The House resumed at 8 p.m.
BUDGET DEBATE (CONTINUED)
Resuming the debate on the amendment to the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.
Mr. McLean: Mr. Speaker, if I can continue my remarks in regard to the debate on the budget, there were several interjections this afternoon by certain members of the third party, and I wish they were here tonight to hear some of the remarks I will have to make later.
During the summer of 1982, RCA announced it had plans to close its television picture tube plant in Midland. The closure of this plant would have far-reaching effects within the area, as the plant provided 600 jobs, jobs the area could not afford to lose. Additionally, the closure of this plant would have meant the loss of the only plant in Canada capable of producing colour picture tubes.
However, the events that followed during the last half of 1982 and into 1983 demonstrated to me how much can be accomplished by industry, governments and private citizens when they join together and focus their efforts on a common goal, largely through the active roles played by the town of Midland, by me and by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Two companies were involved, Mitsubishi and Toshiba. They both became interested in acquiring the plant, but there was a problem. RCA had originally closed the plant because the domestic market for picture tubes was dwindling and it was becoming increasingly difficult to compete with foreign manufacturers. Obviously, there was no point in having any firm reopen the plant if it was just going to close again in a few years. Consequently, the government set up a few rules that the prospective buyer had to agree to follow in return for assistance. Only Mitsubishi was willing to abide by these rules.
The terms of the agreement worked out between the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Mitsubishi followed closely the objectives expressed in this year's budget. Mitsubishi's primary emphasis over the next few years will be on facilities and productivity and the improvement of such; and not only that, but on innovation, expansion and the development of a viable export market. Current projections indicate that by 1988 Mitsubishi will have created 595 permanent jobs.
Mr. Haggerty: That is going to get you re-elected.
Mr. McLean: Absolutely. Not only that, but we do a lot of other things in Simcoe East that will help me to get re-elected.
That is already on the way now. There are 200 jobs at the present time, and by the end of May they will have expanded to a full line.
Hon. Mr. McCague: This year?
Mr. McLean: This year, in 1984.
The value of the exports this company is going to create will exceed $210 million. Something this government has striven to do over a long period of time is to increase our export markets. This one success story has driven home to the people in my constituency the unlimited potential inherent in initiatives that bring our private sector into the forefront of the economic transformation.
The words of Peter Palicek, a senior consultant with SRI International of California, are well understood by the people of Midland. "Rapidly advancing technologies and their acceptance abroad make it essential that North American industry keep pace. It is a case of automate and integrate or evaporate."
At the time we were dealing with Mitsubishi, our Minister of Industry and Trade had a great bearing on bringing that company to the great town of Midland. The minister at that time was the present Provincial Secretary for Justice (Mr. Walker). I am sure the present Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. F. S. Miller) is filling his footsteps very capably and will bring further things to the great riding of Simcoe East.
Not only that, tourism is of great concern and importance to my constituents. They are looking forward to the future and are fully aware of the potential of tourism. It has become the first industry in Ontario. It will have to go some to get ahead of the farming industry because, as I observed in the minister's budget, the 16.3 per cent that is being put into the Ministry of Agriculture and Food will help the farming industry, and I am one who recognizes the value of that.
We have been fortunate in the last few years and have seen the development of many new facilities and services which will stimulate tourism in my riding. Quite a few of these initiatives were assisted by the province, most notably the Wye Heritage Marina, the Orillia waterfront development and the expansion of Arrow Wood Lodge. However, much still needs to be done to expand our range of services and tourism opportunities.
I am sure I speak for my constituents in expressing my pleasure at the new tourism agreement outlined in the budget and like my colleagues the member for Lakeshore (Mr. Kolyn) and the member for Leeds (Mr. Runciman), I am eagerly awaiting formal implementation of that program.
Mr. Harris: And Nipissing.
Mr. McLean: Nipissing is very interested in tourism. They have to go through Simcoe East before they get to Nipissing.
We are entering a period of transition. Ontario's economic health is recovering and the prospects for renewed vitality are good. However, we must not make the mistake of expecting too much, too soon. It will take time to recover completely from the scars left on our economy by the recent recession.
The budget has proposed a number of new initiatives to get our people back to work. However, it must be realized that the nature of our work force needs to change and such change is not accomplished overnight.
The opposition members would have the people of this province believe that Ontario's unemployment rate is astronomically high and that no one else has the problems we have experienced. In truth, Ontario has fared well in comparison with other jurisdictions.
The severe international recession of 1981 and 1982 caused increased unemployment throughout the industrialized world. Between 1979 and 1982, Germany's unemployment rate increased by 63 per cent, France's by 64 per cent, the United States' by 64 per cent and Canada's, as a whole, by 46 per cent. How did Ontario compare?
8:10 p.m.
If the opposition were to be believed, I am sure our rate must have quadrupled. However, records show that Ontario's unemployment rate increased by 50 per cent. When compared with the other provinces in Canada, Ontario has one of the lowest unemployment rates. In March of this year, our seasonally adjusted rate stood at 9.4 per cent. Newfoundland's rate was 20.3 per cent, New Brunswick checked in at 14.7 per cent and Alberta's rate was 10.7 per cent, while the national rate was 11.4 per cent.
Another notable fact often overlooked by people is that the Ontario economy has outperformed the national economy in terms of job recovery. In the period from November 1982 until March 1984, Ontario recovered 202,000 jobs, or 92.2 per cent of the jobs lost during the recession. By comparison, the Canadian economy has recovered only 69.8 per cent of jobs lost in the recession. The Conference Board of Canada has projected that our unemployment rate this year will be a full percentage point below last year's level and that Ontario will be among the leaders across Canada in reducing unemployment.
Although this is all good news, a projected unemployment rate of 9.3 per cent is still not an acceptable level in the opinion of this government.
Mr. Haggerty: I agree with the member on that one.
Mr. McLean: That is right; we agree with it too. We want to make it better and we will. If the honourable member will listen to what we have to say, he will believe that we will do it because we know it can be accomplished. The Treasurer (Mr. Grossman) brought down an outstanding budget. It was one that many of us in this province could believe in.
I believe the records show that our programs and policies to date have been effective in keeping our rates well below the levels experienced in other jurisdictions. However, this year's budget has provided Ontario with a long-term strategy which, in my opinion, will put our people back to work on a permanent basis.
Some have advocated that the government should institute make-work programs for the young and those without marketable skills in an effort to reduce our unemployment rate. I think such schemes are worthless in the long term. They serve only to perpetuate the problems of the unemployed. At the end of these make-work programs, given their nature, the people are once again out of a job. They have not increased their marketable skills. The only positive aspect of short-term employment programs is the positive figure they add to the government's deficit. The proposals contained in this year's budget offer a sound and responsible approach to controlling unemployment.
Mr. Haggerty: How come it took the Tory government 40 years to realize that?
Mr. McLean: Experts agree that within 25 years 90 per cent of the work force will be employed in industries that do not exist today. It is imperative that our work force undertake retraining programs and that our young people are prepared for the jobs that will be required of them.
In addition to increasing job opportunities in the future, I believe the Treasurer has offered a document that upholds this government's commitment to reducing inflation and maintaining a climate favourable to economic growth.
Ontario's deficit this year will be 13.2 per cent lower than last year.
Mr. Haggerty: Is it around $2 billion?
Mr. McLean: Yes, it is around $2 million, but it is still 13.2 per cent lower. The member knows it went down from $2.76 billion to $2.3 billion and now we are going down to $2 billion. Next year we will go down a little further.
When measuring inflation against the size of the gross provincial product, Ontario's 1984-85 deficit is actually smaller than the deficits carried in 1975 and 1978. Additionally, Ontario's deficit in per capita terms was the lowest of any Canadian jurisdiction last year. I am sure we will retain that position in the upcoming year. I want to repeat that for the opposition members who did not catch what I have just said. Our debt was the lowest of any Canadian jurisdiction last year and I am sure we will retain that position in the upcoming year. I do not hear a word from the opposition about that.
Our restraint programs have assisted in keeping our inflation rates down.
Mr. Wildman: They are keeping people out of work.
Mr. McLean: We are now experiencing the lowest rates in the last decade. The honourable member forgets what I said earlier in my speech: we increased our employment by 202,000 jobs last year. He does not listen very well.
We have witnessed the success of this government's fiscal policies. We have built a solid economic base upon which we can develop initiatives and effective programs to address the challenges before us.
This year's budget provides the people of Ontario with a plan that will guide them through the spirit of transition and will guarantee Ontario a place in the world economy for many years to come.
I want to follow this plan. I do not fear this economic transformation, because I have confidence this government will not allow Ontario to be left behind. It never has before and it will not in the future; even 10 or 20 years in the future, when we are still on the government side, it will not.
I hope all members will see the value inherent in the government's proposed initiatives and will join me in supporting the budget of the Treasurer for this year. He brought in a budget of which the people of Ontario whom I know and have heard from are proud.
Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege --
Mr. Stokes: What does the honourable member want to revert to now?
Hon. Mr. Wells: I do not want to revert to anything.
I want to indicate, Mr. Speaker, that we have provided for your benefit an audience that I know will enliven the debate. I am sure all members would want to know the executive of the Scarborough North Progressive Conservative Association is in the gallery tonight, and would welcome those people.
Mr. McGuigan: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this budget debate. It has been interesting to listen to those who have spoken before me this afternoon, and I am glad to know we have an audience here from the city. They will be glad to learn some of the things we are going to tell them about the mismanagement of items outside the city of Toronto. There is a great land outside Toronto; some have never heard of it, but it does exist, in the north, the east and the west. We have some things we would like to say about this budget.
I would first like to report on my riding of Kent-Elgin, where the manufacturing industry is doing reasonably well at the moment. Quite a large number of small plants over the last eight, 10 or 15 years have moved into the small towns and are benefiting from the resurgence of the auto trade. I talked to someone from one of these plants yesterday and he said they turned down the opportunity to work over the weekend.
8:20 p.m.
It brings up the point that it is too bad we could not find some sort of system to even out the cycles within the automotive business, where people are pushed beyond their ability to put in hours in the plants at times of the year or during certain years; yet at other times they are laid off for very long periods.
The people who are not sharing in that are those in the agricultural industry. Probably the most prominent and well-known are in the riding of Kent-Elgin. Another area that is not sharing so well is the tourism industry. Our riding is seldom thought of as a tourist area; yet all along the lakes, in the harbours and in the resort areas along the lakes, there is a very important tourist industry.
To my regret, when those people apply for assistance in the form of funds and grants from those various ministry programs, I do not think they receive their fair share. I think the reason is it is not recognized as an industry in our area. I bring this to the attention of the Minister of Tourism and Recreation (Mr. Baetz).
There are a lot of people who fit well into the service industry. Not everyone can work on a farm or a production line. There are people, students and others, who enjoy the service industry and can benefit from it. I bring forward the fact that we do not feel we are being recognized as we should be in the tourist industry.
I must say I am pretty disappointed in the agricultural section of this budget. We were led to believe it was going to be the biggest increase in the agricultural budget that one had seen in recent years. So many farmers had the feeling that when the present Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Timbrell) came in we were bringing in a new era, a new insight into the agricultural problems.
Here we had a man, fresh from the city, who would look at these programs with a different eye, one who perhaps thought of doing a real job for farmers as his means of achieving the premiership of this province. Today we are bitterly disappointed because we find this great, heralded increase of 16.3 per cent has to be examined in light of the facts of the budget.
First, the budget is still only one per cent of the provincial budget. This goes to a part of the industry which provides some 20 to 25 per cent of the total provincial gross product. It provides some 20 to 25 per cent of the jobs within Ontario.
We also find this increase is really a phoney increase. If we examine the various items mentioned in the budget, we see things such as the Ontario farm tax reduction program which will be enriched by $18 million to bring us to $90 million. I do not have the expertise at my fingertips to work out the figures. However, I think if we did an analysis of that, with the increase in assessment on farm land brought about by this government, together with the province's share of the education tax, which has been reduced from a figure of about 60 per cent a few years ago to down around 48 per cent, we would find that $18 million is completely swallowed up by those increases in taxes.
Another item is the $62-million, five-year commitment to the Ontario red meat plan. This is a plan which has yet to go into effect. If present indications are of any consequence, it may never go into effect because the 10 provinces and the federal government have to agree to it. We are a long way from that coming into effect.
There is talk about the cost of credit and the fact that this government is going to do something towards alleviating the cost of credit. It is being very generous with the federal budget because two thirds of the cost of those agribonds come at the expense of taxes forgone by the federal government. Possibly one third would be forgone by the province, but we are a long way from agreement on that program.
The thing that angers me so much is that the government is constantly holding out carrots in front of farmers, saying just around the corner salvation is coming. That salvation, if and when it does come, is of some dubious nature.
The Treasurer (Mr. Grossman) mentioned that the Ontario government forgave $140 million in retail sales tax exemptions. That is one of the phoniest items that could be put into a budget statement because there is no government in the western world that charges retail sales tax on food products, that is, raw food products from the farm. It is part of the cheap food policy of every government of the western world. It is absolutely misleading to indicate he is giving up $140 million in taxes.
He said he is giving up $12.2 million in fuel and gasoline tax refunds from farmers. Again, there is no government in the western world that charges retail sales tax on farm fuel because that is a part of the cheap food policy.
Farmers are not so easily fooled. One of the things that makes me particularly angry about that statement is having the minister think he can sell such a program to farmers because they are so stupid that they would believe these things, that they do not understand how the world works; when they do understand.
Another item he cited is $500,000 for farm tank grants. That is to offset the coloured fuel program, which has resulted in millions more dollars in taxes being harvested by this government, not from farmers but from other aspects of the transportation industry. To offset that requirement, the government gave $500,000 for tank grants. There is a net zero at the end of that transaction.
The government has $10 million in Board of Industrial Leadership and Development grants, which is part of the $51.7 million spent on agriculture since 1981. If one goes back to 1967 when the grant system first began, in that year there was $4.7 million in the capital grants program. This $10 million hardly takes care of inflation during the years since 1967.
I have a particular gripe I want to bring to the members attention. Part of that $10 million in BILD grants was a $3-million grant to a processing factory in Essex county, specifically the H. J. Heinz Co.
That was put in to capture another couple thousand acres of tomatoes to replace paste we bring in from California and Spain. That was heralded as a great program. There were going to be a lot of farmers getting tomato contracts over that. One farmer this year has a contract for 450 acres. They gave 450 acres to one producer.
Mr. Stokes: Do you call that smoke and mirrors?
8:30 p.m.
Mr. McGuigan: I do not use that term. We have farm terms that cover it a whole lot better, but I would not use them because they are not parliamentary. It is the kind of language I am accustomed to and I have to hold myself back in those items.
Here is a government handing out public money for a good purpose. We agree it is for a good purpose, to replace some of the imports, but they hand out the money and then turn their backs on it. They say: "Use it the way you want to use it. Use it to your own advantage. Don't worry about the farmers out there. Let them grow peanuts or something of that sort."
Mr. Nixon: That is what the Tories call free enterprise.
Mr. McGuigan: That is the freedom to put the wood to you.
Mr. Nixon: It is going to be different after the next election.
Mr. McGuigan: That is for sure. We have $1.22 million from the Ministry of Energy for agricultural and energy projects in the greenhouse incentive program. Here is a multimillion-dollar program struggling to stay alive today in a high-cost energy environment and the government gives it $1.22 million. One can hardly find that in the budget.
The Ministry of Northern Affairs was given for northern agricultural products --
Mr. Nixon: They want the resignation of the minister.
Mr. McGuigan: Darned right. We have three million acres up there they keep resurrecting every election time, three million acres they are going to develop. For that purpose, the Ministry of Northern Affairs was given $600,000. They are giving a nickel an acre to northern agriculture. That is almost as bad as when they bought Manhattan Island.
The budget says total government spending was more than $450 million in the last fiscal year, that in total the government will have given over half a billion dollars to agriculture. If we bring in all the subsidies that accrue to each and every one of us, the list is endless. Every time someone mails a letter, I understand the actual cost of mailing a letter is something in the order of 55 cents to 60 cents, depending on the time one is speaking of. Yet the cost is only 32 cents. Each and every time members mail a letter, we are being subsidized.
The minister could well have brought in all those sorts of things. For instance, farmers get a reduced rate on their truck licences. He could have run that in. They were given that reduced rate for a very good reason, that is, they use their trucks seasonally and the total mileage during the year is very small. They did a research project a number of years ago and they came to that conclusion.
I want to speak about soil erosion. That is a theme I began in the throne speech and I want to continue it at this time. I want to read a little bit from an article in the Policy Options magazine all of us get. It is called The Conservation of Canada. It is written by Paul Aird, who is a professor of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto. He was educated at Macdonald College of McGill University and Cornell University. He has worked for the Canadian International Paper Co. and the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada.
He says: "The political journey to create and sustain Canada has blazed two intertwining trails. One went through the political debate to create and maintain a self-governed nation, including the provision and guarantee of human rights and freedoms. The other went through the politics of developing better ways to manage our renewable resources of soil, plants, animals, water and air to sustain the growing nation.
"We have succeeded in developing an economically advanced society, based on a democratic government and an industrial system of free enterprise, that provides high standards of education, health and welfare services available to all." Of course, I know many people here might want to make qualifications to that statement, but I think in very broad terms we would agree with what has been said.
Then he says: "But these successes are marred by the toll of thousands of polluted lakes and rivers and millions of hectares of abused land. Will historians describe us as a nation at war or at peace with our environment -- as a developing or a developed nation?"
Later he said: "Canada is gradually losing its margin of advantage in the abundance and quality of renewable resources. Our soil, plants, animals, water and air have not been properly represented by Parliament or the Senate.
"Conservation must have a higher priority. In fact, it should have the highest priority in the nation since how well we manage, use and share our biological heritage will determine Canada's future.
"A new focus for conservation needs more public understanding and public debate, with Parliament leading the debate." I have done so in the past and I intend to continue talking about that item in this Legislature. "We need to have much more parliamentary attention devoted to the development of better institutional arrangements within and among governments, industry, unions, schools, universities and the public to advance the wise management and use of Canada's biological resources."
Recently, the Senate of Canada did do something about this. The standing committee on agriculture, fisheries and forests held a public hearing in Guelph, and I have the transcript. I want to tell members some of the things that were said there.
Dr. Willem Van Vuuren, department of agricultural economics, University of Guelph, presented a brief. He reported on a land study done in southwestern Ontario. He found a very close relationship between land tenancy and soil degradation problems.
Currently, he said, one quarter of the land base is farmed under a lease; 30 years ago it was around 11 per cent. About 88 per cent of that rented land is rented by part owners -- that is, people who own some land as their home base and rent other lands from other owners.
Their study was conducted among 354 part owners. Most of the leases were for one year; 77 per cent were verbal. If the renter improves the soil by growing, say, a hay crop, the benefit goes to the land owner. Conversely, the renter does not feel the deferred costs of looking after the soil; the owner feels the deferred cost.
When they looked at the way the operators treated the land, taking into account the various basic differences in the land, they found the operators treated the owned land much better than they treated the rented lands. The effects are multiplied by the fact that the rented land was usually more prone to damage. For instance, the owned land was often flat land; the rented land was sloping.
Dr. Van Vuuren concluded that we need research to better establish the relationship between tenure and soil degradation, and we need legislation to establish the parameters for voluntary use of such legislation. He pointed out that there is a good deal of this in Europe.
Vern Spencer of the land branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food suggested that two to three per cent of the $100 million now spent on tile drainage and municipal drainage would be a good starting figure for a research budget. Currently, the government is spending about $500,000 on the entire field of soil degradation.
This 1969 report, The Challenge of Abundance, recommended that the province and the municipalities zone land according to land use plans so that the direction of the development of land use is clearly set out by law and made public. This never did come about. The present guidelines simply hold farm land until it can be taken over for other uses. It holds it in a nice unencumbered parcel so that it is a prize for the developer.
Anyone who has engaged in shooting wildfowl will know there is not much sense in shooting at a goose, particularly an old one, on the ground or on the water because the pellets will bounce off those armoured quills on the back of the bird. To be a sportsman, you scare the bird up and then you take a shot at the soft underbelly, and that is the way to bring down a bird.
8:40 p.m.
This is what the developers do with agricultural land. They want the soft underbelly to develop, where it is cheap and easy to put in the foundations and tiles and all those things done below ground. They do not want to tackle the armour stone that they have in some areas simply because it costs more money to develop in those areas. All we really do today under the present zoning plan is save that land until the day the developers take it.
Rather than protecting farmers as was promised, the new Planning Act is now an instrument used against them. The old guidelines and minimum distances gave a good deal of flexibility in protecting farm land against urban neighbours. If they were short a few points in one area, the protection could be maintained because they were long in another area. Under the new act, people tell me that if a person is short in one area he is lost. We need a better statement of provincial interest slotted into the new act to protect farmers, as was promised when it was passed.
The report made many other recommendations regarding education, regional development and marketing. Many have been carried out, some by the federal government and some by the provincial government.
As far as this government's education policy for young farmers is concerned, I think it is pretty good. The agricultural colleges are doing a very good job. I attended the graduation ceremonies at Ridgetown just last week.
However, the income problems of disadvantaged farmers remain. The caution that was given in the 1969 report is still valid; that is, across-the-board subsidies soon become capitalized in land values. We need programs targeted at specific groups of producers such as young farmers and farmers in certain sections of industry; for instance, the red meat industry.
In my comments on the throne speech, I started on the question of soil erosion. A great deal more information came to hand at the standing committee hearings on May 1. One of the highlights was testimony by Lawrence Taylor, the president of the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association. He said, "Many farmers today talk about soil degradation rather than erosion. In this, they are recognizing the effects of compaction." That is a point I mentioned in my remarks on the throne speech.
Galen Driver of the Ontario Institute of Pedology made a cogent point. He said soil does not start to move or erode until it is degraded; in other words, it has lost its native structure. Mr. Driver said that in 1982 a study they initiated indicated that soil erosion, lower yields and loss of pesticide were costing farmers $44 per hectare per year.
The figure for all Ontario is $68 million. This figure is really for the cost of fertilizer and pesticides that are carried away when soil is eroded. It does not place a value on the soil itself. That is simply the cost of replacing the chemicals that are carried away.
The county of Middlesex had the greatest losses on a hectare basis. The greatest loss in actual terms was in Brant county.
One can imagine what that $68 million would represent in added income to farmers. It is five per cent of the value of the crops grown on those erosion-prone lands. They could have an extra five per cent in their gross income if it were not for those losses. I suggest most of that money would go right into the net income column.
Dr. Robert McLaughlin, the director of the plant industry branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, outlined the roles of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Natural Resources. He pointed out that Agriculture and Food took a background role and there was little co-ordination among the players. I have mentioned this on other occasions and here we have the ministry admitting it. In my mind, that is an indictment of this ministry because it should have been the lead group in carrying this important program.
Why has this happened? In my opinion, it has happened because we have not had a strong farmer at the head of the ministry since Bill Stewart was minister. Bill Newman was a political end runner.
To his credit, the member for Lambton (Mr. Henderson) was not a political person when he was minister. I know he is very political in his own riding and takes care of his riding very well, but watching him as minister, I noted that he went out and acted as best he could to promote and guard the interests of farmers.
A lot of farmers feel that whether it is Bill Stewart, Gene Whelan or the present Minister of Agriculture and Food, that person should be fighting for farm programs and the farm and rural parts of this great province.
Even Liberal farmers look to the minister as their spokesman, just as I as a farmer look to that minister as my spokesman. When I am on the farm, I do not look at him as a political enemy or as a political person. I look upon him as my spokesman. He has not carried forward that role, and the farmers know it. That is why today they are calling for his resignation through their chief political farm organization.
The minister made the fatal mistake that has derailed his ambition for the moment; he underestimated farmers. When he blamed the federal government during his speeches, they applauded. I attended some of those speeches and heard them applaud. But when they went home and analysed what he said, they realized they had been led down the garden path. They stopped midway down that path, turned around, looked at the minister and decided they were being sold out.
It is too bad. I hated to see this minister fail in his mission. I know each and every one of us on this side of the House who represents a farm constituency wanted to see the minister succeed, because we know the social values, the farm women and children and the rural communities that depend upon the success of that program. I take no particular pride in saying it has failed.
One of the reasons the ministry has failed is that it really has not had a handle on what has gone on within that ministry. If one were a researcher in the agricultural area and ambitious, as most people are -- we do not knock people for being ambitious -- one would realize that the way to success is to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.
The interests of soil erosion have been set aside by the people who say: "Do not worry about it. It is not really a problem. If it does become a problem, we can step in with a remedial process and fix it up. You can simply put on more fertilizer and chemicals. Do not worry about that program."
Despite that, the people who had a real interest in maintaining the viability of the agricultural soils and our towns in the rural areas soldiered on in the wilderness. Today we realize that those people had a real message. The problem was at the head office where those people who did have an interest in carrying forward these programs were sidetracked.
Dr. McLaughlin said at the Senate hearing that agriculture will take the lead in the future, a point I have been making for years, but they still have only 13 people -- 13 people for all of Ontario -- to carry forward a program that involves billions and billions of dollars' worth of agricultural land.
Dr. McLaughlin described the soil conservation and environmental protection assistance program as involving $25.5 million over five years. Last year it was only $3.5 million. Two million dollars was used to clean up the old farm productivity incentive grants. The program has two parts: $3.5 million for manure storage and $2 million for erosion.
8:50 p.m.
Manure storage sounds great, it sounds like a great conservation move, but almost all of it is for liquid manure. Liquid manure systems are a great labour-saving method of handling livestock. Instead of shovelling and forking, one simply pumps the material.
I know people from farm areas, and perhaps even people from city areas, have seen some of these big tank loads, which weigh anywhere from 10 to 15 tons, when they are pulled by 100-to 200-horsepower tractors over wet land, usually in the spring. If they are going to get the value of that manure and clear their storage, they have to put it down before the crop is planted. That means they go on to the land when it is really not fit to carry those great loads.
There are probably people here who, when driving through the country, have seen some of those giant machines in fields bogged right up to the chassis when they hit a wet spot in a field and sink down. The compaction under those wheels goes down four to five feet, way below the frost line. They rely, in a good many situations, for the frost to break up the soil compaction near the top layers, but the frost never reaches underneath the wheels of those machines.
It makes good sense to store manure in this manner but I submit at application time, we are promoting a system that has a lot of drawbacks.
I have just one last item I wanted to bring to Mr. Speaker's attention.
[Applause]
Mr. McGuigan: I know the honourable member has enjoyed listening, and I would like to thank him for his applause.
I want to refer to the testimony of Mr. Vernon Spencer, director of the capital improvements branch, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. There is really some good stuff here. This is what he said about the drainage program:
"Impact for specific study circumstances are reasonably understood, but the global impact has not been well documented. The overall impact is buffered by countervailing forces. Tile drainage should" -- and I emphasize "should" -- "increase infiltration and reduce direct runoff. As such, it should reduce peak flows and improve water quality. This should occur because of improved soil structure brought about by the growing of a broader range of crops, particularly deep-rooting legumes, which is possible because of better soil aeration, earlier drying and warming of the soils, longer seasons, etc. With improved structure and a well-drained soil, soil infiltration should increase. I might add that surface runoff should then decrease, and soil erosion as well."
This is the answer I get every time I bring this subject up in the estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, that the greatest and easiest way to prevent soil erosion is to drain it. But then he says:
"On the other hand, land drainage is usually accompanied by a change in cropping practices. If continuous row-cropping is practised, we probably do not get and retain the improved soil structure that we desire. Similarly, with continuous cropping, the soil surface may be bare for long periods of the year. Thus, gains in infiltration may be limited to a relatively short period of the year, with high levels of runoff of poorer-quality water for a relatively long period. This partially explains why the ministry is now stressing crop rotation and the management of over-winter soil surface conditions."
What he is saying, in terms of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food over the last 20 years, is sheer heresy. He would have been strung up if he had said this two or three years ago, because people built their whole careers and their whole programs on the notion that the only way to prevent soil erosion was to drain land. Here is a knowledgeable man saying it may be doing exactly the opposite. He says:
"Finally, outlet drains will increase the speed at which water is removed and, unless specifically designed to limit outflow, will often increase peak flows. Also, during and following construction, there are normally detrimental effects on water quality. Ministry design and construction guidelines are directed at reducing these problems.... Because of all the counterbalancing factors outlined above, it is difficult to indicate with any certainty the impact of the drainage program on our soils and water. This is an area that requires continued study."
Later on he says: "Perhaps just to summarize, Ontario agriculture spends somewhere between $80 million and $100 million each year on land drainage, right now. Yet the actual extent to which it is a cause or a cure of soil erosion and soil structure problems is not really very well documented. That is the situation."
I find that pretty damaging for a government that is supposed to manage our resources so well. They put their trust in one program over a very long period of time and just now are beginning to sense there is a problem.
There was a question by Senator Le Moyne. Spencer said: "Our concern is that we are spending a great deal of money as an industry, namely, $100 million. On all soil conservation-related research, we are spending perhaps $500,000 to $1 million. I agree with Dr. McLaughlin that we will not see a great shift of money from the implementation of the drainage program into research. However, we do not really know whether the net result of, for example, tile draining a field is an improvement in its soil structure and a reduction in surface runoff and therefore an improvement of water quality or whether in fact the exact reverse happens."
Can the members imagine what he is saying here? He is saying he does not know whether they are improving or the exact reverse. I think I know, because I have been bringing this to members' attention for some time.
The reason we do not know is that we do not have the studies and documentation done yet. Theoretically, we know that it should be an improvement. We also know that in actual fact one gets crop changes. But, as pointed out today, because of the market drive, the high-value crop can be grown continuously, and that is what will be done. If there is a sudden conversion of an area that has been in small grains or hay and pasture most of the time to an area that is almost continuously row-cropped, while one has used a practice that should be an improvement, the net result may actually be detrimental.
Also, we really do not have that documented other than for very specific cases. What we really need to do is try to get some understanding of what happens in an overall watershed or in a larger area rather than an individual plot. We know what happens in a plot but we do not know what happens in an overall watershed.
The members' attention should be directed to some of the testimony that was given at this Senate hearing. It points out that what we have here is simply a stand-pat budget. The minister has tried to film-flam press releases and releases to radio stations, some of which they took up hook, line and sinker. Some of those stations have analysts and know the agricultural scene, and some of the editors of the farm magazines have seen through it and are ripping it to pieces.
9 p.m.
As a farmer and as a representative of a farm area, I can accept an honest statement from the minister saying: "This is all the money we have for agriculture. You will simply have to be satisfied with that share." I would accept that far better than I accept this snow job that has been put to us. It insults our integrity and intellect to suggest that we can be fooled so easily, that we are such ignorant people -- I guess that would not be too strong a term -- we can be conned that way.
In my farm business and in farm politics I have travelled the country roads a great many times to visit farmers in their kitchens and in their fields. These are people with analytical minds. They have to analyse the market. They have to analyse the weather. They have to analyse their programs. They can see through such a sham of a budget so easily. I feel rather sad that a government would treat a portion of its resource industry in this way.
To repeat, I would not feel nearly as bad had it said: "That is your share. Take it and be satisfied." I understand that kind of talk. Most farmers understand that kind of talk. They get it every day in the market. They get it every day with their banker. They would appreciate the government talking the same way.
There is one area where I have to compliment the minister and that is on his report on rural women. I would like to predict that report is going to have far more impact on the politics of Ontario than anybody here may realize. It may not happen tomorrow but for the first time the concerns of rural women have been brought out into the open.
I guess rural women are so accustomed to working alongside their husbands, making sacrifices or going out on a job. I think 77 per cent of them work on a job of some sort to try to bring money home to keep that operation going. But they have had enough of it. They are sick of it.
If one looks around any farm community today one can find divorces that really have their roots in the raw deal the farm woman gets. To operate a modern farm, The Challenge of Abundance of 1969 advocates all the programs one could specialize in, where the farm would get bigger and when to capitalize, to substitute capital for labour. To do all of those things, the farmer had to buy the $100,000 combine and the $80,000 tractor. In order to drive that equipment night and day, he had to put in an air conditioner.
I do not think that is a great luxury. If one is going to spend the hours to run that equipment, he would be better to do that and get a return on that air-conditioning system. His wife is in the farm home looking at what she has to put up with. Many times it is a third- or fourth-generation home.
Mr. Stokes: She does not have air conditioning.
Mr. McGuigan: No, she does not have air conditioning. In many cases she does not have other appliances. She may have a refrigerator and some of the basic items. She may have an icebox too. But these farm women are under fantastic pressure. They are asked to work in the fields during the planting and harvest season because of the economics of it. The farmer cannot put out dollars to hire help. The farm wives do a lovely job. They can run that equipment just as well as men can. It is not the strong-arm job it used to be.
Men, on average, are 40 per cent stronger in muscle power, and there was a day when women could not steer those iron monsters. The equipment today with hydraulic steering and modern things is relatively easy to drive as far as physical effort is concerned, as long as the person has some brains. The farm women do have brains. They know how to operate that equipment.
They are called upon to work off the farm to bring in extra money. They are called upon to be wives and mothers, and they are called upon to do the social things expected of farm wives in the community.
They do it without a great deal of complaining, but today they are damned well sick of it. I think one is going to find these people taking an active role in politics. I see this myself in the last couple of years when I go to Ontario Federation of Agriculture meetings. There are a fair number of farm women there.
I must admit it was quite a surprise to me during the 1981 election as I campaigned on the country roads, going down concession roads and turning into farms -- in February 1981 because the election was on March 19 -- I seldom found anyone in the house. I would knock at the door and the house was empty. The only people I would find on occasion would be elderly ladies. I thought in many cases they should not have been left alone because they were 75 or 80 years old. They were alone in the home. I do not know whether they were babysitting, but I question it.
After three or four days and about a dozen attempts in various areas of my riding, I decided it was a great waste of time. I could spend a whole morning trying to find six or seven people at home. They were not there. I could tell the minute I drove into the farm yard. Most farmers have two vehicles. The pickup used in the business of getting farm supplies and doing farm business was gone, and that told me the owner of the farm was away working in a factory, he had a winter job or he was in town getting seed cleaned or picking up fertilizer and making business arrangements for the coming season. The family car was also gone, and that told me the farm wife was driving a school bus, teaching school, nursing, clerking in a store or whatever.
Mr. Riddell: Too bad there are not more women in this Legislature. They might bring more relevance to this place.
Mr. McGuigan: Whether or not they come to the Legislature, and I hope they do, I think these women are going to make their feelings known not only in the next election but also in subsequent elections.
One of the points on which there is now agreement between farm women and urban women is in the matter of day care. One of the things brought out in this study was that the women who were doing all these jobs had no place to take their children for really good supervised day care. I am not knocking the arrangements they make. I am sure they make the best arrangements they can with neighbours or with people who operate private facilities, but they are not the facilities we want and we really need to take care of the children.
I have an example in my own family. As I mentioned before, I became a grandfather some eight months ago. He is a beautiful male child, not that we would care very much whether it is a boy or a girl, but farmers do look to have a male inheritor of the farm.
Mr. Riddell: He is destined to become the next Premier of this province.
Mr. McGuigan: He has brains on both sides of his family, from his mother and my son. I am not saying anything about myself. I will leave that to the member.
When my daughter-in-law looked around for day care -- she has a very good job and is quite able to pay for day care; money was not the problem -- she found there was really nothing. There was simply nowhere she could take the child for properly supervised day care, although she was quite able and willing to pay for it.
For the first time this was really brought to my attention, because this has been something that has not been talked about in the farm sector. I guess we have been so used to accepting it as the way of living on a farm, but a lot of women will no longer accept that. We are going to see them joining with their urban sisters in demanding day care.
9:10 p.m.
In Ontario, we have close to half a million people out of work and most of those are on social assistance of one description or another, federal or provincial. It would seem to be only a matter of eminent good sense if we could employ some of those people in that area.
I am not saying every one of those persons would be qualified to look after children in a day care situation, but in half a million people there must be some excellent people. If they were properly paid, if we had a proper program and if it was managed properly, we would take care of some of those problems. As has been pointed out by members of this government, this is a rich province with great resources and great people.
I have some hope that these women are now identified and will become a factor in Ontario politics. I do not believe for one minute that because they come from a particular ethnic family or from a family with a Conservative, Liberal or New Democratic Party tradition, they are going to vote in a traditional way. They are going to vote for the programs they see will meet their needs. This is going to breathe new life into the politics of Ontario.
Mr. Charlton: Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to follow the comments of the member for Kent-Elgin (Mr. McGuigan) in his windup on women s issues in the rural areas. I guess he is aware the member for Oxford (Mr. Treleaven) said daycare is not an issue in rural Ontario. I think what the member for Kent-Elgin has just said is that the member for Oxford is out of touch with rural life in Ontario.
It is with a degree of frustration and anger that I rise to speak to the budget this evening. I am not sure whether I can express my anger, frustration and disappointment in the same eloquent way as did the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) this afternoon.
In some respects, it is perhaps an appropriate day to be speaking on this budget, although it is none the less frustrating. It is appropriate because we saw a very interesting article in the business section of the Toronto Star this afternoon. I hark back to the comments of the member for Simcoe East (Mr. McLean) earlier this afternoon and into this evening.
He started out his comments by talking about how this government plans and spends for the future. I find those comments particularly irrelevant in the context of this budget and of what many of us know to be happening in the real world, and naïve in the context of what we have seen over the last three years and what we can expect to see again in the very near future.
I come back to the article in the business section of the Toronto Star to which I made reference. "Majority of US Economists See Recession in 1985," says the headline.
"Rising interest rates, large federal budget deficits and a ballooning foreign trade imbalance could stall the US economic recovery as early as next year, a group of business economists predict."
These are 4,000 economists; I know we have said often if one asked 25 economists the same question, one would get 25 different answers. What we have evolving here among 4,000 economists is perhaps a bit of a clear consensus; a consensus, I might add, that falls very clearly into line with what we have been saying to this government for the past several years without much impact, unfortunately.
The article says: "The National Association of Business Economists said yesterday that a survey among its nearly 4,000 members found strong optimism about the economy in coming months but growing pessimism about how long the current recovery will last. A majority -- 69 per cent -- now believe the recession will begin by the end of 1985 or sooner.
"The prime lending rate at US banks has risen three times in the past two months, to 12.5 per cent. The economists see the prime hitting 13 per cent by the end of the year, up substantially from their forecast of 11.9 per cent in February. Among economists who expect the current expansion to be shorter than average, 82 per cent gave high interest rates as the reason."
The member for Simcoe East in his comments was applauding this budget because of the economic stability it was supposedly going to provide for this province. Was there anything in this budget to deal with interest rates? We have all seen them start to climb again. The answer is quite simple; we do not have to debate it: No.
Was there anything in this budget to stimulate employment in this province, to create jobs for the 450,000 people in Ontario who are out of work? Was there anything in this budget to create the jobs that will provide the industrial stability, both with respect to the concept of full employment and reducing the social costs of unemployment and from the perspective of providing the markets that our industries now lack to get on with the recovery they really need to be stable once again? The answer to that question is very clearly no, there was nothing in the budget to deal with employment.
Was there anything in this budget to help this province and this country avoid the scenario that large numbers of the economists in the United States, 70 per cent, are now telling us is going to happen? We all know that, because of the policies of this administration and those of the government in Ottawa, whatever happens in the United States with respect to interest rates and ultimately with respect to recession will befall us as well, because the administration here and the administration in Ottawa continually tell us there is nothing we can do to avoid it.
If the budget that was presented a week ago today is to provide us with stability, or if this administration believes this budget is going to provide us with stability, then it is quite clear that this government is not listening to anyone, including its own members.
Out of one side of their mouths they are saying we cannot avoid what is happening and what is going to happen in the United States, and out of the other side of their mouths they are saying we will have stability through the leadership of their budget, which provides us with nothing to avoid this scenario at all.
9:20 p.m.
Last week, with my colleagues the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen) and the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie), I spent a number of mornings talking to workers at plant gates in the city of Hamilton -- at four plants, as a matter of fact. All are fairly major plants, fairly significant plants in the economy in Hamilton. Three of those four plants, the smallest of which I would class as a medium-size industry -- not a small industry, a medium-size industry -- and the largest of which I would classify as a very significant industry in Ontario, are on the brink of disaster and extinction.
There are a number of other industries in Hamilton that we did not happen to visit last week which are also major industries and fall into the same category. That is not to forget about the small industries and small businesses in Hamilton that are in the same situation, sitting on the very edge of disaster. They are the companies that managed to survive the last round of recession and high interest rates and have managed through cutbacks, layoffs, downsizing of their operations and a number of other techniques to keep slowly rolling along in this so-called recovery, but they are not in any sense of the word fully in the recovery mode or at a stage where they can even think of expansion or the long-term view.
As I suggested, they are still sitting on the brink. They still have thousands of workers on layoff. They still have no substantial prospective increases in their markets. Their workers are openly talking about those plants being closed totally within the next year to a year and a half if something does not happen to change the situation those companies are in, if something does not happen, on the one hand, to provide them with a marketplace for increased production or, on the other hand, substantial relief from the high cost of money they have to borrow to cover their losses, or some combination of the two.
There is nothing in this budget that deals with the situation any of those companies is confronted with. There is the lack of action on interest rates in this budget. Whether we are talking about overall interest rates or whether we are talking about specifically targeted programs to special sectors that happen to be in particular trouble, it does not much matter because there is none of that in this budget.
Interest rates this year alone may very well be enough to sink half or three quarters of these companies over the course of the next two years. Their employees firmly believe it will happen. They have resigned themselves to that prospect and they see nothing coming from the government to stop it from happening. The managements of their companies are basically telling them the same thing.
Some of those companies are sending out layoff notices every two months, every 60 days. They do not always lay off the people they send out the notices to, but they send out the notices to cover themselves under the Employment Standards Act, because their business prospects at this point are so short term they know two months down the road they may have to lay off people. They manage in a patchwork way to grab another little contract to keep going.
I think that gives the members the sense of what many employers and many working people in this province are up against. This government has totally and completely ignored that reality in this budget. It has even been smart enough this year totally to avoid talking about that situation. Instead of going off as it has in the past with a number of inadequate programs that pretend to deal with those problems, but which obviously have not because the problems are still there, they have totally avoided even talking about those problems in this year's budget.
That situation has left communities such as Hamilton in rough shape and facing potential disaster. Hamilton is by no means the worst of the communities in this province. We have all heard discussions over the last few weeks, months and years, about communities that are in much worse shape in the short and long term than Hamilton.
I will not get into as much detail on many of the tax issues as I might have in past budget debates, since those responsibilities have been passed to others now. I am sure my colleagues will deal most adequately with the tax and economic questions that this budget does or does not reflect on.
I want to make some comments on the environment in this province. I will start by mentioning my very serious anger over the cuts in the budget of the Ministry of the Environment for the second year in a row. Last year we had budget cuts that totalled, depending on whom you talked to, $32 million to $38 million. This year we have another $19-million cut from the ministry's budget. My colleague the member for Huron-Bruce (Mr. Elston) referred to this matter this afternoon, but I feel it is important enough to repeat at least part of it. I will also deal with a couple of items he did not deal with.
The Minister of the Environment (Mr. Brandt), for the first time in his ministry's history, is taking on a public issue in New York state concerning a dump site. I do not want to get into a debate now about whether or not his lawyers and representatives blew that case. That is for another time. I want to deal with the demands he claimed his people were making in the case.
It was a case concerning the S area dump site, a site that is leaking into the Niagara River. Both the opposition and, presumably, the government have been criticizing the way in which that chemical dump site is contaminating the Niagara River and, ultimately, Lake Ontario. We have criticized the way those chemical dump sites, not only the S area but Hyde Park, Love Canal, 102nd Street and all the others we have talked about over the last four or five years, are destroying the environment on which we depend.
In the S area case, the minister has now finally moved to the position we took four years ago, namely, that there is no such thing as a safe dump site. He admits there is no such thing, especially when that dump site is sitting on the edge of the Niagara River and has been proved to be leaking. The minister has finally risen to demanding that the dump site must be excavated and the contaminants removed and destroyed. It took a long time for the government to come to that position; finally, it has, but only when the dump site involved happens to be in somebody else's jurisdiction, such as in New York state.
Unfortunately, they have not seen fit to apply the same philosophy or understanding of the environmental problems on our side of the Great Lakes. There is a dump site in Hamilton just to the south of my riding. If and when the redistribution goes through, it will be in my riding --
Mr. Haggerty: You are going to get something out of it.
9:30 p.m.
Mr. Charlton: I have managed to inherit something out of the redistribution -- the Upper Ottawa Street dump. There is a study of that site going on. It will now have been closed for four years this summer. It is supposedly capped to protect it from leaking.
There is a committee studying that site. They have found some 1,000 hazardous industrial chemicals there but have identified only about 270 of them. They do not even know what the other 725 or so chemicals are. They do not have a clue.
That dump site is bigger than any one of the single chemical dump sites we are talking about on the New York state side of the Niagara River.
Mr. Haggerty: What has the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor) done in the area of illegal dumping?
Mr. Charlton: The Solicitor General has probably been involved in some fashion. His officers on the highway have probably flagged through thousands of trucks that took contaminants to the Upper Ottawa Street landfill site.
The Upper Ottawa Street dump site is larger and potentially more dangerous than any one of the sites we are talking about on the American side of the Niagara River. It is a dump site that was used for 30 years. It is a dump site about which we had a great deal of difficulty getting information for many years. As a matter of fact, we had to get some of the information about the Upper Ottawa Street dump from congressional hearings in Washington. I am just thinking back again to the member for Kent-Elgin (Mr. McGuigan), who was referring to congressional hearings. We could not get that information here in Ontario.
The Minister of the Environment, who has just come into the House, will take a firm, strong position about dump sites in New York state, but have we heard a single peep about whether or not dump sites in Ontario can ever be safe? Have we heard a comment in this House about whether the Upper Ottawa Street dump or the Pauzé landfill site will have to be excavated and the contaminants therein destroyed? Not a peep because it is here; it is in our own jurisdiction.
The government and the minister know if that were to be ordered, the Treasury would have to pay the huge costs of that kind of cleanup, at least in part. We have one policy about dump sites in somebody else's jurisdiction and another policy about dangerous dump sites in our own jurisdiction.
Four or five years ago they were telling us there was no way the Upper Ottawa Street dump could leak.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: It has not.
Mr. Charlton: It has. I have the report of the study committee upstairs. The contaminants from the Upper Ottawa Street dump have moved two thirds of the way from the landfill site to the edge of the escarpment. They are moving laterally and downwards through the bedrock.
Although at the release of the report last year, the study committee had not done hydrogeologic testing all around the perimeter of the site, it estimates that the contaminants are likely moving out in all directions from that landfill site. It is clearly established they have moved some 600 feet to the east towards the edge of the Niagara Escarpment and the Red Hill Creek, which will carry them down into Hamilton harbour and Lake Ontario.
Those are facts from the report. The minister should not try to deny them. He should take out the report and look at what it says. The facts are there. The site is leaking. Whether it is leaking slowly or quickly is not the point. The point is it is leaking. Whether we poison ourselves slowly or whether we take a dose to kill ourselves instantly is not very pertinent in the long-term debate about whether a landfill site filled with contaminants such as that one is can ever be safe. The minister knows as well as I do that it cannot.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Is the member comparing Upper Ottawa Street with New York state sites?
Mr. Charlton: That is right.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: That is totally irresponsible.
Mr. Charlton: It is not totally irresponsible. The volumes of waste that have gone into the Upper Ottawa Street dump far surpass anything in New York state as a single site. Perhaps if one takes all of the New York sites and adds them together, New York can outdo us.
Obviously, the minister has not taken the time to look very far into the Upper Ottawa Street situation. The reality is they have identified 1,000 chemicals in that site and they do not even know what 725 of them are. The minister is going to tell me the 725 they do not know about are harmless. Is that the minister's approach to the whole thing?
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Naturally, the member is going to say they are all dangerous.
Mr. Charlton: I am saying the minister does not have the right to take the chance they are not. I do not play games with lives and with the environment. Until I know what those 725 chemicals are, I am going to assume they are dangerous because that is the approach I take to the environment and to people and their health. One does not play games when one does not know.
That brings me to the interesting announcement of a week and a half or two weeks ago that the minister is not going to put in place the gas collection system that the site study committee recommended in Upper Ottawa Street. The minister says, "Toxic compounds do not appear to be escaping from the landfill into the atmosphere in concentrations large enough to constitute a hazard to persons living and working in the adjacent neighbourhood." The minister quotes from the site study committee's report.
Has the minister ever looked up the definition of the word "appear"? Did he take the quote out of that study and understand what it meant? It means that of the 1,000 chemicals in the site, it does not appear the 273 identified chemicals are escaping from that site in concentrations dangerous enough to provide any immediate harm.
The study goes on to say: "The amounts and the types of wastes buried in the landfill will never be fully known with any degree of certainty. The basic lack of information about the waste materials deposited in past years at the Upper Ottawa Street site presents a major stumbling block to designing specific studies to investigate the possible health effects of exposure to landfill contaminants." That is what the study says. That is really reassuring. That builds a lot of confidence out there in the community.
The study confirmed the existence of 1,000 chemical compounds in the dump site, but most of those compounds have not been identified. For many of those chemical compounds that have been identified, there is a lack of basic information concerning toxicity. For those who do not know, toxicity is the danger index of a particular chemical.
In addition, the study says, "Little is known about the effects of multiple exposure or toxicological interactions of the chemicals." That is another unknown. That is particularly reassuring to the people in the community as well.
What all this really means is that the statement, "Toxic compounds do not appear to be escaping from the landfill into the atmosphere in concentrations large enough to constitute a hazard to persons living and working in the adjacent neighbourhoods," is a very cautious and limited statement based on what they know so far.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: The member just got through reading the part that said it is not a health hazard. Why does he not repeat that?
Mr. Charlton: Where does it say that? I do not see that anywhere.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: The fact that emissions were not escaping into the atmosphere.
9:40 p.m.
Mr. Charlton: No. It says "does not appear." Again, it does not say it is not a health hazard. It does not appear, based on 273 chemicals out of 1,000 they have identified so far and have been able to measure. It means the immediate short-term effects of the identified chemicals for which toxicological information is available are probably negligible. It also means the long-term effects of those chemicals are unknown.
The short-term and long-term effects of the chemicals identified, for which there is no toxicological information available, are also unknown yet. Further, the short-term and long-term effects of those chemicals still unidentified are unknown. Most important, the short-term and long-term effects of identified and unidentified chemicals in combination are totally unknown.
For the minister's information, since he has chosen, along with his staff presumably, to interpret the site study committee as saying there are no health problems at the site, I want to quote from the research director of the site study committee when she found out what the minister's decision was. Anne Koven, who was the key person in developing that report, does not agree with the minister's interpretation. Last week or a week and a half ago, when she found out what his decision was, she said, "We had recommended the system as a means of taking fewer chances with the health of area residents."
The minister says "No collection system" because he wants to take chances with the health of the residents. The site study committee wanted the collection system so we could take fewer chances with the health of local residents. I find the minister's approach totally unacceptable. In many respects, it is the approach that is inherent right through this government. It is the approach that is reflected in this budget and in the government's inaction on the economy and on interest rates.
They take the same inaction on the environment unless it suits their purpose. The only time it seems to suit their purpose is when public opinion reaches a level at which they feel they have no choice. They go out and poll; they find out what the public thinks, and then they do what they have to do to satisfy that newly developed level of public opinion. Unfortunately, on environmental matters --
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Mr. Speaker, on a point of personal privilege: The honourable member implies that my ministry and this government take polls to determine virtually every step of future activity on the part of the ministries. I want to let the record show that during the time I have been minister of this portfolio, I have not taken any poll of any kind on environmental issues. Let us put that on the record, and the member can go ahead with his rhetoric.
The Deputy Speaker: That is really not a point of personal privilege.
Mr. Charlton: The Minister of the Environment may have taken no polls himself, but we know what the government does. I am not suggesting the minister personally commissioned a poll on anything. He has not been there long enough to figure out what he should commission a poll on. I just repeat for the record what the site study committee on Upper Ottawa Street said: "We had recommended the system as a means of taking fewer chances with the health of area residents." The Minister of the Environment says no. Let that speak for his ministry's record.
The minister is a proponent -- at least I assume since it was in the throne speech he supports it; as a matter of fact, in his response here in the House to us he seemed to support it -- of the process of mediation as an addition to a very public approach we created in this province a little better than a decade ago; that is, the environmental assessment process.
The minister, the ministry and apparently the government as a whole want to establish this mediation process as a new additional part of the environmental assessment process so that perhaps we can avoid lengthy hearings and the antagonism and confrontation that inevitably seem to result from the environmental assessment process.
The minister says the mediation process is not intended to replace the hearing process but is only perhaps to shorten it. I think what the government is doing is indicative of its approach to public participation in environmental protection in this province. As their rationale for moving ahead with this, they have touted some experimentation they have done and are doing in this province on the process of mediation.
I would like to read some paragraphs from a participation agreement in the matter of the mediation of the establishment and operation of a waste management system for the north Simcoe area. This is one of the mediations the minister touted to us in response to questions we raised with him some month or six weeks ago as one of the experimental mediations that was ongoing.
I asked the minister why, if he felt it was in addition to a public process, they were demanding absolute secrecy in this mediation process. He said: "As far as I know, we are not. I do not know anything about that, but I will look into it and get back to you." He may have looked into it, but he certainly has not got back to us.
We took the time to get a copy of this participation agreement on our own. I will read a few brief words from it. "Item 2: All communications made to or through the mediator shall be confidential, privileged and without prejudice to the position of a participant in any future proceedings."
We have taken a process that is public, a process in which the public is intended to have full input and full access to information, and we are now going to make the first stage of that process totally private and behind closed doors.
Even worse than making it a private process: "While it shall be open to any participant to withdraw from mediation at any time" -- i.e., a public group, a particular industry, anybody who happens to be involved in an environmental mediation -- "it shall remain the sole prerogative of the mediator to declare either a complete or partial impasse and to terminate the mediation. Any party withdrawing from the mediation undertakes to respect the confidentiality of the mediation until such time as it may be concluded."
There is the case of the Concerned Citizens of Stouffville, which withdrew from an experimental mediation some year and a half ago. When there is a public group of 500 or 1,000 members -- I do not know how many members the Stouffville group has -- the members have representatives. There are two, three or five members doing the representation in the mediation process. They get the shaft in the process and they withdraw because they know they are getting the shaft.
Under the approach the government takes in this document, the government makes those representatives sign to become participants in the mediation, but they do not even have the right to go back to their members and report why they have withdrawn. They do not have the right to report to the public they represent what it was the government or the proponent of a particular project was doing to them in that mediation process. They do not have the right to report on how they were getting the shaft or why they withdrew from that mediation.
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Is that an appropriate addition to a public process where the public is supposed to have full access to all the information concerning the proposal or whatever the environmental case happens to be? Is that an acceptable addition to a public process? Of course it is not. What is more, the public will not accept it.
There is no other conclusion that reasonable people in this province will accept, especially those reasonable people who have been through the two mediations I am aware of, those who participated in the Stouffville one and those participating in this one. No reasonable people will accept that as either a replacement for or an addition to an open and public process. The minister runs the risk of further losing the confidence of the people of Ontario on environmental matters by the route he has chosen to take.
I have one other issue I want to deal with tonight. It will mean getting away from the environment for a few minutes.
Hon. Mr. Brandt: Good.
Mr. Charlton: Perhaps I have forgotten one other environmental matter I did want to mention. It has to do with the question we asked the minister this afternoon about the trip to Illinois and the kinds of things going on there.
I see the member for Oxford (Mr. Treleaven) smiling because he had the honour and pleasure of being with us last week on a most informative trip. I think he will concur that some of the things that happened on the last afternoon of the trip were very unfortunate and, to some extent, twisted somewhat out of shape. I think he will agree on that point. We do not have any quarrel about that. What I quarrel with is the very naïve approach the minister is taking to that issue.
When we questioned him this afternoon, the minister on the one hand took the position that there is no problem with Ontario Hydro, when he knows full well there is. He finally conceded the Americans are now using our record with Ontario Hydro against us in the battle to cut back acid emissions in the United States. He finally admitted that, although a month and a half ago he would not admit it; yet he is still sitting over there saying we are not losing that battle in terms of getting some legislated reduction in emissions in the United States.
The member for Oxford sat with me through that session on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, the minister was not there, but presumably his staff has reported to him. We had a very hard and frank discussion with a couple of gentlemen from Capitol Hill in Washington where the final decisions will be made.
It is very clear that there is going to be no legislation this year committed to reducing acid rain emissions in any way, shape or form. If the member for Oxford will recall their comments, they see virtually no chance for any legislation in the foreseeable future. Is that a fairly close quote in terms of what we were told last Friday afternoon?
How can the minister sit there with his head in the sand and say, "We are not losing that battle," when we hear those kinds of comments from those we know are going to be part of making that decision? How can the minister sit there with his head in the sand and deny those things are going on?
I understand the minister wants to continue the fight. We all do; we all know we have to. We have to continue the fight to clean up here at home, but we also have to continue the fight to convince our neighbours to the south to reduce emissions. Why is it we cannot face up to the political reality that we are losing that battle because we are making some serious mistakes at home?
The minister will stand up in the House and say: "Ontario Hydro is going to reduce its emissions. It will meet the 1986 targets; it will meet the 1990 targets." I have no doubt that is the honest and sincere intention. I will not be so bad-mouthing as to impute motives different from that, but let us be realistic.
If the approach we are taking to clean up Ontario Hydro is to phase out the coal-fired plants as opposed to cleaning them up, where will we be if we have another series of major nuclear breakdowns in 1988 and we have to fire up those coal-fired plants again? We will be right back where we are now and we will have accomplished nothing. The Americans will be using the same arguments against us they were using last Friday, last month and in the months to come.
If everything goes perfectly with our nuclear expansion program, if there are no more major and unexpected problems with our nuclear plants and if Darlington comes on stream when it is supposed to, Ontario Hydro will likely meet its reduction commitments. But if there are any unexpected problems along the way, it will miss the mark.
The minister will have failed to keep his commitment, through no fault of his perhaps, but he will have failed to keep the commitment because we will then have to rev up those coal-fired plants again and our acid emissions will go on the rise again because he has done nothing to clean up those plants. It does not matter whether we keep those coal-fired plants mothballed for potential backup or whether we make the decision to use them full-time; they need to be cleaned up.
What happened this year should be the lesson that tells us that. What happened last summer at Pickering was totally unexpected. What will be the next unexpected thing to happen? Will it be another problem we have not heard about as yet or perhaps even financial problems which will not allow us to finish Darlington on time? What will be the next problem that causes us to have to use the coal-fired plants we do not now intend to use?
If we want to honestly make the Americans believe we are committed to cleanup, we cannot allow that kind of thing to happen. We have to take whatever initiatives are necessary to ensure it does not happen. That likely means going back to a commitment that was made, perhaps not directly by the Premier (Mr. Davis) but certainly directly in a throne speech of this government just a few short years ago, to install some scrubbers at least on those plants that most likely will have to be used for backup in the future.
With that, I will move on to the last comment I wanted to make on the announced program in the budget, that the Ministry of Revenue is supposed to provide assessment exemptions for seniors and the handicapped for renovations or alterations that they or their sons or daughters do to their homes so those handicapped people can stay and live at home as opposed to going into an institution, and as well the increase -- the second announcement this afternoon -- in the allowable amount for renovations without any increase in assessment.
10 p.m.
The minister is aware that the allowable amount since 1971 -- some 13 years ago -- has been $2,500. In his great generosity, and I presume with the permission of the Treasurer, the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Gregory) has increased that allowable renovation amount from $2,500 to $5,000. Does he have any kind of concept as to what changes have occurred in real estate values in this province, even on average? We could take some of the exaggerated cases such as in Metro Toronto and really make it look bad, but let us just talk about some general averages.
On average, since 1970 real estate values in this province have gone up 300 per cent. The Ministry of Revenue, after waiting 13 years to make any change at all, has offered us one third of what it would take to catch up, just to bring us back to par with what we had when the government took over assessment in this province. That is the extent of the generosity in this new program. It sounds great: let us double it. But everything else has gone up triple.
Concerning the program for seniors and the handicapped, Mr. Speaker, how many people do you know in your riding who have built ramps not only into their houses but perhaps out into the backyards, ramps from one floor to another inside their houses, perhaps even some elevators or additions on the backs of the houses to accommodate a particular handicap, or a number of other special facilities that are put in for seniors? I know of dozens in my riding.
I can tell who does not know, though: the assessment office. They have assessed them. When they did their reassessments, they assessed those additions, those alterations, those improvements; but they do not keep records of what alterations are put in for a handicapped person and what alterations are put in for the pleasure of the member for Oakwood (Mr. Grande). They go out to assess an addition, they assess a value to that addition and they add an assessment based on that valuation; but they do not keep track of which were done for seniors, which were done for the handicapped and which were done just by an average citizen.
What we have here is a program that will deal from this point on with seniors and the handicapped. I suppose it will probably even apply to those seniors and handicapped who happen to hear about this program through the newspaper, by word of mouth or whatever, who understand it, who get in touch with the assessment office and who have an assessor come out to look at those things they have already had assessed and that now should be exempt. We have created a program here that nobody, in effect, has any way of reasonably implementing for all those people in this province who have already done the work and received no credit for it in the past.
We have seen the record of this government. We have an Ontario health insurance plan premium assistance program in this province. I cannot recall the exact figures, but we had some figures just a few years ago about the number of people in this province who were eligible on the basis of their income for premium assistance but who were not getting it because they did not know it existed.
That is the kind of program this one is going to be as well, the kind of program that hundreds of thousands of people in this province who will be eligible for some kind of property tax exemption will never get because this government has to take the approach of back-door assistance. On the one hand they can take credit for being good to seniors and the handicapped, but on the other hand they will never have to spend all the money the program really might require them to spend if it were an upfront program such as a tax credit.
This government could very easily have extended the seniors' property tax credit and made some minor changes to the general Ontario tax credit, which everybody fills out on the pink form in his income tax every year, so that people could take advantage of an exemption for additional taxes they paid on renovations and alterations done for a senior parent or for a handicapped member of the family.
At least that way everybody who is eligible in this province would have a reasonable chance of getting access to that eligibility, but the way we have approached this program likely ensures that somewhere between a third and a half of the people who are eligible for this kind of program will never get access to it because they will never hear about it.
That reflects the approach this government takes, the approach we have criticized this government for over the years, yet it continues to implement the kinds of programs it knows everybody will not have easy and fair access to. In large part, it reflects the attitudes that exist across there, the same attitudes that exist in the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Labour.
The Ministry of Labour, and we have talked about it in this House, repeatedly talks about its voluntary approach to everything under the sun, women's issues or whatever it happens to be. We know those programs do not work and do not accomplish the goals this government says it intends them to accomplish. That reflects the whole approach of this government and I find that very unfortunate.
As I suggested at the outset of my comments, it raises in me a great deal of anger and frustration. Those are the things I find myself compelled to say to my constituents when they ask me why we are not getting a gas collection system at the Upper Ottawa Street dump, or why there are no job creation programs in the provincial budget to deal with a slightly above average unemployment rate in Hamilton compared to the rest of the province, or any number of other issues they come to me with.
This government leaves us no choice but to run through the things that go on here and the games this government plays with the very lives of the people of this province, against the clear advice of the experts it hires to recommend solutions, which ultimately get ignored.
Mr. Cousens: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Charlton) for leaving me a few moments to squeeze in a few remarks on this important subject.
I am inclined to believe that the member for Hamilton Mountain will not be supporting the budget of the government and I am really surprised. I thought he was a man of great wisdom, insight and intelligence. The fact that he spoke in such a strong and forceful way against the efforts of our government is quite a surprise and disappointment.
As one who sits back here with a lot of other members of this party, I think back to the days just over three years ago when we were talking about keeping the promise. I believe that what we see in this budget is the promise of the Davis government being fulfilled again, with a very responsible approach to the fiscal needs of our province, looking after the needs of everybody in a responsible way. As members of this caucus, we are proud of what has happened.
When one talks of politicians having to go to the polls every three, four or five years, that is when we re-establish ourselves with the electorate. What we are doing here on a regular, daily basis in this government is doing it on a very regular basis, a daily basis, a weekly basis. Just as the Treasurer has to go to the money markets and is constantly under the test for the way he is handling the financial obligations of our province, this government, our Premier (Mr. Davis) and our Treasurer are living up to the high expectations the people of this province have placed upon them.
10:10 p.m.
When one starts to see members from other parties looking earnestly and anxiously at this side of the House and coming across the floor, we begin to know, not just think, that promise is being understood.
Some people might be inclined to think the efforts of this Legislature are boring and uninteresting, that nothing is happening. When our Treasurer has been able to come out with a budget that does not increase taxes, that is able to touch on the needs of the people of the province at every level -- the young, the old or whoever -- we are seeing a government that is responding to important needs.
One of the big dangers in business today is the fear of bankruptcy. A business that spends too much, does not plan properly and does not handle its resources in a proper way can go bankrupt. Governments can go bankrupt as well. Before they go economically bankrupt, I think they go politically bankrupt. That is when politicians fail to give leadership and guidance and are not able to use the strength of their positions to say no when everybody is saying, "Do this and this and this." What we are seeing in this government is the kind of leadership that makes us far from bankrupt in any way.
What our government is trying to do in giving this leadership is to see we do not even come close to the edge of being economically bankrupt. Some people make light of what it is to fight the deficit and to have responsible government. I think there are a lot of unsung heroes in Ontario who have not been given recognition and credit by all of us in this House for the way they have fought excesses in spending and have tried to put the lid on their own expenditures.
Mr. Boudria: Yes, $600,000 in public opinion polls.
Mr. Bradley: And $50 million in advertising.
Mr. Cousens: The member for St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley) should look at the way Management Board for the last 10 years has been clamping down and closing in. It has meant this province has not had to go to the kind of methods that are being brought in by the government of British Columbia. We are doing it on a gradual basis, on a consistent basis and in a deliberate way to keep government spending in Ontario under control.
That is an important part of what this budget is all about. It is not just something that happened one day when the Treasurer announced it. Behind the scenes, in an ongoing way, every ministry, every cabinet minister and every person within this government, going right down to the clerks and the people in the ministries --
Mr. Harris: And the back-benchers.
Mr. Cousens: -- and the back-benchers, are all carrying an increased load. They are the unsung heroes. Not necessarily the back-benchers, but the people out there who are making the government offices work effectively with reduced numbers of people and reduced costs and under heavy times.
That is the difficult balance our government is trying to keep, the balance that says to the people who elected us: "We will keep the promise. We will provide the delivery of the services you need, but we will also be fiscally responsible. We will do that to the extent that we want to protect real take-home pay by limiting the growth of spending on public policy." This means we have to live within our means. There is something criminal when people start thinking they have money to spend when they have not earned the money.
Mr. Bradley: Like on a new jet for the Premier.
Mr. Cousens: It was not for the Premier. If this government had gone ahead, I would have supported the jet for this province, for northern Ontario. Yes, I would have. The fact of the matter is that many people did not understand it.
There are many things this government can be doing for northern Ontario and members do not realize that. I live in southern Ontario and I realize we have many benefits here, but let us recognize the people in Kenora and Kapuskasing, North Bay and those cities who need to be recognized. We need to provide services for them as well.
We must live within our means. That is the point. We have to face up to the facts. We should not spend money that does not belong to us. We are spending the money of coming generations and of people who are not here to be accounted to. That is not fair. It is not right.
When we start having members, as we had the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston), asking why do we not have a larger deficit at this point, promoting a higher deficit, I can tell them this: that from my riding and my constituency, I would rather promote responsibility in controlled spending, reduced spending and bringing down the deficit. I can defend that strongly and emphatically and I wish the member for Scarborough West could have done so as well.
Mr. Nixon: You sound just like John Turner.
Mr. Cousens: John Turner talks about reducing the deficit in the federal government by $15 billion, but one wonders how he is going to do it. He is like the honourable member opposite, who would have radical surgery in different areas but does not tell us where or how he would do it if in fact he were ever to have the position of responsibility.
Mr. Bradley: Are you talking about Brian Mulroney?
Mr. Cousens: I was talking about the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) if he ever were to be the head of a government. It is easy to make promises when you are outside; it is far more difficult to make those difficult decisions from within.
Mr. Bradley: He soars with the eagle.
Mr. Cousens: Well, I would just like to stay with him right now because, quite simply, many governments, not just the government of Canada but governments in other parts of the world, also are running up debts that threaten not only to drown their countries in a sea of red ink but also to jeopardize the stability of the international financial system.
Mr. Grande: Metaphors are not your forte.
Mr. Cousens: Metaphors may be important in certain respects, and we will come to the honourable member's big metaphor shortly.
Mr. Allen: Let us get into some reasonable comparisons.
Mr. Cousens: The reasonable comparison is that it would seem to be popular on all the world markets for countries to spend more than they have, and I was impressed to see that our Treasurer made at least a significant effort in this budget to start reducing the deficit of this province.
You cannot continue to spend money you do not have. The federal government started it years ago. The federal deficit in 1979-80 was a mere $11.48 billion; it has crept up to close to $30 billion. That kind of spending has to stop. We have to live within our means.
In 1983, the net external debt for nonmembers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries stood at US$413 billion. If you start looking at the extent of the world debt, there are countries all over this magic globe that are living beyond their means.
In 1983, for the first time, debt service payments for all developing countries exceeded net borrowing by $21 billion, and the total external liabilities reached $810 billion. In other words, that is how much in debt this world of ours was. That is not the communist countries, because they do not know how to keep track of things. They force it; they have the kind of thinking that comes from the third party.
In the period 1978-82, the portion of world debt that countries could not pay on time increased from US$2.3 billion to US$39.5 billion, an increase of 1,600 per cent. In 1983, the total national debt of Latin American and South American countries alone stood at US$318 billion. Look at what Brazil has done. Maybe the members opposite would like to see us be like Brazil, Mexico or Argentina.
Brazil owes between $89 billion and $92 billion in foreign debt, Mexico about $83 billion in external liabilities and Argentina between $37 billion and $40 billion. According to a survey conducted by Country Risk Update, of the 50 major borrowing nations in the world, only 22 nations are solid enough to be ranked as a moderate risk or better, and the situation in six of those 22 countries is expected to worsen over the next five years. In other words, we are seeing countries borrowing beyond their means; we will be seeing six of the 22 major countries that have borrowed get into trouble in the next five years.
It is not only governments of developing countries that carry large debts and run large deficits; look at what the United States is giving us as an example. The American deficit this year is estimated to be $177.8 billion, and they project a deficit of $179 billion for fiscal 1985. The American deficit was expected to peak at around $180 billion. They are now seeing that the American deficit will remain in the $200-billion range for the next several years; it could reach $280 billion by 1989.
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Those guys over there get so comfortable living in debt that they do not know what it is like to live on the right side of it, in the black rather than in the red. Maybe that is why some of them are called reds.
The total American national debt now stands at $1.3 trillion. The 1984 Canadian budget projects a deficit this fiscal year for our good country of $29.6 billion or 6.9 per cent of our gross national product. According to a recent report of the International Monetary Fund, of the seven major industrial economies, Canada is running the highest deficit in relation to the size of its economy.
Interjections.
Mr. Cousens: Did members hear that during their interjections? Canada is running the highest deficit in relation to its economy among the seven large major industrial powers.
In 1983, about 10 million Canadians paid taxes to the federal government. The average payment was about $2,800, of which federal debt charges consumed $1,700 for each taxpayer. In other words, in 1983 nearly 61 per cent of the average Canadian's tax dollar went to service debt. This year the federal government will spend $20.3 billion to cover public debt charges. By 1987-88, debt charges will increase to $24.7 billion.
Living above one's income becomes a habit. It has become a habit for Canadians; it has become a habit for governments; but it is not going to become a habit for this government.
Look at Alberta, our good friends out west. To keep its deficit under control in fiscal 1984, to maintain its capital program, the government has borrowed from the heritage savings trust fund for the third year in a row. They have cut expenditures by 1.7 per cent, the first such cut in 40 years. We started long before that to bring things under control. The Alberta government has eliminated 1,100 civil service positions, the first reduction in 43 years. Last fall they raised their personal income tax rate by 12.5 per cent.
In per capita terms, if Ontario's 1983-84 deficit had been as large as Alberta's or the federal deficit, it would have been $3.25 billion or $9.5 billion respectively. That is an awful lot of money the members opposite are inviting us to spend.
In 1984-85, the total national output will be nearly three times greater than Ontario's output. However, though the national economy is only three times the size of Ontario's, the national deficit is 14.5 times that of Ontario's.
Mr. Bradley: That is because they are bailing you out.
Mr. Cousens: I do not hear the Liberals making comments on that one. If they want us to be that much over our means, they are really begging for trouble.
In Ontario, debt service accounts for 11 per cent of total government expenditures. For the sake of the member for St. Catharines, 11 cents on every dollar spent by the government goes to pay off the debt. At the federal government level, public debt charges account for 20.8 per cent of total expenditures or 21 cents out of every dollar.
Measured in relation to the size of the provincial economy, Ontario's 1984-85 deficit is actually smaller than the 1975-76 deficit -- 1.3 per cent of the gross provincial product as compared with 2.8 per cent then. Were Ontario's 1984-85 deficit as large as its 1975-76 deficit, relative to the size of the economy, it would be $4.46 billion.
What we are seeing here is a government that is making significant strides to reduce its spending. The Ontario government expenditures have remained relatively stable in relation to the size of the economy.
In 1984-85, provincial government expenditures equal 16.8 per cent of the gross provincial product. Federal expenditures equal 23.3 per cent of its gross national product. Ontario's deficit as a percentage of total spending has declined from 10.8 per cent in 1982-8 3 to 7.6 per cent this fiscal year. That is why I am a Tory, because what we are doing is being responsible.
At the federal level the trend has run the opposite way, with the deficit rising from 30.8 per cent to 31.9 per cent of the total spending in the same period. In Ontario, we are seeing a significant effort by everybody to bring things under control. This includes the unsung heroes, the people who make up the Ontario civil service who have made efforts to make this happen.
The problem is that everybody has a "want" list. If a member were to delineate the total requirements he has in his riding, we know he could delineate costs for which the province could pay out more money. If a member were to go and figure out the costs he would like to see in his riding and if he were given $3,000 for each person in his community, he could do much with it.
Mr. Laughren: Not in Markham, though. It has everything. The honourable member just has to look at the Markham news.
Mr. Cousens: I know.
Let me just respond to the honourable member. I have in my riding a very significant community known as Richmond Hill. Approximately 40,000 people live there. Richmond Hill has an immediate requirement for roads that $80 million would begin to resolve. Over a time it has just not been able to maintain the payments on them. In the same community we have no sewers, and we require in the order of $10 million to $12 million to help resolve the problem. We put in water, but we did not put in the sewers to take the water away.
In one community we could spend $110 million. We have a need for more hospital space, schools and day care. If we were to live in the ideal world that the member dreams of being in, then it would take double the taxes this province is now levying to meet the needs of that kind of community, because we are talking something in the order of $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Ontario.
The people of this province cannot afford to pay more taxes. They want a government that is going to live within its means. They have one. They can afford us because they know we are doing the right thing. It is a lot harder to say no than it is to say yes. As members, we all approach the ministers and seek from them assistance for some of these major requirements. They end up having to say, "No, we cannot do it." The Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) just cut $40 million from his road budget. That is not easy or fun.
Mr. Nixon: I think that was done for him.
Mr. Cousens: I know it was. May I just suggest that we on this side see it as difficult but responsible. On one side we are saying, "Give us more," and yet we are not prepared to pay more. The people of Ontario want a government that is going to have the balance that is required to say, "We know there are many requirements out there."
The Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson) had requests for capital in excess of $360 million, with something like $40 million to dole out and share across Ontario. Where is that money going to come from? It has to come through being fiscally responsible and through the government being careful in spending what money it does get.
Members do not realize how difficult it is for a government to say no. I approach the Minister of Education and the Minister of Transportation and Communications and they say no. May I just suggest that I know the province would like to have more and more, and there are people in the third party who have said, "Increase the deficit."
We want to have responsible leadership such as has been given to us by our Treasurer and our Premier. I give great tribute to those unsung heroes coming through Management Board and the ministries who are cutting back on the spending of this government.
This is the kind of government that will get re-elected. It is the kind of government that knows there are limits to its spending and that the government can only provide so much with its limited resources.
Politicians must establish priorities. What I see our government trying to do is establish those priorities. The budget that our minister has presented to us, which I am glad to support, is responsible for that reason and for many others.
Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the honourable member would adjourn the debate.
On motion by Mr. Cousens, the debate was adjourned.
The House adjourned at 10:30 p.m.