POWERS OF ATTORNEY AMENDMENT ACT
REGIONAL MUNICIPALITIES AMENDMENT ACT
MUNICIPAL PRIVATE ACTS REPEAL ACT
REGIONAL MUNICIPALITIES AMENDMENT ACT
PUBLIC SECTOR PRICES AND COMPENSATION REVIEW ACT (CONCLUDED)
The House resumed at 8 p.m.
POWERS OF ATTORNEY AMENDMENT ACT
Hon. Mr. Sterling moved, on behalf of Hon. Mr. McMurtry, second reading of Bill 132, An Act to amend the Powers of Attorney Act.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: Mr. Speaker, the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) asked me to carry Bill 132 and Bill 133 on his behalf this evening and I do that with a great deal of pleasure, as I have had considerable contact with the Alzheimer Society. It is perhaps through a little bit of lobbying on my part that these two acts come to the Legislature at this time.
I do believe the bill is a necessary amendment to the Powers of Attorney Act for all those who are afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. They will be able to plan for their future when they are still competent and allow a friend or, in most cases, a spouse to take over their affairs if they should become so incapacitated that they would have to end up in a psychiatric institution. These bills are meant to overcome that particular problem.
I do have one problem with one subsection and I can leave that particular subsection in or take it out at the will of the members of the Legislature. I ask them to comment on subsection 5a(2), which basically brings into effect full powers of attorney under these new rules. In other words, it grandfathers any powers of attorney that have been in effect since 1979, and it assumes that the associated clauses required under this new act are in the old Powers of Attorney Act. I have had brought to my attention a number of cases in which it is felt by some people they would prefer that particular section be taken out, but I leave that for some debate and ask the members to comment on it.
Mr. Nixon: What is the number of that section?
Hon. Mr. Sterling: I am referring to subsection 5a(2) under section 1 of this bill.
Mr. Elston: Mr. Speaker, I will address a few brief remarks on the bill. I think it is probably a good step forward, taken for the first time with respect to this particular sort of legislation to deal with the Powers of Attorney Act.
I have for some time practised locally and run into situations in which the family was deprived of carrying out the wishes of a parent or brother or sister basically because of the way the legislation was before. I know my friend the member for Windsor-Sandwich (Mr. Wrye) has more detailed remarks to make with respect to the involvement of his local Alzheimer's association. I think the minister will find members on this side are fully behind the government in its amendments here this evening.
It seems that this is probably a reflection of the fact that the public trustee is unable in some ways to meet the types of demands made by members of the public when a loved one loses the ability to act capably to manage his or her own affairs. Particularly when there is a progression involved in a disease like Alzheimer's, then it seems to me something has to be done in addition to this Powers of Attorney Act which will provide for the individual to appoint his or her own legal representative, even during the incapacity, to make the public trustee more amenable to the wishes of the family when this sort of problem arises.
I think this will help by eliminating the need for the public trustee to become involved at any stage in the management of these affairs so long as the person is able to say, "I do not want section 38 of the Mental Health Act to apply." I think that is a good step. But in cases where there is no appointment under a power of attorney or where there is no reference at all to the appointment of an attorney under the provisions of the Powers of Attorney Act, we still have the problem with the public trustee's office being able to come up with the type of administration that is sensitive and timely in dealing with the real problems that are associated with the loss of one's legal capacities.
I leave that particularly for the minister to consider as part of the policy as well so that we can deal specifically with this bill, which amends the Powers of Attorney Act to allow for the replacement of the public trustee, who may now be managing the affairs, or prevent the public trustee from automatically becoming involved. Perhaps the minister could look even further into the operation of the public trustee's office so that it can become more attuned to the type of administration of people's estates that is provided by someone who is either a family friend or a family member.
With respect to the particular section, I will leave that for a couple of other members to raise a little bit later on and I will express only our intention to support the bill.
Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of our caucus to say we will support Bill 132 and, of course, the companion Bill 133. Bill 132 amends the Powers of Attorney Act and Bill 133 amends the Mental Health Act.
Apart from the procedural difficulties that are always involved in these bills, we can see no problem with making the provision for an additional clause to be inserted in a power of attorney that would have the effect, subject always to the supervision of the court, of excluding the public trustee from the statutory committeeship that he would otherwise get when a person is admitted to a psychiatric facility.
It would be very much our wish in supporting the bills that the minister would consider the bills more as an interim provision because of some other problems that are not covered by this bill. I think all the members of the assembly who had an opportunity to attend the reception held by the Alzheimer Society recently in the assembly and had an opportunity to hear the representatives of that society speak to the various aspects of the social, economic and legal problems that arise when there is the onset in a family of a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease will have a very good appreciation of the kinds of problems we have to address. This is the first attempt, as I take it, by the government to address some of those legal problems.
8:10 p.m.
We must, however, be very clear in debating the bill today that this does not help, so far as I can tell, any person who at present has his estate under committeeship by the public trustee because of admission to a psychiatric facility. This bill just does not deal with that situation. There is no way under the provisions of this bill that the benefit of this bill will be extended to those persons. That is subject only to the limited operation of the subsection to which the minister referred. Perhaps I could come back to that in a few minutes.
That is the first group of people who are not assisted by this bill. I may say that the second group are those persons who do not know about the provision in the bill and are not persons who consult lawyers about questions such as this and who, therefore, will find an ongoing incapacity but no power of attorney at all and will be subject to the automatic committeeship of the public trustee upon admission to that particular psychiatric facility.
It seems to me those two groups of persons require attention by the assembly. It is for that reason I would like to suggest to the ministry it very much consider this not as the end of the road but as the beginning of an exploration of a procedure that will solve the problem for those two other groups which are not going to have the benefit of this bill. I think it is possible to devise a method by which, where a person does not have a power of attorney and is admitted to a psychiatric facility, the public trustee becomes the committee of the estate of that person.
I think it is possible to devise an inexpensive, effective process by which an application could be made to the court by a close relative of the person who is suffering the incapacity, with the intervention and notice to the public trustee, to have a court decide whether in the circumstances of the family -- that is, all the social, economic and legal aspects of the problem -- it would be wise to treat the initial public trusteeship as an interim trusteeship, allow a hearing and, where the public trustee has no objection and the court in its discretion decides to do so, permit the administration of the estate of that person as if there were a power of attorney granted to the relative who makes the application to the court with notice to the public trustee.
There are always costs involved in these things, but surely in circumstances such as that it would be possible to devise an expeditious way of dealing with that problem. Otherwise, I am quite certain that with the best intention in the world, unless there is a power of attorney we are not going to touch the problem which in the nature of things is going to be a problem faced by any number of families simply because they are not in the habit of consulting lawyers and because they will not be aware of the existence of this remedial legislation which might have been of use to them.
As far as those who are at present under committeeship in the psychiatric facilities of the province are concerned, it would seem to me we could also use a somewhat similar inexpensive process by which, under a beneficial statute of this province, it would be possible for a near relative of the person suffering the incapacity to adapt the process to which I have referred and make an application to the court, with notice to the public trustee, not in the face of the public trustee but again with the co-operation of the public trustee, to permit a near relative to provide for the administration of the estate in place of the public trustee.
Usually in all these circumstances we expect the court to have a supervisory function. It seems to me that with a little bit of wit and thought it would be possible to provide for the two groups of persons to which I have made reference.
A matter which is of some concern to me, and I did have a word with legislative counsel about it, is that while it is clear the public trustee can only be ousted from his committeeship on the production to the public trustee of a valid power of attorney containing the new provision, which will be in the power of attorney if we enact this particular bill, it is a little bit hazy as to whether or not there is an obligation on the public trustee to maintain a register of all such persons who are acting in his place, by virtue of this provision, as public trustee, as committee of the person who is incapacitated.
We must not be naive about the situation. There will be occasions where the public trustee is going to have to step back in, where he should have an obligation to step back in. We do not necessarily live in the world where the nearest relative or the closest next of kin over a long period of time is necessarily going to act in the best interests of the person who is incapacitated.
Therefore, when the public trustee, as we make provision here, has the authority to step back in by order of the court to resume the committeeship from which he has been excluded by the operation of the power of attorney, then it seems to me we should not just leave it to happenstance as to whether the public trustee takes that action or not, but that he should have a register available to him of all persons who are incapacitated and who have attorneys or agents acting for them under this extended power of attorney which will be granted if these bills pass.
I may also say, as an aside, there will be very few people who can understand the clause in the power of attorney. I think there is a lot of legal jargon involved in the clause. Indeed, it would take a lawyer to interpret it in any meaningful sense to the person who is asked to sign it, given the competency of the person at the time he executes the power of attorney.
It does seem to me to have an unnecessarily jargonish ring to it. It states what the person is going to be asked to include in his power of attorney and then to sign. It states: "In accordance with the Powers of Attorney Act, I declare that, after due consideration, I am satisfied that the authority conferred on the attorney(s) named in this power of attorney is adequate to provide for the competent and effectual management of all my estate in case I should become a patient in a psychiatric facility and be certified as not competent to manage my estate under the Mental Health Act. I, therefore, direct that in that event the attorney(s) named in the power of attorney may retain this power of attorney for the management of my estate by complying with subsection 38(2) of the Mental Health Act and in that case the public trustee shall not become committee of my estate as would otherwise be the case under clauses 38(1)(a) and (b) of that act."
If a person should get a power of attorney and sign it, he would have some difficulty in understanding exactly what he was signing. I do believe there must be a shorter, more direct and simpler method of expressing the additional clause which will give effect to the intention of the bill.
8:20 p.m.
My colleague the leader of the New Democratic Party has already issued a release dealing with some of the incidents and the problems of the costs to the estate at the present time that are under administration by the public trustee as a result of the automatic committeeship imposed on the public trustee under the Mental Health Act.
It may be that the minister has seen those particular instances we have of confusion between the person who would think he had the right to continue the administration of the family's affairs and find that the public trustee is involved in them. I am not going to recite the instances, but they are certainly available and have been distributed, and they do illustrate some of the problems that are involved when the public trustee, in the exercise of his general authority, has to move in on these estates and assume their administration and the kind of awkward, difficult and, in many cases, unnecessary interpersonal problems that arise from day to day about how he is going to manage and administer the estates.
I noticed my friend the member for Huron-Bruce (Mr. Elston) neatly did not comment on the clause the minister referred to. I will have the temerity to do so. It seems to me the proposed subsection 5a(2), which will be inserted in the Powers of Attorney Act, makes sense and is clear as far as I can understand it.
It states, "Where a power of attorney containing a provision referred to in section 5" -- that is the nonrevocable power in an ordinary power of attorney -- "is in effect on the day ..." this act is proclaimed and comes into force, and if the person who has signed the power of attorney is incapacitated on January 1, 1984, then "the power of attorney shall be deemed to contain the provision" I have recently recited. I think that is a workable process. It helps to deal with a minor part of the class of omission to which I referred earlier in one of my examples.
I feel, and I am sure the ministry should feel, that we must treat this as simply an interim bill. Perhaps the minister could give a commitment to the representatives of the Alzheimer Society and others who are concerned and interested in the problem that this bill will be treated simply as an interim bill and that in the next session of this parliament we will try to devise a simple, expeditious, nonexpensive process by which, when persons become incapacitated and find the public trustee is appointed the committee by statute because there is no power of attorney, the nearest kin or the person having the close family interest in it could make the application with the public trustee to the court perhaps to have the benefit of the kind of provision we are making in this bill.
For the other group, as I know the minister understands, those persons who are currently under the committeeship of the public trustee because they are now in psychiatric facilities, a similar easy, simple, inexpensive process could be worked out under the supervision of the court to permit next of kin or close relations dealing with the administration of the household as a household to have the opportunity to have the benefit of the clause contained in the bill.
With those comments, we will support the bill and urge the minister to consider the two suggestions we have made in the course of our remarks.
Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I rise to proffer my support for this legislation and to say that this is one of those pieces of legislation, Bill 132 and its companion piece Bill 133, An Act to amend the Mental Health Act, that gives one the thought that once in a while we make a little of progress around this place.
It was almost two years ago now that constituents from my riding and from throughout Windsor came to my office, and with the burgeoning problem of Alzheimer's disease -- not necessarily a burgeoning problem, but a problem that had been recognized and an organization that was beginning to take hold -- they brought to my attention, as one of the most active organizations in the province along with the organization in Ottawa, the problems with the power of attorney and what happened to those powers when the individual was declared incompetent and put under public trusteeship.
After having researched this matter, I spent some time in the throne speech debate that followed putting on the record for the then Minister of Health and now Treasurer (Mr. Grossman), for the Attorney General and for the House in general my view that changes were needed and were long overdue; changes that would mean that this Legislature, those of us who govern this province in the broadest sense of the word, would not double the family tragedy that was befalling so many thousands of our citizens by having the individuals who had placed their faith in a family member through power of attorney later find, on admission to an institution, that the power of attorney would no longer be of any use.
I am very pleased to see that the government has followed up on a commitment the Attorney General made in May 1983, I believe, by bringing this legislation in now. I hope we can move it through the House most expeditiously.
I am particularly pleased by two aspects of this legislation. The first is subsection 5a(2), which contains a grandfather clause. My friend the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) spoke on this, and I thought he put forward some very useful points in that we have gone only part of the way. We have not recognized the problem of those who are under public trusteeship where there was no power of attorney to start with. As well, we have not recognized those who might not establish power of attorney in the future -- though I say, with respect for my friend the member for Riverdale, I suspect that, particularly with Alzheimer's, in view of the growth of the Alzheimer Society this will not be as great a problem in the future as perhaps it is at present.
The fact there is a clause that will allow those who have gone under public trusteeship who had a power of attorney to move back and will allow the person holding power of attorney, most notably and most usually a family member -- either the spouse or another family member -- to regain power of attorney, will set the minds of thousands of our citizens at ease, and I congratulate the government for coming forward with that.
8:30 p.m.
The other aspect, which I just want to touch on briefly, is this very difficult area that the government had always raised as a difficult, which I think all of us recognized as a difficulty; that is, what to do in the case where the power of attorney could at some point be abused by those in whom it was vested. I note with some pleasure that section 2 of the legislation indicates the public trustee may regain his committeeship by court order only.
In other words, my suspicion is -- and perhaps the minister will correct me if I am wrong -- that the restoration or, indeed, the moving from power of attorney to public trusteeship, will be done only if it can be shown before the courts there has been an abuse of the power of attorney.
I think that is a commendable position which does protect the rights of those who become mentally incompetent, but at the same time, and perhaps more important, it protects in the first instance those who are the donors of the power of attorney, those who choose to give a spouse, a loved one, a member of the family, the power of attorney, by saying that only when there is provable negligence before the courts -- I am not a lawyer and that may not be the correct phrase, but that is my reading of the legislation -- can the matter be swung over to the public trustee.
I must say the constituents I have dealt with in this matter by and large recognize the public trustee as being well-meaning and, I suggest, reasonably competent in dealing with these affairs. However, the problem is that it ends up being a day-to-day and month-to-month existence. It has the frustration, which I think all of us can see as we deal with our own family affairs, of having a spouse or other members of a family never really knowing where the family's affairs are on a day-to-day, ongoing basis.
This change is certainly overdue. It will be welcomed by a large number of people; unfortunately by a growing number of people, because our knowledge of this very crippling illness called Alzheimer's disease is growing by such leaps and bounds. We are finding it is not only one of the great killer diseases in our society, but also that many people who were afflicted with illnesses we diagnosed otherwise are now being diagnosed in this way. In these cases, it will present peace of mind to those families already suffering a real personal tragedy through the illness of a loved one.
Those who are involved in the Alzheimer Society -- in my community, the president of the Alzheimer Society, Madeleine Honeyman, and others have urged this upon all of us as members of the Legislature, most recently when they met with us in May or June of this year -- will be gratified by this change.
I am very pleased to give my support to the legislation when it comes up for second reading.
Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that a number of problems identified by the Alzheimer Society and others are not being addressed by the bill. We appreciate the measures being taken in the legislation and, for obvious reasons, we will support the bill. However, I hope the minister will respond to the issues that are not addressed by the legislation in front of us tonight.
The Alzheimer Society has pointed out the problems that confront the families of Alzheimer victims which are being addressed in the legislation tonight; but it has also pointed out additional problems.
First, committeeship proceedings are costly, time-consuming and incredibly complex. It can take from a year to a year and a half for a family to apply for committeeship on behalf of an Alzheimer victim. In the meantime, the public trustee is in charge of assets which many families thought had been adequately provided for through joint bank accounts.
Most people are not aware of the legal niceties involved in these situations. To her horror, a wife will discover that if her husband becomes a victim of Alzheimer's disease, joint bank accounts -- in which the entire family assets are tied up -- are suddenly seized by the public trustee. All the savings of a lifetime of mutual work are taken over by an agent for the state, and the only recourse for people who are not grandfathered under Bill 132 and Bill 133 is to apply for committeeship.
This is a lengthy and time-consuming procedure. Surely it is not beyond the capacity of the government to come up with ways and means to make this a more simple and expeditious procedure which is not so burdensome to people who will not be covered by the provisions of Bill 132. Quite frankly, that is something we insist on from the government, that it come up with ways and means of making committeeship a relatively simple procedure that does not take a year and a half to achieve, during which time people discover their lifetime savings and assets are no longer in their effective ownership and control.
Second, the Alzheimer Society has been asking that the public trustee have the flexibility to delay seizing a patient's assets in cases where the spouse or immediate family is proceeding with a committeeship application.
This seems to be a very sensible and reasonable proposition in cases in which an Alzheimer's victim and his or her family have been aware of the nature of the problem and have thought they had solved it by placing assets and accounts into joint ownership, only to discover that upon certification of incompetence under the Mental Health Act the public trustee is empowered in effect to seize the family assets, administer them and dole out a living allowance to the husband or wife who remains in the community.
This is an incredibly stressful and basically unjust situation; which I am sure the minister and the government recognize, but it is not being addressed in the legislation in front of us.
Third, the Alzheimer Society has asked that the office of the public trustee become more accountable to the patient's spouse or family. It is hard to believe the public trustee is not required to issue regular statements of his stewardship of the family assets or to provide any accounting whatsoever with respect to the way he is disposing of the family assets in his public trustee capacity.
We have cases of families that have asked for an accounting from the public trustee but have been denied. We have cases of families that have made requests for normal expenditures to cover clothing and other very basic necessities but have been rebuffed by the public trustee. I am not inclined to share on the record some of these cases but I can provide them to the minister. The problem exists, it is very real and it is being inflicted on families who had expected they had made appropriate provisions through the establishment of joint accounts, only to find the law requires something entirely different.
The law permits the expropriation of assets and resources and a quite arbitrary administration of these assets and resources without the kind of accountability that simple justice, and indeed decency and civility would require. I hope the ministry will take these problems into account as well.
The public trustee's office charges fees which quite frankly are exorbitant. We have cases that have been brought to our attention of fees in the vicinity of $1,400 and $1,500 being charged by the public trustee for the administration of accounts and assets which families had anticipated they were responsible for administering and had made provision for.
8:40 p.m.
I have to say that this legislation at least begins to redress what can only be described as a kind of shocking intrusion on the part of the state into the business of ordinary individuals. I say this as one who has had a certain amount of experience being the next of kin to five members of my own family who are in their late 70s and early 80s.
This is a situation many people in our society will have to confront and most people will accept the responsibilities they are required to assume in a spirit of full responsibility out of the sense of love and obligation.
First, it is a condition of considerable stress and anxiety which people are being asked to assume, in addition to a position of enormous responsibility. One expects a measure of support from the state. One does not expect the kind of insensitive and arbitrary intrusion by the state which the present state of the law makes necessary.
The bill in front of us deals with a part of what can only be described as an intolerable and unwarranted intrusion into the business of family responsibility. It does not complete the task that must be completed. There are still areas of intrusion and still areas where the state is imposing an enormous degree of burden and stress on families. We are talking about the state stripping spouses, husbands or wives, of the responsibility for the administration of the family assets. The problem is that the bills in front of us do not have an adequate grandfather clause.
The many hundreds of people who have discovered, to their horror, that the state has taken charge of the administration of their assets, the many hundreds of people who are already in the position of being under the regime of the public trustee, are not adequately responded to by the legislation in front of us. I hope Bills 132 and 133 will deal with future cases if people are sufficiently aware to make provision to obtain power of attorney.
Again, what I am speaking to is the need for a grandfather provision which takes into account that not everybody has been to law school, not everybody is versed in the absurd intricacies of the law, not everybody knows that in order to protect themselves they need to obtain a power of attorney and not everybody knows that if they do not obtain a power of attorney they will be subject to an enormous intrusion into their own financial affairs, they will be stripped of their rights to control their own assets. Those people who had not, in the past, made provisions for power of attorney will not have an adequate grandfather provision.
I do not understand why the ministry has not had the wit to come up with a grandfather provision that would cover the hundreds of people who have been unwillingly, and I must say quite arbitrarily, thrust under the power of the public trustee with no avenue of escape except to apply for committeeship.
Mr. Ruston: Quiet over there.
Mr. Stokes: Why does the Speaker not stop the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) from interrupting that private conversation?
Mr. McClellan: Maybe this is a subject that is of no interest to the members on the other side of the House. If they are bored, why do they not go out and have a cup of coffee or take a walk?
The Deputy Speaker: Order. I noticed the interruptions. If you proceed, I will do that job. That is my job.
Mr. McClellan: I would appreciate it if you would intervene on behalf of those who are interested in participating in the debate.
The Deputy Speaker: Just continue.
Hon. Mr. Ashe: What a pompous you-know-what.
Mr. McClellan: Do I know what?
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. If the member would continue, please.
Mr. McClellan: We are constrained by the necessity of having a quorum. It seems to attract a number of people who have better things to do somewhere outside. I happen to think it is a serious issue and I think the minister agrees with me. I hope the minister, even if he has trouble hearing what I have to say, will have the decency to respond to some of the concerns that have been raised.
There are a number of problems that have not been solved by this legislation. There are many hundreds of families who have had their bank accounts seized by the public trustee by virtue of the fact that a husband or wife has become victim to Alzheimer's disease. They are not covered under this legislation and they have no redress under this legislation. We are asking the ministry to make some suggestions with respect to a more adequate grandfather provision.
We applaud the ministry for taking the initiatives that are set forward in Bills 132 and 133 but, with respect, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. We do not know what will happen to those many families who have had the unfortunate tragedy of a husband or wife suffering from Alzheimer's disease who becomes incompetent under the Mental Health Act and has his or her assets placed arbitrarily under the regime of the public trustee.
We expect and we insist that the ministry should come forward, if not tonight in the very near future, with proposals that will establish some kind of grandfather provision and that will remedy this very basic injustice, which I am sure the minister understands is causing the most acute anguish and concern on the part of many hundreds of families.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank the members for their support of this legislation. I do agree that all the answers are not included in both pieces of legislation. All the problems are not easy to resolve because we have a number of issues to protect when we are dealing with this matter.
I want to indicate to the member for Riverdale that perhaps he might follow in some of the footsteps I undertook in order to bring this piece of legislation the route I did. When I was Provincial Secretary for Justice for this government I went with Mr. McCann, who is the policy adviser on this matter for the Attorney General, and talked with the public trustee about amendment to the act in order to allow this to come to some kind of conclusion and to address the problem.
I might also add that in my capacity as vice-chairman of the legislation committee for cabinet it was at my insistence subsection 5a(2) went into the bill. It was not part of the original bill and it might be an indication to members some of the cabinet committees do change pieces of legislation as they proceed through the process. To clarify it for the member for Windsor-Sandwich, that clause basically grandfathers the powers of attorney that came into effect after the last amendment to the Powers of Attorney Act in 1979.
8:50 p.m.
The reason is that prior to that year and prior to that amendment there was no provision in the Powers of Attorney Act to state expressly that the power extended upon loss of capacity was as far as I thought the matter could be taken when a person had signed the old form of power of attorney which had some reference to legal capacity.
I therefore invite the member for Riverdale, and perhaps the member for Bellwoods would like to accompany him, to discuss the matter fully with the public trustee and perhaps make suggestions to the Attorney General. I do not feel this is a highly partisan kind of an issue. Therefore, I am sure the Attorney General would be most pleased to listen to their counsel as to further amendments they could suggest which would protect both of the interests.
I know I explored several avenues in terms of widening the scope for the next of kin to be involved with a power of attorney. This was basically the first step towards it.
I do want to disagree very much with the comments of the member for Bellwoods. I know that in some cases there might be some differences with the public trustee or the individual trust officer who might be dealing with an individual. However, in my view the public trustee in general has done a very adequate and outstanding job for the people of Ontario in the duties he is charged with under his legislation.
It is not an easy job all of the time, because one has various interests involved in trying to access the assets of somebody who is no longer competent to instruct. I would invite the member for Bellwoods to provide me with the details of those of his constituents who were not able to obtain an accounting. I will assure him the public trustee will provide an adequate accounting for the expenditure of any funds which are in his trust as long as those particular people requesting it have a right to that kind of information.
Mr. McClellan: There is no automatic statement of accounting.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: At the end of a trusteeship there has to be an accounting of the expenditure of the funds. If an incompetent is cured --
Mr. McClellan: Yes, at the end of trusteeship; after somebody dies.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: The trustee has to provide that to people who have a beneficial interest in the estate. It is not available to anybody on the street to have information about other people's business affairs.
Mr. McClellan: At the end of trusteeship; is that normal accounting procedure? The minister knows exactly what I am talking about and is trying to confuse it.
The Deputy Speaker: Gentlemen, we are on second reading. There is no provision for a back-and-forth discussion.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: If the member would provide me with details of the individual situations, I will be able to respond on a case-by-case basis.
The other matter which the member for Riverdale brought up was the matter of record. For the sake of his administration the public trustee will have to keep a record of patients whose estates are under power of attorney and will have to deal with being asked questions about that.
I sent a note to the member for Riverdale. It is a question of whether or not that record should be accessible to the public in general. It relates to the possibility of information as to the identity of the donor who had become mentally incapacitated. That would normally be kept confidential by psychiatric institutions, and there is concern as to whether or not a person could find out about somebody who was in an institution via the back door rather than the front door.
I have no further comments on the bill and thank the members for their support on the legislation. I am not going to move it into committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill ordered for third reading.
MENTAL HEALTH AMENDMENT ACT
Hon. Mr. Sterling moved, on behalf of Hon. Mr. McMurtry, second reading of Bill 133, An Act to amend the Mental Health Act.
Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I want to take the opportunity to comment on Bill 133 as a companion bill to Bill 132 so that I will not be compelled to feel that we should put the bill into committee of the whole House.
I am quite prepared to do whatever I can, as is my colleague the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan), from the point of view of making whatever suggestions need to be made to cover the two classes of people we are speaking about and also to deal with some of the other matters of concern to many members of the public with respect to the administration and costs of the public trustee's office.
I am surprised that the minister himself would not give the specific undertaking on his own initiative on behalf of the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry). His parliamentary assistant is in the assembly this evening to say that, yes, this is a first step, and yes, between now and the next session of the Legislature we will devise a method by which we will deal with those two classes of persons -- those who are already under public trusteeship by virtue of the operation of the Mental Health Act; at the present time in psychiatric facilities, whether as a result of Alzheimer's disease or other reasons -- and work out a process which, in a family situation and where the concept of the family is so very important, will provide an expeditious method under proper court supervision to make certain a member of the family can act as if there had been a power of attorney.
Second, the area which my friend the member for Windsor-Sandwich (Mr. Wrye) does not necessarily think is a problem, I happen to think is a problem; the whole question of the point in time when competency comes into question. Knowledge of the Powers of Attorney Act and this amendment before a person becomes incapacitated may be true with a large number of people but an equally large number of people will not be aware of the intricacies of the law of powers of attorney or what the process may be.
I would hope that the minister, having himself spoken of his interest in this and what he was able to persuade his cabinet colleagues to do with respect to the grandfathering clause, which is a portion of the previous bill, I wish he would be forthright about it and say yes, maybe he would come with the member for Bellwoods and me when we go to see the public trustee and maybe he would join with us, along with the member from the Liberal Party, in making some written submissions to the Attorney General.
Nobody is trying to get any credit for this. All we are trying to do is make certain that the assembly faces up to a very serious family problem with social, economic and legal implications, with which this bill only deals in part. I hope the minister will be person enough to stand up and give us the undertaking that yes, he will pursue the kinds of suggestions which have been made in the course of this debate.
9 p.m.
Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I am just going to take a moment. I am not sure I appreciated the nature of the response of the minister who is carrying the bill. Let us clearly understand what we are talking about. A spouse who has a joint bank account with her husband and who has provided for the expenses of the husband, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease for example, will find that if her husband, because of the progression of the disease, is declared incompetent under the Mental Health Act, having entered a psychiatric facility, the wife will find that the joint bank account and the control of all family assets and income have been seized by the public trustee and are being administered by the state.
Talk about the power of the state to intrude into the life of the family; that is about the whole banana. The bill we have in front of us deals with part of the problem. If the family have had the foresight, the expertise and the knowledge to apply in advance for power of attorney, then they will be protected by Bills 132 and 133. If they do not happen to know there is such a thing as the power of attorney, then they will not be provided for, they will not be covered and they will not fall under the ambit of the protection of the bill.
If they have already had the experience of having a loved one committed to a psychiatric facility and found to be incompetent because of Alzheimer's or some other disease, they will not be covered by the ambit of the bills that are in front of us. So there are still many hundreds and thousands of families that are not protected by the bills that are in front of us.
That is the first problem. How is the government going to come up with measures that cover everybody, not just those who have the advantage of knowing that there is such a thing as power of attorney, such a thing as applying for committeeship, such a thing as Bill 132 and Bill 133? There are no provisions in the bill that make it easy for people, who have not done any planning in advance to make these kinds of legal arrangements, to get the kind of protection they need.
The second problem is that the usual response of the government, when one points out problems around the exercise of rather awesome powers on the part of the state, is to say: "You are criticizing the trustee. You are casting aspersions on the character of the public trustee. You are insulting the public trustee." We have had this for the last nine years. Every time we bring a problem forward, we are somehow insulting the integrity of the people who are administering the office. That is a neat dodge, but it does not get to the problem, and I am sure the minister knows better than to make that suggestion.
We are raising legitimate problems which have nothing to do with anybody's personal integrity. When we give the state severe and rather awesome powers with respect to the family, it is the responsibility of the government and the opposition in this assembly to make sure that abuses do not take place, even if they take place inadvertently.
We have cases that have been brought to our attention of families that have been hassled -- there is no other way to put it -- families that have been accustomed to administering the family assets under a joint account arrangement having had those powers taken away by the public trustee, being refused information with respect to the amount of assets in the account, being told they cannot purchase clothing items on behalf of their relatives without the express permission of the public trustee and being denied accounting on a normal basis.
When I deposit my assets in a bank, I get a statement every month. This may come as a big shock to the minister, but I get a statement every month with respect to how the bank is handling my assets. I do not have to wait until I am dead and buried before the bank sends me a statement of account; I get it every month. Maybe the minister does not get it every month, but I do.
I do not think it is an unreasonable request that the public trustee provide the same businesslike arrangement to families of people who are being trusteed. I do not see this as an outrageous suggestion. Perhaps the government somehow sees it as a threat to its longevity. Why do they do that when somebody raises a simple problem like this that happens to be real?
The public trustee does not send the spouse or family a statement of the patient's account on a regular basis. He sends an account only to the estate. That is stupid, stupid, stupid. The minister should not magnify that into some great big issue that has to do with the integrity of his government's administration over the last 40 years or the integrity of the public trustee. It is simply a problem that needs to be dealt with.
It is a very simple problem to be simply dealt with. He should accept it simply as something that is being conveyed to him to be shared and to be solved. It is not an indictment of the minister or the public trustee. It is not an indictment of 40 years of Tory rule. It is just something that happens in this province that should not happen.
My colleague the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) and I are quite willing to accept the invitation of our friend who is carrying this bill to pursue these matters with himself, the minister, the trustee and with anybody who wants to discuss them. We look forward to doing that.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: Mr. Speaker, I thank the members opposite for their support of the bill. In terms of commitment by myself and the government, we will always continue to look at bettering this kind of legislation as we have done I guess on a couple of occasions since I have been in this Legislature when it had not often been amended prior to that time.
The member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) again raises the issue in terms of dealing in a more simplistic way with people who have become incapacitated through mental illness.
Mr. McClellan: I prefer the adjective simple, not simplistic.
Hon. Mr. Sterling: I know everything is simple until we start to talk about conflict perhaps between various members of a family or outside a family as to their access to assets. That is what the Mental Incompetency Act is all about.
I do not pretend to think the Mental Incompetency Act as it is now legislated is the be-all and the end-all, but it is in place to protect the interests of the mentally infirm person and to make certain his assets will be protected while he is incapacitated. Therefore, somebody wanting to gain control of his assets has to prove to a court that he is competent and will answer to that court for what he might or might not do with those assets. That is what the Mental Incompetency Act is all about.
I am only willing to say I will urge the Attorney General and this government to continue trying to address the problem with regard to making the process better in the administration end and better in the legal end if it can be made more simple.
Motion agreed to.
Bill ordered for third reading.
REGIONAL MUNICIPALITIES AMENDMENT ACT
Mr. Rotenberg moved, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Bennett, second reading of Bill 119, An Act to amend certain Acts respecting Regional Municipalities.
9:10 p.m.
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Speaker, this legislation will transfer responsibility for public health in the regions of Durham, Hamilton-Wentworth and Peel from regional boards of health to regional councils. This takes advantage of the role regional councils can play in strengthening the accountability for and co-ordination of local public services.
The bill will also allow the region of Halton to delegate to the area municipalities within that region the power to promote the area municipality as an industrial, agricultural, educational, residential or vacation centre. This has been requested by the region.
A number of changes are also being made to the Regional Municipality of Sudbury Act. This region will be empowered to delegate certain planning powers to the area municipalities, its power over site planning control will be restored, and the region's authority to relegate signs will be expanded, again at the request of the region.
In addition, a number of minor changes are proposed for all regional acts similar to those changes that were made in the Municipal Act earlier this year.
I will be asking that this bill be sent to committee of the whole this evening in order to move three amendments to the bill. I would indicate I have discussed these amendments with the critics opposite earlier today.
In response to the requests from the regions, I would propose that both the regions of Niagara and Haldimand-Norfolk be made directly responsible for public health in the same manner as the bills now provide for Durham, Peel and Hamilton-Wentworth. Similarly, I would move that the region of Durham be enabled to delegate responsibility for promotion to its area municipalities in the same fashion as the bill now provides for the region of Halton.
The reason these amendments are here is that when the bill was first written those three regions had not yet indicated they wanted this power. Their request has come in since first reading of the bill. We would ask the indulgence of the House to add these to the bill.
With those remarks, I commend the bill to the House.
Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, we intend to support the bill, although I do want to say a few words about some of its provisions.
I have the feeling this yearly series of amendments to the 10 regional governments is a bit of a fiasco. It is almost like a series of private bills brought together. The member speaking for the minister has indicated that it is, in most cases, in response to the requests of the region. They move the boards of health in and out of various jurisdictions and they move planning responsibilities to the lower tier and back up to the top tier, and so on.
Then, normally, we get another bill to do the same sort of amending to the restructured county of Oxford because they are trying to maintain the fiction that Oxford has not been regionalized, even though they removed most of its lower-tier municipalities back in the days when Darcy McKeough was offering his gentle ministrations to the municipalities.
I am sure you are aware, Mr. Speaker, that over the last couple of years most of these regions have built open, elaborate new regional headquarters at great public expense. In most instances, the old but serviceable buildings of the various municipalities that were forced under the whip of the government majority to go into regional government have been taken over by the province under some sort of deal whereby the local region does not lose any money.
It is the generous taxpayers of the province who are assisting in making work this regional government experiment -- which is something past that stage now and is well established now that the Conservative majority is re-established -- no matter what the cost, no matter what the dislocation.
It is certainly my experience, in speaking for my constituents, that the regional governments are not the success the people opposite seem to wish they were. They are overlarge, overexpensive, remote and insensitive. They have the same problems as the government of Ontario has because it is necessary for them to hire masses of public servants, nameless and faceless bureaucrats who administer policies usually initiated by themselves but in the name of elected officials.
I do not intend to renew all of the debate on regional government, but I feel I would not be performing my duty if I did not tell you, Mr. Speaker, that those policies entered into a decade ago have not been successful. The only smart thing the government did was announce before 1975 that there would be no more regional government. That was written in blood and several crosses were kissed so the people in the areas that were hoping not to be regionalized might not reject the Tories.
Hon. Mr. McCague: What about the OPP? The member does not like spending on the OPP.
Mr. Nixon: That was in Orangeville. That was the way they did it.
Under these circumstances, the government is moving once again in some of these regions to make regional planning responsibilities a lower-tier area of concern. In the instance of health services, they are moving in the other direction, taking them away from a more or less autonomous board and putting them in the hands of the regional council.
I want to express a minor concern in that regard because many of the boards of health are experiencing a certain amount of dislocation -- I do not think I should call it difficulty -- in establishing birth control clinics and family planning education in the school system, because of the natural objections that will certainly come from individuals in an area for moral reasons and because they feel the application of this sort of training in the schools is not appropriate.
If one is in favour of this sort of progressive development in most of our modern communities, it seems to me it is going to be even more difficult to move in that direction if the directly elected regional council has the responsibility. I do not want to be misunderstood. I would be the last to say I would object to all the democratic pressures there are, whether I like them or not, being brought to hear on the elected members. They have to cope with them and make their decisions as they see best and as they find best for their own communities.
I wanted to mention this might delay some of the progressive changes that have been brought forward by the boards of health which have been working quite effectively in most of these areas.
I notice also that one of the more general amendments permits bylaws to be bilingual, or bilingue as we say in South Dumfries. That is, of course, acceptable and part of the policy of the government to improve French services without ever for a moment suggesting that the provisions of the Constitution should apply. The government likes to give these favours in a way whereby they could be removed, if it ever wanted to, rather than give them as a right. This is something we have seen developing over the years in this area and others, and I just wanted to take note of it.
This is a collection of amendments, none of which we are objecting to. I believe the minister has indicated he wants some amendments that would include three of the regional areas which had not made a decision at the time of the printing of the bill. We would support that at the committee stage as well.
Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, this is an annual event which is a bit difficult to explain to people who are not familiar with the way this province is run and the way this Legislature puts together bills such as Bill 119. It is an awkward process.
We intend to support the bill this year. In previous years we have opposed the bill on second reading when this approach was taken because there was, and there is on this bill, a great deal of confusion. We support most of what the government is trying to do in here, however. In the spirit of Christmas, we will give it support on second reading.
I want to point out in passing that we encountered some difficulty with the bill in this form, not really in trying to get the opinions of various regional councils around Ontario that are affected by this act, but simply in trying to identify what the act was.
The process was once described to me as relatively straightforward. A municipality out there will ask for a change in the regional act, it will take it to the regional council and the council will say yes or no. That brings the process to Queen's Park where eventually, once a year, a kind of compendium act is put together to deal with amendments for all the regions.
The difficulty is that when one goes back to the various regions contained in this bill and asks whether that is what they asked for and whether that is what they want, they do not know because they have not seen the act. For many of them, they think they asked for it but it was so long ago they really cannot remember because, apparently, there is not a great deal of communication back and forth between the ministry and at least the regional council.
9:20 p.m.
I suggest to the minister one of the things he might try to do in subsequent years is to identify the tracking of these motions back and forth better than he does. It is awkward for members in my caucus, and I imagine all members, to phone their regional headquarters and say: "We have a bill before the Legislature which deals with the region of Durham, Sudbury or wherever. I would like to know whether that is really what you asked for. Are you happy with the bill in that form? Should we be suggesting some changes?" The first observation from the regional municipality is: "We do not know. We have not seen it." So we had to send members scurrying out with copies of the legislation. It seems to me we ought to be able to follow this system through.
As one instance of an area where some confusion arose, there was -- in my view, anyway -- no difficulty at any level with the idea that the region of Durham ought to be able to do something that is being proposed for the region of Halton in this very act; that is, to get the local municipalities involved in industrial development once again. They have tried for a long time -- about a decade now, I guess -- while regional government has been there; they have tried it the other way and have encountered some difficulty.
After a decade of trying it one was, they have decided to try a relatively simple notion, that it might be better if the regional council were able to delegate that responsibility to the city of Oshawa. Oshawa wants that; the region of Durham wants it. But somewhere in there the region of Durham did not communicate its wishes in the form prescribed by the minister, even though the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) was on various little junkets into Oshawa on something called a task force. I am not very familiar with it, but I understand that a couple of local members and a couple of ministers roll into town, set up shop at the Holiday Inn and meet with the chamber of commerce and groups like that.
The chamber happened to ask him, as a matter of fact, on this occasion, "Whatever happened to the idea that Oshawa could have its own industrial promotion facility?" The minister said, "Didn't we do that?" They said: "No, you did not. We asked you for it, but you didn't do it." It is odd, because when I went to the parliamentary assistant and reminded him that it was not in this act, that it was in here for Halton but not for Durham, his response was identical. He said, "Didn't we do that?"
I think somewhere in here there is a cog missing. It is true that this is a complicated business. There is a simple process at work here, yet the end result is a very complicated piece of legislation. Quite frankly, it is understandable from my point of view that a parliamentary assistant or even a minister is going to have a difficult time remembering all the amendments to all the municipal and regional acts in Ontario. They may recall speaking with someone from a council or the mayor of a municipality who has put forward a request like that, and sometimes ministers get the funny idea in their heads that having discussed the problem on one occasion and perhaps even having gone so far as to make a decision to do something, it actually gets done. Of course, we have seen of late that whether or not something gets done has nothing to do with that; it has to do with whether staff make it happen, and in this instance they did not.
We are happy to support Bill 119 on second reading. We are going to go even further than that. On other occasions I recall members posing amendments that the chair ruled out of order because they were not printed in the bill. We got into the interesting argument in here about whether, if they opened the Regional Municipality of Durham Act, one could put an amendment to it. I seem to recall a few difficulties with that before.
But I am sure we will have unanimous consent this evening to the three amendments that were posed to me this afternoon by the parliamentary assistant, because they happen to be matters I discussed about a week ago when I suggested we were getting some feedback from area municipalities that there were some adjustments that should have been made in the bill but were not there. I suggested those were three areas where, in our canvassing of the region, we had picked up that something was missing; regions had made requests or had become aware of changes for other regions and thought they should apply to them.
I particularly pointed out that the region of Durham situation was an example of that; so I was quite prepared to move an amendment to see whether we could actually get it accomplished. I believe they have been pursuing that for about two years, and I am happy to see the government took the suggestion of the city of Oshawa, the region of Durham and me and put forward an amendment this afternoon.
As I say, we are going to support the bill on second reading. We will be happy to support the amendments that were put in front of me this afternoon by the parliamentary assistant. We are going to go one step further because I think there is one other area the minister missed. In Hamilton-Wentworth there has been discussion for a long time about the direct election of a regional chairman.
It has been my contention, notwithstanding what everyone sees as being totally terrible problems around the direct election of regional chairmen, that we should do that. My colleague the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Stokes), for example, represents an area that is a rather large chunk of geography. We manage to get direct election to work there. It has worked very well in that particular instance for some period of time now. We are able to do that in a number of instances around Ontario, federally and provincially.
The matter of direct election of chairmen has been debated for a long time. Shall we use the polite term and say there are variations on the theme at work around Ontario? In some places the chairman of the region is appointed by the government for a period of time. I do not think that system is appropriate in a democracy at all, but it has happened and we have lived through it.
In some areas of Ontario, the council elects the chairman, which is a rather unique system because in some places whoever is going to be elected chairman must be part of the council. Being elected chairman causes a by-election to occur; so it is a little fancier system.
Frankly, I think it is time to try the form of direct election of a regional chairman in one of the regions. Hamilton-Wentworth seems to be an ideal place to start. The council of the city of Hamilton and the region of Hamilton-Wentworth have both passed motions, debated at great length, agreeing that is a good place to try direct election of a regional chairman.
Later this evening, when we go into committee of the whole House, the member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Charlton) will put forward an amendment which I am sure just slipped the government's mind or dropped Out of the system somewhere.
In response to what the government has always said are regional municipalities with a great deal of autonomy, full of properly elected, mature, wise, eminent people who have discussed motions formally and openly in public meetings and who have passed those motions, I am sure it would not now say they are so immature, so unwise, so unable to make a decision of that nature that it will not even give it a try.
This is a little different from the usual speech I give on regional bills. Tonight I am prepared to say we are going to support the bill in principle on second reading. We are going to support the amendments the government puts forward in committee of the whole House. We are going to give the government an opportunity to correct what I am sure is an oversight in one of the regions. We are happy to support in principle the amendments that are here. We will help the government do one more nice thing at Christmas for the region of Hamilton-Wentworth.
Mr. G. I. Miller: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and participate in the debate on Bill 119, which affects my riding of Haldimand-Norfolk and that of my colleague the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon), who has made some points he is concerned about on the workings of regional government.
We did have input from the local council, and the regional chairman indicated there was a missing link in Bill 119. As far as the municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk is concerned, they wanted the added responsibilities of taking over the health council. I am pleased to note the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing accepted that amendment, and we will be supporting it. It is one step forward in providing more autonomy at the local level.
If regional government had only done what the government indicated when they brought it in, if it had been more efficient, more accessible to the local taxpayers and cost less, it would have been accepted a lot more easily; but, as we all know, that was not to be the case.
As I recall, the municipality of the man who designed regional government, Darcy McKeough, still does not have regional government. That is a good indication that the selling points at that time never came about. It has cost the local taxpayers more money. It has removed the possibility of even participating at the local level in municipal politics because of the time and restrictions that have come about. The responsibilities have increased considerably and consequently many people cannot participate because of the time factor.
However, we appreciate the fact this has been implemented in Bill 119 and we will be supporting it when it comes to that time.
9:30 p.m.
Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, this affects the regional municipality of Niagara and the existing health units there. I rise, as others have done, to support the bill that is before us, which provides for the region to take over the operation of health units. I do this because I think it gives a greater degree of accountability and because it will mean the health units' operation will be less of a handmaiden of the Ontario government.
A number of years ago the Ministry of Health made very substantial changes in the way health units were operated. In our area I have to say the government appointees, even though they belonged to the same political party, did stand up to the Ontario government and criticized it very strongly for making changes whereby the tests that were taken locally had to be taken to Hamilton and so on, but that has not been the pattern generally.
Generally, those who are appointees of the government feel a responsibility to defend the government. With this change, there will be some greater degree of autonomy and those who are operating the health systems will be operating them more independently and not having to look over their shoulders to see whether they are carrying out what the Ontario government wants them to do.
As the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) said, the principle could be extended a bit further, and not only to the election of regional chairmen. If the principle is sound here that local people should run health units, which provide rather an important service, it seems to me we could have moved to give a little bit more local authority on the matter of police commissions so that as members of police commissions there would be a majority of locally elected people and, given that, a greater degree of accountability. However, because this is one move in the right direction for whatever reason, along with the rest of my colleagues I will be supporting this bill.
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the members opposite for their co-operation. This is basically municipal legislation. In most of it there is no political point of view from any party.
The member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk has raised the problem of the form of the bill, and I concede there is a problem. He is correct in a way, that this is a series of private acts. The alternative we have is to include these in the Municipal Act with cross-references, without all these powers appearing in the various regional acts.
There is a feeling among those who practise law and politics in the regions that the powers of the regions should be all in one place. It is for this reason that we amend each regional act to indicate the powers of each region in its own act rather than have them go back to the Municipal Act, where some parts of the Municipal Act would apply and some would not apply. We feel that neither way is the perfect solution, but this is probably the better solution.
As far as the member for Oshawa is concerned, we do our best to communicate with all the councils, but not necessarily with every individual member of council. Sometimes we do err, but we err on the side of caution. Before we amend regional acts on things such as the health units, which are optional, we want to make sure not only that members of the regional council are in favour of it but also that the regional council itself, by resolution, and the area councils have seen and agree with the exact proposal.
Sometimes this takes more time than people would like; sometimes it takes more time than I would like. As I say, we would rather err on the side of caution and make sure the regions understand what we are doing for them, and maybe to them, and are content with the legislation rather than put something through the legislation and find out a week later that Oshawa city council or Durham region is saying: "Wait a minute. That is not what we want. Go back and repeal it and make a change."
As I say, we are small-c conservative in putting through legislation to make sure the various regions and the constituent municipalities of a region do concur in the legislation put forward to them.
The final request from Durham really did come through, I say with respect to the member of Oshawa. Although the region had talked about it, we did not get a firm request till after we had finalized the bill, and we are quite happy to include it in the bill at the request of the region of Durham.
With those remarks, I commend the bill to the House. As I have indicated, I will ask that this to go to the committee of the whole House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill ordered for committee of the whole House.
MUNICIPAL PRIVATE ACTS REPEAL ACT
Mr. Rotenberg moved, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Bennett, second reading of Bill 120, An Act to repeal certain Private Acts related to Municipalities.
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to repeal a very large number of private acts obtained by municipalities since 1867.
For the information of the House, the compendium includes an index which briefly describes the content of each act to be repealed. This will enable individual members to identify easily those items in the bill which are of particular interest to them and their constituents.
I believe this legislation is a very constructive exercise. It tries to clear the statute books of legislation that no longer serves a useful purpose. It is also an excellent example of co-operation between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the municipalities of Ontario.
This project has been made possible by the publication in the 1980 Revised Statutes of Ontario of a table listing all private statutes enacted since Confederation. Naturally enough, a great many changes in municipal boundaries, names and statutes have taken place since then and staff of our ministry had to spend a considerable amount of time in tying every municipal private act to an existing municipality.
When that step was completed, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing wrote on October 1, 1982, to every one of the approximately 550 municipalities which had obtained at least one private act over the years. In the letter, he asked each council to review all of its private legislation and to let him know whether some or all of those acts could now be repealed.
There was an excellent response to that letter. Staff members of the ministry reviewed every response in co-operation with the office of the legislative counsel to ensure that the repeal of individual acts would not create future problems. Where there was a potential difficulty, the issue was discussed with the municipality and where doubt still remained, the act was left out of the schedule of acts to be repealed. Moreover, where an act related to more than one municipality, it was left out of the schedule until the other affected municipalities indicated their support of the repeal.
The point I wish to emphasize is that there is not a single private act in the schedule of bills to be repealed which has not been requested for inclusion by the municipality or municipalities to which the act applies.
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank councils and staff of the municipalities for making this bill possible. I would also like to give advance notice to the members that with the continued co-operation of the municipalities, the ministry hopes to introduce a second bill in 1984 to repeal another lengthy list of obsolete private acts.
Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, the government is making a valiant attempt to clean up its act, to clean up its law books, and I am glad to confirm that, having checked each of these references, we will not be losing anything by repealing them.
I noted that the earliest was 1870, although the spokesman for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has said that maybe there is something a year earlier than that. The latest is 1978, I believe; so we have been mixing things up and having the names becoming redundant right up until a very short time ago.
9:40 p.m.
I was interested to hear the member for Wilson Heights (Mr. Rotenberg) indicated that ministry staff went carefully over the statute books to determine the list of the bills that might be eligible for repeal. I was wondering whether they had to get legal counsel or some outside consultant to do that.
I know that the standing committee on regulations and other statutory instruments has a legal consultant who does similar work, going over all of our regulations that are passed by the various ministers. Mr. Speaker, you will be glad to know we get his services for $85 an hour, but the committee has wisely restricted him to 10 hours a day; so it is not completely out of control.
I have a feeling the spokesmen for the ministry, if they have not retained special experts to do this, probably have assigned many of the staff to winnow through the law books and find all these redundant references and amendments. I am not so sure it is even worth cleaning them up. After all, they have been floating along and making the law books very impressive as they sit gathering dust on the shelves of so many offices. They will be that much slimmer now that we have repealed these sections. We will have to work that much harder to make them up with all the good stuff we pass from day to day so there is no chance that the book binderies are going to fall into any kind of depression because of our actions here tonight.
Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, we will be pleased to support this bill. We think that what has been proposed here is a sensible exercise. Clearing the books of private acts that have not been functioning for some time seems to us to be a sensible bookkeeping matter for the government and we approve of the technique it is using to do that, However, I want to make a couple of remarks on the way through.
In reviewing the bills, one thing that came home to me was how consistently and regularly municipal governments in Ontario have moved to provide assistance to the private sector. I am not saying that in all cases they nationalized local industry, but in some cases they did. In some cases, particularly around railways, telephone services and those things that might have looked good some 40 or 50 years, they might not look so good today; I am thinking of cases where they gave up, for example, their municipal telephone systems.
It is an interesting exercise to go through, because one finds that some municipality at some time has moved to provide aid for just about anything one cares to think of. The ways of doing so are quite unique. It would be useful to put on the record here this evening what some of the municipalities have done and the techniques they have used to move into the private sector when the private sector needed help. I am really building the argument that Ontario has been socialistic in nature for some time and it is getting ready for the next logical step.
For example, the town of Durham in 1904 passed a bylaw making a loan and granting partial exemption from taxation to the Durham Manufacturing Co. They were quite busy that year, because they did another one in 1905, giving a bonus to the Durham Furniture Co. and issuing debentures therefor. In 1910, they guaranteed debentures of the McCowan Milling Co.
I will just cite a couple of other examples here. The town of Harriston in 1900 passed a bylaw granting aid to the Harriston Pork Packing Co. and exempting the company from taxation. In 1925, they confirmed a bylaw ratifying an agreement with the Harriston Stove Co. Ltd. The town of Niagara in 1910 confirmed a bylaw fixing the assessment of the Queen Royal Hotel for 10 years.
It makes interesting reading as one goes through here and finds that municipalities in Ontario have been involved in a variety of ways in assisting the private sector, through exemption of taxes, through giving loans and through writing debentures for just about everything from wood stoves to caskets.
It is not included in this act, but I was informed by one of my more senior constituents that at one time the city of Oshawa did exactly the same thing; by a private act it provided somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30,000 which saved General Motors, which was then known as the McLaughlin Motor Co., in Oshawa. I am not sure what kind of equity the city of Oshawa got out of that at that time, but if it had a rescue operation under way and sank $30,000 into the forerunner of General Motors of Canada it would be a nifty piece of business these days if we had that percentage of the shares of General Motors.
On the way through, it is interesting reading to follow the acts that are being repealed here tonight. It is an interesting exercise to see that even the government of Ontario, every once in a while, searches around to clear up the record. We think this is a supportable notion and we will support it on second reading.
Motion agreed to.
Bill ordered for third reading.
House in committee of the whole.
REGIONAL MUNICIPALITIES AMENDMENT ACT
Consideration of Bill 119, An Act to amend certain Acts respecting Regional Municipalities. Sections 1 to 5, inclusive, agreed to.
On section 6:
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment to section 6 which deals with the regional delegates' powers of promotion. Because this is "new matters," which is not on the bill, before I introduce the bill I think I will require the unanimous consent of the House to place this amendment.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Robinson): Is there unanimous consent in the House to place the amendment proposed to section 6?
Agreed to.
The Acting Chairman: Mr. Rotenberg moves that part I of the bill be amended by adding thereto the following section:
"6a. Subsection 131(2) of the said Act is repealed and the following substituted therefor:
"(2) Paragraph 50 of section 210 and paragraph 22 of section 208 of the Municipal Act apply with necessary modifications to the regional corporation, and subject to subsection 2a no area municipality shall exercise any such powers, except in respect of those lands acquired or held by a local municipality on or before December 31, 1973.
"(2a) The regional council may authorize, for such period and on such terms and conditions as the regional council considers desirable, the council of an area municipality to exercise the powers conferred on the council of a municipality by paragraph 22 of section 208 of the Municipal Act."
Section 6, as amended, agreed to.
Section 7 agreed to.
On section 8:
Mr. Rotenberg: Again, because this is new to the Haldimand-Norfolk region, I would ask the unanimous consent of the House to place the amendment.
The Acting Chairman: This is another new section in the outstanding part of the bill. Is there unanimous consent in the House?
Agreed to.
9:50 p.m.
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Chairman, this is a three-page amendment. The wording is almost identical to section 3 of the bill in the region of Durham. I will read it into the record if the House so desires, but if the House would consent to dispense, I will dispense with the reading of this amendment.
Some hon. members: Dispense.
The Acting Chairman: No, you cannot dispense when it has not been read the first time. Please proceed.
Mr. Rotenberg: I move that the bill be amended by adding thereto the following section:
"8a. Sections 58 and 59 of the said act are repealed and the following substituted therefor:
"58(1) On the first day of January 1984, the regional area health unit and the Haldimand-Norfolk Regional Board of Health are dissolved, and the assets and liabilities of the board become the assets and liabilities of the regional corporation without compensation, and the regional corporation shall stand in the place and stead of the Haldimand-Norfolk Regional Board of Health for the purposes of any agreements entered into, orders made, or matters commenced by that board, and for the purposes of any proceedings which have been or may be instituted against that board.
"(2) The regional corporation shall have all the powers and rights and be subject to all the duties conferred or imposed on a local board of health for a municipality by the Public Health Act and shall perform all the functions of such a board, and the functions which would have been performed by the local board or the medical officer of health or the public health inspector of an area municipality shall be performed by the regional corporation or the medical officer of health or the health inspector of the regional corporation, as the case may be.
"(3) The regional corporation shall be deemed to be a municipality for the purpose of the Public Health Act.
"(4) Section 19 of the Public Health Act does not apply to the regional corporation, and section 21 of that act does not apply to the clerk of the regional corporation.
"(5) Sections 17 and 39 of the Public Health Act do not apply to an area municipality.
"(6) The regional corporation shall be deemed to be a local board of health for a municipality for the purposes of sections 25 and 149 and subsections 132(2) and 132(5) and schedule B of the Public Health Act.
"(7) The clerk of the regional corporation shall be deemed to be the secretary of a local board for the purposes of sections 28 and 92 and subsection 27(2) and subsection 78(7) and schedule B of the Public Health Act.
"(8) For the purposes of sections 37 and 129 and subsection 150(2) of the Public Health Act, an order made by the regional council pursuant to the powers conferred on the regional corporation by this section shall be deemed to be an order made by a local board.
"(9) The medical officer of health and the public health inspector and all other classes of persons referred to in subsection 39(7) of the Public Health Act employed by the regional corporation pursuant to subsection 13 shall be deemed to have been duly appointed under section 39 of the Public Health Act and shall have all the powers, rights and privileges and be subject to all the duties conferred or imposed upon such persons by that act or any other act.
"(10) For the purposes of subsection 127(1) of
the Public Health Act a request to the Minister of Health by the regional corporation shall be deemed to be a request by a local board.
"(11) The regional corporation may exercise the powers conferred by sections 157 and 158 of the Public Health Act, and no area municipality may exercise such powers.
"(12) Where the regional corporation or the medical officer of health or a public health inspector of the regional corporation has incurred expenditures which under the Public Health Act may be recovered by levying the amount thereof against rateable property in a municipality or by adding the amount thereof to the collector's roll and collecting such amount in a like manner as municipal taxes, the regional council may by bylaw direct the appropriate area municipality to levy such amount or to add such amount to its collector's roll, as the case may be, and to collect the same in accordance with the provisions of the Public Health Act, and the council of an area municipality shall forthwith upon receiving a direction under this subsection comply therewith, and any moneys collected pursuant to this subsection shall forthwith be paid over to the treasurer of the regional municipality.
"(13) The regional corporation shall offer to employ every person who on the 31st day of December, 1983, is employed by the Haldimand-Norfolk Regional Board of Health, and any person who accepts employment offered under this subsection shall be entitled to receive a wage or salary up to and including the 31st day of December, 1984, of not less than he was receiving on the 31st day of December, 1983.
"(14) Subsections 26(1), 26(2) and 26(4) apply with necessary modifications to the regional corporation and to persons employed under subsection 13 as though such persons were employed on the 31st day of December, 1983, by a local board of a local municipality within the regional area.
"(15) Where a person employed under subsection 13 was not employed under a collective agreement on the 31st day of December, 1983, the regional corporation shall place to the credit of such person the sick leave credits standing to his credit on such date in the sick leave credit plan of the Haldimand-Norfolk Regional Board of Health.
"(16) Nothing in subsections 13, 14 and 15 prevents the regional corporation from terminating the employment of an employee for cause."
The Acting Chairman: Mr. Rotenberg moves that the bill --
Mr. Rotenberg: Dispense.
The Acting Chairman: It will take twice as long if I read it.
Motion agreed to.
Section 8, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 9 to 17, inclusive, agreed to.
On section 18:
Mr. Charlton: Mr. Chairman, I too have two amendments which come from the city of Hamilton and the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth.
I move that section 7 of the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth Act, being chapter 437 of the Revised Statutes of Ontario, be repealed, and that section 11 of the said act be repealed and the following substituted therefor:
"11(1) The chairman shall be elected in the general municipal election at large.
"(2) When a vacancy occurs in the office of chairman within two years of a municipal election, a new election shall be held.
"(3) When a vacancy occurs in the office of chairman in the third year, the regional council shall at the general meeting elect a chairman, who may be one of the members of the regional council, or any other qualified elector in Hamilton-Wentworth, to hold office for the remainder of the term of his or her predecessor.
"(4) Should this necessitate a vacancy in an area municipality, the council of the area municipality of which he or she was a member shall by bylaw, within 30 days after the vacancy occurs, appoint a successor, who may be a member of the council or a person who is eligible to be elected a member of the council, to hold office for the remainder of the term of his or her predecessor."
Mr. Chairman, the two amendments that I have moved will require unanimous consent of the House.
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Deputy Chairman: There is not unanimous consent.
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: Not agreed.
The Deputy Chairman: Just a moment. I am hearing "agreed" and "not agreed." Is it agreed on this side? It is agreed.
Some hon. members: No.
The Deputy Chairman: I do not have unanimous consent.
Interjections.
The Deputy Chairman: I am hearing the government side say it is agreed.
Interjections.
The Deputy Chairman: I do not have unanimous consent.
Interjections.
The Deputy Chairman: It is agreed?
Mr. McClellan: Mr. Chairman, I am sure you have unanimous consent, because the House had received --
The Deputy Chairman: But I asked all honourable members to bear with --
Mr. McClellan: -- the unanimous consent of the government about five minutes ago, and I cannot imagine that they would be --
The Deputy Chairman: I hear unanimity, so if I can have a copy of the motion.
Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, it is agreed.
Agreed to.
Mr. Charlton: Mr. Chairman, I will be brief. I would just like to make several brief points in supporting the amendments I have moved.
First, this is an issue that has been discussed for almost a decade now since the majority of the regions in Ontario were created. There may have been some validity to using the process now in place when the regions were first established, but in every other level of government in this province we use an elected approach. As my colleague the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) suggested when he was speaking on second reading, the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Stokes) represents a much larger piece of the geography of this province than any of the regions I am aware of and without substantial difficulty.
It is time that we try the first experiment in this province with an elected regional chairman and it is appropriate that this experiment be done in the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth. This is the one region where it is of great concern to both the residents and the taxpayers and it is the one region where both the major municipality in the region and the regional council of Hamilton-Wentworth have requested repeatedly, and recently again this fall, that this amendment be made to the act.
The parliamentary assistant, the member who is carrying this bill through the House tonight, made the point and made it a number of times in his earlier comments, that the amendments he was moving tonight were being moved to accommodate the wishes of the regional municipalities. It is not, in my view and I think in the view of those elected representatives in the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, appropriate for this Legislature to say that they are not mature enough and not able to handle a full electoral system in their region.
10 p.m.
It is their request, after very thorough discussion over a number of years, that this amendment be passed. This request, from this regional municipality, has been given the same kind of consideration the other amendments we dealt with here tonight have been given. That makes it an appropriate process for us to get on with finding out if there are the problems that have been suggested, which most of us do not believe exist.
Mr. Cunningham: Mr. Chairman, I am quite anxious to support the amendment that has been moved by my friend the member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Charlton). I should say at the outset I agree entirely with the thesis of his amendment and I am supportive of it. I hope the government might set aside its previous dialectical hang-ups, contemplate favouring this amendment and permit the people of Hamilton-Wentworth, at least on the basis of an experiment, to elect at large their own regional chairman.
I was frankly astounded that the parliamentary assistant would have voiced his disapproval and his objection to offering unanimous consent to have this amendment advanced at the outset. It certainly is at variance with the generosity of spirit this side of the House has offered unequivocally to the honourable member so that we could proceed with regard to previous amendments in this very same item of legislation. I was astounded to hear him say he would deny unanimous consent while his House leader, a scant 25 yards away, would be suggesting we proceed with it. Of course, the right to proceed with it and the right to see it passed in law are two different and distinct things.
I myself would very much like to see this become reality because I believe the people of Hamilton-Wentworth are quite capable of determining their own destiny, and that includes the selection of a regional chairman. Indeed, the regional chairman who was chosen to head the region is on record right from day one as supporting the election of a regional chairman, as are a majority of our council, as is our major newspaper, the Hamilton Spectator, and as are at least 8,000 people who have signed a petition that has been advanced in support of this initiative.
It is abject nonsense that this government continues to ignore the well-expressed wishes, the well-developed consensus of the people in my district and the other six constituencies in the area on this subject. It is not only unfair, it is undemocratic, it is inequitable and, frankly and simply put, it is bad politics.
Our good friend the rookie member for Wentworth (Mr. Dean) is not here tonight. I do not know what he is doing. He may well be here by 10:30 p.m., but I gather he has a definite point of view in relation to this initiative. It is his view that we do not have the capability to determine our own destiny and we should not be given the privilege of electing our own regional chairman. If he had advocated this during the course of the last election, he would not be here today.
I say sincerely to the parliamentary assistant that if the government does not re-evaluate its position in this regard and contemplate being a little more objective, a little more sensible and, if I could actually suggest it in this chamber, a little more political, that honourable gentleman may not be with us after the conclusion of the next election. After all, back home we call him landslide Gordon.
I ask the parliamentary assistant to have a little huddle with his House leader and determine that possibly tonight is the occasion for a sensible initiative advanced by an opposition member, albeit not myself, although I have advanced this by way of private initiative and would support it if it came from a government initiative. In five minutes we could have it through the House and it would be reality.
I ask the parliamentary assistant to take a long look at the concern advanced by my colleague the member for Hamilton Mountain, set aside whatever dialectical or partisan hangup he may have with regard to the election of a regional chairman and give consideration to the passage of this amendment. It is a radical step, I must admit. It has something to do with democracy. It is really something strange that we would have taxpayers actually electing their own chairmen in their own district. It is somewhat radical, but I would think the people of Hamilton-Wentworth are up to that task.
This would not involve a great deal of extra expense. We advertise in the Hamilton Spectator. When one buys the Spectator for Dundas, one buys it for the whole area. We would advertise on our three local radio stations. When one buys an ad there, one buys an ad for the whole area.
In the context of running an election campaign, it might be 25 per cent or 30 per cent more expensive, and that is all. Of course, if it was unduly expensive, the government might do the right thing and bring in election expenses for municipalities, which is something I think both parties on this side would advocate as well.
In conclusion, I think the time has come for this legislation. The problem will not go away. It is something that our citizens, our taxpayers, our ratepayers are expecting. By denying it to them, we are denying them fundamental justice, we are denying them democracy and we may even be denying them the services of landslide Gordon after the next election.
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Chairman, I must say I would have been considerably happier had the member for Hamilton Mountain given me the same notice on this new motion that I gave the people opposite, so there would have been at least some time to consider what was being brought forward and not have it sprung on us at the last moment.
However, I must indicate that the government -- not just myself -- does not support this amendment. The chairmen in Hamilton-Wentworth and other regions are elected. They are elected by their colleagues in the same way as is done in all parliamentary systems where the leader of the government is elected by his colleagues. We operate in the tradition of the British parliamentary system and of all local governments in Great Britain. The head of the council is not elected by the people but by the members of the council, which is the same, in effect, as the head of this government who is elected by the Legislature. We are not in the American system of government where everybody from Supreme Court judge to dog catcher is elected at large.
As I say, had we had some notice of this motion, we might have been able --
Mr. Breaugh: You had as much notice of this motion as I had.
The Deputy Chairman: Order.
Mr. Rotenberg: The member had notice this afternoon and the motion was put tonight. However, notice or not, I must indicate that the government cannot support this motion at this time.
The Deputy Chairman: Does any other member wish to participate in this debate?
All those in favour of Mr. Charlton's amendment will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion the nays have it.
Motion negatived.
Section 7 agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman: Are there any further amendments?
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Chairman, the next amendment I have is on section 26, if we can carry sections 18 to 25 inclusive.
Sections 18 to 25, inclusive, agreed to.
On section 26:
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Chairman, the amendment I have to section 26 is identical to the amendment I moved on section 8. Maybe we could have a better ruling from you than we did from the previous chairman. Could we pursue this without reading it into the record?
The Deputy Chairman: No, it has to be read into the record.
Mr. Nixon: On the point the member is making --
Mr. McClellan: Are you asking for unanimous consent?
Mr. Rotenberg: First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would ask for unanimous consent to place this amendment on behalf of the regional municipality of Niagara.
Agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman: I recognize the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk.
Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: Since the words are identical to those that were just read in this very act, I wonder whether it would not be possible for the member to make a motion simply referring to the exact words he has already read to us.
Mr. Rotenberg: I would be delighted, except the words are slightly different. The other one made reference to Haldimand-Norfolk and this one does not. With that slight difference --
The Deputy Chairman: I accept the point the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk has made, with the only change referring to the municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk.
10:10 p.m.
Mr. Breaugh: Speaking to that matter, Mr. Chairman, I think you need unanimous consent for that. I would have been prepared to give it 10 minutes ago, but now I am not. Make him read it.
The Deputy Chairman: The member will read it.
Mr. Rotenberg: No problem.
I move that the bill be amended by adding thereto the following sections:
"26a. Sections 106 and 107 of the said act are repealed and the following substituted therefor:
"106(1) On the first day of January 1984 the regional area health unit and the board of health of the regional area health unit are dissolved and the assets and liabilities of the board become the assets and liabilities of the regional corporation without compensation, and the regional corporation shall stand in the place and stead of the board for the purposes of any agreements entered into, orders made or matters commenced by the board and for the purposes of any proceedings which have been or may be instituted against the board.
"(2) The regional corporation will have all the powers and rights and be subject to all the duties conferred or imposed on a local board of health for a municipality by the Public Health Act and shall perform all the functions of such a board, and the functions which would have been performed by the local board or the medical officer of health or the public health inspector of an area municipality shall be performed by the regional corporation or the medical officer of health or the health inspector of the regional corporation, as the case may be.
"(3) The regional corporation shall be deemed to be a municipality for the purpose of the Public Health Act.
"(4) Section 19 of the Public Health Act does not apply to the regional corporation, and section 21 of that act does not apply to the clerk of the regional corporation.
"(5) Sections 17 and 39 of the Public Health Act do not apply to an area municipality.
"(6) The regional corporation shall be deemed to be a local board of health for a municipality for the purposes of sections 25 and 149 and subsections 132(2) and (5) and schedule B of the Public Health Act.
"(7) The clerk of the regional corporation shall be deemed to be the secretary of a local board for the purposes of sections 28 and 92 and subsection 27(2) and subsection 78(7) and schedule B of the Public Health Act.
"(8) For the purposes of sections 37 and 129 and subsection 150(2) of the Public Health Act, an order made by the regional council pursuant to the powers conferred on the regional corporation by this section shall be deemed to be an order made by a local board.
"(9) The medical officer of health and the public health inspector and all other classes of persons referred to in subsection 39(7) of the Public Health Act employed by the regional corporation pursuant to subsection 13 shall be deemed to have been duly appointed under section 39 of the Public Health Act and shall have all the powers, rights and privileges and be subject to all the duties conferred or imposed upon such persons by that act or any other act.
"(10) For the purposes of subsection 127(1) of the Public Health Act a request to the Minister of Health by the regional corporation shall be deemed to be a request by a local board.
"(11) The regional corporation may exercise the powers conferred by sections 157 and 158 of the Public Health Act, and no area municipality may exercise such powers.
"(12) Where the regional corporation or the medical officer of health or a public health inspector of the regional corporation has incurred expenditures which under the Public Health Act may be recovered by levying an amount thereof against rateable property in a municipality or by adding the amount thereof to the collector's roll and collecting such amount in a like manner as municipal taxes, the regional council may by bylaw direct the appropriate area municipality to levy such amount or to add such amount to its collector's roll, as the case may be, and to collect the same in accordance with the provisions of the Public Health Act, and the council of an area municipality shall forthwith upon receiving a direction under this subsection comply therewith, and any moneys collected pursuant to this subsection shall forthwith be paid over to the treasurer of the regional municipality.
"(13) The regional corporation shall offer to employ every person who on the 31st day of December 1983 is employed by the board of health of the regional area health unit, and any person who accepts employment offered under this subsection shall be entitled to receive a wage or salary up to and including the 31st day of December 1984 of not less than he was receiving on the 31st day of December 1983.
"(14) Subsections 24(2), (3) and (5) apply with necessary modifications to the regional corporation and to persons employed under subsection 13 as though such persons were employed on the 31st day of December 1983 by a local board of a local municipality within the regional area.
"(15) Where a person employed under subsection 13 was not employed under a collective agreement on the 31st day of December 1983, the regional corporation shall place to the credit of such person the sick leave credits standing to his credit on such date in the sick leave credit plan of the board of health of the regional area health unit.
"(16) Nothing in subsections 13, 14 and 15 prevents the regional corporation from terminating the employment of an employee for cause."
Mr. R. F. Johnston: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman: I missed the second paragraph. I wonder if the member could read it again.
Interjections.
Motion agreed to.
Section 26, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 27 to 58, inclusive, agreed to.
On section 59:
The Deputy Chairman: Mr. Rotenberg moves that subsection 59(2) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted therefor:
"(2) Sections 3, 8a, 20, 26a and 36 come into force on the first day of January 1984."
Mr. Rotenberg: Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is that those three amendments we have carried can now come into force on January 1, 1984.
Motion agreed to.
Section 59, as amended, agreed to.
Section 60 agreed to.
Bill, as amended, ordered to be reported.
PUBLIC SECTOR PRICES AND COMPENSATION REVIEW ACT (CONCLUDED)
Resuming the adjourned consideration of Bill 111, An Act to provide for the Review of Prices and Compensation in the Public Sector and for an orderly Transition to the Resumption of Full Collective Bargaining.
The Deputy Chairman: It being 10:15 p.m., and since it was agreed there would be a stacked vote, the bells will ring for 10 minutes.
10:25 p.m.
The committee divided on Mr. Swart's amendment to add subsection 12(1), which was negatived on the following vote:
Ayes 37; nays 59.
The committee divided on whether section 12 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.
The committee divided on Mr. Swart's amendment to add subsection 13(1), which was negatived on the same vote.
The committee divided on Mr. Wrye's amendment to section 13, which was negatived on the same vote.
The committee divided on Mr. Wrye's amendment to subsection 13(3), which was negatived on the same vote.
The committee divided on Mr. Swart's amendment to section 13, which was negatived on the same vote.
The committee divided on whether section 13 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.
Section 13 agreed to.
10:30 p.m.
The committee divided on Mr. Wrye's amendment to subsection 14(2), which was negatived on the following vote:
Ayes 37; nays 59.
The committee divided on whether section 14 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the following vote:
Ayes 59; nays 37.
Section 14 agreed to.
The committee divided on Mr. Wrye's amendment to section 22, which was negatived on the following vote:
Ayes 37; nays 59.
Section 22 agreed to.
The committee divided on Mr. Rae's amendment, the addition of subsection 22(a), which was negatived on the same vote.
Bill, as amended, ordered to be reported.
On motion of Hon. Mr. Wells, the committee of the whole House reported two bills with certain amendments.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, just before we adjourn, I might indicate there will be a slight change in the business tomorrow afternoon.
We will deal with all the private bills standing on the order paper tomorrow afternoon, second and third readings, and then move to Bill 134, An Act to amend the Immunization of School Pupils Act, then go down the list we had: Bill 139, Bill 145, Bill 147, Bill 144, Bill 135, Bill 136 and Bill 142. Bill 111 will be called for third reading tomorrow evening.
The House adjourned at 10:33 p.m.