Hansard Transcripts 1984-Oct-18 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, the government, as members of the House will know, established the Ontario Status of Women Council in 1973 to advise on any and all matters of concern to women. The advice we have received from that council has formed the basis of our activities on behalf of the women of this province for over a decade.

The first chairman, Laura Sabia, and her dedicated council members proceeded quickly to establish themselves as a most effective advisory council, and her successors to that position, Lynne Gordon and the council's most recent president, Sally Barnes, continued this tradition. I would also like to pay tribute today to the tremendous co-operation I have received from the vice-president, Sheila Ward, in this interim period and to extend my words of appreciation to her as part of this statement today.

Perhaps the most visible contribution of the Ontario Status of Women Council was the appointment in 1983 of a Minister responsible for Women's Issues and the formation of the Ontario women's directorate in the office of the Deputy Premier effectively to consolidate, co-ordinate and improve the government's policies, programs and activities on behalf of the women of Ontario.

The establishment of the directorate, providing, as it did, a structured focus for women's issues within the government, brought with it the necessity to re-evaluate the role and the mandate of the advisory council. It was for that reason the management consultant firm of Touche Ross and Partners was commissioned to conduct a study of the council, the directorate and their relationship.

The report resulting from that study is entitled An Organization Review of the Ontario Women's Directorate and the Ontario Status of Women Council, and I am pleased to table that document today. The report made several constructive recommendations and observations. I am sure honourable members will appreciate that before appointing a new president it was imperative to have a clear indication of the purpose, direction and role of the advisory body.

The challenging mandate and demanding responsibilities of the council require an able president. I believe we have found such an individual. I am delighted to inform the House that Ms. Sam Ion has been appointed the new president of the Ontario Status of Women Council effective immediately. Honourable members will join me in welcoming her, as she sits in the Speaker's gallery this afternoon.

Sam Ion is familiar to all of us as a columnist and feature writer for the Toronto Sun. Her column "Dear Sam: Advice to the Working Woman" is syndicated, and her book by the same name was a bestseller in Canada and the United States.

She is widely sought after as a speaker for her opinions, advice and thoughtful counsel. Ms. Ion has made a valuable contribution to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, held office in a host of service clubs and volunteer organizations and served as a president of a co-operative nursery school. She has produced and directed several television shows and was nominated for Hamilton's Woman of the Year in 1973 and for a Vanier Award in 1982.

I am sure all members of the House will agree that she will be an effective representative of women's concerns in the tradition of her three predecessors.

Sam Ion will be assisted with her new challenge by members of the council at full strength with the appointment of the following individuals: Sarah Band of Toronto; Mariah Seymour of Kenora; Ed Arundell of Toronto; Diane Marleau of Sudbury; and Dorothy Kirby-Rawn of Toronto.

Members will know that today, this very day, October 18, is Persons Day, the 55th anniversary of the landmark decision by the Privy Council which overturned a ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada and declared that women were indeed persons. We have come a long way since that historic event. Women have achieved prominence in every field of endeavour, and we are moving rapidly towards the day when our goal of true justice, fairness and equity for everyone in Ontario will be realized.

I am confident that our progress will be enhanced by the efforts of the Ontario Status of Women Council guided by its very able president, Sam Ion.

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, as the women's issues critic for the Liberal Party, on behalf of my colleagues I would like to offer our congratulations to Sam Ion on her appointment. We wish her well as she takes on this very challenging task. We hope she will meet with great success and that she will have the resources, both personnel and dollars, to forward the cause of women in Ontario.

Mr. Rae: Mr. Speaker, after a considerable delay we welcome the appointment of a new chairperson at the council. We certainly appreciate the appointment of Sam Ion and the other members of the committee.

I cannot resist simply indicating two things to the minister. First, in December 1983 the procedural affairs committee recommended that the new president of the advisory council should be a full-time position.

Second, I must indicate to the minister that he is tabling a document from Touche Ross that is dated December 1983. I think it should be stated for the record that some nine or 10 months after a document was forwarded to the minister he has seen fit to table it without indicating in any way, shape or form what the government intends to do with any of the recommendations made to it either by the council or --

The Deputy Speaker: With respect to the member, this is more suitably a matter that should be brought up in question period.

COMMERCIAL FISHING MODERNIZATION PROGRAM

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, as a result of a Supreme Court of Ontario judgement on October 15, individual quotas assigned to commercial fishermen have been ruled to be technically invalid at the present time. The judgement was based on the issue of delegation of authority from the federal Governor General in Council to the provincial Minister of Natural Resources.

In the decision, it was held by Mr. Justice Smith that the authority of the Minister of Natural Resources to impose individual quotas is not legally delegated in the federal Fisheries Act or the Ontario fisheries regulations made thereunder.

I am disappointed that the quota allocations have been held by His Lordship to be invalid. I am also encouraged that the judge found we had been fair and just in both our applications and in the intent of the quota system.

I would like to make it clear that all of the other Ontario fishery regulations involving both sport and commercial fishing remain valid.

Members should know that the province is currently seeking both a stay of this judgement and leave to appeal the judgement to a higher court. The matter of staying the judgement will be heard on Friday, October 19.

In the interim, we are reviewing the other legislation and we will advise the commercial fishing industry of our subsequent approach to enforcing harvest controls.

We are encouraging commercial fishermen to continue to respect the intent of individual quotas in their fishing practices in recognition of the best interests of conservation of the resource, other resource users and the industry itself.

2:10 p.m.

I would like to remind members of the House of the importance of our fishery resource to the province. Across Ontario, from Lake St. Clair to Lake Nipigon, there are close to 1,000 commercial fish licensees who directly employ more than 2,000 persons annually. These fisherman land approximately 60 million pounds of fish a year with a landed value of nearly $30 million.

The concerns facing the commercial fishery across the province are remarkably similar. Without exception, there is competition for the fisheries resource within the industry and among the various user groups. The competition between anglers and commercial fishermen for yellow pickerel, as an example, is as intense on the Lake of the Woods as it is on Georgian Bay or Lake Erie.

Each user group is calling for sensible control of fish harvests. Tourist lodge operators, charter boat operators and recreational anglers, who alone contribute more than half a billion dollars to the provincial economy annually, are demanding measures that will ensure a stable fisheries resource. I think it is obvious a stable resource is needed to make long-term business decisions and plan for recreational pursuits.

It is concern for each of these groups as well as for the future of the commercial fishing industry as a whole that prompted the Ontario government to bring changes to the management of commercial fishing. Our goal is to make sure fish stocks are protected from collapse and that the commercial fishing industry is protected from the instability it has experienced for the past 40 years.

To achieve this goal, we have been working with commercial fishermen for several years. We have been looking for ways to protect fish stocks, streamline commercial fishing administration and, at the same time, allow good opportunities for productive business enterprise. I would like to emphasize the degree of consultation between my ministry staff and members of the commercial fishing industry concerning the modernization program.

From as early as the late 1970s and more intensively from the beginning of the 1980s, there have been extensive communications. This has included letters to the industry; reports circulated and comments requested; meetings held by local ministry staff with local fishermen and fishermen's associations; joint industry-ministry committees; meetings between the ministry and the Ontario Council of Commercial Fisheries; and meetings between the successive ministers of Natural Resources and individuals, associations and representatives of the industry.

The result is a program for modernization of commercial fishing in Ontario that is a comprehensive treatment of many of the problems identified by the industry. The primary goal of the modernization program must be conservation of fish species. This is the essential first step in guaranteeing a healthy and economically viable commercial fishery.

A program of this magnitude necessarily involves changes. The biggest change to result from the modernization is the establishment of a quota system providing each fisherman with a share of the available catch.

As many members know, until now Ontario has relied on more indirect methods to manage the fish harvest. This included closed fishing seasons, closed fishing areas, size limits on catch and restrictions on the type of gear used.

Under the new system, commercial fishermen would be assigned individual species quotas representing each fisherman's share of the total allowable catch allocated to the industry. In other words, the proposed quota system would do away with many of the efficiency reduction regulations and concentrate instead on maintaining a total catch geared to fish stock predictions.

We trust this matter will soon be resolved to the benefit of all concerned.

ORAL QUESTIONS

COMMUNITY COLLEGE LABOUR DISPUTE

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Education and Colleges and Universities with respect to the now two-day-old strike of the community college teachers. I would like to ask the minister a number of questions, but what are her plans with respect to some of the students whose courses are now in jeopardy?

I use as an example the nursing class at Seneca College that is supposed to finish this semester. I am told 80 per cent or so of the graduating students could have been finding jobs in January when they graduated, and now it looks like their future is in jeopardy. What contingency plans does the minister have to address that specific problem and others like it across the province?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, it is the considered opinion of those who are very knowledgeable about education at the college level that a disruption of two or three days is not likely to produce jeopardy for any program, even nursing programs. That is the kind of information I am seeking in order to try to determine the most appropriate course of action on the part of the government in support of the students in the college system. Our primary concern is the students in that system. Any action we take will be in support of their educational program rather than anything else.

I will not give the honourable member the details of contingency plans because they vary from course to course and from institution to institution. It is therefore not possible to provide a list.

Mr. Peterson: I think the students would like to know that immediately, but I will pass on to another question with respect to the strike.

Will the minister not agree with me that at the present time the bargaining table is virtually polluted with bad feelings, that no progress is being made, that the position of the minister in her own so-called neutrality is highly suspect in the situation and that the things she is saying are not being confirmed by others? I can give her an example. The minister said, "The union had decided it did not want to talk." The union told us this morning that it flatly contradicts what she is saying.

The minister denied that a major issue in the campaign was the number of hours in the classroom.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: No, I did not.

Mr. Peterson: Yes, she did. Of course, she did. She has the shortest memory. She is incredible. She does not remember what she said.

The Deputy Speaker: Would the member just put the question?

Mr. Peterson: She can stand and deny it. If she wants us to bring the tapes, the records and the newspapers in here, we will do it, but she cannot stand up and change her mind every five seconds and then pretend she did not say it a few minutes ago. Those are quotes.

I want to remind her of what she said. She denied that the classroom hours were a major issue in the campaign. The spokesman for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union said this morning: "We want to talk about the work load issue. That is what the strike is about and that is the only thing preventing settlement."

The minister said in this House, and I will show her Hansard if she wants me to, "On average, most of them are spending 15 to 17 hours in the classroom per week." Yet her own employer-employee relations study said that the average was 21.45 hours per week. I will show her that study if she wants to see it with respect to the 1983-84 work load.

What I am saying to the minister is that she is either misinformed, keeps changing her mind or is misrepresenting positions. Because she is the minister responsible, does she not feel that at this point some conciliatory gesture of impartiality, some kind of move to give the impression that she at least wants to get rid of those poisonous relationships --

The Deputy Speaker: We heard the question.

Mr. Peterson: -- and try to solve some of the bad relations in the past would be worth while at this time?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: That was a delightfully interesting diatribe. It is unfortunate for the poor leader of the Liberal Party that my memory is longer and more accurate than his is by a long shot.

I think I said very clearly in this House that the issue of classroom hours per se, or direct student contact in the classroom hours, was not the matter at issue, that it was the total work load, and that the union was asking for inclusion of such items as the time necessary to prepare classes, the time necessary to mark examinations and the time necessary to counsel students in the formula used to ensure they receive reasonable remuneration.

The direct student contact hours in the classroom are only part of the work load and they are not the matters which are at issue at this point. It is the total work load concept that is at issue. I think I made that fairly clear. If I did not, I apologize to the members of the House, because it was not direct student contact hours in the classroom that I perceived to be and which I have been told by the union are the matter of grave concern.

2:20 p.m.

The figure that has been developed by the staff with respect to the average number of assigned teaching hours per week in 1983-84 in the colleges is 18.9 hours per week. It was informed opinion on the part of several individuals in the college system who provided me with the information that most colleges were unable to achieve 18.9 or 19 hours per week because of the rigidity of the formula.

That concern is bothering me at present, and it seems we must find a way to resolve that issue. I am looking at that at present, and I will continue to provide the House and the members with factual information at all times about this situation.

I will attempt not to suggest that I am taking any sides --

Mr. Rae: Oh, come off it. The minister was here as a spokesman for the regents on Tuesday.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Yesterday morning, when I spoke to the press at Niagara-on-the-Lake, I simply reported what I had been informed had occurred. The mediator had presented the last offer of the Council of Regents on Sunday afternoon to the group that was around the bargaining table and had awaited a response. I gather they had been informed that a response would be forthcoming. When it was not forthcoming late on Tuesday afternoon, the mediator called for an informal meeting of two representatives of the union and two representatives of the Council of Regents.

The two representatives of the Council of Regents went to that informal meeting; the two representatives of the union did not appear, and did not appear for a considerable period of time. I gather it was at that point the mediator said, "It is evident they do not want to talk and therefore I am suspending mediation." That was the situation. That is what I reported.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minister how she reconciles her statement that no student will fail because of this strike with the words of the administration at Durham College in Oshawa yesterday to their first-year nursing students. Those students were told that if they did not cross the picket line, they would fail their year; that they should make their choice now of their career or honouring a picket line; that no matter what they get on written tests, their score would be zero; and that they would not be allowed to do their clinical work in hospital. In short, they were told that their career would be over if they did not cross a legal picket line.

Does the minister understand how that makes the parents and children feel in Oshawa, a union community that is currently on strike at General Motors of Canada, where parents on a legal picket line at GM are asking everyone to honour that line? How can she reconcile her statement with the threats that were made to those students at Durham College yesterday?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, if the honourable member would look, he would see that what I said was, "I cannot guarantee that no student will fail." That is an impossibility for any teacher, as the member very well knows. I said very clearly that it was my intention to do everything within my power to ensure that the academic year of the students in the college system would not be lost as a result of the strike, and that is precisely what I am attempting to do.

The condition at an individual college is determined within that college. It would be my understanding that those in charge of administration within the colleges would understand best the local situations and would make the kinds of statements that would be in support of those local situations. I have no control over the statements that are made by the administration of the individual colleges with regard to this activity. I am surprised that there was such a statement, but if it is there, I will investigate it.

Mr. Peterson: I refer the minister to the report of the Employer-Employee Relations Committee, 1983-84, which refers to the 21.45-hour figure as the total assigned classroom hours. One has to be frank in this situation and say that there is a lot of misunderstanding and extremely bad relations at the moment. I do not want to be uncharitable, but let me tell the minister, she personally is one of the major causes of that.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Oh. thank you.

Mr. Peterson: It is just a reality; whether the minister knows it or not, it is just a reality because of some of the misstatements she has made and some of her perceived bias. It is poisoning the relationships, and she ought to know that. I know it and everybody else knows it. I am surprised the minister does not know it.

The Deputy Speaker: Can we have a question, please?

Mr. Peterson: My question to the minister is this. Does she not consider it as part of her responsibility at least to step forward personally and make some very serious conciliatory gestures, the first of which is to admit that the work load is a problem and that she is prepared to address that because she does not want to see the quality of education hammered out on the bargaining table but rather she is prepared to take her responsibilities as a minister and tell us what the policy should be?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: One of the things I learned a long time ago that the poisonous personality of the Liberal leader has apparently not learned as yet is that one has to take one's role very seriously but one never takes oneself seriously. That, I think, is the important difference between the two persons here represented.

The only side I am on, and I hope the only side any member in this House is on, is the students' side in this dispute.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I would hope that each one of us would be very careful about the kinds of remarks we make, because it would appear there are some remarks on the other side that are equally distorting. I think if we are all very careful from here on in, things will improve tremendously.

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question to the same minister on the same subject.

Interjections.

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, will you please protect me?

The Deputy Speaker: I will do my best.

Mr. Conway: Specifically, what contingency plan does the minister have for that group of people'? Let us be very particular and talk about the graduating nurses at Seneca, many of whom will be ready to accept employment in a few months' time. Accepting that she cannot talk about the general, let us be specific. Can the minister tell me, so that I can tell the nurses about to graduate at Seneca, what specific contingency plan she has for them?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: No, Mr. Speaker, I do not think I should share that with the honourable member. That nursing school happens to be in my riding, and I will be very pleased to look after it.

Mr. Conway: I think that kind of attitude and that kind of answer speaks all too eloquently to the kind of role the minister has had in this. It speaks very much by dint of her attitude as indicated in her answer that she is part of the problem and not part of any solution to it.

Given that the union has stated publicly its concern about and its loss of credence in the mediator, Mr. Graeme McKechnie, does the minister not think it might be useful to consider seriously replacing Mr. McKechnie in that critical role of mediation with someone who enjoys the support and confidence of both sides in this very important matter, which we sincerely hope will be resolved at the bargaining table at the earliest opportunity?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I share the member's hopes that it will be resolved at the bargaining table and very rapidly. I remind him that it is the responsibility of the College Relations Commission to appoint the mediators, and I am sure the very responsible people on that commission are looking very seriously at the ongoing situation --

Mr. Bradley: It is the minister's responsibility.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: It is not the minister but the College Relations Commission that makes those recommendations. The individuals who are appointed are appointed as a result of the serious consideration of the qualifications of each one in each situation, just as they are under Bill 100 for the teachers under the Education Relations Commission. It is precisely the same kind of arrangement.

The Deputy Speaker: May I remind all members, as we have the next supplementary, that we do have standing rules that preclude the use of language that might be construed as abusive or inflammatory.

Mr. Wildman: Are you talking about the minister? She called him a poisonous personality.

The Deputy Speaker: No. I was talking to all honourable members. I was only awaiting our next supplementary.

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, how can the Minister of Colleges and Universities say with such certainty that this will be resolved so quickly at the bargaining table and speak so lightly of its going on for two or three days, as though that were the likely scenario in this dispute, and fail to indicate what steps she is going to take to see that this time frame is adhered to?

How can she say those things when she knows the work load issue is the one central question for the union and it is not prepared to back away from it? The chairman of the Council of Regents has said, according to this morning's paper, that he is a hardliner on this question and he has no intention of backing down on the work load issue.

2:30 p.m.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I said I sincerely hoped it would be resolved by negotiation, and I do. I also hope it will be done in relatively short order. I cannot be certain about that because one cannot be 100 per cent certain about any activity that involves human beings on both sides.

If statements are being made over which I may have some control that could be construed to be damaging to the negotiating process, we will make sure those statements are no longer made and attempt to be as fair as can possibly be appreciated on the side of the employer, with which we do have a direct relationship.

We have had interesting discussions in the past and in the past several months with the unions. I have shared my concerns with them and will continue to do so because I believe all of us are in this business together and we are all supposedly particularly concerned about the future of the students within the system.

Mr. Conway: I have a supplementary, going back to the question about the role of the mediator. Accepting, as we all must surely accept, that the College Relations Commission is an emanation of this Ontario government, of which the minister is so prominent a part, does she not share with me a concern that one of the two sides at the bargaining table has lost confidence in the objectivity and the credibility of the mediator?

What specific steps is the minister prepared to take to deal with that very serious and immediate difficulty, which is surely going to stand in the way of the most preferred solution, which is a resolution, and I hope a speedy one, at the bargaining table?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I can assure the member that the chairman and the members of the commission are neither blind nor deaf. They do read and they do take note of the information provided to them. They are aware of the situation totally.

Mr. Rae: Given the tone of the minister's answers and the tone and substance of her comments on Tuesday, it is very difficult for anyone listening to those comments to come away with any conclusion other than that she saw herself very much as a spokesman for the employer in this dispute, that she saw herself as a spokesman for the Council of Regents and, indeed, an apologist for the Council of Regents, in terms of the argument she was making in the House on Tuesday.

I see the minister shaking her head. If she has changed her mind about that role and now sees that is not helpful and that it makes the colllective agreement more difficult, I agree with her.

I simply want to ask the minister this question: does she feel it is at least a reasonable proposition that the question of overall work load should be a subject of negotiations between the two parties and that the overall work load includes more than simply teaching hours? Is she prepared to concede that at least is a reasonable subject for agreement, disagreement and ultimately resolution and a collective agreement? Does she agree with that?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I thought I had made it clear on Tuesday afternoon when the question was posed that it was not a matter of simply the contact hours in the classroom that the union was concerned about. There is no doubt that there are some teachers within the system who are working extremely long hours because of the popularity of their classes and because of a number of other things.

I, for one, am suspicious that the kind of formula established by arbitration under Mr. Justice Estey is too rigid to deal with all these problems, and that is a matter I have asked be examined carefully. In the light of current negotiations, I guess that is not something that could be debated over the bargaining table at this point. If the formula itself is not good enough, it is very difficult to negotiate something better out of an imperfect foundation.

This is a matter I am looking at, therefore, but I tried very hard to provide factual information. I am not providing a bias, if I can help it. I am not an apologist for anyone. I am simply trying to provide the member with factual information about what is provided to me by both sides and from our monitoring.

Mr. Rae: I do not want to be inflammatory, but I simply say to the minister that the information she supplied to the House on Tuesday with respect to teaching hours is in direct --

The Deputy Speaker: May we have a question, please?

Mr. Rae: I would to like ask the minister whether she can confirm that the information she gave to the House with respect to teaching hours -- she listed certain figures and she knows what those figures are -- is substantially different from, and I would say substantially lower than, the figures produced by the Employer-Employee Relations Committee 1983-84 faculty survey statistical summary for teaching area and co-ordinators, showing averages of 12 or more response combinations based on all colleges. It is a fact sheet I am sure the minister has seen. She must have seen it before she came into the House on Tuesday, since she knows it is what is at stake in these negotiations.

If the minister had this information on Tuesday, why did she come in here with a cock-and-bull story about the teaching hours in the community colleges? It is information that is misleading, unfair to the faculty members involved and unfair to the negotiations involved.

I hope she will withdraw that statement and replace it with the factual information that she should have before her which gives a substantially different picture of the number of hours worked and the number of hours teachers are really spending with their students.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: The information supplied by the Employer-Employee Relations Committee, which is a joint union-management committee, provides for this. In 1981-82, the number of assigned teaching weeks per year was 32 weeks; in 1983-84, it was 34 weeks. The average number of assigned teaching hours per week in 1981-82 was 19.6 hours; in 1983-84, it was 18.9 hours. The student-teacher ratio in 1981-82 was 14.8:1; in 1983-84, it was 16.3:1. In 1981-82, the total weekly hours, including class preparation, student evaluation and other assigned duties, was 39.9 hours; in 1983-84. it was 37.8 hours.

I have clearly pointed out today that in addition to that information, in my conversations with some reputable representatives responsible for scheduling within the college system, I was informed that because of the rigidity of the formula within the system, there was a problem even assuring this quota of 18.9 hours was being met in most colleges.

In most circumstances, the range was somewhere between 15 and 17 classroom hours -- not total working hours or total work load, but classroom hours. This is what I was trying to tell the member for York South (Mr. Rae) the other day. This is the information that was established by the Employer-Employee Relations Committee. It has been in my hands at all times.

The members of the staffs of colleges who have been involved in this believe there is a problem, even with this information. They apparently do not believe it is entirely accurate.

Mr. Conway: On the contingency plan part of this critical question, when will the minister share that with the thousands of disadvantaged students who wait anxiously on her every word to hear about the secret, silent contingency plans that rest so very dear to the minister's heart?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: The member is being carried away with his own hyperbole, as usual. The contingency plans in almost all circumstances are the contingency plans of similar faculties in various institutions or specific institutions per se. That is where they have been developed because it is the best place for them to be developed. It is where they can meet the needs of the students. I know the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway) hangs upon my every word, but I do not think anybody else does.

Mr. Rae: Of all the things the minister has said, that is one with which we have little difficulty agreeing.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: They do not hang on the honourable member's, either.

Mr. Rae: I am under no illusions about that. I want to ask the minister a simple question.

In view of her statements today that she does not see herself as a spokesman for either side and that she wants to do everything she can to effect a settlement, can the minister point out to us precisely what steps she plans to take to ensure a settlement happens? What precisely is the minister doing to ensure that a settlement takes place?

She said a number of things she does not intend to do. Could she please tell us what she does intend to do to ensure quality education for the students, fairness for the faculty and good service for all the citizens of Ontario?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I am having some very useful discussions. When they have provided me with a solid foundation for action, I shall be pleased to share it with the House.

Mr. Rae: Is the minister sure there is not an ambassadorial appointment in line for her? With that last statement, she would certainly qualify.

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

2:40 p.m.

NURSING HOME CARE

Mr. Rae: I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Health. It was bad enough when the government of Ontario announced this summer that it was reducing its share of nursing home costs and increasing the burden on pensioners and on people living in nursing homes, but I would like to ask the minister if he can explain the following simple situation, which is a true one.

The Gustas family in Walden, near Sudbury, has a total income of $806 a month. Mr. Gustas is less than 65 -- 62 years old -- and was paralysed by a stroke. He is in a Sudbury nursing home. He receives an income from lnco and the Canada disability pension. Mrs. Gustas receives a disability pension of $164.

How can the minister explain the fact that the wife, Ilze, now has only $280 to live on, $40 less than she had before the Ministry of Health reached in the family's pockets and pulled out $40 a month in order to pay for nursing home care for Mr. Gustas?

Hon. Mr. Norton: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member is aware of the fact the adjustments that are made are made in conjunction with increases in old age security benefits and are designed to ensure that those persons are at a guaranteed level of discretionary, disposable income at the end of any given month. There are times when inequities creep in when individuals are dependent upon sources of income other than old age security.

I cannot respond to a specific fact situation without having those facts before me, and I do not think it would be wise for me to try to respond on the basis of a question such as the member has raised. I would be pleased to examine the situation he described and respond to him when I have had an opportunity to look at the facts and see if there is any way to alleviate the hardship he describes.

Mr. Rae: The Gustas family is not alone. There are literally thousands of families in a similar position to this family in Sudbury. The minister knows that perfectly well. He knows the number of families that are having to pay the chronic care copayment.

He knows perfectly well that as a result of that deliberate, mean-spirited, Dickensian decision of his government to increase the chronic care copayment, not to increase the quality of care in nursing homes, not to increase the money going to homes for the aged, but to simply reach into the pockets of old people and take that money and put it into the pocket of the government of Ontario, and that is what this government did --

The Deputy Speaker: Question please.

Mr. Rae: -- there are many people in this province who are poor. Can the minister deny there are many families in Ontario that are directly poorer as a result of that mean-spirited, Dickensian move by his government to take money out of people's pockets and put it into the pockets of the Treasurer (Mr. Grossman)? Can he deny for an instant that is exactly what he did?

Hon. Mr. Norton: I suppose if the member thinks I am putting it into the pocket of the Treasurer, then he should ask the Treasurer what he is doing with it.

The fact of the matter is that I am not sure the member understands the distinction between extended care and chronic care. He has apparently used the two terms interchangeably in his question. I am now confused and I presume all members of the House are confused as to what it is he is really talking about. There is a difference.

There is also a difference between the two with respect to the formula upon which the individual pays the copayment. For that reason, in addition to the reason I cited in my first response, I think he would be well advised to provide to me the details other than on the floor of the House, and to afford me an opportunity to examine the situation to see if the predicament he describes is the one that the individual is in fact faced with.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, speaking of confusion, did I correctly understand the minister to say that the only time the copayment is increased is when the old age security payments are increased?

Hon. Mr. Norton: No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Sweeney: Would the minister please clarify that? That was the impression he left in his original answer and yet I am sure both the minister and I are well aware that is not the case. What exactly is he trying to tell us?

Hon. Mr. Norton: I am sorry if that was the impression the member had. There is, of course, another time and that is when the annual adjustments are made. Otherwise, the only time there is an increase in the copayment is one that is coincident with the increase in the old age security, guaranteed income supplement, and Gains total package payment to the senior citizens. That applies only in the cases of residents of nursing homes or chronic care facilities who are over the age of 65.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister himself does not understand what has happened. We have a situation in which a person who is under the age of 65 is in a nursing home and so did not get the increase senior citizens got. Although the cost of that person's payment to the nursing home went up by $40, there was no corresponding increase in that person's income. In this case, we have the spouse of the person in the nursing home living on $280 a month.

Was that really the intention of the minister when he increased the rates to people paying for nursing home care? If that was not his intention -- and I find it hard to believe that he intended to take $40 out of the pockets of the very people in our society who are least able to afford it -- will he at the very least roll back that increase for the people who do not receive the corresponding increase in pension?

Hon. Mr. Norton: Mr. Speaker, the confusion that I made reference to was not with respect to that, but with respect to the fact situation. The member's leader, in the course of asking his question, used interchangeably the reference to chronic care and extended care. There is a difference in the kind of payment system that prevails.

Mr. Rae: They both went up. Are you denying they all went up?

Hon. Mr. Norton: I am not denying at all that they all went up. All I am saying is that if the honourable member wishes to ask a question, he should first clearly understand what it is he is asking.

The question of the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) was much clearer. He did not make the same confusing exchange of terminology that his leader did. I am assuming that he may understand the whole situation better. The leader of the NDP might well have been advised to let his member for Nickel Belt ask the question in the first place.

In so far as he did not, the member has now asked a supplementary. I will be pleased to review the situation and see whether anything can be done to relieve the difficulty.

I know cases of difficulty arise, not necessarily in the thousands, but there are some individual cases of families that face difficulty when these increases occur. I will be pleased to look at it if the member will be so good as to provide me with the facts.

COMMERCIAL FISHING MODERNIZATION PROGRAM

Mr. Mancini: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Natural Resources in regard to the statement the minister made today. He is not getting his leadership campaign off to a very good start, I am sorry to say.

The minister has informed the House that he has for several years been working on an implementation system for the quotas. If he has been working on this quota system for several years, why is he not aware he did not have the legal right to implement the quota system?

2:50 p.m.

Did he get his information from Ontario's Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry), whose record has not been very good over these past few years? How can the minister and his ministry be working on a quota system for several years and not know that he did not even have the right to implement such a system?

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, I indicated in the statement I made that the court had ruled with respect to subdelegation and cross-delegation. There was a decision made by Mr. Justice Smith that there was no legal delegation that was sufficient to authorize the issuance of orders in council and regulations to impose individual species quotas.

The issue of the delegation between the federal and provincial governments has been a problem between the two levels of government for at least two years. It was raised in the spring of 1983 in another context. We have asked the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans to put the delegation in very specific and concrete terms. We think that work will now be done.

We have expended millions of dollars pursuant to a delegated authority in this province -- $24 million a year. The federal government in a co-operative approach has invested about $13 million a year for some extended period of time. The fact of the matter is that for over a century the delegation has been virtually unwritten and a judge has ruled that one needs a specific, detailed delegation in writing in order to authorize the issuance of the regulations. Now I understand it is the intention or the hope of both parties that specific subdelegation will be created.

Mr. Mancini: The minister still did not explain to the House how he could be working on a quota system for several years and not know that he did not have the legal right to implement such a system.

Why was the minister in such a hurry this past spring, last February, March and April, to implement the quota system when he had received correspondence from a great number of fisherman and fish processors who asked him to delay implementation of the quotas so that they could further discuss with the minister some of the problems they were having, such as the important area of the minister not having the exact poundage of what species of fish had been caught? The minister proceeded and implemented the quota system without having the exact facts.

Now that the minister has the industry in complete chaos, what does he plan to do if, on Friday of this week, he is not granted his stay and then once again the fisherman are allowed to go into the lakes and catch as many fish as they want to?

Hon. Mr. Pope: I presume from that last comment the honourable member is in favour of individual species quotas. He should read the judgement to understand that the legalities of the issue are not as clear-cut as he has tried to present to this House. The judge dealt with a number of case precedents on both sides of the delegation issue and then made his final decision. I would refer the member to the decision so that he can understand that it is not as clear-cut as he has proposed it is.

I would ask the member to read the decision and the specific reference to the Shoal Lake case before he makes such a clear-cut statement as he made in the first part of his question.

The second issue was that modernization has been discussed since the 1970s. There was a joint government-industry committee that looked at modernization issues. It made its report to the government and to the industry. In it, the committee, including industry representatives, recommended agreeing to species-specific individual quotas.

Based on that report, we went to the next phase of consultation. I have indicated, as an attachment to the statement, some of the personal contacts I had -- the member was involved in some of them, as was the member for Haldimand-Norfolk (Mr. G. I. Miller) -- with the industry to discuss some of the details.

I appeared at every annual meeting of the Ontario Council of Commercial Fisheries to discuss modernization. Our staff met with them and discussed that in some detail. We made a decision -- and the council understood that decision -- to proceed in this current year with individual species quotas. In addition, we have moved to improve the administration of the quota system in line with their recommendations.

There will never be complete agreement among the commercial fishing industry, other user groups and the government as to how much fish exists in any one body of water. All I can do, along with my staff, is attempt to make some decision based on the scientific information that is given to me. That is the basis that we use for establishing the quotas, and that is the basis that has to be used for any rational system of allocation.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the minister whether he will address himself to this particular problem as it affects our first citizens. Does the minister think the position taken by the court is anywhere parallel to the position taken by the federal government when he himself tried to negotiate an agreement for an Indian fishing agreement?

Did his dialogue with the previous government flag the issue for him with regard to the importance of the fishery to our first citizens? Did the minister not get an inkling there, since they were so reluctant to sign the Indian fishing agreement, that there was a jurisdictional problem and that perhaps he did not have the right to establish quotas?

Now that he has this judgement, for which they are asking a stay tomorrow, what is the status of the charges that have been laid against the former chief of the Gull Bay band and five of its members? Is the minister going to put those in abeyance until this whole matter is settled?

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the charges now before the court, it will be up to the county court judge to make a decision upon those.

The issue of constitutionality was never specified by the representatives of the Department of Justice in the discussions of December 1982 and January 1983, in spite of our repeated requests that they provide some specifics about any problems with respect to constitutionality.

The delegation issue was set forward on the table as an issue of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans wishing to add new terms or limits to the delegation without directly discussing those with the provincial government. It was in the light of that discussion that we felt the federal government might be trying to use that issue to rewrite the delegation or to put limits on the delegation that had not been placed there before. It was not with respect to the legality of the delegation or any aspects of it that we had that discussion.

USE OF FUNGICIDES

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of the Environment with regard to his responsiblity for the Pesticides Act. Can the minister explain why his ministry and the Ministry of Labour passed the buck from one to another when summer employees at Chateau des Charmes winery at St. Davids, near St. Catharines, complained about hazardous use and storage of fungicides such as Captan, Sevin, Rovral and Folpet last summer?

Considering that Captan is a mutagen and a suspected carcinogen, why did the minister not at least send an inspector in when his ministry was informed that fungicides were being applied when the boys were working as close as 35 feet away and that they were being stored without warnings and markings which are required by the ministry's own regulations, in an area next to a room where their employees eat lunch?

Hon. Mr. Brandt: Mr. Speaker, this is the first I have heard of that case. If the materials the honourable member is describing were inside the building, they would come under the Ministry of Labour. If they were stored outside and exposed to the natural environment, it could well be a Ministry of the Environment responsibility.

I am not going to stand here and tell the member it is a matter that is being shifted back and forth between the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) and myself because, quite frankly, no one has complained to me about it; but I will look into it on behalf of the member. I will take his question under advisement and report back to him.

3 p.m.

Mr. Wildman: Is the minister not aware that agricultural workers are exempted from the Occupational Health and Safety Act? Is he also not aware that the regulations and general information on pesticide usage put out by his own ministry state under regulation 751 that pesticides should be stored in a locked facility away from food for humans?

Considering that and the fact that the regulations also state they should have a warning and be marked clearly, why did he or his ministry not take any action when they were informed that workers must walk through this unmarked storage area past unmarked fungicides in order to get to their lunch room and eat lunch? Why on earth did he not apply the regulations? Why does he allow workers to be endangered in this way without taking any action? Surely he is aware that this does show that the Ministry of Labour should without delay include agricultural workers under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Hon. Mr. Brandt: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to deal with the last part of the comment made by the honourable member; that is a matter to be dealt with by the Minister of Labour.

If there are any violations of the regulations governing the handling of toxic chemicals or of any of the products he has identified in his comments, if a company is in violation of the regulations that my ministry not only prints but enforces, then there is a possibility of prosecution of that company and it leaves itself open to that kind of action.

I can only reiterate what I said before. I have heard of the case for the first time today and I share the concerns the member is bringing to my attention. I will have the matter investigated. I am not at all satisfied with any company that exposes workers to toxicity of that level and that type of chemical, and I will look into the matter.

MUNICIPAL ROADS

Mr. Eakins: Mr. Speaker, my question for the Minister of Transportation and Communications relates to the issue of municipal roads in Ontario.

I am sure the minister is aware of and has read the recent report of The Road Information Program of Canada on the condition of municipal roads in Ontario. The report points out that the condition of these roads is so serious that some 61 per cent of Ontario's paved municipal road system will need either resurfacing or reconstruction over the next five years. This is on top of the 2,000 kilometres of the province's highways that are already below his own ministry's standards. Over the next five years another 7,000 kilometres of these highways will also need resurfacing and reconstruction.

What steps is his ministry going to take to respond to the condition of the road system? Specifically, how much of an increase in actual expenditures will the government provide for road repair spending to deal with the present situation?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the honourable member must realize I cannot answer that question. I will supply to the municipalities an increase of whatever this Legislature provides for that vote, or whatever the ministry is allocated for municipal roads. We will continue to distribute that to the municipalities, as we have been doing for many years.

Mr. Eakins: The minister's government has reduced funding in real dollars for road repairs and subsidies. In fact, there has been $50 million less in tender calls by his ministry for road construction thus far than in the same time last year.

Why did the minister tell the Ontario Good Roads Association last February, "It is very difficult to demonstrate to the public the need to spend large sums on road maintenance until after the roads have deteriorated to a point where it will cost much more to almost totally rebuild them"?

Last year when I asked the minister about the reduction in funding, he said, as he said today, that he could only spend the amount of money the Legislature gives to him. Will the minister assure us road repair will be a priority and this government will bring before the House a five-year plan for road spending that will reverse the present decline in the road system?

Hon. Mr. Snow: As I have explained many times in estimates and so on, and as all the members of the House know, our budget has been severely constrained over the past number of years, as is the case with every other ministry. We recognize the need to maintain the road system. Our highest priority is to maintain the existing infrastructure. We have to maintain our existing road system and we have to give that a higher priority than building a new capacity, whether it be a complete new alignment or an increase in capacity on an existing line. We have continued to extend a higher priority to our own provincial road system, to resurfacing and maintenance, in order to maintain the system and not to let it deteriorate, and it has not done so.

The TRIP report came out and said, I believe, that eight per cent of Ontario's highways would need resurfacing during the next period of time. If the honourable member would get his research staff going a little bit and ask what that report said for the other provinces, he would find that in some of the other provinces it was 40, 50 or 60 per cent. I think if only eight per cent of our roads are found to need something to be done to them -- I am talking of provincial roads -- then that is not too bad.

Of course, we give substantial grants to the municipalities every year. I know they are not as much as the municipalities would like to have. The municipalities then must set their priorities concerning how they spend those dollars, whether they do reconstruction, new roads or resurfacing. We work with them and we advise them. But we happen to believe in local autonomy and in letting the local municipality make that decision.

Mr. Wildman: If you give them enough money, they will make up their own minds.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Snow: If the member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. Eakins) does not believe that, I had a delegation of citizens from his riding in to see me the other day wanting me to interfere and to overrule the Victoria county council on a decision the county council had made to upgrade a road called county road 24. I told these people: "That is a decision for the county roads committee to make. If you have a beef with that decision, go and see the county roads committee; they are the ones who have to make that decision." If the member does not agree with that, fine; but that is what I told his constituents.

SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONS

Mr. Philip: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Revenue. The minister will recall that on Friday I asked him about the Clarkson Gordon report, which pointed out the inadequacy of the auditing in the small business development corporation program.

At that time the minister commented that losses sustained by the program had been minimal. Is the minister now aware of the defrauding of the SBDC of $450,000 by Mr. Ralph Lambe? Can the minister inform the House if he is aware of similar cases? If so, how many are there, since the government has invested some $70 million in this program?

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the situation the honourable member mentions. He will also make note of the fact that the man has been given a three-year term in jail.

The design of this program is such that we are dealing with risk capital. When one is dealing with risk capital sometimes one takes a risk, and this is one that was taken.

Auditing is not done on a regular basis. We have reports from SBDCs once a year. We have reports -- affidavits, in fact -- when funds are brought down from the trust account, and it is only natural that there are going to be cases in which things go wrong. In those cases we investigate and take appropriate action.

Mr. Philip: I am not sure whether the minister is saying that sending people to jail is the purpose of the program or the consequence of the program. In any case, can the minister inform the House, since he refused to answer or conveniently ignored my question, whether there are any other similar cases that he knows about? Is his ministry or is the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor) currently investigating other cases of a similar nature? Can he assure the House that the audits that were requested in the Clarkson Gordon report will be implemented so that the taxpayers' money will be protected?

3:10 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Additional audits were undertaken coincident with the recommendation of the report the member is speaking of. In any program of this sort there will naturally be cases in which people perhaps attempt to defraud the government. When it is suspected these cases are occurring, a proper investigation takes place. We are certainly not in the business of jailing someone before we find out if he is guilty of anything.

Mr. Philip: Are there any other cases or not? Why do you --

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

HOSPITAL BEDS

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Health. He will recall that on June 25 I asked a question about the possibility of 41 surgical beds being closed at Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital. As part of the minister's answer he indicated, on page 2825 of Hansard, that this was not acceptable. He gave us reason to believe he would do something about it. I draw to the minister's attention that those 41 beds were closed and are closed today.

As a direct result of that, on Tuesday of this week six elective surgeries had to be cancelled. That is the second time in a month that surgery had to be cancelled at K-W Hospital.

I checked with the two local hospitals yesterday and found that although no additional surgeries were cancelled, things are very tight. My obvious question of the minister is, given his statement of June 25, and recognizing that he or his staff has spoken to representatives of those hospitals somewhat recently, what does he intend to do now? Does he intend to allow surgeries to continue to be cancelled?

Mr. McClellan: Why does the minister not study it for a while? Is that not his job, to study things?

Hon. Mr. Norton: Mr. Speaker, the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) knows I am much more decisive than that.

The decision to close beds is not uncommon at that time of year. I am especially concerned if they are still closed.

Mr. Sweeney: They have been closed for a year.

Hon. Mr. Norton: Let me explain why it is not uncommon in June. It is because staff vacations, including those of physicians, nurses and others, often dictate that will be the case. As well, the demand for elective surgery and other procedures declines substantially during the summer months because they are elective procedures. People choose to have their summer vacations rather than go to hospital.

Mr. Sweeney: That is not what we are talking about.

Hon. Mr. Norton: Just a moment. We are talking about a time of year when the demand is reduced and the staffing is such that the staff support is diminished as well.

I do not know why those beds are closed at the moment. I assure the member I will find out. If they are closed for reasons that the hospital alleges are related to funding, then I want to know why. If, like other hospitals, it was brought up to its operating level of cost a couple of years ago, I want to know why the management of its funding should have deteriorated in such a short time to a point where it claims it has to close beds. I obviously want to know the answers to that and I will find the answers to that.

The other thing I emphasize is that the cancellation of elective surgery from time to time, and I should think much more frequently than the member has cited in the case of Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital, is not uncommon. It is impossible for hospitals or anyone to predict the intermittent increases that occur in emergency cases. When elective procedures are scheduled well in advance of the time, and if there should be an increase in emergency cases brought to the hospital, which it must deal with on a priority basis, that often means the beds which were allocated for purposes of elective procedures are taken up. That is not uncommon. It may or may not bear any relationship to the fact that some of the beds were closed. I shall get the answer for the member and respond at the earliest opportunity.

Mr. Eakins: Mr. Speaker, can I have a supplementary?

The Deputy Speaker: I am sorry. The time for question period has expired. The member will have to deal with it another time.

PLANE CRASH

Mr. Pollock: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: I would ask that all members of this House join with me in paying tribute to Grenville Martin, who died yesterday in a tragic plane crash just north of this city. Not only do I extend sympathy to his family, but also to the family of Ross McNaught, who was a resident of Tweed and whom I knew personally, and to the family of the pilot of the plane.

Mr. Eakins: Mr. Speaker, on a point of personal privilege: I think it would be appropriate to join my colleague the member for Hastings-Peterborough in expressing on behalf of the Liberal Party our regret at the news of the tragic plane crash yesterday which claimed the lives of three gentlemen.

We were especially saddened in our riding to learn of the death of Grenville Martin, who is a very respected gentleman and the owner of G. W. Martin Veneer Ltd. in Harcourt. I am sure that we join with the other members of the House in paying tribute to his memory today.

MINISTERIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: You may recall when you were in the House earlier this week that the Minister of Health (Mr. Norton) indicated to the House that he does not make major announcements outside of the Legislative Assembly and yet -- and you will be sympathetic to this as an individual member of this House -- yesterday he was in Niagara-on-the-Lake making a major announcement. In effect, he capitulated to demands of the member for Niagara Falls (Mr. Kerrio) and myself for a major health study in the Niagara region.

I commend him for that, but you would agree with me, Mr. Speaker, that the announcement should have been made in the House.

Hon. Mr. Norton: Mr. Speaker, there has been an allegation made on the floor of this House which I think invites response by way of at least a protest on a matter of personal privilege.

The honourable member has alleged I said in the House, on an occasion he does not specify, that I do not make any announcements or any important announcements outside the House. If he correctly recalls my words, I think I said I would not make any announcement of important policy outside this House. I have always felt that way and still feel that way. In this particular instance which has irked him, the policy has long since been established and the policy is one of great sensitivity on the part of this government in responding to the needs of the people of this province. That is the policy.

That was not an innovative announcement. The particular announcement I made was of a programmatic nature, of a grant to the good folks of the Niagara Peninsula to carry out an extensive health study. That is not a policy announcement.

The Deputy Speaker: I appreciate this has been a burning matter between the two members but neither point was a point of privilege.

REPORT

STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND OTHER STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS

Mr. Sheppard from the standing committee on regulations and other statutory instruments presented the following report and moved its adoption:

Your committee begs to report the following bill with a certain amendment, Bill Pr19, an Act respecting the City of London.

Motion agreed to.

3:20 p.m.

MOTIONS

ESTIMATES

Hon. Mr. Wells moved that the estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ministry of Labour be transferred to the standing committee on general government.

Motion agreed to.

MOTION TO SET ASIDE ORDINARY BUSINESS

Mr. Bradley moved, seconded by Mr. Elston, that pursuant to standing order 34(a), the ordinary business of the House be set aside in order to debate a matter of urgent public importance, namely:

The province-wide community college teachers' strike, which has deprived hundreds of thousands of college students of instruction;

The impact of this strike on students who were expecting to complete their terms within the next few weeks, and the effect this strike will have on their immediate employment prospects;

The failure of this government to encourage and facilitate the bargaining process, resulting in a breakdown of negotiations and, ultimately, the strike action;

And the failure of this government to adequately fund the college system, thereby forcing the colleges to place greater work load demands on the part of their teachers, a consequence which will have a direct and negative effect on the quality of education offered by our province's colleges.

The Deputy Speaker: I mention to all members that the motion of the member for St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley) was received in good time and he has five minutes to state his case. For the member's advice, I would say the motion probably was in order down to "the province-wide community college teachers' strike" comment. The rest probably should be more correctly in your debate.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, are you suggesting that is editorializing within the motion? I will take that into consideration in any future notices of motion.

If there is one issue at the forefront of interest in Ontario politics today it is the unfortunate breakdown of negotiations, particularly with respect to the strike taking place at community colleges across Ontario. We have, I believe, some 120,000 full-time students who are involved in community colleges from one end of the province to the other and some 500,000 part-time students who are taking advantage of the opportunities presented by community colleges.

We have a situation where students are expressing the gravest of concerns about their own futures, where teachers themselves are concerned about what is happening in the college system and where the general public is not pleased to see the present circumstances.

Unfortunately, many students are wondering what to do at present. Many are contemplating quitting the year if there is no opportunity to continue their education within the near future, particularly those who are going out of town to the various colleges in the province. We hear parents and students talking about one reason, that they have board or rent to pay. Also, they have tuition to worry about, the loss of that tuition and the expenses incurred in being out of town.

There is no doubt that there is a good deal of concern about this among the students and parents. I think among all parties there is a desire to see it resolved through the collective bargaining process. Justifiably or not, and the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Miss Stephenson) may disagree, if we look at what has happened at this time, the perception I detect out there is that the minister has sided with the Council of Regents. I think members of this Legislature gained that impression on Tuesday. Certainly, representatives of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union have indicated very clearly they felt the Minister of Colleges and Universities was at least tilting towards the employer's side in this dispute.

We recognize that what is happening out there is affecting everyone in the province, including the teachers in terms of their employment circumstances. Most important, students who are on shorter-term courses can see themselves losing their courses as a result of this, and students who are on longer-term courses that would normally terminate in May are concerned that even if there is only a relatively short pause in their education, there is still going to be the consequence of extending the school year in some way. When they are competing for jobs with university and high school students in late May or June, they are not going to have the same advantage as others.

All of them recognize the consequences of the underfunding of the system as it relates to community colleges, and we could extend that to other parts of education. They see it as part of the real crisis that exists today. They see it as one of the compelling reasons for the Legislature to be dealing with the matter.

If one listens to the telephone calls coming into constituency offices, the letters we are receiving and the personal encounters we each have, particularly those of us who have a community college in our area, those kinds of encounters reveal a genuine concern about this and a concern that the Minister of Colleges and Universities is not taking the appropriate action to bring the two sides in this dispute together to resolve it.

While there are disagreements between the two sides, we know they are not so far apart that they cannot reach some kind of agreement. In previous days the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Peterson), the Colleges and Universities critic of the Liberal Party and I have all indicated clearly that we feel the Minister of Colleges and Universities should take, first of all, an impartial role and, second of all, a prominent role in bringing the two sides together, talking about the consequences that exist and ensuring we have some meaningful negotiations that will produce a settlement satisfactory to all.

It is our view in the official opposition that this is the responsibility of the minister. We have a strike that is affecting the entire province, a strike that I am certain the people who are out on strike, the teachers themselves, do not want but feel compelled to engage in because of the circumstances they face; a strike the students do not want, because of the consequences for them; and a strike the general public does not want.

I appeal to the House for approval of a discussion of this matter of great importance this afternoon.

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, I would like to support the call for an emergency debate on the crisis that affects the college system in this province today as a result of the strike that has been under way for two days.

Obviously this strike has two levels of crisis and two levels of emergency. The first is the crisis and the emergency that attend the students, who must complete courses and who have gone to those institutions to receive training to become competitive, skilful participants in our work force. They deserve to have their studies completed at the earliest possible moment. There is no question that there is an emergency and a crisis in that respect. and all of us wish to see that issue resolved as quickly as possible for their sake.

At the same time, I might refer to the fact that the Canadian Federation of Students -- Ontario/Ontario Federation of Students has indicated its concern with respect to the central issue of the strike, namely, the quality of education in the colleges; this is what the strike is essentially about.

The second level of the crisis we face is simply the fact that this is the tip of an iceberg. This is the event that enables us to view as if through a telescope the larger scene in the colleges so as to put in perspective what has been happening during the last half dozen years in college funding, college hiring practices and college work loads.

I refer the House to a series of reports that indicate this cumulating problem. In the first place there is the college growth report of 1981, which the minister never did release in full, which she never did publish and which she has sworn recently she never will publish. It indicates quite clearly the remarkable growth in the system and the remarkable underfunding. It also indicates quite clearly that the real demand for services is not being met with a quality response because, as it says, services are decreasing to such a degree that some valid and necessary services can no longer be provided, given the funding available.

I move on to the analysis of unit operating costs, the so-called productivity report, which states very briefly that if the colleges had operated in 1982 as they did in 1978-79, the resource requirements in 1982-83 would have been about 25 per cent higher than was actually the case. Twenty-one per cent more faculty members would have been used, administrative staff numbers would have been 46 per cent higher and there would have been 21 per cent more support staff. That gives members some indication of the direction.

3:30 p.m.

When one looks at the Employee-Employer Relations Committee work load survey of 1983-84, one sees that the work load levels reported there exceed in all categories the maxima set out in the contract, which I have in my hand, between the Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

Obviously that has an impact on quality. The students in the system are being shortchanged. The work force, whether it is support staff or faculty, is being overloaded. Beginning these negotiations in those circumstances, one would have to say the employer in this circumstance has a great deal of nerve in moving the proposal that the work load levels have their caps removed. Over time, the employer saw some wisdom in retaining a cap on the work load provisions. The employer then turned around and suggested that unspecified and unlimited assignments might be added as a matter of contract to the limits that would remain in the contract. That is doing the same thing in a circuitous way.

The minister who is responsible in these circumstances undoubtedly has difficulty separating herself from the position of the employer in question. In fact, it has been her policies that have forced that employer to take that position and to overload all participants in the college system -- the students, faculty and support staff. The whole system has been overloaded as a result of her policies.

It seems to me that when we listen to that employer saying he is going to take a hard line with respect to work loads, and in fact he proposes to make no adjustments whatsoever as far as the time line that he looks down the road to as his scenario, then I think we have a major crisis in hand. On the one hand there is the immediate problem of the strike and its impact on students; and on the other there are the policies and pressures that underlie that event.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I recognize the motivation for the suggestion that there should be an emergency debate today. This is a very emotional subject at the present time and understandably so. The several hundred thousand students who are affected, either directly or indirectly and more or less severely, are very much concerned about what is going to happen to them.

We have explored with the various colleges the directions they may take. As I said to the House earlier today, there are different directions being taken by different colleges. The means of satisfying or solving some of the problems is most certainly within the hands of certain of the institutions at the present time.

This matter is a matter of negotiation, a matter for collective bargaining as the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act has determined. The negotiations that take place between support staff for one and faculty of colleges for another with the colleges themselves take place at the central bargaining table through bargainers who are employed by the Council of Regents for that purpose and who keep in close touch with each of the colleges throughout the preparation for bargaining and throughout all of the negotiations.

It is unfortunate that a number of things occurred, all of which I would consider to be unfortunate in terms of the relationships between the bargainers at the bargaining table and the relationships that were established and the kinds of attitudes that seem to be being presented at the bargaining table, none of which I believe was conducive to finding a settlement.

It is a matter of grave concern to the government and to the colleges that there is a dispute which has occasioned a cessation of activity in the majority of college programs throughout the province at the present time. What we are attempting to do is to work as diligently as we can with all those who have the capacity to provide us with informed opinion and expert information to develop the kind of situation that will encourage and induce both sides to come back to the bargaining table to negotiate a settlement.

It was with some surprise today that I heard the leader of the third party suggesting something which was perilously close, I thought, to the suggestion that we might legislate an end to this dispute. I did not believe that was --

Mr. Rae: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I do not like to have to say this, but in a way that has become her trademark the minister is completely and utterly misrepresenting my views, and I do not appreciate her doing that. Those are not my views.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Would the honourable member please resume his seat.

Mr. Rae: I ask the minister to withdraw her remarks. They do not represent my views in any way, shape or form.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. If the member still feels so strongly at the conclusion of the debate, he should bring this point of order then.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: If I am misinterpreting the leader of the third party, then I do apologize for that. I will reread Hansard, but I was concerned with what I thought I heard him say and I was surprised because I did not think he would say that.

Mr. Rae: I never said anything like it.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Then I will reread Hansard and clarify it for myself, but I have withdrawn the comment.

Mr. Rae: Two steps forward, three steps backward.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: It would be less than productive if at this time we were to interfere with what appears to be a reasonable degree of progress in the establishment of some improved information which will provide the foundation for further negotiations.

It is obvious from the debate that has taken place in the House thus far today that there is no way we can be as objective and as straight-visioned as perhaps we all need to be and provide the kind of assistance that I presume the member for St. Catharines would hope to provide by such a debate.

It would be a direct interference with the negotiating process and probably an impediment to the collective bargaining system if we were to have a premature debate about this at this time in this House. Therefore, I request that it not be considered.

The Deputy Speaker: I find the motion to be in order. Therefore, the question to be decided is, shall the debate proceed?

4:03 p.m.

The House divided on whether the debate should proceed, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes

Allen, Bradley, Breaugh, Bryden, Charlton, Cooke, Di Santo, Eakins, Elston, Epp, Kerrio, Laughren, Mackenzie, Mancini, McClellan, Newman, Nixon, O'Neil, Peterson, Philip, Rae, Renwick, Riddell, Ruprecht, Ruston, Spensieri, Swart, Sweeney, Van Horne, Wildman, Worton, Wrye.

Nays

Andrewes, Ashe, Baetz, Barlow, Bennett, Bernier, Brandt, Cousens, Cureatz, Dean, Elgie, Fish, Gillies, Gordon, Gregory, Grossman, Havrot, Hodgson, Kells, Kennedy, Kolyn, Leluk, MacQuarrie, McCaffrey, McCague, McEwen, McLean, McNeil, Miller, F. S., Mitchell, Norton, Piché;

Treleaven, Pollock, Pope, Ramsay, Runciman, Scrivener, Sheppard, Shymko, Snow, Stephenson, B. M., Sterling, Stevenson, K. R., Villeneuve, Watson, Wells, Williams.

Ayes 32; nays 48.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

The Deputy Speaker: Before moving to the orders of the day, I would share with honourable members that, pursuant to standing order 28. the member for Windsor-Sandwich (Mr. Wrye) has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question of the Minister of Health (Mr. Norton) on October 15 concerning hospital overcrowding. This matter will be debated at 10:30 p.m.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS IN ORDERS AND NOTICES AND RESPONSES TO PETITIONS

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table the answers to questions 334, 417, 504, 528, 529, 530 and 531, all standing in Orders and Notices; also, responses to the petitions presented to the Legislature, sessional papers 148, 149, 153 and 155 see Hansard for Friday, October 19.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

CO-ORDINATION OF EDUCATION POLICY

Mr. Gordon moved, seconded by Mr. Treleaven, resolution 31:

Recognizing that the rapid societal changes occurring in Canada represent similar challenges to education policymakers in every province across Canada, it is the opinion of this House that the government, through the ministries of Education and Colleges and Universities, work to encourage strengthening interprovincial educational organizations, such as the Council of Ministers of Education, in order to effect better co-ordination of education policy planning between Ontario and other provincial education systems and agencies nationwide.

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I wish to put forward a resolution that centres on an issue of fundamental importance to every Ontario citizen and, indeed, every Canadian.

Education has been, and will continue to be, the key to meeting our nation's social and economic development. It was the dedicated work and foresight of people such as Egerton Ryerson, who in the mid-19th century recognized that "education was a public good" that would fit children to be "honest and useful members of society," that enabled Canada to forge ahead to become one of the world's industrial leaders.

4:10 p.m.

Now, as knowledge continues to transcend intellectual boundaries that will radically affect our entire social and economic structure, we must prepare to address further changes. Such challenges we have faced before and will continue to face in the future, because we must and they are crucial to our survival as a nation and our future prosperity.

To do so, we must foster an atmosphere of greater co-operation between those autonomous jurisdictions responsible for the various aspects of education policy in Canada. It is only with strengthened and flexible forums of intergovernmental co-ordination and idea exchange between education policymakers that we can engage in this constructive dialogue seen by Canadians as fundamental to addressing every major challenge we face.

The Council of Ministers of Education of Canada has already made great strides in this direction. Founded in 1967, the council endeavours to focus and harmonize the disparate education policies of the individual provinces. Over the years, the council has also evolved into a national body representing and articulating relevant policy positions and points of view to the federal government.

In particular, one thinks of the critical role the council played and continues to play in the established programs financing debate between Ottawa and the provinces. In addition, the council is the body that provides national presence and involvement in the sphere of international education matters.

In the past year, the most extensive international activity has been with the two education-related bodies of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the education committee and the governing board of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. Currently, the main priority of these two bodies is the completion of an analysis of the changing nature of the interaction between education and the socioeconomic situation since the early 1970s.

The Council of Ministers of Education should be proud of its accomplishments over its 17-year history. The accomplishments in both the national and international spheres have made a lasting contribution to education in this country. Ontario's participation in these efforts has always been significant. Ontario Ministers of Education have frequently served as chairman of this council. In fact our colleague the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson) just completed three terms in this position.

Most recently Ontario's eminently qualified Deputy Minister of Education, Dr. Harry Fisher, has been appointed director general of the council. I am certain his contribution to this body will be as significant and lasting as his contribution was to the Ministry of Education.

I am confident all members of this assembly join with me in my applause of the accomplishments of the Council of Ministers of Education and Ontario's significant contribution to it. I know they will also agree with me when I say that such bodies need to be strengthened if we are to successfully face the enormous challenges which will bring us into the 21st century.

The technological era of information-base societies is now upon us. It has changed our perspective on the structure of our socioeconomic environment. It has necessarily forced us as a Canadian society to re-evaluate and redirect our future objectives and goals.

During the public hearings and presentations to the commission on Canada's future, the Macdonald commission, perhaps the most comprehensive airing of public viewpoints ever seen in this country, education figured prominently as an issue in which there must be greater national co-operation and consultation.

There were many voices representing each sector of our society. I believe that we must all listen very carefully to what these individuals are telling us about education and the future. For example, one such voice was the president of the United Steelworkers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ron MacDonald, who said in his submission:

"We must examine our approach as to what we are to produce from our educational facilities. Those who are graduating have to be prepared so they may compete in our society because of many technological changes. These changes will continue to escalate. Those who are in our educational system must be given every opportunity to fill the job opportunities that will be available."

There are job opportunities available now that are not being filled because of a lack of qualifications. We must also provide training facilities for not only the unemployed, but also for those who are employed so that they may acquire the necessary skills to perform the work that will be available. The billions of dollars that are being expended in unemployment insurance, welfare and short-term make-work programs could be better utilized to provide training to allow the individuals every opportunity to develop their abilities, knowledge and skill.

It would be a much improved situation if we emphasized training and education instead of unemployment and welfare. If we can pay out billions to have people unemployed, surely we can spend the same amounts on training and education. Our thinking has to change in this regard to one of how to employ people and prepare them prior to employment in our society, not to one of paying them not to work.

We live in a country that is rich in resources, one that can compete with any country in the world if we are given the opportunity. We should be developing our natural and human resources.

David Johnston, principal of McGill University, told the commissioners. "It is becoming increasingly clear that Canada cannot achieve a national economic policy without a national consensus on desirable educational goals."

The Business Council on National Issues reinforced the need for a national perspective on education. "It is clear," they argued, "that the lack of a labour force trained to use the technologies of the future and unable to adapt to changes is a major weakness in our industrial system. For this reason we suggest that the federal and provincial governments spare no effort in devising a more coherent national policy in respect of education, skill training and retraining. The objective should be to replace duplication, to cease training people for occupations not likely to be in demand and to develop a truly national policy in this critical area to replace the current ineffective hotchpotch of policies."

Other organizations brought a different, but equally important and valid, perspective to the need for a national education policy. But while there was a decided feeling that a national perspective should be put on education policies, there was also the underlying recognition that education always was and will remain a provincial responsibility.

As the former president of the Quebec Commission on the Study of Vocational and SocioCultural Training for Adults articulately stated it: "The responsibility in matters of education lies with the provinces. The federal government of Canada must, therefore, respect the various jurisdictions and their cultural diversity."

Such viewpoints epitomize the need for strengthened interprovincial educational organizations. Everywhere one turns one hears yet another call for national co-operation to ensure the adequacy of Canada's response to the technological era we find ourselves in. Our emerging technologies and information-based economy now demand far more consultation and co-operative sharing than ever before.

As the former chairman of the Council of Ministers of Education stated in her message in the annual report of the council, "It is time we built upon our similarities, diverse as they may be, rather than to concentrate on our difficulties and conflicts." Such an attitude will result in significant savings and a more efficient allocation of available educational resources in both human and dollar terms.

For example, the priority that the Council of Ministers of Education has attached to the impact of new information technologies in the classroom has resulted in the development of an inter-provincial network for information sharing. Such developments will make available to all provinces the experience that some provinces, such as Ontario and Quebec, have gained in developing their own educational computers, and software will also be available for all to share. Members will agree that such information networking will serve to advance education for all Canadian children rather than just for those few living in select provinces.

Greater intergovernmental co-ordination in the area of skills training and higher education will lead to a more rational allocation of resources throughout the provinces. For example, our province is the acknowledged leader in training in the applied arts and technology field; thus members will agree that it makes sense for Ontario to concentrate its educational resources in these areas while encouraging other provinces to concentrate their resources in their areas of relative strength.

The ultimate outcome, members will agree, will be a far more efficient allocation of resources throughout all the provinces. More important, this type of co-operation will maximize the value of our most precious resource, our young and aspiring children and youth. The entire country will be richer as a result. Why? Because investment in human capital is the key to productivity growth and new industries.

A New York Stock Exchange study of the Japanese example illustrates this point clearly. Analysts concluded that the single most important factor in high Japanese productivity, and thus in their high relative welfare, is the high quality of that country's education system. Members will agree, therefore, that the future of Canada depends on having knowledgeable workers who can function, and indeed excel, in an information-based economy. To achieve this will require strategic planning that must involve a mix of enhanced research and development, professional training, technical skills and general education.

To address this challenge adequately will require the co-operation of every individual Canadian and institution, but it is only with a strengthened political will on the part of all political institutions that this increased institutional and intergovernmental consultation and co-ordination will be achieved. I dare say many will view this as a challenge too great to be met. To those, I say it must be met.

4:20 p.m.

For too long we have seen acrimonious intergovernmental conflicts, particularly federal-provincial conflicts, that lead to a waste and misallocation of valuable resources. Competing educational programs, policies and objectives serve no one; instead, they hurt everyone.

With the recent welcome change of government in Ottawa, I believe we are now finally entering a period of renewed intergovernmental co-operation and consultation. The resulting effects will reverberate throughout every sphere of our nation, but nowhere will they be more evident than in the sphere of education policy.

Thus, as members of this assembly, I believe we have a duty and a responsibility to see that as a province and a country we succeed and not fail in meeting the technological challenges of the future. In this light, I urge all members here this afternoon to join me in supporting this resolution in order that we may register our convictions that education, while a provincial responsibility, is a national priority.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, if I did not know better, I would think that one of the multitudes of staff in the government caucus office had dreamt up this resolution and even written the fine speech that has been put forward by the honourable member. I am actually surprised, knowing the member's fighting spirit when it comes to issues of the Sudbury basin and the province in general, that he did not think up something a little more compelling than the prospect given to us in ballot item number 22, "that we work to encourage strengthening interprovincial educational organizations."

I have observed that almost every department of government, or ministry as they are known in this jurisdiction, has a yearly meeting somewhere in Canada wherein all the ministers get together with selected staff members. They are entertained well at public expense. They go to the best theatres in the provincial capital where they are, or if the meeting is in the summer at St. Andrews-by-the-Sea or one of these classy spots, they no doubt have formal meetings. I have heard it said by ministers who are asked about it that the real exchange comes in the informal time when probably the thought process is stimulated and an exchange of views on a more interpersonal basis is accomplished.

I am simply saying that we have had the inter-provincial communications and formal structure in education and almost every other provincial responsibility for many years. Even though that is the case, Ontario still finds itself, even though it has been exposed to educational leadership in many other jurisdictions, being in the caboose of the educational train in this country.

We are just rather tentatively moving away from a 13-grade system. The fearless Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson), who said at one time that we would do away with grade 13, has moderated that considerably. When the boys in the back row told her that maybe this was not the thing to do in Primrose Centre, she said that perhaps we will for some students but not for all, and that it will be phased in over a number of years.

The decisions of previous Treasurers of the province have decided that our funding of education on a per capita basis is going to be reduced compared with that of most other provinces. We find school boards facing the responsibility of relatively lower grants from Ontario and, thus, finding it necessary to raise taxes for education purposes, relative to previous tax levels, in community after community.

I really wish the honourable member, who is concerned about uniformity to some extent or having "better co-ordination of education policy planning" would look at some of the lack of co-ordination within Ontario itself. We have very little, if any, parallel approach to curriculum in schools across the province or even in the jurisdiction of a single school board. I would suggest to him that he could go into classes with the identical names in high schools not two miles apart and find that the curriculum was substantially different, the timing of the materials had no relation one to another and even the textbooks and study uses were completely at variance one with another.

I never have and never would advocate a lockstep approach to an educational curriculum, but I believe that in the last decade the so-called reforms in education have done much to depreciate the value of a system that at one stage, even when I was Education critic in one of my previous incarnations, I told the then minister was really second to none on this continent.

I do not believe that now. I believe the cafeteria approach to an educational style has been proved to be nonproductive, or to be productive of an approach to education that has given us pause when we look at the quality of our graduates, particularly as they go on to postsecondary education.

The idea that this House ought to suggest to the minister that she should, according to the words in the motion "work to encourage strengthening interprovincial educational organizations" makes me feel that the author of the motion himself might take a very short course in clarity of expression of the written word. I think I know what is intended here, but it is not even a Mom's apple pie resolution as far as I can see.

I suppose when we look at the provision of alternative school financing in other provinces and see that separate schools have had full and parallel financing in many other jurisdictions for many years, while we in this province have gone through all the divisive, acrimonious debates that resulted in depriving the separate schools of proper financing since Confederation, it might have been a good thing if various Premiers and Ministers of Education had looked beyond our borders for leadership in this connection.

My own feeling is that voting for this resolution might simply persuade successors to the Minister of Education to feel that we are giving them a rubber stamp to have more of these meetings in the luxurious accommodations in the various provincial capitals across the country. They set up their own internal bureaucracy with -- what is the title the honourable member said our own deputy minister has in the present interprovincial organization? Director general or something like that? Presumably, this carries with it a special staff.

Naturally, the director general would have to go province by province to establish the agenda for a meeting that is to be held some time in the summer in one of the summer resort facilities in one of the provinces, and presumably our deputy minister is paid in the top rank of civil service salaries, always reported to this House 18 months out of date. Frankly, I do not like these top people to get the habit of travelling across Canada on responsibilities and duties that are not directly in line with the responsibility of giving leadership in our own education system. I really am going to be hard pressed indeed to support even a resolution like this, which is pretty well innocuous.

Frankly, I have a great deal of confidence in the present Minister of Education that she would not allow this and increase her already ballooned budget; that is ballooned in nonproductive expenditure and starved in the kind of expenditure that would support the sort of education system that all of us in this House would wish and that many people on the other side still think we are providing in spite of the facts in the case. One thing for which I do not wish to blame the minister is throwing money around on silly exercises like establishing more interprovincial committees, which are simply going to provide busy work for the platoons of top administrative executives who over the years have stuck to that ministry like flies to flypaper.

4:30 p.m.

I do not even find it within my ability to congratulate the honourable member for an initiative in this regard. If I were going to be really nasty about it, I would say that the importance of the resolution is shown by the lack of interest in attendance in the House, particularly on the government side, which as usual is just a sea of empty blue faces and a few of the workers in the political vineyard making up lists for their favourite leadership candidate.

I regret this very much. I do not congratulate the member for bringing forward this resolution. I think the idea is absolutely cockamamy. We have had all sorts of opportunity to improve our educational system by doing the good things they do in other jurisdictions. This minister and her predecessors have failed to do that over the years. I certainly do not want to establish one more junket for several deluxe carloads of education officials from Ontario to traipse back and forth across the country, dining on the best lobster and listening to the erudite conversation that is stimulated by that approach.

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this resolution. I intend to oppose it. I must say I was tempted. It is one of those very high-minded pieces of irrelevancy that I am increasingly getting used to emanating from the back benches on the other side, an indication of the limitations of the position I am sure those members find themselves in.

I say "tempted" because, in certain respects, one cannot help but be concerned about national educational policy and one cannot help but be concerned somewhat about co-ordination. One realizes that there are problems in that respect, but I also reflect that what is being proposed is the co-ordination of what really amounts to nine Conservative ministries of education, none of which knows exceptionally well what it is doing in its own domain; so I really wonder about the virtue and value of the exercise.

I should say that as I reflected on this resolution it struck me that the primary need for co-ordination, for consolidation and for getting acts together lay right here in Ontario. I think we had a magnificent example of that last June when we were all so stunned to have the Premier (Mr. Davis) of this province, after all the years in which he had taken a mistaken position on the subject of the extension of separate school funding to all years of the separate school system, propose that. I am sure there was no one more surprised than the Minister of Education herself, although she might have had a few minutes briefing on it.

Had there been some co-ordination, we might now be avoiding some of the problems in the debate over that issue that subsequently followed. It is a prime, prize and highly elevated example of the need for co-ordination right here in Ontario.

On the other hand, I think back to the earlier months of my experience in this Legislature when I became concerned about the audio library at Trent University. The minister, on the one hand, was declaring her great concern about handicapped students in the system, and yet failed to provide ongoing funding for the one institution that enabled hearing-impaired students to continue with their studies.

I extend that to another problem of coordination. I recall that, obviously, the minister had not consulted with the Ministry of Community and Social Services over that matter because, had she thrown them all out of universities by virtue of not providing the services to keep them there, they would have been a greater charge on the Ministry of Community and Social Services with disability pensions then they ever were as students under the Ministry of Education.

Problems of co-ordination that I think all of us must be concerned about give a suggestion that the member's resolution is misapplied or misdirected in its concern about the federal level. There is another level of co-ordination that one looks to in this jurisdiction in Ontario. That is between the minister herself and a number of the agencies with which she works in the provision of education in this province.

I think back, for example, to the long struggle between the minister, on the one hand, and the teachers' federations, on the other, with respect to the question of the college of teachers. The federations were initially interested in that subject, but the minister was laying down conditions that would have forced them virtually to abandon their federations and would have impacted on them so badly that they would not have had a hold on their membership. At the same time, she was proposing to institute another institution that would take their place but would not have the kind of effect they wanted.

They finally had to walk out of the meeting with the minister, the first time that has ever happened in a meeting between the federations and the minister. This is a another problem of co-ordination and co-operation, of finding a will to work together in the provision of education in Ontario.

I might also refer not only to the matter of co-ordination at the high level of the Premier and the minister, between the minister and other ministries, between the minister and the federations and some of the agencies with which she works, but also to a certain kind of co-ordination one might want within the mind of the minister herself. Perhaps the member could bend himself somewhat in this direction to help keep the minister herself on a straight tack.

I recall last spring when the minister, wanting to get the last ounce of mileage out of the public mood, which favoured a universal testing in the school system, proposed, through I believe it was initially the Treasurer (Mr. Grossman), that universal testing should take place in the very near future. She let the notion get out that it was a secondary-school-wide system of testing she had in mind and that the public had in mind. Very soon we found her running for cover because all she was talking about was an incidental testing program on a sampling kind of basis that really was nothing like what the public had in mind. The minister herself was finding it difficult to keep the two ends together and perhaps needed a little bit of co-ordination.

The same problem afflicted the minister when it came to Bill 42, for example, with respect to colleges and universities and the proposed need the minister saw for putting a supervisor in place in every university that exceeded a two per cent deficit in its operating budget. The minister told us up and down in the estimates discussion of this matter and at the hearings on Bill 42 that she did not have the powers in her hand to secure the information she needed from universities in order to judge whether they were performing well in terms of the cost-effectiveness of their operations.

We finally had to get the Provincial Auditor to come in to the hearings to tell her she could get all the information she wanted from those institutions simply by request. There seems to be an ongoing problem with the minister as far as her own jurisdiction is concerned.

When one moves into the area of skills training that the member mentioned -- and surely this is an incredibly important matter in our country today; no question -- when I look at the failure of this government to institute any adequate program of apprenticeship within the industrial structure of Ontario, try as it will, I wonder whether the concern the minister has expressed that this be addressed on a national level ought not perhaps better be resolved on a provincial level first.

To take one minor regulation with respect to apprenticeship to show the inherent contradiction that exists, it is required in a factory that one must preserve a minimum and maximum ratio of apprentices to journeymen, which is a proper provision to have, but the ministry has no method in place for discovering and maintaining a bank of information as to how many journeymen are in any factory at any given time to be able to judge the relationship.

Again, this is a contradiction. There is a need for co-ordination. One can go on and on citing example after example of the "hotchpotch," to use the member's word, that exists in education in Ontario.

4:40 p.m.

My colleague from the Liberal Party referred to the problem at the curriculum level. If one looks again at that, one sees a movement in contrary directions. On the one hand, the ministry put in place a new and more demanding secondary school curriculum program last year. At the same time, it was maintaining that there was an impressive need out there for maintaining advanced technical education. When one put the two of those together, one discovered that the Ontario Schools, Intermediate and Senior Divisions curriculum guidelines drove technical educational enrolment in the secondary school system down by 24 per cent, 42 per cent, 54 per cent and 68 per cent in certain schools across Ontario.

Overall, there was a massive impact of the one proposal on the other. Lack of co-ordination is obviously a real problem, but it is not a major and essential problem for us at the national level in the way in which it is at this time. I would suggest it might help us in this province were we to engage in some rather extensive debate on education matters in this Legislature, having in mind that both of the last two major reforms in this jurisdiction -- the Hall-Dennis report and the OSIS report -- were floated into this province without a single word of debate in this Legislature.

I submit that the problem of co-ordination exists; it exists in Ontario, not nationally. As I say, this piece of high-minded irrelevance is something I will be opposing.

Mr. Stevenson: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate this afternoon in supporting my fellow member's resolution. I submit that we are talking about provincial and federal co-ordination of education policy. I think we have drifted somewhat off topic in some of the previous debate.

I had hoped the members opposite would join the members on the government side in supporting this resolution. My colleague the member for Sudbury (Mr. Gordon) has already discussed the need for greater and strengthened co-operation between the various jurisdictions responsible for education policy in Canada.

In my comments today, I wish to focus on one specific relationship that has done little to foster co-operation among educational policymakers in the past. In the future we think there are promises for immense improvement. I think it is interesting to note that possibly the system and the structure are there, but the co-operation has not been. Much of the strengthening may well be getting the right people in place to get the job done.

When federal and provincial responsibilities were decided upon at Confederation, it was relatively simple to see that education was a local issue and thus, a provincial responsibility, but in today's increasingly complex and complicated world, the fine line between federal and provincial jurisdictions has become somewhat blurred.

Simple delineation of jurisdictional responsibility is now impossible. That is particularly evident in situations or in cases of job training and post-secondary education. These are two areas that were virtually unheard of in 1867. The overlapping of responsibilities in these two areas has led to much conflict between the two levels of government in the past few years. We are just now beginning to emerge from that serious conflict.

No longer should members of the Legislature and members of Parliament sit idly back and tolerate impasses created by such situations as the former Liberal Secretary of State insisting that he is an equal partner in education and thus stonewalling a meeting of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada until the provincial ministers assented to his equal status.

I have no hesitation in stating that I am confident we are now on the dawn of such a new era in federal-provincial relations. I strongly believe the federal and provincial ministers currently involved in education issues recognize their fundamental importance to the future of Canada and will act accordingly. Members will agree it is reassuring to know that the new Progressive Conservative government focus on such issues as college and university funding now will be approached in a more constructive manner rather than by ultimatums and deadlines.

Job training and retraining is another sphere I have mentioned in which federal and provincial responsibilities clearly overlap and where strengthened intergovernmental co-ordination is necessary. In Ontario, significant steps have been taken through the federal Department of Employment and Immigration and the provincial Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

Under way at present are programs to assist unemployed workers to get retraining or upgrading through the province's colleges of applied arts and technology. The financing and coordination of such programs are shared by both levels of government; the benefits accrue to each and every Canadian.

While by now it must be evident to the members present this afternoon that I am optimistic about future federal-provincial relations in the fields of education and colleges and universities, I would be remiss if I did not inject a cautious note into my remarks.

There remain many issues that will continue to pose problems and difficulties for relations among the provincial and federal governments. Financial strains and differing policy objectives will require continued patience, skilful negotiations and goodwill if we are to attain our common objectives.

As the member for Sudbury has pointed out, education is solely the jurisdiction of the provinces. This government stands steadfastly behind the view that there is no role for the federal government in elementary and secondary education. Ottawa's role in post-secondary education and job training must be determined through mutual consultation and negotiation.

In no way does this position diminish the conviction embodied in this resolution. We want co-operation, discussion and harmonization among all provincial and federal education authorities. These are qualities I am sure we all want to preserve.

The resolution before us demonstrates and embodies this conviction. It urges the strengthening of intergovernmental relationships in the sphere of education policy while maintaining the diversity provided by the autonomy of provincial education systems. Such flexibility will ensure the attainment of national objectives and the continued relevance of education policies. It seems that members would be remiss if they were not to support such a resolution.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, first of all let me comment on the comments by the member for Durham-York (Mr. Stevenson). I remind him that while he recognizes the federal government has no jurisdiction in elementary or secondary education, it also has no jurisdiction whatsoever in post-secondary education. He would be remiss if he had any illusions that things are going to change significantly between the federal and provincial governments simply because his Tory cousins are now ensconced in Ottawa. I suggest to him that he will find out differently.

I point out to the honourable member, as a matter of fact, that the relations between this government in Ontario and previous federal governments with respect to co-operation have not been all that great. Just a few years ago I brought to the attention of the Premier the fact that a sum of $37 million that had been transferred to Ontario for post-secondary education had been channelled into other activities. That is something the member ought to keep in mind.

4:50 p.m.

Getting back to the resolution itself, obviously in principle what is behind it is contained in the last couple of lines. The main issue is "to effect better co-ordination of education policy planning between Ontario and other provincial" jurisdictions. It is hard to disagree with that in principle.

I can remember some of my own personal experiences in travelling from province to province in this country, from New Brunswick to Quebec to Ontario, when I was getting my own elementary and secondary education. I can remember some of the difficulties that I encountered and that many people encounter in the diversity of educational expectations. It is something that has to be dealt with.

However, I point out to the member for Sudbury, who moved this resolution, that when the present Minister of Education just a couple of years ago was the chairman of the council of ministers covering the whole country, this very issue was raised with her.

The member can go back and check the Hansard records for the estimates of the Ministry of Education at that time. He will notice that I, among others, clearly brought to our minister's attention the need to have greater co-ordination among the various provinces of Canada with respect at least to the basic curriculum courses such as mathematics, science and the study of English or French.

We know that in the areas of social studies and of studies that deal more specifically with the history of individual provinces or of provincial jurisdictions, some local control would be wanted, we understand that; but surety in the areas of math, science and language studies there could be some greater co-operation.

I ask the member for Sudbury to go back and check the record on that, because clearly what the Minister of Education said at that time, while she was chairman of the council of ministers, was that it could not be done, that they had discussed it among themselves and that there was too much jurisdictional jealousy for them ever to have the opportunity to give up that jurisdictional control.

Therefore, before we bring in this kind of resolution, despite the fact that in principle it is hard to disagree with it, we should look at the record itself as to how our own minister had the opportunity to do something about it.

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to what the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) had to say and jotted down his points as well as the points made by a number of other members such as the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen).

I must say that one of the members took advantage of this motion to express a parochial and rather narrow point of view. He spent the time running down the Minister of Education rather than talking about the fact that we have people living in this country who, when they move from province to province, are unable to get the courses or training that they require to be able to apply for jobs in Ontario or in other provinces because there is a lack of co-ordination between the provinces and the federal government when it comes to education.

To take the attitude that to bring this up in this House is wrong, I find to be lacking in common sense. It shows a rather narrow approach to the whole business of education and to the business of employment in this country and province.

As well, when it comes to what this government and the Ministry of Education were able to do through what we call the cafeteria style of education, where students have the opportunity to choose courses that are more closely allied to their talents, to take an elitist point of view and suggest that this is wrongheaded shows a complete lack of understanding of the democratic approach we must take and have taken to education in this province.

To take an elitist point of view, coming from the opposition, the party that is supposed to be fighting for the people and change, and to be against the average guy even getting ahead strikes me as an example of hardening of the arteries on the other side of the House. I have to say that was a third-rate and maybe even a fifth-rate answer to a motion that has been brought forward with great sincerity and with concern, not only for the people of this province but also for the people across this country.

THERAPEUTIC USE OF HEROIN

Mr. Kerrio moved, seconded by Mr. Nixon. resolution 28:

That this House urges the government of Canada to amend the Narcotic Control Act to allow the therapeutic use of heroin by physicians to alleviate pain for the terminally ill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): I remind the honourable member that he has up to 20 minutes to make his presentation and can reserve any portion thereof for final presentation.

Mr. Kerrio: Mr. Speaker, all members of the House will be familiar with those issues that come before us from time to time that are by nature nonpartisan. We all recognize them, and in fine parliamentary tradition, this House has risen above partisanship on occasions when the merits of an issue are so compelling as to warrant it.

The resolution I place before the House for consideration is a result of a presentation to the standing committee of health, welfare and social justice by Dr. Kenneth Walker, which said in part:

"Mr. Chairman, I wrote my first newspaper column on heroin in 1979. I did so because I am a practising physician and over a period of 30 years have seen many people die badly, including parents, parents-in-law and dear friends. The agony of their last days struck me as being unnecessary, cruel and inhuman.

"Since the article appeared, I have received thousands of letters from Canadians in all walks of life, asking questions about the use of this painkiller. To find answers, I have discussed the issue with many distinguished scientists, researchers and clinicians in this country, in England where heroin is used legally and at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. This brief, therefore, contains both my own opinion and that of physicians who are experts in the management of cancer pain.

"I will try to answer any questions that your committee members might submit to me, but I trust that this brief will help put to rest much of the misinformation, half-truths and hypocrisy which surround this important issue.

"The more I researched the topic of heroin for medical use, the more convinced I became of one fact. Heroin had been denied to Canadian and US patients for political rather than medical reasons. It was an annoying conclusion. Since I was writing a medical column syndicated to 40 Canadian newspapers read by 12 million people, I decided without hesitation to use this forum to test what I perceived as a grave injustice."

That is the end of the introduction of this particular position of Dr. Walker on the federal scene.

It is my hope today that in passing this resolution we may help right a wrong that is long overdue. Dr. Walker has spent much time and effort in researching this important cause. Many men and women dedicate themselves to medical research in lieu of private practice, and we all are the beneficiaries of their great work. Dr. Walker has been able to do both. In fact, he adds a third dimension in his writing. His practice -- which includes treating patients in Fort Erie, Niagara Falls and Toronto -- and his writing consume much of his time, but he still takes time to reach out in a very personal way to champion the cause of those in need of compassion in the practice of medicine. I want to raise one of those matters today.

5 p.m.

It is of medical significance, but primarily of human significance though, for it aims to provide relief from extreme pain for those people who are in need of that relief. The issue is the legalization of heroin for the use of patients who are either terminally ill or for whom no other pain relief is sufficient.

I will advise members of my personal bias up front. It is this: the potential for misuse of the drug or illegal distribution of the drug should never be allowed to overcome the potential benefits to dying patients and their families. While the use of heroin must pass a good test of administration, it cannot fail in a test of compassion. That view, I am pleased to advise, is shared by the Canadian Medical Association as recently as this past August of 1984 and by two federal members of Parliament, MP Jim McGrath, who introduced a bill that had been originally introduced by Conservative MP Walter Baker shortly before his passing from this particular dread disease.

Members will note that heroin use for medical purpose now exists in 38 countries, including Great Britain. Its use was banned in Canada in 1954 and morphine has attempted to serve as a substitute since. The people who are the best witnesses cannot appear; they are dead. I think they would really be the prime people to tell us of the agony of terminal cancer pain.

Some people have asked why heroin is superior to morphine as a painkiller. Heroin is about two and a half to three times more potent than morphine. It is also a proven fact that heroin is more soluble than morphine. This allows more heroin to be dissolved in an equivalent solution than morphine. The increased potency plus the greater solubility is an important practical advantage when cancer victims require painkillers by injection.

No one enjoys injections every few hours under the best of circumstances, but they can be terribly painful when patients are emaciated with precious little flesh left. The more humane treatment would be to inject a few drops of heroin rather than a teaspoon of morphine every few hours. The intramuscular route for painkillers is often the only one that can be used in terminal cancer. Some patients are unable to take oral medication because of vomiting. Others have no veins left for needles because they have been destroyed by chemotherapy or the prolonged use of intravenous feeding.

Every critic of heroin admits that heroin is superior to morphine when injections are required. No study has ever shown that there is a painkiller superior to heroin. Morphine and heroin are the same, some say, because morphine breaks down into heroin. Yes, it does; but by comparison, ice and water are both H₂O, but hold them in your hands and you see the difference. Heroin is a diacetyl morphine, yet we know its properties are different from morphine.

Dr. Allen Mondzac, professor of medicine at George Washington University and director of the Warwick Cancer Clinic, made the following remarks to the United States House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment in March 1984.

"Students of pharmacology know that small molecular changes can make significant changes in the mechanisms of drug action. Simply adding two acetyl groups can do much to a drug. We know that biological differences of small degree have made the difference between inactive and active drugs. Those who dismiss heroin as a form of morphine are ignoring what are basic biological truths. It is this kind of change of the morphine radical, changing it to diacetyl morphine and creating heroin, that gives heroin its unique property."

It is estimated that about 50 per cent of cancer patients will suffer from pain. This becomes a serious management problem in at least 15 to 20 per cent of the cases. Bone malignancy and neuritic pain can be particularly severe.

For instance, a physician from a hospital in Britain said that a 17-year-old girl who was dying of bone cancer required 1,700 milligrams of heroin every three hours. This is a huge amount when one considers that only four milligrams of heroin are required to control normal post-operative pain. British doctors stated it would be physically impossible to inject an equal amount of morphine into this young patient. British physicians also said that heroin is the best drug to stop the incessant coughing of patients dying of lung cancer.

Heroin critics claim that only three per cent of patients need heroin. If this is true, why are 80 per cent or more of terminally ill patients at St. Christopher's Hospice in England given heroin in their final days?

It is also said that we have enough painkillers to fight cancer pain. Then why are so many cancer victims dying in agony? Does not common sense demand that doctors have the maximum number of effective painkillers to combat cancer pain?

Thousands of Canadians have experienced or witnessed the terrible death of a loved one. Seeing uncontrollable pain in a parent, relative or friend has left them with psychological scars. The use of heroin would ease the suffering of the patient and the anguish of his or her family.

Some critics in this country are worried about addiction. How much addiction results from the medical use of heroin? Dr. Thelma Bates at St. Thomas's Hospital gave Dr. Walker a message to bring back to Canada. She said: "Tell Canadians and Americans to stop worrying about addiction. I have had patients on 300 and 400 milligrams of heroin but I can wean them off heroin in two to three weeks if they experience remission of their disease. Heroin is extremely addictive when taken for pleasure, but this is not the case when used for pain relief when the patient has only a short time to live. Even if heroin is addictive in terminal cases, what difference does that really make?"

The question often asked is whether the legislation of heroin for medical use would increase the illegal use by addicts. Would security be a major problem and would addicts break into hospital pharmacies to obtain heroin? This is a lame excuse for fighting the legalization of heroin. Historically, there is no evidence that this would happen.

The British handle the security of heroin in hospitals just as they do other narcotics. Dr. Saunders, the founder of St. Christopher's Hospice, said, "Over the years I have found no evidence that diamorphine prescribed for medical purposes has ever been abused or reached the drug addict market." Again, I must stress that the potential for misuse of the drug or illegal distribution of the drug should never be allowed to overcome the potential benefits to dying patients and their families.

Like many other Canadians I assumed that since Canada had signed the Single Convention Treaty, heroin could not be used for medical purposes in this country. In fact, politicians were talking about the medical ban on heroin by the World Health Organization as recently as March 14, 1984, during a debate in the House of Commons. But in May of this year, an official at WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, said that WHO never asked Canada or any other nation to stop the medical use of this painkiller. They merely asked member nations to stop the importation of heroin in an endeavour to stop the illicit use of the drug. They pointed out that England also signed the Single Convention Treaty but British doctors were still using heroin for medical purposes with the blessing of WHO.

We know that English doctors have been using heroin for more than 80 years. This is the best trial that has ever been done. Why do we not believe them and put an end to these committees and costly studies? Consider, for instance, that in 1982 English doctors used 98.7 per cent of the legal heroin consumed in the entire world, not forgetting that these doctors had a choice of painkillers. Surely the use of heroin would have dropped if it did not possess any unique advantages. Instead, between 1971 and 1982, the amount of heroin prescribed by these physicians increased nearly four times.

5:10 p.m.

In closing, I do not presume, on behalf of those learned in the sciences of medicine, to act as an expert in this discussion. My role is to present to this Legislature the unselfish and dedicated effort of a friend, Dr. Walker, who has undertaken the task of overturning a law introduced for questionable reasons, which in turn has taken from the physician's bag a very useful drug for the treatment of pain. This resolution is a plea to the lawmakers of the nation to amend the Narcotic Control Act to allow the therapeutic use of heroin by physicians to alleviate pain for the terminally ill.

Unrelieved pain from advanced cancer should be one of the most pressing issues that concerns our society. To quote Dr. Walker: "One in four of the people here today will succumb to malignancy, and some will suffer indescribable pain. It is my opinion that this debate would end today if every person here could suffer the pain of a terminally malignant patient for just one day."

Mr. Di Santo: Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution of the member for Niagara Falls. I was listening very carefully to the argument he made in support of his resolution. I must say I am not an expert in this matter and I do not pretend to be one, but I have read the abundant literature on the subject. I know the experts disagree; they often do, not only on this question but on many other questions.

I cannot possibly understand why the use of heroin in cases of terminally ill persons should be forbidden, unless the reasons for the opposition expressed to its use are to be found in the fact that there is a mythology in our society that derives from the fact that, unfortunately, the illicit use of heroin is so widespread and causes so many problems in modern society that people have been deterred from thinking that perhaps in the case of the terminally ill the use of heroin should be allowed.

I think that was the primary consideration in 1955, when the federal government imposed the ban on the import of heroin in response to the World Health Organization, because the primary concern was that heroin, if used illicitly, creates addiction and creates incredible social problems. We all know that.

The real question we must address in this Legislature is whether the use of heroin should be permitted in designated cases, which were elicited quite clearly in Bill C-684, introduced by the late Mr. Baker and reintroduced by Mr. McGrath, for special cases such as those of cancer patients.

We will not be able to solve the problem the experts are debating, but the fact that we and the federal Parliament, which has jurisdiction in this case, are unable to make a political decision is very serious, because we are talking about people who are terminally ill and for whom there is no question that the problem of addiction is totally meaningless.

As the member for Niagara Falls so convincingly said, the real witnesses, those who could tell us whether or not they got relief, are unfortunately dead. They are no longer with us. They are the people who could tell us whether the use of heroin as a painkiller is effective, but they cannot tell us.

I do not want to say that from a medical point of view the evidence is in favour of or against the use of heroin. We have heard all the arguments. Those who are in favour tell us that heroin is more soluble than morphine and is therefore more acceptable to the patients.

I do not quite understand the counter-argument, which in my opinion is not based on medical grounds but rather on the fear that, as the cancer society says, if we allow the use of heroin in hospitals the people who are allowed to use heroin may be attacked by addicts and there will be more break-ins. If we accept that argument, it could be applied to many other drugs -- for example, to cough syrup, but we do not prohibit the use of cough syrup for that reason.

I do not think there is a medical argument we should accept. We know there are doctors who are in favour and doctors who are opposed. We also know that the experts' advisory committee set up by the Minister of National Health and Welfare in response to the 15,000 signatures brought to the minister by Dr. Walker was biased because two of the doctors who were members of the committee were against the use of heroin.

We know well that, despite the fact that the advisory committee had come down against the use of heroin, last August the Canadian Medical Association, after a long internal debate, passed a resolution urging that the government of Canada immediately resume the licensing for importation, manufacture and sale of diacetylmorphine, which is heroin for medical purposes.

We have guarantees that it will not be misused and that the heroin will be used specifically for terminally ill patients. Above all, by using heroin we will relieve the pain of a number of people. If we were able to relieve the pain for even a single person, we should do it. For a moment, we should put ourselves in the situation of a person who is terminally ill and who is going through incredible suffering. Some of us have witnessed those kinds of tragedies in our own families.

If one person could be relieved of that suffering, I think that would justify the use of heroin, if we are sure, as we can be sure, that a mechanism is put in place so that illicit use of heroin is not propagated by the fact that we allow its use in a restricted number of cases.

5:20 p.m.

I think the legislators should make a decision that is basically political to respond to a situation that is basically human. If we have compassion and if we really believe, as the Canadian Medical Association code of ethics says, that a physician will allow death to occur with dignity and comfort when death of the body appears to be inevitable, then we know this is one of those cases.

We should not assume it is up to us to decide a person cannot die with dignity and comfort only because some people out there may use heroin illicitly. I think it is too much for us to presume that. We should keep in mind there are people who are suffering and, by allowing the use of heroin, we can relieve that suffering. Even if one person can be relieved from pain, we should do that.

For these reasons, I concur with my colleague the member for Niagara Falls. I hope the other members will also support the resolution.

Mr. Runciman: Mr. Speaker, the resolution put before us today by our friend the member for Niagara Falls addresses an issue that has been and remains one of great personal concern to me and I know to thousands of our fellow citizens. I think the resolution is both timely and appropriate. It is timely with a new government in Ottawa and a government that I think will be most receptive to this suggestion. It is appropriate coming from the member for Niagara Falls, because I believe Niagara Falls is the home base for Ken Walker. If any individual in this country deserves credit for this, it is Dr. Walker. He has fought a lonely battle for many years.

For quite a number of years, both inside and outside this House, in my private and public lives, I have attempted to impress upon the former government of Canada the need to take immediate action to redress what I believe to be a 30-year wrong. I want to thank the member for Niagara Falls for the opportunity to express, once again, in this House my support for the legalization of heroin for the treatment of those terminal patients whose suffering cannot be relieved by other drugs.

I commend the member for publicly indicating his support for this measure and I tell him most sincerely that his concern and support are appreciated by all of us who have worked to gain better, more effective treatment for those unfortunate people whose last days are spent in unrelieved agony.

I will not detail the chain of events that led to the introduction of the ban in this country. It is sufficient to say I believe the ban was not instituted for medical reasons, as other members have said, but for political ones. There was a somewhat naive belief that banning the importation and production of heroin for medical use would make the illicit use and criminal trade in the drug easier to control.

The federal government at that time and the federal administration since have argued that in banning the medical use of heroin, it was acting in compliance with the treaty entered into with the World Health Organization. As the member for Niagara Falls indicated earlier, that was not an accurate statement of fact.

Members may also be interested to learn that the ban on heroin, introduced in 1954, was adopted in spite of the advice of the Canadian Medical Association. There has been considerable misrepresentation of the facts on the CMA's position with regard to the adoption of the ban. It has been long believed that the CMA did nothing to oppose the ban or that it gave tacit consent to the ban.

Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act indicate this was not the case. On the contrary, in July 1952 the deputy general secretary of the CMA wrote to the Department of National Health and Welfare and said the CMA's position with regard to a ban on the medical use of heroin remained as expressed by a resolution adopted by the general council of the CMA at its 81st annual meeting in Halifax in 1952. That resolution read, "Be it resolved that this general council recommend that the use of heroin by the medical profession of Canada be not prohibited."

The sad fact is that for the past 30 years health care professionals in this country have been denied the use of a potent painkiller, despite the advice of their professional association that its use be continued. The debate occurs at a critical point in the fight to legalize the use of heroin for the treatment of the terminally ill. A Gallup poll released in July of this year indicated that 73 per cent of Canadians favour the legal use of heroin as a painkiller.

After a three-year study, the Canadian Medical Association at its general meeting in August passed a resolution calling on the government to resume immediately licensing for importation, manufacture and sale of heroin for medicinal purposes.

In June a resolution to legalize the therapeutic use of heroin was passed by the Association of Ontario Boards of Health. The member for Niagara Falls mentioned the support of Mr. James McGrath, a federal member of Parliament.

However, while public, professional and political support for the legalization for the therapeutic use of heroin is growing, opposition to this sensible measure continues to exist. Perhaps the most ill-considered opposition to lifting the heroin ban is based on the claim that heroin is addictive and that patients run the risk of becoming addicts.

In the first place, to the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence to support the view that heroin is any more addictive than morphine, demerol or codeine. In the second place, what does the risk of addiction matter to someone dying of cancer? There is no reason why that person should be made the victim of a fear of a drug which has been demonized in the minds and imaginations of some.

Others oppose the legalization of the therapeutic use of heroin on the grounds that possible criminal diversion of the drug will increase heroin addiction and criminal activity. I, for one, do not believe that we can tolerate a situation in which the way we care for the sick is dictated by our fear of what criminals may or may not do.

Banning the medical use of heroin for 30 years has not eliminated or diminished illegal traffic in the drug or its illicit use. We have succeeded only in depriving patients, not pushers, of the drug while its illicit use has grown. When the ban on medical use of heroin was introduced in Canada there were about 4,000 heroin addicts in the country; today there are an estimated 18,000.

Some look at this figure and ask how many more addicts there might be had heroin not been banned. These people should take a good, long look at the British experience with heroin. The medical profession in Britain has continued to use heroin for the treatment of pain, and its use has actually increased from 1971 to 1982.

Criminal diversion has not proved to be a problem. Britain, which has more than double our population, has only an estimated 8,000 heroin addicts compared to our 18,000. Hospitals in Britain make the same security arrangements for heroin as they make for the security of other narcotic drugs which they have on hand.

It has been estimated that between 4.5 and 11 tons of illegal heroin come into the United States every year. It has also been estimated that if medical use of heroin were legalized in the United States, the total amount that might be used, under proposed legislation in the United States, would be about 500 pounds per year. Even if the total supply of heroin produced for medical use were diverted to the criminal market in any given year, it would represent only four per cent of the total amount of heroin on the street.

In any event, as I have suggested elsewhere, the legalization of heroin for therapeutic use need not add to the total volume of heroin in circulation. For example, heroin for medical use could be obtained from heroin supplies seized as a result of criminal investigations.

Over the years I have argued in support of the measure proposed by the resolution introduced by the member for Niagara Falls. I have argued that the medical use of heroin could be closely supervised, used only by prescription and with the approval of a hospital committee. I see no reason why this measure should not be adopted. The benefits to the patients more than justify its implementation.

I close with a quote from a letter I received from a very well-known physician in Kingston. A copy was also sent to Dr. Walker. "I am writing to support your stand with reference to heroin. We used this superb drug in Vancouver as late as 1968 because the Vancouver General Hospital had a left-over supply. The drug always went to the most needy. This procedure was, admittedly, illegal. No one could convince me that it was immoral. Good luck in your fight." I do not think I could say it any better than that.

5:30 p.m.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by commending my colleague the member for Niagara Falls for expressing in a very meaningful way his strong belief that the drug known as heroin, which was dreaded by many for years for its criminal use, should be permitted to be used to treat terminally ill patients.

I have heard many say, and I think it bears repeating, that most of us cannot testify in a very personal way to having felt the kind of excruciating pain for which heroin should, and under this resolution, if adopted and if the necessary action were taken by the federal government, would be made available.

I think all of us recognize that those people who have gone through excruciating pain and who could give the best testimony to the value of the potential use of heroin are deceased. There have been those who have testified in that direction in other countries. They have had the opportunity to have heroin for that use. I guess most are now dead because most of that usage is confined to those who are terminally ill.

As legislators and individuals, we have been bombarded with considerable evidence as to why we should not undertake the kind of activity and action prescribed in this resolution. This has been documented on many occasions in columns by Dr. Kenneth Walker of Niagara Falls, to whom many have made reference in today's debate. Dr. Walker writes under the pseudonym of Dr. Gifford-Jones.

Being somewhat of a hypochondriac, I read that column and other "Dear Doctor" columns at frequent intervals. Sometimes I find them amusing and often I find them extremely useful in diagnosing my own ailments, but the ones that have been the most serious and sombre for those of us who have read them have been those which have dealt with the terminally ill, making life at least comfortable and allowing some dignity in the last days of one's life.

I join with others in commending Dr. Walker for carrying out his crusade, in many cases almost single-handedly or at least being the most prominent and persistent person. The ones who would be most pleased with his efforts and thankful if this resolution were adopted are those who are terminally ill at present and those at some time in the future who will be terminally ill.

I recall raising this issue in the Legislature on April 30, 1982, when I asked the then Minister of Health, the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman), whether he would be prepared to entertain supporting this. The question was as follows:

"As the minister is aware, a significant number of people in the province have expressed the view that the drug known as heroin should be licensed for medical use to stop what newspaper columnist Dr. Kenneth Walker refers to as the 'torment of the final throes of terminal cancer and patients who are allergic to morphine or for whom that drug is no longer sufficient without many painful injections.'

"In view of the fact that 37 other countries, including England and West Germany, have legalized the use of heroin for strictly definitive medical purposes, is the minister prepared to make representations at this time to the federal ministers of Health and Justice to make the necessary changes in Canadian law to permit what Dr. Walker calls the ultimate humanitarian act to legally take place?"

The minister said he was prepared to entertain representations, but he was not prepared at that time to take the specific action for which I had asked. I find that unfortunate, but I understand the debate was continuing and many people were making counterarguments.

I also recognize, as others do in this Legislature, as those in the United States Congress recognize and as those on the federal task force who looked into this recognize, there are some risks to be taken in the legalization of heroin for medical purposes. We all know the damage heroin has done to the lives of many and their families. We know it has produced criminal profits. We also know that greater availability to doctors brings with it the risk there maybe people who might consider breaking into offices and those who might make use of it in other ways. We are mindful of the opposition which has come forward to this, some of it more thoughtful than others.

Those of us who are supporting this resolution. however, are saying that it be available as one of the options for treating excruciating pain, not that it be the sole option. People in the medical profession are aware of these needs. They are experts, they know their patients well and they know which patients would benefit from the use of heroin as compared to other drugs.

I recognize there are other painkillers. I realize that the problem of palliative care requires greater attention in its entirety. I recognize that there is a need to work on alternatives to heroin for use as painkillers, but none of those arguments is compelling enough to persuade me that the resolution proposed by the member for Niagara Falls is not a good resolution and should not be adopted by this House.

Anyone who has gone through the experience -- and I suspect many members of this Legislature have, and members of the medical profession most certainly have -- and watched those close to them go through the final throes of death in a very painful way cannot help but be moved to support this kind of resolution.

It is not a pretty sight to see friends, relatives and those close to us, or anyone, go through an excruciating death, often attributable to terminal cancer. I think all of us wished we had some magic wand we could wave that would at least provide the dignity of less pain in death and provide that kind of comfort; yet we do not have that magic wand. There are some drugs that can be prescribed and they are prescribed. People do their best, but we have kept away from the medical profession in this country one of the tools which could be most effective against this pain.

My friend the member for Niagara Falls has called upon the federal government to permit the use of heroin for medical purposes, and I think most of us in this House will likely support it.

The British use it. The British are not foolish people in terms of their treatment of their patients. The people in the other 36 countries that we are aware of do not have that lack of expertise either.

Many have mentioned the problem of addiction and many have stated in this House today how foolish it is to worry about addiction to the use of heroin of those who are in their last days before death and are in greatest pain. Frankly, who cares if they are addicted to heroin at that time?

If we are to take into consideration the views of the Canadian Medical Association -- and they are not a group that quickly jumps; they are a small-c conservative group in many ways, so they study very carefully before they make recommendations -- we note that they finally made the recommendation that the federal government legalize the use of heroin not only for the purposes of the terminally ill, as described in this particular resolution, but also for others who experience severe pain, for instance, for burn victims and for use in obstetrics.

The resolution calls for legalizing it for use only for the terminally ill. It is a very defined resolution and it is a very supportable resolution. The Association of Ontario Boards of Health, which endorsed this in June, obviously took into consideration the arguments both for and against. If supervised carefully, if used intelligently and with compassion, I think all of us recognize that heroin can be a major tool in alleviating the pain of people who are terminally ill.

I would hope the members of this House would support this resolution. I understand that those who make arguments contra are not necessarily people trying to bring pain to those in their final days on this earth, but I think they are wrong in denying that use to those people. I think they are wrong in denying to the members of the medical profession in this province and in this country an opportunity to alleviate the pain of those who are suffering from terminal illness.

There are many problems, psychological and others, associated with terminal illness that do not involve the direct experiencing of pain, but the one that hits home constantly to all of us for those dear to us, the one problem we cannot overcome, the one we are most hopeless about, is the alleviation of pain.

The member for Leeds (Mr. Runciman) said it eloquently this afternoon. The member for Downsview (Mr. Di Santo) has added his voice. The member for Niagara Falls has taken the initiative. Dr. Walker has carried the banner for this and has provided the necessary positive publicity and arguments that are compelling to those of us who sit in this Legislature.

I certainly support with every bit of enthusiasm I can, this issue of the adoption of this resolution, which I hope will receive the appropriate attention of the federal government.

5:40 p.m.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in with those who are supporting this resolution this afternoon. As one who has followed this debate over a number of years, there are some ironic situations I wish to point out in the few remarks I will make this afternoon.

The matter has been debated on more than one occasion. It is interesting to read the debates in Parliament, for example, where one can find a rather rational and calm debate in which representatives from all three political parties agreed that it was a reasonable thing to provide for the therapeutic use of heroin for terminally ill patients and for others. The difficulty is that it has not happened yet.

When one goes into the background as to why there is a ban on the use of heroin, one can understand -- I certainly can -- why world organizations concerned with the widespread use of heroin as a drug, and particularly its illicit uses on the street, would make such a move.

It is sadly ironic that in this nation, for example, the use of heroin only happens illegally, supposedly, on the street and without any kind of supervision. Its use is banned in the place where I would think it would be most logical to use it: for therapeutic purposes in a hospital situation, where it would be closely controlled, where the quality of the drug and its usage would he carefully monitored and where one could gather some very sensible, hard data with respect to research. That would be the logical place to have a drug such as heroin used. and yet it cannot be used there.

When one looks at the Canadian research experience dealing with heroin or other drugs of a similar nature, one finds it is done rather furtively; it is not clear whether all these drugs, heroin included, are illegal or whether certain research facilities can do research on these drugs. We have virtually no research of that kind done in Canada. It seems to me that is wrong.

The use of heroin in the situation outlined in this resolution is the calm, rational and logical approach to be taken. There is proper information to be gained from such usage. The controls are there. The experience in Britain and elsewhere has proven that all the arguments about there being lots of break-ins and things of that nature, as well as the illicit use of drugs associated with it, are not real; these things do not happen.

One can sympathize with the imposition of the ban initially for reasons that are not really related to this resolution, but I feel it is time this ban was lifted and we should proceed to apply this kind of drug usage in the very limited way it is called for in this resolution.

It is very odd -- this is the other irony I want to mention this afternoon -- that some drugs are accepted by governments. This government makes a lot of money from the use of tobacco, for example. It also makes a lot of money from the use of alcohol and from the use of pharmaceuticals, synthetic and natural, which are produced and sold here in Canada and imported from elsewhere. All those drugs we know about. All those drugs are used widely and extensively, too widely and too extensively.

The drug we are talking about in this resolution is banned, at least in theory. But as other members have pointed out, the ban is not always effectively carried out; there are sources of it and it is or has been used in a somewhat limited way. I have not read of a big raid by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on any of our hospitals where people have admitted the drug has been used in a very limited way. I suspect that will never happen. I suspect they know where it is being used in the Canadian experience for research purposes and are turning a blind eye to it.

The resolution before us this afternoon once again puts before legislators, as the federal bills did, the opportunity to express an opinion and to put some limits on the kind of usage. I believe the limits contained in the resolution are necessary. I believe that is the purpose for which heroin use may have some advantage in our society. The controls are there. The definition is very tight -- perhaps a little tighter than I would care to have it -- in saying it is only for the terminally ill, for therapeutic use, and it will be used only in a tightly controlled situation.

In those situations and in those circumstances, this resolution ought to receive the support of all the members here. Whether or not one has great fears about heroin use, one surely cannot deny that we ought to have some working knowledge, some active Canadian research on the matter, and that is what the resolution calls for.

In addition, as other members have pointed out at some length, there is a humane purpose behind the resolution: it will ease the pain of some people who are terminally ill.

The honourable member has put forward a resolution that has specificity, detailing the control and the exact nature of the result he wants. The resolution deserves the support of all members. I hope they will join with those of us who have followed this debate for some time and who are somewhat frustrated by the arguments that have been put forward.

Mr. Kerrio: Mr. Speaker, at the outset, I want to thank those members, particularly the member for Downsview, the member for Leeds, the member for St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley) and the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh), for supporting me in this resolution. When I opened my remarks, I read something I had a feeling for that rises above partisan politics, and I am very pleased to see support on all sides of the House for this very important resolution.

Because of earlier circumstances, the motion to set aside the business of the House, which somewhat truncated this debate, I told Dr. Walker he should not come; then I told him there might be a chance it would go on. I am pleased he has availed himself of the opportunity to hear some of the members speak, and I am particularly pleased and proud that there has been such support on all sides of the House.

I have been extremely careful and have avoided the arguments of some people who would not support this resolution. I have done that for a very good reason. It would be in all our best interests to bring those people across without causing any more friction or difficulty in bringing them to the kind of thinking that prevailed here today. I take it on myself, and I hope all members here might in the future, should the resolution pass, go to those who are opposed to it and make the kind of arguments that were made here today and bring everyone on side, if I can use that description, in the relief of suffering for those who could have such pain.

When I put the resolution and made it very specific, I was trying to put it in such a way that it could be supported on all sides of the House. I think sane heads will prevail in the future and it might be expanded and used in those areas that have been described by many physicians and many of those learned in the practice of medicine.

There is one specific area we did not touch on that bears a few moments of consideration, the fact that this drug often puts a patient who is in serious pain in a euphoric atmosphere that takes him out of touch, as it were. We have seen many friends who have been given injections of morphine and have been depressed to the point where they have no sense of what they are about.

If there are those who do not think that should happen, so be it. They could talk over that kind of treatment of their loved ones, and their physician would certainly do the will of the person suffering and/or of the family. I cannot find anyone who would criticize the ability of someone who has very deep pain to spend the last while they have with their loved ones and to be given some lift, some euphoric state, where they know what is happening and can suffer the last days here with at least that kind of communication with those who are about them.

5:50 p.m.

In closing, I want to put something on the record that was written by Albert Schweitzer: "We all must die, but if I can save him from days of torture, that is what I feel is my great and ever-new privilege. Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself." I suppose what he really is saying is that we are all indeed our brothers' keepers.

I hope I can get the kind of support today for this resolution that will allow me to go from these halls and see if we can get all provincial governments to support such a resolution and get the government in Ottawa to accept this in the way it is given and to put forward legislation that will allow doctors the use of this very valuable way to treat those who are suffering.

CO-ORDINATION OF EDUCATION POLICY

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): Mr. Gordon has moved resolution 31.

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Motion agreed to.

5:57 p.m.

THERAPEUTIC USE OF HEROIN

The House divided on Mr. Kerrio's motion for resolution 28, which was agreed to on the following vote:

Ayes

Andrewes, Ashe, Baetz, Barlow, Bradley, Breaugh, Bryden, Charlton, Cooke, Cureatz, Di Santo, Eakins, Eaton, Elston, Gordon, Harris, Kennedy, Kerrio, Kolyn, MacQuarrie, Mancini, McCaffrey, McCague, McClellan, McLean, McMurtry, Newman, Nixon, O'Neil, Philip, Piché, Rae, Ramsay, Riddell, Runciman, Ruston, Scrivener, Sheppard, Stokes, Taylor, G. W., Treleaven, Van Horne, Walker, Watson, Wells, Wildman, Worton, Wrye.

Ayes 48; nays 0.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I will be very brief because I know other members are anxious to speak to this point of order.

We have just experienced a bit of an ironic situation where a vote was called. Members voted one way and asked for a recorded vote. During the course of the recorded vote, they voted the other way. I know the rules are somewhat silent on that. However, I do think you should address yourself to that. I think there are other members here who would like to explain why they voted against something on a voice vote and then voted for it on a recorded vote. We should afford them that opportunity.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you.

Mr. Ruston: That is what you call a flip-flop.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mrs. Scrivener: Mr. Speaker, I attempted to clarify what had happened just before you received the vote from the clerk. I and some of my colleagues. with the consent of our colleagues across the aisle, stood in our places to oppose in order that we could bring in the members and have a recorded vote. We felt that it was a very important bill and that all of our names should be recorded as being in support of this important resolution.

Mr. Kerrio: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Can we take the bill to committee?

The Acting Speaker: It is only a resolution and you cannot do that.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate the business of the House for the coming week.

Tomorrow, Friday, October 19, and on Monday, October 22, the House will consider the estimates of the Ministry of Northern Affairs.

On Tuesday, October 23, in the afternoon, we will deal with Bill 101 in committee of the whole House. In the evening, we will deal with Education Bills 114 and 119. which are here for second reading and committee of the whole if necessary.

On Wednesday, October 24, the usual committees have permission to sit in the morning.

On Thursday, October 25, in the afternoon, we will have private members' ballot items standing in the names of the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) and the member for Lakeshore (Mr. Kolyn). In the evening, we will continue with debate on the 11th report of the select committee on the Ombudsman if it is not completed tonight. Then we will have debate on the report of the standing committee on procedural affairs regarding premature disclosure of reports from committees.

On Friday, October 26, we will deal with the estimates of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics.

The House recessed at 6:03 p.m.

October 18, 1984