The House resumed at 8 p.m.
INTERIM SUPPLY
Hon. Mr. Grossman moved, seconded by Hon. F. S. Miller, resolution 1:
That the Treasurer of Ontario be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants and other necessary payments pending the voting of supply for the period commencing April 1, 1984, and ending June 30, 1984, such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation following the voting of supply.
Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, I want to offer a few random observations on government motion 1.
Mr. Martel: What does that really mean?
Mr. Conway: What does that really mean? It is a good question that my friend the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) raises. I hope in the next few minutes to help him understand. I see my friend the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds) here. I know he is anxious to have his day in court, so to speak. I do not want to keep him beyond any necessary amount of time.
It is good to be back. It is good to see our friend the Treasurer (Mr. Grossman) here early in the session looking for additional sums. I am sure my friend the member for Elgin (Mr. McNeil) is as anxious as I am not to stand in the Treasurer's way, the insatiable maw he presides over there -- $25 billion or thereabouts, I understand, for this year.
By the way, I see the member for Elgin and I am pleased to see he is in seat 1. He should be congratulated for that. I think that is where all former Liberals on the Progressive Conservative side ought finally to come to rest. I am glad to see the distinguished member for Elgin occupying his rightful place in that respect. I see the Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. F. S. Miller) offering some advice.
Hon. F. S. Miller: I was not offering advice, I was getting it.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: No thanks, Frank, let's take a pass.
Mr. Conway: I am prepared to accept that as an offer of goodwill. I just hope I do not have to wait too many years.
Hon. F. S. Miller: It is 25.
Mr. Conway: Is it 25? I think it is actually 27, is it not? No, it is 26.
Mr. Speaker: Now to the motion.
Mr. Conway: Now to the motion. After three months in the hardwood hills and pine valleys of Renfrew North, I am back and I am a little rusty. I have to get a little more of this legislative air.
I saw the member for Sudbury East staring at me from the pages of the Toronto tabloid this morning. Did anybody see that picture of the member? One of the cynical Liberals thought it was not possible to get a picture of the member with his mouth closed. Hence we were treated to a full view of his teeth.
Mr. T. P. Reid: I raised that issue.
Mr. Conway: I am reminded it was the member for Rainy River (Mr. T. P. Reid) who raised that issue.
Mr. Nixon: Originally.
Mr. Conway: Originally. I would not want to be --
Mr. T. P. Reid: A fellow by the name of McMurtry had a one-man royal commission on it.
Mr. Conway: I understand the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) is just back from a tour of Cochrane North. In the presence of the Treasurer, might I wonder aloud what the Attorney General is campaigning for or is about in the distant reaches of Cochrane North? I thought he was out of this race, but perhaps there is a seat in northeastern Ontario that looks more promising than St. Paul's or Eglinton-Lawrence.
We are asked to come here to vote the Treasurer additional sums to pay the provincial public service and for such other appropriations as he will require. As a supporter of the public service in this great province, I would not now or ever wish to be put in the position of denying members of the public service, containing, as it does, even a few of my relatives, their pay at the end of the month.
Mr. Wildman: Is that a declaration of conflict of interest?
Mr. Conway: No. I want my friend from Algoma to know that it is not a declaration of conflict of interest.
During the recess, I was reading the speeches at the Empire Club of Canada. I was struck by one that reminded me of the politics of William Davis's Ontario. I really recommend to the members of the House a speech called "The Authority of Learning" by Northrop Frye, that distinguished academic from Victoria College, University of Toronto, to the Empire Club in January 1984.
I am going to quote apropos this particular motion -- I am not exactly sure, but I thought it was a good observation the distinguished Professor Frye offered the Empire Club about our political situation.
"People need political and social leaders who can define policies, articulate problems and express the aims and ideals of their society for those who cannot express them for themselves, though they may feel them very deeply. But the evidence is overwhelming that voters in a democracy want and expect bumble and burble from their leaders and seem to be disturbed, if not upset, by the impact of articulate speech."
In this the week of the throne speech, I want to share that with, among others, my friend the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman), soon to be just the member for St. Patrick, if at all --
Hon. Mr. Grossman: St. Andrew.
Mr. Conway: St. Andrew, if at all.
Mr. McClellan: Why don't you run in St. George?
Mr. Conway: There is an idea.
If I might digress, somebody asked me the other day what chances I thought the preliminary proposals of the Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission had for passage. I said that one need only look at the future and the fate of St. Andrew-St. Patrick to understand why these proposals will fly like Icarus. They are not going to get far, I suspect, and there are more than a few of us around here who are counting on the Treasurer to use his not inconsiderable influence to ensure those proposals are amended in the direction of democracy and common sense.
I somehow think my friend the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick knows exactly what I intend and, if nothing else, he might talk to our mutual friend the member for Wilson Heights (Mr. Rotenberg), who I hear is more than a little exercised about what those proposals intend for him.
8:10 p.m.
I want to say in the presence of the Treasurer, about whom I must say I keep hearing more and more -- every time I go to Canada Post I meet another one of the honourable member's friends and former staff assistants.
Mr. Mitchell: Are you buying from Consumers Distributing?
Mr. Conway: No, as a matter of fact, for the member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell), I am not. I am on record as having said something rather to the contrary.
About this motion, one of the concerns I have in these tough days of restraint is that the Treasurer not come here and expect me and others to vote additional sums so that he and many of his ministerial friends can continue to travel at a rather rapid rate, if I might suggest it. During the holidays, something was made of the fact that Mr. Speaker led a delegation to an important Commonwealth parliamentary responsibility in some far distant clime. I understand a full accounting has been given of that.
I liked the reports that said the member for Cambridge (Mr. Barlow) was a Liberal. I do not know what is going on in Cambridge but I read that and wondered whether, as he got closer to the equator, he began to have a lapse of judgement, as the Treasurer says.
I thought it would be interesting and perhaps useful to review the travels of the honourable members opposite over the winter recess. They have been a very busy bunch. I am sure there was a lot said around Peterborough about the Speaker and the parliamentary committee going off to do their good works in Barbados, as reported by the local press.
Listen to what restraint has done to the travel plans of ministers opposite over the course of the winter recess. The Premier (Mr. Davis), as we all saw on our television, was in London doing good works with the Stratford production. I do not think anybody could quarrel with that.
Mr. Nixon: He did not ask us to go along.
Mr. Conway: I know he was over there on a private -- I understand he was in London to -- Interjection.
Mr. Conway: Well, the member for Perth (Mr. Edighoffer) has nothing to apologize for. His support of that great --
Mr. Nixon: He is the father of the festival.
Mr. Conway: The member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) says he is the father of the festival. Who am I to quarrel with that.
Frankly, I understand the Premier was really there on a private mission to see if he could talk Ross DeGeer out of giving up the sinecure he has enjoyed for these past five years, to make way for either the government House leader (Mr. Wells) or the Minister of Industry and Trade. Rumour has it they are prepared to leave before the next election. In the words of the member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy), they are both saying in the private corridors of Torydom over there, "Step aside, we are coming through." They have to get Ross packed and on his way home.
Speaking of the Minister of Industry and Trade, he has just returned from a 16-day trip to Munich, Paris and London. I believe he was --
Mr. T. P. Reid: Is he trying to get a better price on bookmarks?
Mr. Conway: The member for Rainy River says the minister has been trying to find a better price for his bookmarks. I do not know. I know the minister is likely to want to travel as much as he possibly can before he gives up the ministerial responsibility, which I understand will be within the next three to six months.
The real competition is in who is going to get London. Is it going to be the member for Scarborough North (Mr. Wells) or is it going to be the member for Muskoka (Mr. F. S. Miller)? The decision has to be made within the next three to six months. There are other prizes, we know that, but I understand that is a significant --
Mr. McClellan: Surely there are more candidates than those two.
Mr. Conway: There are other candidates, but I understand the chairman of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board is not yet prepared to step aside to allow someone else in the family to have the opportunity to serve in that connection.
To be fair to the member for Muskoka -- I think I have always been fair to him -- I understand he travelled what he called ordinary jetliner across the Atlantic, unlike the Treasurer, the man with the whip over there who has been cracking it on as many backs as he can find; to his credit he did not travel the Atlantic Concorde style. I think he ought to be commended for showing at least that much restraint. If I am wrong in that respect, he can perhaps correct the record.
Our friend the Treasurer's ally, the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Timbrell), who has not been around the House a great deal before today, was off in London as well at what was billed as a corn seminar. The rest of us were at work --
Mr. T. P. Reid: That is where the Minister of Industry and Trade should have been.
Hon. Mr. McCague: You were here at the same seminar.
Mr. Conway: It was a lot cheaper to keep me at the corn seminar in old Upper Canada than it appears to have been to send the Minister of Agriculture and Food to London to a corn seminar.
Then he left, of course, to cross paths with the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson) in Bahrain. The Persian Gulf is occupying a lot of interest and time and resources there, and I just wonder why we are not booking a more permanent presence there, since most of that front bench has been to Bahrain.
Mr. T. P. Reid: Now we are moving the embassy.
Mr. Conway: That is the New York primary.
The Minister of Health (Mr. Norton) was not to be outdone. He was travelling around central Europe understanding how the Swiss, the Germans and the French deliver health care services.
Where do we find the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) in the recent break? He was in Saudi Arabia. The Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor) was in Paris and in Washington, I am told.
The Minister of the Environment (Mr. Brandt) was in West Germany and the Netherlands. As for the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Ashe), one had only to look at him last week to see that he had been someplace other than Durham West; he was down discharging important responsibilities in Nassau.
The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (Mr. Wells), like the Minister of the Environment, was in West Germany. The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) was also in the Persian Gulf, in Kuwait, to be specific.
Mr. Nixon: Those guys are far worse than the federal Liberals.
Mr. T. P. Reid: What do your public opinion polls tell you about this that we do not know?
Hon. Mr. McCague: Where was the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk?
Mr. Nixon: Not at public expense.
Mr. Conway: I think the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk makes a good point, because travel is not to be frowned upon in any respect.
Mr. Nixon: It is broadening.
Mr. Conway: It builds character, it widens horizons --
Interjection.
Mr. Conway: It may be. I remember that experience very well, not the least of the reasons being that I paid the freight, unlike these people who have been travelling in style.
Mr. Nixon: Right. That is the essential difference.
Mr. Conway: There is a difference, as the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk points out.
I am glad, as we come tonight to vote additional funds, that we have the interest and the presence of the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. McCague). I have not seen him this aroused since he was last in Wasaga Beach.
I have a certain personal respect for the member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. McCague) and -- let us leave it at that -- liking, but I have to wonder. Am I being asked in this particular motion to commit additional resources so that another minister over there is going to be in the unhappy condition of the Chairman of Management Board? I ask the Treasurer, are we, in this twilight of restraint, going to be asked through this motion to vote $290,000 for, let us say, the member for Wentworth (Mr. Dean) to discover what his ministerial responsibilities are all about?
8:20 p.m.
I have to feel that there is no little bit of embarrassment across the way felt by everyone, including the Chairman of Management Board, that in a public place in recent days he has had to stand up and say, "I am going to commit an expenditure in excess of $250,000 in this period of restraint so outside consultants can come to me, analyse me and my good works and tell me and my peers in cabinet what it is I am supposed to be doing."
There is more than a little evidence of the fact that the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet does not appear to know what it is about, as we saw in the public accounts committee particularly through late 1983 and as has been continued on in early 1984. Is that what we are being asked by the Treasurer to come, to consider and to vote appropriations for?
If no one else could give direction to the Chairman of Management Board, I would like to think the Treasurer, in the best Darcy McKeough tradition, would delineate for the more junior ministers of his Treasury bench exactly what it is they are supposed to be doing or at least what he expects them to do.
I hear from my Tory friends around the province that the one thing they like about this Treasurer is that he emanates a certain sense of competence, toughness and direction. On that score, they say the Treasurer is a more desirable option than the Minister of Agriculture and Food, who seems to be in perennial pursuit of another advisory committee. They say our friend the Treasurer has a sense of toughness, firmness and direction.
If that is the Treasurer's reputation among his circle, then surely he would want to take the Chairman of Management Board aside and say, "No, I am not going to allow 300,000 scarce dollars to be allocated so we can discover what it is you are supposed to do." Surely the Treasurer would want to agree with most reasonable observers of the scene that we have a set of government guidelines.
We have the November 16, 1983, letter of the Premier, which was a helpful elucidation, or so we were told last fall by the Premier himself, for understanding the intent of these spending controls and accounting practices. Surely it remains only for someone who is paid $75,000 by the secretariat in support of himself to see to it that there is enforcement.
Hon. Mr. McCague: They are the best in the world, but can they be better?
Mr. Conway: The Chairman of Management Board says they are "the best in the world." I can only say to the minister that I was there last fall taking a personal interest in one case study of how it was that those "best in the world" guidelines were followed by some very senior people in the government.
I am going to tell the minister without too much partisan prejudice that it was a sad and worrisome spectacle. We appear to have created a set of conditions whereby senior civil servants who were mandated with the responsibility to enforce these "best in the world" guidelines did not fully understand what these "best in the world" guidelines involved and how they might be enforced. Most important was that when they stood in violation of same, somehow they were supposed to tell on themselves.
Members do not have to take my word for it. They simply have to look at the findings of the Provincial Auditor.
I say to the Treasurer and his junior partner, the Chairman of Management Board, that is simply not good enough. I cannot believe, given the players involved in that secretariat who are not foolish or apparently incompetent people, that we could have come to such a sad and sorry spectacle as we witnessed in late 1983. To say those are the best and brightest guidelines available is to say nothing in the light of that recent experience.
One of the problems we have on this side of the House is watching the universe unfold as it does. I was not particularly involved in the Astra/ReMor business of 1980, but I was around to hear the minister of the day say a problem of a reasonably serious nature had occurred, but not to worry; it could not and would not happen again because we had a new, intricate system of red flags around to indicate where the trouble might occur and how it might be dealt with under those conditions.
I know the Treasurer will know a lot about this, because unlike those of us over here, he sat as the minister responsible for that operation for a period of 13 months, or whatever it was, back in the early days of his meteoric rise.
I simply say to the members opposite, including the Chairman of Management Board, of what account is it to say these are the best rules and the best guidelines when we saw then that nothing much had changed? A bigger fish entered the pond and cleaned up in about three weeks, or even less, if my memory serves me correctly. It certainly did not instil any confidence in me.
I am sure, if my friend from Woodstock were honest -- I should not say "honest," as he is always honest, but candid -- he would want to agree with me that whole episode did not raise confidence, either in this assembly or in the public beyond, that those good provisions really protected much of the public interest. Now we are left with the hope that the present Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Elgie) will do what our friend the member for London South (Mr. Walker) was clearly incapable of doing.
The Chairman of Management Board says, "I am going to get Price Waterhouse and the Canada Consulting Group in, and we are going to devise better ways and means of implementation." Given the government's past practice, given that we have some 82,000 public servants in this province, if my memory --
Hon. Mr. Grossman: We have 80,000 public servants.
Mr. Conway: The minister tells me it is 80,000. I will accept his assessment. He pays the bills directly, not I.
I have to wonder why we are going outside the public service and spending $300,000 to bring people in to tell this ever-increasing Treasury bench what it is supposed to be doing. It may be useful just to note the fact that it is ever-increasing. I never cease to be amazed that it just gets bigger and bigger.
It is quite obvious some are much more important than others. Notwithstanding the expectant grin on the face of the member for Carleton East (Mr. MacQuarrie), those who are on the front row of this Treasury bench have responsibilities to see to it that they discharge the function for which they have been paid and to which they have been elevated.
8:30 p.m.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: The cabinet is smaller than it was.
Mr. Conway: I want to see the data that support the contention that the cabinet is smaller than it was.
Over the course of the recent recess, I read an article by a distinguished commentator on public affairs, the son of a distinguished former member of this assembly and, as I understand it, the man who is prepared to be nominated in the interests of the national Progressive Conservative Party somewhere in the western reaches of this metropolitan community, Mr. J. Patrick Boyer.
Not too long ago, Mr. Boyer wrote an interesting article in Business Quarterly under the caption "Viewpoint." It was headed "Government Advertising: Some Wheat, Too Much Chaff." It is interesting reading, because one of the areas of government expenditure in recent years that has been quite impressive in terms of the rate of increase is government advertising.
In my part of the province one can scarcely travel a mile without being reminded that Alan Pope is the Minister of Natural Resources. I see the Minister of the Environment has just taken a seat over there. He is doing his part in spending our money advertising himself and all his good works.
I just noticed in the mail the other day we got Environment Ontario Legacy, volume 12, numbers 1 and 2, winter 1983-84. No second-rater is the Minister of the Environment. We are treated to quite a spectacular array of colour photographs in this publication, the circulation of which I have some wonder about. I must say, however, nothing but the best is good enough for the minister.
The Treasurer might tell the workers of Etobicoke and Kapuskasing that they should work through their lunch break, but nobody is going to tell the Minister of the Environment that he ought not to have seven colour photographs of himself on the front pages of Environment Ontario Legacy.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: In the interest of accuracy, the honourable member should mention that the photographs are of projects related to the Ministry of the Environment and are not specifically related to, nor do they identify, the individuals in the pictures.
The member, who is trying to imply that there is some self-aggrandizement going on, is totally misleading this House. I would only suggest that if he were to take a very careful look at those pictures, he would see that each and every picture identified on the cover of Legacy is fundamental to the progress and the prosperity of this province.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I must rule that is not a point of order and there is nothing out of order.
Mr. Conway: I just want to say, as we come together tonight to respond to the Treasurer's invitation to give him more money, we have a right as members of this assembly to ask where the money is going and how is it being spent, in view of the restraint injunction of this government: "Tighten your belt. Toughen up. Spend sparingly instead of lavishly."
Mr. Martel: You have no idea what Bernier is doing, though. He sends framed pictures of himself and the person he is with to everyone.
Mr. Conway: My friend the member for Sudbury East reminds me of the conduct of the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier), the governor of new Ontario, but I cannot speak with his degree of knowledge and accuracy. I just happened to pick up, on the way in tonight, Environment Ontario Legacy, volume 12. This is the legacy of the Treasurer. I have not seen such a shameless, multicoloured display of ministerial performance since I last read a publication of the Treasurer.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: That is gross exaggeration. You are having another one of your flights of fantasy.
Mr. Conway: I do not mean to denigrate in any way the talents of the Minister of the Environment, a man who I understand is picking up the pace in the race. But lest the Minister of the Environment forget himself, in the days before the member for Wilson Heights had exclusive control over who appeared on Metro Morning, I remember this minister in his days as a private member. I can remember some private chats at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in Toronto about the enthusiasm the new member for Sarnia (Mr. Brandt) had in letting people know he was around.
If we are talking about government spending and about government advertising, we might wonder about the need in this day and age for this kind of publication to begin with and the gloss and toss of it all when it is made public.
An hon. member: Larry is taking notes.
Hon. Mr. Pope: You are right. I just changed my vote.
Mr. Conway: I just wanted to say it was a good opportunity for me to lead into Mr. Boyer's comments in "Government Advertising: Some Wheat, Too Much Chaff."
I have the feeling that since we have entered the fourth year of our mandate, we are going to see more advertising rather than less in the next 12 months. Maybe I am wrong; maybe there is not going to be what we witnessed in 1976-77 or 1980-81, but maybe history is going to be repeated.
Mr. Boyer in his observations to the readers of the Business Quarterly had some interesting things to say about the Ontario Progressive Conservative government in talking about government advertising. Let me just quote briefly from what he had to say.
Mr. Wrye: You have changed, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Conway: You have changed indeed, Mr. Speaker. I must say I saw the Deputy Speaker's most recent report to the people of Mississauga North, and it was much more antiseptic and newsworthy than a lot of the Minister of the Environment's efforts.
I have been blinded by the ministerial presence on the front page. But the issue, for the edification of the member for Sarnia, is well put by Mr. J. Patrick Boyer in his recent article, "Government Advertising: Some Wheat, Too Much Chaff." Mr. Boyer says: "In like vein, the Progressive Conservative government in Ontario spent more than $8 million on advertising in a five-month period in 1980, double the amount for the same period in 1979."
Hon. Mr. Brandt: How does that rate per capita with the federal spending? Can the member give us those relative numbers?
Mr. Gillies: Your kissing cousins in Ottawa.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Renfrew North has the floor.
Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, I never cease to be amazed at how anxious my friends opposite are to deflect any and all criticism to another place. Why do they not have the intestinal fortitude of their colleague the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris), who, I understand from reading some of the northern press, has at least thought about running for the other place? If the minister is anxious to be in the other place, I am sure Bud Cullen would be happy to see the Minister of the Environment on the campaign trail this summer or fall. If he wants to be a federal politician, he should go to Ottawa. God bless him and Godspeed.
8:40 p.m.
I am sure Derek Blackburn would be delighted to see the youthful secretary for youth in Ontario, the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies), engage himself in a national campaign to decide who represents that great part of Ontario in the national Parliament. But I take it the member for Sarnia and the member for Brantford have made a choice in that they have come here and they are happy about it. Well, they are here to give an accounting of how it is that --
Mr. Gillies: Responsible government.
Mr. Conway: It could be worse. It could be Brixton. I just say to the Minister of the Environment that he is here to give an accounting of his responsibility.
In his assessment Mr. Boyer noted that the Ontario government of William Davis over a five-month period in 1980 spent $8 million, which was double the amount spent in the same period in 1979. A campaign costing $3 million told Ontarians they had a good life and a pretty province. "Life is good in Ontario," said the jingle. "Preserve it, conserve it, Ontario." He noted the self-promotion, the subliminal and the political overtones of that kind of a campaign, did Mr. J. Patrick Boyer. He simply concluded that as a government which is now spending roughly $60 million to $75 million in advertising itself and its good works, when all bills are in --
Hon. Mr. Brandt: The lowest per capita in Canada.
Mr. Conway: Mr. Boyer noted: "Government cannot operate without communicating with its citizenry. However, the increasing amount of chaff, worthless stuff, which is coming forth from the government advertising and promotional campaigns reduces the effectiveness and credibility of its mainstay informational programs and raises serious issues about government manipulation of public opinion in a free and democratic society."
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Let us get to the good stuff.
Mr. Conway: The member for Sarnia says, "Get to the good stuff." Since I arrived in this place eight and a half years ago, the real stuff, the good stuff, the one big growth industry in this jurisdiction has been the advertising industry, about which the member for Sarnia feels so rightly nervous and about which this government has a lot of accounting to provide.
The advertising of the Ontario government has doubled in the last five years. It doubled because, I am afraid, more and more of the ministers are following the example set by the Treasurer and followed so carefully and so well by the Minister of the Environment that it is very difficult to credit there is any real restraint on that kind of promotional material.
The other day I met an individual who told me one of her responsibilities was to go out and interview people so she could produce the best profile of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. It was amazing what this individual told me. Her job, for which she was paid, presumably, and well paid, was to go around and talk to people, some of them in the opposition, some of them in the farm community, some in Don Mills and others elsewhere in north Frontenac, to find out all the good news about the minister and to put it all together in a glossy presentation to make available to the good people of Ontario. That is apparently what we are spending more and more money on.
If the Minister of the Environment and the Treasurer are expecting this Legislature to take seriously their restraint dictum, they are going to have to be seen to be practising a much tighter management of those kinds of funds. I expect this to be a very difficult job for the Treasurer, because my experience is that when it comes to self-promotion over these past number of years he is what is called triple-A in rating. There is nobody in his class. He is in the fast track, the best track, the real de luxe track.
Mr. Wrye: Larry for leader.
Mr. Conway: Yes. If what my friends in the media tell me about the efforts to which he will go to present a good face or to be credited is accurate, there is no more successful and high-grade promotional campaign anywhere in the public sector of Canada than that which is operated by the Treasurer and Minister of Economics.
I simply say to the Treasurer that I think Mr. Boyer's comments about government advertising, which I recommend to the minister, make for very interesting reading. I would not like to see a decrease in the legitimate promotional efforts of the government of Ontario because I can think of some areas where things are not very well advertised at a purely routine level. I see an awful lot more abuse of literature that at best has a dubious life and an even more questionable circulation.
I know it brings joy to the hearts of certain friends in the advertising and publishing world who are perhaps closer to the government than to the rest of us, but it would be a useful thing for the Treasurer to follow some of the advice of Mr. Boyer, considering we are on the eve of the election term. I would not want to see his restraint pressures in any way compromised by excesses which have been all too evident in the past.
I have just one final word about the Treasurer. I was thinking about the Treasurer the other day when I was imagining succession, whenever it comes over there, and it may be a longer time rather than a shorter time, and I thought what an unhappy situation the Treasurer finds himself in because he is doing well. It is difficult for me to admit this, but our man from St. Andrew-St. Patrick is doing well, but with respect to his future ambitions, he only has one left.
Mr. Foulds: He might run federally too.
Mr. Conway: It was a federal connection that made me think about this. It was said that the longer the Prime Minister of Canada stayed, the more it appeared his presence would guarantee the succession of a certain Toronto lawyer who practises in the firm of McMillan Binch. I do not know whether that is true, but I thought of a corresponding provincial parallel, which is that the longer the member for Brampton (Mr. Davis) holds on, the more likely it is it will be a Grossman/McKeough contest if, as and when it comes.
Mr. Nixon: I say Julian Porter.
Mr. Conway: No, no. Julian Porter has to get a nomination and the member for St. David (Mrs. Scrivener) is very tenacious indeed.
I just thought, alas, the poor Treasurer, if it should be that his seatmate the Premier should hang on so long as to reduce the field to the Treasurer of today versus the super-Treasurer of yesterday, how difficult a political prospect that might be.
The Deputy Speaker: You are just on your way back to the vote on supply.
Mr. Conway: I was just on my way back to the debate.
I wanted to say a word about the Minister of Education, who is not here tonight. She left in a cloud of dust late this afternoon, having been --
Mr. Nixon: She left in a high dudgeon.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Who was driving it?
8:50 p.m.
Mr. Conway: I say a cloud of dust because the exchange between the minister and the leader of the New Democratic Party was, to say the least, a spirited one.
I wanted to say a word about the commission looking at the restructuring of Ontario universities. I know that, as with radio broadcasts in this city where I am involved, the Minister of Colleges and Universities monitors these things very carefully; so it is as good as talking to her directly.
I am concerned that she has it in her mind that we are going to proceed in the coming weeks with, on the one hand a major commission to restructure Ontario universities, the so-called Bovey commission, while at the same time she proceeds unilaterally to implement significantly new structures for operating grants formulas for those 15 Ontario universities involved and while she unilaterally proceeds with the enactment of Bill 42, an act respecting university deficits.
I do not want to upset my House leader, who has been very supportive throughout these recent days with respect to the future of Bill 42, but I do want the minister to know that it would be prudent of her to understand that reasonable people on this side of the aisle imagined that, given her own statements about the lack of urgency about Bill 42 in the fall of 1983, she would do well to set it aside, recognizing that, as she said herself, she does not need it in the here and now and that, as she indicated in the fall, she probably would never have to use it, leaving a lot of us wondering why she was in such a big rush to get it then.
I want to say to the minister in her absence that it would be very prudent and wise of her to allow the Bovey commission to go forward to do its work involving extremely important issues that have to be resolved by the participation not only of the three commissioners but also of the university community and, certainly, the public interested in and involved with university affairs in Ontario.
I want to believe that the Minister of Colleges and Universities will take a prudent, sensible, reasonable course in the coming weeks; that she will not try, as she sometimes does, to ascend a white horse and to ram it through Bill 42, so to speak.
Mr. Nixon: Ascend a white horse and ram it through?
Mr. Foulds: The image that leaps readily to mind staggers the imagination.
Mr. Conway: The problem with my agricultural colleagues is that they invariably turn these antiseptic phrases into some kind of personal reference that is --
Mr. Nixon: The image of Lady Godiva is overpowering.
Mr. Sweeney: Bette on a white horse?
Mr. Conway: There are many in this province who imagine the minister on a white horse, determined to build a fundamentally different educational world.
I see the Treasurer brushing the side of his face. It reminds me that he has had his brush with this minister on educational policy. I will never forget the look on his face in this place about a year and one month ago when he sat with his friends the Attorney General and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs one night at about 10:35. If ever there was a horse-whipped triumvirate, it had to be that.
We knew the debate had been going on about Bill 127. I think it was fair and reasonable for us to have assumed, as everyone over there did, that the Treasurer and the Attorney General, being city members, had a view of Bill 127 that was not exactly the view of the minister. But not even the Treasurer and the Attorney General as a team could stare her down. There were more than a few marks, scars or whatever showing on the defeated luminaries in that case.
I say to the minister that it would be unnecessarily provocative of the stability of this House and it would be unnecessarily threatening to the important work of the Bovey commission for her to imagine that she can or should proceed in the coming weeks with her Bill 42. I thought it would be useful for me in this place tonight to indicate my hope that the commission on university restructuring will be allowed to continue to an early completion of its important mandate. During the course of that period, I expect and hope the minister will set aside that controversial Bill 42 which she has standing in her name on the order paper.
I have another comment on the Bovey commission. It concerns me that the commission has been set to work in the way it has. I remember last fall in the context of the debate on Bill 42 that the minister said late in the session that the answer to some of my questions about what the ministry thinking would be about resolving some of the problems would come to light with a statement she intended to make.
I was off in a far distant part of the province on December 15 struggling in a by-election, the results of which are now public and less satisfying than I would have imagined, when the minister stood in her place and said her response to my concerns about the problems of Bill 42 were going to be responded to by the Bovey commission, a commission she struck on that occasion.
I am worried that the commission has been set to work with a set of terms of reference that are unnecessarily threatening in some respects. I note, for example, that in her December 15 statement the minister imagines faculty renewal to be the cornerstone of her new system, her new operational plan. I think it was unnecessary for that comment to be contained in that statement because it has left quite a few people in the university community worried, if not alarmed, about what ministry intentions are in this respect.
I am concerned as well that the minister imagines in her statement that she somehow is going to be able to get this Bovey commission to report some time in the late summer or early fall of this year, take it and go forward unilaterally and restructure the university system of Ontario. I hope the minister does not really and realistically expect she is going to be allowed that opportunity.
Some of us were around here when the former Minister of Health, now Minister of Industry and Trade, tried to do that with our public hospital sector. I would want this Minister of Colleges and Universities to be spared the ignominy that was ultimately his when, days after he closed Doctors Hospital, the aggressive, upwardly mobile young back-bencher from St. Andrew-St. Patrick opened it. I would not want to see anyone on the government bench embarrassed in a similar fashion.
I would not want to see the Minister of Colleges and Universities do something to Brock University that would in any way compromise that great institution in the Niagara Peninsula, and force a reaction from the members for Brock (Mr. Welch) and St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley). I would not want to see the Minister of Colleges and Universities embarrassed by any of her colleagues in the way she has been embarrassed over the implementation, or at least the discussion of the implementation of the Parrott commission on the reorganization and the restructuring of the university community in northeastern Ontario.
9 p.m.
The minister would be wrong to imagine she is unilaterally going to take that report, such as it will be from the three commissioners, and go forward to implement its findings without any reference to this assembly and the broader community we represent.
For some time now, I have said some clear direction for the post-secondary sector is required. Three years ago, the Premier's blue-ribbon panel, the so-called Fisher group, reported that our universities in this province were imperilled by a period of provincial government underfunding, by a lack of direction and by a lack of support. The minister has now finally stood in her place and indicated that she is prepared to take some kind of action and to set some kind of direction for the critical university community in this province for the years and decades ahead.
Concerned as I am about some of the intentions set out in those terms of reference, I am prepared to give the minister that opportunity. The member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen) and I have been travelling much of the province in recent months talking about some of these issues in terms of our universities. There is great concern. It is a concern that has not been set to rest by any of the minister's reassurances or by the comments contained in last Tuesday's throne speech.
More than anything else, the province expects to have a healthy and vibrant post-secondary community. We are going to depend on it, both for intellectual and economic benefits. I expect the Bovey commission's report, which will probably come after the next provincial election, will give this assembly the opportunity to discuss, in a major public way, the problems, challenges and options we have to rehabilitate our university system.
It has been allowed to deteriorate over the last 10 years because the Davis government at Queen's Park has shown much less interest in supporting and re-establishing a viable, creative, truly strong and diversified university community, the like of which we must have if we are going to effectively deal with the challenges which lie ahead.
I wanted to touch on that. As well, I wanted to encourage the ministers responsible for government spending to indicate they are prepared. For example, the Treasurer is now talking to the province's chief policeman. In the public accounts committee not too many weeks ago, we were treated to the problems the Solicitor General is having with his new telecommunications system; the one that started in 1979-80 at an estimated cost of $20 million and which, at last report, is moving upwards of $71 million. That is not a bad rate of increase in four years; from $20 million to $71 million.
I was talking to a communications expert the other day. "You should ask the Solicitor General," this fellow said, "what it is going to cost to amend the system if that power line, that Hydro corridor, is adjusted in a way that appears likely." I understand there are some very significant impacts of a power corridor --
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Wait a minute. I will ask him.
Mr. Conway: The Treasurer might ask him. In the past three and a half years, the Treasurer has been asked to authorize expenditures fully $40 million more than were imagined when this project began in 1979 or 1980. Before he comes to this assembly and asks for additional funds, some people in the province might very well expect that he fully understands the requests being made of him by people like the province's chief policeman. As I said, according to the Provincial Auditor, he has a telecommunications difficulty on his hands that grows like Topsy at a very rapid rate.
I had intended to make some comments about the people's power corporation tonight. Unfortunately, I am not prepared to do that since I was not able to get the remarks properly organized. I will be doing that on another occasion.
In conclusion, let me say we on this side of the House are not in any way unprepared to vote appropriations that are necessary and proper. But I have to say to this government and to the Treasurer in particular, it does some of us no good at all to be treated to more and more evidence that this 40-year-old government does not seem to know what it is about in these matters: to wit, the Wasaga Beach confession of the Chairman of Management Board; to wit, the telecommunications wonders of the Solicitor General; to wit, the advertising extravagance of the Minister of the Environment, etc.
We expect this government, when we can demonstrate that there have been some very serious questions about the administration of public funds -- let me digress one last time while my friend the member for Carleton leaves the chamber.
I want this assembly to reflect upon what it was we in the eastern part of the province were treated to in the last three or four months about the province's largest community college. The government has been saying, and it was repeated in the throne speech, that unlike other governments it is going to exact a higher and better level of accountability from those agencies, boards, commissions and such subsidiary groups as colleges and universities.
I ask the Treasurer what we are to make of that commitment when we are treated to the spectacle in Ottawa of the province's largest community college, where we now have clear evidence that -- and that is a college, by the way, that was investigated 10 years ago by Mr. Norman Sisco because very serious questions were raised about its administration. A report was done and the conclusions were made public. The concerns that were at the base of the initial inquiry appeared to be entirely justified.
I want the Treasurer to hear this because he probably does not know it. In late 1983, in Ottawa, at a community college that receives most of its $70 million in funds from the Ontario government, we had a senior college administrator who redirected more than $250,000 from one fund in which he had an involvement, on its way to a program at Algonquin College over which he had some responsibility --
Mr. Mitchell: Don't you think it might be a little more prudent not to get into that sort of thing when you know quite well what is going on there.
Mr. Conway: I say to my friend the member for Carleton, I just want to put the facts before the Treasurer, because I want to believe he is serious when he says he is going to enforce a higher and better standard of accountability.
What is the evidence? I am just going to use an example because it is at the heart of much of the initiative and energy of the Minister of Colleges and Universities. I am not saying anything that is not well before the public of our region and, as a result of that, before the province as a whole.
Interjection.
Mr. Conway: I know my friend the member for Carleton wants to express his concerns, which I have to believe are legitimate.
9:10 p.m.
What do we know? We know a senior college official redirected $250,000 from one fund in which he had an involvement, on its way to his Algonquin College financial management program, to a private service corporation of which he was the principal. He had the use of that $250,000 for a period of more than two years, during which time it was also discovered there was in the same financial management program an overpayment of provincial funds in excess of $2 million. He had the use of that $250,000 for all of that two-year period.
One of the questions I had, which was answered not too long ago, was how was it possible we did not know that at Algonquin College $250,000 had gone missing, not for two weeks or two months but for two years? One of the reasons, apparently, is there had been a $2.2-million overpayment to that financial management program. It appears there was a lot wrong at that time, at that level and at that community college.
I am sure the member for Carleton would want me to be fair and reasonable. Let me say in response to that concern, I do not profess to know how this all came about. I have grave suspicions in view of the fact the new president of that college was fired after 14 months of running that $70-million operation. Most of that $70 million comes from us in this assembly. These are very serious questions.
In view of the government's stated ambition to have a better and greater understanding of what was going on in the pursuit of a higher and better standard of accountability, surely no reasonable man or woman in this place could disagree with the idea that it should go forward to the Provincial Auditor saying, "As a man who has the capacity, who has the interest and who has the mandate, you go forward and put to rest these allegations, big and small, serious and not so serious."
What happened when that motion was put? I will tell the members what happened. The motion was not allowed to pass. I sit here today still wondering, how did somebody lay hands on $250,000, redirect it to a private service corporation over which he had control, keep it for a period of two years, use that money for personal development or personal purposes and then, when it was discovered, give it back, the principal but with no interest, and continue to walk the streets of Ontario?
What are we to make, I say to the member for Carleton, of the much-talked-of commitment of the Treasurer and the ministers, particularly the Minister of Colleges and Universities, who say repeatedly, "We will exact a better and higher standard of accountability"?
I do not profess to have all the answers about the Algonquin College problem, but I want at least to know what the reality was. The only way I can think of to do that fairly and quickly is to dispatch the Provincial Auditor. Maybe there are a lot of hidden reasons which will clear up the misunderstanding. If there are, let me be the first to say I will give them a good and complete ear.
When we are treated to this kind of spectacle, I say to the Treasurer and his cabinet colleagues, what are we to make of these promises that they are going to manage better the money we are being asked to vote here tonight and later this session? There is, unfortunately and unhappily, too great a gulf between their promise of better management and their day-to-day performance of their public responsibilities.
I leave my remarks tonight with that caution to the minister who is being advised by my friend the member for Carleton. If he is going to have any credibility with the people of Pembroke, Petrolia or elsewhere, he is going to have to be seen to be functioning at a better level than we have seen in the recent past.
It is not going to be good enough to say in one place, "We are going to better understand, we are going to better account for the billions of dollars we transfer," and at the first sign of trouble in a given institution the government closes ranks and does not allow any kind of assessment that would take us to this better level of understanding.
It is not going to be good enough to be surrounded on an almost daily basis by evidence that the Manual of Administration is being broken, that tendering rules are being either ignored or circumvented, and then to send the Chairman of Management Board off to a service club luncheon in Wasaga Beach to say, "I am going to spend $300,000 to hire management consultants to tell me and the government what I should be doing to give better management of these public accounts."
Mr. Roy: That is not very reassuring.
Mr. Conway: It is not very reassuring, as my friend the member for Ottawa East is quick and right to point out.
Hon. Mr. McCague: It shows a complete lack of understanding.
Mr. Roy: Anybody who understands you has to be a genius.
Mr. Conway: The member for Dufferin-Simcoe says it shows a complete want of understanding. I suggest to the minister in charge of Management Board that if there was any place where one could gather a complete lack of understanding, it was in the public accounts committee of this Legislature in the past six months, as we in the committee and senior bureaucrats on behalf of the government groped, trying to understand who was running the ship, who was keeping the general store Ontario, because there seemed to be a substantial amount of violation that was going on without any discipline or any real accounting.
Hon. Mr. McCague: "There seemed to be," I said.
Mr. Conway: The Chairman of Management Board says, "There seemed to have been." I do not think there was any "seemed to have been" in the auditor's report with respect to the conduct of the former Deputy Minister of Government Services.
Mr. Roy: He resigned just for the fun of it. Sure.
Mr. Conway: As my friend from Ottawa East says, Mr. Gordon presumably resigned for the fun of it.
I say to the member for Dufferin-Simcoe, it is just not good enough to send poor Mr. Carman off to the committee and to leave him floundering about because he does not understand what his minister's role is with respect to enforcing the best and the toughest guidelines anywhere in the free world this side of Manila. That kind of general reassurance does not carry much weight in the light of the developing evidence that there is a pattern --
Hon. Mr. McCague: Even you understand, but you do not want to admit it.
Mr. Conway: I do not understand. I was more confused at the end of that public accounts reference involving the former Minister of Government Services (Mr. Wiseman) than I ever was at the outset, and I say that to the minister in all candour. I listened very carefully to what Mr. Gordon and Mr. Carman had to say. I listened even more carefully to what the minister had to say in this House. I listened very carefully to what the member for London South said in the fall, when the Premier's current press secretary in her previous incarnation detailed in chapter and verse how serious the problem had become under the nose of the member for London South in his various departmental responsibilities.
I want to recall to the Treasurer's mind some of the public utterances of people like Mr. Les Horswill. I was thinking about where Les had gone, another one of the best and the brightest, to the Treasurer's staff.
Hon. Mr. McCague: He is saying the same about you.
Mr. Conway: I was being flattering, I thought. Mr. Les Horswill is in the Treasurer's office. He is going to get the reputation he had a few years ago: stealing all the good ones from all quarters.
Mr. McClellan: What happened to the Minister of Agriculture and Food's staff? Where did David Surplis go?
Mr. Conway: They have gone in search of advisory committees.
9:20 p.m.
Mr. Horswill said yes, it was his view that some of those contracts the member for London South had let without tender to his London hit men had, upon reflection, violated the spirit and the letter of the Manual of Administration.
The Chairman of Management Board does not seem to remember what Mr. Horswill said on that occasion. Perhaps he has forgotten that the member for London South was not only a minister in violation of the Manual of Administration but also was at the time, and probably still is, a member of Management Board of Cabinet itself. At that time, the member for London South said, "I am doing this because it is my understanding that just about everybody else in the cabinet is doing it as well."
I ask the chairman, what kind of confidence does he suppose that instils in people like the man who is sitting in the chair? What does he think the member for York Centre (Mr. Cousens) feels as a right-wing Conservative when he reads in the public press that the member for London South is breaking the rules of the Manual of Administration because, apparently, he figures everybody else is doing it as well?
My leader and the member for Rainy River have pointed out that there is more and more evidence to support the contention of the member for London South that the Manual of Administration is more notable for its avoidance than for its application. I say to the Chairman of Management Board, that is not a fantasy.
Hon. Mr. McCague: Maybe we should have lunch some day. It might take two hours, but I might get through to you.
Mr. McClellan: Who is going to pay for the lunch? Never mind -- the public trough.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: The two of them at the public trough.
Mr. Roy: The Chairman of Management Board is supposed to be the watchdog of the public purse and he is not.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): Order. The member for Renfrew North will not allow himself to be distracted by these interruptions unless he wants me to take over.
Mr. Roy: He wants to hide every time there is a problem.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Conway: I want to note that I think I have been invited to dinner.
Mr. Foulds: No; lunch.
Mr. Conway: I agree with the New Democratic Party that nobody on this side of the House can be bought off with a free lunch.
Mr. Wildman: Dinner, perhaps?
Mr. Conway: Dinner maybe, but not lunch. That welfare diet has impaired the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston) for life, I am afraid.
However, I say to the Chairman of Management Board that it was all too obvious in the past six months that no one was minding the store. His senior staff did not know what they were about, they did not appear to --
Hon. Mr. McCague: Pardon? You are challenging my senior staff?
Mr. Conway: I sat in the standing committee on public accounts and heard as much.
Mr. Roy: We heard the minister's statement in the House.
Mr. Conway: As the member for Ottawa East said, we heard the minister's statement in the House. Who can forget that? Perhaps the ultimate proof of my point is that in the middle of the great controversy involving the member for Lanark (Mr. Wiseman) and the member for London South in November 1983, a letter arrived from on high signed by the Premier, clarifying the Manual of Administration.
Surely the Premier's letter of November 16 has to be understood as a want of confidence in what the minister and Management Board had been about for these past number of months. I simply say it is not good enough. If the minister wants more money, he is going to have to give better management of his responsibility.
Hon. Mr. McCague: You challenge them?
Mr. Conway: I am sorry if I have upset the otherwise quiet Chairman of Management Board.
Hon. Mr. McCague: It clearly demonstrates that what your leader said the other day was that he does not trust the civil service.
Mr. Conway: I will tell the minister this about the public service. There are some people in the public service who create difficulties for members of this assembly. I am reminded, for example, of the former Assistant Deputy Minister of Tourism and Recreation, Mr. John Laschinger, when he was found to have been in breach --
Mr. R. F. Johnston: You really touch nerves with these guys when you do that. Look at the looks you get.
Mr. Conway: Who can forget John Laschinger? John Crosbie wishes he could. Who can forget John Laschinger coming before a committee of this Legislature and saying, "Too bad"?
Mr. Wildman: "That is the way I did it, and I would do it again." That is what he said.
Mr. Conway: Exactly. The member for Algoma supplies the requisite quotation. Unrevised and unrepentant was John Laschinger. We know you could not find a more neutral, more antiseptic, more nonpartisan public servant this side of Hughie Segal. We know Mr. Laschinger would have no partisan interests whatsoever. But in a very useful way my friend from Algoma reminds us all of what kind of act of contrition the former Assistant Deputy Minister of Tourism and Recreation was prepared to offer the committee of this Legislature that was inquiring into the misadventures that had been commented upon by the Provincial Auditor.
John Laschinger gave the back of his hand to the auditor and the standing committee on public accounts. To the auditor he said, "To you and the committee, the devil can take the hindmost." I say to the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet, what are we to do with that kind of performance?
I remember being involved with the McMichael Canadian Collection's financial difficulties relating to the renovations, which quite frankly none of us could really quarrel with. What did we see there? The cabinet said: "You will be given roughly $4.5 million to $5 million to do what we think has to be done in the here and now. I know you want $11 million, but we cannot afford it. We are going to give you $5 million."
What did the McMichael group do? They certainly seemed to give the impression of saying: "Those poor people at the Legislature, those hicks, those cultural philistines do not understand the great good works we are about here. We have to do it this way." Notwithstanding the direction of the cabinet of Ontario to spend $5 million, they apparently went and spent what they intended to spend all along and then submitted the bills.
I am not saying that for $11 million we did not get a lot of improvements up at the McMichael Canadian Collection. What I am saying is that the clear directive of the Ontario government was flouted by one of its own agencies. Of that, there is all kinds of proof. That, I hope, is clear enough for the Chairman of Management Board.
To him I want to say that his reputation throughout this place, certainly with me up until the fall of 1983, was that of a shrewd, tough, tough-minded protector of the public purse.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Antiseptic.
Mr. McClellan: Dyspeptic.
Mr. Conway: Dyspeptic and dyspepsia are what I imagined in relation to other ministers.
Hon. Mr. McCague: Do not change your mind, that is all. You were right in the first place.
9:30 p.m.
Mr. Conway: The Chairman of Management Board seems to be very nervous on this point. He has had his chance. He was repeatedly invited in the fall to stand in this House, take his place and say: "There is about me the evidence or the allegation of misappropriation, of violation of the government guidelines as set out in the Manual of Administration. So there is no misunderstanding, ladies and gentlemen, I am responsible. I will see to it that the best of guidelines are understood and implemented. So there can be no confusion, I will issue new clear directives."
But what did we get from the Chairman of Management Board? We got a performance that made me think of a referee in a professional wrestling match. He was being distracted by every imaginable irrelevance while the combatants were gouging each other's eyes out in flagrant violation of common decency, to say nothing of the rules of the game.
We were treated to the spectacle of the gatekeeper being duped, not once but daily. In the final analysis, what do we have? We have a plaintive Chairman of Management Board going off to Wasaga Beach and saying, "I need Price Waterhouse and the Canada Consulting Group to explain to me and the government what I should be doing."
That seems to be a very unhappy and almost unbelievable act of defeat by the government in general and by the minister in particular. I thought we paid the minister some $70,000 to crack the whip. I did not get an impression in the past six months that any kind of a whip was being cracked.
Hon. Mr. McCague: You love that $70,000 figure. Do you tell them back home you get $55,000?
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Conway: No. I tell them I get about $48,000 to $50,000.
Hon. Mr. McCague: A little low, but that is all right.
Mr. Conway: If the minister has done the accounting, he should send it over. I always defer to the evidence.
The evidence of the minister's stewardship in the past year has been the evidence of incompetence, of noninvolvement, of "I wash my hands of my responsibility." The price we now pay for that is a $300,000 contract to the Canada Consulting Group and Price Waterhouse to define the minister for himself.
I am sorry about that. I had hoped there would be a better understanding. Those of us on this side who have watched this minister in earlier incarnations had expected more. There were great expectations that were not fulfilled. To the eager, salivating back-benchers I say that if his performance does not improve, even the member for High Park-Swansea (Mr. Shymko) may have his day sooner rather than later.
Mr. Gillies: While you are apologizing, apologize for the rest of your speech.
Mr. Roy: It is an excellent speech. He does not have to apologize. You may have to apologize.
Mr. Gillies: It is always good to see you on such a rare occasion.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Roy: Call him to order.
The Acting Speaker: All and sundry, order. The member for Renfrew North has the floor, and please refer to honourable members by their seats.
Mr. Conway: I want to say to the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) that it would have been a lot easier for me to come here tonight and speak to an appropriation that gave a real-life commitment on behalf of this government to the youth employment initiatives spoken of by the Premier two months ago. There would be nothing easier, nicer or more satisfying for me or for many members on this side to come here to vote moneys for this Treasurer to go forward and to put in place more job opportunities for the young people of this province.
I want to say to the member for Brantford that maybe we are all blessed by the fact that nobody has really thought about the speech from the throne and what it did not tell us about what this government has not done for the 163,000 unemployed young people, really the 225,000 unemployed young people, in this province.
I want to say to the member for Brantford that it would make me feel a lot better about what his talking did on the other side if I had before me in late March 1984 some firm evidence that he was being listened to by his Premier and his Treasurer and if we had something concrete and specific instead of just these promises, instead of having the Premier go off to the Empire Club three, four, five or six weeks ago and raise great expectations about what his government was going to do to create jobs for the 200,000-odd unemployed young Ontarians.
I do not know how to read the speech from the throne in any other way than to take it as a breach of faith and almost a betrayal of trust for members of the government party, from the member for Brantford up to the Premier, to have gone around in recent weeks and months and to have raised expectations about what we might expect, to have promised the moon and to have not yet even delivered a thin slice of rancid cheese. There was nothing in the throne speech.
Mr. Gillies: It is all there.
Mr. Conway: I want to see the colour of the member for Brantford's money. I want to be able to go to Brantford and Unionville, and to a lot of other places from York East to Renfrew North, to say to the thousands of young unemployed that the Premier meant what he said.
Mr. Gillies: You will see it.
Mr. Conway: We have been waiting for weeks and months and there is absolutely nothing yet.
Interjection.
Mr. Conway: The minister says we are going to be impressed.
One thing we got in the speech from the throne was the admission from this government that its 20 years of experimentation with education in this province has come to an end because it was a failure. The very least I would have expected from the government in this speech from the throne was some clear and understandable compensation for the young men and women of this province who will carry with them for the rest of their lives the burden of the failure of the Davis experimentation in education.
There is nothing but vague promises, recycled commitments, more committees and a one-minister approach to the problems and opportunities of youth unemployment. Maybe the member for Brantford is the man of tomorrow, maybe the Treasurer has the answers, but how long are we going to have to wait? That is the question to which the young men and women, unemployed in greater than ever numbers in this province today, want an answer.
I say to the member for Brantford, in his capacity as the parliamentary assistant for youth responsibilities or whatever, it is not good enough simply to say, "Wait and see." Wait and see for how much longer? That is the promise these people were invited to fulfil two and a half years ago: "Come. Vote for Phil Gillies in Brantford, and Bill Davis and Phil Gillies will do it."
The young people of Renfrew North are saying: "They have done it all right. They have done it to me. They have put me out of school, they have left me out of work and they blame it all on some other jurisdiction -- Ottawa, Tasmania or the star wars of Ronald Reagan.
I have to say to the Treasurer and to the member for Brantford that it is not good enough; in this case the old "tomorrow" politics of those who would procrastinate instead of making policy is not good enough. Time will not buy an answer. I cannot believe they are no more serious than this throne speech would indicate.
9:40 p.m.
I wanted to believe the Premier six weeks ago when he said we will do something. There is nothing as we head into the spring and early summer. It is only a matter of weeks before these young people in record numbers are going to be leaving the colleges and universities of this province to get employment either on a full-time or part-time basis. What do we have to offer them?
I ask my friend the member for Brantford to read the speech from the throne. If he can point out in that speech something concrete I can take to the 20-odd per cent of the unemployed young people in Renfrew county, then I would be delighted to take that and offer it up to them.
I know government cannot be expected to provide all the answers. I know the fiscal resources of this province are not as flush as they once were. But it is simply not good enough to wash one's hands, as the government appears to have done in this most recent speech from the throne, particularly in view of the fact that about six weeks ago it raised great expectations at the prime ministerial level.
I say to the Treasurer that when the last allocation was made to the Ontario career action program, which I think was roughly in the amount of $2 million and came in January of this past year -- they made a $2-million additional allocation to OCAP, which I entirely support -- they did so without any fanfare. They did not issue a press release. There was no indication to anybody out there looking for a job that there was going to be some additional help and one might reapply for the OCAP program which had long since been oversubscribed.
To give this government credit, it has over the course of recent years developed some creative, helpful programs, but everyone in this chamber knows what the problem is. They will not fund those programs to anything like the level the province requires at this critical juncture.
OCAP has been without money for most of the past 18 months. OCAP has cried out. I know people in the government who have knocked at the door of the Treasury saying: "It works and it creates jobs for young people. Give us more money and we will deal with the ever-worsening youth unemployment problem in Ontario." What do we get? We get from the Treasurer no money for a program that works. When there is an additional $2 million, there is no announcement of whatever kind.
I would have thought that somebody somewhere would have thought it worth while perhaps just to issue a short press release to our local gallery if nothing else. They may have done it, but I certainly could not find it.
I have to say to the Treasurer and to his friend the member for Brantford that it is simply not good enough to tell the hundreds of thousands of young unemployed Ontarians, many of whom have been on the street for months and years, that they are going to have to wait just that much longer. People have waited for all these many months to see the colour of that money, to see the character of that initiative. I reiterate, it is not good enough to say that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow they might get an answer. The tragedy of youth unemployment stares us all in the face today.
I conclude by saying the time for action has arrived. The moment the government wants to show its hand, the moment it wants to bring forward new initiatives or additional funding for proved and effective old initiatives is the day this Liberal Party, and I presume others, will be very pleased to come here and give the government the authorization it requires to make those programs work and to get those young people into the economy doing something productive and useful for themselves and for their community.
Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, it really is a rather bizarre exercise we are engaged in this evening. We have before us a motion of the Treasurer that the Treasurer of Ontario be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants and other necessary payments pending the voting of supply for the period commencing April 1, 1984, and ending June 30, 1984, such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation following the voting of supply. This means, if I calculate correctly, that we will be voting this evening about $6 billion for the Treasurer to expend on a temporary basis over a three-month period. That seems to me to be a fair chunk of money.
This party will be voting for the motion so the public service of this province can go about doing its job. But it is really rather bizarre when we have barely a quorum from all parties of the House to be debating the expenditure of $6 billion. It really is rather bizarre when we get up to discuss a matter of considerable public importance, the spending of a quarter of the government's budget and the authorization thereof, that we have no statement from the Treasurer. We have no interim statement about the state of the province's finances before this House, even though we get it in printed form on a quarterly basis via the mails. We have no definition of what the minister considers necessary. Yet, before the evening concludes, I suspect we will have passed in one fell swoop an authorization for a minister of the crown to dispense $6 billion.
That seems to be a matter of substance, a matter of some importance and a matter with which we should deal perhaps more seriously than we have either in the past or than we do in the present.
I would suggest, as a matter of modest minor reform, that whenever the Treasurer comes in for interim supply he should give us, not a full budget statement but a statement of the expenditures he sees as being necessary; he should give us a brief outline of the province's finances. It need not be a statement as lengthy as the one we have just heard from the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, but it could be a matter of some substance so we could debate in this House the budgetary and economic matters of this province with the seriousness they deserve.
I will not be speaking at great length, but I do want to put four or five matters to the Treasurer briefly. First of all, I want to remind him that if there has been both a political and a substantive failure on his part in the past year, it has been exemplified and typified by the Sensenbrenner Hospital situation, in which the Treasurer, who, I believe, initially had good intentions in meeting the particular circumstances at this hospital and felt he could, found ultimately he had to fail in his commitment to the Sensenbrenner Hospital workers, to this House and, I think, to himself.
I do not have the newspaper clipping in front of me, but he said publicly in an interview -- I believe it was with the Globe and Mail -- that this was the most difficult thing he had had to cope with in his short tenure as Treasurer, and I believe that.
I want to underline in as antiseptic and unprovocative terms as possible that it was a failure. I submit that it was not a failure because of a lack of goodwill on the part of the Treasurer; it was a failure of the basic legislation. That was what this party argued against alone in this House for some two years.
9:50 p.m.
Secondly, I would like to point out, not at the enormous length of the previous speaker, that there has been some slipping of the grip on fiscal management and financial responsibility on the part of the ministry of this government. Perhaps the deputy leader of the Liberal Party went on slightly too long about his examples. Perhaps they were old hat in the sense that they have all been raised before. But it really is quite bizarre that a government that prides itself as the fiscal manager of the province and as being fiscally responsible could have the series of irresponsible expenditures we have had, from the Algonquin College fiasco to Alan Gordon's shenanigans, whatever they were.
It is extremely bizarre to have the minister who is supposed to be the fiscal manager par excellence, the man in charge of the purse-strings, the Chairman of Management Board, absolving himself of responsibility when the procedures of the government with regard to tendering expenditures are not adhered to. I suggest it really is quite bizarre that, five years or more after his appointment, he has not just one, but a set of consulting firms to tell him what his job is.
I want to spend the majority of my time this evening talking directly to the Treasurer about his new budget. I am frankly quite appalled by the indications we have that the Treasurer will not be bringing in a new budget until late May. People on government benches and some people who pride themselves as being economists were saying late in the fall that the recovery was beginning to take hold, but already in the spring of 1984 they are saying the recovery is faltering, interest and mortgage rates are rising and all the bugaboos that were supposed to be the signs of the great recession in 1981 are rearing their heads again.
We see that so-called recovery, which has never been an employment recovery, faltering; yet we have no statement by the Treasurer and no initiative taken by this government to have an early budget, simply from a commonsense, practical, business point of view.
I am even more appalled that the Treasurer, after refusing to bring in a winter works budget or a mini-budget in the fall or early winter, is now giving himself the luxury of waiting until late May to bring in a genuine budget. I suggest to the Treasurer that is simply not good enough. Going on interim supply, which we are voting this evening, is not good enough.
What we need is a new budget that does not merely tinker with a few points in the taxation system here and there or give a few thousand dollars to the Ontario career action program here and there. We need a fundamental beginning of a restructuring of our province's economy. Unless the Treasurer is willing to tackle the fundamental structural problems of the unemployment of our youth, our elderly and women, he will have failed not only the Sensenbrenner Hospital workers, but he will have failed as the Treasurer of this province.
When he took the job, he took on an enormous task and he has yet to show a sign that he is up to that task. By postponing the budget that long, it seems to me he is postponing the inevitable day when he must come through and come on to the line.
I want very briefly to put on the record some of our concerns about older workers. There are at least 32,000 unemployed workers in Ontario aged 55 or more. When the leader of the New Democratic Party raised the question with the Minister of Labour this afternoon, the minister indicated that although he himself admitted his answer was inadequate, things were getting better. Things were getting better because in 1982, 49,385 employees were laid off in 346 establishments because of plant closures, while in 1983, only 19,143 employees were laid off in 186 establishments.
I do not consider that progress because what we have there is a cumulative thing. Sure, fewer people were laid off through plant closures in 1983, but it is not an economic recovery when we still have 186 establishments of 50 or more employees closing down and that number of employees laid off. I suggest we are looking at some 68,000 employees laid off over two years and that in the majority of those cases they were older workers.
The greatest single failure of this government is not that it has failed to develop any programs but that it has failed to do even the thing it says it does so well, which is to keep an accounting of what happens to those workers. There has been no tracking of those workers. There has been no follow-up to find out what happens to those men and women who so tragically lose their jobs because of the great recession of 1981-84.
We in this party have outlined in other places our suggestions for meeting the problem of older workers. Very briefly, it requires a three-pronged attack. First, it requires fundamental pension reform on the part of this government -- something the Treasurer has dabbled in between sessions -- so people over 50 who are laid off and who have no hope of getting another job can have a full pension.
If that is going to happen, we need to have bridging arrangements so they can have those pensions. We need to have supplementary pensions so those men and women can live and still have productive and useful lives of dignity. There are a good many of those people who, with their experience, may not be able to get another job but can do a tremendous amount in contributing to our community in terms of voluntary work -- coaching minor hockey properly, being involved in horticultural societies, doing work around their homes and so on.
10 p.m.
The pension provisions that have been outlined by my leader, by me and by the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie) -- and I know the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) will talk about them because of his own particular interest in the issue -- are serious suggestions about meeting that structural problem.
However, I also want to say that we should not automatically write off people over 50 who have been laid off. We must, if they so wish, make every effort to retrain them for jobs that exist. At present, most of the retraining we are engaged in is for nonexistent jobs. If we have any single quarrel with the government's fiscal and financial policy, it has to do with its failure and the federal Liberal government's failure -- the kissing cousins, because the federal Liberal government is the kissing cousin of this government, not the party to my right and to its right -- to aim at full employment as an objective of our society. Government should take a leadership role.
Second, I want to talk about youth unemployment.
Mr. McClellan: The Liberal Party's friend Jimmy Coutts knows all about youth unemployment. Is it true the members are supporting Jimmy Coutts for the leadership?
Mr. Foulds: I hear that is true, but I do not want to get diverted into the kind of speech made by the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway). Much as I like engaging in the banter about personalities, I would like to deal with policy and substance.
I suggest that all of the suggestions made by the honourable party to my right and by the potential leader of the federal Liberal Party, the federal Liberal candidate in Spadina -- the never-to-be member, by the way -- with regard to youth unemployment, both ideologically and geographically will meet only one tenth of the job requirements of our young unemployed in this province.
There are 163,000 unemployed young people in this province and all of the much-ballyhooed programs of the party to my right and of the candidate for the Liberal Party in the federal Spadina riding will meet about 16,000 jobs or one tenth of the requirement. Some program. That is all ballyhoo and no substance.
Ontario is failing the young men and women of this province. The costs of youth unemployment are staggering in emotional terms just as the costs of unemployment for older workers are staggering in emotional terms. I want to say something else. Older workers may become bitter because they are thrown on the scrap heap after giving a productive life to our society, and they have every right to be sad and bitter. But think of the bitterness of youth who are thrown on the scrap heap before they have had a chance even to contribute to the economy of this nation.
I would suggest the Catholic bishops struck a chord in the provincial and national consciousness a year ago last January when they talked about joblessness. They understood, as we understand -- I hope members of all parties understand -- that men and women, young and old, have worn the dignity of a job as a badge of honour. What has happened is this government and the federal Liberal government have taken away even the opportunity for those men and women, young and old, to have that badge of honour.
If there has been a fundamental failure on the part of the Davis administration from its inception in 1971, it is its failure in that regard because this government did have the wherewithal in budgetary terms, in resources and in the opportunity to restructure the taxation system in those growth periods. If it had taken advantage of that opportunity, we would not now be facing this serious economic crisis and this serious social crisis.
It is instructive that on the licence plates of this province in the 1960s there was the little phrase, "Province of Opportunity." It is instructive that has changed from "Province of Opportunity" to "Yours to discover." But it is yours to discover what? It is yours to discover disillusionment, yours to discover anger, yours to discover unemployment, yours to discover a lack of housing. That is what this government has done to the province of opportunity.
What angers me about this government is it has not only failed as managers of the books of the province -- it has failed to be fiscally responsible by encouraging high living, irresponsibility and sleight of hand in fiscal management at the provincial level in terms of the dollars and cents that are given it in its stewardship by the taxpayers of this province -- but it has also failed to manage the economy.
It has preferred the short-term gains of political expediency and political advantage to the long-term benefit of the people of the province and, frankly, to the long-term benefit of its own political longevity.
We all make jokes about the longevity of the Tory party. The government party makes jokes in its sense of self-satisfied smugness, the opposition parties with a sense of rather cynical fun in order to withstand the pain of the Tory longevity, but the Tory party is rotten. It is dying. It will collapse. It will collapse simply because of the kind of smug reaction by the member for High Park-Swansea. It will die and collapse simply because it has not been creative enough, has not been imaginative enough and has not been courageous enough in coming to grips with the economy. It has squandered our inheritance.
I do not have to point out the failings of the opposition parties. That is the government's job and it will do that. I admit there have been failings on the part of the opposition parties. Our greatest single failure has been the failure to take over the reins of government.
10:10 p.m.
I readily admit that, but having been entrusted with the government for so long, this government has failed to meet its responsibilities. When it gets into the kind of second-rate, noncreative, public relations response, when it gets into the patronage response, so if there is a problem there is a "throw money at it" response, the politics of failure become apparent in a time of restraint because the government ain't got no more money to throw at the problem.
The Treasurer is going to have one heck of a difficult job when he finally does have the courage to bring down this budget at the end of May. He will not, unless he is a man of extraordinary skill, have the courage to bring in a budget which fundamentally restructures the taxation system in this province, which fundamentally gets taxation off the backs of the people who earn between the minimum amount of income tax payment and $30,000 to $32,000 a year.
There are a few little statistics that are really quite appalling. Since the last election in 1981, the provincial government has increased the average family's taxes by $700. In last year's budget, for every $1 in increased family taxes, the government provided tax breaks of 14 cents. For every $1 increase in corporate taxes, the government provided corporate tax breaks of $5.11. Would that we as individual citizens could have that kind of break.
A family of four with one wage earner pays about $5,000 in income tax if he or she earns $25,000 in this province and country. A similar taxpayer who earns $25,000 a year in investment income from the sale of corporate securities, not in wage income, would pay a tax of $1,500.
There were 740 people in this country who earned more than $100,000 a year and paid not one cent of federal income tax. It is that kind of pushing that my colleagues to the right should be doing to their colleagues at the federal level to reform the taxation system. It is that kind of reform the Treasurer should be pushing to the federal Treasurer.
The last three budgets have been punitive in that they have affected Ontario families. They have increased liquor taxes and tobacco taxes, the so-called sin taxes. They have increased the Ontario health insurance plan premiums, personal income tax, sales tax, gasoline taxes. All those have been raised.
The Treasurer must take the opportunity of an early budget to signal his intention to change from the mean-spirited approach of his predecessor. It really was an amazing act that his predecessor was able to conduct, with his ideological infatuation with Reaganomics and the kind of nice-guy image he has. He now uses his opportunity to jet around the world trying to hustle the sale of Ontario in the boardrooms of the world, not just the boardrooms of the province.
Instead of putting all our eggs in one basket, what we need to do from time to time in this province is to develop for our country those products for which there is a domestic market and to use that domestic market, which we often call import replacement, as a basis for hustling on the international market.
The obvious example is mining machinery. We are probably the third largest, if not the second largest, mining jurisdiction in the world, and we remain the largest importer of mining machinery in the world. In the rapid transit area the province has developed a crown corporation to manufacture rapid transit equipment, which it is hustling all over the world. Why in blazes can we not do the same in mining machinery? If the government needs to go into a consortium with the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia as well because it wants their market, then why not do it? There is here both a natural domestic market and a natural export market.
I will take this example of import replacement and another simple one. Do members know that somehow this country is unable to produce thumbtacks? There is not one manufacturer of thumbtacks in Canada. I do not believe the people of Ontario and of Canada are incapable of manufacturing thumbtacks; I do not believe we have to import thumbtacks from Britain, as we do for Ontario.
The thumbtacks that we and all of the government services order for our offices are imported from Britain. I do not believe we are incapable of producing thumbtacks in Ontario, and I suggest this is an area where a good free-enterprising, entrepreneurial soul could get a government loan or grant to develop a full-fledged industry right here in Ontario.
I use those two simple but direct examples: mining machinery and thumbtacks. We do not produce either in the way we could and should to serve both a domestic market and an international market.
I would suggest to the Treasurer that in his upcoming budget, which I would urge him to move ahead by at least a month and bring in by the end of April, he should look at the development of public housing. Public housing is one of the best investments this province could make. It both supplies a real need for the people of this province -- socially assisted housing in the nonprofit sector, public housing, co-operative housing -- and gives an immediate boost to the economy in supplying jobs for both older and younger workers.
Chronic care beds in nonprofit community-based homes, such as that run by the sisters of St. Joseph's in Thunder Bay --
Mr. Conway: A great organization.
Mr. Foulds: Not only are they a great organization, but they happen to run a great chronic care home, which they themselves subsidize to the tune of $250,000 a year. They provide first-rate and caring service. That kind of chronic care facility not only could meet a needed social goal and produce jobs but also could reduce the overall cost of our health care system because so many of the active treatment beds in our health care system are occupied by people who could be more adequately, more thoughtfully and more caringly looked after in a genuine nonprofit nursing or chronic care home. Those are only two concrete suggestions.
10:20 p.m.
I want to conclude by saying that unless there is a fundamental restructuring of the province's budget -- not just a fundamental restructuring of the process and of our taxation system but also a fundamental attack on structural youth unemployment and unemployment of older workers -- this Treasurer and this government will have failed.
I suggest that would be a tragedy, not merely for the political ambitions of the Treasurer and for the longevity of the Conservative government but for the people of Ontario. I suggest that while we are voting $6 billion tonight, the Treasurer give us an indication and a commitment to the things I have outlined in my speech this evening.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I have listened carefully for most of the evening to the contributions made by the honourable members opposite.
I should like to begin by pointing out that the member for Port Arthur has speculated the budget date would be in the latter part of May. I want to reassure him that as things look currently, I will be looking at a somewhat earlier date than that, although I acknowledge that while I would ordinarily prefer a late April date, we will probably end up around the traditional date for budgets. I suspect it will not be far off the dates of the last couple of budgets.
Quite frankly, I do not want to bring it in earlier because some of the economic indicators are causing us to look carefully to make sure that our predictions, as set out in my prebudget statement in December, are still going to be on target. In that regard I should also point out that while we want to do that, we are, as of today, still quite confident in what I consider to be fairly good and optimistic numbers in the economic forecasts for this current year. There is obviously some concern about the interest rate situation. Notwithstanding the events of the past couple of weeks, we are still confident this is going to be a good year for growth in Ontario.
As to the remarks of the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, without getting into the entire debate again and without joining a debate which no doubt will be joined many other times during this session with regard to the whole public accountability issue and the good works of the Chairman of Management Board and his entire operation, I think one has to be fair to the 80,000 civil servants in the province who are loyal, dedicated and working under a system that has handled, and always does handle, a great number of transactions every day, every month and every year, and does so efficiently and effectively.
As to my colleague the Chairman of Management Board, he has worked with me and my predecessor in a way that remains the envy of governments and provincial and federal auditors throughout this country. The scrutiny we are currently undergoing, both internally and externally in the light of the consultant study, is one that, as my colleague has said, is welcome because we are convinced that by any measure and any standard, the current operating methods, mechanisms, checks and balances will prove to be the best developed anywhere.
Mr. Bradley: The best in the world.
Mr. Conway: This side of Manila.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Certainly this side of Ottawa; there is no question about that.
Mr. McClellan: They are rubbing their hands in the back row. Are you running for Ottawa too?
Hon. Mr. Grossman: No, never; that is a commitment.
Mr. Conway: Unlike Roy, you could find a seat.
Mr. Bradley: Why did you torpedo Laura Sabia then?
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I do not even know when the Spadina meeting was held. I could not do that.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Conway: Jim Coutts will look pretty good between Ying Hope and Dan Heap.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: Even the member for Renfrew North would look good in that. I acknowledge that.
On interim supply, for those who are interested, the member for Port Arthur has suggested the interim supply discussion should be preceded by a short statement by the Treasurer presenting the motion, setting out, as I took notes here, the need for the supply motion, the amounts of moneys that would be required and a brief outline of the state of the economy and finances. I think that is a fairly reasonable suggestion.
I must say I have treated the interim supply time as time for the opposition to address its concerns in the light of Ontario Finances, which comes out quarterly, and all the information that is available through all the traditional sources. However, if the members opposite feel a statement of some sort might be helpful, then I think that is a reasonable suggestion. We shall try to accommodate that suggestion with the next motion for interim supply.
Finally, the member for Port Arthur has raised, as has the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, the traditional and important employment questions as they relate both to young people and to older employees who have lost their jobs because of the recession. These are the areas where we are working hard right now. We are looking at federal support which has been promised. In fairness, while it is slow and clearly is not the amount we had expected and anticipated in the federal budget, none the less some assistance may well be available We are working with them. As I say, it is going more slowly than I had hoped, but we are trying to work the federal programs into ours in such a way that we do not get into the traditional overlap.
One of the continuing problems in the youth employment area is that the more we review these programs, the more we find there is an absolute plethora of programs, some of them too narrowly defined to fit all the client groups they tried to fit when they started. Between federal programs, provincial programs and programs run through the community colleges, even with the help of the youth employment counselling centres, it is my view at present that a great deal of effort has to go into co-ordinating those programs, sorting out which should remain intact and broadening them so we not only get our young people understanding the programs but also match the programs to the real problems out there.
As I deduce the real problems, one thing pops out: for example, 20 per cent of young people comprise 50 per cent of all the days spent on youth unemployment. That indicates the core of the problem and it indicates what we are doing right now in trying to shift whatever moneys we have into that core area.
Mr. Conway: You have some excellent programs. They are just without money.
Hon. Mr. Grossman: I say to the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, they are not without money. In point of fact, our efforts on the good programs are concentrated on coming behind and making sure not only that they are well funded but also that they are well known, because one of the problems we have, I suspect, is that they fill needs for people who are not aware of them. When they are aware of them, as the member saw with the Ontario career action program, we simply put the money into the program to fill the need.
In any event, I urge the House to vote for this interim supply motion as we work down towards what I hope will be a budget addressing the points raised by both opposition members.
Motion agreed to.
10:30 p.m.
JUNCTION TRIANGLE
Mr. Speaker: As provided for in standing order 28(b), the member for Parkdale (Mr. Ruprecht) has given notice of dissatisfaction with an answer of the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Brandt). I now recognize the member for Parkdale.
Mr. Ruprecht: Mr. Speaker, the residents of the Junction triangle area have been exposed to the grave dangers of chemical spills and air emissions, both in the sewers and in the air. I am not very happy with the answer that was given to me by the minister when he was unable to tell us who was responsible for the most recent dangerous air emission that hospitalized some students and created grave health dangers to teachers and the ice rink guard at this site.
I would like to know why the minister is unable to trace the emissions which poisoned the teachers, students and the whole area. I was told by the minister's staff that the ministry would determine the culprit early in April and be able to identify the emission in order to assure or give some guarantees to the residents that this is not a recurring item. The minister got up on Friday and said, "We are not in a position to tell anything about this incident." When we look at the history over the years, we find there has been one chemical spill after another.
We know there have been polychlorinated biphenyls in municipal sewers close to the area. We know, as the minister well knows, some schools had to be shut down and that kids and other residents had to be taken out of the area. He is well aware that because of the tradition of the Junction triangle the residents are very adamant now that this no longer occur because the promise was made by the previous Minister of the Environment that these spills would no longer take place.
I am quoting from a letter by the former Minister of the Environment in which he stated that the "discharging of highly odorous materials of the type in question will not be tolerated by my ministry."
There is existing legislation in place, both in the Environmental Protection Act and the Ontario Water Resources Act, to deal with such violations. As I said earlier, I have no doubt the minister is serious about trying to clean it up, but when will he be serious enough to send his ministry team into the Junction triangle area and assure the residents he is cracking down? That is the basic question.
We know the residents in the Junction triangle area are facing a grave danger. We know a comparison between birth defects of children in the Junction area and those of children in other areas of Toronto shows that in the Junction and surrounding neighbourhoods birth defects are three times higher than those in other parts of Toronto. That is certainly a big problem. We would like to find out when the minister is going to act. I would like to give the minister a chance to give us and the residents assurances that any further air emission or chemical spill will be more promptly investigated than the last one and done with a lot more vigour.
About six weeks ago I invited the chemical companies and the ministry staff to my office to find out whether assurances could be given that this will no longer occur. Most of the companies preferred not to show up. At that point it was determined that the ministry staff did not properly investigate this question as they should have done. I had to send them into a certain area and say, "If the wind came from the northwest, why did you not look at companies A, B and C?" At that point it had not been investigated.
If the minister cannot give us such assurances, I cannot see any other route but to ask him to have environmental assessment hearings in this area so the residents can get assurances they can live in an environment that as taxpayers they have a right to live in.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to respond to the initial inquiry by the honourable member and to further points he has raised this evening with respect to the Junction triangle.
First, I would like to put some facts on the record for the member. I am sure he is aware of some of these things. I do not know why he did not incorporate them in his remarks. Ministry investigations to this time have indicated the air quality in the area immediately adjacent to the Junction triangle -- and I want the member to listen very carefully to this -- compares favourably with the air quality in the balance of the Metro Toronto area. I think he should also be aware that the kinds of allegations he raises on a continuous basis with respect to the environmental concerns he seems to be so serious about simply do not check out with the facts we have before us.
I recognize, as the member does, that whenever there is an older industrial area, as the Junction triangle is, and when residential areas are being developed in close proximity to it, it is obviously going to lead to some conflicts between industry and those residential areas and from time to time there are going to be the kinds of odours that cause me some difficulty and about which I am sure the member is concerned as well.
Since 1981 we have been monitoring the air quality in the Junction triangle area. We are monitoring for sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, ozone, dust particles, fluorides and hydrocarbons. We are monitoring for a whole series of chemical contaminants that, frankly, are not being monitored anywhere else in the entire Metro Toronto area to the same extent as they are in that area.
Mr. Wrye: He is not a big leadership threat, is he?
Interjection.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Thank you, Mr. Treasurer. I appreciate that.
May I address the question the member raised with respect to the reports on the specific odours which my staff have indicated publicly would be released by April 4? At the very best, at this time, as I indicated to the member when he first raised the question, we have nothing more to go on than circumstantial evidence. My staff did immediately respond to the particular emission that occurred. In fact, we may be able to determine where that glue-like substance emanated from.
That was the member's question to me during question period, and I responded as honestly as I knew how, which was simply to say we did not have the facts before us and we were continuing with our investigation. I still cannot stand in my place and tell the member with absolute certainty that we are going to be able to pin a rap on one particular company in that area for the impropriety of the particular emission that occurred.
The member indicated again during the comments he made this evening that we are not taking any action in the Junction triangle. We have put control orders on companies in the Junction triangle. We have worked on a compliance basis voluntarily with companies in order to control the emissions and the difficulties that are caused by a normal industrial operation.
The member indicates we do not have any concern with the environmental controls there. But does he know that at the present time we have a very active committee in that area that involves the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour, the city of Toronto, my own ministry and community groups which are meeting on a regular basis and are trying to have some positive input into correcting what I admit are problems that occur from time to time?
Rather than raising allegations about chemical contaminants such as polychlorinated byphenyls, which the member brings up all the time with no other purpose than to scare people in that particular area --
Mr. Ruprecht: Allegations? People are getting sick.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: I listened to the member.
Mr. Wrye: Stay on the high road then.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: I am trying to stay on the high road. I wish he would.
The reality of the situation is that the medical officer of health has indicated the level of contamination for the PCBs that were found at the Canadian General Electric site was not of a level that was going to cause any health difficulties. Why does the member not tell that to the people? Why does he not tell them that although there is a problem there, the problem is under control? All I would ask is that the member deal honestly, in a forthright manner and on a fair basis with this very sensitive and important issue.
The House adjourned at 10:40 p.m.