The House resumed at 8 p.m.
BUDGET DEBATE (CONTINUED)
Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the amendment to the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.
Mr. Gillies: Mr. Speaker, I seem to have drawn my usual large crowd tonight. I appreciate joining what is, I believe, the third budget debate in which I have taken part since my election some two years ago. In commencing this evening I would like to draw the attention of the honourable members to the presence in the gallery of some very distinguished visitors from Brantford.
Mr. Ruston: You can't do that.
Mr. Gillies: My good friend the member for Essex North is telling me I cannot do that, and I apologize now, having already done it.
Hon. Mr. Walker: What city are they from?
Mr. Gillies: From Brantford. The honourable minister is asking me where they are from.
We have some friends, supporters and members -- at the risk of sounding a trifle partisan -- of the Brantford Progressive Conservative Association, and I am just delighted that they were able to be with us this evening.
In commencing this brief speech tonight, I would like to commend the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) for the budget he has tabled with this House in the last number of days outlining policies that I believe effectively address the major economic problems of the day and that will help our private sector to take full advantage of, and build on the opportunities afforded by, improving economic conditions. I am confident that in tandem with other actions of our government this budget will be responsible for what will doubtless be a slow, but none the less steady, transformation of the current economic situation into a recovery of the economy of our province.
I would like to say at this time, and I think I speak for all my colleagues on this side of the House, that we have been very proud of the performance of our Treasurer in the last number of days. We recognize the difficult task the Treasurer and his staff had preparing and tabling the budget we now have before us. Meeting the deadline with the various complications that developed in the last number of days required, I know, an unusual effort on the part of the people in the Ministry of Treasury and Economics. I am sure that effort is appreciated by all members of the House.
Although I know this was the subject of an emergency debate last Monday in which I took part, I would like to reflect briefly on the circumstances that surrounded the preparation and presentation of this year's budget, as I fear that in some ways the substance of the budget has been overshadowed by the purported leak of some documents that were alleged to be part of the budget. The incident I am referring to at the print shop in this city has had serious implications for the preparation of budgets in the future. I think it has in turn had effects on what will be the future budgetary policies of the government.
I would like to make a few observations about the issues involved in the incident itself and the subsequent debate on those issues that took place in this House. The incident led many members opposite to demand the resignation of the Treasurer. It is our feeling on this side of the House that the Treasurer must remain in his post and continue to exercise his duties on behalf of the people of this province.
Mr. Nixon: That is not what he said.
Mr. Gillies: I am coming to that. There was some insistence the Treasurer must resign because of the dilemma in which the federal Minister of Finance found himself. I would like to make only two observations on that point.
First, the two cases in my opinion are so dissimilar that the situation prohibits any drawing of legitimate comparisons between them.
Mr. Wildman: More like comic books.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): Order.
Mr. Gillies: My friends over there are just reminding all my friends up in the galleries why they voted Conservative in the last election and why that change may have been beneficial for them.
Mr. Wildman: You probably have as many friends in the gallery as you have over here.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member's interjections will cease.
Mr. Gillies: I hope I have more friends in the gallery than I have over there.
The Acting Speaker: The member will speak to the Speaker.
Mr. Gillies: Mr. Speaker, I will speak to you.
The Acting Speaker: The members opposite will refrain from interjecting.
Mr. Gillies: I will try to ignore the interjections opposite.
In speaking again to the comparison between the situation the Treasurer found himself in and the situation Mr. Lalonde was in some weeks prior to that, it is obvious to any observer that Mr. Lalonde was in large part the cause of his own misfortune, and directly and immediately contributed to the leak of the federal budget. I do not believe those conditions hold in the case involving the Treasurer of Ontario. The members of all parties, in fairness, should acknowledge there is an obvious and important difference between the two cases and govern their statements accordingly.
One has only to read the letters to the editors of our various newspapers to appreciate that the public is very supportive of the Treasurer in this case. In my opinion, it would be a great shame indeed if the province were to be deprived of a man of his undoubted abilities and talents, someone who has in the last 12 years contributed greatly to the public life and administration of this province.
8:10 p.m.
I and the members of our caucus, therefore, urge the Treasurer not to resign and, if such a resignation should be tendered, we urge the Premier (Mr. Davis) not to accept it. There is nothing in this unfortunate incident that has compromised the integrity of his office, nor would a decision on the Treasurer's part to retain his cabinet post undermine the principle of ministerial accountability or show any disrespect of this House. I can assure the Treasurer that he has the confidence of his colleagues in this caucus and of the people of Ontario.
In the light of the incident last Thursday evening, it might be advisable for this House to take a long look at the relationship that exists between parliamentary traditions, often rooted in the practices and conventions of a less complicated age, and the demands and procedures typical of a modern government. In particular, this incident should serve to demonstrate to all of us that we have to explore ways of opening up further the budgetary process itself. I have heard this sentiment expressed by members of all three parties, and I think that it is something we should all be working towards.
Speaking to the budget itself, it is an honest and realistic document, formulated in consultation, as has become the practice in Ontario, with a large number of groups and individuals representing a broad spectrum of Ontario society. It is an honest budget because it does not attempt to disguise the fact that, though our economy is improving, we still have some distance to go before the recovery is complete.
It is a realistic budget because it recognizes that an enduring recovery and positive economic growth can only be built on a vigorous private sector. As the Treasurer said, "Only private enterprise can undertake the investments and create jobs upon which prosperity depends." I do not say this in any dogmatic or philosophical sense. We all know, as members of the House, how much good can be done through the use of short-term job creation projects. We know what can be done by a responsible government, operating in a mixed economy, to help people through the worst days of a recessionary cycle.
At the same time, I have to believe that, in the long term, for the continuation of full-time, permanent jobs in the private economy, we have to offer incentives to business, small business and large business, and to the various organs of the economy that are going to bring about a permanent recovery in our economy.
This budget has demonstrated that our government is committed to helping the unemployed, and maintaining the level and quality of fundamental social support upon which our citizens have come to depend and which they have reason to expect in the future. The government has set out four objectives in this budget, which we believe will work towards, and help to restore, economic prosperity.
First, there is the maintenance of a co-operative federal economic system, a co-operative federal and provincial environment. Second, there is the creation of long-term private sector employment through increased productivity and through increased investment in the private sector. Third, there is the expansion of short-term job opportunities through job creation programs, skills development and economic growth. Finally, there is the maintenance of a fiscal framework that will allow the government to fund public programs without burying the province in debt.
To achieve these objectives and to help strengthen the recovery, this budget introduces programs that will strike a balance between strategic stimulation of the economy and continued fiscal responsibility. In order to ensure the continued delivery of high-quality services to the people of Ontario and to fund job creation initiatives, the government has introduced a number of new equitable tax measures, some of which have been implemented as temporary measures. I speak specifically of the social maintenance tax, the five per cent surcharge.
As mentioned earlier, although our economy is now in a recovery mode, there remain a number of obstacles to full economic recovery. The most pressing of these, in both its economic and human consequences, is the problem of unemployment. The recession has taken a terrible toll in jobs and job opportunities across this country. In the 18-month period ending January 1983, the recession has eliminated permanently, or we hope in many cases temporarily, over 1.4 million jobs in the Canadian economy. In Ontario in 1982, employment declined by 108,000. Some improvement was evident by April of this year when seasonally adjusted employment had risen by 24,000 compared to the November 1982 low.
In spite of improvements in the Ontario economic picture in the last number of months and predictions for continued improvements during the year, unemployment will continue to be the major economic problem facing our people and facing this government. For 1983, the budget predicts an average unemployment rate of 11.7 per cent, with an average annual employment level below that of 1982. I am sure every member of this House will agree that this is a very sorry situation and one that every public organ in this country has to work towards eliminating.
This apparent paradox of high unemployment in a recovery economy can be explained by a number of factors. We have to turn here to our friends the economists. First, there is always a lag between the upturn in economic growth and activity and the decline in the rate of unemployment. In a riding like mine, which is so heavily dependent on heavy manufacturing, that is very evident. As I talk to people in my community, they will point to the renewed activity in the housing market and increased sales of certain consumer products, but there will still inevitably be a lag before the heavy manufacturing sector pulls out of the tailspin in which it has been.
The lag will be particularly pronounced in the current recovery because the recession cut demand for products to the point where many industries were operating well below capacity. Consequently, in the initial stages of this recovery, employers will make greater use of their existing work force as they work back to full production, and they will only expand their work force when the existing people are fully employed.
The second factor is in itself paradoxical. Economic conditions improve and unemployed people, who have become so frustrated that they are no longer registered as unemployed, begin again to take up the job search and temporarily, one would expect, swell the jobless numbers. An analysis by the Toronto Dominion Bank points out that these people may well swamp the job market as they return to the employment scene, and the result will be continuing upward pressure on the unemployment rate.
It does not follow then, as some critics would have us believe, that high unemployment rates mean that recovery is an illusion. This, however, is of little immediate comfort to the unemployed man or woman. There is little comfort in being told that one is a lagging indicator. Being a lagging indicator does not buy food and it does not pay the mortgage. Nor is there comfort in being informed that one has been seasonally adjusted. We cannot seasonally adjust pain and frustration, and hardship indices cannot measure the damage done to a person's self-esteem.
It is this government's responsibility to do what it can, through both direct and indirect measures, to stimulate job creation in our economy. The programs contained in the 1983 budget prove that we have not only to accept that responsibility, but we must have the policies that will effectively discharge it. I am confident that the budget policies put before us by the Treasurer will help us to meet this challenge of unemployment without jeopardizing the fiscal integrity of this province and without burdening the citizens of Ontario with a huge public debt.
There is a connection between inflation and unemployment that must be considered when assessing the wisdom of any policy calling for massive financial stimulation. In its latest annual report, the Bank of Canada notes that many of our current economic problems, including unemployment, are caused by the distortions in our economy introduced by inflation and stagflation in the 1970s.
8:20 p.m.
A contributing cause of this inflation was massive public spending, which, no matter how well-intentioned, produced some nasty, unintended consequences. Now, just as we are beginning to pull out of the recession, some critics would have us adopt policies that would again begin that sorry cycle. This is what they call progress, while accusing this government of being on a treadmill.
The real keys to the creation of permanent new employment lie in policies that will control the provincial deficit, that will create an environment conducive to new investment and capital formation, and that will assist our industries and manufacturers in becoming more competitive by improving their productivity.
The budget puts in place policies to stimulate the economy strategically and to help the private sector create jobs. For example, the corporate tax exemption for small businesses has been extended for a further year. We calculate this will cost the province approximately $180 million in revenue. However, this is a sound investment in the economy that will yield a return in the form of higher tax revenues from the businesses that are able to sell their products and continue in operation.
It is also a sensible indirect investment in job creation, because historically the small business sector creates more than 50 per cent of all new jobs in this province and employs about 40 per cent of our jurisdiction's work force. In addition, small businesses will benefit, as will all businesses, from the budget's amendment of Ontario's loss carryover provision.
These changes have been introduced to complement those announced in the recent federal budget. Each of these programs and others will create in the private sector a new pool of investment capital by forgoing revenue. It is to be hoped this capital will be invested in expansion and the creation of new job opportunities. In the early stages of the recovery, it will be expected that businesses will use increased cash flow to eliminate their debts. However, this is a necessary prelude to any form of sustained growth.
We have also taken steps in this budget -- and I think this is very important -- to stimulate directly the employment market by employing people through various government programs in either short term or, we hope, longer term job creation projects. Many of these projects, some of them co-operatively run by the government of Canada and the government of Ontario, were undertaken in the budget of May 1982.
In that budget, the government introduced a four-point job creation program, which included accelerating the capital projects program, the farm improvement program, the co-operative employment projects funds and youth program enrichment. These various projects received $171 million in funding and were expected in the last year to create some 31,000 jobs. As of April, last month, the government had invested $176 million and these programs have created more than 40,000 jobs.
I hope these efforts will be further enhanced by the Treasurer's announcement of the 90-day sales tax holiday on certain types of furniture and household goods and by the announcement of a permanent tax exemption for large trucks and trailers. This will directly benefit my riding because of the presence of Pullman Trailmobile Canada Ltd., which employs several hundred people in the production of truck trailers. I have talked to several people in the industry since the budget was brought down on Tuesday and they see great things for the trucking industry because of this measure.
In November 1982, the government provided an additional $50 million in funds to create 7,500 new jobs through co-ordinated efforts through the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program.
Interjection.
Mr. Gillies: Yes, the BILD program. My friends opposite are so quick to criticize it and so quick to try and take credit when it has a positive benefit in their own ridings. I always point out to my friends opposite that they are opposition members in this chamber from Monday to Friday and they are almost government members when they go back to their ridings on Saturday and Sunday, absolutely falling over themselves to announce new initiatives in their ridings and to get on the platform or in the picture with whatever minister of this government happens to be there.
But I do not want to get sidetracked by my friends opposite and talk about the habits of opposition members.
Mr. Mackenzie: I thought it was going to spend $150 million a year for five years. How come it is only $111 million this year? How come the figures have changed?
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Mackenzie: It was $150 million a year. All of a sudden it is $111 million this year.
Mr. Gillies: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the member for Hamilton East for the background music. He is always so helpful.
As of April 19 the total value of job creation programs under the Canada-Ontario employment development program -- and this is a program that has been of distinct benefit to our community in the city of Brantford -- stood at $188.9 million. I am very pleased, as are the various municipalities in Brant county. I am sure we have benefited more, dollar for dollar, in Brant county through COED than any other jurisdiction in the province. We have already approved well over $3 million of COED programs, which shows, I think, a great commitment on the part of the government of Ontario --
Mr. Nixon: And the government of Canada.
Mr. Gillies: -- and the government of Canada, as my friend opposite reminds us, to our community.
I might say in response to those who say we need more public sector investment in our various industries that I have to be very aware that the governments of Canada and Ontario have a massive investment sitting in the Massey-Ferguson company in my riding and a very large-scale investment also in the White Farm Equipment company, not to speak of all the smaller companies that have been helped through federal programs like the industry and labour adjustment program and through provincial programs like the Ontario Development Corp. I am very sensitive to any suggestions that our governments have not taken a hands-on attitude towards the problems of our economy, because indeed they have.
I am going to speak very briefly about an area of special concern and responsibility of mine, and that is youth unemployment. We spent in the last year in this province over $90 million on youth employment programs to create over 80,000 jobs for young people. We have to be extremely concerned that the rate of unemployment among our young people under the age of 25 is close to double that of the population as a whole. We have made a massive public sector investment through this province and through various organs of the federal government to try to make a dent in that program.
Mr. Mackenzie: There are 220,000 unemployed young people. I thought that was your responsibility.
Mr. Gillies: Mr. Speaker, I am trying not to get sidetracked, but again I hear the very sensible and constructive suggestions being made by our friends opposite, many of whom could not even name the projects we have under way through the government now. They are not aware of the various youth employment programs that the Ontario government is running --
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Gillies: -- and that, I would suggest, is because they are more concerned with scoring political points than they are with realistically addressing the problem.
As soon as I open my mouth on youth employment the music starts; but as soon as I start speaking about the Ontario youth employment program, the Ontario career action program, the Experience '83 program, and so on, I see nothing but blank expressions, because they do not know what I am talking about. They have no idea what our government is doing to help young people; and, at the risk of being repetitious, it is because they do not care; as long as they can score their political marks their purpose in life is achieved.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Gillies: Through the budget announced by the Treasurer on Tuesday we will be enhancing these youth employment programs by some $30 million for a total of $120 million, an increase this year over last of over 25 per cent. I take severe exception to any suggestion that we are not doing the job, because the members of this government and the members of this caucus are responding riding by riding and they are doing the job.
8:30 p.m.
I will draw to a close with a few brief observations. This government has one of the most respected records of fiscal integrity of any jurisdiction in North America. The government of Ontario has one of the best standings in the money market. We have one of the best administrations of our own government's affairs. We have the respect of the people who are going to invest in this economy and bring our province out of the recession.
At the same time, in an ongoing fashion, we have responded with realistic and sweeping programs to help the unemployed in our society and we will continue to do so. Those efforts have been increased and enriched in this budget. We will continue to do so.
I ask the members of this House whether these things have been achieved because of the barracking of our friends across the way. I would suggest that has not done a darned thing for this province in 40-odd years. I am a very tolerant man, but like many over here I get sick of the pious prattling that we put up with day after day from the people who have never had the responsibility for so much as running a $1-million department, a $1-million business or anything else, when this government is stewarding over $20 billion of the public's money every year and is doing it with the overwhelming support of the people who elected us.
It is my hope that in the weeks and months to come the Treasurer will remain in this House and retain his responsibilities as Treasurer and bring in the measures we have outlined in this budget. He will do so under the leadership of quite simply the best politician in this country, the Premier.
Mr. G. I. Miller: Why did he not go federal?
Mr. Boudria: Yes, why didn't he?
Mr. Gillies: The member would have loved that. Despite the suggestions from my friends opposite, whose Prime Minister blanched at the thought the Premier would go federal, he will continue at the helm here.
Many members of this caucus will be speaking in the days to come to the measures we have outlined in this budget. The Treasurer will bring forward the budget bills and we will march forward in a responsible manner to fulfil our obligations to the people of Ontario. It is an obligation. It is not an easy job but it is one that we take seriously and that we relish and we will continue to steward for the people of Ontario in the years to come.
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to participate in the debate on the budget of earlier this week. Before speaking on the budget, I would like to remind all honourable members of the very sad economic tragedy that my own constituency is living at this very moment that we are here discussing this budget. I think it is important to talk about that in order to find out what things are like in the real world out there, not in that Utopian world that has just been described to us by the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies).
The constituency I live in is suffering from the highest unemployment we can ever recall, perhaps in much the same way as Brantford. Just this morning a young man came into my constituency office to ask me if I could assist him in finding a job. He has just finished his post-secondary education at Algonquin College in Ottawa where he took a course to become a machinist and tool and die maker. This is one of the professions, the line of employment, we have been telling people and informing our young people to direct their efforts towards because that is where the future is. This young person did not think the future is there.
He has been finished school for months now and cannot find any employment at all as a tool and die maker. How can we give any hope to our young people when somebody who is 23 or 24 years old and has been going to school for just about all his life cannot find any employment after taking the courses and the instruction we as a society have directed him to take?
That is the very sad reality we have in our area. When 40 per cent of our young people are unemployed, I do not think we can say things are going well and this government is doing a good job. The reality of the constituency I represent is very different.
The Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. Walker) is here in the House with us tonight and he too knows the difficult situation my constituency is in. Perhaps I should state at this time I am grateful for the good co-operation I have personally received from the minister in trying to assist the people of the constituency of Prescott-Russell. We have had some assistance but all is not well in that area, as the minister knows. We are still hopeful we can attract more industry and more employment for the people of the riding of Prescott-Russell.
We had all hoped this budget would address itself in a major way to meaningful job creation. I am not speaking merely of the make-work things some would perhaps expect to find in the budget to create only short-term, rather meaningless jobs to get some people off one's back for a short while. That is not what I am advocating. I am stating there are many things, many capital investments that could have been made by the provincial government in the constituency I represent to stimulate employment and benefit this province on a long-term basis.
We have many public facilities in need of improvement. As the member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell) will know -- he was here a minute ago and has now stepped out -- in regard to our highways in eastern Ontario we do not even have a decent highway linking the capital of this country to Highway 401. That is a major undertaking and the kind of development project I would have liked to see included in the budget document with which we were presented earlier this week. That is the kind of initiative that would build something for the future, while at the same time giving meaningful employment to the people of this province. Sadly, we did not see those things.
We hear this is supposed to be a recovery budget, but that is contradictory. It proposes a consumer-led recovery, but it aborts the process by taking seven times more out of the consumer's pocket than it puts back in.
The members opposite and many other people have criticized the federal government in the past for its inaction, or at least what they perceive as being the federal government's inaction. The federal budget of only a few weeks ago at least delayed increases in taxes to let the economy pick itself up again, but these people have socked the consumer right away before we even had a chance to get out of the present economic recession.
Mr. Gordon: You are so naive. They are waiting for the election. You must know that. Don't they consult you? How naive.
Mr. Boudria: The member for Sudbury would know, coming from an area of high unemployment, that the people from his area are not out of the woods yet. The people from his constituency are still in a very difficult economic situation. They do not want to be socked right now with increases in taxes. They could have waited for a while for that tax increase, one that is largely due to the mismanagement of the economy by this provincial government.
I would like to refresh the members' memories about an event that took place not long ago, in February 1981. At that time the government did a few things, two of which are particularly worth remembering. One was the release of the document I have in my hand, Building Ontario in the 1980s, by the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development. We all remember the board, commonly known as BILD. The other major event that occurred not too many days after, by mere coincidence, was the calling of the 1981 election.
8:40 p.m.
Mr. Wildman: It was not intended that way.
Mr. Boudria: As the member for Algoma states, it was not intended that way. That is just the way things happen.
Let us remember what the government said in 1981 at that election. They wanted a mandate, they wanted to "keep the promise," they said the Premier could do it and all those other things. They wanted a mandate to keep taxes down. I am sure the House will recall that. Is that not cute?
Ontario health insurance plan premiums, which are, as members know, a form of taxation, have increased by 42 per cent in 26 months. This is not bad for a government that was going to keep taxes down. Imagine if had they not promised to keep taxes down what things would have been like.
Personal income tax has increased 15 per cent in those 26 months. Again, this is from the government that promised to keep taxes down and wanted a mandate to keep such taxes down.
Since 1981, the three budgets of the Treasurer have increased the tax burden of an average family of four with an income of $25,000 by $1,470.61 per year. Here is how that works: OHIP fees for the average family of four have increased by $368.40; retail sales tax has increased for the average family by $181; the hospitality tax, another $159; and the usual sin taxes that people do not usually object to -- but I will -- liquor and tobacco, have increased by $195.41. Apparently the government thinks it is a sin for the senior citizen to smoke his pipe and for the family to have a bottle of wine at dinner. I do not happen to agree and I do not think those taxes are any more legitimate than any of the others.
The gasoline tax has increased by $184.13 and the provincial income tax -- again the income tax of the government that promised to keep taxes down if it was re-elected -- has increased by $381.60. It is small wonder that people are losing faith in what public officials are telling them when we hear this kind of thing.
A moment ago we heard from the member for Brantford that this was an honest budget. I found that to be a particularly amusing phrase, especially when I look at page 17 of the budget document, which describes the social services maintenance tax. We should remember the previous speaker stated that this was an honest budget. Those are the words I believe he used.
A social services maintenance tax -- imagine the pressure the unemployed, the welfare recipients, the recipients of family benefits, the sole-support mothers and the other people in this province who have to live on social assistance are enduring at this moment. Imagine what it is like to have to exist on that amount of assistance, $238 per month I believe it is for a single person on general welfare assistance. It is very difficult to exist and the pressures on these individuals are just unbearable.
Now, just to make them feel better, the Treasurer has a new tax called the social services maintenance tax. The person who is already paying high taxes and the welfare recipient who already feels so burdened and so pressured being on general welfare assistance are now being blamed by this government for the increase in taxes. If things are not already bad enough for people on welfare, they are going to be even worse because from now on these people are held responsible by this Treasurer for the increase in taxes.
I asked the Treasurer this afternoon if this increase in taxes will generate some $170 million. If a $170-million expenditure warrants a tax to be named after it -- and one would assume that is the case because the Treasurer has done it -- then why do we not call another tax the Minaki Lodge fiasco tax? After all, that cost us $40 million. That certainly warrants having a tax named after it.
How about the John White land assembly vision tax? That surely deserves a name. Some $508 million was spent on that deal by Ontario, a far greater amount than is needed this year for that increase in social assistance. Or why do we not call a new tax the Ontario Hydro overbuilding tax? Just imagine what that cost the taxpayers of Ontario. But no, the government does not name a tax that way; of course not. They would hold themselves responsible if they did. Instead, they prefer to attack the poor, the elderly and the people on social assistance.
As far as I am concerned, that is the most disgraceful thing in the whole budget. That is the thing that struck me while reading the document in the lock up session that day. Why would anyone blame the recipients of social assistance for the mismanagement of the economy this provincial government has orchestrated? That is shameful.
I would like to talk about agriculture for a moment. As the members know, the area I represent has a large farming community but, unlike other farming communities in Ontario, the farmers in my area are far from being well off. Perhaps they are not well off anywhere, but the economic situation for farmers in the area I represent is probably even worse than in most areas.
The members will recall that not long ago Highway 417 at the St. Isidore de Prescott exit in my riding was blocked by a group of disgruntled farmers, out of desperation as a method of protesting the difficult economic situation they were in, where banks were coming in daily and taking over farms.
Pork producers from our area were one day in their farms, their houses and had a business; and the next day they were on general welfare assistance with no place to stay. Overnight, just like that, everything was swept from under them. That is the harsh economic reality of the agricultural area in the riding I represent. For a long time we have stated in this House that what the provincial government has to do is put the agricultural component in a balanced situation with that of other jurisdictions.
This afternoon I asked the Treasurer why the government of this province assists farmers to an average of $3,000 each, when the government of the nearest province to the east, Quebec, assists farmers by $8,600-odd for every farmer. If one were a farmer in Prescott-Russell and one's farm was in St-Eugene near the Quebec border, and the farmer on the other side of the border, actually just the other side of the fence, in Quebec in St. Redempteur, Rigaud or some other area receives $6,000 more in benefits, how is one supposed to compete when each gets the same price for his commodity? One cannot compete when one person is $6,000 ahead of the other, no matter how one looks at it.
Mr. G. I. Miller: The member for Brantford did not mention that.
Mr. Boudria: Perhaps the member for Brantford forgot about that aspect of agriculture, or maybe he has never been to Prescott-Russell, but either way there must be farmers in his area who are just as concerned, even if they are a little farther from that artificial line that separates Ontario and Quebec.
Mr. Charlton: There is one of them sitting in the front row.
Mr. Boudria: I hope that member takes note of what I have to say. I hope the member in the front row just described previously will be able to speak on behalf of his party and explain to everyone the importance of improving the agricultural sector of this province.
8:50 p.m.
Moments ago I referred to the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development document. I am sure you have memorized the document by now, Mr. Speaker, but I would like to refresh your memory on a few sentences which are very important for the people of the area I represent.
I am glad to see the member for Renfrew South (Mr. Yakabuski) and the member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell) are here, because I am sure they will remember this part of the BILD document. I quote as follows:
"Through land-clearing efforts, selective drainage and farmstead improvements, one million acres of farm land in eastern and northern Ontario are capable of being upgraded into high-quality agricultural land. The large capital input required for these improvements will greatly increase the overall productive capacity of the agricultural land base and permit the expansion of high-value crops in areas where agricultural potential has not been fully realized.
"To achieve such production, Ontario will establish an acreage improvement fund which will provide financing at favourable rates."
I wonder whether members from eastern and northern Ontario recall those profound words of BILD. How did this government go about implementing this? First, it said it would drain one million acres of agricultural land. Then twice within a year after the election, the government increased the interest in the tile drainage scheme, from six per cent to eight per cent and from eight per cent to 10 per cent.
One does not have to be an economic genius to realize that if you make these plans unattractive, nobody is going to use them, and that if nobody uses them, one million acres of agricultural land will never be drained.
Further, the government was lending up to 75 per cent of the cost of improving drainage, to a maximum of $20,000. Then they changed that and lowered it to 60 per cent.
How are farmers in eastern and northern Ontario ever going to drain that one million acres which the government itself thinks is a reasonable amount of land to drain in those areas when the government is making plans unattractive for the people of eastern and northern Ontario?
One might think the people of eastern and northern Ontario could have drained their farms at the same time as the people of southwestern Ontario did. But that is not so. Let me tell the members why. It is important to realize that up until a few years ago, the tiles that were used to improve drainage were orange clay tiles. Those orange clay tiles did not work in our area; they broke under the weight of the clay and the farmers in our area therefore were not able to drain with those tiles.
The member for Renfrew South knows those things did not work in our area.
Mr. Pollock: I am not from Renfrew South. I am from Hastings-Peterborough.
Mr. Boudria: I am sorry; Hastings-Peterborough. He should know that; he is from eastern Ontario as well.
We know that when they started with the perforated tiles, these tiles worked fine in our area. But by the time we got those tiles, by the time technology was able to accommodate us, the government programs no longer were attractive.
Why are the government programs not attractive for eastern and northern Ontario when they were attractive elsewhere? Can the government answer that question?
Would it not be logical to have programs now that would be as meaningful as the programs were when other parts of the province were drained? I ask the member for Hastings-Peterborough, does eastern Ontario deserve no less?
Those things have to be addressed. Improvements in the agricultural area are very important, especially in tile drainage. That is the only way the yield will be improved in eastern and northern Ontario so that we can begin to compete not only with the other parts of Ontario that have already been tile-drained but also with those other provinces that are getting far greater benefits than we are in this province. That is going to have to be addressed very soon by this government, but we are very sorry to hear the budget does not address this issue at all.
The government talks about the $135-million young farmer program. Of course, those are empty words, because $9 million is going to be spent this year and that is all. Just the interest on the Suncor purchase is going to be $93 million this year. The interest on 25 per cent of an oil company that produced only one job in this province is $93 million and the help to young farmers is $9 million. All the young farmers together are worth only 10 per cent of the effort that the Premier (Mr. Davis) put into purchasing Suncor, or one quarter of Suncor, in order to have "a window on the oil industry," whatever that means.
Mr. G. I. Miller: Agriculture is not playing a big role.
Mr. Boudria: We can see, as the member for Haldimand-Norfolk states, that agriculture is not playing a very big role in this province. The government extracts more from the agricultural area than it puts back in.
Let me give an example of this. The government's commitment to the whole agriculture sector in the province is $295 million. Do members know how much tax is generated just from tobacco, which is, of course, an agricultural product? The member for Haldimand-Norfolk would know. It was $533 million that was collected in tobacco taxes. Not only is the government not giving anything to the agriculture sector, it is taking it away from the agriculture sector.
Mr. Ruston: They are bleeding it.
Mr. Boudria: As the member for Essex North says, the government is bleeding the agriculture area. That is its effort in the agriculture sector.
Mr. Ruston: Plus all the tax they get on the corn and the booze.
Mr. Rotenberg: We are taking it from smokers, not the farmers, and you know that.
Mr. Boudria: The member for the large agricultural area of Wilson Heights, with all the farms that are there and all the acreage that is in agricultural production in that constituency, would know that whether we are taxing one part or the other it is still a farm product, as the member for Essex North has stated.
I would like to comment very briefly on the youth employment programs of this government.
Mr. Wildman: Where is the member for Brantford?
Mr. Boudria: I would have liked the member for Brantford to be here in his capacity as the parliamentary assistant to the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch).
Mr. Ruston: Whatever that means.
Mr. Boudria: Yes, whatever all that means. I guess it means he is responsible for the youth employment or, as some of us would like to say, the youth unemployment in this province.
Mr. Charlton: You mean he is responsible for this mess we have got?
Mr. Boudria: He takes credit for things being fine, so I guess he has to share in the blame for things not working. One should follow with the other. Therefore, if he takes the credit for things being good, I believe he should take part of the blame for things being bad.
Youth unemployment across the province, as we have been saying, is approximately 22 per cent and will rise over the summer months. One out of every four young people in this province will be out of a job this summer, and that is a very sad state of affairs. That is not the kind of treatment we had when we were seeking employment as young people -- not that I consider myself that old, but I am still past the age after which one is usually described as qualifying for inclusion in the youth statistics.
The member for Brantford was explaining all the virtues of some of the programs his government has put in place, programs that he says are really helping out the youth of our province. I think the youth programs in this province are an unmitigated disaster.
We have talked about the Ontario youth employment program before, which had, by the way, $6.5 million left over in its kitty last year. Can you imagine having money left in a youth employment program, Mr. Speaker? That is how well they have administered it; they had money left. I am sure the young people of this province who stayed unemployed last year are not impressed by having money left in the program. It is another example of the maladministration of this province by this government.
9 p.m.
The Ontario youth employment program was not the only failure. The youth programs last year were supposed to create 93,000 jobs, we were told. But all the information we have to date tells us that only 75,000 positions were achieved. It is ludicrous that in a year when youth employment soared to unprecedented heights, the government fell 18,000 jobs or 20 per cent short of its already inadequate goal.
I was on an open-line radio show the other day with the member for Brantford, and we were discussing youth unemployment. The thing I fail to understand is why it is, if the government programs are so great, we have one quarter of all our young people out of work. If the government is doing such a fine job, why is it that instead of spending some $70 per unemployed youth, as it was three years ago, it is today spending $46? That is not improvement, not matter how one cuts it.
If the government is spending $46 per unemployed youth and it was spending $70 only a few years ago, I think this speaks very sadly to the record of this government in improving the lives of our young people. The young people of this province have been let down by the government.
Last year, along with the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini) and the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney), I was on a youth employment task force we sent around this province. We spoke to many unemployed youth in this province, and they were not impressed with the record of this government.
Mr. Rotenberg: I am sure they were impressed with you.
Mr. Boudria: I want the member for Wilson Heights to know that when we interviewed the youth of this province, we asked them, "If you had known what it was like, would you have quit school?" In all cases the young people answered, 'No, I would not have."
Do members know what that tells us? That tells all of us -- and the member for Wilson Heights as well -- that we are misleading our young people as a society.
Mr. Rotenberg: Maybe you are.
Mr. Boudria: I think all of us are collectively responsible for this. When we do not provide adequate guidance for our young people, when the average young person goes out of high school having received something like four minutes of guidance, does the member not agree we are collectively misleading those young people? When most of the information they get is from watching television versus getting adequate guidance in school, does the member feel we are not misleading our young people? I do not believe that. I think that we are, as a society, if we have nothing better to tell them.
When one goes into a high school and speaks with students, as I have done on many cases -- and I am sure the member for Wilson Heights has -- and asks them, "What do you want to do?" and one still hears such occupations as hairdresser, auto mechanic, airline pilot and cruise stewardesses, we as a society are not telling them everything that has to be said.
When one asks a young person who says he wants to be an airline pilot, "Do you know whether there are any openings for that?" the young person says: "Well, gee, no. I never did think of it that way." Why not?
Is it because instead of having one guidance teacher for every 300 young people, as the professionals state we should have, or one guidance teacher to every 350, as the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson) says we should have, we are not meeting any of those objectives because we have one guidance teacher for every 410 young people in this province, most guidance teachers being busy filling out forms and doing crisis counselling and all those other kinds of things they have to do and not having any time for career counselling of our young people?
I tell the member for Wilson Heights that yes, as a society, we are misleading our young people if we cannot tell them anything better than what we have done now.
I challenge members to do the same as we have done in our task force to go to schools, go to drop-in centres, go to where the young people are and talk to them individually; to take the few days it takes to do it and go all across the province.
We went to Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and various other areas, and it is the same everywhere. The numbers change but the feeling does not that we, as a society, have not told them what we should have. We have not informed them. We have let them down. This budget and the attitudes of this government towards young people are not making it any better, and that is a very sad reality.
I have just been looking at a newspaper clipping from today's Toronto Star. We have Archbishop Remi De Roo telling us that the government of this province -- all governments for that matter -- has a wrong set of values: "profits and growth instead of compassionate concern for the weak and the poor." I would add to that the young, because if we are letting down any group in our society, the young have to be included with the weak and the poor.
If there is one good thing that has come out of this budget it is the change of heart that this government finally has had towards the child-rearing drop-out provision. If there is any one member of this Legislature who deserves credit for having that changed because of all his personal effort in that area, it is the member for London Centre (Mr. Peterson), the Leader of the Opposition.
The Leader of the Opposition has been pressing the government on this issue for two or three years now, I guess. Ever since I have been in this Legislature, the member for London Centre has been speaking of the child-rearing drop-out provision and the unreasonable attitude of the Treasurer and the government towards changing that veto and allowing --
Mr. Cassidy: The NDP was making that argument five years before the member for London Centre became leader.
Mr. Boudria: I am not here to argue who said it first. All I know is that I have been a member of this House for a little more than two years and I have not heard an NDP member raise that issue. Maybe they have, but not while I was here. The member for London Centre has raised it, and he still has a resolution on the order paper right now concerning the topic. He has put a lot of effort into that area and he has succeeded in convincing the government finally to do something about it.
This province was the last holdout on dropping the veto. In March 1981, British Columbia finally got around to changing its mind and allowing the child-rearing drop-out provision. But this province, because it has more than a third of the population of the nine provinces participating in the Canada pension plan, had an effective veto since two-thirds consent is necessary to make any change in the Canada pension plan.
This government, by being the last holdout, prevented the enhancement of life of women not only in Ontario but all across this country. Maybe the Premier should have thought about that issue as well before thinking of running for the federal leadership. More than half the population of this country are women, and this particular feature of the Canada pension plan was especially unfair to them. Now it will finally be corrected, and it is not a moment too soon.
If the government attempts to take any credit for having done this, credit is not in order. They were forced to do it. They saw the pressure that was on them. They saw the pressure that other political parties, lobby groups and all other provinces exerted to get them to move.
I have my own theory as to why the government did not move any earlier. This government was holding out on any changes to the Canada pension plan, because it wanted an increase in CPP rates. Why did it want an increase in CPP rates? Because the plan was running dry. Why was it running dry? This government has squandered the money on other things; that is why the plan was running it dry.
The government was holding the women of this country hostage to try to get bigger premiums, but it failed and now it has finally dropped that. It is about time the government dropped that ridiculous idea. I am glad the women of this province, and of the whole country for that matter, for the reasons I have previously outlined, finally will be getting an improvement in the Canada pension plan.
Mr. Rotenberg: You're getting your speech material from Grimm's Fairy Tales.
9:10 p.m.
Mr. Boudria: I hope the member for Wilson Heights makes his contribution to the budget debate immediately. I am sure he will have much constructive criticism to offer, and I hope he also indicates to the Treasurer that several things in the budget need to be improved.
It is quite evident to all of us looking at this document that it is a hastily prepared document. That is not only because of the type of paper it is printed on; its contents seem to indicate to us that perhaps it was something that was rushed through in three or four days just to have something to say. But it is not good enough for the people of Prescott-Russell, and it is not good enough for the people of Ontario.
This document, along with the accompanying throne speech, indicates to us that this government cannot keep the promise and that Davis cannot do it, and the sooner we get rid of the government, the better.
Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, as I proceed to participate in this budget debate, I would like to extend my congratulations to you on your success in presiding over this Legislature and to your colleagues who also share the duties in the chair.
As you know, this is the first opportunity I have had to participate at any length in a debate, because I had an unfortunate accident during the winter and have not been in this House as much as other members and as much as I would have liked to have been.
I want to raise with you, Mr. Speaker, and with members of the Legislature a number of concerns that relate to the budget and how it relates to my area. As I said, I have not had the opportunity to participate in many debates recently, and I hope to be able to raise a number of issues that are of concern in my riding and northern Ontario, as well as the whole province, that I have been concerned about and have not been able to express in this forum.
I do regret, though, as I glance across the way, that there is not anyone from the government present. I wonder why the government is not represented in this debate on the budget. There is not one member of the executive council in this chamber. I think that is unfortunate. I suppose it indicates how much of an interest they have in the budget and in the economic affairs of this province and specifically in what the members of the Legislature, whether they be from the New Democratic Party, the Liberal Party or the Conservative back benches, have to say about the economy and the economic affairs of this province. It is most unfortunate, and I hope the chief government whip is able to find where the government has disappeared to.
I note the member for Oxford (Mr. Treleaven) is waving at me. I do hope his aspirations are some day answered, but I have to remind him that at this time he is not a member of the government. He is a member of the party that supports the government but he is not a member of the government.
I notice one of the executive council members now has returned, and I welcome him to the debate.
As we proceed with this budget debate, we are experiencing a crisis in the affairs of this province. As has been noted many times during this debate, we are facing the highest unemployment rates Ontario has seen since the great Depression. In the past year, Ontario has lost 221,000 jobs. I come from an area of the province that is experiencing one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma are experiencing unemployment rates in the neighbourhood of 30 to 35 per cent.
It took a little longer for the unemployment figures to reach these terrible heights in our area than it did in some other areas of the province, mainly because the steel industry in this country and this province has traditionally been somewhat shielded from the cyclical ups and downs of manufacturing in this country. I suppose this is partly because it is mainly Canadian-owned. It has tended to try to keep up with the technical advances in the industry and, as a result, has been able to deal with the changes in the market system better than many of the other manufacturing and primary resource industries in Ontario.
But obviously, if we have a downturn in the auto industry, in appliance manufacturing and in the other manufacturing sectors of southern Ontario, it eventually had to get back to the steel industry. So it did. When it hit, it hit very hard. In Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma now we are experiencing unemployment that has not been seen in that area since 1954. We have a whole generation of workers who have never experienced this kind of situation.
We have people who at this moment are exhausting unemployment insurance after having been laid off for a year or over a year -- people who in many cases have never been on unemployment insurance in their lives and now are having to switch to welfare and are getting the shock of their lives to find that their welfare benefits are about half of what they got on unemployment insurance. It is a very serious situation.
When we hear Liberal and Conservative politicians in this country going around talking about recovery, it has a very hollow ring for those people who are exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits and who have been told by the president of the Algoma Steel Corp. that even when that major company in this province, the main employer in my area, gets back to full production, when it starts utilizing its full capacity, there will be at least 1,500 fewer jobs at Algoma Steel than there were when the layoffs started.
Most of those people who are not going to go back to work are people with up to three or five years' seniority, depending on which department they come from at the Algoma Steel plant. We are talking mainly about young people, a large proportion of whom have trades -- skills they now cannot market in the job market in their area because there is not any other employer.
The member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie) and others from his area have described the problems facing that community, which is dependent on steel, and he has talked about a lot of the smaller plant shutdowns in his area. I would like to point out that in Sault Ste. Marie we do not have any small plants. We never did. Although we have one of the three major steel plants in this country, we have almost no secondary manufacturing and no steel fabrication in our community. There are not any other jobs.
The other jobs in our area are primary resource jobs, mainly in the forestry industry. Then as we get up into Wawa, we are talking about mining and those other areas. Of course, the mining in Wawa is dependent on Algoma Steel. We do have some hope that there will be some expansion of the gold mining in the northern part of my riding. I suppose the tax concessions for the gold Maple Leaf will somehow help the Hemlo operation, but they will not mean a lot in terms of employment in the foreseeable future.
9:20 p.m.
I want to talk generally about the unemployment situation we face in our area and across this province and what I believe the Treasurer should have been doing to respond in the short term. Other members will discuss the long term, and I will refer to it briefly, but my main concern is the crisis we are experiencing in our area right now.
What hope can we give to these people who are facing a tremendous loss of income? It is not just a loss of income, but a loss of the sense of self-worth and a loss of dignity which we cannot put back very easily. I am not trying to overdramatize this situation.
I come to Toronto every week. I travel through southern Ontario and I know that people have experienced major shutdowns and layoffs, but in a large metropolitan community like this the situation, serious as it is, tends to be masked. There is still construction going on in downtown Toronto; there are still jobs, even though a large number of construction workers are out of work. There are people working and there still seems to be development.
However, in our part of the province there is absolutely nothing. If a person is on unemployment insurance and he is supposed to be doing a job search, the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission just tells him to forget it; officers know it is no use going to look for work. He becomes a nuisance to the small businesses that are still in operation, because they do not have any jobs to provide. He is going there over and over again and being a nuisance; so the commission is not even asking for job searches any more.
As I understand it, the welfare department used to ask for 20 job searches a week in good times; now they ask for five. They are still asking for them but they are only asking for five, that is how serious it is. There is just nothing else.
When we talk about the budget projection of an 11.7 per cent unemployment rate for 1983 and realize that is a growth of about two per cent in unemployment from 1982, that is serious enough. It is an indication of the failure of the government to respond to the need to develop employment in this province, but it looks good to someone from Algoma. If we could return to the time when we had 11.7 per cent unemployment, things would look pretty good in our area. When one is experiencing 30 to 35 per cent joblessness, that does not look too bad.
However, I do not suppose that is something the Treasurer should feel good about when and if he ever returns to this debate. Obviously that 11.7 per cent jobless rate he is projecting for this year includes areas like my own which has such a high unemployment rate and that is contributing to it.
When we look at the projection of an average unemployment rate of 535,000 people, we all realize that is the official unemployment rate. The member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) referred to the fact that there are many other people out of work who have given up and are not looking for jobs. They are not in the job market. They are not eligible for unemployment insurance any more and they are just not counted in the figures.
He tried to argue that if these people come back into the job market and start looking for work because they think there might be new opportunities, in some way they are then increasing unemployment; but they are not increasing unemployment, they are already out of work.
Mr. Boudria: They are increasing statistics.
Mr. Wildman: They are increasing statistics or official unemployment.
We know that as a result of this budget in this province we will have real unemployment in Ontario of about 786,000 people in 1983. We know from the Treasurer's own figures that there will be 93,000 more jobless people in this province this year than there were last year because of the increase in the work force. The Treasurer's own figures project a loss of 37,000 more jobs this year than we had last year. If this is a recovery budget, I would hate to see a recession.
The Treasurer argues that this is a job creation budget and he has introduced a number of measures to try to produce more employment. Some of those things can be welcomed. Certainly the accelerated capital works program is better than nothing. The Treasurer is projecting $246 million in accelerated capital works which will produce 12,000 jobs this year. It is interesting, though, when we look at those figures we understand the job projection for this year of 12,000 is less than the jobs projected from capital works last year. As I said, it is better than nothing.
One of those capital works projects, according to the member for Sault Ste. Marie, the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay), is the long- awaited renovation and expansion of the Sault Ste. Marie Jail. I understand something like $1.6 million will be expended to try to deal with the problems they have been experiencing at the jail for some time. As the members may know, this goes back to 1978 and the by-election in Sault Ste. Marie when the provincial government promised it was going to build a new jail. At least it said it was going to do something about the old jail and everyone understood it was going to build a new one.
Since that time we have had a long series of reports from the public institutions inspection panels, which have said that the jail is overcrowded and is a fire trap and that the section for male prisoners at the jail, which was built to accommodate 38 prisoners, on occasion has between 60 and 70 prisoners located there.
It is interesting that the public institutions inspection panels have indicated there should be a new jail constructed and have criticized the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Leluk) for failing to respond to their repeated requests that he provide the funding for a new jail for our area.
One panel described the Sault jail in November 1982 as "outdated, antiquated and in need of space in all areas." It said, "The jail is periodically overcrowded, a fire trap, poorly lighted and poorly ventilated". It said it needed immediately "a new fire and emergency alarm system to be installed."
I can only say we have been very fortunate there has not been a major emergency, especially during one of the periods when the jail is overcrowded, which would have required an early warning and evacuation of inmates and staff, especially from the third-floor area which houses the prisoners who need less security, since there is no adequate fire escape from that area of the jail.
Apparently we are going to get some kind of expansion and renovation of the jail. I welcome that, but I regret we are not going to get what is obviously required and has been requested by the public institutions inspection panels: a new jail. I wonder why we are not going to get a new jail. I wonder what keeping the promise means in regard to the comments about a new facility made at the time of the by-election.
I recognize the project will produce some short-term jobs and it will alleviate the situation experienced at that facility for so long, but I can only say it is about time. I regret we are apparently not getting what is really required.
9:30 p.m.
In the budget, the Treasurer made a great to-do about the short-term jobs he was producing to deal with the short-term economic situation we face and to help the recovery get started; the recovery he seems to see but that most of us find rather elusive.
He said these accelerated capital works would produce 12,000 jobs, but when one starts looking at equivalents in terms of full-time employment and determines what that means in relation to full-year employment, we find these works will provide only about 2,400 new jobs.
The Treasurer also pointed to the Canada-Ontario employment development program, which is administered by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay), and argued there were going to be 19,000 short-term jobs created through COED projects across the province. That is infinitesimal when one realizes that 17,000 unemployed workers across Ontario exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits every month, and that COED is mainly set up to assist the "exhaustees," as they are called, to get short-term employment so they can then requalify for unemployment insurance benefits.
So we have 19,000 short-term jobs when we have almost that same number exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits each month in Ontario. How anyone can crow about that kind of program to help exhaustees is beyond me. I find it rather interesting when I look at what this means in terms of full-time employment or full-year jobs. Instead of 19,000, it really means 8,403 jobs across Ontario; I am talking about the equivalent in full-time employment. I am even more disappointed when I realize these jobs are not new jobs, they are jobs that were already announced in November 1982 when the COED program was announced here and in Ottawa.
It appears that in this particular program the Treasurer is trying to parade an old program, one that is already committed, as a new one that is going to produce new employment. He is trying to make jobs that have already been committed look as if they are part of the job creation program resulting from this budget, and it is just not true. When you consider that this COED program will provide the equivalent of 8,400 full-time jobs across Ontario and realize there are over 14,000 people out of work in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma out of a total work force of somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000, you can see how inadequate that kind of program is.
As I said before, the statements made by Liberal and Conservative politicians to the effect that the economy has begun to recover, that we are at the beginning of a recovery, are really of little comfort to the people who are exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits after having been laid off for a full year. They are now facing having to live on welfare benefits and losing their homes, because that is what is happening to most of them. When one is having to plead with his bank manager to adjust his payment plan for his mortgage so he does not lose his home, it is pretty cold comfort to hear Marc Lalonde or the Treasurer say we are in a recovery and things are turning around and improving.
If one considers the equivalent new jobs -- full-time, full-year jobs -- that are resulting from the short-term job creation programs announced in this budget, and subtracts from them the COED program which was already announced, one finds the government programs announced in the budget will create 20,783 new jobs. When one considers that we have a real unemployment rate of about 780,000, how this government can talk about a job creation budget is beyond me. At best, these short-term job creation programs will help about 3.7 per cent of the currently unemployed in this province.
We in the New Democratic Party believe it is the right of every Ontarian who wishes to work to have a job. We believe he should have the opportunity to improve himself or herself and that he should have the opportunity to gain the sense of self-worth and dignity that comes with working and improving one's lot in life.
Employment is the only valid definition of a healthy economy. Job creation, in my view, is the only valid definition of an economic recovery. It is not enough to measure so-called economic recovery, as the Treasurer appears to do, and his government along with him, on the basis of profit ledgers. The Treasurer seems to have bought the Reaganite argument that if the profit picture for the major corporations improves, it will somehow trickle down through the economy, lead to expansion and provide jobs.
Considering the debt load that many corporations have been carrying through this recent period of high interest rates, as they get more fiscal room to manoeuvre, most of those corporations are going to take the opportunity to cut their debt loads; they are not going to expand their operations and hire more workers or call back laid-off employees until there is a market for their products. It does not make sense to say that just because the major corporations are facing a better picture financially we are in an economic recovery, when unemployment is increasing.
The Treasurer alluded to this somewhat when he said he hoped for a consumer-led recovery; that what was needed in this province was for the consumers to free up some money and start spending so there would be a market and business would be able to expand. It may sound funny that I would be agreeing with this, but I do agree with it: in the short term we do need to increase consumer spending.
In Canada and in Ontario we have had too much saving. People in this economic situation are very insecure. Those who still have jobs do not know whether they are going to continue to have those jobs, so they are not going to make major purchases, they are not going to commit themselves to long-term expenditures and they certainly are not going to borrow heavily at a bank to buy automobiles, furniture, appliances -- the kinds of purchases that must be made in order to stimulate economic growth in the short term. So we need to encourage consumer spending to create jobs; we have to create the market.
In our view, though, the government has to act to put people back to work so they have some money coming in, they have money in their pockets, they have some encouragement and some hope for the future and they have some security, so they will make the purchases that are required to expand the market for manufactured goods in Ontario and in Canada.
9:40 p.m.
The Treasurer had one major proposal for trying to encourage consumer spending, and that was the 90-day sales tax holiday, which would save the consumers of this province approximately $55 million. That kind of approach raises a lot of questions. The Treasurer has done it before. He has done it with automobiles in the short term. These are questions the Treasurer himself has addressed on other occasions. He pointed out at one point that a short-term sales tax holiday really moves purchases around, it does not increase them.
If I am intending to purchase a living-room suite some time in the next few months, obviously I am going to purchase it during the 90-day period, if I can, when the sales tax is no longer in effect. But if I already have a living-room suite and do not need one, I am not going to rush out and purchase one just because the sales tax is off for 90 days.
In my view what that sales tax holiday is going to do is assist retail store owners to move inventory more quickly, and that is a useful effect. It will help the retail merchant to move inventory. But will that retail store owner then replace the inventory? Will he order more living-room suites from the furniture manufacturer? I submit that most of the retail merchants will not order as many living-room suites as they have in the past because of the difficult time they have experienced in carrying inventory, especially with the recent high interest rates.
While this short-term stimulus will help the retail merchants, I very much doubt it will produce the kind of stimulus to the manufacturing sector that will mean laid-off workers will be called back, plants will reopen, unused capacity will be utilized and that will get the economy going again; I very much doubt it.
When one looks at the figures projected in the budget, one realizes that what we are talking about is a growth in retail sales of only one per cent in real terms. A growth of only one per cent in real terms is not going to put all those laid-off workers back to work. It will help the retail stores, and that is good, but it is not going to do what the Treasurer would like us to believe it will do.
Mr. J. M. Johnson: Why not give them 60 to 90 days to find out?
Mr. Wildman: I do not debate that; I agreed with that. I said there was going to be an increase in the number of sales of furniture and appliances. That is going to happen, that is the idea.
The member for Wellington-Dufferin-Peel (Mr. J. M. Johnson) is saying the Treasurer intends this program only to help the retail sector. He does not really expect it is going to help the manufacturing sector. If that is what he is saying, then we are in agreement.
Mr. J. M. Johnson: That is not what he said.
Mr. Wildman: I submit the retail owners in Sault Ste. Marie are not going to reorder when there is 30 per cent unemployment in Sault Ste. Marie. They are going to reorder when the steel plant gets the majority of people back to work in Sault Ste. Marie. Then they are going to reorder. This sales tax holiday is not going to produce a rehiring of the laid-off employees at Algoma Steel.
Mr. J. M. Johnson: Talk about all of Ontario, not one area.
Mr. Wildman: All right: Hamilton, Windsor, whatever area one likes.
The problem with this budget is that it does not do what we believe is necessary in order to have a consumer-led recovery, and that is putting people back to work and earning incomes they can spend.
We have talked this evening about youth unemployment. This budget suggests a great deal of short-term jobs for the youth. The member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) talked at length about what was going to improve the situation with youth unemployment in this province. He accused the opposition of not knowing or caring about what the government is doing in that area. Yet he could not react to the fact there are going to be 220,000 young people out of work in Ontario.
If the government is doing such a good job in that area, why are there that many people out of work? Why do we have 22 per cent unemployment between the ages of 15 and 25 in this province?
We on this side of the House are accused sometimes of being gloom and doom boys. That is the term the government likes to use. In my view, we often have on the other side of the House a bunch of Pollyannas who believe: "Say everything is wonderful. Do not look at the hard realities. Just wish things were better, and they will be."
I do not think that either the gloom and doom or the Pollyanna approach is going to help anyone in this province. I think we have to talk about what the real situation is, good or bad, and unfortunately in this particular economic period it is more bad than it is good.
Our party proposed a lot of job creation programs we believe this government could have instituted. We have suggested that in the short term there should be summer employment programs for the youth at a cost of about $81 million, which could have produced 89,000 seasonal jobs.
We have not just decided to have short-term make-work projects that do not mean anything, but job creation projects that would respond to the needs of various sectors of the economy in this province while at the same time giving jobs to young people, getting them involved in the work force, and letting them gain skills they will be able to use later when they finish school and enter the permanent work force.
One of the areas we suggested was forest conservation. We have suggested the government could form teams of young people who would be assigned to each Ministry of Natural Resources district, who then could get involved in things such as forest rehabilitation and reforestation. We have suggested allocating $20 million to that program. Over a period of time, it would produce about 14,000 jobs.
This is responding to a serious need, which is of tremendous importance not only to the northern part of the province, to my area, but to the whole economy of Ontario. I think many people in southern Ontario do not realize that forestry and the industries related to forestry are the largest employer in Ontario, and in Canada for that matter.
We have experienced a situation over a period of time where the industry has mined what should be a renewable resource. I know my colleague the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Stokes) and other northern members have raised this issue over and over again in this House. We have seen the situation where we have cut far more than we have regenerated. We are in the unbelievable and undesirable situation in this province of facing a shortage of timber within the next 10 years, a renewable resource we should never run out of and that we should farm, yet we are running short of it.
9:50 p.m.
We believe one of the ways of providing jobs is to respond to the real need to increase forest rehabilitation in Ontario. Frankly, we would like to have never reached this situation. We feel the government has failed, as has the industry failed, to respond to this major need of the province. But, since we are now facing this situation, I do not think it does anybody any good just to cry over the situation we have had in the past. We should be doing something about it and what better opportunity than a period of high unemployment when we could be employing people in a useful task like forest rehabilitation.
There have been a number of other short-term work creation projects that we have proposed that would respond to the needs of not only my area but the whole province. One of the problems that we have in northern Ontario, of course, is distance from one community to another. We find that even in areas -- Algoma district, for instance -- where a particular service is provided, and in northern Ontario we often have fewer services than are taken for granted in the southern part of the province, in many cases the distances between communities make it impossible for people in need of that service to benefit from it, unless they move and leave their family and friends or commute back and forth at great distances.
For my area, ever since I came to this House, I have been raising issues about the need to provide services to the elderly and to the disabled in their own community so they do not have to leave their communities to travel hundreds of miles to the nearest large centre where those services might be provided. In our proposal for work creation, we suggested a homemaker service that could employ 1,000 people at a cost of about $8 million.
This really relates specifically to a need in my riding since we have a situation where the homemaker services are not provided beyond three communities in Algoma district. They are provided in Sault Ste. Marie but the homemaker service goes only 20 miles outside the city limits and if you live even one mile farther you cannot receive it.
In 1980, as a matter of fact, I presented a petition on behalf of the residents of the community of Goulais River, which is just beyond 20 miles outside Sault Ste. Marie, requesting that there be changes made in the home health care program so that an aged or a physically handicapped adult who did not necessarily require medical services, such as nursing or physiotherapy, but was unable to care for himself or herself at home, could get homemaker services in their own communities.
Because of the lack of these services, in many cases these kinds of people have had to have institutional care which they did not really require, and because they needed help they have had to remain in institutions far longer than they should have.
In response, after two years the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman) eventually did change the program. He brought in six pilot projects across the province for an expanded homemaker service. Ironically, after presenting this petition in this Legislature, one of the areas accepted for the six projects was not Goulais River, not even Algoma district.
I do not really think that had anything to do with partisan politics, I am sure it did not; I welcomed the institution of the pilot projects, hoping this would lead to an expansion of the homemaker service into other areas such as my own. Unfortunately that did not happen. I think one of the more positive proposals made by this caucus in this job creation program was the proposal for a homemaker service that could provide care for people in their own homes, enabling them to stay with family and friends, feel more independent and yet get the kind of care they need, and avoid having them stay in institutional care at a far greater cost and longer than was required.
These are short-term suggestions, but obviously there is a tremendous need for youth training, especially if one considers that in my area 1,500 young people are not going to get back to work when Algoma Steel is in full production. If there are going to be jobs in the 1980s, we have to train the youth for them.
I recognize that in this budget the Treasurer did talk about the institution of training programs for young people, and I welcome that. I look forward to hearing about the changes and proposals that are going to be made by the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Miss Stephenson) in that regard. I understand Sault Ste. Marie is one of three areas that is specifically singled out to benefit from this, so I suppose this means that Sault College is going to get some courses that are required to train the young people of our area.
One of the problems we have now is that if an individual is on unemployment insurance and would qualify according to the manpower regulations of the federal government for a training course that would upgrade his skills so he might be able to take a job when and if jobs become available, he finds that those courses are not provided at Sault College; they just do not have the courses. We have had situations where people have had to go to Kapuskasing, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Timmins or southern Ontario, in some cases, to take courses:
Mr. Speaker, tell me how an individual who is on unemployment insurance, who has had a major drop in his income, is going to finance travelling hundreds of miles away and living in residence in order to take a course. It just does not work, so most of those people are not taking these courses and are not benefiting from the few that are available.
I hope this program will provide some of the needed courses that will identify the skills that are going to be required in the future, so that people in our area will be able to take these courses while they are on unemployment insurance and thus will be trained when jobs become available.
In that regard I also want to point out one other thing. If an individual who is laid off and on unemployment insurance, or who has exhausted his unemployment insurance and is on welfare, decides he or she wants to take an upgrading course, wants to return to school to take a course that would provide him with some skills that make it possible for him to get back into the employment market, he finds there are impediments in the regulations if that particular course is not recommended to him by Canada Manpower.
I will give an example. If you have a married couple, both of whom are out of work and where the breadwinner, so called, would qualify for welfare benefits, so called, if one of them returns to school to take a course, both of them cannot get welfare unless that course is recommended by Canada Manpower or the welfare department. Under section 6(2) of regulation 441 under the General Welfare Assistance Act, "An unemployable person who is enrolled as a full-time student at an educational institution is not eligible for general assistance."
What we are saying as a society is that we would rather have people sit at home, do nothing and collect welfare benefits than get out and train themselves to qualify for jobs. I just do not understand this, especially when you consider that we supposedly have a small-c conservative government here that believes in the value of work and believes in individual initiatives, getting out and improving oneself.
Why is this government setting up a regulation that says to people, "We do not want you to improve yourselves; we want you to sit home and waste your time so you can get welfare benefits." I just do not understand it.
10 p.m.
Not only is an individual who returns to work ineligible for welfare assistance himself, but, as I said, so is a married couple. According to section 3(c) of regulation 441, "A welfare administrator must be satisfied that both husband and wife are available for and willing to take employment in order for the couple to be eligible for welfare benefits."
I have a situation in my area, in the city of Sault Ste. Marie, where a young woman who was laid off a year ago at Algoma Steel along with her husband decided: "I do not want to just sit around. I am going back to university. I am going to Lake Superior State College in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to study nursing so I can get a job at the hospital after I complete my course."
She went without her unemployment insurance benefits because, going back to school, she was not available for employment so she was not eligible for unemployment insurance. Her husband collected unemployment insurance for a year. When his unemployment insurance benefits ran out, he went to the welfare department to apply for welfare and was told, "Sorry, you do not qualify for welfare because your wife is going to school" -- not because "you are going to school" but because "your wife is going to school."
When I asked the welfare administrator what on earth he was doing, he said: "It is not us. It is the provincial regulations."
Mr. Allen: The same is true for dependent family benefits kids who want to go to university.
Mr. Wildman: That is right. If this government is serious about youth training and upgrading the skills of young people, I urge it to introduce the legislative and regulatory changes needed to enable employable welfare recipients who have no other means of support to continue receiving income assistance while they are enrolled in full-time education courses.
It does not make sense to me that during a recession, with the high unemployment rates being experienced by so many communities across Ontario, the provincial government would not be encouraging laid-off workers and their spouses to upgrade their skills and knowledge. It is about time we stopped penalizing people for returning to school. If we do change the regulations, perhaps these young people will be able to take advantage of whatever courses the Minister of Colleges and Universities is going to announce for Sault College.
One of the things I had hoped for and asked about in the Legislature was the possibility that communities such as Sault Ste. Marie, Windsor, and others that have experienced enormous increases in their welfare roles because of the exhaustees from unemployment insurance, would receive special assistance from the government to meet the demands of their welfare budgets.
Sault Ste. Marie is going to have an increase in its welfare budget this year of 45 per cent. When I raised this matter with the Treasurer last week, he said, "Well, most of these communities that have been hard hit and have had this increase in welfare budgets have not had to increase their mill rates." That is true, he is quite right, they have not had to increase their mill rates significantly; but the reason they have not had to is they have cut back in other areas.
In Sault Ste. Marie they are not going to maintain their roads this year; not one bit of road maintenance. They have cut out most of their recreation programs and have transferred the people from their recreation programs to the welfare department. They have doubled the size of their welfare department with people who are not qualified social workers. They are giving them a little training and saying, "Now you are going to help us with this tremendous case load increase we have in welfare recipients."
I had hoped this government was going to suggest some assistance for those communities so we could reinstitute some of the other services that have been cut back. If we do not, we will have a very high bill next year. If we do not maintain roads and streets this year, we will have to do a lot more work next year. We are just putting off expenditures that are required; I was disappointed not to see some specific discussion of that in the Treasurer's budget.
It is true the Treasurer did institute the so-called social services maintenance tax, the five per cent surtax on personal income tax. I suppose the Treasurer is suggesting that money might be used to assist the welfare rolls of hard-hit communities; I do not know. If it is, it is a shocking way to finance that kind of assistance. It is very disappointing.
As I said earlier, I support the suggestion for an accelerated capital works program, but I do not support a capital works program like the Treasurer's that produces only 2,400 new jobs. In the job creation program proposed last week by my colleagues the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. Cooke) and the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds), it was suggested that instead of $82 million, the government should be prepared to fund capital works programs at a rate of about $300 million. That would really produce 12,000 jobs, rather than 2,400 under the guise of 12,000 as the Treasurer has proposed.
In my region we are lucky; I suppose that is the term we should use. In some areas we are getting some capital works assistance. For instance, after two years of discussion, Ontario Hydro is going ahead with the erosion control project in Iron Bridge on the Mississagi River. There are many others that could be proceeded with.
Certainly, the White River water and sewer project is required and should go ahead in Wawa. We could be building an extended care facility to help elderly and disabled people stay in their own communities even if they are not able to stay in their own homes. The Wawa sewage lagoon system is overtaxed and should be expanded. The Blind River water and sewer works are outdated and need to be upgraded. These are all things that could be done.
In the Sault Ste. Marie area, 75 per cent of the building trades are unemployed; 75 per cent of construction workers in our area are out of work. We should be providing employment for those people. Right now the only thing they have to provide major employment is the Eldorado plant at Blind River and that is winding down. So the few jobs that have been available in construction are disappearing. The Hemlo mining exploration will produce some short-term construction jobs but not very many.
Although people on the other side of this House fail to recognize on most occasions that anyone on this side can represent a farming area, my riding does include a large number of farmers, mainly dairy and beef. We welcome the fact that the government has finally responded to the proposals made by this caucus for assistance to young farmers through interest rate reduction. But I want to point out that kind of program does nothing for established farmers who are facing serious problems with interest rates. There are a lot of them in my area. Even dairy farmers who normally have a more stable income are facing serious difficulties.
The beef industry has always faced ups and downs. There was a sale at the Thessalon stockyards last weekend and the prices for beef cattle were pretty good compared to what they have been in the past. But those farmers who received good prices will face problems, as will the whole economy, if interest rates rise again this summer. Certainly they will have problems as the price for feed continues to rise, especially in the light of the recent announcements of programs in the United States which have made the shortages of certain seeds inevitable in North America.
10:10 p.m.
The member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) referred at length to the proposal under the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program for the expansion of one million acres of farm land in eastern and northern Ontario through tile drainage. With him, I regret very much that this was not dealt with adequately at all in the budget. We propose in our job creation budget that there be a major tile drainage program, which would be funded at an additional $25 million and would produce 2,000 more jobs as well as assist farmers in improving their farm lands and their production.
If we are really going to assist the farmers we have got to make it possible for them to borrow at reasonable rates so they can continue to operate with some hope of stability in interest rates. Certainly interest rates have dropped recently, but there is no guarantee that we are not going to see an increase in them again. We believe interest rates should be provided at eight per cent by this government for loans up to $50,000 over 10 years, and we believe the government should be prepared to provide $25 million for this kind of program. We also estimate it would produce about 1,600 new jobs.
One of the other proposals in our job creation program was for small-scale hydroelectric developments. Ontario Hydro has recognized that there are 17 small sites that could be developed for hydraulic electricity generation, but we all know the bias of Ontario Hydro. That corporation is controlled by the massive numbers of people in the nuclear program, and the two or three people who are left in the hydraulic program are pretty well voices in the wilderness in that corporation.
Unless there is a government program -- a government will to go ahead with hydraulic generation -- Ontario Hydro will never do it. Even the three sites of the 17 they have identified as the most likely ones to proceed with will not go ahead unless the government tells Ontario Hydro this is the route it wants them to go.
This would produce a number of jobs in our area. We believe that in the first year we could produce up to 5,000 jobs if the government were serious about the hydraulic generation program.
As well, the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier) has made a lot of to-do about the availability of peat resources in northern Ontario and the fact we have such a wealth of this resource in the province, one of the highest amounts of peat in the world. We have had reports from the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope) and a lot of talk from the Minister of Northern Affairs, but they have not come up with anything.
We believe we should emulate Finland, Ireland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We have 26 million hectares of peat, the equivalent of 24 billion barrels of oil, and if we were to institute a program of $20 million, we could produce jobs and perhaps assist small northern communities, at least initially, to generate power for themselves and become self-sufficient in power along the Finnish example. I wonder why this government is not plugging into the proposals that have been made by the Finns, which could apply to northern Ontario and provide for this kind of generation.
My colleague the member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Charlton) raised an issue this afternoon, along with other members of this caucus, regarding the cutbacks in the Ministry of the Environment's budget at a time when acid rain is a major problem in this province and in North America. We have had studies that have shown that if we continue at the present rate of destruction of our lakes, we will lose about 6,000 jobs in the tourist industry alone as a result of the effects of acid rain on our northern lakes.
It is obvious that if Inco and Falconbridge were to be required by this government to cut their emissions, we could produce many jobs; we estimate about 3,000. We would be preserving jobs in the future in the tourist industry and we would be preserving the recreation for the people of this province. Obviously Ontario Hydro is not concerned with this issue in that it has cancelled its scrubbers program, one we believe should be going ahead and be expanded, and which would provide jobs at the same time.
For the life of me, I have never been able to understand why this government does not realize there are jobs in environmental protection. At the very time Algoma Steel is laying off employees and cutting back, it applies to the Ministry of the Environment for a one-year postponement in its pollution abatement program for the St. Marys River and the smokestack emissions.
It appears the Ministry of the Environment is going to grant the postponement because of the economic situation of Algoma Steel. The program for pollution abatement was related to a modernization program at that plant, and if Algoma Steel were going to proceed with that kind of program, there would be construction jobs for some of the 75 per cent of construction workers who are out of work in our area and we would be providing a future for Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma.
But this government feels that in a period of recession we should be cutting back, that we should not be expanding our environmental protection.
Another area that is obviously one of the most effective and least expensive ways of stimulating the economy and producing construction jobs is in housing. Obviously, in our area, this is very important not only for the construction industry but also for the lumber industry.
In my riding, in places such as White River and in the Sault Ste. Marie area as well, many cutters and millworkers have been laid off for a long period. Some of them are just now getting back to work as the housing market seems to be improving in the United States. In the budget, the Treasurer projects 53,000 new housing starts this year. We know he was off by a substantial amount last year, and that if he is off by as much this year it will only be about 41,000.
I fail to understand why this government would cancel one of the most successful programs it has had, the Ontario home renewal program, which provides employment and rehabilitation of housing in the small and large communities of Ontario at the very time we have unemployment at these levels. We believe we should be getting into rehabilitation in construction of homes in a big way. We would propose a $50-million improvement in OHRP rather than cancelling it, so that it could provide at least 2,000 jobs.
Also, we believe we should be responding to the needs of senior citizens for the more than 9,500 units required across Ontario. In my riding we need senior citizens' housing in Thessalon, Blind River, Bruce Mines and the Echo Bay-Desbarats area. Why is this government not doing all it can to provide the senior citizens housing and the employment that would accrue from that in a period of high unemployment in the construction industry?
We believe there could be a two-year program that would provide 10,000 units over those two years, for a cost of $223 million, and we could employ over 11,000 people across Ontario.
On a local issue, we hope this government will move and have an agreement with the federal government for retrofitting homes that have high radiation levels in Blind River. I understand from the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) that he will have a meeting with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) and the mayor of Blind River to discuss that on Monday, May 16, 1983. The Minister of Labour would have liked me to come, but for some reason the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing does not want an opposition member present.
I will of course be meeting with the mayor and the Minister of Labour after that meeting, and I will encourage them to proceed. If the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing can find it in his budget to provide the funding that is required, I will be thankful and I will not in any way misunderstand his inability to talk to people from the other side of the House.
10:20 p.m.
One of the other major needs we have as a result of distance is in the provision of health care -- not just the homemakers that I was referring to, but real outpatient care in the communities where the people live. With the distances we have in northern Ontario we need to have health care clinics established.
In one community in my area, Dubreuilville, we have been fighting for a clinic for a number of years, but the Ministry of Northern Affairs has been very slow, as has the Ministry of Health, to allocate the funding. We believe we could provide 75 centres in a concerted effort to provide health care in small communities and neighbourhoods.
In this regard too, I want to point out that one of the findings of the occupational health and safety task force that my colleague from Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) chaired was the great benefit of workers' clinics, such as the one that was in operation in Hamilton and hopefully will be in operation again soon, for providing workers with protection and assistance.
I would encourage the government and the Minister of Labour to respond to recommendation 47 for the establishment of independent occupational health clinics in every major industrial city. They would be funded collectively by employers but would remain under worker control. These are the kinds of things that are necessary if we are going to provide workers with the protection they need.
I want to emphasize that I cannot accept the argument that has been made time and again by the Minister of Labour that in a period of recession we cannot improve protection for workers; that in a bad economic climate we cannot enforce the Occupational Health and Safety Act, we cannot ensure that workers are given the protection they deserve.
I find it particularly distasteful that a Mr. Cohen, from the Minister of Labour's office, would be quoted on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in northern Ontario just this week as stating there was nothing in the health and safety task force that was new, and that people realized the ministry could not employ more inspectors at this time of recession, even if more inspectors were needed to enforce the act. He stated it was really up to the unions to protect their membership in terms of health and safety.
That is an example of what the Ministry of Labour and what this government believe about health and safety in the work place. It is a most unfortunate belief.
I have already mentioned the homemakers service that I believe should be expanded. I want to say, though, that in some cases the government obviously is not going to be able to provide the kind of acute care that is needed by people in the smaller communities of northern Ontario. I have to admit that; it would be nice if we could provide it, but it is not economically feasible and it also is very difficult to attract the professionals to many of the smaller northern communities.
In that regard I think it is imperative that the government expand the northern air ambulance service. I know the government has done so in the past, but I am talking about helicopters, heliports, and so on.
Mr. Boudria: What about jets?
Mr. Wildman: No. These are beneficial, but it is not going to help very much as long as there is a regulation that requires that a person be transferred from one hospital to another before he or she gets OHIP coverage for transportation, if the person is not on a stretcher.
As long as there is a situation where people have to pay their transportation unless they are lying on a stretcher, or they have to be in a hospital before they can qualify to be transferred to another hospital, people who need ongoing specialist care and specialized care in the large communities of this province are not going to have the same access to it that people have in southern Ontario and the larger communities in the north.
All of us in this province pay the same OHIP premiums. We, all of us, pay taxation to the health care system. We all are paying for the specialized services, and the specialized facilities that are available in the large communities. We all have a right to have access to them and OHIP should cover the cost of transportation to those services.
I have gone on at length talking about short-term employment, the need for job creation programs and the failure of this budget to respond to those needs. I do not make any apologies for concentrating on short-term employment because I said at the beginning of my participation in this debate that we have a major short-term problem in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma, one that has to be responded to and one that has not been adequately dealt with by the Treasurer.
I have been asked a number of times by reporters since the so-called budget leak of last week whether I thought the Treasurer should resign. Initially I said that if the leak were as serious as it appeared to be, perhaps he should resign according to parliamentary tradition. But after seeing the substance of the budget, I can only say I do not care what the Treasurer does.
What we have is a Conservative budget presented by a Conservative Treasurer representing a Conservative government. I mean conservative both in the capital-C and small-c aspects. If we trade this Treasurer for another Conservative Treasurer from the same Conservative government, we will end up with a similar Conservative budget.
Mr. Boudria: We need a Liberal government, that is what we need.
Mr. Wildman: If we have a Liberal government, we will have an even more conservative budget such as Marc Lalonde's at the federal level.
I will conclude by dealing shortly with the question that is always legitimately raised when we talk about job creation, and that is how does one pays for it.
We believe the total cost of creating 150,000 new jobs in 1983-84 would be approximately $2 billion. Of that, $700 million could be raised through increased tax revenues and progressive taxes such as succession duty and corporation taxes. Then $1 billion would be raised through borrowing, similar to what the Treasurer is doing. The difference is the borrowing we would be doing would be for productive measures producing jobs. It would not be what this Treasurer is doing in failing to respond to the need for job creation in Ontario.
We are quite upfront about the fact we would be increasing the deficit by $1 billion and we make no apologies for that proposal at a time of recession. Cutting back when people are out of work does not make any sense. It is the same kind of thing R. B. Bennett did in the 1930s and we know what kind of situation that produced for the unemployed of this country.
Also, the Treasurer is not willing to be as honest with the public as we are. He wants to play games with his deficit. He says he has a deficit of $2.7 billion. Then he says he wants to take $300 million out of what has already been proposed for the various programs in the budget and he is not counting that as part of his deficit. In fact, he has a deficit of $3 billion and he does not want to tell the people that. Why is he so afraid?
This is a cutback budget. It takes $21 million from municipalities and housing programs at a time when we should be expanding and assisting in those areas. Instead of putting money into the pockets of consumers, it takes money from them. It means a cutback in services. We not only have an increase of five per cent surtax on personal income tax, but we have a five per cent increase in OHIP premiums. We have the so-called sin tax increases.
For every $1 put in the pockets of consumers through the sales tax holiday, we are taking about $7 out of their pockets for the provincial Treasurer. Whatever stimulus is proposed by the sales tax holiday is more than cancelled out by the other tax changes of the Treasurer.
We propose a short-term job creation program of 150,000 jobs; the Treasurer projects 93,000 more jobless. This is not a job creation budget, it is not an economic-growth stimulation budget. It is a stand-pat budget at best. It does nothing about the unemployment rate we have in this province. At worst, it is a cutback budget, which will cut programs and services that are needed at the very time we are in a heavy recession.
10:30 p.m.
The Treasurer is doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing. He is not responding to the challenge of the 1980s; he is not going to get the economy moving; he is not providing new jobs; he is not going to pull this province out of the recession. At best, it is just going to continue as it is; at worst, it is going to make the whole situation much worse.
I am very disappointed in this budget, and I hope that over the next few weeks we will be able to persuade the government not to change the Treasurer but to change its budgetary program.
On motion by Mr. Treleaven, the debate was adjourned.
INCOME TAX SURCHARGE
Mr. Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 28(b), the member for Scarborough West has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question given by the Treasurer and Minister of Economics (Mr. F. S. Miller) concerning the social service maintenance tax, and I shall be prepared to listen to him for up to five minutes.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, the reason I asked for this late show was because of the arrogance of the way in which the Treasurer replied to my question, and I see he is following through tonight by not respecting the rules of this House and not appearing for this small debate. I would suggest it is an indication of the attitude of this government.
The Treasurer has made a great point of saying he uses this surtax to get some of the money out there for purchasing power; that people have too much money in savings, etc. I raised questions about how this was going to hurt people on low incomes.
On page 17 of his budget he says lower-income Ontarians will be protected from this surtax. I asked whether he thought people who earned $3.70 an hour are wealthy people, whether they have an awful lot of money sitting around in their savings accounts that they need to get out and spend. Those people are earning $148 a week, and those people are going to be subject to this tax. A family of four earning $12,500 will be subject to this surtax.
I am saying his line that lower-income people will be protected is so much balderdash and that he needs to rethink his surtax.
He also says on page 17, "those citizens of Ontario who have jobs will contribute a modest additional amount to ensure that decent public programs and job creation initiatives are paid for without undue increases in our deficit." He is talking about citizens with jobs.
I asked him a question as to whether or not people on unemployment insurance benefits would be forced to pay this surtax. I indicated to him that the average unemployment insurance claim at the moment in Ontario is $155.93 a week; that puts those people over the minimum amount that he has talked about.
If he wants it to be people who are employed who are paying this, then surely he should be exempting those who are on unemployment insurance. These are people who are in need of those decent public programs he is talking about. These are people who are in need of the job initiatives he says the government needs to create, yet he is asking them to pay for the programs. It is just ludicrous.
I got no answer. I got a one-word "no" as he said this was not regressive, and then he had the nerve to sit down. Now he has the nerve not to appear here tonight to indicate why that kind of regressive action is necessary at this time.
In my supplementary I raised the ludicrous inconsistency of saying that people who are too poor to be expected to pay their Ontario health insurance plan premiums are not too poor to pay this surtax, and I got no satisfaction on that answer either. One can have a taxable income of $3,500 in this province and supposedly be eligible for the assistance program for the premiums, yet the Treasurer's cutoff is $2,178 taxable income for his surtax. That is totally inconsistent.
How is it that people can be too poor to pay the OHIP premiums, which the government has boosted again, and yet are supposedly going to carry job creation programs and more social services projects on their backs? It is a total farce, Mr. Speaker. If he had any guts or any sense, he would do as we suggested, which was to put a surtax on those who can pay.
People with incomes over $30,000 net should be picking up these costs, not people who are earning $3.70 an hour, not people who are on unemployment insurance, not people who happen to be on UIC and have a partner who has a part-time job.
He would not even respond to that and again, he is not here tonight to respond to it. I am basically giving notice tonight that he is going to hear an awful lot more about this. This kind of unjust increase on the backs of people who cannot afford it is not the way we should be funding social programs. If he is really just adding a tax increase for the vast majority of people in Ontario, he should say so and not pretend it is some surtax upon the wealthy.
In my question today, I pointed out to him that it is not only the wealthy who are paying for this, it is the poor as well. If this minister and this government had any respect for the poor and the unemployed in Ontario, they would not levy this tax against them. I regret again that this Legislature and our process are being ignored by a minister of the crown and that he does not feel he should come here tonight and explain why he did not give me a fuller answer this afternoon.
Mr. Di Santo: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether I can use the 10 minutes that the minister should have used and report --
Mr. Speaker: I think not.
The House adjourned at 10:37 p.m.