do not have them in the order now that they were given to me. Perhaps the members could refer to them again in the estimates as we go along, if that is all right with them.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, I want to make three points. First, in my opinion, the minister did not answer a majority of the questions I raised on Friday. Therefore, I hope he will take the opportunity now on this first vote to deal with those questions. Second, I do not think we should move off this vote until I have had an opportunity to get some clarification on the answers he has made. He certainly answered me in a very general way and in most cases has not provided the information I asked for. Third, I wonder if it would be possible to deal with item 1 of vote 501 but not vote on it until 5:30, because our critic on women's issues, the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden), is tied up in another committee --

Mr. Chairman: I missed the 5:30 point.

Mr. Philip: Our critic on women's issues wishes to deal with item 1, which covers the affirmative action program. She is tied up in another committee and would like to ask the minister some specific questions on that. If we could deal with this item but stand down the vote on it until 5:30, that would give her an opportunity to participate in the debate.

Mr. Chairman: Would the member for Erie be willing to stand down the vote until the member for Beaches-Woodbine arrives? We will need the consent of the House. Would the minister mind? The minister does not mind.

Mr. Haggerty: There are other members who want to speak on these estimates too. I cannot make a judgement here whether we should wait until somebody else gets here, I suggest there are members who want to get on with the estimates. It depends upon how long -- what vote are we looking at?

Mr. Chairman: We are looking at item 1 of vote 501, the main office. The member for Etobicoke (Mr. Philip) suggested that we could have a full discussion and, if there is general agreement that we have finished 501, we will not specifically vote on it but carry on to 502. When the member for Beaches-Woodbine returns, then we can get back to item 1. Keeping in mind there are only two hours and 12 minutes --

Mr. Haggerty: That is right.

Mr. Chairman: -- that gets us to about 5:30 or a little after.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, the normal protocol is that when a member has a specific responsibility and is tied up with other responsibilities on another committee, it is agreed that we stand down a vote until such member is able to have his or her questions addressed.

Mr. Chairman: I think we are in general agreement. We are trying to be most accommodating.

Mr. Haggerty: It is just a matter of time. I do not know how much longer you want to go on with it. Is there half an hour set aside or one hour or what?

Mr. Chairman: No, I think we just have to keep talking. When we are finished 501, we will go on the presumption that with the unanimous agreement of the committee we will not specifically vote on it until such time --

Mr. Haggerty: What particular vote are we looking at?

Mr. Chairman: Vote 501, item 1. Is that right, member for Etobicoke?

Mr. Haggerty: The main office?

Mr. Philip: Yes, we are talking about the affirmative action program, which would be under the main office vote.

Mr. Chairman: I see. Let us try to continue and see how it works out. Dealing with the first vote then: Would members want to discuss items 1, 2, etc. or can we just talk generally about vote 501?

Mr. Philip: Generally.

Mr. Chairman: All right. Does the minister have any opening comments?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: No.

Mr. Chairman: Do you agree with that? We will talk generally on each specific point.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Fine. Did the honourable members want me to answer the last two questions they asked the other day or will we just pick them up when we get around to them?

There was one I will mention. The member mentioned there were 6,000 bookmarks sent to one outlet. The number 6,000 was marked on the box but there were only 2,000 in the box, and the total cost was $18.16, so we were not talking about very much money. The member asked me about advertising and the fact that we had 6,000 of these bookmarks sent to one store somewhere. I have forgotten which riding it was. It was a very small amount. The total cost for the postage and everything was $18.16.

We may want to leave the other two questions until we get around to them again and I can answer them more fully. There were only two, I understand, and I thought I paid quite close attention to all the questions asked of me at that time.

Mr. Haggerty: I want to question the minister on his opening comments. He said, "The additional $7.9 million allocated to my ministry by the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development provided a further 1,500 new jobs in Ontario this year." Is that the money that was allocated here last spring? Does the minister have any additional funding in the proposed budget report for an immediate job creation program?

What is his policy as it relates to the number of persons now unemployed? How are we going to come up with a comprehensive scheme to get these people back to work and assist those who will not be able to draw unemployment insurance? What is his program in connection with job creation in his ministry and perhaps in the other ministries too?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, as the honourable member knows, BILD did give us $7.9 million to spend this year. To give a breakdown of those 1,500 jobs -- 1,531 jobs to be exact: in major capital, we had 35 jobs; in minor capital, 35; in alterations, 174 jobs; and in repairs, 1,287 jobs.

For the $7.9 million, that would give us 1,531 jobs. The directive we had was that this money had to create jobs in this fiscal year, meaning before March 31 of next year. That is where we use the BILD money. I have a large list. Rather than read it all to the member, I would be glad to send him a copy.

There were jobs created all over the province and different areas benefited from this. The largest amounts were spent on alterations, $3 million, and on repairs, $3.7 million. There is a list about three pages long of where all these jobs took place in the different areas. Rather than taking the House's time, if the member is interested in where they were, I will send him a copy.

3:30 p.m.

Mr. Haggerty: I would appreciate receiving a copy, because I am as much interested in finding out how much money has been spent in the hub of Metro Toronto as has been spent in the Sudbury area, in Thunder Bay or even in the Niagara Peninsula.

In what other areas does the minister contemplate getting on with some major building project which would create a number of manhours of work, not just for a period of two or three weeks or a month but for six months or a year? Does he have anything in his little black book that he would like to bring forward and say, "This is what we are going to do"? Is he going to be calling tenders for some major buildings such as courthouses that he would like to tell us about and that we can look forward to seeing?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: As the member knows, our sum for capital expenditures is in the range of $35 million or $36 million, perhaps a little more. We could certainly use a lot more capital if we had it.

We are presenting right now, and have presented to cabinet as I mentioned in my opening statement, a Metro plan whereby we hope to amalgamate nine different ministries whose head offices are in different locations in the downtown core. We are finding that the cost of accommodation downtown is becoming very expensive. We will be moving along in that area.

We hope we can come up with some jobs on a tower east of Bay Street. We were over there this morning and watched the Young Men's Christian Association get started on its building. The Premier (Mr. Davis) said he hoped that would not be the last building on that site. I believe those were his words. We hope the city will work along with us in order to give us a little more coverage. As the member knows, we purchased it at about 11 or 12 times coverage and they down-zoned us to about two. We could have all the things they would like us to have, such as housing and maybe even a police station, if we had about 4.5 times coverage.

We are looking at all the sites we own at present around the city and in other places, particularly those in Etobicoke, North York, on the Lakeshore and so on, with the idea of seeing how long it would take us to put a proposal together, prepare plans, etc., so that if we had the capital funds we could do something such as the member is suggesting.

We have four capital projects to report to the House on right now, including the courthouse in St. Catharines. We are finishing up the Oshawa project and we have the Ontario health insurance plan building in Kingston.

I see the Ottawa members are away except for the member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy), who will be interested to know that we are going ahead with the Ottawa courthouse. That is a $50-million project and it will employ a lot of people. We will have a shovel in the ground on that early in the spring, I hope.

There are $76 million in the estimates this year, but part of that is to pay for the building in Oshawa and for our building in Kingston. That makes it look as if we have a lot more, but with those two big chunks taken out I think it will bring us down to about the $36 million which we have on an ongoing basis.

The bottom line is that if we had a lot more capital we could bring some projects through fairly fast. That is what we hope to do. We will certainly inform the members if the decision I hope for is made so that we may start out on some of these projects. But right now I cannot honestly tell the member for Erie that we will start tomorrow, apart from those projects already mentioned.

Mr. Philip: In talking about centralizing, or having Government Services in one complex rather than five or six, is most of this office space that is being rented or is it space at present owned by the government?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: In making the changes I mentioned, we have never been in a better position to do that. Because of the move of our ministry to Oshawa and the Ontario health insurance plan to Kingston we have two large blocks to do something with.

Both the buildings they are coming out of are leased. One of the ones we are hoping will make the first move is now in eight or nine different locations. We can save a lot on the leases, because we can cancel the expensive leases and keep some of the others that are more reasonable. By consolidating, I think the ministry involved can make some cost savings as well. The minister will be with his people rather than being separated. We have about nine like that. They are not all in eight or nine locations, but this will help to make savings both ways. As we get down the line, some of them will be in our own buildings, but the ones we are talking about at first are in leased accommodation.

Mr. Philip: You are not saying it is being moved into the east of Bay project but rather that you are moving these nine different office conglomerations of the ministry into the space that will be made vacant by the move towards decentralization to Kingston. Is that what you are telling us, that there will be an expected saving in being able to get out of the more expensive rental agreements with private developers?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I will clarify it a little more, because I have been working with it. Perhaps I have not made it quite clear. There are two different areas, one where we are trying to consolidate eight or nine ministries in leased accommodation. Besides that, we are looking at another area where we have a lot of options. We can either build, if we have the capital, or we have had developers come in and ask us if they could build on a lease-purchase arrangement. Because we have the land, some of them have said they will put up the amount of square footage we need and enter into some agreement whereby, for the land we have, we would own one of the complexes they put up.

There are many different arrangements we can make, but we must find out if we are going to have the capital. If we are not, then we will look at the other alternatives. The eight or nine moves can be done so as not to cost us a lot of dollars but to make some savings down the road. If we get the capital, the other area shows great savings down the road, but whether we can get that capital remains to be seen at this time.

Mr. Haggerty: The reason I asked the question is, when I look at the buildings south of Wellesley Street and east of Bay Street, I am sure they belong to and are part of the government of Ontario. At one time a couple of years ago, I thought there were prospects for private individuals who wanted to build a large complex of office facilities and even rental units for apartments.

You are talking about lease-purchase arrangements. I am sure you can recall that the present Workmen's Compensation Board building was built on a similar basis, and you had the private sector come in. I am sure you have enough land around here; your land banking is quite enormous. Is it not time to encourage the private sector to come in? Based upon a lease-purchase arrangement, you can perhaps start to develop some of this property now.

3:40 p.m.

You could bring in some of your other facilities. For example, the one on King Street where you had the Ministry of Natural Resources. It was just a warehouse, but that has been torn down. I do not know what is going to go up there. I do not know whether that land belongs to the province. All I am suggesting is some form of job creation program, particularly in relation to high-rise buildings which take quite a bit of steel, cement, bricks and mortar. It is labour intensive.

In this time of a depressed economy and high unemployment, is it not time for the government to look at some arrangements of this sort to get a permanent job program going? If we are really serious about creating jobs in Ontario, maybe you should be looking at developing that property.

As it is now, all I see is truckload after truckload of pamphlets and brochures for the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Surely that property is more valuable. You should have a high-rise building, perhaps a government building together with rental units, office facilities or even apartments. In other words, you should be getting the show on the road.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I agree with the honourable member. What he said is along the same line as my own thinking.

I will bring the members up to date on what has happened east of Bay. Maybe they are aware of it. If they are they can nod their heads and I will not go through it. We did have a planner after we went to try to get four and a half or five times coverage from the then mayor of Toronto and it did not go through. We then had another planner who came in and gave us a plan that seemed, and I do not want to put words in the mouths of the municipal people, to have general agreement as to what would go on that site.

It showed some senior citizens' housing and the Young Men's Christian Association using the piece it started on this morning. With four and a half times coverage, closing out the street would give us the type of coverage, would give us enough space so we would not have to build any office space for some time in the future. Then we would do it in steps, one down on the corner of Grosvenor and Bay to tie in with the YMCA and so on.

We had a few meetings with the mayor, the chairman of Metro and the police chief. The chief was interested, and I believe still is, in having a Metro police office there. We are willing to try to co-operate as much as we can, but the bottom line is we own the land and have an obligation to the province to put up some office space. We want to be a good Samaritan, but we want to have some office space left at the end for ourselves. That is why we have been holding it for all these years.

The Premier mentioned this morning in his remarks at the site that the city closed off part of the lane for the YMCA. Perhaps when we talk to them they will be quite open-minded on the coverage we need. Maybe we could accommodate all the things the planner showed in his plan at that time.

The bottom line is that what you have said is right. We would like to get some building going to stimulate the economy, whether we do it or another developer does it. I think you will probably see something like that.

On lease-purchase, I should say it is not as easy as it once was because of the interest rates. They are going in the right direction now, they are coming down, but when the interest rates were jumping all over the place, as the members know, one really put the builder in quite a bad position. He might have bid at an interest rate of 18 per cent but things went to 20 or 22 per cent or better, as we have seen.

When interest rates are stabilized, it is our feeling that capital is the best in the long run. Next to that is lease-purchase. The last, of course, is leasing; leasing was always more expensive. That is what we found in the past and, with leases escalating as they are, I think leasing is still going to be the most expensive way to go.

Bear in mind, when the member from Erie says a lease-purchase, we like those but we do not want to see anybody go bankrupt entering into an agreement like that with the interest rates fluctuating as they have in the past. Once they stabilize, I think we could look at that again.

Mr. Haggerty: The ministry can go to the Ontario Development Corp. and get some favourable interest rates, from zero to about -- I think they have now changed it a little -- 17 per cent, but the majority run about seven per cent. There is a possibility you can form your own corporation over there and put the buildings up. You can borrow the money from the ODC and you have your interest rate pegged.

Interjection.

Mr. Haggerty: You have asked for suggestions and this is what we are trying to do.

On the matter about the building and the government running the building, I guess there is 110 Ellington Avenue West. How many floors of that building do you rent?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I wonder if the member would repeat that and I will have the staff check it.

Mr. Haggerty: Apparently you are renting a property at 110 Ellington Avenue West. How many floors are you renting in that building?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Would it be Eglinton?

Mr. Haggerty: Yes, Eglinton.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: If the members want to go on, I will get that information.

Mr. Philip: I have a few items arising out of the minister's answers to my first series of questions and my opening statement, but on this item can the minister tell us specifically what properties are now being sold off by the government? He mentioned that there were some properties that, because of reserved bids, they had tried to sell off and were unsuccessful.

Can you give us a list of which properties are at present being sold by the government? I wonder if you can be more specific about the criteria for evaluating whether or not a property is sold to private enterprise. I realize he outlined that if there is a surplus property owned by the government, he first of all approaches the other ministries and if there are no takers he approaches the municipalities.

What is the cutoff? Is it the price? There may well be a social cost in selling off some of this property. The most flagrant example was the selling of the Bergamot property, where a private developer came in and bought a government-owned project for less money 14 years after the government had built it on the promise he would fix it up because it was uneconomical for the government to do so.

He did cosmetic changes to that building. He evicted all the tenants, or the Ontario Housing Corp. did, transferred them to other developments and promised them they would go back into a new project. He sold it off to a private developer who was able to remove it from rent review because with cosmetic changes it was called a new building, and they really were cosmetic changes.

Those units that were originally servicing poor people are now gouging people at $500 and $600 per month. I am wondering what human or social weights you put when you have something like that, which obviously serves the social purpose of providing housing to low and middle-income wage earners, when a co-operative was willing to buy it and keep that purpose and yet you sold off the building to a private developer who is making a profit and raising it out of the reach of the average person who was living in that community? Can you give us the weighting of that? Is there a factor that you build into the sale of the property?

3:50 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: With regard to the selling of property, I would like to co-operate with the member, as he knows, in giving him the figures when he asks for them, but it would be almost impossible to say just how many we are selling off, because not a week goes by when I do not have to sign that so-and-so was the highest bidder on such and such a piece of property.

We are probably the largest landlord in the province. Maybe the federal government is ahead of us; I do not know, but we are one of the largest. We have a lot of property that we are disposing of that has become surplus or something by one of our sister ministries. I would like to co-operate on this, but I honestly cannot give the exact numbers, and I hope you will understand that.

With regard to property sales, you were right about the way it goes. We circulate it to all the ministries. We ask the municipality if it has a need for it. One thing that maybe I did not say the other day is that occasionally, if it is something a municipality is going to use for a park or something else where we can write in a designated use for it -- there is a phrase for that, "special uses," which I think tells you what I am trying to say -- it is written into the agreement, and at that time we will sometimes sell it to the municipality for less than market value.

But keep in mind that if it changes from that special use and they resell it to a developer, then we ask for the difference between what we sold it to them for and what market value is at that time. Otherwise we could come out with egg on our face if someone bought it and turned right around and sold it.

I am not familiar with the property you are talking about. Perhaps if any of my staff are listening and have anything further to add to this, I can give it to you in a few minutes. The bottom line is that when we put it up for tender or with a reserve bid, it is, as we all know, just as if we go out to buy something: if a person beats the reserve bid and is the highest bidder, then in our society as it is that person would get it.

To get around what you were mentioning, if a person or the city wants to use it for a special purpose, perhaps they can come in a little early and suggest what that special purpose is and we can consider it at that time. Otherwise I think we have no alternative but to sell it to the highest bidder; or, if it is a case of their being over our appraised value, we have to let it go.

Mr. Philip: I find it preposterous that in a city that has 8,000 families on a waiting list to get into geared-to-income housing the government would be so near-sighted as to sell off an already geared-to-income project, the Bergamot project, to a private developer who is going to rent it with very limited cosmetic changes at $500 or $600 a month, which those people in that project obviously cannot afford.

When there is that kind of waiting list, the government is going to have to subsidize in some other way, perhaps through a rent supplement program, many of the families who are being displaced.

What I am suggesting to the minister is that some weight should be given, at least in communities where there is a shortage of affordable housing, to co-operatives, nonprofit bodies and church and other groups which might provide the kind of housing that is needed. They should at least be given priority. It should not be sold off to the highest bidder who happens to come in over the reserve bid.

That surely shows a lack of co-ordination of policy, both on the part of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing -- which will come as no surprise to members on this side of the House who have watched the Housing ministry operate over the years -- but also there should be some co-ordination between your ministry and those other ministries in terms of giving some priority to social purposes rather than to private enterprise or profit purposes.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I could use as an example the church group, Youth With a Mission, which bought our property in Cambridge. The name of the property escapes me for a moment.

Mr. Barlow: Grandview.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Grandview, yes. The member for that area is here. They came to see us when we put that out for tender and actually beat the developer who was bidding that day. They got it for a fair bit under our appraisal figure. The church is using it for rooms and so on, as well as for young people.

I think the member gets into a grey area when he talks about my colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett). I know we are all brothers and sisters together, but providing housing for the province is his area. I am sure if he saw one of our properties that he felt would fit that need, he would do something.

If a group wanted to come and make a presentation on one of those properties we would certainly look at it. It would be an irregular process, but, if it was for a good purpose in the area and met with the Housing minister's criteria, we would see what we could do.

Mr. Philip: I doubt if that minister would do it, knowing the philosophical binds he gets himself into. Perhaps you would do it if you were Housing minister, but not the present minister.

Is it not possible to have a regular publishing of a list of available properties owned by this government, so that groups which may not necessarily be municipal or government bodies, or which may not have direct connections on a daily or monthly basis with municipal bodies, can at least see that a certain piece of property is coming up for sale? It may be worth while for that church group or that co-operative housing group to sit down with the minister who, as he suggested, would be happy to meet with them and perhaps come to some understanding.

In such cases it should not be necessary for the property to go on the auction block if the group has a legitimate social community use for that property. Perhaps some kind of an agreeable price could be reached based on the financing capabilities of the group and on the co-operation of the municipal authorities who would, supposedly, endorse such a project in their community.

With the computer system the minister has, can he not put together an inventory of properties which are in the process of being sold and publish it regularly?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: We can look into the suggestions the member has made, but I should say that on Friday we were discussing advertising, and that budget for advertising is to let people in a particular area know that we are selling a piece of property. If we published a list province-wide our advertising budget would be quite high, with the number of pieces of property we have, and then we might get some scolding in here. When we are selling in a particular area, we always advertise it and that is the time when the groups such as those the honourable member mentioned should come forward.

4 p.m.

There is only this caution: Every time we seem to begin working with a group such as this, their intentions are good and the whole bit, but a fellow called the Provincial Auditor keeps an eye on us. Sometimes we have held up selling a piece of property for some time, trying to be good Samaritans, only to find that they keep coming back wanting it for $1, and there is no way we could do that. After a year's time or so, the Provincial Auditor starts to make note of what we have done; so we have to move fairly fast on these things.

We do not want to sell it overnight and get a wrong dollar for it, but on the other hand there has to be a cutoff point whereby we can sell it, get money back in and start buying land where we need it for something else.

The staff are telling me that we also keep a list of potential buyers so they can be notified when there is a property coming up, because otherwise they may miss it. Anyone who wants to be put on the list would be on there. I give assurances to the members that if they have someone they want to put on there, I will make sure their name goes on.

This is when the property has been declared surplus by some of the other ministries as well.

Mr. Philip: I do not want to prolong the debate on this but it seems to me that, first of all, the Provincial Auditor will step in on the minister and investigate only if his objectives are not clearly stated.

The only reason the auditor would find fault in any way would be if there were no clearly stated social objectives for selling the property at a lesser amount than the market might obtain. The auditor's role is not to set government policy but to find out whether there is a policy, whether there is an objective that is being stated and whether that objective is being met.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I agree with the member. The problem is just the time that elapses between the first talk and when we actually get them saying, "If you do not sell it to us for $1, we will not have the money." That might be a year. That is when the Provincial Auditor gets after us and asks why we waited so long to make the business decision.

We are honestly trying to run this ministry like a business -- having a heart for people as well, but trying to keep it on a businesslike basis. This is where we have sometimes run into trouble, waiting a year only to find that they have not got the money to buy.

Mr. Philip: Surely, though, a part of this is a planning problem, because most voluntary groups, be they church groups or municipalities, cannot move in immediately, within six months, and put a proposal together that quickly.

Surely what is needed is not a massive government advertising program but, rather, a central list so any groups that are in the co-op housing business or providing certain services can know that two years down the road there is a possibility that certain lands on such and such a site might be available or that certain space in such and such a building might become available?

With that kind of list, such groups can set their operations in motion so they are in a financial and planning level of development to make a proposal and able to compete or even to make their views known in a reasonable way with some chance of beating off, perhaps, a private developer who may have a fleet of lawyers and accountants and who can put together what looks like, and may well be, a much more professional style of proposal?

Maybe that is the problem, that community groups need more lead time than a corporation. I have worked with both; so I think I know the problems involved in pulling together a bunch of volunteers who want to do something in their community and who are involved in a whole lot of other things. In the case of housing, just dealing with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which can be a very bureaucratic and awkward body to deal with at times, you need a couple of years' lead time to get a proposal going.

Before the minister gets up to respond to that, I wonder whether I can ask a very specific question that involves the same provision. Does the minister have unused space now which he is contemplating converting to day care centres and to interval houses, since we do have a problem in both those social areas? I believe, if I am not mistaken, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union has asked for day care services, which were not granted, in four government complexes in collective bargaining negotiations. Has the minister looked at the provision of space in government office complexes for day care centres and for the use of interval housing in any way in any of the government buildings?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: It has just been brought to my attention -- I had forgotten -- that the Ontario Provincial Police College on Sherbourne Street was turned over for $1 to a group that did something very much like what the member mentioned. We did turn it over for $1. I do not want to prolong this, but we will look at the member's suggestions. We are reviewing what we are doing with the sale of land and we will take that into consideration.

As to the member's last question, we do what we are instructed to do. I understand there was a study done by either the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Drea) or the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch), one or the other, some time ago on day care and so on with the government. I understood that was being looked at again. If it is the decision of the government that we go that route, I am sure we will find space if that is its wish.

The member for Erie (Mr. Haggerty) asked about 110 Eglinton Avenue West and how much space we occupy there. If he has a pencil, I will read it off to him. We have part of the main floor, estimated at about 25 per cent, and the third, fourth and fifth floors. We occupy approximately 26,500 square feet at a cost of approximately $12 a square foot.

Mr. Newman: Is that the going rate in the area?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: It is a lot lower.

Mr. Newman: Mr. Chairman, if I am straying from the original vote, then I wish to be called to order so that I can bring it up at another time.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Barlow): I will not hesitate to do that.

Mr. Newman: Are we taking the whole --

The Acting Chairman: No. We are trying to stick to vote 502; in general, any topic within vote 502.

Mr. Newman: We have been talking about the disposal of excess properties by the ministry. In the disposal of surplus properties, does the minister have the priority order in which certain groups, such as municipalities, public libraries and other government agencies, may have a first chance at the purchase or transfer of the properties before the ministry puts them up for public tender for the public to purchase these excess properties?

4:10 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I think the honourable member was out at the time. I will just run through it again if members will bear with me. What we do when it is declared surplus is we run it through all the other ministries to see whether they are interested in it for a purpose of which we may not be aware. If they are not, then it goes to the municipalities and they have a chance to buy it at market value. Then we put it up for public auction to the highest bidder or tenderer or whatever. That is the route we follow.

I did say earlier that sometimes we will consider if it is for a special use, but if we do it that way, we write that special use into it. If it is used for anything other than that, at the time they want to change the use, we charge them the market value as of that day and we subtract what they paid us from whatever the market value is; so we do not come out of it with egg on our faces.

Mr. Newman: Does the minister have an information sheet which lists these in order of priority so that an individual or organization wishing to purchase properties would know that A, B, C, D, E and F have the first chance at it, and then if they do not accept it, it may be their turn to make a bid for the property involved?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I could give the member a copy of that list, yes.

Mr. Newman: That is what I was interested in, because in my own community we have had individuals who have contacted me concerning the purchase of surplus property. I gave him the right advice then.

One of the items I would like to raise with the minister on this vote concerns a communication regarding the municipal telephone books.

The Acting Chairman: Does that fall under the item we are on?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: That is fine with me, if the Chairman wants to do it that way. If he agrees to do it, that is fine.

Mr. Newman: There is a time constraint and if someone has something --

The Acting Chairman: I have a few other speakers. Perhaps we could go on with the other speakers and then come back to you for that question.

Mr. Newman: May I carry on, Mr. Chairman?

The Acting Chairman: No. We have other speakers waiting. I think the custom is to allow one line of questioning per speaker.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister to give us a little more detail on the Ministry of Revenue building in Oshawa, which is somewhat delayed, and particularly on a couple of other problems that have come to my attention surrounding that move.

Does the minister have, for example, a fairly clear idea now of when the building will be occupied? There seems to be some discrepancy. Some of the ministry people are indicating there may be a break-in period for some of the new equipment that will go in there. I believe the last time I saw anything about it, most people were talking about February some time. There seemed to be some argument that there would need to be a two- or three-month break-in period before the building could be fully occupied.

I would like to hear the minister's comments about the dispute, which I believe is between the general contractor and the government. The firm that constructed the building is indicating it lost money on its bid, which I believe is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3 million and change, but that is in dispute.

Could I hear some comments from the minister? Can he clarify the status of that? I am somewhat concerned that he might be facing some legal challenges if the people who built the building feel they are not being dealt with fairly. Is he aware of any attempts they might be making to perhaps hold on to the building to recover some additional moneys from his ministry?

Thirdly, the minister is aware that the city participated in providing a parking facility for the Revenue building. That parking facility is now fully constructed and is at least temporarily in use by the city of Oshawa. It concerns me somewhat that I have not seen anyone clarify who is paying for the structure.

The original agreement, as I understand it, was that essentially the city would construct the parking facility and that it would be relatively self-sustaining because revenue would be generated from the Ministry of Revenue staff who would be using the parking facility.

If we do encounter a rather lengthy delay -- and it is conceivable now that we are looking at a delay of three, four or even six months -- who carries the cost of that building in the interim? Does the ministry's agreement with the city, the original intent of which was that the ministry would carry the cost of the structure, still hold even though the Ministry of Revenue employees may not be using that facility?

Perhaps the minister could clarify some of those points for me.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: If I can start with the last one first, Mr. Chairman, we were there about two weeks ago, I believe it was, with the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Ashe), the architect and some other staff. The parking was not brought up at that time. We agreed on everything with the mayor and council, and I think it was voted on, not quite unanimously, but almost.

While I am answering the other part of the honourable member's question, if any of my staff have anything further to add about the parking, taking into consideration the two- or three-month delay, I hope they will give it to me so I can answer more fully.

There was a delay in the building for a number of reasons, one being the plumbers' strike. I know the member will have gone through that building; the mayor had asked to go through it with a group the other day, and we have had groups from all over the world taking a look at it. I am sure the member, dropping in once in a while, knows that it is the most energy-conserving building we have put up to date.

The security systems in there are quite elaborate, but they still keep within the cost. The cost is just a little over $60 a square foot, I understand, taking away the price of the land, which is the same as a lot of the buildings that are not as energy-conserving and do not have the security or surveillance systems we have in there.

All those systems, along with the energy- conservation computer that is in place, have to be tested. Maybe one time the heat would be up to 80 or 90 degrees and the next time it would be way down to where the staff or people in there would be uncomfortable; so we have to make sure they are working before we can move the staff in.

The office part of it is just about complete, other than that. When I was there, the storefront downstairs had a fair bit of work to be done on it. We are going to put false floors in for the tenants, and I believe the ceiling was partly in as well. It looked kind of rough in there, because the carpenters and some of the electricians were using it as a storage place at that time, but I hope we can get them out of there.

Testing of the systems and everything will be done, and we will be ready to move in by the end of January. They will start to move February 1. We have tightened up the move-in period, and I would like to thank the moving staff, because they have really condensed the move-in by about two or three weeks. We are just as anxious as the member and other members in the area are to get them in and get them settled.

4:20 p.m.

In regard to the general contractor, he is suing my then deputy, me and one of my staff; so I will not comment on it other than to say the member knows that I am a reasonable guy and that I am just asking him to do what he said he would do: to give us the building as agreed and to live up to the commitment he signed. That is all we are asking him to do. Apparently he has a different opinion on that.

If anyone here has information about the garage, if any other agreement was worked out that I am not aware of, if the member will bear with me for a few minutes, or if he has a supplementary on what I have said, I will try to get that for him. Otherwise, I think the agreement is probably as it was worked out with the mayor and the people at that time.

Mr. Breaugh: I am a little concerned about the agreement on the parking garage. My understanding was that essentially the ministry was leasing spaces in the garage; that, in a nutshell, is what the proposal was. It occurs to me that there may be an interim period between the finishing of construction and the time when the ministry staff are actually using the facility, when the city may be carrying a parking facility that is not now open to the public and has no revenue coming in from the ministry because the ministry is not leasing the space and is not using it.

I am wondering about the shortfall that could conceivably occur there. I am trying to get some clarification as to whether we are paying for the spaces whether we use them or not. The difficulty locally is that there is a small controversy around the concept of what to do with this brand-new parking facility, which has nobody parking in it. For the interim period, the city is making use of it while some parking areas just behind city hall are being resurfaced. I would like to know whether we can clarify that.

Without discussing the court procedures that may go against the minister, I would be a bit concerned about what would be normal in this kind of situation, that the ministry would be reluctant to take possession of a building that is not completed. On the other hand, the general contractor may be somewhat reluctant to turn that facility over to the ministry in a legal sense.

Is there a potential there for some legal problems that would mean the minister may be ready to have staff move into that facility at the end of January or the beginning of February but may not be able to get title to it if the contractor chooses to exercise some options in that way?

I would like the minister, if he can, to clarify for me whether he has legal possession of the building as of now, with some work that remains to be done; or could the contractor hold the ministry up for ransom if he is not happy with the amounts paid to him? I believe his argument revolves around some $3.5 million which he says he lost in the process. Is there a possibility that he could prevent the ministry staff from occupying that building?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I do not believe so. We are living up to our agreement in the contract. We are willing to pay him as soon as we get these things tested, and we have told him so. He or a representative of his firm has been in a couple of times asking that we pay for these in advance of having the systems done, and we have said no to that. I am not aware of any way that he would even want to hold it up, because I think he wants to get his hands on that money as soon as possible or even sooner.

To clarify the point about the parking, if there are fewer than 149 spaces, we pay the deficit. Perhaps that will cover what the member was talking about. If there are fewer than the 149 we have guaranteed them, then we pick up the deficit. There will be some people there using it from the ministry or our ministry. If the member needs further clarification on that, I will be glad to get it for him. We will pick up the deficit on that.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister what his policy is in dealing with counties and regions in the case of county courthouses and regional administrative offices. I lump them together for the following reason.

I understand that in the past the government, through the ministry, has arranged with at least with one county to buy its courthouse, since it is largely used for the administration of justice anyway, and thus provide certain funds for the county, which then either rents back the limited facilities it requires in the courthouse or gets an administrative office elsewhere.

In the case of the county of Brant, which has an extremely fine, historical building, renovated and cleaned off for centennial purposes, on a beautiful park. I know there is some thought that it would be advantageous to all concerned if the Ontario government were to purchase the building, since it is used almost exclusively for administration of justice purposes. The proceeds of the purchase then could be used by the county either to continue using the space in the courthouse it currently has or perhaps to move to another building.

In the case of the county of Brant, there is some thought that the old library building, which is once again a fine architectural masterpiece, may be available, since we hope a new library will be built in the foreseeable future, with the resurgence of good times.

I want to ask the minister what his policy is on that, and then I want to go on to another matter directly associated with these administrative headquarters.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: We have been asked by a lot of counties lately to take over their buildings. In a good percentage of them we occupy 80 per cent, and sometimes even a little more, of the total space in those.

As I was telling some of the honourable members a few minutes ago, we have a limited budget in capital to purchase anything like this, but where we do purchase, we pay market value. As the member knows, the market value of a particular property may be worth more to some people than it would if it went out on to the market. We sometimes have a little dispute over what market value is, but we usually have two appraisers and then if we cannot agree, if we have to, we bring in a third.

That is the policy we have, but we have not done too much of that, sometimes because of lack of funds.

Mr. Nixon: How many courthouses has the ministry bought? Just one?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Since I have been minister?

Mr. Nixon: No. In all.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Perhaps my staff could find that out for me. Since I have been the minister, we have purchased only two over three years.

Mr. Nixon: I gather that the county of Lambton led the way in this program. A number of people in Brant have looked to Lambton county for the kind of leadership in negotiating with the ministry that has been so fruitful for that county. I think they felt, or perhaps still feel, although I would not want to jeopardize their ongoing discussions, that there was some reason why the minister was more interested in buying the Lambton county courthouse than the architectural gem that is sitting in the city of Brantford, waiting for him to pick it up, of course, at a fair and equitable price.

It is true the government of Ontario uses at least 80 per cent of the building. But the minister has to be seen to be treating all the county councils with fairness and equity. It is true the ministry cannot buy them all in one year, but it must be understood that the policy of the government is to acquire these buildings, since it is using them almost exclusively across the province, and not doing something in one part of the province that it is not ready, willing and anxious to do in another part. Perhaps the minister could give me his personal assurance in this regard.

4:30 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, just to correct my statement there -- I was trying to think back -- there are three. I forgot one that was already on the way when I came along; but there have been three. I give the honourable member my assurance that we will look at any proposal that comes along and try to judge it on its own merits. But I was just trying to say that sometimes market value means something different to one person than it does to another. We have built approximately 30 and we have purchased four or five altogether.

Mr. Nixon: To pursue it one more step, if I may, in my opening comment I also said that the administrative headquarters for certain regions must, to some degree, be built in consultation with the ministry and its officials. I am thinking of the one at present under construction in Haldimand-Norfolk. Has an agreement been made with the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk to use some of the property left behind after the erection of the new building, and some of the new building itself to house provincial offices in the region?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: The staff tell me there is always an understanding between our staff and the county that we discuss back and forth in advance what our plans are, so that one group knows what the other is doing. Since I have been in the ministry, we have had two or three people who have come in to talk to us about the possibility that the county build a new building and what we might occupy in it -- whether we can move the courts in or maybe the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, if there is an area office -- to help them with their costs. We are always willing to try to do that.

Mr. Nixon: In closing I would just ask the minister if he has consulted with his colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) about the Haldimand-Norfolk situation. The building of the new administrative centre appears to be more or less an arm designed for the completion of provincial policy in the establishment of a new town in Haldimand-Norfolk. The minister may recall my talking about this in the Legislature on a number of occasions, but the new town is, to be frank, a complete flop at this stage.

The taxpayers of Ontario sank $60 million into it, and it really is a grand location with beautiful buildings and roads and street lights and tennis courts. Everything is there except people. But in order to make it fly, so to speak, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has persuaded the local council to build a new regional headquarters at a cost of about $2.6 million to begin with and, of course, there will be ancillary additions.

As I understood it, the government of Ontario is providing the land free. It is not your land, it is probably some other emanation, although my own feeling is that Government Services ought to have control of all land and all the decisions should be under this ministry and not fragmented into a number of different parcels. I feel that very strongly.

The land is being provided free and the plans were provided free. It so happens the council did not accept the plans, but they were provided free. I understood the government had undertaken to say to the regional municipality that, as it left its old premises scattered out in the towns that have been established for over a century and went to this new, pristine location, the government would undertake to rent those offices. I would think that would have to be done through you people. Also, it would undertake to provide certain offices in the new building, paying a top dollar figure for rent, to ease the pain of the buildings even more than it had been eased already.

Incidentally, the Ontario Land Corp., which is the developer of record, is also providing all the up-front money at 11 per cent. That looks good, even today; but you can imagine how good it looked back in the old 20 per cent days when the decision was made. I just say to the minister that in his position, he must be careful that he is not bypassed by his more aggressive colleagues who are moving into the area which should be his responsibility. At the same time, he must be careful he is not persuaded by his colleagues to enter into certain agreements which are not in the best interests of the taxpayers as a whole but which commit many millions of public dollars in justification of a policy which has long since been discredited and seen to be wasteful.

To the same extent, I would warn the minister about the policy of purchasing courthouses. Before he was minister, the now Provincial Secretary for Resources Development, the member for Lambton (Mr. Henderson), had even more influence with his cabinet colleagues than he has now, if you can imagine. He was the person who had this great visionary breakthrough that the province should buy courthouses; maybe selected courthouses. In other words, for a transference of a nice chunk of money to the county, the title deed, if such there is of a courthouse, is transferred to the province and everything goes on the way it was before. So the electors of Lambton or some other specially designated area get a great bundle of money dropped into their treasury by Santa Claus and give up nothing in return.

If you are going to start doing that you are going to have to do it everywhere. I tell the minister he will have to do it everywhere or we are going to have some goings-on around here. When I see these things developing over the years, it amazes me what you birds get away with.

But I have great confidence in the minister. I have known him for a long time, and there is no way that he is going to do anything he does not think is correct. I simply warn him to look out for his colleagues because they may try to make a fool of him.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the honourable member for his advice. I understand there are one or two ministries that are looking at space in that complex with a view to purchase, but at this point I cannot say who they are. I understand it is before Management Board of Cabinet. I accept the honourable member's advice. I only say again that we will try to treat every county that comes in to talk to us in an upright way and do what we can with the moneys we have available.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, I had some supplementaries to some of the questions that the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) was asking, if I may ask those now.

As the minister will know, I have been concerned about what happens to a subcontractor when there is a hold-back to a developer. The minister will be aware of a particular case that I brought to his attention of one subcontractor -- what was really a small businessman, a company worth perhaps a couple of million dollars, but small compared to the major developer -- who was not paid as a result of the government holding back on what they considered to be unsatisfactory work by the major developer.

In these times of Trudeau-Reagan high-interest economic policies, many of these people simply cannot stay in business if they are expected to carry the government -- or indeed the work they have done for a contractor who has worked for the government -- on their financial books for three months, or six months, while the government is legitimately trying to get the service the taxpayers have paid for. I am wondering if the minister has thought of any way in which he can get around that problem of paying off some of the subcontractors in cases where their work has been satisfactory but where the major contractor obviously has not fulfilled all of his obligations.

4:40 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, in this particular case and in the Oshawa one, the contractor is responsible for paying the subs, and at the end of the contract the way it is written we are to turn over a set amount of money agreed upon the day we signed the contract. As soon as he finishes the testing of these systems, as I mentioned to the member for Oshawa -- and I believe there may be one or two other areas -- we are prepared to turn that over. To my knowledge at this time there are no major problems with subs; there may be, but I am not aware right now that subs are hurting as a result of this.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, the minister surely has made the very point I am making, namely, that it is the subcontractors who often end up being punished through no fault of their own for the problems of the initial contractor.

The case I brought to his attention, which was not the Oshawa one, I have in my file upstairs. I am sure the minister will recall it because I sat down with him personally and said, "Look, these people are not going to meet payroll and they are going to go into bankruptcy unless you do something to see that they get paid." It is not their work that the ministry is dissatisfied with but work that was done by the major contractor or by other subcontractors for him.

The main point is, though, that many of these small subcontractors simply cannot wait it out until you fellows have your day in court or your holdback for whatever length of time with the major contractor.

Is there not some way in which, when you see that small businessmen are hurting like this, you can break the contract or have an arrangement whereby you can advance some of the money to the subcontractor, because it is no fault of his that the major contractor is defaulting on his agreement.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, I suppose there are a lot of different ways of designing contracts. But under this particular contract the person got the money, had the money there; and since the architect on the job and the others verified that such and such an amount of work was done, it was released from the people we had the money from. It is a little different, I suppose, with some of the contracts we have.

But right now, with the present conditions, an awful lot of contractors are having difficulties, as are the subs; and I think we all have to watch that when the contractor or the architect on whatever job it is -- I am talking generally now -- has a problem, the subcontractors know right away that he has this.

I think back to one situation in the north in which we actually worked along to clear off those subs; and some of the members in the Legislature had written to me about it, some from the London area for rugs and so on. We went in and actually bought the building even though we had a lease-purchase to clear them off.

But these days we all have to be very careful. I think subs have a responsibility to look at the soundness of the general contractor, because we do not have enough money to bail out everybody who goes into these sorts of arrangements. We are just as sympathetic as the honourable member is, but I think you just have to be a better businessman in these days of hard times we are having.

Mr. Philip: What I hear the minister saying is so preposterous that I find it hard to believe even he can try to get us to believe it. He is saying that some poor, small subcontractor should be smarter than the government is in picking the main general contractor who is not going to default.

If you guys with all of your expertise and all of the staff you have over there cannot figure out that a main contractor is going to default, then how can the subcontractors figure it out? In a time of shortage of work, subcontractors probably will take a contract from anyone, because they are desperate for work.

I find it hard to believe that you cannot work out a contract with the major contractor that would guarantee a system whereby you could pay off the subcontractors who are not involved in the faulty workmanship, or whatever it is that you are holding back for, in those instances where you happen to be stung by a major contractor who is not performing up to specifications. Surely the little guy with the dump truck and the four or five employees should not suffer because you have hired a contractor who is incompetent or is not delivering.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Let us see what we are talking about now. Are we talking in general, or are we talking about the particular case the member for Oshawa was speaking of? If we are talking about the one in Oshawa, that was a different kind of arrangement. We guaranteed to pay him at the completion of the project a given amount of dollars, and no progress payments. He was to supply his money up front and look after that himself, which I understand he has done.

There is another kind of contract in which we do give progress payments from our ministry. But the one in Oshawa is a different type. He is to put up the building as described and laid out in the architectural plans for a certain amount of dollars; and on the day it is completed and the systems are working, he gets his dollars. In between, he arranges financing. Normally, we make progress payments and have mechanics' liens to help cover situations such as the honourable member has mentioned.

As I mentioned, there was one in the north where the mechanics' liens, etc., did not cover everything. A lease was to be purchased and we went in and did something that usually a contractor or person getting a building would not have done. We bought the building. I think it is going to be a good buy in the long run. But we did so in order that we might pay off the small subcontractors who came as a group to see me. They are now happy.

I mentioned that members in the Legislature had written me, one of the members from London and others from eastern Ontario, about rugs and other goods which had not been paid for. They were pleased with the way Government Services handled the situation so that the suppliers received their money.

Mr. Philip: The minister will recall that in the case I brought to his attention -- which was not the case in Oshawa -- the subcontractor was put in terrible financial jeopardy. Borrowing money at 18 per cent can put you under if you do not get paid by the government.

The question I am simply asking of the minister is: Why can he not arrange all of his contracts in such a way that the subcontractors, provided they are not involved in the faulty workmanship, are paid in those cases where the contractor defaults, rather than having their payment held back, as happened in the specific example I gave to him? Was the minister punishing the subcontractors along with the contractors?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: My staff tell me that we do exactly what the industry does in cases like this. Not on the one we were talking about, but under normal conditions there are progress payments. I would think that where payments were authorized to that point, the subcontractor should ensure that he gets payment for his work. But we follow the same practice adopted by all other contractors or people erecting buildings.

I was trying to give you an example of where we went beyond what they have done to help this particular case out. We try to be as fair as we can, but these days, as I have said, there are an awful lot of people out there who have to be a little more businesslike too, and the general contractors they go with must be strong contractors.

4:50 p.m.

In Government Services we have to take the lowest bidder in every case, provided the person has done a pretty good job. If we were doing a building for ourselves and we knew John Doe was one of the subcontractors on another and had never had any problems, had done this, that and the next thing, we could do that. But when we are spending government money, unless we have a good reason not to, we have to take the lowest tender. Maybe one general contractor is not as good as another, one or two up the line, who is a little more expensive.

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Chairman, I want to address myself to vote 501, item 10: Ministers without Portfolio. In a two-year period that item has increased 75 or 80 per cent. That is perhaps where the salaries of the ministers would be almost 100 per cent of the estimate. The salary is $24,500. Can you give me some explanation why that figure should increase to $523,000 for two members of the Ontario Legislature? What did they do to spend that amount of money around here? What is the reasoning? Can it be justified? Let me put it that way.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, I felt when I was Minister without Portfolio I earned that extra money and never had a shaky hand receiving it at the end of the month or whenever I got my pay. There were three Ministers without Portfolio when that was put through. We went from two to three.

Mr. Haggerty: And the parliamentary assistant too?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: And my parliamentary assistant, yes. As you know, last Friday my parliamentary assistant was busy working on my behalf opening our new agricultural college in Alfred. He is always available, is willing and able to help me whenever he can. I find my parliamentary assistant does a really good job representing our ministry whenever I am unable to go. I working on my behalf opening our new agricultural college in Alfred. He is always available, is willing and able to help me whenever he can. I find my parliamentary assistant does a really good job representing our ministry whenever I am unable to go. I am sure the honourable members know that is bound to happen sometimes. I am pleased to have him on staff.

Mr. Haggerty: Why the $523,000 expenditure? That is the point I am trying to convey to you. Can you justify that expenditure for three members of the Ontario Legislature?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, as we all know, we have staff added in there to run an office. We are running three offices and it does cost money.

I am always surprised when every year the Board of Internal Economy tells me how much it costs me to run my riding office. I think I try to do it in an efficient way, but I am really surprised; when it is all added up, it comes to a fair bit of money.

We had estimated for 12 staff, which we now have reduced to eight because of constraints. There was money for 12 staff. We reduced the number to eight.

The Ministers without Portfolio do a lot. My colleague the deputy House leader performs a lot of duties on the Board of Internal Economy, on the legislation committee and as deputy House leader. I forget a lot of the duties, but they are kept quite busy and I think earn every cent they make.

Mr. Haggerty: I find it rather difficult to justify that heavy expenditure when we are talking about restraint. The minister said he had reduced the staff to a certain number. How many vehicles are there? Do they share vehicles or are there three separate vehicles, four now with one for the parliamentary assistant?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: No. The members will be interested to know we will be reducing that budget by approximately $100,000 by cutting the staff and so on. Each Minister without Portfolio is entitled to a car but my parliamentary assistant does not have a car. No parliamentary assistant has a car, to my knowledge. They may have the use of a car when on government business but not --

Mr. Haggerty: They walk, as members of the opposition do, do they? That is great. If I can grasp this issue, I cannot see that you can really justify that expenditure by the Ministers without Portfolio. That is an area you should be cutting back on.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: The member will be pleased to know we have had to find some constraints throughout our ministry. This is one area where we are cutting back on actual people and saving about $100,000 off the figure in the estimates.

Mr. Philip: It is interesting to note that, if we look at all the votes in these estimates, at the actual compared to the estimates in 1980-81, with the exception of one item the estimates were all overestimated.

One of the interesting items is the tremendous growth of the main office. The actual in 1980-81 was $497,305 compared to the estimate of $545,800. The 1981-82 estimate was $786,900. Then for 1982-83 it is $946,600, which is a dramatic increase over a short period of time. I wonder if the minister can give some explanation for that.

Mr. Chairman: The question is, there seems to be a dramatic increase.

Mr. Philips: This is a two-part question. The minister seems to have a bad record of estimating. He overestimates on every item except one.

The second question is that, in looking at all those figures, the most dramatic increase I could find was in the main office expenditures. I wonder if the minister has an explanation for his poor record in estimating. I suppose it is the old story that it is always better to ask for more money and that saves him from coming back for supplementary estimates. There has been a constant pattern of overestimating.

Therefore, the second question is, why has the main office expenditure grown so dramatically compared to other expenditures?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Perhaps I can run over some of the items that make up the majority of the increases in the main office expenditure. The revision of salaries relating to wages and employee benefits amounts to $70,000 approximately. The allowance for inflation is $23,800.

Another one is to allow for the review of administrative procedures in the ministry; it was $38,900. The secretarial support for my parliamentary assistant was another one. There is a small increase of $2,300 in the minister's salary, and an increase in the parliamentary assistant's salary during that year. This totalled $169,200. Those figures make up the bulk of the main office increase.

5 p.m.

Mr. Philip: That really does not answer my question of why the main office has grown disproportionately to other offices under this ministry.

The minister also mentioned the secretarial assistance to the parliamentary assistant to the minister. Could the minister tell us what his parliamentary assistant does in a ministry this small? What does a secretary to a parliamentary assistant do? Is he or she a full-time secretary? Does he or she go out and cut his ribbons for him? What is it the parliamentary assistant is doing?

I know we see parliamentary assistants, such as the member for Wilson Heights (Mr. Rotenberg) who seems to be here more often than the minister, handling the legislation, but I have not seen your parliamentary assistant in action. The minister has always been the one who has been doing anything that I have seen connected with his ministry.

Mr. Hodgson: The member will have to come up to my riding and see me in action.

Mr. Philip: The parliamentary assistant is not being paid for doing it in his riding. I get a salary for taking care of my riding but I do not get a parliamentary assistant's salary for doing it.

Mr. Hodgson: You do not get paid for looking after my riding either. I hope not.

Mr. Philip: As usual, the parliamentary assistant does not understand what he is talking about, or about his ministry, but maybe the minister can answer the question.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, I thought I had mentioned this to the member for Erie, when he mentioned my parliamentary assistant and the Ministers without Portfolio. I did not want to take the rest of the afternoon to cover that, ahead of other questions the members might have for me, but there is no doubt I could, and I probably would forget some.

As I mentioned to the member for Erie, and I thought the member for Etobicoke was in the House at the time, my parliamentary assistant does a lot of things for me. For instance, I had already booked with the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Timbrell) to open our new agricultural college. I called on my parliamentary assistant to take my place on Friday and he went very ably so I could be here for the estimates. This has happened many times.

In the Ministry of Government Services we have a lot of openings, a lot of sod turnings and things like that, and the member can and does take my place. Many of those, I should say, work into his weekends. As ministers, we expect that to happen but from time to time it happens to parliamentary assistants.

I am sure my parliamentary assistant got home much later on the weekend than most of us in the Legislature because he was doing a particular job. I can think of times when he has gone up north. The member for Sudbury (Mr. Gordon) will be happy to hear that he has been to Moosonee on my behalf when I was unable to go. I am sure he realizes, as do some of the other northern members, how long it takes to get there.

The parliamentary assistant has done that. He knows that sometimes the weather can fog in so one loses two days. He does things like this; he does them very easily and without any pressure at all. As I said, I am very pleased he is with me to assist me so I can be here in the House to answer any questions the members might have rather than be on the road all the time. It gives me a chance to be here to look after day-to-day operations, and my colleague can be out doing some of those jobs for me.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Haldimand-Norfolk.

Mr. Philip: Well, the minister makes it sound as though --

Mr. Chairman: Order. Are we on the same topic?

Mr. Philip: Supplementary to the --

Mr. Chairman: Well, we would like to give a chance to the member for Haldimand-Norfolk next.

Mr. Philip: If I may just ask my supplementary and then --

Mr. Chairman: I am saying yes, and then the member for Haldimand-Norfolk.

Mr. Philip: It sounds as though the parliamentary assistant is so active that he has probably been issued his own shovel. I am asking why he needs a special secretary in order to do a sod turning. You would not really need a secretary assigned to sod-turning ceremonies, and I am wondering what this secretary does. Is it just a way of giving that MPP an extra staff person, or is that secretary involved in work for your ministry?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: A bit of both, but she does not go out on the sod turnings with the honourable member, and I hope I did not give any indication that she does. I am sure that on occasion she would be welcome, but she does not do that. She does some ministry work and some work for the honourable member so he can be kept up to date with everything that goes on.

Mr. G. I. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I have a question about the White Oaks property, which consists of approximately 50 acres and 40 homes which you say are not being utilized now and have not been utilized extensively for the last couple of years. What plans does the ministry have for those? They have good access to water now from the new central water treatment plant. There is a lagoon there to service the area and a heating plant that has not been in for all that long. The final thing that makes the site of some value is a swimming pool and a recreation area that are not going to be utilized, and I wonder what plans the ministry may have for that property.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, I have not seen these buildings myself, but I understand they were put up during the Second World War. They were temporary buildings, and I understand from the staff that it would cost much more to bring them up to standard than perhaps they are worth. The Ministry of Community and Social Services has declared these buildings surplus and has decided not to spend any more money on them; so we will have to declare the property surplus, and perhaps in the near future it will be up for sale.

Mr. G. I. Miller: Will the local municipalities be given first chance? It may be true that some of them were wartime buildings, but many of the houses are being upgraded and do have good heating systems; they are on paved roads and have good foundations. We have had some requests from people who are utilizing them now who would like to rent them on a long-term basis, and it just seems such a waste that 40 homes that are in good condition and can be put to use by people who cannot afford the top level of housing are not going to be utilized.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I understand we are trying to have the municipality take over the water and sewerage. Perhaps you were not here earlier this afternoon. If you will bear with me again, I will run through the procedure. Any time they become surplus, in this case -- or do you know that?

Mr. G. I. Miller: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: The municipality will have first choice if no other ministries are interested in that property. The municipality could make a presentation to us at that time and we will investigate that further to see if they are interested in taking it over at a price.

5:10 p.m.

Mr. G. I. Miller: I would like to ask the minister about the announcement the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing made in regard to South Cayuga. I believe that land is under the jurisdiction of your ministry at the present time. What plans do you have for it? Will it be used like Edwardsburgh which I think was turned over to the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope)?

Will it be possible to turn the land over to the Minister of Agriculture and Food for his direction so it can be maintained as agricultural land? As the government well knows, that is good agricultural land. Will the government give consideration to utilizing part of it for experimental use so other agriculture can learn and benefit from that type of use in that area?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I believe I should respond more fully to your question at another time. We are holding some of that in a housekeeping type of arrangement. We are leasing it back to farmers in the area. That is similar to what we do in most areas. As you know, being a farmer yourself, they are able to increase their production and, it is hoped, make a few extra dollars. When a decision is made other than that, I would be glad to keep it in mind and let the member know what we intend to do. I am sure you would agree that leasing it back to farmers in the area is putting it to good use at this time.

Mr. G. I. Miller: I have a final question for the minister. Will the local municipalities be given an opportunity to have input as to the direction it may go and will that be given consideration?

We are speaking not only of South Cayuga but also of Pickering. There may even be a portion of the Townsend property which it is not planned to utilize as a city. Maybe that land should be given direction under the local municipality. Will they have an opportunity to have input in that decision?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I will discuss your suggestion with my colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing because I believe he would be taking an active role in this and anything that might be done with it.

If he is listening, the member for Erie asked me a question about the telephone lines on Friday and I do not think I answered it properly. We have about 400 inner-city lines to different areas. As to the one you were particularly concerned with, just looking at the place you mentioned, there now is a direct line in from St. Catharines --

Mr. Haggerty: That government line into the city of Welland takes in part of the exchange at Port Colborne, but it does not go into the Fort Erie area or parts of Wainfleet. I have to share that with my colleague the member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart).

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Are you near Wellandport? Is Wellandport the place where you are interested in getting a phone directly in?

Mr. Haggerty: No. It was into the town of Fort Erie. It does not go into the exchange there. It only goes into part of it and that is Stevensville.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Perhaps I will have to get that. My staff misunderstood the name of the place you wanted it directly in. Just so you will know, we have approximately 400 lines at the present time. We keep trying to update these as there is a demand for more. The cutoff point we try to have is about 900 calls per month using the line, which makes it a candidate for a direct line.

I guess our staff picked up the wrong name, but we will check that out and let the honourable member know where it stands and approximately how many calls are coming in at the present time if we have some way of monitoring those.

Mr. Haggerty: The reason I raised the point is the example of my colleague from Haldimand-Norfolk. We both have parts of our ridings that go into the Dunnville phone exchange. We do not have a government wide area telephone service line or service unless it is a long-distance cost to us. The costs show up on the member's allowance throughout the year, saying you spent so many dollars on long-distance phone calls.

You could give a WATS line directly to all the constituents, just as you allow them to call in now. Every citizen has the right now to call in to the different ministries to get some response. All I am suggesting is that it should work the other way around so the members would have direct calling to their constituents from Queen's Park and I think it would speed up some of the inquiries.

A question I asked you in the opening comments was what additional staff do you have to answer the phone calls for all the government agencies? I imagine it takes quite a few telephone operators to handle 100 million phone calls throughout the year.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: If I could start with the last one first, my staff tell me that because we are now able to direct callers to the right place with the first call and eliminate those three or four calls that we had in the past, we are doing that without additional staff.

I sympathize with the member. For a long time in my riding just one municipality, and that was Smiths Falls, had a direct line to Toronto and now there are two. I have four municipalities and a lot of outlying areas and they can't phone Toronto without a long-distance call or, if I am there, I can't phone here.

One thing the Board of Internal Economy has done for us all, and some of the city members I suppose wouldn't appreciate it as we in the rural ridings do, is that anybody in the rural ridings now can phone the constituency office on a Zenith number. This has increased our calls considerably but I think it lets us do a better job as members when constituents can get to us by phone without paying the cost.

The member for Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. Newman) asked me one day in the House, or somewhere, about phoning in and being able to get through. We have cleared that up. I would ask the members that when they give their identification number, if they would give their riding, the operator will put them through right away. If it is the wife calling or someone from home phoning with a message to the member, if the person says "the member for So-and-so" and gives the number, he or she will have no trouble at all. I hope the member has found that to be helpful. They have been asked to do that for all members.

Ms. Bryden: Mr. Chairman, when the minister was making his reply to the leadoff, he mentioned his affirmative action program in the ministry and said his ministry was regarded among the good guys. Certainly, his ministry should be congratulated on the fact that it has now established an apprenticeship program in the trades for women and is presumably helping women to get into nontraditional occupations which are among the better-paid occupations.

But the women crown employees office report for 1980-81, which is the latest we have available, says that with regard to this apprenticeship program up to March 31, 1981, only one woman had been accepted into the program and that was in the electrical trades. Have any more been accepted since then? If so, how many?

5:20 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Mr. Chairman, I want to correct the record, because I want to be completely honest with everybody here. I made a statement about our affirmative action group and how good we were; I still maintain we are good, but I misinterpreted the information that was given to me. I said that we had increased from 27 per cent to 32 per cent in one year, whereas that increase was between 1977 and this year. Last year the figure was 31 per cent. It was not just a year-over-year increase, as I think I may have indicated. I wanted to correct the record on that.

I think we are doing very well in affirmative action. Currently, we have 888 women on staff. We have had a reorganization within the ministry, and if the member will look at my support staff, she will see that some of the key players are ladies. So we have taken the ladies into consideration; besides that, they were well qualified for the jobs. We continue to move in that direction.

I do not think the member was in the House on Friday, at which time I mentioned that when I sat on Management Board of Cabinet, the affirmative action ladies came before us and said the Ministry of Government Services was one of the better ministries in the area of affirmative action. I use that as evidence that we are showing improvement every year.

Ms. Bryden: I was going to point out, as my second question, that discrepancy in the increase from 27 per cent to 32 per cent. It has actually gone up by one per cent a year, which is progress but rather slow progress.

The minister did not answer my question regarding how many have gone into the apprenticeship program for skilled trades which he has announced as part of his ministry's program. As I said, the report for 1980-81 shows that one person has gone into that program.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Perhaps the member has some other questions to ask while staff look up that information, which I do not have at my fingertips. That will give the staff a little while to research that and come up with a number.

Ms. Bryden: I do have one or two other questions. Women's wages as a percentage of men's wages for the ministry are still below the overall percentage for the Ontario public service, which is 72 per cent. This still leaves a 28-point gap between what women and men make in the Ontario public service. Presumably the affirmative action program is aimed at overcoming this.

However, in the Ministry of Government Services, women's wages as a percentage of men's actually have slipped in the last year for which we have a report. It was 70.6 per cent in 1979-80, and went down to 69.8 per cent in 1980-81. It appears the ministry is going backwards in trying to close the gap between men's and women's wages. Has he any evidence that the trend is changing for the current year, for which we do not have statistics?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I will study this a little more closely and take the member's comments under advisement. I hope that in next year's estimates we will be able to improve on that.

Mr. Philip: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman: Surely the minister can respond before the estimates next year. Some valid points have been made by my colleague, and we would expect an answer -- if not in these estimates, because there are only a few minutes left, at least a written answer to the member.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I will be glad to do that, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Bryden: Can the minister also indicate to us whether the resources available for the affirmative action program have been increased this year over last year? The 1980-81 report shows that the resources provided for the affirmative action program in that year were $74,900 direct and $10,900 indirect. To me this seems rather a pittance to overcome what is close to a 30 per cent wage gap and to move women into higher-paying jobs. I wonder whether more money has been allocated to this very important program for this year.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: The member will be pleased to hear that in 1982-83 the estimates have been increased in that vote. Just under $150,000 is allocated to that area of my ministry.

Ms. Bryden: That is very good news.

One final question: I noticed that in terms of applicants for vacancies in the ministry in 1980-81, 13.5 per cent of the total applicants were women but only 12.4 per cent got appointments. Does that indicate there is a definite effort to move more women into the ministry and get beyond that 32 per cent of the total staff the ministry now has?

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

Mr. Newman: Mr. Chairman, I want to raise an issue that has been bothering me for quite a few years, ever since the blue pages started appearing in telephone books. I assume the Ministry of Government Services provides Bell Canada with the various government telephone numbers. Is that correct?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: If the honourable member can go on with another question, I will find that out.

Mr. Newman: This is on exactly the same thing. The small type used in the blue pages of the telephone book is too difficult for senior citizens to be able to read. The purpose of the blue pages in the telephone book is to assist individuals to communicate directly with various ministries of the government here in Toronto. I assume those blue pages are in all the major cities and probably some of the smaller municipalities, listing the various ministries. If I am incorrect, and the ministry does not provide them, then I suggest that whoever does provide them could make changes that would assist in the attempt to allow communication between constituents and government offices.

In the first place, the type is too small; it cannot be read. In the second place, it is confusing with the federal telephone numbers in there. Possibly there could be a different colour of ink or a different colour of page for the federal listing, so the individual would know exactly whether he is to contact a federal government department or a provincial government ministry. There are no cross-references for the reader. If he wants to get the Ministry of Health, he cannot find it; he has to look under OHIP or something else. There are a lot of other little things.

I do not want to take up the time of the House, but I ask the minister's officials, if they are responsible for that -- if not, then I hope the minister will relay it to the minister who is responsible for it -- to help the citizens to be able to communicate with the proper government ministry here in Toronto, especially those from my own area who would like to talk directly to an individual when they have problems to resolve. We are willing to act as go-betweens for the constituents, but a lot of times the constituents would prefer to talk directly with an individual in the ministry in an attempt to resolve a problem.

May I have the minister's comments?

5:30 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I appreciate what the member is saying. We have come a long way and we have a lot of comments on it. We have to work out many of the things -- the print and one thing and another. We co-ordinate the whole thing with Bell. We are trying to improve it all the time, and we will be dealing with many of the suggestions the member has made. We do appreciate his letting us know what his people are finding, because that is what our ministry is all about. We are a service ministry, and we are trying to do the best job we can for all the ministries, the members and the people of Ontario.

We do appreciate, as I said when we first started, that in our estimates we are open to suggestions. We do not think we have the answers to everything or all the good ideas. We look forward to getting some from the member and others. We will certainly look at what he has said.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, I think the member for Windsor-Walkerville makes a good point about the colour. It seems to me preposterous that we have municipal, provincial and federal all in the same colour. Surely a colour scheme could be used. If we are going to have blue pages, why not have one colour for the province and a different colour for the municipalities so that people would understand the provincial government is such-and-such a colour and know where to look?

The other point is, was Bell instructed to remove the riding office numbers from the white pages number when it implemented the blue pages? For a couple of years now, we have been trying to tell Bell it is fine to list our riding office in the blue pages, but we also want it listed in the white pages.

Was that a conscious decision by the Ministry of Government Services? If it was, I suggest it was the wrong decision. People look up the member's name. They look up "Mr. Wiseman," and not the provincial government listings, when they want to call their MPP. Maybe the minister can get through to Bell, because after three or four calls every year they still cannot seem to print my riding office in the white pages as well as in the blue pages. Maybe some other members have had the same problem.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: I will take the last question first. It was Bell's doing. We have had some discussions with them as well. We will continue to have discussions with them, as we do on a regular basis on different things, but we have already told them our feelings on that.

As far as the colour is concerned, I understand this is the colour that is used right across North America. It is used in New York and other places. It seems to me -- and I could be wrong, because one covers so many areas in a ministry such as this one -- that there was something about the cost of the paper being better that way than with some of the other colours and so on. It is the colour they are using right across North America, and I suppose there are savings there. As the member for Erie was telling us, we should be making savings for Bell by buying one colour for everyone.

Mr. Newman: While we are talking about telephone books, I have another suggestion for the minister. In the state of California, the telephone company has appended to the telephone book what is called a survival guide. There are various emergency numbers for an individual to call for miscellaneous reasons. Included in that are first-aid suggestions for various types of illness, accidents and so forth that an individual may be confronted with.

I have asked Bell for about three years now to consider implementing that, and I get nowhere with it. I thought I might send over a copy of that book to the minister, and maybe he could have Bell co-operate with him so that everyone would have a copy in his home. Normally one woulday people would have Bibles, but it is not so today; however, they do have telephone books, and in case you wanted some type of first aid, you have the book right there all the time, you turn to the pages and it may be, though it will not necessarily be, of some help.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Barlow): I wish to advise members that our time has now expired, and under standing order 46(d) we must put the balance of the questions.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Chairman, the minister was having his staff look up an answer for the member for Beaches-Woodbine. I wonder whether you could at least let the minister give that answer.

The Acting Chairman: No, I am sorry. The time has expired, and the answer can be forthcoming at a later time.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: It would take only a minute, Mr. Chairman.

The Acting Chairman: Do you have the answer handy? Quickly then.

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: The member for Beaches-Woodbine mentioned that there was just one; I think there have been three. I realize improvement is probably still needed in this area, but it is a little better than what the member had mentioned.

For the member who mentioned the emergency numbers, I point out that we have incorporated the 911 emergency number. We are working all the time to improve our services there, and we will take a look at the member's suggestion there as well.

The Acting Chairman: All right. Let us proceed with the voting.

Mr. Haggerty: Can I ask a question?

The Acting Chairman: I am sorry. There is no time for questions. Our time has expired.

Mr. Haggerty: We still have 22 minutes yet.

The Acting Chairman: No, I am sorry. According to the clock on the table, the time expired about three minutes ago.

Vote 501 agreed to

Votes 502 through 506, inclusive, agreed to.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Wells, the committee of supply reported certain resolutions.

The House adjourned at 5:38 p.m.